From Medicine to Cryptocurrency: The Career Evolution of Dr. Julian Hosp

Are you 'CryptoFit'? This intriguing concept, introduced by our esteemed guest, Dr. Julian Hosp, is a fascinating exploration of blockchain technology and savvy cryptocurrency investment. Dr. Hosp, the CEO of  Cake Group, takes us on a riveting journey from his early days as a pro kite surfer and medical professional to becoming a blockchain entrepreneur. He shares his rich experiences with us, offering insights into how cultural nuances shape crypto interactions around the world, especially in Singapore.

This episode certainly isn't just about Bitcoin! While we do delve into the utility of Bitcoin, we also venture into the broader crypto ecosystem. The conversation takes an interesting turn as we discuss a recent statistic showing a drop in new crypto startups, the lowest in a decade. But fear not, Dr. Hosp predicts a spring rally within the crypto space and shares his perspective on the role of entrepreneurs and builders in shaping the future of the crypto ecosystem.

But our journey doesn't stop here. We tackle the importance of understanding what you’re investing in before jumping headfirst into the crypto pool. Dr. Hosp emphasizes the importance of taking a gradual approach to self-custody and being aware of the risks involved with investing in exchanges. This episode is a treasure trove of knowledge about the dynamic world of cryptocurrency investments. So, sit back and let Dr. Julian Hosp guide you through the intricate maze of the crypto universe.

01:10 - CryptoFit
02:00 - Julian Online
02:20 - Crypto-Cultural Differences
03:50 - Cake Group and Bake.io
06:06 - Singapore Regulation
10:20 - Julian's Hobbies
12:00 - Why Singapore?
12:25 - Crypto Strategy & Maximalism
17:40 - Healthcare and technology
20:55 - 2024 Halving
24:40 - Crypto Resources
26:03 - Lost Coins: Custodial vs. Non-Custodial
31:32 - Fewest Crypto Startups in 10 years
35:35 - The Teacher is the Best Student
38:00 - Token 2049: Ordinal Summit
40:18 - Julian Hosp

Follow Dr. Julian Hosp:
https://twitter.com/julianhosp
https://www.instagram.com/julianhosp/

📺  Other Channels Mentioned:

Dr. Julian Hosp
📺   / https://www.youtube.com/@julianhospenglish

Bake - Control your financial destiny
📺   / https://www.youtube.com/@bake_io

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What's up everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the having report podcast. I am your host, brad Bynes. The price of Bitcoin is approximately 30.5 thousand US dollars and there's only about 40 weeks left until the next Bitcoin having. Today, we welcome Dr Julian Haas on to the show. Julian spent 10 years as a pro kite surfer, seven years in medicine. Now Julian is a serial entrepreneur, the CEO of Kate Group and bakeio. His large online audience speaks volumes. We're super lucky to have him here on the show today. Everybody welcome Julian to the show. Welcome to the having report, julian. Thanks for doing this today. It's a pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 1: 0:37

This is our 88th episode of the having report. You know, just like your bake story, we started in 2019, so I feel like there's a kindred spirit there. You know. Again, we're honored to have you on. Your substantial following online speaks volumes. We genuinely appreciate your dedication and free education that you offer in this crypto space. One captivating theme that I saw throughout your your online presence is this idea of being crypto fit. So my first question to you, for you, julian, is what is the origin of this idea of being crypto fit and what does it mean?

Speaker 2: 1:17

Man. I got into this space actually nine years ago, 2014 and I was a medical doctor at that point. I come from professional sports, so being fit was everything that was, I think, in life always being healthy and fit and I learned about blockchain and cryptocurrencies and so I thought, yeah, you know I I definitely didn't understand that part back then at all, so I thought, hey, if I can figure this out, then I really want to be on this mission on inspiring other people to learn this, and so I just call this crypto fit understanding this world of decentralization and yeah and so on.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Given your large audience online, I'm kind of surprised I haven't been following you for a longer time in this space. You where's your largest audience? You make mostly German content, yeah, so.

Speaker 2: 2:01

I do. Most of my content is in German. I do English as well and I haven't quite a large following here in Singapore, but where I live, but yeah, I'm not so US, so America centric, so I think that's also obviously Americans love to follow Americans, or North America love, loves to follow in North America. I understand that.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Definitely, man. Do you notice any like big differences in the crypto communities from nation to nation?

Speaker 2: 2:27

Oh for sure, I think, for example, singapore, because Vitalik was here for so long with the ASEAN Foundation. So Singapore is very, very, very ASEAN focused. I think that is something that's very specific to Singapore, very special, I always feel. And then in Europe, germany is extremely Bitcoin focused. There's a very strong trend there. With Bitcoin, I mean lightning network, lightning labs, a lot of them. They do a lot of work from there, so I noticed that as well. So I think these are very specific, like regional focuses.

