Join me today for Episode 929 of Bitcoin And . . .
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Topics for today:
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- Bitcoin
- The Shitcoin Journey
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[00:00:09]
David Bennett:
It's episode 929 or 930, something like that, of Bitcoin. And I'm here with my neighbor up in beautiful San Juan Mountains in Colorado, Cody. He's got an entrepreneurial spirit. I know you guys are going to really, really like that. So we're gonna get into some of the businesses that he's done. He also is kind of a little bit tangentially interested in Bitcoin, so clearly that matches with the show. There's also gonna be some other stuff that we talk about because I ain't got nothing planned. So god only knows where this is gonna go, but we are gonna be doing this thing. We're gonna do it right now. Cody, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Bitcoin Inn podcast. Thank you.
Have you ever been on a podcast before? I haven't. Sweet. First timer, I'm looking forward to it. Nice. Thank God. One of the things about Cody that's nice is that he's a musician too, so he knows my technique, and I don't have to coach him on that. Sometimes. And it'll be fine. We'll be fine. Everything's gonna be just a okay. Let's let's just start. Your introduction, generally, people go, oh, well, tell us all about yourself. But the whole point about this thing is we're gonna find out all about you. So the whole podcast is sort of an introduction to Cody. And I'm not gonna use your last name because we practice operational security here. And I I just think it's I think it's better just to go with Cody. Right? Okay. So, you've been doing businesses for a while now, and let's just let's start with the first business that you started.
[00:01:51] Cody:
That would have been, I believe lawn kale. Kind of lawn maintenance, lawn mowing. Just like a mowing service. Really just mowing. Right. So now And I think I started with, like, 3 yards. 3 years ago? 3 yards. Oh. With 3 clients. Oh, with 3 clients. Okay. And then I kinda grew that into 23.
[00:02:13] David Bennett:
Into 23. That's what you're standing at now? Yeah. And and which includes our family too. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I guess the question the question is, this is a really small village. We're not, we're in the San Juan mountains, but we're not in Durango, we're not in like a a metro not that Durango is really all that big, but it's a hell of a lot bigger than where we're at. Yeah. So this is a, you know, this is sort of like a vacation community Mhmm. Is generally speaking with. So how hard was it to get those clients? It wasn't too hard.
[00:02:47] Cody:
Mainly because I knew all all of them that I was working with. Uh-huh. And they had asked me. They're, like, hey, you know, would you mind doing all your to someone? I was, like, sure. Yeah. No problem. So I actually ended up using everybody's mobile that was there. I didn't own any of my own stuff. I owned a weed eater. You That was all I You started with a weed eater. That's all I had. Oh, god. And so I had to walk out all the pricing Wow. To make it fail. So I was using all their equipment.
[00:03:13] David Bennett:
Were you buying the gas at least? Mhmm. Okay. Okay. That that that actually makes sense. That I don't know. There there's a guy that that I know that used to rent, people's front yards to grow. I I don't know him personally. He was like, something stone. I cannot remember the the cat's first name. He's up in Canada, and he started he did a whole business by renting people's front and backyards and doing vegetable gardens and selling the vegetables. Really cool. And what you just described is almost exactly like what he was doing only with, you know, using using their equipment, but that's not your only business. No. You got a second business. What was the second one you did?
Snow removal. Snow well, which makes a lot of sense, but how are you if you only had a weed eater and you started, lawn care business,
[00:04:02] Cody:
what did you start with with snow removal? I kinda walked with my parents Okay. On that credit, but they kinda did a little bit more than I did. Uh-huh. My dad had a plow truck and everything. He did more of that. I did more of the shoveling Uh-huh. And kinda did that side of the snow removal Right. Those few seasons.
[00:04:19] David Bennett:
Yeah. Because, driving when you started the snow removal stuff, driving was a little bit of an issue. We're we're gonna get into that.
[00:04:28] Cody:
How long after your the lawn care business did you start the snow removal? It was pretty soon. It might have been Same year? Right around the same year, maybe a year later, but it was pretty soon. Okay. And then, after that, about 2 or 3 years after I started mowing Yeah. I finally was able to get my false tractor. Uh-huh. And I used that for snow removal, which was 20 2 into 23. Is is that the one you got now? The one before ball, what I have right now. Okay. I got that one
[00:05:00] David Bennett:
last year. Last year? Oh, it was it was new last year. Well Yeah. Did you get it new, or did you get it used? It's used. Okay. Because it's in great condition. It is. I mean, it's like you guys clearly take care of it, but Had it
[00:05:13] Cody:
it it just clicked over to 8,000 hours. Really? About 2 weeks ago. God, you guys
[00:05:19] David Bennett:
that's a lot of hours, man. Well, it came with 78100, I think, on it. Yeah. But still I put about 300 hours on it. I mean, that's a lot of drive time. That's people always, like, oh, I I don't understand what that means in miles, and it's, like, that's doesn't really apply. I can give you the equivalent. It's got 21,000 miles on it. Oh, there oh, there's a an equivalency? Yeah. Oh, neat. Okay. Well, that'd be good. Japanese
[00:05:42] Cody:
put 2 different they put the owl needle on it and then the miles on it. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So so you got so now you're doing
[00:05:51] David Bennett:
lawn care in the summer, which makes sense. Mhmm. Snow removal in the winter Mhmm. Which makes sense because you can't mow any lawns. They're all covered with snow. So you've pretty much got income from what may or no, You're not mowing lawns up here until, like, June.
[00:06:11] Cody:
About the soonest we can start is, like, the it seems like it's always, like, around 20th May. Uh-huh. Kind of around there. I think I think 2 years, I've started on 27th.
[00:06:24] David Bennett:
Do you do you mow clear up until it starts snowing?
[00:06:28] Cody:
It's kinda tough. So we we start at the end of May. We mow June, July, August, September. Uh-huh. Do we get into October? It's kind of, it depends on the growth of it. Uh-huh. Okay. I think we we generally stop
[00:06:44] David Bennett:
all late at mid October. And when do you start, snow removal?
[00:06:48] Cody:
Kinda whenever it snows. Last year, we started at the end of November. Okay. Okay. So it kinda depends.
[00:06:54] David Bennett:
So there's a little bit of a lull in income between those 2? Well, not really because after I stop mowing,
[00:07:00] Cody:
then I go and blow out irrigation systems. Okay. So
[00:07:05] David Bennett:
And get things ready for for fall. Okay. So but that would you consider that part of your lawn care business? Mhmm. Okay. Because snow removal and lawn care, not your only businesses. Correct. You have a third business? Yes. Okay. So what the hell is that? Excavation. Like dirt moving?
[00:07:22] Cody:
Yeah. Septic like, really anything involves foundations, septic systems, roads, road maintenance,
[00:07:30] David Bennett:
anything that involves dull. Yeah. So and for pea and I may I used to make this mistake too. So for people that don't know, excavation isn't just dirt removal. It's just moving it. Could be anything. Yeah. Could even be tree clearing. Right. And this Or a garage or something. And and we're in the Rocky Mountains so it ain't all dirt they're called the Rocky Mountains for a reason so you're dealing with like large boulders as well right? Yes. Okay. So, those can be fun. So excavation is also gonna be done in the, in all times that's not frozen
[00:08:04] Cody:
ground and snow. Right? For the most part, there's a few times that, I've had to use that in the winter time. Really? Like, if we have a broken water line on the water system Yeah. Yeah. Could take it up. Last year, we had a
[00:08:17] David Bennett:
I think we had a frozen valve. Yeah. Somewhere we ended up digging that up. Yeah. Well, I can't can't imagine that digging in the frozen earth is very much fun and It wasn't too hard last year because nothing froze. Well, yeah. You were talking about that and, like, mounds of snow, but, like, it was sitting on, like mud. Yeah. Yeah. The ground never froze. It was cold but the it just heated right back up in the day. God, that is just so that it's just bizarre. Me and me and, Jeanie were, my wife was talking about that the other day, or, you know, like yesterday after you were telling us about it. I just can't imagine what that's like. Does that happen often?
[00:08:56] Cody:
I think this, this is the first year I've seen it like that. Really? Yeah. Cause I've, I've never,
[00:09:02] David Bennett:
I don't know it's always been so so damn cold by the time I get up here in the wintertime that it's just it's amazing so now at this point, how long did you start excavation after snow removal?
[00:09:17] Cody:
It would've been the same about about a year. Okay. About a year after. So you're just When I got serious into it because I I kinda did some here and there. Uh-huh. But this year, I really got serious about it and actually got a Traco Right. And some other things. So I've kind of done it for a little bit. I've had to vent all the equipment Right. And I wasn't really into it yet. Right. But
[00:09:41] David Bennett:
but again, you're, you've got that, that mindset of kind of like a try before you buy
[00:09:48] Cody:
kind of thing.
[00:09:50] David Bennett:
Okay. So now you're, you're moving dirt. And that's gotta be at this point, filling in any gaps of monthly income. Right?
[00:10:01] Cody:
It's kind of in and out. Really? Depends. I mean,
[00:10:06] David Bennett:
the the problem is is I have a lot of projects lined up. Right. That's the time. Right. Because I'm trying to cut grass and You're kinda buy are you I'm trying to do anything else. Do you have a partner at all? My dad, actually. Well, I know your I know your dad has always been been part of this, but, anybody outside family? Okay. No.
[00:10:26] Cody:
In fact, about 3 weeks ago, I had my entire family walking for
[00:10:33] David Bennett:
me. Jesus. I love this guy.
[00:10:38] Cody:
But that's not your only business. And my sister does all of, like she's, like, the office manager. She's care of everything. Is your brother in on it? He's the only one that's not he does his own thing in Durango.
[00:10:51] David Bennett:
Oh, so he's not working at the little market up here anymore? Mhmm. He's not? Okay. No. So but those three businesses, not not your only business. Well, you got a 4th one. Right?
[00:11:05] Cody:
Kinda?
[00:11:06] David Bennett:
Kind of. Is it is it, like, just starting? Could yeah. You okay. So what is it?
[00:11:19] Cody:
I think it well, it's, septic system installs. Okay. Are you including that with excavation?
[00:11:25] David Bennett:
Or Most for the most part. Yeah. Okay. Since it's kind of the same. Right. But you ended up having but to install a septic digging for a septic system is not as cumbersome as digging and installing 1 because you gotta be certified. Right? Correct. Okay. So when did you get certified? April. Okay. So April of this year. This this year. Okay. And how long did that take?
[00:11:50] Cody:
It's about a day. It's like a full hour class.
[00:11:53] David Bennett:
Is it is it really hard? I mean, is there something about a septic system that's, like, oh my god, I had no idea that this was all like this. Well, it's
[00:12:01] Cody:
it's kind of interesting when you take the class because they show you how they want the system. Uh-huh. But they don't necessarily tell you how to install the system. Really? So you kinda have to figure it out Oh, god. By what you've learned. Uh-huh. But it wasn't really that hard. Okay. I mean,
[00:12:19] David Bennett:
once you understand it, it's pretty simple. Now do you have septic installs lined up for this year? I do. Okay. How many you got? I think right now,
[00:12:28] Cody:
3. In fact, I'm getting ready to install 1 in 2 weeks. Really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Are And I just finished
[00:12:34] David Bennett:
my first one about 3 weeks ago. Okay. And are these these are all now this new style of septic system. Right? Like, because you're not allowed to do the old way. These are, like, are these, like, these engineered septic systems? So the the leach field Uh-huh. Has to be engineered.
[00:12:52] Cody:
The tank, like, if you're doing just a tank install Right. Or replacement, you don't have to have that in engineered, but for kind of all new systems, you have to have engineered. Uh-huh. Just for the placement of of everything. Where to put it. Okay. So Especially if the yards if the area you're walking with is really tight, and you have property lines. Yeah. You have limits between waddle you have to stay off of and And you can't put the lead field, like, within x feet of the house kind of thing. Yeah. Everything has a, like, a boundary, like, waddle. You have to be, like, a 100 feet from that. Like, you have to it's kinda hard trying to place it. Now do you have to do the engineering, or is that a plan drawn up by, like, county? It's a third party. Okay. Does that. And then you get, like, the plat that shows all the property lines. Then I get the plans. Okay. But then that set of plans has to be sent to the county.
Right. Have it approved. Right. And then I get it back. Right. And then I can go ahead and start moving on to project. Okay. And how old are you? 18.
[00:13:52] David Bennett:
Say that number one more time. 18. You're killing all of us, dude. You're literally killing all of us. Everybody that just heard that, if it's not, like, sinking into your brain that I'm talking to an 18 year old guy, you need to have your hearing checked. When did you start your lawn mowing business?
[00:14:13] Cody:
When I was 15, I walked for a landscaping company when I was robot teen. Mhmm. Which is kind of an issue because I was underage
[00:14:21] David Bennett:
for that, for, like, payroll reasons and all that. We're gonna get into the we're gonna get into that shit,
[00:14:27] Cody:
man. It was kinda tough.
