Speaker: Welcome to Honest Money.
I'm your host, Anya, and today's episode is brought to you by hard block.
Anja: Joining me today in a virtual decentralized studio is Rajat Soni.
Rajat is a chartered financial analyst and a Bitcoin, and is joining me
today to talk about, well, Bitcoin Welcome to Honest Money Rajat.
Rajat: Absolutely.
Thank you so much for having me, Anja.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Anja: Me too, me too.
I've been following some of your stuff online for some time, and I think a
lot of Australians really appreciate your levelheadedness when it comes to
analyzing and also quite, um, personally am very, um, warm to the fact that
you encourage, uh, people to get to 0.1% of a, no, not percent, sorry,
0.1 of a Bitcoin or 0.01 of a Bitcoin, which is achievable for most people.
Let's start with the beginnings.
Why did you get into finance to begin with?
Rajat: I think it was a little bit of an accident.
I just did well in an accounting class in high school, and then after
that I thought, oh, I like numbers.
I might as well get this done.
But, but I think that that's kind of funny as well to think about.
People are making fin, they're making decisions for the rest of their
lives when they're, when they're in like 15, 16, 17, everybody's asking
'em, oh, what do you wanna do?
You have to take certain credits in, in high school and stuff to,
to, to get to a certain point in your life or to get a certain
education, uh, and, and a certain job.
But I, I think it was by accident, to be honest.
Um, I started off with an interest in accounting, and then after
accounting in university, I took a couple of, uh, finance, uh, classes.
And one of my friends was thinking of doing the CFA, so I thought,
I'm kind of bored of accounting.
At that time I thought accounting was a little boring.
It was, uh, it wasn't like finance, finance, it was a lot of excitement.
So I did the CFA.
Um, and I mean, I, here, here I am now, I, I worked at a bank,
um, I worked at, uh, TD Bank in the asset management department.
I worked at a brokerage, uh, quest trade.
I worked at CIBC, but that was like a customer facing role.
Uh, over time I just did all these different roles.
I think it ca, I think it happened by accident though, that, um, I'm,
I'm doing what I'm doing today, so helping people with their finances,
helping people make better financial decisions, I guess you can say.
Um, I do one-on-one meetings.
I do, uh, I create a lot of content now, but like I said, it was by accident.
I started off with, I guess, helping the rich get richer, and then over time
it turned into, um, I, I, I guess the working at the bank, that, that's what
I mean by helping the rich get richer.
Working at the bank wasn't really that fulfilling.
And I was pretty miserable.
Working, working there.
I, I didn't really like it much.
Um, and over time I transitioned into doing my own thing,
starting my own business.
I started posting on social media.
I started creating content about personal finance, stocks, real estate.
And in the comments, a lot of people started asking me to look into Bitcoin,
and they were telling me that 10% returns from stocks aren't enough
because inflation isn't actually 2%.
And at first I thought, oh, these people are idiots.
Um, I know what I'm talking about.
I have my CFA, I have my education and accounting and finance.
I know what I'm talking about.
None of these people know what they're talking about.
None of them have the education that I have.
But then, I don't know.
I don't know really why.
I started looking into Bitcoin.
I saw a couple posts about, uh, the Bitcoin standard.
Somebody said, Bitcoin's gonna go to 10,000.
This was around, I think it was either 2021 or 2020.
Somebody said, Bitcoin's gonna crash, uh, to 10,000.
Of course it didn't do that, but that, that kind of got me thinking.
They said how owning one Bitcoin will be generational wealth.
It'll create a level of wealth that most people probably will
never be able to experience.
And I, I, I do, I do generally, I, I do genuinely think that
that's what would happen.
But I, I mean, even that, I kind of figured it out after
reading the Bitcoin standard.
Reading the Bitcoin standard made me ask more questions and I even
got answers to it and it, and it's almost like a rabbit hole, right?
You go into it, it, um, you, you learn a little bit.
And then you need to kind of step back and then learn a little bit more about
a different topic, and then you step back and learn a little bit more about
a different topic, and then you go back into the topic that you started with.
And that's, that's exactly what happened with me and the Bitcoin standard.
So I think I read the Bitcoin standard maybe four or five times.
I listened to the audio book.
I was doing, uh, Uber Eats, so I was delivering food.
And while I was delivering food, I was listening to audio books.
I was listening to podcasts.
I think I probably spent, um, maybe 1500 hours listening to podcasts in
a year, which was absolutely insane.
But it really gave me different perspectives and it made me think
about, uh, different, really different books to read, learn, learn from
different people, see different opinions, different perspectives.
I think that's the best thing about Bitcoin.
You have to learn it from different people.
Everybody has their own experience about what it is.
One person would think of it as something and the other person
would think of it as something else.
And I, I guess that's really kind of shaped my, uh, belief.
Of where Bitcoin is going.
People like, let's say Lawrence Lapard
Anja: mm
Rajat: uh, Adeena Moose, Jeff Booth, um, Peter McCormack.
McCormack.
McCormack, yeah.
How, however you pronounce it, presses press and push.
Uh, all these people, Robert Breed love, all these people
have like their own opinions.
Ol uh, tons of, tons of tor scroll.
Like tons, tons of them.
There, there, there are so many of them.
Um, they ha they, a lot of them have written their own books.
And I highly recommend that you read those books because it gives
you a different perspective.
It gives you more detail on what they think of Bitcoin.
And that's, that's what shaped my view of what Bitcoin is.
So, back to the question, how did I get into finance?
It happened by accident, but now I'm very, very fulfilled with what I do.
I love it.
I enjoy it so much.
I feel like it's helping me, uh, it's helping me to really
enjoy my life more as well.
'cause I, I, I think just helping other people, serving other people.
Helping them to solve their problems is probably one of the best things
that you can do, and I, I truly feel like I get to do that now.
Anja: Yeah, absolutely.
I love that too.
That's what I love.
Just seeing people, um, people's lives transform and when they
become economically empowered, it's, it's just such a wonderful
thing to experience and to witness.
But I wanna, uh, like I wanna study you because it's so interesting to
see, you know, traditional finance professionals get into Bitcoin and a lot
of them share the same story of like, they were very resistant to it at the
start and just dismissed it, you know, almost like scoffed it, like, this is a
scam, I don't even wanna know about it.
And eventually they cave in because like, okay, this thing isn't going away.
It keeps reappearing.
So let me look into this.
Do you believe that Bitcoin is more of an intelligence test or more of an ego test?
Rajat: I think it's an ego test.
Uh, there are people who I've talked to, a lot of people, I don't know if they're
telling the truth or not, but they say that they've read the Bitcoin standard.
They say that they've studied Bitcoin for thousands of hours.
And I think that one of the things.
That people have to get through is just their belief of how the world should work.
And I believe that's the ego.
So what I mean by that is certain people believe that money has to be physical.
Other people believe that money has to be issued by governments.
But I mean, in the past that has been the case.
So we've always, we've always had fiat, we've always had gold.
But what, what's the reason for that?
The way, the way that I see it is that with gold, there's
no central authority and.
Because of that, you don't have to trust anybody for transactions.
But over time, we needed a way to transact with people around the
world, and we needed a way to transact with people, uh, without having
to carry gold bars and gold coins.
And that's where Fiat came in, right?
So what Fiat did was it allowed us to transact and not have to carry around
a bunch of coins or a gold bar to, to give value away to other people.
And I feel like it's much easier for somebody to know that you have gold
than it is for them to know that you have, let's say, fiat, right?
Because gold, if you have it in your pockets, it's gonna, it's gonna clink,
it's gonna make a certain sound.
If you have a gold bar, I mean, the, the weight of that is massive.
You're not gonna be able to carry it around.
People will see it in your pocket.
I mean, it's easy to detect, let's say a. Um, if somebody really wanted to, to steal
from you, they, they, they could, right?
It's just much easier.
And they can have a very concentrated amount of wealth, uh, in, in a very,
they, they can have a very, very cent, sorry, a very, a massive amount of
wealth in a very concentrated form.
So say a gold bar, it could be worth $500,000 and somebody
could come into your house, they can grab it and they can leave.