Speaker 2: 2:58

And then I think, in general, if you look at the Asian culture, a lot of it, a lot of the Asian culture, has a bit of a gambling culture in it. They love to gamble. So many times you notice that in Asia, some of those things really work that don't work anywhere else when it comes to gambling. And then vice-versa, then you have those things that are extremely solid and then sometimes you cannot attract someone here to be interested in that because for them they're like oh yeah, but I saw this new thing out of my cow and you know I can make 200% a week and I want to rather have that thing from a cow because I can make 200% a week and yeah. So it's just different cultures.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Obviously I'm totally generalizing here, but I that's just something I've noticed yeah, no, I was just interested because you know I, like you said, americans really like to follow Americans on a very much intertwined with the North, with the North American culture. What can you give us an introduction into? Into bakeio?

Speaker 2: 3:52

yeah, so actually it's an entire group. The group is called cake and that's what we started a bit over four years ago. It started as only retail and the retail arm used to be called cake because that was all there was, but that group really kind of grew and the mission of the group is to advance blockchain technologies forward for enterprises, individuals, builders and investors alike. So it was it's really just focus on driving blockchain forward. Initially it was retail. That was the main focus now. Then afterwards the enterprise arm came, which is called Leveen. We do a lot of custody solutions there and then afterwards we had an R&D arm which is called bursty research and it's really really focused on but we actually contribute open source to Ethereum, to Bitcoin, to the D5 chain ecosystem a lot of ecosystems where we just contribute and drive kind of growth there and we have a venture arm. Everything is around like this cakey name, the venture arms called whisk, and so, yeah, and it's a lot about this.

Speaker 2: 4:52

For us it was all about having some fun to it. Finance can be so boring and so dry, and so we renamed the retail arm bake and the idea originally was to get cash flow in your crypto. This has changed a bit over the years, where cash flow was super interesting in 2019, 2020 and then became less and less relevant. So now it's really about dollar cost averaging into your favorite coins. This can be Bitcoin or Ethereum I mean, we have most of the large coins and then if you want to get cash flow on top, but it's really about building a diverse for it crypto portfolio.

Speaker 2: 5:25

And one thing we've been really looking into at bake now is adding real world assets, so adding tokenized bonds, adding actual commodities, adding precious metals, just so that you can really kind of get this diversified exposure, the one thing that we don't touch our securities, because that's like an entire kind of difficult pathway. Now, obviously, I want to be very clear on this. It depends on the jurisdiction on. In some jurisdictions we don't offer certain things because our legal advice there is we should be offering those in those jurisdictions and just depends on some countries are a bit more liberal on on these rules than other countries, as we definitely know from the US and so on now, from what I seen, singapore is quite crypto friendly in regards to regulation.

Speaker 1: 6:09

What are some major differences there? That attracts companies in the crypto Bitcoin space to start up in Singapore.

Speaker 2: 6:16

I would say yes and no. So I think where it's very strict in comparison to most other jurisdictions is when it comes to money laundering regulations, kyc. So we need to like in most jurisdictions, for example, in Europe, if you everything to, I think, a thousand US dollars, in Europe, the KYC requirements are Pretty lenient. So you can go and say, okay, all I need is a local ID. And if I have a local ID, you can purchase a thousand US dollars a month, for example, in cryptocurrency In Singapore. From the very first dollar. We have to do pretty much every check. There is what's your address, we need to get all the details, passport and so on. So Singapore is extremely strict when it comes to that. Now, where Singapore is way more liberal is this concept of what is a security and what is not a security.

Speaker 2: 7:01

I think if you look at this from a US perspective, this is where the US tends to be Incredibly focused on. Many times, I feel the US is not so focused on the money laundering regulations and it's just so focused on is this a security or not? And and it's just a bit of a different kind of point. And if you look into Europe, europe is all about data protection Right. So it's all about if a customer comes to you, can this customer be sure that their data is not being abused, not misused, not Spread some wells? What happens if that customer wants to delete their data is always tricky, because obviously you have some financial stuff you need to keep financial documentation for customers, especially in the EU and then they come to you and say, oh, but I would love to delete my account, I want you to erase all my data, and we're like okay, look, we're happy to do that, but by law, we need to store data in case, I know, law enforcement comes, in case the local IRS comes, and so on. We need to Store that. So I think it's it's very regional what the various kind of regulator looks for, and and Singapore right now is getting Actually relatively strict when it comes to what can you offer to retail? Like guess, they want to actually not allow staking in from October on for locals, so that's, staking can only be done by themselves. It seems that, yeah, they just really worried about all these yeah schemes that have been going on and have been faking customers.

Speaker 2: 8:16

How long have you been in Singapore for 2016? So seven years, yeah, it's. I mean I when people ask me Is it like the perfect place to live? I think there's no perfect place. I think it's always depends on what you want.

