Shownotes
Now the you have some crypto you need to keep it safe. Remember, you can be your own bank. For a tiny bit more of responsibility you have ultimate control over your assets. So let's discuss what's best for your assets.
Resources
https://www.walletofsatoshi.com
https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair
News
https://cryptopotato.com/mt-gox-former-ceo-issues-nft-series-customers-to-get-them-free
https://cointelegraph.com/news/metamask-rolls-out-apple-pay-integration-and-other-ios-updates
https://www.protocol.com/fintech/eu-crypto-kyc
Podcasting 2.0 Apps Available at http://newpodcastapps.com/
I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Website
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
Transcripts
The
Speaker:Hey, everyone. No one on this podcast is a financial advisor. All information presented
Speaker:on this podcast is for informational purposes only. Now that we have the legal stuff out
Speaker:of the way, let's jump on in. Welcome to the Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency
Speaker:podcast. I'm your host, McIntosh. Today, we're going to be talking about storing your
Speaker:investments safely. A bit of the news right at the start. I'm always trying to improve
Speaker:the podcast. Today, I'm going to be implementing another change. Beginning right now, episodes
Speaker:are going to be both shorter in length and more frequent. Episodes will come out on Monday
Speaker:and Thursday mornings. I'll keep them down to 30 minutes or less. If content needs to
Speaker:be split across two or even more episodes, that will be done rather than letting them
Speaker:go longer. The benefits are shorter episodes are easier to consume in one listening opportunity
Speaker:and having more frequent episodes will benefit in regards to the news. There are times, such
Speaker:as this week, when there is a lot of news. Really, this week, we could probably spend
Speaker:30 minutes talking about the news. I don't want to turn this into a news-only show, however,
Speaker:so we're going to have the news twice a week to help keep things timely. The Stacker News
Speaker:articles that I write will continue once a week. I frankly do not have time to write
Speaker:them more frequently than that.
Speaker:Speaking of Stacker News articles, let's talk about this week's. The link to it will be
Speaker:in the show notes. Of course, it's at stacker.news. I don't know if there's a way to sort by my
Speaker:username on there, but my username on there is McIntosh. You can check that out.
Speaker:I was talking this week about some rumors that Strike, which is a Bitcoin Lightning
Speaker:based company that is headed up by Jack Maulers, is potentially partnering with Apple. Now,
Speaker:the main reason that there are these rumors is that Jack Maulers has been posting tweets
Speaker:that are referencing Apple, and he's done it several times. People are basically speculating
Speaker:that they've struck a partnership to integrate Lightning with Apple Pay, and that it might
Speaker:be announced next week at the Bitcoin conference.
Speaker:I believe this is certainly actually possible. I think it's not an April Fool's joke, and
Speaker:Jack, well, you can go read the article about why I think that's possible, but it makes
Speaker:a lot of sense for Apple. I think it's a huge opportunity for the Lightning network in general,
Speaker:and I think it'll be very beneficial for both Apple and the Bitcoin ecosystem. Go take a
Speaker:read at that. I hope you find that it's worth your time. I believe that it's well worth
Speaker:it.
Speaker:All right. We will jump on now to the meat of the episode, storing your investments safely.
Speaker:We have discussed in some levels of detail about storing your investments. I want to
Speaker:go over this again. I'm going to get a little more specific this time, especially in Thursday's
Speaker:episode about some ways that you can provide your optimal storage for long-term wealth
Speaker:management, basically.
Speaker:One of the things that's important when you're looking at crypto, it's a bit of what I would
Speaker:call a paradigm shift. A paradigm is a way that you view things. When you change the
Speaker:way that you're looking at something, that's a paradigm shift. I hope that makes sense.
Speaker:We as people of the 20th and 21st century are used to interacting with banks, putting
Speaker:our investments in banks, or in 401ks that they're tied into this financial system. It's
Speaker:all this large financial system. That's the way that things work. It's worked like this
Speaker:for a long time. That was better than storing your money under the mattress. I don't know
Speaker:if you've ever heard that expression, but the people who would store money under a mattress.