[00:14:29] David Bennett:
And then so and then the timeline, we can just figure out the timeline. Your snow removal came a year after, so you were probably 15, 16. And then excavation or, yeah, excavation came
[00:14:41] Cody:
17. It was kind of the it I started doing some of it in when I was 17, but but not a whole lot. Just kinda little projects here and there, like French drains and But it started getting little small things. Serious now that you've just turned 18. Yeah. Okay. And then septic, by the time that you're probably very serious about that, you'll be 19.
[00:15:02] David Bennett:
Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm always serious about that. Well, I bet I meant, like, where it's, like, you got it all sewed up. You're, like, you know exactly what you just, like like, back of your hand kind of thing. Well and and now I'm looking into actually, you're a friend of mine. We're looking into getting,
[00:15:18] Cody:
certified to, inspect them. See. That makes good sense. So, like, if you were to sell a house and you had to have it inspected Right. We could do that then. Right.
[00:15:30] David Bennett:
Kinda And how it's kinda confusing that that's a separate separate certification than the install because you would think that if you know how to install it, inspection would be, yes, this is this is, like, not broken.
[00:15:43] Cody:
Yeah. It it I've it's just kinda different, because since it's used, you have to kinda look at it differently. Right. You have to look you have to kinda know where everything's at if it was going to break. Right. Well, when you install in it, it's all new, so you don't have to worry about it. Right. But the in and the inspection is pretty,
[00:16:04] David Bennett:
it's like a like a 2 day class. Really? Yeah. Got it. So so inspecting is even harder Yeah. Than learning how to install it. That's interesting.
[00:16:14] Cody:
Once you figure out how to install them. So when did
[00:16:17] David Bennett:
have you ever okay. You worked for somebody else when you were, like, 14. Mhmm. Is that the only time that you've actually ever worked for anybody else?
[00:16:27] Cody:
No. I've actually got another, another guy at work for law, and I've been walking for him for 7, 8 years now. Right. And he actually has a it's a
[00:16:37] David Bennett:
9 hole golf course. Yeah. You told me about this. You've gotta show me where this thing is, man. It's
[00:16:43] Cody:
we've kinda changed it now Uh-huh. But it's it's amazing. But it's up here. Yeah. It's a blast. It they have a pretty good tone out. They play, like, Tuesday and Wednesdays. Really? They have a huge tone out. God bless you. And it's it's So We've spent forever walking on that. So are what were you doing
[00:17:01] David Bennett:
lawn care for the golf course?
[00:17:04] Cody:
So I started out actually, like, doing not really the mowing, but more of the maintenance of things, like, raking and fertilizing, stuff like that, just to kinda keep things up. Somebody else did all the mowing. Uh-huh. But, after about a year, I kinda moved my way up and started doing the mowing and kinda took over everything. Right. And now I pretty much do a I'm kinda the right hand man over there now. I do really anything. We have so many projects going on besides, you know, the graph the the golf course, which is pretty private. Yeah. We have, like, a wood cutting operation, like, firewood and stuff like that. Like, we have a whole thing that we do. So that's a a whole other set of things that's going on. And now I kinda take care of all that. So I kinda I kinda manage everything over there now. My god.
Like, we just put in a, pavilion. Yeah. Like a, like, a reunion kind of place. Yeah. And it's we just we're almost finished with that, but Right. It's pretty cool.
[00:18:04] David Bennett:
Well, the reason the reason I was asking because, you seem to be, like, able to shift over between have no problem working for somebody else and but are also completely self employed, which is kind of unusual. Most people either take one one route or the other. And, well, most people that that I know, Is this sort of, like, up here in these rural communities, is it more like working for somebody else and working for yourself is more normal than you would find in, like, a major metropolitan area? Believe in your opinion, you don't have to know. I I don't know because
[00:18:44] Cody:
this is just kind of the way I've walked for so long that I'm just used to it. Yeah. So I hadn't really I haven't really thought about that. Now that you mentioned it, I haven't really thought about Yeah. You know, walking for somebody else and then doing my own thing. Right. I'm just it's just something I've always done. Well, yeah. If, most people don't like working for somebody else if who they're working for doesn't appreciate them. Yeah. I mean, and that's that's becoming more and more
[00:19:09] David Bennett:
prevalent in society where people are just used to being talked to like crap, you know, or their opinion is not valued. Or and after after a while, it'll damage your soul. That, that, that kind of attitude when you have to go in to a job every day and you're just, it's not that you don't want to be there because the work is that you don't want to be there because these people suck. And, you know, the the people that you've been mentioning, you seem to have a really good relationship with all these guys. So I do. They've all they've all treated me very well. See, in that, you know, at that point, then you're free you're essentially free to run. You can either go you can go either direction or or stay in both directions for as long as you want.
So what what why did you wanna even start a business at 14? I mean, was it was this your dad at all saying you could do this, or was this just you? It it's, probably a little
[00:20:03] Cody:
little bit of both, but mainly it was just I just wanted to go. Sweet. Like, I
[00:20:08] David Bennett:
just I kinda I just went with it. We could I mean, you're kinda like the proverbial kid that played with Tonka trucks and Still do. And never never wanted to stop. You know, dump trucks, road graders, that I mean, I don't know if you've ever run a road grader, but I haven't yet. It's on my list. It's on your bucket list? Hopefully that'll happen soon. Alright. So this is all you, but your dad sort of has that kinda same spirit. I've I've noticed, because he if I remember right, he used to fly a plane and was running human organs for transplant. Is that correct? So he was an EMS pilot. Okay. Oh, flat out EMS pilot. Okay. Yeah. He just flew the fixed wing. Okay. And, yeah. And but at at a time, he decided, screw a bunch of this and started welding.
[00:21:02] Cody:
Yeah. He he got just kind of tired of the always being gone. Yeah. He was only ill, like, 7 days. He was gone for 7 days. Oh. And he just kinda got tired of being gone all the time. So did did he go back I mean, did he already know how to weld?
[00:21:18] David Bennett:
Yeah. Did he get did he already have certification or No. He he,
[00:21:24] Cody:
he's kinda done welding pretty much forever, but but he never really turned it into a business.
[00:21:31] David Bennett:
Until, like, what? Was it 5 years ago? It would have been,
[00:21:35] Cody:
I think, 20
[00:21:37] David Bennett:
13, 24, 14. Yeah. Okay. So a lot longer, than not I didn't realize that it was that long ago, but, so the spirit seems to kinda run-in the family, it seems like. But when you were putting this these businesses together, your age sort of got in your way. It did. Right? So take me back to when you're 14 and you wanna do the lawn mowing business. And you list I don't know. You need a you need a bank account. What what happened?
[00:22:09] Cody:
Well, we, we went into the bank and said, well, we need to open up a a bank account for a business. And, we went to go open it, and they're like, okay. Yeah. No no problem at all. You know? And, like, you know, how old are you? And I'm like, I'm 4, 14, and they're like, okay. This is gonna walk to you, but I'll have to figure it out. And I was, like, well, what can we do? And they're, like, we could make an error LC, but you have to have your you know, you have to have somebody sign on it, like, you you your dad or your mom. So we went and created an LLC Uh-huh. Put it under my name or and my mom's name, then we could go back into the bank. That was still a little bit tough Yeah. Because of my age. Right. So then my mom signed on that again, and we're able to get it open. Yeah. But
[00:22:58] David Bennett:
And this is a major bank, or was it a local smaller bank? Local. Local bank. Okay.
[00:23:03] Cody:
It would have been There was a few times that they they hold my age and, like, you know, we didn't hear that.
[00:23:09] David Bennett:
We'll just move on. I'll say, well, that's okay. Then then, yeah, that's probably much better than having to work with, like, you know, Bank of America or Wells Fargo because they're probably, like, going out. I'll I'll lose my job. Yeah. And there was there was, we were in
[00:23:24] Cody:
we were sitting there trying to, I'm trying to think what what we were doing with it. It was something with the bank account. And I was sitting there, and and I got up to leave or something to do something. And the bank lady was, like, how how old is he? My mom's, like, oh, he's 15. Uh-huh. And she's, like, I thought he was 21.
[00:23:47] David Bennett:
Well,
[00:23:49] Cody:
I even had, issues. I bought a snowplow last year. Yeah. From Chicago. Uh-huh. And I had to I had to wire the company the money. Right. And I went in just to make a wire transfer. Uh-huh. Was insanely hard, because I was 17. Yep. And that was even out of a business account. I'm on the account. Right. Everything's legal, and it was it was hard just trying to do that. Yeah. Because you're doing you're you're doing a transaction,
[00:24:15] David Bennett:
and every transaction is going to cause problems when that transaction is coming from the base of, like, this guy is not 18. Yeah. Well, it it it's even been issues at,
[00:24:27] Cody:
Stoballs. Like, I went into a farm store to buy paint. Yeah. To paint the snowplow that I just bought. Right. And I bought I went to go buy the paint, and I'm thinking nothing about it. I'm like, gosh. You know? Whatever. I'm, you know, just buying some paint to paint this. I spent 30 minutes trying to find the paint in the store, and then I got it I got it to the checkout, Uh-huh. And they scanned it, and they're like, oh, I just need your ID. I'm like, yep. Here you go. I handed it to him, and they're like, oh, we can't sell this to you. You're not 18. And they little they took the paint from me Uh-huh. And they told me to walk out, and I'm, like, fine. Oh, god. I walked out, and I've never been back since. Well, yeah. That's, like, you you know, it's it's hard
[00:25:07] David Bennett:
to it's really hard to get eyeballs to even look at your business or your service or whatever. And and it's not like I was dressed like a thief.
[00:25:17] Cody:
Like, I was dressed like this. Yeah.
[00:25:19] David Bennett:
But I mean, was this, any kind of spray paint or was it just liquid? It was a cat, like, a it was those cobalt cans of paint Yeah. Put in a spray. Okay. Oh. Oh. Do you so you put it in sprayer, but it's not a spray can like Kryolan. Right? Yeah. Is that that's the one where that's the question that I had was if it was spray paint, which I can't imagine you would be doing a tractor with that. But if if for whatever reason you were, they've got a problem with all these I don't know. I guess there's a problem with kids huffing paint. Something. Yeah. They they said something, but I was I was so,
[00:25:52] Cody:
I couldn't believe that told me to walk out of the store when I was trying to buy some paint. Yeah. And I gave him a business card. I know. That's see,
[00:26:00] David Bennett:
now, oh, Bitcoin doesn't fix that, but the banking issues, there's there's there's ways there's clearly ways around that. But is that, like, so your mom had to actually kind of cosign as an owner of the LLC. Yep. Like, present herself as an owner to then be able to open up a bank account. Yep. Yeah. See, this is I think she like, I own, like, 60% or something. Yeah. She owns 40. Yeah. So, yeah, I remember you you telling me telling me numbers, but the whole the whole thing is that this is just like this example of the legacy financial system just failing everybody all at once. I mean, it is it ain't just that. It's like there's so many problems with the guys that run the legacy system that that's why you end up with something like Bitcoin arising.
Right. I mean, just like it didn't, it wasn't like somebody, you know what they say necessity is the mother of invention. You know, and in 2008, we had to tire economy world's economy, literally on the brink of collapse. I mean, a complete meltdown. And that's when, you know, of course, that's when Bitcoin was launched and it was launched as a complete. It was never really said this way, but when I look at it, I'm like, it's a, it is a pressure release valve. Like if you, you know, you work with excavation, so clearly you're, you know, you know, how ponds and stuff work, you know, with you. There's only so much water you can dam up before, before water decides it will find its way. Yep.
And I I'm always on this show. I'm always, talking about how I can look at natural systems like biology, ecology, hydrology, and it, they all seem to follow the same pattern, you know? And, and for those of us that think that. As humans and the way that we construct things like economy, the way that we build businesses, if we go around thinking that we don't have those same patterns inherent in the way that we build these things, then you're going to fail. You're just going to fail because you cannot have the types of pressures that we had in 2,008, which I know that you weren't really thinking of when it was all occurring. Yeah. That was, like, bubble?
Yeah. Yeah. You would have been So
[00:28:29] Cody:
in fact, I watched videos on that the other day of of kinda what happened knowing that time. It's kinda interesting to watch. If you wanna watch a really a couple of really good movies about it, The Big Short
[00:28:40] David Bennett:
is a is Oh, okay. A it's and it's it's a movie. It's not a documentary. It's an actual movie. It's got like Steve Carroll in it. And, God, Kevin Spacey was in it. And then there, or no, it was the Kevin. So I can't remember if it was Kevin Spacey. He may have been in the other one that I was thinking of. Now Kevin Spacey was in, oh, God, there was the big short and there's another movie. I can't remember the name offhand, but it's about the same thing. It's about the 2,008 and, and the structure of what was going on. And I have to watch I still watch The Big Short. I've seen it 8 times. Mhmm. And and I will watch it again, and I will pick up something new, like, something that that I missed, like, in the first 8 times because I like those movies when you when you can rewatch it and you you keep lawning Mhmm. New bits every time well the the the system that was in place that caught that allowed this thing to happen that scared the living crap out of everybody in the world was so complex. It was so riddled with corruption.