Speaker 2: 8:30

What I love about Singapore is Singapore has this heritage with Lee Kuan Yew, who was this very strong leader who built this island, and it's really an island. It's basically a swamp if you actually look at it. Build this swamp of an island into one of the richest places in the world. It's the only place at the equator that Doesn't have natural resources and is a first world country. There's no other place like this other than the United Emirates, and they are, they're, they're full with oil. Singapore has none of that, and then so, and I always believe success leaves clues and I just always love to learn from here.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Singapore is very, very open when it comes to attracting the right talent. Their border is it's so interesting to kind of see these global discussions right now but open borders, closed borders. Singapore has a very close border, but they have a very open border for people that they need. They are very open to entrepreneurs, very open to highly skilled people, but it can also be that they say, look, we need nurses, for example, let's have a lot of nurses come in, and so it's very interesting how they kind of approach that. They're very interested. I think it's very interesting how they attract capital, how they attract businesses, how their taxation system is, so I think that's, that's a very Beautiful kind of approach.

Speaker 2: 9:43

And so me I have three young kids, young family, I have our business has 200 employees. For me it's just the perfect place to be when it comes to all those things that I'm interested in and and maybe someone else, my mother, for example. She loves to go in the mountain, she loves to ski, and I'm originally from Austria, europe, and I think she would be miserable here in Singapore, where it's 30 degrees every day and like a hundred degrees Fahrenheit every day, and and she would need snow and and Mountains and obviously there's a very different kind of lifestyle. So I think it really depends and for us it's it's absolutely perfect here.

Speaker 1: 10:14

How does it work with your diverse lifestyle, because you're quite the active guy from what I read myself. You play. You played Basketball growing up. You did professional surfing. How does it work for your outside life of work in big? Yeah man I'm you know.

Speaker 2: 10:28

I'm getting old. So I don't know, I it's not, no, not that's much surfing anymore. I play golf, I go running, I go cycling or something. So yeah, I know that, obviously with the kids, I mean kids are very like young little, like all the one is getting three years old. So I mean life completely changes, focus changes. Let's see, I mean, I don't know, maybe in five years, when the kids get a bit older, where you can actually do stuff for them, maybe I'm gonna look into, you know, spending a bit more time and you, I don't know. Yeah, in the wilder kind of regions.

Speaker 2: 10:58

I always think what I love so much about Singapore is how perfect everything is here, how clean it is, how safe it is. I mean you really get kind of blinded in how perfect that city is, but at the end it doesn't really kind of resemble real life outside of this city Because, I don't know, you just lose a bit of self-awareness. When I go to a restaurant I tend to reserve my table with my phone. So I put my phone there and then I go to the counter in order and I don't even look back and I mean this wouldn't work in most places in the world. It's just yeah. So at some point my kids definitely have to get a bit of I don't know, some real life experience. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:38

Learn those street skills over here in America. Yes, yeah, I think when I was there there was something like 100 and some odd days without a reported crime. I just thought that was absolutely absurd, because the population is not small in Singapore Like it's huge. It's a huge place. It seems very, very progressive there in many ways, julian.

Speaker 2: 12:01

I was going to ask, and for me it's a good base. I mean, I think, why am I here? I'm here because I wanted to be in Asia. I went to high school in the US, in Nashville, tennessee, and just spent a lot of time in North America, and then I grew up in Europe and so I wanted to come to Asia. Just for me that was a new kind of horizon and, yeah, I think Singapore is a really perfect place for that. So, yeah, Now.

Speaker 1: 12:20

Earlier you talked about allocating and dollar cost averaging using your platform with your favorite crypto assets, but you're also reaching beyond cryptocurrencies. Do you have a favorite cryptocurrency or strategy yourself? Is there a merit to the Bitcoin maximalism narrative?

Speaker 2: 12:43

I don't believe in any kind of maximalism. I just think that it's very unlikely that one thing is the cure for all. I think everything has up and downsides. Everything has a trade-off. I love Bitcoin. I dollar cost average into Bitcoin. I've been a Bitcoin holder for a very, very long time. Bitcoin, to be honest, gave me generational wealth, so I love that asset. I think this asset is going to be life changing for a lot of people. But I also think there are things that it can't do. I think there are things that, for example, ethereum can do and I'm a big Ethereum fan. I love Ethereum just as much. I love the things that it can do. We contribute a lot to the DeFi chain ecosystem, which is a blockchain that started with native DeFi for Bitcoin and is now mainly focused on bridging Ethereum to Bitcoin. It has these very unique properties. We're, on the one hand, it has a UTXO model, but an EVM layer on top, so we contribute a lot open source to that, and so I mean I love all three chains there. I think they all are really, really good.