Speaker:There are people who would literally do that. It didn't just come out of nowhere. What happens
Speaker:if your house burns down? You lose your money. What happens if somebody robs your house and
Speaker:finds your money? You lose your money. That was the idea. I'm going to give that responsibility
Speaker:over to the bank. In return, the bank is going to probably charge me fees and paperwork.
Speaker:It's gotten these days where if you do anything, you're getting questioned by the bank. Try
Speaker:bringing in actually $10,000 or more in cash into a bank and saying, I want to deposit
Speaker:this into my checking account. They will ask you to show your identification, even though
Speaker:that identification is probably on their system. They will ask you what your occupation is,
Speaker:why that has anything to do with why you're bringing in cash. I don't know, but I guess
Speaker:they figure some people are dumb enough to say, well, I'm a drug dealer. I don't know.
Speaker:It's the only thing that makes any sense to me. They might ask you where you got the money
Speaker:from. I frankly find this very offensive. I've got a friend of mine who works in a bank,
Speaker:and we've had a number of discussions about this. She has a viewpoint that this is necessary.
Speaker:I know where it comes from. It comes from money laundering regulation. Basically, money laundering
Speaker:laws, they're trying to catch people who are laundering money. That's the point of it.
Speaker:This is well known. My problem is, and not to get off in all this, but my problem is,
Speaker:is that that assumes that I'm a money launderer, which I'm not. We have a legal system here
Speaker:in the United States and virtually most Western countries that presume that someone is innocent
Speaker:versus guilty. You don't presume that somebody's going to do something. If you watch a lot
Speaker:of science fiction movies, that doesn't go real well in most cases. We've got minority
Speaker:report and things like that. Anyways, we've got all this going on. Here's where it comes
Speaker:back to this. When we're dealing with crypto, you are your own bank, or you can be. Now,
Speaker:you can let Coinbase, Kraken, whomever, Gemini, whoever, whoever the centralized exchange
Speaker:is that you use, be your bank. It won't be any different. They will question you. They
Speaker:may block you. We're starting to see this in article after article, news item after
Speaker:news item. Last week, we were talking about Coinbase with Canada, Japan, and Singapore,
Speaker:if I'm not mistaken. If you're sending more than a thousand dollars, you got a KYC, which
Speaker:means know your customer, get documents saying this is who this is going to. And again, going
Speaker:back to the presumption of guilt versus innocence. But you don't have to do that. You can keep
Speaker:your money yourself. And there are a number of ways to do that. We're going to go through
Speaker:the list and we will split this over two weeks. This week, we're going to talk about software
Speaker:wallets. Next week, we're going to talk about what they call hardware wallets. And I break
Speaker:them up this way. It's a little convenient. Undoubtedly, hardware wallets are more secure
Speaker:than software wallets. Software wallets, on the other hand, are more convenient. So the
Speaker:way that I would recommend that you store things are I keep on my software wallet what
Speaker:I, in an ideal world, I would keep on my software wallet what I'm planning on spending, what
Speaker:I'm planning on using for trading or hopefully for buying things with, which is a subject
Speaker:of another podcast, hopefully coming up soon. And it's not a huge amount. Maybe it's a few
Speaker:hundred dollars, whatever. Okay. On the other hand, the hardware wallet is more like the
Speaker:bank vault at the bank. It's much more difficult to get into and it's more secure. If the software
Speaker:wallet is like my wallet, wallet, the hardware wallet is like that bank vault or a safe at
Speaker:your house. And in fact, you can keep your hardware wallet in a safe, which is a good
Speaker:idea. But anyways, so we'll talk about software wallets this week. We'll talk about hardware
Speaker:wallets next week. Well, let's talk about software wallets. Software wallets, there's
Speaker:a broad range. One of the most popular metamask, for example, is a Ethereum based wallet. It's
Speaker:been around for a long time. I've used it for years. It is my main software wallet,
Speaker:to be honest, and it works on like three different networks. So I don't know offhand, but basically
Speaker:any Ethereum based token would work on it. And metamask is an open source product, meaning
Speaker:that all of their code is available online and reviewable. And I personally am of the
Speaker:opinion that's a good thing. All right. For Cardano, you've got a couple of choices, not
Speaker:as many with Cardano as others for software wallets. There's one, and I have no idea how
Speaker:they say it. I'm going to spell it. R, excuse me, YOROI. It's a lightweight wallet like
Speaker:metamask. I believe there are apps available for your iPhone, Android. I do not use that
Speaker:one. I actually use the second one on my desktop. It's called Daedalus. I'll try and say that.