So just that, I mean, I think because of that, we kind of outsourced the security
of our money to banks and to governments because we needed an authority of, we,
we needed an authority that could confirm that the money that we're using is real.
So let's say for example, if there were no banks and there was no government
issued money, and whose money do we use?
Who do we trust?
So let's say for example, you come out with a form of money and.
And, and I come out with a form of money.
Who's the third person?
Let's say there's a third person in this, in this equation, whose money
are they going to choose to use?
Right.
So because of that, I think the, the way that I see it, there had to be an
intervention by governments in creating a form of money that we could trust.
And that won't be diluted very easily.
They won't run away with it.
I mean, that's what in theory should have happened.
And it's just, I, I think that with, with just the way that we've gone in
the past, fiat currencies have given us an opportunity to transact more easily.
But I think what Bitcoin does is it changes how things work.
So before, like, like I said, people believed that money had to be physical.
People believed that money had to be issued by governments.
But now we have, uh, we have this system.
We isn't centralized.
Everybody has one record of this ledger.
And you don't have to trust anybody for you to have money.
So let's say if you keep cash, you have to trust that your
government's not going to dilute it.
If you keep gold, you're going to have to trust.
If you keep it in your house, you're gonna have to trust that people
aren't gonna come in and rob you if you keep it with a custodian.
You have to trust that the custodian isn't just gonna disappear with it.
And now we have Bitcoin because we moved from gold to fiat.
And fiat was we, we were taking advantage of with fiat.
I think that's probably the easiest way to say it.
We were taking advantage of the money is just being printed out of thin air.
People believe that it isn't, or they believe that it shouldn't,
that it, that it won't be printed.
Some people still believe that the US stories are backed by gold, but now
we have this system of money where you don't have to trust anybody.
You know what it is.
So what.
If I were to send you Bitcoin, you can confirm with your phone
that what you got is real.
Whereas let's say with, if you wanted to transact digitally with fiat, your
bank has to confirm that it's real.
And how do you, why would you trust them?
It's just, again, it's trust.
You have to trust the third party who could have any intention in the world.
And that's exactly what the problem is.
With fiat, with Bitcoin, you don't have that issue With
Bitcoin, you don't trust anybody.
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Anja: Yeah.
Rajat: You run your own node.
You could, you have full control over your life.
And, and back to that question, ego versus knowledge.
You can learn, uh, everything about Bitcoin, and if you don't believe
that money should be digital or if you don't believe that governments
shouldn't be able to print money, then you're never gonna grasp Bitcoin.
I think because of that, I think it's an ego test and no
amount of knowledge can change.
What you believe about the world because we, Kelly, we tell, we
tell ourselves these stories about what the world should look like.
We tell ourselves these stories about where we think the world is going.
And if Bitcoin doesn't fit into that story, it doesn't matter how much you
study it, you're not gonna get it.
You kind of have to, you have to, you have to look at Bitcoin with basically
like a, a, a, what's it called?
A like a fresh, a fresh mind.
If you don't look at it with a fresh mind, if you don't just let go of
everything that you've known from the past, you're not gonna get it.
And I think that's partly an ego test.
A lot of people, financial professionals, they believe they know everything
because they've read a couple of books.
I mean, I believe that, like I said, I'm not trying to insult anybody.
I'm saying it about myself as well.
I truly believed that, that I know everything, even though I didn't,
and I had to let go of that belief that I know more than everybody else
in order to grasp what Bitcoin is.
Anja: So.
On that, what was it that finally got you over the line?
Rajat: So one thing that I really, one thing that I really think got me to,
to, I guess believe more about what Bitcoin is, is the Mempool website.
Do you know about it?
Mempool space?
Yeah.
So what I like about Mepo is that it shows you every single transaction
that's ever happened, and you can see the transactions coming in,
um, as they, as they're happening.
So you can see them coming in, you can see them being reflected
on the Bitcoin blockchain.
You can see the trans, if you send a transaction, you can see it
updated on mepo, and then you can see that you are the one who said,
it's like, it's like you're able to write on a global ledger yourself.
And the reason why that really helped me is that I believe it's so, so I think
the white paper is like, is like theory and then the mepo is like application.
So the theory you can.
Learn the theory, but if you can't visualize what it's supposed to be
and you don't see what it's what it's supposed to be, you don't understand
where the Bitcoin is coming from.
For example, a lot of people are just held back by not
understanding how Bitcoin is created.
So on the Mempool, uh, on the Mempool website, mepo space, I saw the
Coinbase transactions, for example.
And then I understood how it's basically an, it's almost like
an honor system, but not really.
'cause everybody's looking at you and, sorry, everybody's looking at the
blocks that you create as a minor and you can give yourself more Bitcoin.
But if you do that, the transactions is not gonna go through.
'cause there's millions of eyes looking at the Bitcoin blockchain at any time.
So if you do some, let's say for example, you're supposed to give
yourself three Bitcoin, but you give yourself 30, everybody's gonna know
and they're gonna reject that block.
So if we look at how the current financial system works, the current
financial system works with one computer and we have no access to it.
We are basically accountable to the bank, whereas the Bitcoin blockchain
is accountable to us, and we're the ones who enforce the rules.
We're the ones who make sure that everything on it is correct, and
if something's not correct, it's up to us to reject that transaction.
And if you think about it, there are something like 25,000 nodes right now.
And if somebody's trying to scam the system, it affects all the
people who are running the nodes.
And if you let that scam go through, you are diluting your own Bitcoin.
And why would anybody do that?
So just based on that, it, it's almost like an it, it, it, it sets
an expectation that this, the, this network is always going to show
you the truth about who owns what.
'cause you can't manipulate it.
You can't, you can't screw it over.
You can't screw other people over.
If I, if I wanted to send you bitcoin.
You can confirm on the Mempool, you can confirm on your own node that
it's real, that you actually got it.
So for me, back to the question, what got me into this thing?
What, what really put me over the edge and got me to really start thinking
about where this thing can go.
I would say it's the Mempool website, but there's also something else.
So there's actually this YouTube video that I saw where the guy was talking
about how, um, real estate, or sorry, landlords don't really produce any value.
And before that I truly believe that oh, land landlords create a lot of value.
They're, uh, they're so important to the financial system.
They create so much that we need.
And I guess that video just showed me that landlords are just a middleman
and what they're doing is they're trying to find a way to save.
And real estate has become that way to save.
And because landlords are using real estate to save, the individual
is struggling to buy homes.
That, that, that gave me a different perspective as well.
Believe it or not, it was a socialist video.
It was like a, it was a like, almost like, um, the guy was kind of saying
that nobody should be able to own more houses than they need, but
saying that is not gonna do anything.
I think the important thing is to find a solution.
And when I looked at Bitcoin from that angle, it made me think you can't
force people not to buy houses, but you can give them an incentive not to buy
houses and Bitcoin is that incentive.
So with real estate, think about all the things you have to do to maintain
a property, to own a property.
To buy a property, you have to go through a realtor.
You have to pay a massive spread to, uh, to, to them as a fee.
For example, like 5% on every sale.
You have to deal with a bank, you have to borrow money to buy a house.
You can't buy pieces of houses.
Whereas with bitcoin.
Is you, you go to an exchange, you buy the Bitcoin, maybe they'll
charge you, I dunno, one 5%.
The Bitcoin is the same no matter what.
So let's say for example, if you have, uh, let's say you get a deposit for a
thousand dollars in your bank account.
If you want, if you are a real estate investor, you can't really
do anything with a thousand dollars.
What are you gonna do?
Whereas if you're a Bitcoin, you get a thousand dollars in your bank
account, deposit it in your exchange account, buy Bitcoin, and you're good.
You don't have to think anymore.
You're good to go.
So those, I think, I think these are all things that made me
change my perspective on Bitcoin.
And I, I think I really grasped it.
I, it takes a long time to study Bitcoin.
Even after you study it, you're still gonna be, you're still gonna
be finding new things to study and you're still gonna be learning more.
And in the time that I learned about it, those, those are the things
that changed my, my perspective.