I mean, that's what it really boiled down to is that the whole system that was built was corrupt. It wasn't like the system was built and then it got corrupt. It was literally built from just an attitude of, I will I will literally represent this thing as inherently valuable when I know full well that it has no value whatsoever. You know about Bitcoin Mhmm. At least a little bit. So when did who told you first about it? Who said when was the first time you heard the word Bitcoin, and then what made you go, I don't know what this is. I need to find out what it is.
[00:30:29] Cody:
I don't, I don't really remember when I the first time I hold it. Like, I've heard about it. Right. But we will, my dad now actually walking on the job and for this guy, and he's way into, like, super into Bitcoin and all kinds of crypto stuff. Uh-huh. And and so so we're walking on this job, and he was kinda talking about it. And I was, like, well, that's that's pretty cool. That's kinda have to look into him all that. And we kinda didn't you know, I didn't really know him, but, after that job, we kinda kept getting together and and going over everything on you know, he kinda showed me a lot, you know, taught me about a bunch of stuff about Bitcoin and all the different coins and everything, and how kind of the whole system walks and everything.
And that was about, it's been about 2 years now. Okay. Kind of been, you know, kind of been friends ever since then. And Does your is,
[00:31:22] David Bennett:
is it is he much older than you or
[00:31:25] Cody:
Yeah. All my friends are much older than me. Okay.
[00:31:28] David Bennett:
That does why does that not surprise me, Cody? So
[00:31:34] Cody:
so this dude is out there, and he's up here? He's in and out. He he has a cabin here, but he lives somewhere else. Okay. On it. He he does a bunch of other jobs. So Right.
[00:31:46] David Bennett:
Do you know, do you know what it's, what I'm trying to say? What does he do as a as his business in general? So he he walks to the pipeline. He's a he's a pipeline inspector. Oh, Okay. Okay. So not a banker, not a financer guy. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So just regular Joe. So I I mean, I I kinda I kind of would like to say that that's just straight up blue collar, you know, just like good old fashioned work and not having to, you know, create something that doesn't have value and beg somebody to buy it from you, which is why color, not all of it, but, I'm a little, I'm a little, jaded on the banking system for, for reasons like you just described.
Like, like I, I was, you know, I will tell my kids and I've told them on several occasions. I'm like, you know, they'll, they'll go your dad, you're loopy about this whole Bitcoin thing. Why would I, why do I care? And I go, well, go into a bank and get an, get an account without me with you. And I'm like, okay, I'm like, I'm going to, I'm just going to go ahead and spoiler alert. It's not going to work. They're not going to give you a bank account. And then they started going, why? Like you're not. Neither one of y'all are 18 and you ain't getting a bank account by yourself until you're 18. And even then, as you've described, it's still not exactly you're not exactly out of the woods, but that's when the light switches kind of start going off.
So does your does your dad still look at this? Do you and your dad talk about it at all? Mhmm. Okay. So I he does,
[00:33:24] Cody:
like, he he's not in it as much as I am Right. But he does more of the resource Right. On it. And I kinda I'm more in to the actual buying of the thing and I'm kind of in I kind of, like, manage all that. Okay. So
[00:33:41] David Bennett:
do you practice self custody? And do you know what that means? I do not. Okay. Alright. Here we go. Okay. The what I'm what I don't what I'm not gonna do is is, you know, have this be like a teach Cody about, you know, the the intricacies of it because it's just gonna bore the shit out of my audience because they know. They they they know what self custody is. But, like when I will, I want to say this about it. Cause I was at, again, this goes back to me talking to my kids about, about Bitcoin and why, you know, dad's loopy about it is that when I put money into a bank, that money is no longer my money.
That money is technically the bank's money. They can tell me I can spend it, which which normally I can, you know, so I know alarm bells go off, but then you witnessed something like the Canadian trucker rally. And do you know what I'm talking about? Okay. Yeah. I followed that for a long time. Alright. So you know that they got that some of those guys got their bank accounts shut down Mhmm. And they were unable to purchase gas. Their credit cards were done. Their debit cards were done. It's a mess. They I I mean, they it was their money, but that's when you learned that it's not your money, and that all the money that you put into a bank is not self custody.
It is what's called custodied. Mhmm. Well, we have the same mirror. I was telling you that, you know, hydrology and ecology, they have these patterns. Well, there's that same, the same pattern can occur. But for the first time we have a pressure release valve and that's the notion of self custody and what we'll do. Like the Bitcoin that I own is self custody. I set up the wallet. I control the private keys. I control the public keys. I have I have the passphrase. Nobody else has access to this but me, which means that nobody can tell me when I can and cannot spend that money. So I can say whatever the hell I want on this podcast. I can do, I can say the most heinous shit if I wanted to, and nobody can stop me from doing a transaction.
However, it was not outside the realm of possibility that if I allow a third party like Coinbase, you know who they are? That's right, Hughes. Okay. Then if you piss off Brian Armstrong enough, the CEO, it's not outside the realm of possibility that he can say no transactions for you. Yeah. You're you're unable to vector this money to any other wallet in the world until you either apologize to me or I stop deciding to be an asshole. And and that means that that your wealth is in the control of somebody that's not you. Mhmm. And so I guess I I guess the question is this, are you were you aware until you were talking to me about this that there is that possibility that you can control the money yourself instead of having Coinbase do it?
I did. Okay. You did. Yeah. Why did you choose not to?
[00:36:41] Cody:
At the time, it was just since I'm was just getting into it Mhmm. And trying to learn about it still, It was easier for me to use, like, Coinbase Mhmm. Because I'd I know it's because safe there Mhmm. For the most part. Change in a minute. Right. But I know it's safe there, and and then I could kinda figure out what I wanted to do. Okay. So So it was just kind of an easier option for me. Well, my family's kinda in it with me. We kinda all do it together. Right. But it was just an easier and safer option to do at the time Right. And, you know To get started. And there's, you know, it's it's not
[00:37:17] David Bennett:
something to be taken lightly when you take control of this money yourself, because most people have never taken control of their own money. Your dad has never taken control of his own money. Your mom hasn't either. My dad didn't either. And I can, and I know that for a fact, because all of us in, in to this day, I still use a bank. Right. So I'm, I'm, I'm not saying I'm better than anybody else. I'm just saying that all of us suck at this is, is what I'm getting at. And we don't, but we don't know that we suck this bad at it because this is the way we all grew up. I grew up this way. You grew up this way. Your dad, my dad. Shit. Their parents were probably the last people that had an inkling that, well, probably just store some gold in the ground, you know?
But after that, no, man, that ship, that ship is sailed. And what many of us that try to talk to people about Bitcoin are, are really trying to do is we're not trying to teach people about how Bitcoin works or why it's better. What we found is that the talking to somebody who doesn't know anything about it as to why they might want to spend time learning about it is to teach them how bad the Fiat system is, which is the legacy financial system of the world. And I mean, we got robbed in 2,001 when they started, when they, when planes flew into the buildings, right? The whole September 11th thing, we got robbed again. And I mean, when I mean robbed, I mean, when when they crank up the money printers, they always crank up the money printers when there's a disaster.
Right? And I'm I'm not saying anybody was on the plunger. Okay. I'm I'm just saying that there's always that saying never let a good, crisis go to waste. Right? So they open up the money printer and every time they print money, the money that you saved before they open up the money printer loses its value. It loses its purchasing power. That's
[00:39:14] Cody:
interesting to me. It's theft.
[00:39:17] David Bennett:
It's open. Theft is what this shit is. But when it in 2,008, so like after September 11th, they started printing a little bit of money. Wasn't too bad, you know, just a little bit, but then 2,008, but then 2,008, the financial collapse happened when we were just talking about, yeah, they printed like $800,000,000,000 850,000,000,000 Right? That's and at that time, which was only 2,008, that was a lot of money. We were, I mean, we, there were people losing their freaking minds as to how much money that was. They were like, you're going, you're going to screw things up. And all of that money ended up going directly to the institutions because of too big to fail.
The banks were too big to fail. That was a, that was a, a refrain that you heard on the financial news. They're too big to, we cannot let, you know, Jamie Dimon, you know, his bank go under. We cannot do it. They let Bear Stearns die and they let Lehman Brothers die as I don't know, sacrificial lambs, just to show the public that look, we, you know, we we did our job as government regulators. We we, you know, they these guys have paid, but all the reds like bank of America, they were just in just as much trouble. Wells Fargo, all of them.
And because the money went to those banks, they didn't hit the public. Oh. And so the markets didn't really react to, like, with inflation where your purchasing power was destroyed by the printing of the money. But then COVID hit and the public gained direct access to fresh money being printed out of thin air. And now I can't go to the grocery store and look at the front door without paying $50. I can't I've literally I can't I mean, it's like a a 9 gallon or a $9 gallon of milk. I still can't get over it. Yeah. So all the money that I saved before that has lost its purchasing power. So I Oh, I see. So, like, if I had a $100 and I could buy a 100 gallons of milk before COVID, I can buy only 50 gallons of milk now.
Wow. I mean, that's just like quick math. It doesn't make sense in in when you talk about, but we did like 2 or $3,200,000,000,000 of printing of the money after like during the whole COVID thing. And then after it, which made the 2,008 thing, the people that were, you know, moaning and crying about 850,000,000,000 being a lot of money, Just blow that. I mean, hold my beer because we printed $3,200,000,000,000 and now everybody's feeling it because most of that money kind of went directly into the open market, which means that the signals was like, oh, there's a lot more money flowing around, which means we're gonna raise prices on everything.
Oh, okay. Because it's it's sort of that economy has a lot there's a lot of ecology that happens in economies, even though humans designed it. Like what happens when we have a really great year in grasses and like the, all the rain that we were getting this year up here, deer populations are going to explode. If a drought happens, what happens to those deer? They start dying off and they either, I mean, they either starve or they, or they just otherwise get sick and die. But the whole thing is, is that there's nothing that exists on this planet that has one side go up without another side effect effectively going down.
[00:43:03] Cody:
Everything's connected. What what is it? For every
[00:43:06] David Bennett:
motion, there's an opposite? You could think of it that way. Yeah. Like, for it, like, if I push on for every force, there's an equal and opposite force. If I press on a wall or a table, the table's pressing back up. Yep. But we have now found ourselves after 2,008 with this interesting invention called Bitcoin. And it allows us to what let's see. Okay. We talked about self custody, but one of the other things about Bitcoin that you probably know is the limit of the amount of Bitcoin that can never be created. Is that something that you're aware of?
A little bit. Okay. So there's 21,000,000 Bitcoin. That's it. Yeah. That's all that can ever be created. And that will the last of those coins will be buying somewhere around 2145. So 90, I think it's like 91% of all the coins that will ever be created have already been printed. Wow. Right. So and I hate to use the word print, but, lack of a better term, but there's a cap. And the first thing that people will say is, well, what if all the people that run the Bitcoin network just decided to make more Bitcoin? And then we get into something called the consensus rules.
And that's what guards against that. If you don't, if you're not really sure about the fact that there was 21,000,000 and only 21,000,000, then the notion of what it, when I say consensus rules, does that ring any bells for you? Cause probably, oh, it does. Okay. Okay. So one of the consensus rules is the 21,000,000, right? When I run the Bitcoin software on a node, because I do, I run a full node. So I have the, I have the complete ledger. I have every transaction that's ever been done. Wow. And that node processes new transactions as they hit the network. So my node is talking to a bunch of other nodes and it forms this Bitcoin network.
My node runs the Bitcoin core software. And in that software are all the consensus rules and there's more than 1. And what the one that's most people think are Mo the most important is there can't be any more than 21,000,000 coins. But there have been versions of Bitcoin that have been forked from the main chain that allow for that. Except my node understands that it is working off of different consensus rules and deletes it from its own network. Oh, wow. It will not talk to that node and that's how if anybody says we'll we'll just go in and change the code. You're not gonna change the code on my note. You're I mean, unless you're gonna force your way into my house at gunpoint and and upload a, you know, brand new set of software to my node, you're not actually going to change anything. Mhmm. And unless you do that to, oh, I don't know, 27,000 people across the globe all at once.
It's not gonna happen. This is one of the reasons why I had such a vehement reaction when you said what was the coin that you were talking about? You asked me about what I thought about it? Oh, it's Cardano. No. No. Cody, no. Please don't go down that hole. Please. Please. Because those coins, the other coins, they do they do not have this kind of safety net of consensus rules. They some people say they do, but they don't. And that's why I stay as far away from any of these things as I possibly can. Ethereum, I can't stand it. Cardano, Charles Hoskins, the guy that's behind it. If you if you dig into his history and who he is, you would run as far away from that shit as you possibly could.
So it is always gonna be up to you, you know, as to what you want to do or not. But I guarantee the second you say Cardano, every single a So that's not what this is about. But who told you was it the same guy told you about Cardano too? Yeah. Okay. And what else did he tell you about? That's pretty much about it. Just Cardano and And Bitcoin. Bitcoin? Yeah. That's the honestly, that's really interesting because most people that only do 2 or 3 coins is like, you know, Bitcoin and Monero or, was it, I can't remember the other one. Something there's like a there's there are only 2 other coins that I would possibly consider thinking about.