Speaker:D-A-E-D-A-L-U-S. And it acts as a wallet. It actually interacts with the Cardano blockchain
Speaker:and you can stake with it. I have a small amount of my portfolio in Cardano and I actually
Speaker:stake that in the data list if I'm not actively trading that coin. Data list is okay. They
Speaker:update it quite frequently. It's maintained by the core team. It is kind of a heavyweight
Speaker:wallet. So you might want to look at the other one, YOROI, as an alternative. I'll have links
Speaker:to all of these in the show notes. There are a number of wallets that are Bitcoin only
Speaker:or Bitcoin enlightening. Electrum is an example of a Bitcoin only wallet. Some of these actually
Speaker:run like a full node which requires a lot of space. It's storing the Bitcoin blockchain.
Speaker:But they do the purpose. They store your Bitcoin. They act as a Bitcoin wallet. And then there's
Speaker:another one I'm going to talk about for just a minute as an example. I had heard of this
Speaker:wallet a while ago. It's fairly new. I say a while ago, within the last year probably.
Speaker:It's called Exodus. It is a Bitcoin and Ethereum and apparently like 150 other coin wallets.
Speaker:So it's kind of a mixture. I was looking at that thinking, well, that's really cool. And
Speaker:then I went to their website and they tie it into an exchange, their Exodus exchange.
Speaker:So it's really just a wallet for that exchange. Now you may be able to store it without interacting
Speaker:with their exchange, but to me personally, that's probably a pretty poor choice. Now
Speaker:I have heard of no major issues with Exodus. It seems like it's got a nice slick interface,
Speaker:so on and so forth. But again, you're tying yourself to that exchange. So this is kind
Speaker:of just money that I'm keeping on the exchange, which I don't want to keep a whole bunch of
Speaker:money on either our software wallet or on the exchange. Because let's say I had $50,000
Speaker:in crypto investments and it were all on Coinbase and something happens with Coinbase. Or Coinbase
Speaker:decides that I'm a bad guy and whatever. And I get blocked. I get shut down. It happens.
Speaker:And that's it. So again, I just don't want to keep everything in that one spot. So I'm
Speaker:going to mention this wallet, but again, it ties right back into that exchange. The Lightning
Speaker:Wallets are a fairly new category, and I've used a few of these with my node. Oh, and
Speaker:to give you guys an update, I've talked about my Lightning node quite a bit. I've actually
Speaker:moved the podcasting stuff, at least for now. I'm moving off the Vault node and I'm using
Speaker:something. I'm basically using an intermediary. There's a website called satoshi.stream, S-A-T-O-S-H-I-S.stream.
Speaker:And they basically run a Lightning node and they allow you to join in that and use it
Speaker:for a 3% fee. So if I had 100 satoshi streamed my way, they would get 3%. I would get 97%
Speaker:basically. And in return for not having to run my own Lightning node right now, I think
Speaker:that's probably a pretty fair deal. I've actually had a really good experience with them. We
Speaker:had a little bit of an issue at start. I jumped into the Telegram group and it was like 11
Speaker:o'clock at night and I don't know what time zone this guy was in, or maybe there's more
Speaker:than one support person. But anyways, they helped me within like half an hour. We got
Speaker:it straightened out. And so now that is how my value for value sat streams from podcast
Speaker:2.0 apps is working. I'll keep you all up to date on that. And eventually at some point
Speaker:I will go to my own Lightning node again. But for right now, it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker:I got too many other things I'm trying to do to deal with that right now. I was having
Speaker:some issues with it, frankly, because I don't know enough about it. And Lightning is a little
Speaker:rougher on the edges still. I believe Lightning has a very bright future. It's not to get
Speaker:off track on this. And I got to be careful about this as we move to these lower times.