But I, I think, I think I'm still learning.
I'm still not an expert.
Nobody's an expert on Bitcoin.
Nobody knows everything.
I'm still learning new things every single day.
I, I mean, who knows?
Maybe I feel like I'm bullish today, but a year from now, I'll be even more bullish.
And then a year from that, I'll be even more bullish because the,
the, the, the, the journey to learn about Bitcoin never ends.
I mean, you just keep going, right?
You keep learning new things.
You keep learning from different perspectives.
Every time I go on X somebody posts something that blows my mind about
Bitcoin, and it just gives me another perspective to look at it from.
And it just, it's almost like a puzzle.
And every single piece of knowledge that you have is just building that puzzle.
Anja: Mm. I love that.
I love that analogy and I certainly relate to it a lot.
Um, but I'm very curious to know is, you know, obviously with Bitcoin being a,
a store of value, a medium of exchange used in, in some countries, um, not so
much in the west yet, um, but you know, it's got all these amazing properties
to make it a, a great unit of account.
Do you have a favorite feature of Bitcoin of those three, like.
I'm curious because your accounting background, obviously, um, you know, the
fact that you like seeing the man, it kind of makes a lot of sense with an accounting
background why you would be drawn to that.
So I'm wondering if you Yeah, if you kind of are drawn to
the Bitcoins unit of account.
Rajat: Yeah, so what I like, I think what I like the most about Bitcoin
is probably the self custody aspect.
I mean, it's not the numbers, I think the numbers are, are interesting.
I like the self custody aspect.
And then I also, I also created this, uh, supply schedule where it shows
you how much Bitcoin is being created.
I feel like that's really amazing as well because it shows you over
time, it's just gonna take more and more time to create Bitcoin.
So let's say today, or let's say in the, let's say in the beginning from
2012 till, sorry, 2009 till 2012, 50 Bitcoin were created every 10 minutes.
And if you think about that, that's five Bitcoin every minute.
From 2012 till 2016, it dropped by 50%, so it dropped to 2.5
Bitcoin every 10 minutes.
Then from 2016 to 2020, dropped another 50% to 1.25 Bitcoin every 10 minutes.
Then the following, those are what these are called is, they're
called, they're called epoch.
So every epoch has a certain supply, four years.
It's another, it, it basically halves a supply Hal.
So it's the, the following epoch.
And what, what really fascinates me about this is that over time, this is
the only thing that'll be more difficult to create, the only technology that's
more difficult to create more of.
So over time, it takes more, let's say 10 years from now, 20 years
from now, 30 years from now, there's going to be a lot less Bitcoin being
produced every 10 minutes compared to what's being created today.
Whereas let's say with computers, you get something like, what is it?
Uh.
Twice as I think it's for, for, for storage, you get twice as much storage for
the same price every one and a half years.
Whereas with Bitcoin, you get half the amount of Bitcoin every
four years, and that's unheard of.
Nothing.
That's harder to create more of.
Even with gold, something like 66% of the total supply was
issued within the last 50 years.
So we've, gold has been around for 5,000 year, well, millions of years,
but 66% of the above ground supply was produced in the last 50 years.
That's wild.
So what that means is 33% of it was produced before that.
And that, that shows me that the supply is, it's increasing, it's accelerating,
it's growing faster and faster over time.
We're gonna keep getting better at producing gold.
Whereas with Bitcoin we get du we we get worse at producing it.
Because that's what the system is designed to do.
And it, once you, I think once you grasp that, it, it becomes very difficult
not to see where Bitcoin is going.
And then self custody, for example.
Sorry.
The, the other thing that I really like about Bitcoin is the self custody.
Um, for example, if you wanted to take self custody of your stocks, you'd
have to get, uh, stock certificates.
So I used to work at a brokerage, and if somebody, let's say for example,
somebody had $10,000 worth of a stock and they wanted to take self custody and
they wanted to move it to, let's say, another brokerage, what they'd have to
do is they'd have to ask the bank to move the stock into that other brokerage.
They'd have to do that, and it would take 30 days for them
to get that done, 30 days.
And then if you wanted to take self custody of a stock, you'd
have to get stock certificates.
And stock certificates cost like 300, which is absolutely insane.
So if you wanted to take stocks into your own hands.
It would cost you $300 to do so, no matter how much stock you have.
If you have one share, it takes you $300.
If you have 10 shares, 300 to, to me, that's pretty crazy.
So it almost feels like it's a incentive not to take self custody.
Whereas with Bitcoin, I think there was a transaction maybe a month ago
for 1.5 billion and it costs 30 cents.
Anja: Yeah.
Rajat: So you can take self custody with Bitcoin for 30 cents.
Nobody can mess with you.
Nobody can take your Bitcoin from you.
If you have Bitcoin, and let's say for example, you have Bitcoin, you have
your private keys, um, and somebody wants to take that Bitcoin from you.
They have to come and take it from you physically.
If you have it in an exchange, they can just go to the exchange and get the
exchange to send that Bitcoin to them.
That's, that's a, that, that's not self custody.
Whereas if you take self custody, they have to physically come to
you to try to take your Bitcoin.
I, I think that's, that blows my mind.
'cause you can't take self custody in that way with anything.
Let's say with gold, for example, if you wanna take self custody,
you have to have security.
You have to have a special vault.
That vault will only protect your gold for let's say half
an hour against power tools.
Whereas with Bitcoin, if you have your Bitcoin in cold storage,
people will have to guess your private keys to access your Bitcoin.
And that's extremely difficult to, you can't do that.
It's impossible.
It's like trying to guess.
It's try, it's like, it's like trying to find a specific grain
of sand in the entire world.
You can't, it's like trying to find one specific star in the entire,
in in the entire, what is it?
Is it the universe?
Universe, yeah.
Universe.
I was thinking universe, galaxy.
Yeah.
So universe, let's say one specific star and there are.
I mean, there's a lot of them.
I, I don't even know how big the number is.
There's like 70 digits or something in the number of private keys
that you can potentially create.
And over time I think that'll get higher.
It'll get bigger and bigger.
So it'll get diff more and more difficult to, to take people's Bitcoin.
It gets more difficult to create more Bitcoin.
That and that to me, that's, I mean, I find that fascinating.
I don't think anything can compete.
Anja: Yep.
No, it, it can't.
I agree with you.
Absolutely.
Um, yeah, it's interesting.
And going back to what you were saying earlier on, like on on, on the
whole issue of trust, if I was gonna summarize it the way I understand it,
you know, historically, going back a few centuries ago, the issue of trust
was between individuals and that's why Central Banks initially stepped in.
Mm-hmm.
Um, they didn't have the scope that they have today.
It was a lot smaller and it was more about standardization of money so that
you knew if money was issued by your gold coin was issued by a central institution,
that it was, it, it was the real deal.
No one manipulated it in any way.
Um, and now what we are going through, um, is the breakdown of trust
between individuals and institutions.
So that's kind of where Bitcoin comes in because people have been
calling out fiat for a long time.
Um, you know, there've been many, um, people talking about the Federal
Reserve, like going back a hundred years ago now, how it's a terrible idea.
Um, they've been various documentaries made even long before Bitcoin was ever
invented about the global financial system and what, what's wrong with
it and that breakdown in trust and how many bank runs have there been,
how many bailouts have there been?
Um, so that institutional trust is really eroding.
And I think what's speeding it up now is that we do have an exit
for the first time in history.
And that's also what's very confronting for a lot of people
because it wasn't meant to be there.
You know, it's kind of, we're having to renegotiate everything we know about money
and trust, and I just find it really fast.
Fascinating.
I love the human psychology of it.
It's, yeah, it's really fascinating to me.
Um,
Rajat: yeah, we, we needed, I think we did need central banks at one
point, but now because of Bitcoin, we don't, you can't use gold globally.
If, like, if I, let's say for example, you're in Australia, I'm
in Toronto, uh, I'm in Canada.
If I wanted to send you gold, how do I do it?
I can't.
Whereas with Bitcoin you can just put up a, a, a barcode.
I can scan it and I can send you that Bitcoin.
Anja: Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's that easy.