I will never buy those coins. But there was something about the way that they launched that seemed more not scammy, if you know what I mean. But everything else that I've ever seen is just like, it is a mess. And I've seen so many people lose all of their money on stuff like Dogecoin. Oh, yeah. I mean, I I mean, I'm not perfect. I've owned ether. I used to have I used to have, like, a shit ton of Dogecoin. And the reason I did is because it was it was at the time that Dogecoin was built, it was built as an anti reaction to Bitcoin. The people that built it said that crypto cryptocurrency of any kind was stupid and Bitcoin was stupid. And here's why, because we're just gonna spin up our own coin, and they did. Except that it's it doesn't talk to the Bitcoin network because Bitcoin network's like, you don't have our consensus rules. You don't have our our wallet type. So you're off off by yourself.
And but there were what they were trying to do is say, well, if we can just spin up, like, a 100000 different coins, then how does this one thing have any value? And that for me, the value is intrinsic in the fact that I can run a full note on a raspberry PI. I don't need a big computer. Right. I I I've scaled up since then because it's for various reasons, but not much more. I mean, my note cost now costs $700 whereas my Raspberry Pi, when I built it, caught with the hard drives cost me, like, 400. It's not that big of a difference. Mhmm. And it's it literally I can hold it in my hand. You know, it's, like, connected with an ethernet.
Cable. It's got a power cable and then it's got a USB cable if I want to plug something else into it. But it's about, I mean, it's like a cube. It's like, it's a start 9. If you ever, if you ever want to look into running your own node, I highly recommend start 9. Okay. That's good. It's a good machine, but the having those consensus rules chained to each other so that everybody else is keeping each other in check saying you're you're out of consensus. So buy. Makes sense. Yeah. I'm not doing your transaction. It's not a valid transaction.
And but with Dogecoin and all the rest of them, with all these people were trying to say was that since I can spend up my own, I don't need this one. But the thing is is that you kind of do. And it's that that that trustless mechanism of letting the software do a check on itself all the time. Like, we are literally we are auditing the entire blockchain from the very first transaction to the very last transaction every 10 minutes that a block is created. Wow. Because the whole thing has to be validated again in my note as part of that system. And again, for $700 and a little bit of know how you can do it too. And honestly not even know how you just get to start 9 and say, install Bitcoin core and then put it on the internet.
And all of a sudden it starts getting peers, other nodes to talk to. Wow. And it just starts validating transactions. But with the whole those thing, the only reason that I bought it, even though I knew it was what, what is called a shit coin is that it was fun because it was the, the guys that did it. They, by the time I got into it, they were like basically gone. And the, the, the network was being run by a whole bunch of, you know, plebs out there. And they had like, you know, the, the doge coin foundation sponsored to like a NASCAR race car and had like the doge emblem on it. And it was all, it was fun. But it, for me, it wasn't, it didn't have any real value other than just, it was kind of fun.
And then I had, then I started kind of like, well, boss, I'll buy some ether. I'll buy some of this stuff from the Ethereum, you know, guys. And, and I was kind of excited about it until about, I think I was like, I've had, I bought my first Bitcoin September 11th, 2050, which I should never say, but I've said it on this show before. So it doesn't really matter. Other prices? 250. As I say, really? It was like it was like 250. Yeah. But But see, I also spent money on Ethereum. And if I actually add up how much I would have, how much more by Bitcoin would be valued in Fiat terms. And that's, that's a whole other thing.
We continuously look to the financial monstrosity that we're trying to get away from to value Bitcoin in and that when you start thinking about it, it's like, God, that doesn't kind of make any sense, but we'll leave that on the table. If I add up what I would have gotten, if I just bought straight Bitcoin and not doge coin and not any Ethereum,
[00:52:59] Cody:
then I would have been, I would be in a much better position. I was gonna say it's so interesting. Cause I'll go back and look and, you know, I'll do when it launched to now Uh-huh. And, like, the profit. Uh-huh. It's insane. I know. It's yeah. It it it is. It it's stupid. But
[00:53:15] David Bennett:
again, that's see, there's almost a real danger in saying, how much would I have profited? Well yeah. And and it it's
[00:53:22] Cody:
just, you know, when it first launched Mhmm. Like, who knows what it would have done? So It it it's like, do I really wanna chance it? Yeah. It's a it's
[00:53:33] David Bennett:
a much easier bet now though Yeah. Because it's got so it's got, you know, 15 years a lot of backing in. It's got a lot of, it's got 15 years of history, the amount of development that's on it. And the fact that now, well, God forbid BlackRock has started, you know, elect, the ETFs for Bitcoin and there's like 11 now. And that's essentially the only way that a retirement, 401 ks like the, like let's say that your dad worked for Fort Lewis college or something like that. It's a state institution. They got a 401 ks. The only way that they'd to be able to give exposure to their employees on their 401 k is buying things through what's called an ETF.
Mhmm. And now that there's 11 ETFs for Bitcoin in the United States, I mean, retirement retirement guys have, I think that a lot of these places have to wait like 90 days before a product is online before they can actually legally consider putting it into their client's portfolios. Oh, wow. So, yeah, that's, we're seeing the sea change go on. But when I sold ether, I sold it directly for Bitcoin. And when I got rid of my doge and the reason I got rid of those is because it became unfund because of Elon Musk. It was no longer cute and fluffy and, you know, not dangerous.
It was something that was going to get people, like, homeless. And I was like I will have no part of this and I sold it directly into bitcoin now what happened to that after you sold it it went it went crash back down I sold it at like 77¢ I bought it for like a like fractions of a penny I had a 100,000 of my, I mean, I was able to like pick up a full Bitcoin out of it. That's so cool. But I, the amount of people, like there is a, there is a like red, like, you ever use Reddit at all? Okay. Our cryptocurrency, when you see crashes, like really bad ones, like, 70% downs, which we get. Mhmm. I mean, it happens. It happened a few weeks ago, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
I watched it. The, what you'll see on our cryptocurrency is people posting up the suicide hotline, and it's not a joke. Oh, wow. Because these there's a lot of people that I mean, if you, you know, if you thought, you know, losing 70% or 50% on price of a Bitcoin and Fiat terms was bad. You should see what happened to card. You should see what happens to those. Watch what happens to a theory and watch what happens to a lot of these other coins and people, instead of going, you know, all in on Bitcoins, we're like all in on the next, the next Bitcoin. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for those same gains.
[00:56:17] Cody:
Those gains are not there anymore. So I'll ask you about a coin. Uh-huh. It's it's,
[00:56:22] David Bennett:
it's a shiba shiba coin. No. You know that one? Oh, I know it. I'm saying no. I it doesn't matter. See, that's the thing. It doesn't matter, like, if it's not Bitcoin, it's a shit coin, and I'm just Now, again, it's you have to make your own choices. You know, nobody can, you know, all I can all I can do on that is, like, look, I've just given you a warning. I've seen too many people lose too much too quickly to trust any of them. Mhmm. Right? So but I I think the you know, one of the last things that I wanna talk about is when we like, your thoughts on are you gonna are you gonna stay in Bitcoin as a savings vehicle? Or are you looking at it as a profit vehicle,
[00:57:11] Cody:
somewhat of both? Both. You're looking at I'm just but kinda both. Uh-huh. But I'm in it kinda just, like, along for the ride. Along for the ride? Just kinda to see what happens.
[00:57:21] David Bennett:
What if let let me put it to you like this. Let's go back to when you're 14. Mhmm. And I wanna pay you to mow my lawn. You've got a business, but you don't have a bank account yet. Like, the first day, you're, like, maybe just talking to me about it. I think I wanna start a business mowing lawns and I go, and I wanna be your first customer, do my lawn, every week for and I'll pay you, like, a 100 I don't know, whatever we pay you. And then you go, well, we need to get a bank account so you can pay me. I'm like, no, I can just pay you directly as a 14 year old to your wallet, to your self custody wallet, because even if I try, you know, there there may be an issue with Coinbase,
[00:58:02] Cody:
you know? There is. There's a there's an age limit. There's an age limit with Coinbase. Yeah. Yeah. When I set that up, that was a deal. Yep. See, again Same same issue. See, we have this tool,
[00:58:12] David Bennett:
this bitcoin tool that allows freedom and it's so hard to actually pick that freedom up, understand what it is, and use it as the tool that it was meant to be used for. It's very hard because we're we're almost programmed for the last 4 generations to trust somebody else to do our shit for us. That's why we have 401ks. That's why. We have to have, I don't know, employee ID numbers and bank accounts. And, and the only way that we are able to allow to transact with one another is through a third, what's called a trusted third party. That's a bank. Right. But I could have just paid you directly.
No bank, no nothing, nothing at all. And the only way that that really works, especially if there's an issue, like if you were 14 and you know, you went up to coinbase and set up you know set up a wallet and they're like oh not no dude you're 14 all I would really have to do is tell you to go buy a cold card from coinkite and I teach you how to set up your own wallet and I can transact with you freely Wow. And you would be able to transact with anybody else freely, and there is no bank. There's no trusted third party. The issue becomes how nervous do you get pushing that send button?
And I still have problems with it. I mean, I transact in Bitcoin all the time, but you know, if I'm sending $5,000 I'm like, Yes. I'm blue. So I'll look at the wallet, send the wallet that I'm sending to. I'll like, look at the address versus what I've pasted in, in my actual transaction. I'm like, do they line up? I mean, did, did I get spoofed? I still go through that. Yeah. Do you know, to this day? So I understand the, the notion of feeling safer with a third party, and that's something that I think humanity is gonna have to take years for that to become undone.
And I think we're gonna have to. And it's gonna be people like you that talk to other people about maybe we should do the work and and really understand these systems so that we don't get freaked out when we take our own bitcoin away from coinbase because we should. We we should have no coin Coinbase should not be allowed to have any bitcoin at all. They've been a bad actor in the space for a long time. But all exchanges, you know, like cracking is another exchange bit stamp. There used to be a bit max, which was funny. I'd watch people leverage, take bets like a 100 x that, you know, they'd like buy a long, long futures contract and they'd have, like, $1 to their name, but they were somehow able to leverage it up to a $100 worth of Bitcoin and then lose and just watch them get wiped out, you know, and it's like, it's not funny when people start posting the the suicide hotline number.
And and again, that's why it's like, this is, you know, you're you're sort of at that that point that you'll cross over and become so serious about it like you were doing with your own businesses. Like, you first started using their mowers, but then you bought your own. Yep. That's self custody. And now you're responsible for the maintenance. And and if something breaks on it, you're well, I'm sure you would have done the right thing and try to help repair somebody's mower if it was somebody else's and broke it. But the point is, is that now it's yours and it's a, that's a different deal.
And all I would say, you know, at the end of this conversation is consider learning more about Bitcoin. And if you want to learn more about Cardano, can't stop you and I won't, but I don't think it's worth your time. I really don't. But I do think it's worth your time to learn about hardware wallets and what that means what self cut because that's part of self custody you you you need to keep your stuff in something like a hardware wallet that's what I have okay do you have a coin kite? I have a ledger a ledger okay I, I, I do recommend coin kite products.
I used to have a ledge. Actually I had 3 ledgers and the only reason the reason I don't use them anymore is because they, they're kind of insecure, not the ledger itself. But they've demonstrated that they've had a couple of they've demonstrated that they're not as good with operational security over at ledger because they've had at least 2 hacks of well, their but their hacks are about, like, your, email address as a customer. You know, like, some of your some of your information. It's not, I don't think people are gonna lose their money if they have a ledger because of, you know, their private keys got taken up. But see if you've got a, if you've got a ledger and you're, using that to sign transactions on Coinbase, is that what you're doing?
[01:03:11] Cody:
No. I I actually haven't got it set up yet. Oh, you haven't got okay. So I have it, and and I've been trying to set it up. Uh-huh. But I have to figure out how to. Yep. It's kinda confusing. Well, it of course, it's confusing. And you've got 4 businesses to run, and you're 18.
[01:03:26] David Bennett:
And now you got a guy sitting across the table from you saying, well, now you gotta spend more time to learn to learn this and learn it well. And you're not the only one that has that issue. You're I mean, you're like, there are millions of people that are like, I know I need to learn this, but I don't have the time because your real life is happening out here. So first of all, don't ever, don't ever feel bad. You know, if you need help, I will, I will help you out with it. Okay. But, and you also have some time. I don't think, I don't think Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, is going to rug anybody just yet.
And and it may not even be him that makes the decision. See, my problem is is like, what if the United States government says we we will pull all your licenses and we will send all of you to jail unless you give us all of the Bitcoin. Why isn't that the government that was trying to ban
[01:04:20] Cody:
coin basis?
[01:04:21] David Bennett:
Yeah. They're they're They were trying to get rid of it? They're they're not trying to get rid of it. They're essentially right now, they're in coin base in the United States, justice department. And, just not trade. It's not treasury. I can't, let's just say the judicial department are, oh, it's the, God, what's the fed, the fed treasury department, justice department. They're kind of like all ganging up on Coinbase but it's not just Coinbase and Coinbase is suing them back. Yeah. For like you know being being buttheads and that's, but see what I'm looking at is just a bunch of people that think the exact same way that got us into 2,000 and 1 and 2,008 and the whole COVID thing.