Speaker:But you know, the growth on the Lightning network is still extremely, extremely rapid.
Speaker:But it's not as easy as I would like it to be. That's for sure. And one of the things
Speaker:I actually hope that actually come out of a Strike and Apple partnership is that kind
Speaker:of beautiful symbiosis of a high quality interface with a system that works. Strike provides
Speaker:a very high level of service. They were the ones who helped El Salvador get set up. Apple
Speaker:obviously, you know, builds high quality software. You may not agree with their philosophies
Speaker:or whatever. And I actually discussed that in the article. But the reality is they do
Speaker:build a nice user interface. So I think they could move Lightning a long way along and
Speaker:introduce it to millions of people. OK, so there are a number of Lightning wallets. I've
Speaker:used several of them. They're all about the same, to be honest. At this point, in my opinion,
Speaker:you know, they've not really had any that really stand out. But you've got Blue Wallet.
Speaker:You've got the Wallet of Satoshi, which does get bonus points for the best name. Electrum.
Speaker:Well, Electrum. I guess Electrum added Lightning support. Huh. OK. Or I didn't understand.
Speaker:But it does actually do Lightning transactions. Muin. M-U-N. Phoenix. Breeze. I've used Breeze.
Speaker:I don't see Eclair. And I don't see it on here. There's one called Zeus. That's actually
Speaker:one that I've used as well. So there are a number of options there. Now, what does this
Speaker:mean? It means potentially, at least for now, that you may have to, you know, you may have
Speaker:to have several wallets. You may need one for Cardano. You may need one for your Ethereum
Speaker:based stuff. You may need one for Bitcoin. And that's the way it is. And I don't know
Speaker:that that will change unless you choose a solution like Exodus, where it's more of an
Speaker:exchange type or a centralized service. So that's kind of the compromise there. Otherwise,
Speaker:we don't really have a way to make these things. There's just a lot of technical reasons why
Speaker:kind of these things break along the blockchain line, so to speak. I hope that made sense.
Speaker:So I will have links to the articles and actual sites for like MetaMask and Yori and Daeldalus.
Speaker:I really wish they would have come up with some easier names. I think sometimes people
Speaker:in tech like myself, we try and come up with the most difficult names. Anyways. Oh, I did
Speaker:want to mention, of course, being software wallets, these are going to be online all
Speaker:the time. When you're online, you do need to be careful. You certainly do not ever,
Speaker:ever, ever want to give out your private keys to your wallet, whether that's MetaMask or,
Speaker:you know, your Bitcoin wallet or whatever. Just don't do it. Don't believe anything that
Speaker:anybody says if they're asking for your private keys. They're just trying to steal your money.
Speaker:Be careful about phishing attacks. All right. So that's it for software wallets. Now, of
Speaker:course, hardware wallets, literally they are hardware. They are, you know, a physical device
Speaker:like a USB type device or something like that. We're going to talk about those next week.
Speaker:They are, they are certainly considered to be more secure than software wallets. We're
Speaker:actually going to talk about two kinds of hardware wallets, and I'm going to give you
Speaker:suggestions on, you know, depending on basically the amount of money that you're willing to
Speaker:spend, what you should get. And of course, I'm not getting any benefit from recommending
Speaker:any of these products. I just want that to be known. All right, we need to move on. Let's
Speaker:close up with the news. There was a lot of news this week. I want to start with Mount
Speaker:Gox. Now I've talked about Mount Gox probably more than once. I was a user of Mount Gox.