Rajat: Yeah.
Anja: Um, yeah.
And another fact I love someone commented on one of my previous YouTube posts,
um, and this is another rabbit hole that I really wanna go down, is that
in the global south, in countries like Africa and Asia, it's the women who
are largely driving adoption because they are motivated by necessity.
They're experiencing de banking a lot more than women in the West.
So women in the West seem to treat it more like as a technology that
they need to wrap their head around.
It's not considered money, whereas global south it is considered money.
And that's why it's just, I just found that very, very fascinating.
Um, but I wanna talk about the school that you, uh, organize.
I love communities and, and, um, I wanna know more about like the
online community you've created.
Rajat: Yeah.
Uh, so I, I created a, a school community.
The website is, uh, school.com, SKOO l.com/retire with Bitcoin.
So I created the community with the intention of just helping
as many people as possible with answering their questions.
And a lot of people have had a lot of questions that even
I've had to think about.
And the great thing about the school community is that there are
people on there who know more than I do, and then there are other
people who know less than I do.
So everybody's contributing and they're giving their thoughts and their opinions
on where this thing could go, where this thing should go in the future, and
where, where they think that it could potentially, uh, where it could change
the world, how it could change the world.
So in that community, we have, I mean, I, I've created a couple of courses.
I've created a, a few videos.
Uh, my goal is to just help people to build wealth by using Bitcoin,
creating as much value as they possibly can, serving as many people as they
possibly can so that they're not.
Struggling for money when they're 60, 70, 80.
I don't know if you've heard the term, uh uh, the phrase,
uh, dying on the Walmart floor.
To me, that's really scary.
'cause what that means is basically it's just older people who are, let's say
in their seventies, eighties, nineties, they're having to work part-time jobs
because they can't afford their lives.
And they're so old that they're literally dying at their part-time
jobs because they can't sustain their lifestyle if they didn't work this job.
And they're going through this stress because of how the system works.
And I don't want people to go through that.
I, I, I, that's, that scares me.
And I know that that's a gap that a lot of people have in their lives right now.
They're not completely financially illiterate.
They trust the banks.
But they don't understand that the banks profit from their mistakes.
They profit from, uh, these people not understanding how money works.
And, and that's basically my goal in the community.
My goal is just to give people the means to understand how the
financial system works so that they can use it to their advantage rather
than getting screwed over by it.
So, for example, instead of working an active job for the rest of their lives
and giving their time, their effort, their energy to a company, I want
people to, I mean, of course you have to do that at some point you have to
work a job, but I want people to put at least a small portion of that money
into Bitcoin, because what that does is it gives them an asset that's going to
accumulate in purchasing power over time.
It's going to continue to grow forever, and at some point, I think
it'll sustain their lifestyle.
I think what it'll do is it'll give them that power to not have
to rely on an employer anymore.
And, and to me that's one of the most important things.
I, I personally think that not having an employer, being able to freely
create your own value the way that you want to, and then living your life,
like the way that you're doing it, the way that I, I've been doing it.
I think that's one of the greatest forms of freedom that you have.
Not having to ask somebody for permission to go on vacation, not
having to ask to take a day off.
I, I think that's the greatest form of freedom that anybody can experience
because it, I, I've seen people just hate going to work on Monday.
'cause they, they don't like the job that they're doing, but they have to do it.
They're forced to do it, and if they don't do it, then they're gonna be homeless.
So my goal again is to just help people to not have to do that
for the rest of their lives.
If I can help one person do that, 10 people, a hundred people.
A thousand people.
I mean, I'm happy.
I'm happy to, I'm happy to help.
I, I think in total I've orange peeled, I would say at least 10,000 people.
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Anja: Wow.
Rajat: With, with the content that I'm creating.
Anja: Nice.
Rajat: Um, and so in the community, I have this webinar that I used to
charge $50 for, and just that webinar there were, so in total I had about
3000 people who took that webinar, and 2,500 of 'em were brand new.
So 2,500 people who, at least from my opinion, I would say
80% of them were orange pilled.
I got a lot of emails from people telling me they started buying Bitcoin
because of, and I want to, my, my end goal, I mean, I, I I, I can only
estimate 10,000 people across, let's say, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, 10,000 plus.
Um, but my, my end goal is to orange pill at least a million people.
I think that'd be, I, I think that'd be awesome.
Anja: I love you said that because I, I, um, I have kind of the same goal, um,
which I have never voiced out loud, but like I would love nothing more than to
orange peel a million Australian families and get them running their own rows, help
them, like economically empower them.
And although I don't have like a traditional finance background, I
do have a marketing background, um, which kind of helps me, like I feel
myself as almost like a gateway drug.
Um.
That first soft launch into the Bitcoin community, and then there's
so many other people you can find that align with your worldview.
Um, yeah.
I I I love that.
I, um, I, I'm so impressed with like 10,000 because for me, I feel happy.
Just recently I organized a women in Bitcoin meetup in Byron Bay and which is
like a regional town in, in, in Australia.
We had 14 women show up and some of them have been in Bitcoin for a long time.
Some of them are relatively new to it, but still very clue, clued on.
Some are curious about it.
And then the very few, um, ladies were complete nebes and they were
like, okay, so tell me like what to do, what do I invest my money in?
We're like, no, no, no, no, no.
We're not here to give financial advice.
Um, we're here to like lead with education and these are the resources
that you can lean into to, you know, start your self-education
journey because this is like the.
Powerful you think you can do for yourself is to learn about money,
especially where we are at in the, in, in the world right now.
And, and yeah, like a lot of people just leave feeling very
inspired and feel like that kind of network effects is taking off.
And I was also very inspired to, to, um, I got curious to learn about how
knowledge has been passed through history.
And this again gave me like, you know, a bit of, um, inspo.
Is that women in particular, uh, have passed knowledge horizontally.
So peer-to-peer, sister to sister, neighbor to neighbor.
Whereas men who owned or managed institutions like universities,
banks, um, like spread, uh, knowledge more vertically.
So that's kind of an oversimplification.
And obviously the world has changed a lot, um, throughout history, but historically
it was, yeah, it was women that led that, you know, passing on information
about societal issues, morality about the home, midwifery, whatever.
And this is why I think learning about Bitcoin is so important because
it is the base layer of our society.
We all use money.
We need not to carry shame around it and have open and honest conversations
to help em empower each other and build resilient communities.
So this is what I love.
Um, yeah.
But I'm very, I'm very curious to know, um, is like, obviously if I'm hearing
you right, you used to work, you know, in your traditional finance life you
used to help make rich people rich, and now you're just helping regular
people become financially independent.
Do you have a success story that you wanna share?
Rajat: Yeah, absolutely.
So there was actually, uh, I would say that there are a few people
who, who've gone from, let's say, having tons of debt to paying it off
and then starting to stack Bitcoin.
I think it's more about mindset in that ca in that case.
So in the beginning it's about mindset and then after, once you, if, if
you don't bel let's say what I mean, what I mean by that is if you don't
believe that you can pay off your debt, then you're not gonna do it.
You're not gonna try to find the ways to do it.
I think with, with just paying off your debt, and then I, so the way that I look
at it, it's being, so there's two, two, I guess two different groups of people.
So there's people who are in debt, they have massive amounts of
credit card debt, that's bad debt.
Then there are people who have no debt, but they have some savings.
Let's say they have, uh, or they have a positive net worth.
Let's say they have a house, they have some cash, um,
maybe they have some stocks.
And then after that, there are people who have the majority of
their wealth in liquid assets like stocks, Bitcoin, um, let's say REITs.
Real estate investment trust, uh, I would say probably even real estate.
Um, and, and moving from the person who's in debt and has a negative
net worth to moving to, to becoming someone who has a positive net
worth and owns assets is huge.
I think that's insane.
So a lot of the people who, who join the community, a lot of the
people who have listened to my content, most of them aren't at
that point where they're in debt.
I think most of them have paid off their debt, or maybe they have a
close to positive net worth, and they're now looking at growing
their wealth by multiplying it.
So they have some savings, they wanna multiply their savings.
So I've had, I've had, let, let's say, I'll give you an example.
