Ep 011 – Dr. Smith Talks Crypto

Summary: Tesla Acquired 1.5 Billion Dollars’ Worth Of Bitcoin [0:01:11] Inflation – What Is The Value Of Money? [0:05:01] There’s A New Asset Class – Digital Assets [0:08:12] Everybody Can Have Bitcoin [0:10:49] The Reason Companies Are Buying Bitcoin [0:11:38] Pump Up Your Portfolio – Diversify! [0:16:23] Implication For The Average Young Physician [0:17:52] Volatility Is Not A Negative Thing [0:19:40] As Elon Musk Said, ‘In Retrospect, It’s Inevitable’ [0:22:55]     Welcome to the Financial MD Show. This is the only podcast designed specifically for residents and young physicians to help you become educated on financial planning for physicians and avoid many of the common financial mistakes doctors make. Your hosts, Jon and Trevor, explore a different topic with each episode. Jon Solitro is a financial planner and certified financial education instructor. He’s been working with young physicians for the better part of the decade and lectures to graduate medical programs around the country. Dr. Trevor Smith is a board-certified ophthalmologist with a full-time practice and he has learned the ins and outs first-hand what it takes to make smart financial decisions as a young physician. And now here’s your hosts, Jon and Trevor.   Jon: All right, so you want to get rolling on crypto?   Trevor: Let’s do it, yeah, and mostly just Bitcoin. I mean, I’m pretty…call me a Bitcoin maximalist is what they call it.   Jon: You bleed Bitcoin?   Trevor: I bleed Bitcoin. I mostly just don’t want other people to lose money in other more insanely speculative bets. It makes me nervous.   Jon: Okay. Ethereum pretty solid?   Trevor: Ethereum pretty solid – great question. That’s probably the biggest debate. Yeah, so Bitcoin is like mainstream. All of them put together, something like, you know, 1.1 trillion market cap that fluctuates a good 10 percent day-to-day, week-to-week, even more sometimes. So the whole market cap of like cryptocurrency and everything was like about 1.1 trillion, right. I think it’s a million for a second there. Yeah, so it’s definitely trillion and Bitcoin’s in the 800 billion range right now and that’s been kind of working its way up, and then Ethereum’s market cap actually should but I don’t know off the top of my head. It’s the second largest but it’s not an insane amount. I want to say – we could google it – but it’s probably between let’s say it’s 100 and 200 which I don’t think it’s that high. If it’s 100 billion then it’s still, you know, significantly smaller than Bitcoin, but it’s a significant part of the cryptocurrency kind of landscape because a lot of the other coins are either like sort of created on what’s considered the Ethereum network.   Tesla Acquired 1.5 Billion Dollars’ Worth Of Bitcoin [0:01:11]   Yeah, so those are the kind of the top two coins but like the main reason I wanted to talk about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin is because of the big news that Tesla acquired 1.5 billion dollars in Bitcoin a month ago.   Jon: Yeah, so let’s talk about that. Why do you think they got that?   Trevor: Yeah, so they called it in their filing with the SEC an alternative store of value asset. So it’s a store of value much like gold where it protects against inflation. When they say store of value, they kind of – it’s kind of like a fancy way of saying like hedge against inflation, meaning that there’s a lot of inflation and dollars losing their buying power, you know. Dollar is going to be a dollar, but a dollar versus, you know, what? A loaf of bread. A dollar versus a euro, a dollar versus a peso. You know, if it loses the ability to buy things then that’s important.   Jon: Sure. Value…   Trevor: So that’s the basis. Yeah, value, and it’s most important, you know, you can talk about like a banana at a store, okay, sure, like those prices do fluctuate and that’s kind of more on the order of the mainstream i...