Speaker 2: 13:44

I think the key always is you need to understand what you invest into so you're not so much focused on price or affected by price. You shouldn't be affected much on actually what we're talking here. So you shouldn't be affected by influencers. You shouldn't be affected by the media. You should see them more as an idea giver. So if I talk about something here, let's say I talk about Bitcoin, I talk about Ethereum, I talk about DeFi, I don't know. We can talk about Solana, whatever coin. You should see this more as an idea.

Speaker 2: 14:08

But it should never be that point where you didn't go and say, oh, I'm going to buy this just because Brett's or just because Julian's, or you should never do that. You should always think go and say, ok, let me really understand that investment, let me really understand the fundamentals of it. And you need to understand utility. Utility is everything. I try to always explain this something and for those that struggle with what utility is, utility means you use something without knowing its price, right.

Speaker 2: 14:34

So the example I always love to give is oil. You can go on a stock market and you can buy a barrel of oil and you look at the price and you always going to focus on price, because the only way you ever going to do something with this thing again is if you sell it and you need to have a price for that. Now, when you actually use oil is when you go to the gas station. You get petrol, you put it in your car and then you drive it and you don't ever think about the price when you drive it. You don't think, oh, today I'm not going to drive the car because today the petrol is a bit more expensive out on the market. Oh, today I'm going to drive it. No, you only look at the price when you actually buy this thing and afterwards you use it, and so that would be the ideal, right? And so I understand that you're not probably not going to actually use all the things that you will ever buy, because probably going to buy a lot of petrol and you're going to drive your car and you hope that along the road you find people who really want that petrol and you can sell it to them on the road. So that's kind of the example of you buying Bitcoin, you buying Ease, you buying DFI, you buying Solana, whatever your coins are, and that should always be that kind of mentality.

Speaker 2: 15:36

I just noticed that a lot of people, especially in the crypto space, they don't approach it this way. They purely buy something. Even if I look at the Bitcoin Maxis right, I think they really focused on some good things, but the stacking sets the only reason they stack sets is because they hope the price goes to 500,000. I hope the price goes to a million and it's always focused on price Right. So what they would have to focus on and I would love that, for example, sailor focuses more on that is really kind of driving the ecosystem of Bitcoin. Who are the people that actually accept Bitcoin as Bitcoin, not as dollars, and then they convert it into Bitcoin? This, like you, need to build this ecosystem. I'm a big fan, so we invested into an ordinal project that built on top of Bitcoin. So I love anything that kind of drives utility and that, for me, is the key thing.

Speaker 2: 16:28

I think that's the if people ask me, the two crucial kind of things that crypto lacks right now a blockchain one, and it can all be summarized with utility.

Speaker 2: 16:38

But the first one is actually, for the average person, using the stuff in a decentralized manner, aka private key issues. That's the first really big hurdle, and the second one you buying those coins clearly and easily understanding what can you use them for. If suddenly there was no more market to sell them on. What would you use them for? Right, and if there's no more market, how would you use them? And that would be what would give this industry an explosion, and that's something that I hope that I mean I can help as well. On the platform on Bake, for example, we try to really focus heavily on that to make sure people really understand the narrative behind the coins, understand the kind of ideas, how to use them, what to use them for. Of course, we are a centralized platform, but then, on the other hand, we always kind of encourage people and say, hey, if you want to get off and control your own private keys, then do so. I think that's always just a key part.

Speaker 1: 17:31

Yeah, definitely something I look for in platforms that whether, if they're centralized, are they still helping people learn about self-custody and how much of a priority they make that. But I want to shift a little bit. Julian, again, you have such an interesting background. You had a journey in medicine for seven years. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and your experiences in the medical field and how that shaped your perspective at the intersection of health care and technology.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Look for me, we're coming to blockchain in 2014. I was actually trying to start a medical startup and I wanted to go into a field that today is very easy to understand, because we had this entire issue with COVID and vaccinations and stuff. But I actually wanted to have a vaccination passport in 2014. At that point, that was not so much controversially, it was more on, oh, this is never going to be possible and that was what I wanted to actually do in 2014. I didn't know about six years later, covid and stuff coming. I think today, everyone would understand what this vaccination passport is and I think that would just be understandably, it would be a lot of pushback against it. So that was what got me into that space. It was this controlling your own data, controlling your own kind of digital stuff.