So I used to do the, uh, the webinars that I mentioned.
And I actually had a, a movie director who watched the webinar
and he had enough wealth.
So at the time Bitcoin was like 30 K. So this, this guy, he had like $900,000
in, uh, I think it was in stocks.
I think it might have been index funds, but I, he had about $900,000.
He converted that $900,000 after the watching the webinar.
And he, I guess that was his, his, um, like the seed that was planted
after watching the webinar, he did a little bit more research.
He talked to other people about it.
He looked online and he converted $900,000 into Bitcoin and
he got 30 Bitcoin out of it.
Absolutely wild.
And I think that that 30 Bitcoin, so he went from having, let's say, index funds.
Uh, he, he was already creating value, but he went from having index funds to
just completely moving into Bitcoin, which to me is, I mean, that, that's
fascinated, that, that's amazing.
That's, that's the kind of story that I want to, that that's the kind
of story that I want to inspire.
And then there was another guy who was a doctor.
Um, he had 15 rental properties.
He booked a meeting with me, a one-on-one meeting with me, and he sold 10 of them
Anja: boom,
Rajat: to buy Bitcoin.
Crazy.
And now he probably has more Bitcoin than all of the doctors
that he works with combined.
And, and that, that's, that's life changing at some point.
The bitcoin that he, that, that he, that he has is not only going to support him.
But probably also four or five, six generations into the future
if he manages it properly.
And, and to me that's, that's what's life changing.
I think the, there are people who, that you have to change your mindset
to really start paying off your debt.
And then you have to really look into what investing is to get to the
point where you can even think about putting your money into two assets.
But then after that, once you've already done that, I think it's probably the
most difficult part because you've spent the most time already learning
about, let's say stocks, real estate bonds, gold, whatever it is, and
switching from that to, to Bitcoin.
I mean, that, that's, it's huge.
It's a massive change.
It's a, it's a huge paradigm shift just going from physical to
digital, going from centralized assets to decentralized assets.
That's, I think that's the most important thing.
There are a lot of people who, there was another guy who had, I think it was a
hundred thousand, $96,000 or something like that, in a cd, in a certificate of
deposit, and he booked a meeting with me.
He wanted to know what he can do to potentially retire, and his goal, like
at the end of the day, his goal was to just keep working, keep working,
keep putting five to $10,000 into this cd, or just keep buying CDs and
use those at some point to retire.
But I told him it's impossible.
So a CD is a certificate of deposit.
What it is, it gives you a fixed interest rate, and every year, let's
say you're gonna get 3%, 4%, 5%, whereas inflation could be seven to 10%.
Yeah.
So technically he's making money.
I mean, he's making money in terms of US dollars, but in terms of real
world goods, he's losing value.
He's losing four to 5% per year.
And after he had that meeting with me, he immediately went and converted
about 80% of the value that he had.
So I think it was, I think it might've been like $75,000 into Bitcoin.
And he got to almost a whole coin, which is, I mean, to me that's amazing.
And he's been working his way to a whole coin.
So what, like, when you think about it, all those stories combined, these people
have bought, one got 30 Bitcoin, one got something like a hundred Bitcoin,
the other one got close to one Bitcoin.
There are people who've bought 0.1 Bitcoin, 0.01 Bitcoin after talking to
me just as like a, a, a backup plan.
They still don't believe in it, but they bought 0.01 because just in case, in
case this is, go through it and they're starting to, to learn more about it.
But I, I think the, the impact that social media can have is huge.
The impact that we can have as content creators is absolutely massive.
Like you can change somebody's life and they don't know it yet, but at some
point they're going to look back and they're gonna think That video that
I watched is what changed my life.
And it, that's what gave me the, the present that I have.
Whereas with others, with other assets, maybe they wouldn't be
able to to do the same things.
So the guy that I was talking about, the doctor, um, he hated managing
his properties and now all he has to do is manage a seed phrase.
Anja: Yeah.
Rajat: So much easier.
So much easier.
He was a doctor, right?
He was a doctor, he was working full time.
And because of how the system works, he has to have a second
part-time job just to save.
That makes no sense.
And he, he could see that it didn't make sense, so he wanted to get
out of having too many things to manage and Bitcoin gave that to
him, like it gave him that freedom.
And I was so happy to have taken him through the process of.
Accumulating Bitcoin.
Anja: Yeah, absolutely.
And I wanted to ask you, I'm so glad you brought up, um, credit card debt
because I assume Canada's similar situation to Australia is now there
is a cost of living crisis and a lot of people here have credit card debt.
They have the buy now pay later debt as well on top of the credit card debt.
So people are really struggling financially and we are seeing an
increasing number of Australians living paycheck to paycheck.
So they don't have a disposable income that they once had to put into savings,
um, on top of the debt they have.
And unfortunately, like this, one of the things that breaks my heart is sometimes
people who are interested in, in, you know, acquiring some Bitcoin, they
almost wanna kind of jump a few steps ahead rather than paying down late debt.
First they wanna use Bitcoin to potentially increase
their purchasing power.
Sell that Bitcoin trigger a capital gains tax and then pay off the credit
card debt, where I feel like that might be like a weird way to go about it.
Do you think So,
Rajat: I think, I think there's a balance that's required.
I would say pay off your credit cards, but at the same time, I
would say even stack a dollar, $2, $5 worth of Bitcoin every month.
And I, I don't think that people should be putting all of their money
into Bitcoin because at that point, if you're in credit card debt, you
might want to get that guaranteed return of paying off your credit cards.
And I think that's very valuable.
So let's say if you're paying 25% interest or 20% interest, if you
pay off your credit card, that's a guaranteed 20, 25% return.
Whereas with Bitcoin, what you're doing is you are buying this asset.
Of course, buying the asset is great.
We have no idea what the returns will look like in the short term over the long term.
Maybe it'll go up, but let's say Bitcoin doubles every four years.
Your credit card debt will probably also double every four years.
Or more.
And, and I, I think it's important to start stacking Bitcoin as
much as you can, but obviously pay off the credit card debt.
If you, if you have low interest credit card debt, that's different.
This applies to high interest.
So let's say 20, 25%, if you can, if you have like a, uh, an introductory, um,
rate, like a balance transfer rate of one or 2%, don't pay that off, of course.
But if you're paying 20, 25%, that doesn't make any sense.
There are cards that have, let's say 10% interest rates.
I think that 10% is a great rate to be buying Bitcoin at.
If you have companies like MicroStrategy issuing credit at 11% with STRC and
they're buying Bitcoin with it, I think 10% is a great rate in that case.
So it, it depends on the situation.
Credit card debt in general isn't always bad.
Um, if, like, like I said, if you have a balanced transfer of 1%, that's, I think
that's, I think that's, that's a great.
Way to do things because what you're doing is you're basically getting that money
for free and you're buying assets with it.
I think that's, that's smart.
But then if you have credit card debt and you can't pay for your
day-to-day expenses, I don't think that buying Bitcoin is gonna help you.
I think what you should be focusing on is spending more or spending less than
you earn, either increasing your income or find ways to cut your expenses.
And then after that, let's say if you find a gap of a hundred dollars
a month, you can put that a hundred dollars a month into your credit card,
pay that off, get the snowball rolling.
And if you really want to, let's say you can save a hundred
dollars a month, put $90 into your credit card and $10 into Bitcoin.
I, I don't, I don't think it'd be, I wouldn't advise putting all
$100 into Bitcoin at that point.
I think at that point it would be very smart to mostly use your
savings to pay off Bitcoin, but af after that point, if you can save a
hundred dollars a month, maybe you can increase your income by $200 a month.
That's a $300 gap.
If you can then cut more expenses, uh, more of your expenses, let's
say you cut out another a hundred dollars a month, that's a $400 gap.
You can always increase your income.
There's no limit to how much you can increase your income.
There is a limit to how much you can cut your expenses though.
So what I would say is focus on increasing your income, create new skills, build new
skills, create as much value as you can, serve as many people as you can, and then
use the proceeds of that to buy Bitcoin.