I'm seeing those same people infiltrate the space with that same thinking, And I know where that thinking goes. It never ends up anywhere good. It ends up with shit like planes flying into buildings. People, like, thinking that they're, you know, 401 k is safe in in 2,008 when it wasn't, and they lost all of that. Mhmm. And then we're seeing, like, all the people that saved hard over the last year, you know, few years have their money destroyed in front of their face, and they can't do a thing about it because of inflation, because we can't tell the government to stop printing money.
We when I see those same people and those same attitudes come back into this into this space that is supposed to be a pressure release valve against all of that, that's when I'm like, I don't trust you. I'm not going to do business with Coinbase because I don't trust the people that are behind it. And again, It doesn't mean that you're, you know, you're in a situation where you're in danger. I don't think you are, but if you were to just not learn any more and you keep buying the stuff and putting it into 3rd, 3rd party custody, the danger increases.
And so start because you've, I mean, even though the time is an issue, we just talked about it. Start now. I will help. I will. I will do what, do what I can. We'll like, even after I'm gone, I've got your phone number. You've got mine. If you've got questions, you can call me. But I, I really recommend getting off off of the heroin that is Cardano. I just, I honestly it's it's I think it's just bad for you. But,
[01:06:47] Cody:
what what do you think the price of Bitcoin would go to?
[01:06:51] David Bennett:
I don't know. I don't make I I I am not one of the people that do, price predictions, and there's a reason that I don't. It drives me crazy.
[01:07:01] Cody:
It should. It because I I I'll watch them, like, listening on, and they're, like, oh, this coin's gonna go to it's gonna go to 1 penny, and it's not, like, you know, a price of a penny. And they say it's gonna be at a penny next week. Mhmm. And then, like, 3 weeks from then, it's it's, like, down. Yeah. It's It drives you crazy. It's, yeah.
[01:07:21] David Bennett:
That's what gets a lot of the people that I was talking about, the whole suicide hotline posting number getting posted is because people will watch those things and they will just go buy anything that these people talk about because they've got a YouTube channel. Mhmm. And I mean, I do my best on this show to not talk about the only reason I will talk like on this show. The only reason I will talk about another coin is. Tell people how it got hacked or how its wallet got maneuvered into vectoring coin away from the owner or some other intense failure that nobody will actually tell you about because it's not in their best interest. It's in their best interest for you to pump their bags. So they've got, if they've got a bag of card.
Bottom dollar. I mean, I got a bag of Bitcoin. I do the same thing, except I know these people will talk about how, like, 15 different coins are gonna go up and that you've got to sell these other 10 coins. Mhmm. Because they've adjusted their bags out of those coins into these other coins. They're just waiting for you to pump their back. Oh, I see. So if, but with me and a lot of the people that, that I respect in the space, we only talk about Bitcoin. And it's like, so the only thing that people can can charge us with is as as a crime is you're you're just you're like anybody else. You want people to pump your bags. Uh-uh. I got one bag. Mhmm.
Pump my bag? Sure. I'll take that as I'll I'll take that as as, you know, however it's offered, but there are no bags. I do not own more than 1, you know, one of these things. Cause I don't believe in any of them. I've seen too many of them fail. I've seen too many of them just go away. Shit. I've I mean, I can't even, I've forgotten more names of coins that were famous 5 years ago and are nowhere to be found right now. Then I've then I've then I know about now is I just stopped. I I stopped 10 years ago looking at this crap, you know, or, well, 9 years ago. Once I got rid of my, once I got rid of my theory, I pretty much stopped and I'd kind of forgot that I even had those until Elon Musk started talking about it. And I'm like, well, it's not fun anymore. So, and that was what, 2020.
Wow. Somewhere around there. He was, that's when he was really high in 2020. Yeah. Everything was up then. Yeah. Well, that was that, that was, that was, last bull market cycle. And so, and you'd also asked me, what do you think about this bull market cycle? I, the only thing that I can really say is I think it's going to be different, but I don't know how There's there's too much institutional and political stuff that has now recognized Bitcoin's existence. Mhmm. And back in the day, even the the guy that, you know, the name Satoshi Nakamoto comes to mind, the guy that released the white paper, did the initial programming of the system. When WikiLeaks announced that they were going to start taking Bitcoin for their donations, the like, literally the first thing that came up with Satoshi Nakamoto riding, riding them back saying, please don't do this, please. Please do not put Bitcoin in the spotlight right now, but we're, it's too young. It's too fragile.
We've really got to build up the network effect to get this thing solid. Wow. So even the creator himself was like too soon. Mhmm. But for, on WikiLeaks side, the only reason that that organization still exists, that's the whole Julian Assange thing. If you know about him. Right. Right. So the only reason they still exist is because they started taking Bitcoin back then against the advices. It saved their ass. You know, it's like to, to this day, it still saves my ass, but I can't depend on any of the other ones, But we've gone an hour. God, an hour and 11 minutes, Cody.
We gotta get out of here, dude. Okay. You got stuff to do. Last thing I'll say is about price predictions is it's
[01:11:16] Cody:
it's I can see why it's hard to do them because everything changes Uh-huh. So rapidly. I mean, I mean, it's hard to it can I mean, it's just hard to manage? Just
[01:11:28] David Bennett:
be careful out there. And that goes for you too, folks. And we will talk to you later, man. Hold on. I gotta I gotta find my thing. Where's my thing? There is that it? Yep. That's it. That's the buffer music. Because all this was episode 929 of Bitcoin. And, Cody, I hope you, take what he said to heart, especially about the entrepreneurial spirit and doing things at an early, early age. He basically blew the doors off of all of us. There's no recovery for any of us ancient old screwballs, but, hey, at least the future is secured. I'll see you on the other
[01:12:11] Cody:
side.
It's episode 929 or 930, something like that, of Bitcoin. And I'm here with my neighbor up in beautiful San Juan Mountains in Colorado, Cody. He's got an entrepreneurial spirit. I know you guys are going to really, really like that. So we're gonna get into some of the businesses that he's done. He also is kind of a little bit tangentially interested in Bitcoin, so clearly that matches with the show. There's also gonna be some other stuff that we talk about because I ain't got nothing planned. So god only knows where this is gonna go, but we are gonna be doing this thing. We're gonna do it right now. Cody, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Bitcoin Inn podcast. Thank you.
Have you ever been on a podcast before? I haven't. Sweet. First timer, I'm looking forward to it. Nice. Thank God. One of the things about Cody that's nice is that he's a musician too, so he knows my technique, and I don't have to coach him on that. Sometimes. And it'll be fine. We'll be fine. Everything's gonna be just a okay. Let's let's just start. Your introduction, generally, people go, oh, well, tell us all about yourself. But the whole point about this thing is we're gonna find out all about you. So the whole podcast is sort of an introduction to Cody. And I'm not gonna use your last name because we practice operational security here. And I I just think it's I think it's better just to go with Cody. Right? Okay. So, you've been doing businesses for a while now, and let's just let's start with the first business that you started.
[00:01:51] Cody:
That would have been, I believe lawn kale. Kind of lawn maintenance, lawn mowing. Just like a mowing service. Really just mowing. Right. So now And I think I started with, like, 3 yards. 3 years ago? 3 yards. Oh. With 3 clients. Oh, with 3 clients. Okay. And then I kinda grew that into 23.
[00:02:13] David Bennett:
Into 23. That's what you're standing at now? Yeah. And and which includes our family too. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I guess the question the question is, this is a really small village. We're not, we're in the San Juan mountains, but we're not in Durango, we're not in like a a metro not that Durango is really all that big, but it's a hell of a lot bigger than where we're at. Yeah. So this is a, you know, this is sort of like a vacation community Mhmm. Is generally speaking with. So how hard was it to get those clients? It wasn't too hard.
[00:02:47] Cody:
Mainly because I knew all all of them that I was working with. Uh-huh. And they had asked me. They're, like, hey, you know, would you mind doing all your to someone? I was, like, sure. Yeah. No problem. So I actually ended up using everybody's mobile that was there. I didn't own any of my own stuff. I owned a weed eater. You That was all I You started with a weed eater. That's all I had. Oh, god. And so I had to walk out all the pricing Wow. To make it fail. So I was using all their equipment.
[00:03:13] David Bennett:
Were you buying the gas at least? Mhmm. Okay. Okay. That that that actually makes sense. That I don't know. There there's a guy that that I know that used to rent, people's front yards to grow. I I don't know him personally. He was like, something stone. I cannot remember the the cat's first name. He's up in Canada, and he started he did a whole business by renting people's front and backyards and doing vegetable gardens and selling the vegetables. Really cool. And what you just described is almost exactly like what he was doing only with, you know, using using their equipment, but that's not your only business. No. You got a second business. What was the second one you did?
Snow removal. Snow well, which makes a lot of sense, but how are you if you only had a weed eater and you started, lawn care business,
[00:04:02] Cody:
what did you start with with snow removal? I kinda walked with my parents Okay. On that credit, but they kinda did a little bit more than I did. Uh-huh. My dad had a plow truck and everything. He did more of that. I did more of the shoveling Uh-huh. And kinda did that side of the snow removal Right. Those few seasons.
[00:04:19] David Bennett:
Yeah. Because, driving when you started the snow removal stuff, driving was a little bit of an issue. We're we're gonna get into that.
[00:04:28] Cody:
How long after your the lawn care business did you start the snow removal? It was pretty soon. It might have been Same year? Right around the same year, maybe a year later, but it was pretty soon. Okay. And then, after that, about 2 or 3 years after I started mowing Yeah. I finally was able to get my false tractor. Uh-huh. And I used that for snow removal, which was 20 2 into 23. Is is that the one you got now? The one before ball, what I have right now. Okay. I got that one
[00:05:00] David Bennett:
last year. Last year? Oh, it was it was new last year. Well Yeah. Did you get it new, or did you get it used? It's used. Okay. Because it's in great condition. It is. I mean, it's like you guys clearly take care of it, but Had it
[00:05:13] Cody:
it it just clicked over to 8,000 hours. Really? About 2 weeks ago. God, you guys
[00:05:19] David Bennett:
that's a lot of hours, man. Well, it came with 78100, I think, on it. Yeah. But still I put about 300 hours on it. I mean, that's a lot of drive time. That's people always, like, oh, I I don't understand what that means in miles, and it's, like, that's doesn't really apply. I can give you the equivalent. It's got 21,000 miles on it. Oh, there oh, there's a an equivalency? Yeah. Oh, neat. Okay. Well, that'd be good. Japanese
[00:05:42] Cody:
put 2 different they put the owl needle on it and then the miles on it. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So so you got so now you're doing
[00:05:51] David Bennett:
lawn care in the summer, which makes sense. Mhmm. Snow removal in the winter Mhmm. Which makes sense because you can't mow any lawns. They're all covered with snow. So you've pretty much got income from what may or no, You're not mowing lawns up here until, like, June.
[00:06:11] Cody:
About the soonest we can start is, like, the it seems like it's always, like, around 20th May. Uh-huh. Kind of around there. I think I think 2 years, I've started on 27th.
[00:06:24] David Bennett:
Do you do you mow clear up until it starts snowing?
[00:06:28] Cody:
It's kinda tough. So we we start at the end of May. We mow June, July, August, September. Uh-huh. Do we get into October? It's kind of, it depends on the growth of it. Uh-huh. Okay. I think we we generally stop
[00:06:44] David Bennett:
all late at mid October. And when do you start, snow removal?
[00:06:48] Cody:
Kinda whenever it snows. Last year, we started at the end of November. Okay. Okay. So it kinda depends.
[00:06:54] David Bennett:
So there's a little bit of a lull in income between those 2? Well, not really because after I stop mowing,
[00:07:00] Cody:
then I go and blow out irrigation systems. Okay. So
[00:07:05] David Bennett:
And get things ready for for fall. Okay. So but that would you consider that part of your lawn care business? Mhmm. Okay. Because snow removal and lawn care, not your only businesses. Correct. You have a third business? Yes. Okay. So what the hell is that? Excavation. Like dirt moving?
[00:07:22] Cody:
Yeah. Septic like, really anything involves foundations, septic systems, roads, road maintenance,
[00:07:30] David Bennett:
anything that involves dull. Yeah. So and for pea and I may I used to make this mistake too. So for people that don't know, excavation isn't just dirt removal. It's just moving it. Could be anything. Yeah. Could even be tree clearing. Right. And this Or a garage or something. And and we're in the Rocky Mountains so it ain't all dirt they're called the Rocky Mountains for a reason so you're dealing with like large boulders as well right? Yes. Okay. So, those can be fun. So excavation is also gonna be done in the, in all times that's not frozen
[00:08:04] Cody:
ground and snow. Right? For the most part, there's a few times that, I've had to use that in the winter time. Really? Like, if we have a broken water line on the water system Yeah. Yeah. Could take it up. Last year, we had a
[00:08:17] David Bennett:
I think we had a frozen valve. Yeah. Somewhere we ended up digging that up. Yeah. Well, I can't can't imagine that digging in the frozen earth is very much fun and It wasn't too hard last year because nothing froze. Well, yeah. You were talking about that and, like, mounds of snow, but, like, it was sitting on, like mud. Yeah. Yeah. The ground never froze. It was cold but the it just heated right back up in the day. God, that is just so that it's just bizarre. Me and me and, Jeanie were, my wife was talking about that the other day, or, you know, like yesterday after you were telling us about it. I just can't imagine what that's like. Does that happen often?