Speaker 2: 18:43

Whatever this stuff is and for me, again, I'm very focused on utility. That has always been why, for example, I love Bitcoin and why I criticize Bitcoin, because I loved it, because, on the one hand, it could have so much utility in the future and I struggled with it so much because it had so little utility right now. That's why, for example, ethereum, at the very beginning, I didn't believe in Bitcoin and Ethereum at all because I felt this was only about ICOs and there was no actual utility to it. And that's then when my love for Ethereum grew a bit bigger, when the entire kind of idea came around DeFi, around NFTs and I understand a lot of this is still gambling and a lot of it this is still speculation. I get all that, but the utility there became very, very strong and for me, that's always what I focus on. My love for Bitcoin became so much higher this year when I understood ordinals on top of Bitcoin, the AI part around Bitcoin.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Arthur Hayes has such an interesting blog post around this that just came out where he talks about how AI will need a currency and that currency will very likely not be a fiat currency and AI will very likely choose Bitcoin, and that, to me, makes so much sense. I agree with that and AI doesn't have issues with the user experience of decentralization. So I was always a bit of a critic for the Lightning Network because I always said look, for the majority of people, lightning is not going to be able to be used decentralized. It will always be custodial, it will always have a massive centralization impact, but AIs don't care about this. Ais are really, really good at doing these things. So this is just something where I see massive utility for Bitcoin, and that is something that gets me extremely excited.

Speaker 2: 20:24

So I'm sometimes more excited about things that, for example, I'm not a big believer in that the dollar is going to die tomorrow. I think that the dollar is going to have way more years to come than most people wanted to have. Yes, the dollar is dying, but I think it's going to die way slower than most people hope so. So yeah, that's. I have sometimes a bit of counter beliefs, but that doesn't mean that I'm actually less bullish than most other people. I'm probably more bullish on than other people, but just based on other facts.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Speaking of bullish, we're coming into you know, I don't know 40 weeks or something like that, away from the next Bitcoin having. What are your thoughts around the 2024 having and do you see it having a big impact this time around, or what are your thoughts about that in regards to price as well?

Speaker 2: 21:09

So this is my third half, or it's going to be my third half. My first one was 2016. And, to be honest, I completely missed that half. It was an OK deal. It was something that obviously people kind of talked about, but it was more. It was the second half thing. Is everything going to go smoothly? Is the block reward actually going to have right? So that was more of a it was not so much of a price focus, to be honest. That price also 2016. I mean, people say, oh, yeah, you know the having that's actually big impact, but it's actually not so true.

Speaker 2: 21:37

The entire kind of cycle with Bitcoin back then came from the ICOs and suddenly had these ICOs come up in 2016 and then 2017 that at the end, really cost that massive price spike. So I think that was my 2016 experience. The 2020 experience very different. Everyone was locked down. Everyone was like, oh, this is going to be the big rally. We had this rally up and then obviously COVID crash and so on. Everything came down and then massive money printing. So I personally don't think that the halving actually had any impact on the price in the past two cycles that I had experienced, but it was more of a coincidence rather than anything else.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Now, what do I expect for next year? I actually expected to have a big impact, going into the halving, but mainly because of the narrative, not so much because whether we have six points something Bitcoin is getting released every 10 minutes or three points something Bitcoin is getting released every minute makes such a huge difference. It really doesn't that we already I mean, you could look at the data right now, already, right now the, what they call the shrimp. So these are like the, the regular kind of Bitcoin investors. When you just look at all the dollar cost averaging that they doing on a regular monthly basis, they're already buying up all the news supply of Bitcoins. So it's already super bullish. So it has very little to do and actually it's going to be more impactful if someone comes and dumps a huge load of new coins that they have been hardling for a long time, rather than this little bit of change in inflation.

Speaker 2: 23:06

So my expectation in this is, especially when we get to March next year, we're going to see a hype up, but to me that's going to be more of a just a narrative rather than actual fundamentals really, really changing. To me and here comes the interesting part could easily be the discount sites with the Bitcoin spot ETF. And then the market's going to rally and people are like, oh, you see, the Bitcoin halving had this massive impact. And I'm like, yeah, it's going to remind me a bit similar to 2020, where actually all the money printing came in and people feel like, oh, you know all this, that the halving had such an impact, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 23:40

So that's just what I see. I think it's going to be more of a narrative first, and if the fundamentals afterwards really drive it, then I think this is going to be powerful. I'm bullish I want to be very clear on this I'm dollar cost averaging. I'm bullish on Bitcoin. I just I'm not so sure if that change of issuance from six something bitcoins to three point something bitcoins is going to be the massive driver.

Speaker 1: 24:01

Yeah, no, it's funny you said that about the Bitcoin ETF because I just saw I just saw a tweet earlier today and how I guess one of the deadlines is like the very last deadline is just like a month before the Bitcoin halving.

Speaker 2: 24:13

So what you said, makes stars could align yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:17

So we'll see, we'll see. I'm for the record, I'm also very bullish. I like to focus on the having for for the point of having people to zoom out and learn that bitcoins moving in cycles and you know everything. There's a lot of things that are that are transparent in Bitcoin that just don't exist in the legacy financial system. Julian, what, what are some like of your favorite sources? Like, if you are you consuming German content, do you have any favorite influences in this space?