One thing that I had a really difficult time wrapping my head around is
your income can, you can, you can keep increasing your income forever.
There's no limit.
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Rajat: There's an abundance of, let's say Australian dollars.
There's an abundance of US dollars, Canadian dollars.
There is no limit to how many dollars can exist.
So if you feel like you can make a certain amount of money, you're
just holding yourself back.
I, I've made videos about, let's say, earning $5,000 a month,
$10,000 a month, $20,000 a month.
And there's always somebody in the comments who says, no, it's impossible.
I can't do it.
And I mean, if you're thinking that way, you've already stopped
yourself from going to that point.
It's not gonna happen.
But if you believe that, okay, it can happen, then maybe you'll
find ways to make it happen.
And I think that's the key.
Back to what we were saying, pay off the credit cards.
Buy Bitcoin with maybe a small amount if you can, but pay off the credit cards.
And I think you'll feel great if you have low interest
credit cards, that's different.
If it's 10%, 5%, 3%, keep them for as long as you can, I would say and buy Bitcoin
with, with the income that you have.
But I mean.
Even then having credit card debt is, it's a little bit stressful.
Just knowing that your creditor can increase the rate that they charge
you at any time, and they can do that.
That's, that's nothing is stopping them from doing that.
If you have a, I so for example, I have a line of credit, um, and I, I've
obviously maxed it out and bought Bitcoin with it, but now the, the lender has
increased the interest rate by 2% and there's nothing that I can do about it.
I'm okay with it.
I'm, I'm fine with the increase in the interest rate, but let's say for example,
if you have credit card, you go from 21% to to 30%, that's a massive change,
and it's a guaranteed loss of 30% per year that you can't stop and that's
gonna compound against you over time.
Anja: Yeah.
Yep.
I'm just doing the math in my head.
Rajat: Yeah.
Anja: But.
Like, just before we wrap up, I wanna ask you for people who are listening to this
podcast, and they may be starting at zero.
So if they live in, most of my listeners are Australia, us, Canada, and uk.
Um, so if they're like, you know, in their twenties or thirties earning
a reasonable income and they've got some disposable income to set aside
into savings, can they still acquire a meaningful amount of Bitcoin to make
a meaningful difference in their life?
Rajat: Yeah, absolutely.
So one thing that I really like doing is I have a compound interest calculator that
I, that I made specifically for Bitcoin.
If, can I share my screen?
Anja: Of course.
Rajat: Yeah.
Okay.
A, I have this compound interest cover.
Oh, perfect.
So I have this compound interest calculator that I created.
It shows you, if you were to buy a certain amount of Bitcoin every
month, what exactly would happen?
You can obviously go into another combin risk calculator, but the reason why I like
this one so much is that, uh, I've added some features that I personally like.
So you can, first of all, change the currency that's, that's do denominated in.
So let's say you want to, so we've got the a
d
Rajat: Yep,
Anja: let's
Rajat: go, let's you change to Australian dollars.
You can do that, right?
So you can put an Australian dollars here and you can see exactly
the price of Bitcoin in that.
And then let's say for example, in your case, let, let's actually,
let's create an example here.
So if that person that you're talking about, let's say they just wanna start
investing, how much money do you think that they would want invest per month?
Anja: Per month in Australia?
Um, I reckon most people, if they were disciplined, could easily
squeeze in, well, I don't wanna say that, that might sound offensive,
but let's just go with 500.
Rajat: 500, 500 a
Anja: month.
Rajat: 500 a month.
And then what do you think the return on Bitcoin will be over the next.
Actually what, what we'll do is we'll go with how many years.
So let's say if this person's gonna retire, when are they gonna retire?
20 years, 30 years from now?
Anja: Um, let's go 20 years.
Rajat: 20 years.
Okay.
So 20 years from now.
Uh, what do you think the return will be over the 20 next 20 years?
I think it'll probably be around 30%.
Anja: I was gonna say 30 for 10, definitely.
Um, but yeah, let's go 30 for 20.
Okay.
That seems high though, but okay.
Yeah.
Rajat: Okay.
Let's go.
25.
Anja: Okay.
Rajat: 25.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let's say you go 25%, you're gonna be buying 500 Australian dollars
worth of Bitcoin every single month.
The first year you're gonna buy about 0.05.
Obviously these numbers aren't gonna be exact.
That's impossible.
Nobody knows where bitcoin's gonna go in the short term.
Nobody has any idea.
So let's say in the short term, in the year, you get 0.047 Bitcoin.
The next year you get 0.037.
Next year you get 0.03.
Next year you get 2.4 million Satoshis.
So what Bitcoin is, is it's one Bitcoin.
There are 21 million Bitcoin in total, or they're going to
be 21 million Bitcoin in total.
And each Bitcoin can be split into a hundred million Satoshis.
So in this case, first year you bought 4.7 million Satoshis.
Second year you bought 3.7 million Satoshis.
Third year you bought 3 million Satoshis.
And the reason for that is that the price is going up over time, but the amount
that you're buying is staying consistent.
So in the first year you have $0.
You can see here, column D I'll zoom in a little bit.
Uh, you have $0 in the first year, but over time you're
gonna stack more and more.
Second year you have 7,500.
Third year you have 17,000.
Fourth year you have 29,000.
By 2031, you have $61,000 saved.
That's $500 a month, 500 Australian dollars per month.
That's that.
I think that's a, that's a great growth rate.
And you're still stacking the Bitcoin, right?
So you have, in the fifth year you have all this, so you
have $61,000 worth of Bitcoin.
And you have in total.
So in total you have 0.15 Bitcoin.
So 15.7 million Satoshis.
That's with $500 per month.
So over time, that's gonna keep growing and growing.
You're gonna keep stacking, but what you're going to see is that
at some point your stack is going to grow much, much faster than the
amount of Bitcoin that you put in.
So, sorry.
But then the amount of dollars that you put in, so you're gonna
start with, in this ca in the first year, the majority of your value is
just the Bitcoin that you bought.
Mm. So we can actually see here, if we scroll over, uh, column W after
one year, you've put in $6,000, but your Bitcoin has grown to 7,500.
So your portfolio is 80% of money that you put in.
You put in 80% of the value In year two, you see here, you put in 12,000,
but your Bitcoin grew at 25% per year.
So now you have 17,000, which is 71% of your portfolio is money that you put in.
But let's say after five years, this is the fun part.
Over time your investment keeps dropping.
Even though the amount of money that you're putting in is increasing, the
percentage of your portfolio that you initially put in is decreasing.
So your return is gonna be a bigger percentage of your portfolio.
So let's say after five years, you are gonna see here your portfolio
is worth 61,000, like we mentioned.
But you've only invested 30,000.
That's 48.74% of your portfolio is money that you put in.
But now let's say after year 10, year 10, you're at 24% of your
portfolio is money that you put in.
And over time, this keeps, it keeps falling and falling because your
investment is growing by so much.
So you can see here at the bottom here, the growth.
In year at year 10, your portfolio has grown by 189,000,
but you've only put in 60,000.
So this, I think this is the mindset that, that's really difficult to
develop, but once you have it, this mindset is, is gonna change your life.
It's, it's compounding, right?
So what I mean here is you are actively working for your income, but
you want your money to work for you.
You don't wanna work for money, you want your money to work for you.
And that's exactly what's happening here.
You are in the beginning, you're putting in your energy and effort into this.
You're putting $500 per month and assuming, let's say you're working a job,
you're putting $500 a month in, in of, of income that you've earned into Bitcoin.
But over time, your Bitcoin is going to be pulling the weight.
Faster than you are.
It's going to be, sorry, not faster you, if your Bitcoin is going to be better
at pulling the weight than you are.
Anja: Yep.
Rajat: So let's say in year, we'll go from in year, from year 10 to year 11.
We'll see what the numbers look like.
So year 10, you're at 0.21 Bitcoin $189,000 in total growth.
Let's go to year 11.
So year 11, your portfolio went from thousand of growth to 253,000 of growth.
Your portfolio grew by $64,000 in a year.
And all you put in, well look at this, all you put in was 6,000.