[00:08:56] Cody:
I think this, this is the first year I've seen it like that. Really? Yeah. Cause I've, I've never,
[00:09:02] David Bennett:
I don't know it's always been so so damn cold by the time I get up here in the wintertime that it's just it's amazing so now at this point, how long did you start excavation after snow removal?
[00:09:17] Cody:
It would've been the same about about a year. Okay. About a year after. So you're just When I got serious into it because I I kinda did some here and there. Uh-huh. But this year, I really got serious about it and actually got a Traco Right. And some other things. So I've kind of done it for a little bit. I've had to vent all the equipment Right. And I wasn't really into it yet. Right. But
[00:09:41] David Bennett:
but again, you're, you've got that, that mindset of kind of like a try before you buy
[00:09:48] Cody:
kind of thing.
[00:09:50] David Bennett:
Okay. So now you're, you're moving dirt. And that's gotta be at this point, filling in any gaps of monthly income. Right?
[00:10:01] Cody:
It's kind of in and out. Really? Depends. I mean,
[00:10:06] David Bennett:
the the problem is is I have a lot of projects lined up. Right. That's the time. Right. Because I'm trying to cut grass and You're kinda buy are you I'm trying to do anything else. Do you have a partner at all? My dad, actually. Well, I know your I know your dad has always been been part of this, but, anybody outside family? Okay. No.
[00:10:26] Cody:
In fact, about 3 weeks ago, I had my entire family walking for
[00:10:33] David Bennett:
me. Jesus. I love this guy.
[00:10:38] Cody:
But that's not your only business. And my sister does all of, like she's, like, the office manager. She's care of everything. Is your brother in on it? He's the only one that's not he does his own thing in Durango.
[00:10:51] David Bennett:
Oh, so he's not working at the little market up here anymore? Mhmm. He's not? Okay. No. So but those three businesses, not not your only business. Well, you got a 4th one. Right?
[00:11:05] Cody:
Kinda?
[00:11:06] David Bennett:
Kind of. Is it is it, like, just starting? Could yeah. You okay. So what is it?
[00:11:19] Cody:
I think it well, it's, septic system installs. Okay. Are you including that with excavation?
[00:11:25] David Bennett:
Or Most for the most part. Yeah. Okay. Since it's kind of the same. Right. But you ended up having but to install a septic digging for a septic system is not as cumbersome as digging and installing 1 because you gotta be certified. Right? Correct. Okay. So when did you get certified? April. Okay. So April of this year. This this year. Okay. And how long did that take?
[00:11:50] Cody:
It's about a day. It's like a full hour class.
[00:11:53] David Bennett:
Is it is it really hard? I mean, is there something about a septic system that's, like, oh my god, I had no idea that this was all like this. Well, it's
[00:12:01] Cody:
it's kind of interesting when you take the class because they show you how they want the system. Uh-huh. But they don't necessarily tell you how to install the system. Really? So you kinda have to figure it out Oh, god. By what you've learned. Uh-huh. But it wasn't really that hard. Okay. I mean,
[00:12:19] David Bennett:
once you understand it, it's pretty simple. Now do you have septic installs lined up for this year? I do. Okay. How many you got? I think right now,
[00:12:28] Cody:
3. In fact, I'm getting ready to install 1 in 2 weeks. Really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Are And I just finished
[00:12:34] David Bennett:
my first one about 3 weeks ago. Okay. And are these these are all now this new style of septic system. Right? Like, because you're not allowed to do the old way. These are, like, are these, like, these engineered septic systems? So the the leach field Uh-huh. Has to be engineered.
[00:12:52] Cody:
The tank, like, if you're doing just a tank install Right. Or replacement, you don't have to have that in engineered, but for kind of all new systems, you have to have engineered. Uh-huh. Just for the placement of of everything. Where to put it. Okay. So Especially if the yards if the area you're walking with is really tight, and you have property lines. Yeah. You have limits between waddle you have to stay off of and And you can't put the lead field, like, within x feet of the house kind of thing. Yeah. Everything has a, like, a boundary, like, waddle. You have to be, like, a 100 feet from that. Like, you have to it's kinda hard trying to place it. Now do you have to do the engineering, or is that a plan drawn up by, like, county? It's a third party. Okay. Does that. And then you get, like, the plat that shows all the property lines. Then I get the plans. Okay. But then that set of plans has to be sent to the county.
Right. Have it approved. Right. And then I get it back. Right. And then I can go ahead and start moving on to project. Okay. And how old are you? 18.
[00:13:52] David Bennett:
Say that number one more time. 18. You're killing all of us, dude. You're literally killing all of us. Everybody that just heard that, if it's not, like, sinking into your brain that I'm talking to an 18 year old guy, you need to have your hearing checked. When did you start your lawn mowing business?
[00:14:13] Cody:
When I was 15, I walked for a landscaping company when I was robot teen. Mhmm. Which is kind of an issue because I was underage
[00:14:21] David Bennett:
for that, for, like, payroll reasons and all that. We're gonna get into the we're gonna get into that shit,
[00:14:27] Cody:
man. It was kinda tough.
[00:14:29] David Bennett:
And then so and then the timeline, we can just figure out the timeline. Your snow removal came a year after, so you were probably 15, 16. And then excavation or, yeah, excavation came
[00:14:41] Cody:
17. It was kind of the it I started doing some of it in when I was 17, but but not a whole lot. Just kinda little projects here and there, like French drains and But it started getting little small things. Serious now that you've just turned 18. Yeah. Okay. And then septic, by the time that you're probably very serious about that, you'll be 19.
[00:15:02] David Bennett:
Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm always serious about that. Well, I bet I meant, like, where it's, like, you got it all sewed up. You're, like, you know exactly what you just, like like, back of your hand kind of thing. Well and and now I'm looking into actually, you're a friend of mine. We're looking into getting,
[00:15:18] Cody:
certified to, inspect them. See. That makes good sense. So, like, if you were to sell a house and you had to have it inspected Right. We could do that then. Right.
[00:15:30] David Bennett:
Kinda And how it's kinda confusing that that's a separate separate certification than the install because you would think that if you know how to install it, inspection would be, yes, this is this is, like, not broken.
[00:15:43] Cody:
Yeah. It it I've it's just kinda different, because since it's used, you have to kinda look at it differently. Right. You have to look you have to kinda know where everything's at if it was going to break. Right. Well, when you install in it, it's all new, so you don't have to worry about it. Right. But the in and the inspection is pretty,
[00:16:04] David Bennett:
it's like a like a 2 day class. Really? Yeah. Got it. So so inspecting is even harder Yeah. Than learning how to install it. That's interesting.
[00:16:14] Cody:
Once you figure out how to install them. So when did
[00:16:17] David Bennett:
have you ever okay. You worked for somebody else when you were, like, 14. Mhmm. Is that the only time that you've actually ever worked for anybody else?
[00:16:27] Cody:
No. I've actually got another, another guy at work for law, and I've been walking for him for 7, 8 years now. Right. And he actually has a it's a
[00:16:37] David Bennett:
9 hole golf course. Yeah. You told me about this. You've gotta show me where this thing is, man. It's
[00:16:43] Cody:
we've kinda changed it now Uh-huh. But it's it's amazing. But it's up here. Yeah. It's a blast. It they have a pretty good tone out. They play, like, Tuesday and Wednesdays. Really? They have a huge tone out. God bless you. And it's it's So We've spent forever walking on that. So are what were you doing
[00:17:01] David Bennett:
lawn care for the golf course?
[00:17:04] Cody:
So I started out actually, like, doing not really the mowing, but more of the maintenance of things, like, raking and fertilizing, stuff like that, just to kinda keep things up. Somebody else did all the mowing. Uh-huh. But, after about a year, I kinda moved my way up and started doing the mowing and kinda took over everything. Right. And now I pretty much do a I'm kinda the right hand man over there now. I do really anything. We have so many projects going on besides, you know, the graph the the golf course, which is pretty private. Yeah. We have, like, a wood cutting operation, like, firewood and stuff like that. Like, we have a whole thing that we do. So that's a a whole other set of things that's going on. And now I kinda take care of all that. So I kinda I kinda manage everything over there now. My god.
Like, we just put in a, pavilion. Yeah. Like a, like, a reunion kind of place. Yeah. And it's we just we're almost finished with that, but Right. It's pretty cool.
[00:18:04] David Bennett:
Well, the reason the reason I was asking because, you seem to be, like, able to shift over between have no problem working for somebody else and but are also completely self employed, which is kind of unusual. Most people either take one one route or the other. And, well, most people that that I know, Is this sort of, like, up here in these rural communities, is it more like working for somebody else and working for yourself is more normal than you would find in, like, a major metropolitan area? Believe in your opinion, you don't have to know. I I don't know because
[00:18:44] Cody:
this is just kind of the way I've walked for so long that I'm just used to it. Yeah. So I hadn't really I haven't really thought about that. Now that you mentioned it, I haven't really thought about Yeah. You know, walking for somebody else and then doing my own thing. Right. I'm just it's just something I've always done. Well, yeah. If, most people don't like working for somebody else if who they're working for doesn't appreciate them. Yeah. I mean, and that's that's becoming more and more
[00:19:09] David Bennett:
prevalent in society where people are just used to being talked to like crap, you know, or their opinion is not valued. Or and after after a while, it'll damage your soul. That, that, that kind of attitude when you have to go in to a job every day and you're just, it's not that you don't want to be there because the work is that you don't want to be there because these people suck. And, you know, the the people that you've been mentioning, you seem to have a really good relationship with all these guys. So I do. They've all they've all treated me very well. See, in that, you know, at that point, then you're free you're essentially free to run. You can either go you can go either direction or or stay in both directions for as long as you want.
So what what why did you wanna even start a business at 14? I mean, was it was this your dad at all saying you could do this, or was this just you? It it's, probably a little
[00:20:03] Cody:
little bit of both, but mainly it was just I just wanted to go. Sweet. Like, I
[00:20:08] David Bennett:
just I kinda I just went with it. We could I mean, you're kinda like the proverbial kid that played with Tonka trucks and Still do. And never never wanted to stop. You know, dump trucks, road graders, that I mean, I don't know if you've ever run a road grader, but I haven't yet. It's on my list. It's on your bucket list? Hopefully that'll happen soon. Alright. So this is all you, but your dad sort of has that kinda same spirit. I've I've noticed, because he if I remember right, he used to fly a plane and was running human organs for transplant. Is that correct? So he was an EMS pilot. Okay. Oh, flat out EMS pilot. Okay. Yeah. He just flew the fixed wing. Okay. And, yeah. And but at at a time, he decided, screw a bunch of this and started welding.
[00:21:02] Cody:
Yeah. He he got just kind of tired of the always being gone. Yeah. He was only ill, like, 7 days. He was gone for 7 days. Oh. And he just kinda got tired of being gone all the time. So did did he go back I mean, did he already know how to weld?
[00:21:18] David Bennett:
Yeah. Did he get did he already have certification or No. He he,
[00:21:24] Cody:
he's kinda done welding pretty much forever, but but he never really turned it into a business.
[00:21:31] David Bennett:
Until, like, what? Was it 5 years ago? It would have been,
[00:21:35] Cody:
I think, 20
[00:21:37] David Bennett:
13, 24, 14. Yeah. Okay. So a lot longer, than not I didn't realize that it was that long ago, but, so the spirit seems to kinda run-in the family, it seems like. But when you were putting this these businesses together, your age sort of got in your way. It did. Right? So take me back to when you're 14 and you wanna do the lawn mowing business. And you list I don't know. You need a you need a bank account. What what happened?
[00:22:09] Cody:
Well, we, we went into the bank and said, well, we need to open up a a bank account for a business. And, we went to go open it, and they're like, okay. Yeah. No no problem at all. You know? And, like, you know, how old are you? And I'm like, I'm 4, 14, and they're like, okay. This is gonna walk to you, but I'll have to figure it out. And I was, like, well, what can we do? And they're, like, we could make an error LC, but you have to have your you know, you have to have somebody sign on it, like, you you your dad or your mom. So we went and created an LLC Uh-huh. Put it under my name or and my mom's name, then we could go back into the bank. That was still a little bit tough Yeah. Because of my age. Right. So then my mom signed on that again, and we're able to get it open. Yeah. But
[00:22:58] David Bennett:
And this is a major bank, or was it a local smaller bank? Local. Local bank. Okay.
[00:23:03] Cody:
It would have been There was a few times that they they hold my age and, like, you know, we didn't hear that.