Speaker 2: 24:49

Good question. I think it's a bit of a mix of of everything. I'm not so much German content, I don't know. I mean, I still think that probably the the leading resources are still coming from the US. I do follow some of the Bitcoin maxis. I follow some of the Ethereum maxis. I follow I love Laura Shin's podcast, which is on chain. I listen to that a lot. She obviously comes from a very journalist kind of view.

Speaker 2: 25:18

It's a bit of a mix of a lot of things and I mean, look, I always think you should take a lot of things with a grain of salt. You should always understand that obviously, a Bitcoin maxi will always show Bitcoin, ethereum maxi will always show Ethereum. I mean, I'm just kind of I'm trying to get some ideas and at the end it's, I think it's. It is very spotty on things. So, yeah, sometimes I focus on this data point, that data point. I'm always a bit hesitant when suddenly I see too many people kind of having the same narrative or kind of the same kind of excitement. That always kind of rattles me up a bit. I'm like, ah, ok, maybe it's just people like talking on book or you know, just not really substantiated discussion points. It's a mix all over.

Speaker 1: 26:03

What would you say? The biggest misconception is about that people new people in this space have about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.

Speaker 2: 26:10

First of all and look, I get where this is coming from, but this idea of you should always go into self custody right away. I think that is a very tricky point because for most people, this is the hardest point about it all. The hardest point about it all is because suddenly people all feel like, if I don't do this, I don't do this right, and this is, in my opinion, not a good thing. I think the first key thing that we need to teach beginners is buy your crypto on a reputable platform. Go somewhere that's regulated Right. I mean, I think North America has great platforms here in Singapore. Everything here is very, very strict. A lot of the European platforms are very strict, so you're probably just going to want to pick something. That's very intentional. For example, we have people who come to Singapore simply because they say I want to get out of my own country, I want to get out of North America, I want to get out of Europe, I just want to go somewhere else. I want to go to the Switzerland of Asia. And some people say, heck, no, I'm never going to go to Singapore. I have never been there, I don't know. It's this part of China, where's this Right? So it's a very like and, but you want to pick a solid, reputable platform.

Speaker 2: 27:15

I think that's the first part, and the second part is when you buy crypto on there, start with the blue chips, start with Bitcoin, start with Ethereum, start with the blue chips with the big ones, only then go into the crazy altcoins that your best friend told you to buy because it's going to do another hundred X or something Right. Start with the blue chips and leave the maturity in the blue chips. That's my second key thing I think that people do wrong. And the third one only go self custody Once you kind of familiarized yourself with this, once you kind of understand this a bit, and then don't do this with all your funds. Do this step by step and then you should definitely learn. I completely am aligned with that. I just always think that the kind of teaching is always on Like, if you don't control your own keys, you don't own your coins and you know better. Don't even get started. That's kind of the sentiment I think. No, buy the blue chips, get started. Get started yesterday, you know, and do this right away, and then, along the way, start withdrawing coins and start controlling them yourself, and you're going to get more and more comfortable with that, and it's not something that you're going to do right away.

Speaker 2: 28:18

I remember when I bought my first bitcoins in 2015,. Actually in 2014, but then I lost so much money because the market crashed. But when I really started buying in 2015, I bought them on crock and I think it took me I don't know probably two years until I actually took them off the exchange and actually started controlling them with my own private key. Now, of course, I was definitely lucky that I chose crocking and not some shady exchange. I get it, but I don't know if you would have told me at the beginning you can never, ever leave your coins and crock and you always have to withdraw them. I'd be like, okay, you know what, I'm not even gonna get started, because For me to put a meaningful amount of money in there that it has a meaningful impact, I I have no clue what this even means to control my private key. So this took a little bit and I think that's the probably the key thing I would tell for beginners.

Speaker 1: 29:05

Yeah, definitely took a bit for me to take ownership of my private keys as well. But and it's hard, though, to a lot of people coming in this space, they see exchanges that appear to be reputable. We've had a lot of exchanges that Really really appear to be reputable in Canada, the US, you know quadrica, we've had FTX, like a lot of things that looks so reputable, and they're buying, you know right, cestadiums for a billion dollars and then things, bad things, still happen. So, but you're right, though, a lot of people don't know, not, do not know what that means, and that could very well Scared them away rather than getting their their feet wet, because once you're invested in something, that's when you, that's when people really start learning and paying.

Speaker 2: 29:48

Sure, and I want to put a flip side to this. And I want to put a flip side to this. Look, it's the same thing as when a plane crashes, right, sure that's in the big news and and it sucks and and it's not good that for the people, or something die right and I get it, and that's kind of the equivalent to one of those large exchanges going down. But, honestly, every single day people lose access to their private keys or they kind of I don't know, mess something up or they I don't know lose the device or something and People hardly ever talk about it, especially not those that have like the biggest mouth and social media Because obviously data ones who are like pushing for this narrative and so they never want to admit that something went wrong or they lost access to something or they lost the device or something right.