Your portfolio grew by 64,000, but you put in 6,000 in one year,
and we'll go to year number 12.
And you see here, year 12, you again, you put in 6,000.
So your inputs are linear, but your growth is exponential.
So again, we went from $253,000 in growth to.
$334,000 in growth.
So you grew, this calculator grew by 80,000.
Sorry.
Anja: I love this calculator.
Yeah.
80,000 difference.
Yep.
Rajat: Yeah, it's crazy.
Your portfolio grew by more than the amount of money that you put in in total.
That's wild.
This, this is, this is the way that I like to talk, to talk to people about this.
So you mentioned if somebody is new to this and they're buying Bitcoin now,
can they buy a significant amount?
Of course, a hundred percent.
After 11 years, they would've bought 0.214 Bitcoin, or after 12 years,
they would've bought 0.214 Bitcoin.
And that's at that, at that point, it's worth $319,000.
In 2042, you have $1.03 million worth of Bitcoin.
And let's say you stop buying Bitcoin.
At that point, your portfolio is barely growing based on your contributions.
It's, at this point, it's growing based on the assets that you have,
the the asset base that you have.
So your asset base keeps growing and growing and growing, and
it'll continue to grow over time.
So you can see here, you still put in $6,000 between these two years,
but your portfolio grew by, let's see, does this show the numbers?
I don't think it does.
Uh, no it doesn't.
So your portfolio grew by $270,000, even though you only put in 6,000,
and then the following year, you can see here it grew by $333,000, even
though you put in another $6,000, and that's, that's the power of compounding.
What compounding is, is essentially is this building on top of
what you've already built.
And what's happening here is you keep putting in more and more money.
You keep buying more and more Bitcoin.
You can see here the amount of Bitcoin that you're buying is
decreasing from 2043 to 2044.
If you just kept buying $500 worth of Bitcoin per month.
You only bought 105,000 Bitcoin or Satoshis, 105,000 Satoshis.
But in the beginning you were buying 4.7 million Satoshis.
3.7 million Satoshis.
3 million Satoshis, and you've grown it so much to a point where your
portfolios is taking care of the growth for you and you, you don't even have
to put money in anymore at that point.
Anja: Yep.
You just sit back and chill.
I love this so much and I'm so excited.
Now do we have about 10 more minutes?
'cause I wanna do another scenario.
Okay, awesome.
Of
Rajat: course.
Anja: Okay, so we're a couple and the, because we both have an income and
um, shared expenses, we can afford to put a little bit more into Bitcoin.
Plus we get a side hustle of dog sitting because we work from home.
So we can, you know, look after our dogs and we calculate we can end
up putting like 2,500 per month.
Rajat: I like it.
Anja: Okay, let's go, let's go show, let's go with money.
Rajat: How many years?
Let's go.
10 years.
Anja: Yep.
Rajat: So you would've put in 300,000.
You would've ha you would have 1.04 Bitcoin, which is huge.
And that's worth 1.2 million.
And let's say after, well, we'll go 15 years.
After 15 years, you've put in 450,000, but your Bitcoin's worth 4.1 million.
And you're, you have in total 1.13 million, 1.13 Bitcoin the, the
growth percentage is the key here.
So at this point, after 15 years, your portfolio is only 11 per 11%
money that you put in and 89% growth.
That's crazy.
Anja: Let's go a more bullish case and put 30% cagr.
Rajat: 30%.
So after it's actually getting size.
So mind the number of Bitcoin that you have will decrease?
Yeah.
Anja: Mm-hmm.
Rajat: From 25% to 30%, you'll go from 1.13 Bitcoin to 0.99 Bitcoin, but your
Bitcoin would be worth a lot more.
The price of Bitcoin would go from 3.6 million to 6.5 million.
And you can see here your investment percentage is also going to decrease.
It's gonna go from 11% to 6.9%.
So you can see here the amount that it's gonna be worth.
It's gonna go from, uh, three point, sorry, one 4.13 million,
$4.113 million to oh $6.5 million.
You're gonna have less Bitcoin, but because it's worth more, you'll
have a higher amount of value.
Crazy.
Uh, one, actually, one more thing that I wanted to mention here.
Um, what do you think we should put in for the monthly expenses?
Anja: Um, for a couple, for the same couple.
Um, let's just put in like, is this including housing and everything?
Everything?
Yep, yep, yep.
Um, yeah, let's leave it like maybe at 5,000.
Rent is very expensive in Australia.
Rajat: Okay.
I think for a couple it might be half.
It might be higher.
No,
Anja: but yeah, sorry for a couple it would be higher 'cause Yep, yep, yep, yep.
The rent would be, actually,
Rajat: actually I have a, a spreadsheet here.
Um, let me see.
I have a spreadsheet on this, on this, um, on this workbook where
I can cost of living per city.
Okay.
So, uh, we go Australia.
Anja: What would be comparable?
Yeah, Sydney.
Wow.
Sydney.
Rajat: So Sydney with a family of fours, 10,000, $200.
Um, so a
Anja: couple would be somewhere in between.
Yeah.
Rajat: Let's see.
More grass.
Do you know where that is?
Anja: No idea.
That's Austria.
Rajat: Okay.
That's okay.
Austria?
Um, yeah.
Oh, did I?
Was that Austria?
Oh yeah, you're right.
Austria.
Sorry.
I thought
Anja: that was, um, let, like, well, let's just go with 7,000 because,
you know, there might be living in an apartment in one of the major cities
and Yeah, let's just go 7,000, um,
Rajat: Brisbane.
Okay, let's go 10.
Yeah.
Okay, let's go 7,000.
So I'm gonna just switch back over to that spreadsheet.
So we'll go 7,000 per month.
Zoom in.
7,000 per month.
This is the interesting part here.
So in the beginning, oh, let me get rid of this.
So, in the beginning, I think this is what really makes a difference for, for people.
And this is what really lights people's eyes up when I show
them, uh, this part of it.
So in the beginning, let's say you're paying $7,000 per month in your
expenses, that's $84,000 a year.
Of course in terms of fiat, in terms of us, uh, in terms of Australian
dollars, it'll keep rising.
'cause you're in our example here, I put in a 5% or 7% inflation rate.
Yeah, I think that's pretty, I think that's very
Anja: fair,
Rajat: right?
7%, yeah.
Okay, so 7%.
So over time, your annual expenses is gonna keep increasing.
So by, so in the first year, you have $84,000 per year as your expenses.
2029, you're at 102,000.
By 2039 you're at 200, 2000.
By 2045, you're at 303,000 per year.
And then by 2050 you're at 426,000 per year.
Anja: That's painful to to see.
Rajat: It's wild from 84,000 to 500,000 or 400, 420 6,000 per year.
But now let's take a look at your Bitcoin expenses.
So if bitcoin's growing at 30% per year, your expenses are gonna go
from 0.65 Bitcoin in the first year.
And, and this is what really makes a difference to people, because
they, they can see that the amount that they're spending is increasing,
they're spending more on their life, but they're giving away less Bitcoin.
So you go from 0.65 Bitcoin in 20 26, 20 31, you're at 0.24 Bitcoin per year 2036.
They're spending less than 0.1 Bitcoin per year in, you can see here 2048,
they're spending less than 0.01 Bitcoin per year, 909,000 Satoshis.
And they, that 0.01 Bitcoin is worth $372,000.
So over time, your expenses keep decreasing.
But let's say this couple, let's say they bought that, that.
$2,500 worth of Bitcoin per month.
And let's say they just want to retire in 2045 for whatever reason.
You can see here if they survive for, if they survive a hundred years until,
um, 2151, just as an example, they will only have spent 9.2 million Satoshis.
But in total, you can see here, they would have, in total, they
would have 1.013 Bitcoin, so they would only spend 9.3 million, but
they would have 1.01, 1.01 Bitcoin.
Um, and then something else that I really, I think that this is important here
is the stack divided by the expenses.
So what this is, is it's your years, it's your years of savings.
Oh, what did I do here?
Ah, here you go.
Okay.
So this is the years of savings.
If you go to column M stack divided by expenses, this is basically
the percentage of your expenses that'll be covered by your stack.