[00:23:09] David Bennett:
We'll just move on. I'll say, well, that's okay. Then then, yeah, that's probably much better than having to work with, like, you know, Bank of America or Wells Fargo because they're probably, like, going out. I'll I'll lose my job. Yeah. And there was there was, we were in
[00:23:24] Cody:
we were sitting there trying to, I'm trying to think what what we were doing with it. It was something with the bank account. And I was sitting there, and and I got up to leave or something to do something. And the bank lady was, like, how how old is he? My mom's, like, oh, he's 15. Uh-huh. And she's, like, I thought he was 21.
[00:23:47] David Bennett:
Well,
[00:23:49] Cody:
I even had, issues. I bought a snowplow last year. Yeah. From Chicago. Uh-huh. And I had to I had to wire the company the money. Right. And I went in just to make a wire transfer. Uh-huh. Was insanely hard, because I was 17. Yep. And that was even out of a business account. I'm on the account. Right. Everything's legal, and it was it was hard just trying to do that. Yeah. Because you're doing you're you're doing a transaction,
[00:24:15] David Bennett:
and every transaction is going to cause problems when that transaction is coming from the base of, like, this guy is not 18. Yeah. Well, it it it's even been issues at,
[00:24:27] Cody:
Stoballs. Like, I went into a farm store to buy paint. Yeah. To paint the snowplow that I just bought. Right. And I bought I went to go buy the paint, and I'm thinking nothing about it. I'm like, gosh. You know? Whatever. I'm, you know, just buying some paint to paint this. I spent 30 minutes trying to find the paint in the store, and then I got it I got it to the checkout, Uh-huh. And they scanned it, and they're like, oh, I just need your ID. I'm like, yep. Here you go. I handed it to him, and they're like, oh, we can't sell this to you. You're not 18. And they little they took the paint from me Uh-huh. And they told me to walk out, and I'm, like, fine. Oh, god. I walked out, and I've never been back since. Well, yeah. That's, like, you you know, it's it's hard
[00:25:07] David Bennett:
to it's really hard to get eyeballs to even look at your business or your service or whatever. And and it's not like I was dressed like a thief.
[00:25:17] Cody:
Like, I was dressed like this. Yeah.
[00:25:19] David Bennett:
But I mean, was this, any kind of spray paint or was it just liquid? It was a cat, like, a it was those cobalt cans of paint Yeah. Put in a spray. Okay. Oh. Oh. Do you so you put it in sprayer, but it's not a spray can like Kryolan. Right? Yeah. Is that that's the one where that's the question that I had was if it was spray paint, which I can't imagine you would be doing a tractor with that. But if if for whatever reason you were, they've got a problem with all these I don't know. I guess there's a problem with kids huffing paint. Something. Yeah. They they said something, but I was I was so,
[00:25:52] Cody:
I couldn't believe that told me to walk out of the store when I was trying to buy some paint. Yeah. And I gave him a business card. I know. That's see,
[00:26:00] David Bennett:
now, oh, Bitcoin doesn't fix that, but the banking issues, there's there's there's ways there's clearly ways around that. But is that, like, so your mom had to actually kind of cosign as an owner of the LLC. Yep. Like, present herself as an owner to then be able to open up a bank account. Yep. Yeah. See, this is I think she like, I own, like, 60% or something. Yeah. She owns 40. Yeah. So, yeah, I remember you you telling me telling me numbers, but the whole the whole thing is that this is just like this example of the legacy financial system just failing everybody all at once. I mean, it is it ain't just that. It's like there's so many problems with the guys that run the legacy system that that's why you end up with something like Bitcoin arising.
Right. I mean, just like it didn't, it wasn't like somebody, you know what they say necessity is the mother of invention. You know, and in 2008, we had to tire economy world's economy, literally on the brink of collapse. I mean, a complete meltdown. And that's when, you know, of course, that's when Bitcoin was launched and it was launched as a complete. It was never really said this way, but when I look at it, I'm like, it's a, it is a pressure release valve. Like if you, you know, you work with excavation, so clearly you're, you know, you know, how ponds and stuff work, you know, with you. There's only so much water you can dam up before, before water decides it will find its way. Yep.
And I I'm always on this show. I'm always, talking about how I can look at natural systems like biology, ecology, hydrology, and it, they all seem to follow the same pattern, you know? And, and for those of us that think that. As humans and the way that we construct things like economy, the way that we build businesses, if we go around thinking that we don't have those same patterns inherent in the way that we build these things, then you're going to fail. You're just going to fail because you cannot have the types of pressures that we had in 2,008, which I know that you weren't really thinking of when it was all occurring. Yeah. That was, like, bubble?
Yeah. Yeah. You would have been So
[00:28:29] Cody:
in fact, I watched videos on that the other day of of kinda what happened knowing that time. It's kinda interesting to watch. If you wanna watch a really a couple of really good movies about it, The Big Short
[00:28:40] David Bennett:
is a is Oh, okay. A it's and it's it's a movie. It's not a documentary. It's an actual movie. It's got like Steve Carroll in it. And, God, Kevin Spacey was in it. And then there, or no, it was the Kevin. So I can't remember if it was Kevin Spacey. He may have been in the other one that I was thinking of. Now Kevin Spacey was in, oh, God, there was the big short and there's another movie. I can't remember the name offhand, but it's about the same thing. It's about the 2,008 and, and the structure of what was going on. And I have to watch I still watch The Big Short. I've seen it 8 times. Mhmm. And and I will watch it again, and I will pick up something new, like, something that that I missed, like, in the first 8 times because I like those movies when you when you can rewatch it and you you keep lawning Mhmm. New bits every time well the the the system that was in place that caught that allowed this thing to happen that scared the living crap out of everybody in the world was so complex. It was so riddled with corruption.
I mean, that's what it really boiled down to is that the whole system that was built was corrupt. It wasn't like the system was built and then it got corrupt. It was literally built from just an attitude of, I will I will literally represent this thing as inherently valuable when I know full well that it has no value whatsoever. You know about Bitcoin Mhmm. At least a little bit. So when did who told you first about it? Who said when was the first time you heard the word Bitcoin, and then what made you go, I don't know what this is. I need to find out what it is.
[00:30:29] Cody:
I don't, I don't really remember when I the first time I hold it. Like, I've heard about it. Right. But we will, my dad now actually walking on the job and for this guy, and he's way into, like, super into Bitcoin and all kinds of crypto stuff. Uh-huh. And and so so we're walking on this job, and he was kinda talking about it. And I was, like, well, that's that's pretty cool. That's kinda have to look into him all that. And we kinda didn't you know, I didn't really know him, but, after that job, we kinda kept getting together and and going over everything on you know, he kinda showed me a lot, you know, taught me about a bunch of stuff about Bitcoin and all the different coins and everything, and how kind of the whole system walks and everything.
And that was about, it's been about 2 years now. Okay. Kind of been, you know, kind of been friends ever since then. And Does your is,
[00:31:22] David Bennett:
is it is he much older than you or
[00:31:25] Cody:
Yeah. All my friends are much older than me. Okay.
[00:31:28] David Bennett:
That does why does that not surprise me, Cody? So
[00:31:34] Cody:
so this dude is out there, and he's up here? He's in and out. He he has a cabin here, but he lives somewhere else. Okay. On it. He he does a bunch of other jobs. So Right.
[00:31:46] David Bennett:
Do you know, do you know what it's, what I'm trying to say? What does he do as a as his business in general? So he he walks to the pipeline. He's a he's a pipeline inspector. Oh, Okay. Okay. So not a banker, not a financer guy. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So just regular Joe. So I I mean, I I kinda I kind of would like to say that that's just straight up blue collar, you know, just like good old fashioned work and not having to, you know, create something that doesn't have value and beg somebody to buy it from you, which is why color, not all of it, but, I'm a little, I'm a little, jaded on the banking system for, for reasons like you just described.
Like, like I, I was, you know, I will tell my kids and I've told them on several occasions. I'm like, you know, they'll, they'll go your dad, you're loopy about this whole Bitcoin thing. Why would I, why do I care? And I go, well, go into a bank and get an, get an account without me with you. And I'm like, okay, I'm like, I'm going to, I'm just going to go ahead and spoiler alert. It's not going to work. They're not going to give you a bank account. And then they started going, why? Like you're not. Neither one of y'all are 18 and you ain't getting a bank account by yourself until you're 18. And even then, as you've described, it's still not exactly you're not exactly out of the woods, but that's when the light switches kind of start going off.
So does your does your dad still look at this? Do you and your dad talk about it at all? Mhmm. Okay. So I he does,
[00:33:24] Cody:
like, he he's not in it as much as I am Right. But he does more of the resource Right. On it. And I kinda I'm more in to the actual buying of the thing and I'm kind of in I kind of, like, manage all that. Okay. So
[00:33:41] David Bennett:
do you practice self custody? And do you know what that means? I do not. Okay. Alright. Here we go. Okay. The what I'm what I don't what I'm not gonna do is is, you know, have this be like a teach Cody about, you know, the the intricacies of it because it's just gonna bore the shit out of my audience because they know. They they they know what self custody is. But, like when I will, I want to say this about it. Cause I was at, again, this goes back to me talking to my kids about, about Bitcoin and why, you know, dad's loopy about it is that when I put money into a bank, that money is no longer my money.
That money is technically the bank's money. They can tell me I can spend it, which which normally I can, you know, so I know alarm bells go off, but then you witnessed something like the Canadian trucker rally. And do you know what I'm talking about? Okay. Yeah. I followed that for a long time. Alright. So you know that they got that some of those guys got their bank accounts shut down Mhmm. And they were unable to purchase gas. Their credit cards were done. Their debit cards were done. It's a mess. They I I mean, they it was their money, but that's when you learned that it's not your money, and that all the money that you put into a bank is not self custody.
It is what's called custodied. Mhmm. Well, we have the same mirror. I was telling you that, you know, hydrology and ecology, they have these patterns. Well, there's that same, the same pattern can occur. But for the first time we have a pressure release valve and that's the notion of self custody and what we'll do. Like the Bitcoin that I own is self custody. I set up the wallet. I control the private keys. I control the public keys. I have I have the passphrase. Nobody else has access to this but me, which means that nobody can tell me when I can and cannot spend that money. So I can say whatever the hell I want on this podcast. I can do, I can say the most heinous shit if I wanted to, and nobody can stop me from doing a transaction.
However, it was not outside the realm of possibility that if I allow a third party like Coinbase, you know who they are? That's right, Hughes. Okay. Then if you piss off Brian Armstrong enough, the CEO, it's not outside the realm of possibility that he can say no transactions for you. Yeah. You're you're unable to vector this money to any other wallet in the world until you either apologize to me or I stop deciding to be an asshole. And and that means that that your wealth is in the control of somebody that's not you. Mhmm. And so I guess I I guess the question is this, are you were you aware until you were talking to me about this that there is that possibility that you can control the money yourself instead of having Coinbase do it?
I did. Okay. You did. Yeah. Why did you choose not to?
[00:36:41] Cody:
At the time, it was just since I'm was just getting into it Mhmm. And trying to learn about it still, It was easier for me to use, like, Coinbase Mhmm. Because I'd I know it's because safe there Mhmm. For the most part. Change in a minute. Right. But I know it's safe there, and and then I could kinda figure out what I wanted to do. Okay. So So it was just kind of an easier option for me. Well, my family's kinda in it with me. We kinda all do it together. Right. But it was just an easier and safer option to do at the time Right. And, you know To get started. And there's, you know, it's it's not
[00:37:17] David Bennett:
something to be taken lightly when you take control of this money yourself, because most people have never taken control of their own money. Your dad has never taken control of his own money. Your mom hasn't either. My dad didn't either. And I can, and I know that for a fact, because all of us in, in to this day, I still use a bank. Right. So I'm, I'm, I'm not saying I'm better than anybody else. I'm just saying that all of us suck at this is, is what I'm getting at. And we don't, but we don't know that we suck this bad at it because this is the way we all grew up. I grew up this way. You grew up this way. Your dad, my dad. Shit. Their parents were probably the last people that had an inkling that, well, probably just store some gold in the ground, you know?
But after that, no, man, that ship, that ship is sailed. And what many of us that try to talk to people about Bitcoin are, are really trying to do is we're not trying to teach people about how Bitcoin works or why it's better. What we found is that the talking to somebody who doesn't know anything about it as to why they might want to spend time learning about it is to teach them how bad the Fiat system is, which is the legacy financial system of the world. And I mean, we got robbed in 2,001 when they started, when they, when planes flew into the buildings, right? The whole September 11th thing, we got robbed again. And I mean, when I mean robbed, I mean, when when they crank up the money printers, they always crank up the money printers when there's a disaster.
Right? And I'm I'm not saying anybody was on the plunger. Okay. I'm I'm just saying that there's always that saying never let a good, crisis go to waste. Right? So they open up the money printer and every time they print money, the money that you saved before they open up the money printer loses its value. It loses its purchasing power. That's
[00:39:14] Cody:
interesting to me. It's theft.
[00:39:17] David Bennett:
It's open. Theft is what this shit is. But when it in 2,008, so like after September 11th, they started printing a little bit of money. Wasn't too bad, you know, just a little bit, but then 2,008, but then 2,008, the financial collapse happened when we were just talking about, yeah, they printed like $800,000,000,000 850,000,000,000 Right? That's and at that time, which was only 2,008, that was a lot of money. We were, I mean, we, there were people losing their freaking minds as to how much money that was. They were like, you're going, you're going to screw things up. And all of that money ended up going directly to the institutions because of too big to fail.