Speaker:Looks like I, according to my email, I signed up in February of 2014, right before they
Speaker:got hacked. I don't think I really lost anything. I went through the process when they were,
Speaker:what's they call it? You know, returning crypto to people who had assets on Mount Gox that
Speaker:lost it. And I, all mine have either been returned at this point or I didn't really
Speaker:have any on there. I don't remember. It was obviously a number of years ago at this
Speaker:point. But one of the interesting things is it looks like the former CEO of Mount Gox
Speaker:is actually issuing a series of NFTs, so non-fungible tokens. Most people think of these as art,
Speaker:that kind of thing, to the customers of Mount Gox for free. So they're requesting that people
Speaker:who have accounts or did have accounts on Mount Gox, basically go to a website, you
Speaker:key in your info, they verify it, and then they will give you an NFT. So I actually signed
Speaker:up for it just for fun. I don't know what this is going to do other than prove that
Speaker:I really was a user of Mount Gox. Now apparently the CEO has gone on to build some type of
Speaker:security service, which I kind of think is pretty funny. And this is kind of a way for
Speaker:him to harvest emails, so to speak, about people who are in crypto to get reconnected
Speaker:with his former. In fact, this is what it says here. Well, let me read what it says
Speaker:here because this provides a pretty good summary. So Mark Carpelles is his name. He announced
Speaker:in a recent interview a new project named UNGOX that will be a service providing ratings
Speaker:for crypto exchanges and their security levels by checking key areas such as technology,
Speaker:legal context, people, and transparency. Now the irony that the CEO of Mount Gox is now
Speaker:involved in security is not lost on me. To get the initiative going and reconnect with
Speaker:his former customers, Carpelles will introduce a non-fungible token NFT series. So if we
Speaker:registered from July the 17th of 2010 until February the 25th of 2014 and provide their
Speaker:account details to get an NFT for free. I think I actually signed up. It was like February
Speaker:the 14th or something. It was literally like 10 days or so before the, I guess the hack
Speaker:happened or whatever. Once the review is complete, there'll be airdropped NFT, which that'll
Speaker:be done. You had to put in your, you know, basically you had to put in your credentials
Speaker:and it all seems legit. I certainly hope it is. And it's apparently not going to actually
Speaker:be like pictures. It's not going to be JPEGs or whatever. It's going to be some type of
Speaker:thing saying that, you know, Hey, I was a customer of Mount Gox customer number, blah,
Speaker:blah, blah, or something like that. You know, I don't know. It didn't cost me anything.
Speaker:It actually literally cost me nothing. And it will be fun to at least be able to say,
Speaker:Hey, I was a OG Mount Goxer. You know, I lived through that nightmare. All right, moving
Speaker:on world news, Vietnam, Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia has become becoming a hotspot for crypto.
Speaker:It's kind of interesting. Vietnam deputy prime minister calls for building a legal framework
Speaker:for digital assets. They've actually authorized and banned Bitcoin a number of times. So they're
Speaker:kind of like India. India has gone back and forth as well, but they're going to develop
Speaker:a legal framework. So they're basically going to say what's good, what's bad, what you can
Speaker:do, what you can't do so that to encourage companies. And this is what I was talking
Speaker:about. This is the regulatory environment that countries are going to build for good
Speaker:or bad, but at least institutions will know, Hey, I can do X, Y, and Z. I can't do, you
Speaker:know, A. A is illegal according to their framework. Does that make sense? So that's important
Speaker:for institutions who have large amounts of money that they would be putting into crypto.
Speaker:So this is a good thing. Oh, speaking of Apple, I had forgotten about this because it happened
Speaker:so early in the week. Apple is actually rolling out PayPal, Apple Pay, excuse me, Apple. Boy,
Speaker:they'd be offended if I said PayPal. Apple Pay integrations with Metamask. So, you know,
Speaker:this is kind of, if you talk about two big parts of the market, you got Bitcoin, you
Speaker:got Ethereum. It's inarguable that those are the two major parts of the crypto market currently.