And over time, you can see here it increases, it goes in year
one, it's at 0% until 2026.
2036. It's at a hundred and, sorry, it's at 1005%.
So what that means is that your stack will cover you at your stack, will
cover your expenses for 10.05 years.
And over time, that's keeps, that keeps increasing.
So what I've seen is that if you have 15 or more years of expenses covered and
you keep stacking Bitcoin or, I mean, at that point you don't even, I don't even
think you need to stack at that point.
You can just let your Bitcoin grow and you can either use your Bitcoin,
you can sell some of your Bitcoin to pay for your expenses, or you
can borrow against your Bitcoin.
I've seen that somewhere around 15 years of expenses.
You're good.
'cause at that point your Bitcoin's gonna keep growing on its own.
You have 15 years of expenses set aside and.
At that point, you'll have enough wealth where, um, you could either,
let's say start a, let's say you wanna start something completely different.
You wanna just start your own business.
You wanna do something for fun, um, you can do that.
Um, you can start a side hustle, like you said, with the dog sitting.
Um, there are multiple ways to just give yourself that freedom.
And I think that's, that's something I'm really passionate about.
What, what I'm, what I mean by that is not having a job to me is probably like one
of the best things that I've ever done.
'cause I don't have to worry about, oh, tomorrow, so right now in Toronto,
it's, uh, 9:00 PM in Australia.
It's, what time is it in Australia?
Anja: It is 1:10 PM
Rajat: one 10.
Okay.
1:10 PM Okay.
So in ca, in Canada right now it's, or in Toronto it's, it's 9:10 PM and I don't
have to worry about not being able to wake up early to go to my job tomorrow.
That's the kind of freedom that I like.
I don't like to have people call them the Sunday scaries like,
oh, oh man, I have to go to work.
That stress that you feel, what's gonna happen tomorrow?
What kind of stress am I gonna deal with tomorrow?
What kind of situation am I gonna deal with tomorrow?
It's just super painful, and I think that's what Bitcoin gives people.
It gives them that freedom to do things the way that they want to.
Because it grows so quickly compared to other assets that you can truly have the
freedom to live the life that you want.
Anja: That's such an important message.
I think a lot of people are wanting to step off the rat
race wheel and enjoy life.
I think COVID really opened up, uh, everybody's eyes to this.
There's so much more to life than just work.
Um, and work becomes a lot more fulfilling.
Like now I'm working more than I ever have been working.
Last night I was working till 10, 10:00 PM and like, I'm just always doing something.
Um, yeah, it's, it's interesting.
Thank you, um, so much for your time.
Do you have any final thoughts that you wanna share?
Like obviously I'm gonna share all your links including your website, X
account, anything else, um, in the show notes, but do you have any final words?
Rajat: I appreciate it.
Um, I, I think the best thing you can do right now is don't think
too much about the strategies.
Don't think too much about, I'm gonna borrow against my Bitcoin.
I'm going to do this, I'm gonna do that right now.
I think the goal is just to stack, just stack.
Just keep buying as much as you can.
Even if you can buy a hundred.
Actually, can I give you one?
Can I give one more example?
Do we have time for that?
Yeah,
Anja: absolutely.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Rajat: Okay.
So, so let's say for example, if you were to buy $1 of a Bitcoin
every month, we'll go with one, or actually we'll go with one per week.
So we'll go $1 per week.
$1 per week.
I'm not saying to go with $1 of Bitcoin per week.
I would say just keep stacking more and more if you can.
But $1 of Bitcoin per week, after 15 years, you would've
put in 780 you would have one.
173,000 Satoshis worth, 11,300.
So now if, let's say you go from $1 per week to $1 per day, let's say you find
some way to cut your expenses by $1 a day.
That's doable.
That's very doable.
After 15 years, you would've put in $5,475, but your
stack would be worth $79,000.
That's $1 per day.
$1. That's $1 I,
Anja: when you pay for a coffee,
Rajat: it is not even a co. That doesn't even buy a coffee.
Exactly.
It buy, it buys nothing.
A dollar a day, just sacrifice is so worth it.
I would say.
How much is a coffee there now?
Like $7?
Anja: Uh, five to $6, depending on a public holiday.
You can definitely get up to $7 with the surcharge.
Okay, so
Rajat: let's say, let's say every week, let's say a coffee costs you $5.
Mm-hmm.
Let's say every week you skip two coffees every, let's say
you're buying coffee every day.
But you skip two coffees a week, you go with $10 per week of
Bitcoin after 15 years, your $7,800 investment is worth $113,000.
That, like, that's, that's crazy.
But the great thing with Bitcoin is that one thing that I've learned
is that, um, it's addictive, right?
Seeing, seeing the growth is very addictive.
Addictive.
And it's a good addiction to have because what it'll do is it'll
make you want to create more value.
Like you, like you mentioned before, that couple, um, they, they have
uh, they have decent jobs and they have a side hustle where they're
making a certain amount of money.
You'll find ways to increase your income because you know that if you
don't, you're gonna get less Bitcoin.
So let's say you go from $10 per week, that's $40 a month.
Let's say you go from $10 per week to $50 per week.
You do, let's say you take on, uh, do you have, do you have Uber Eats there?
Anja: We do.
Rajat: Oh, perfect.
So let's say you do like two Uber Eats orders every week, or let's say five
Uber Eats orders every week and you boost your income from $10 per, or you boost
your gap where the amount of Bitcoin, the amount of Bitcoin that you can
buy from $10 per week to $50 per week.
You can see here after 15 years, you have $565,000.
That may not seem like a lot today, but you can see here over time the
compounding is the most powerful part.
Over time, you'll see here your years of savings is growing.
So in the first year you have zero and it's growing slowly.
It's growing, it's growing, it's growing.
By 2037, you have one year of savings, one year of expenses saved.
Okay?
Year 2038.
So one year from that, you have another third, uh, you have another 0.3 Bitcoin,
or another 0.3 years of expenses saved.
Then by 2039 you have another 0.3 of Bitcoin, or a year,
0.3 years of expenses paid.
So it'll take you saved, it'll take you a le or 12 years to save
the first one year of expenses.
But the next one year of expenses is going to take you three and a half to four
years, and then the next year of expenses is gonna take you another two years.
Then the next year of expenses is gonna, the next year and a half of
expenses is gonna take you two years.
And you can see here by 2049, you're putting it away, five $50 per week.
By 2059, you have 11.7 years of expenses saved, 11.7 years.
You have your, your total stack is worth $4.6 million.
At that point.
One Bitcoin's worth $53 million.
And I think that's possible.
The, the thing about fiat currencies is that they can keep losing value.
You think that they've lose, they, they've lost value today.
Uh, they can lose 99%, then they can lose another 99%, then they can lose
another 99% and they can keep going.
And the greatest thing here is that, that purchasing power is moving into Bitcoin.
Compared to Bitcoin.
Your fiat currencies are dying.
They're, they're going to zero.
And that's where, that's where this growth comes from.
So you go from zero years of expenses to 11 years of expenses by
2049, and that's with $50 a week.
And then by, you can see here by 2052, you're at 21 years
of expenses saved by 2054.
You have 31 years of your expenses saved.
And again, that's with zero point, or sorry, that's with, uh, $50 of Bitcoin
per week that you're buying $50 per week.
That's wild.
Anja: Wild.
Rajat: What I wanna, what I wanna just end it, end it off with is focus
on the inputs, focus on what you can control, focus on buying as much as you
can and let time do the work for you.
I think that's the best thing that you can, you can do for yourself.
Anja: Agree with that.
The lot, a lot of investors, um, uh, yeah.
When they do nothing for long periods of time,
they can really benefit.
Um, yeah.
Thank you so much for your time, Rajat.
I really, really enjoyed this conversation.
It was very insightful and I'm definitely going to rewatch this video back
myself so I can get those numbers down.
Um,
Rajat: yeah.
Anja: Thank you so much.
Rajat: Absolutely.
Let's do this again.
I thought this was really great.
Anja: Absolutely, will do.
Rajat: Thank you for having me.
Anja: Thank you.
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