Speaker 2: 30:27

So I think there was one this was one's research that even if you remove, like Satoshi's coins and say Satoshi actually lost access to his coins or Satoshi died or whatever, so let's even remove that I think in history more coins have more access to coins have been lost, non-custodial than custodial, and this is still, and again, I can't remember exactly where this data was, even if it's not entirely like spot-on correct. I don't think it's far off. I can actually imagine this because there's so many stories of people losing hundreds of millions of dollars with inheritance, inheritance issues, with just losing access to it, right? So I don't I. I understand that people and say, oh, but you know, I have my coins on FTX and I get it like sucks, and I don't think two days before the FTX collapse, many people would have thought all FTX is gonna be a shady exchange. I get it. Yeah, there's a flip side to it and I know so many stories of people who have yeah, no, I would be interested.

Speaker 1: 31:22

I would definitely be interested to see see those numbers. Actually not something.

Speaker 2: 31:25

I look it up and if I have it, if I find it quick, easily, then I'll just send it to you afterwards, yeah okay, sounds good.

Speaker 1: 31:29

We're getting to the end here, julian, but you know what's? Maybe that's something that in the space that's kind of stood out to you, maybe biggest news, or maybe the biggest metric as of late. What's? What's we're talking about right now?

Speaker 2: 31:41

I'm, on the one hand, positive stuff and one hand, negative stuff. I think the negative stuff is that on Crunchbase, we have fewer new crypto startups than we have ever seen before in the last 10 years of crypto, and obviously, to me that's a Very negative and shocking statistic, because, at the end, it's always entrepreneurs who need to drive an ecosystem forward. And so there's two reasons for that either because there's nothing new to build in the crypto space, which I think would be scary, so I mean that I don't think that would be positive, or the other thing, so. Or it's not needed, so it could be. I mean, everything is done, so now it's just the existing companies they're all good or there's just very little interest in this from a fundamental standpoint from new businesses, because maybe they are all jumping on the AI shiny object or whatever right. So and and I think that to me is a bit of a scary the kind of Situation for the simple reason that I believe businesses and entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of Civilization. Without a business, without entrepreneurs, doesn't matter if you're a large business, small business, self-employed they drive everything. Every single tax dollar that ever is paid comes from businesses being self-employed. Being a large business, it doesn't matter. So to me that's always kind of the pulse of health of an ecosystem and that scares me a little bit and it could be an early indicator that maybe we actually gonna see a major downturn and we don't have a spring coming now. So that's the probably the negative side to it. Right, the positive side is that I actually think the next rally and we may be in this spring now, so obviously one I wanted to start with the oh, we're gonna have a continued winter here let's flip to the counter article here, which is let's do spring, and spring is we're gonna focus on a Regulatory cycle and that regulatory cycle. So we had this entire clash with the SEC, we had all around the world and we had this big fight and we had this try like choke point 2.0, and now we are coming out of this and crypto becomes regulated, there's actual rules to it, and that could be a massive, massive leg up, on the one hand, because of Bitcoin spot ETF, because of Real-world assets that suddenly come in and start mingling with these new digital assets, and that's where, in my opinion, suddenly blockchain gets a total new feature, which is interoperability, and that's what I think the Bitcoin max is actually get really well. One of the reasons why they love to have Bitcoin as the backbone of so many payments rails is not so much because, I don't know, it's actually decentralized. It's more that these companies can actually have an interoperable payment rail, and that's something. If this suddenly then ties in with other assets, I think that's where you really get a new economy in the digital world. So, and I think that's something that's extremely bullish for me.

Speaker 2: 34:27

So it's, and it could be right that right now, maybe we have a bit of a fight between the let's have another winter or we're gonna go into spring, and it could be that this spring is just gonna take over and suddenly people businesses realize hey, you know what? There is huge opportunity there. I was wrong to not starting my business three months ago, I'm gonna start it now, and then suddenly we see this number go up. But to me, that's the. I always believe that's a very fundamental Things.

Speaker 2: 34:52

So, just like we look at on blockchains, right, I mean, one thing that people always monitor on blockchains is how many projects build on that Blockchain. What's the TVL on the blockchain? Sure, but that's blockchain. If you look at the entire ecosystem, it's the same kind of concept right, you want to know how many entrepreneurs believe in that system and and how much, how much, how Many builders are there at the end. That's what really drives utility, and so that's the the kind of upside down side that I see a bit, and I Believe the the spring is gonna take over, but it's definitely something to watch out for yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 35:24

Maybe, maybe it's we experience a little bit longer winter than usual. You know, in every every cycle has a little bit unique, it seems. So, yeah, my next question is you know, julian, you create a lot, of, a lot of content in this space. You offer so many free educational resources. You know what is. What are some of the lessons you've learned in? You know podcasting about Bitcoin, crypto and creating YouTube content.