Speaker:If Apple is rolling out Apple Pay integration here with Metamask and then oh, surprise next
Speaker:week or at the upcoming June developer conference would be another opportunity. Oh, surprise.
Speaker:We have Lightning slash Bitcoin integration with Apple Pay. They would cover so much of
Speaker:the market so quickly to such a huge number of users. I give the numbers in that article.
Speaker:It's an astounding amount of people who are using iPhones. So that's actually really good
Speaker:news. Now, unfortunately, we had some bad regulatory news this week. I left this till last. I wished
Speaker:I could say this wasn't true and this was April Fool's, which was a few days ago, but
Speaker:it's not true. Ironically, this article came out on April the 1st, but it is true. It's
Speaker:absolutely true. Again, all goes back to anti-money laundering. The European Parliament voted
Speaker:to require all crypto transactions to include information on the parties involved. Basically,
Speaker:whoever you're dealing with, you have to know your customer. You have to know who you're
Speaker:sending money to. You have to be able to identify them so on and so forth. Technically, this
Speaker:outlaws me sending you whatever without all of this identification. So anonymity would
Speaker:be lost. Now, this doesn't go into effect for a couple of years. So there is a possibility
Speaker:before this actually takes effect, it will be overturned. And in fact, the rules, this
Speaker:article says they still had to be negotiated with EU governments through the EU Council
Speaker:before they take effect. So all hope is not lost, but it's not a good thing. And the EU,
Speaker:which just recently tried to outlaw proof of work mining, not been looking real good
Speaker:in regards to crypto these days. So I hope they kind of get their heads out of the sand
Speaker:and figure things out because they are going to get left behind if they're not careful.
Speaker:So that's it for this week's news. There was a lot going on. I didn't throw in a market
Speaker:watch. Market's about the same as it was last week. In fact, I was just looking at the charts
Speaker:before I started recording. We did actually close down this week, but it was only by a
Speaker:few hundred dollars. So we've kind of gone sideways, although it has gone up and it has
Speaker:gone down. So the bulls and the bears, they're battling as to what's going to happen. We
Speaker:are still above the one major resistance level that's kind of keeping us up. So that's certainly
Speaker:good. I think with this week's Bitcoin conference, which starts, I believe on Wednesday, especially
Speaker:if Apple comes out along with Strike or if Jack Maulers, the CEO of Strike, comes out,
Speaker:who will be at Bitcoin conference, if he comes out on Wednesday and says, hey, we did this
Speaker:deal with Apple. Oh, and by the way, he's the one that announced El Salvador last year.
Speaker:I don't know, might be coincidence. But if he came out and said that, I think the price
Speaker:of Bitcoin would immediately jump a significant amount. I think we would be hitting that 50,
Speaker:$51,000 level that we need in order to continue on up and reach new all time highs. But even
Speaker:more importantly than that, as Apple rolls this out, it brings Bitcoin and crypto to
Speaker:a whole new group of users. And what's been missing from this market for the last, for
Speaker:a while, I don't know, probably nearly a year at this point, maybe retail. People like,
Speaker:probably like you and me, people, you know, retail being the average user out there buying
Speaker:crypto. Not as much volume from that as has been in the past. And there's been a lot of
Speaker:people make note of that. This would bring in a lot of new people over the next few months,
Speaker:certainly over the course of 2022, buying crypto. It would be very bullish. So keep
Speaker:an eye on that. That'll be Wednesday. I believe when that announcement would come out, the
Speaker:conference starts on Wednesday. Hopefully we'll know something here before next Thursday's
Speaker:episode. All right, so we're going to wrap it up. We're going to be right about 35 minutes.
Speaker:I do apologize. You're going to have to give me a little grace. I will try and keep these
Speaker:down to 30 minutes or less. The Generational Wealth of Cryptocurrency podcast supports
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Speaker:I hope this has been helpful. I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at McIntosh
Speaker:Fintech and you can reach me by email at mcintosh at genwealthcrypto.com. Of course, the Generational