Speaker 2: 35:46

I think you are the best Student by being a teacher, as probably the the thing that stood out to me. There hasn't been topics that I understood so well if I hadn't have to Teach or explain them on YouTube in a simple language, understandable format. I remember I have this entire Cryptography course. You can just look it up. You look for my name, julian house cryptography, and I really go for go through all of cryptography, from that, the absolute basics, all the way to how do ring signatures and when era work, how does mixing work, how do zero knowledge proof works, and these are things I never learned in school.

Speaker 2: 36:28

I have always been good in math, I've always been good in science, but I mean specific cryptography, which is just math, is something I never learned, and so I had to actually learn this all by myself and I was just very curious.

Speaker 2: 36:37

I was curious in how does this work? And obviously we talk about the elliptic curve and and what does it mean if, if there's a number of mice leave, something that people always kind of worry about Bitcoin that the elliptic curve function that's a toshi chose is because it's a bit of a it's not a very typical function, right? And so why did he chose that specific one. Is there something that has a so-called number of mice leave, and what are these things and how do you notice this and how do you see this? So these are just some very, very interesting things. And look I, I would have never had that deep understanding of Cryptography, of game theory, of finance, of the economy, had I not Been forced to teach that on YouTube. I don't know what this you must be in a similar situation, I would assume yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 37:21

I mean, I'm learning so much more about you know people, their companies, because I'm researching before beforehand, right, I'm learning about it. There's. There's so many hours that go into it that may not go into anything else. You know, maybe I'm just doing Doing something walking the dog, watching a movie. You know anything else, right? So it's a great hobby for me to to push myself deeper into this space and, like you, it's Bitcoin's really kind of lit a fire up under my ass to learn all these things. I never I never really learned at school. So here I am learning from, from people like you, julian, who are so gracious to give me their time. This, this space, is awesome for that. People are so willing to to talk about it and help others learn more about it. I do you have any, do any events coming up? We have?

Speaker 2: 38:03

I mean we are organizing an ordinals event in September. This token 2049 in Singapore is a humongous crypto event token 2049 and we're doing a site event there which is called the Orts Summit. It's the there was an ordinal summit in at Bitcoin Miami and we're gonna do that counter here in Asia. I'm also very similar People, similar speakers, so that's gonna be end of September. So if anyone is coming to token 2049, there's the formula. One is here during that time. So it's like a big, big, big kind of circus during that entire week. So if you're dropping by then, yeah, definitely check out the ordinal summit. I can send you the details on that and yeah, that's. Yeah, that's the the main event right now that we're focusing on. Other than that, I mean sure would love, if you go to bigio, check out our platform, use us to dollar cost, average into crypto, get cash for on your crypto.

Speaker 2: 38:55

One key feature that we have always done from the start and I think that's the reason why we're still around where everyone else kind of went bankrupt. We always committed on doing everything 100 transparent so you can track and trace every coin flow on the blockchain. So it's very different how Blockfi used to do it or how Celsius did it, who are black box. They never told you how it actually worked. For us, this was very different from the start. We always had this transparency model.

Speaker 2: 39:18

So certain Partners for example, three hours capital were unusable for us because we couldn't use them, because we couldn't show to our customers what actually happened to the funds, and so that's, at the end, what kept us safe from using some of those partners. And yeah, sometimes it's a blessing in disguise. We had these strict rules about transparency all the time and we always wanted to show that we had this concept of proof of reserves Very early on. So when people Kind of talked about this, we're like, yeah, we've been having this all the time that you can track and trace every single Satoshi coming in or a way coming in. So, yeah, yeah, if you want to go to make the di0 check it out.

Speaker 1: 39:58

Yeah, awesome man. You know, and definitely one of the first things I look for when I look at a coin or the the creators or the developers or company that the people behind it is. The first thing I'm going to look at is you know who's behind the project? Are there names out there? They're. How transparent? Are they? So? Uh, something I certainly highly respect in this space. So so thank you for that, Julian. Just let us know where we can follow you and learn more.

Speaker 2: 40:20

Uh, follow me on twitter. Twittercom slash julian. I'm julian Hospital on all the channels. Uh, yeah, so that's the the main one. I have an english youtube channel as well. I have about 10 000 followers on there, so that's the the alternative julian Haas English on youtube.

Speaker 1: 40:35

Awesome Is thanks. Thanks a lot, julian, appreciate it. Thank you so much. Hey you thanks for listening to the having report podcast. If you like the show and want to support, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and be sure to leave us a comment. Follow us on twitter and instagram at having report. If you're a canadian and you want to buy bitcoin or cryptocurrency for the first time, get a 20 bonus when you go to bit by dot ca forward slash having. If you want 30 dollars off the ultimate digital asset security device, bit five, go to having report dot com forward slash bit five for more information. Until next time, I'm brab mines.