The banks were too big to fail. That was a, that was a, a refrain that you heard on the financial news. They're too big to, we cannot let, you know, Jamie Dimon, you know, his bank go under. We cannot do it. They let Bear Stearns die and they let Lehman Brothers die as I don't know, sacrificial lambs, just to show the public that look, we, you know, we we did our job as government regulators. We we, you know, they these guys have paid, but all the reds like bank of America, they were just in just as much trouble. Wells Fargo, all of them.
And because the money went to those banks, they didn't hit the public. Oh. And so the markets didn't really react to, like, with inflation where your purchasing power was destroyed by the printing of the money. But then COVID hit and the public gained direct access to fresh money being printed out of thin air. And now I can't go to the grocery store and look at the front door without paying $50. I can't I've literally I can't I mean, it's like a a 9 gallon or a $9 gallon of milk. I still can't get over it. Yeah. So all the money that I saved before that has lost its purchasing power. So I Oh, I see. So, like, if I had a $100 and I could buy a 100 gallons of milk before COVID, I can buy only 50 gallons of milk now.
Wow. I mean, that's just like quick math. It doesn't make sense in in when you talk about, but we did like 2 or $3,200,000,000,000 of printing of the money after like during the whole COVID thing. And then after it, which made the 2,008 thing, the people that were, you know, moaning and crying about 850,000,000,000 being a lot of money, Just blow that. I mean, hold my beer because we printed $3,200,000,000,000 and now everybody's feeling it because most of that money kind of went directly into the open market, which means that the signals was like, oh, there's a lot more money flowing around, which means we're gonna raise prices on everything.
Oh, okay. Because it's it's sort of that economy has a lot there's a lot of ecology that happens in economies, even though humans designed it. Like what happens when we have a really great year in grasses and like the, all the rain that we were getting this year up here, deer populations are going to explode. If a drought happens, what happens to those deer? They start dying off and they either, I mean, they either starve or they, or they just otherwise get sick and die. But the whole thing is, is that there's nothing that exists on this planet that has one side go up without another side effect effectively going down.
[00:43:03] Cody:
Everything's connected. What what is it? For every
[00:43:06] David Bennett:
motion, there's an opposite? You could think of it that way. Yeah. Like, for it, like, if I push on for every force, there's an equal and opposite force. If I press on a wall or a table, the table's pressing back up. Yep. But we have now found ourselves after 2,008 with this interesting invention called Bitcoin. And it allows us to what let's see. Okay. We talked about self custody, but one of the other things about Bitcoin that you probably know is the limit of the amount of Bitcoin that can never be created. Is that something that you're aware of?
A little bit. Okay. So there's 21,000,000 Bitcoin. That's it. Yeah. That's all that can ever be created. And that will the last of those coins will be buying somewhere around 2145. So 90, I think it's like 91% of all the coins that will ever be created have already been printed. Wow. Right. So and I hate to use the word print, but, lack of a better term, but there's a cap. And the first thing that people will say is, well, what if all the people that run the Bitcoin network just decided to make more Bitcoin? And then we get into something called the consensus rules.
And that's what guards against that. If you don't, if you're not really sure about the fact that there was 21,000,000 and only 21,000,000, then the notion of what it, when I say consensus rules, does that ring any bells for you? Cause probably, oh, it does. Okay. Okay. So one of the consensus rules is the 21,000,000, right? When I run the Bitcoin software on a node, because I do, I run a full node. So I have the, I have the complete ledger. I have every transaction that's ever been done. Wow. And that node processes new transactions as they hit the network. So my node is talking to a bunch of other nodes and it forms this Bitcoin network.
My node runs the Bitcoin core software. And in that software are all the consensus rules and there's more than 1. And what the one that's most people think are Mo the most important is there can't be any more than 21,000,000 coins. But there have been versions of Bitcoin that have been forked from the main chain that allow for that. Except my node understands that it is working off of different consensus rules and deletes it from its own network. Oh, wow. It will not talk to that node and that's how if anybody says we'll we'll just go in and change the code. You're not gonna change the code on my note. You're I mean, unless you're gonna force your way into my house at gunpoint and and upload a, you know, brand new set of software to my node, you're not actually going to change anything. Mhmm. And unless you do that to, oh, I don't know, 27,000 people across the globe all at once.
It's not gonna happen. This is one of the reasons why I had such a vehement reaction when you said what was the coin that you were talking about? You asked me about what I thought about it? Oh, it's Cardano. No. No. Cody, no. Please don't go down that hole. Please. Please. Because those coins, the other coins, they do they do not have this kind of safety net of consensus rules. They some people say they do, but they don't. And that's why I stay as far away from any of these things as I possibly can. Ethereum, I can't stand it. Cardano, Charles Hoskins, the guy that's behind it. If you if you dig into his history and who he is, you would run as far away from that shit as you possibly could.
So it is always gonna be up to you, you know, as to what you want to do or not. But I guarantee the second you say Cardano, every single a So that's not what this is about. But who told you was it the same guy told you about Cardano too? Yeah. Okay. And what else did he tell you about? That's pretty much about it. Just Cardano and And Bitcoin. Bitcoin? Yeah. That's the honestly, that's really interesting because most people that only do 2 or 3 coins is like, you know, Bitcoin and Monero or, was it, I can't remember the other one. Something there's like a there's there are only 2 other coins that I would possibly consider thinking about.
I will never buy those coins. But there was something about the way that they launched that seemed more not scammy, if you know what I mean. But everything else that I've ever seen is just like, it is a mess. And I've seen so many people lose all of their money on stuff like Dogecoin. Oh, yeah. I mean, I I mean, I'm not perfect. I've owned ether. I used to have I used to have, like, a shit ton of Dogecoin. And the reason I did is because it was it was at the time that Dogecoin was built, it was built as an anti reaction to Bitcoin. The people that built it said that crypto cryptocurrency of any kind was stupid and Bitcoin was stupid. And here's why, because we're just gonna spin up our own coin, and they did. Except that it's it doesn't talk to the Bitcoin network because Bitcoin network's like, you don't have our consensus rules. You don't have our our wallet type. So you're off off by yourself.
And but there were what they were trying to do is say, well, if we can just spin up, like, a 100000 different coins, then how does this one thing have any value? And that for me, the value is intrinsic in the fact that I can run a full note on a raspberry PI. I don't need a big computer. Right. I I I've scaled up since then because it's for various reasons, but not much more. I mean, my note cost now costs $700 whereas my Raspberry Pi, when I built it, caught with the hard drives cost me, like, 400. It's not that big of a difference. Mhmm. And it's it literally I can hold it in my hand. You know, it's, like, connected with an ethernet.
Cable. It's got a power cable and then it's got a USB cable if I want to plug something else into it. But it's about, I mean, it's like a cube. It's like, it's a start 9. If you ever, if you ever want to look into running your own node, I highly recommend start 9. Okay. That's good. It's a good machine, but the having those consensus rules chained to each other so that everybody else is keeping each other in check saying you're you're out of consensus. So buy. Makes sense. Yeah. I'm not doing your transaction. It's not a valid transaction.
And but with Dogecoin and all the rest of them, with all these people were trying to say was that since I can spend up my own, I don't need this one. But the thing is is that you kind of do. And it's that that that trustless mechanism of letting the software do a check on itself all the time. Like, we are literally we are auditing the entire blockchain from the very first transaction to the very last transaction every 10 minutes that a block is created. Wow. Because the whole thing has to be validated again in my note as part of that system. And again, for $700 and a little bit of know how you can do it too. And honestly not even know how you just get to start 9 and say, install Bitcoin core and then put it on the internet.
And all of a sudden it starts getting peers, other nodes to talk to. Wow. And it just starts validating transactions. But with the whole those thing, the only reason that I bought it, even though I knew it was what, what is called a shit coin is that it was fun because it was the, the guys that did it. They, by the time I got into it, they were like basically gone. And the, the, the network was being run by a whole bunch of, you know, plebs out there. And they had like, you know, the, the doge coin foundation sponsored to like a NASCAR race car and had like the doge emblem on it. And it was all, it was fun. But it, for me, it wasn't, it didn't have any real value other than just, it was kind of fun.
And then I had, then I started kind of like, well, boss, I'll buy some ether. I'll buy some of this stuff from the Ethereum, you know, guys. And, and I was kind of excited about it until about, I think I was like, I've had, I bought my first Bitcoin September 11th, 2050, which I should never say, but I've said it on this show before. So it doesn't really matter. Other prices? 250. As I say, really? It was like it was like 250. Yeah. But But see, I also spent money on Ethereum. And if I actually add up how much I would have, how much more by Bitcoin would be valued in Fiat terms. And that's, that's a whole other thing.
We continuously look to the financial monstrosity that we're trying to get away from to value Bitcoin in and that when you start thinking about it, it's like, God, that doesn't kind of make any sense, but we'll leave that on the table. If I add up what I would have gotten, if I just bought straight Bitcoin and not doge coin and not any Ethereum,
[00:52:59] Cody:
then I would have been, I would be in a much better position. I was gonna say it's so interesting. Cause I'll go back and look and, you know, I'll do when it launched to now Uh-huh. And, like, the profit. Uh-huh. It's insane. I know. It's yeah. It it it is. It it's stupid. But
[00:53:15] David Bennett:
again, that's see, there's almost a real danger in saying, how much would I have profited? Well yeah. And and it it's
[00:53:22] Cody:
just, you know, when it first launched Mhmm. Like, who knows what it would have done? So It it it's like, do I really wanna chance it? Yeah. It's a it's
[00:53:33] David Bennett:
a much easier bet now though Yeah. Because it's got so it's got, you know, 15 years a lot of backing in. It's got a lot of, it's got 15 years of history, the amount of development that's on it. And the fact that now, well, God forbid BlackRock has started, you know, elect, the ETFs for Bitcoin and there's like 11 now. And that's essentially the only way that a retirement, 401 ks like the, like let's say that your dad worked for Fort Lewis college or something like that. It's a state institution. They got a 401 ks. The only way that they'd to be able to give exposure to their employees on their 401 k is buying things through what's called an ETF.
Mhmm. And now that there's 11 ETFs for Bitcoin in the United States, I mean, retirement retirement guys have, I think that a lot of these places have to wait like 90 days before a product is online before they can actually legally consider putting it into their client's portfolios. Oh, wow. So, yeah, that's, we're seeing the sea change go on. But when I sold ether, I sold it directly for Bitcoin. And when I got rid of my doge and the reason I got rid of those is because it became unfund because of Elon Musk. It was no longer cute and fluffy and, you know, not dangerous.
It was something that was going to get people, like, homeless. And I was like I will have no part of this and I sold it directly into bitcoin now what happened to that after you sold it it went it went crash back down I sold it at like 77¢ I bought it for like a like fractions of a penny I had a 100,000 of my, I mean, I was able to like pick up a full Bitcoin out of it. That's so cool. But I, the amount of people, like there is a, there is a like red, like, you ever use Reddit at all? Okay. Our cryptocurrency, when you see crashes, like really bad ones, like, 70% downs, which we get. Mhmm. I mean, it happens. It happened a few weeks ago, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
I watched it. The, what you'll see on our cryptocurrency is people posting up the suicide hotline, and it's not a joke. Oh, wow. Because these there's a lot of people that I mean, if you, you know, if you thought, you know, losing 70% or 50% on price of a Bitcoin and Fiat terms was bad. You should see what happened to card. You should see what happens to those. Watch what happens to a theory and watch what happens to a lot of these other coins and people, instead of going, you know, all in on Bitcoins, we're like all in on the next, the next Bitcoin. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for those same gains.
[00:56:17] Cody:
Those gains are not there anymore. So I'll ask you about a coin. Uh-huh. It's it's,
[00:56:22] David Bennett:
it's a shiba shiba coin. No. You know that one? Oh, I know it. I'm saying no. I it doesn't matter. See, that's the thing. It doesn't matter, like, if it's not Bitcoin, it's a shit coin, and I'm just Now, again, it's you have to make your own choices. You know, nobody can, you know, all I can all I can do on that is, like, look, I've just given you a warning. I've seen too many people lose too much too quickly to trust any of them. Mhmm. Right? So but I I think the you know, one of the last things that I wanna talk about is when we like, your thoughts on are you gonna are you gonna stay in Bitcoin as a savings vehicle? Or are you looking at it as a profit vehicle,
[00:57:11] Cody:
somewhat of both? Both. You're looking at I'm just but kinda both. Uh-huh. But I'm in it kinda just, like, along for the ride. Along for the ride? Just kinda to see what happens.
[00:57:21] David Bennett:
What if let let me put it to you like this. Let's go back to when you're 14. Mhmm. And I wanna pay you to mow my lawn. You've got a business, but you don't have a bank account yet. Like, the first day, you're, like, maybe just talking to me about it. I think I wanna start a business mowing lawns and I go, and I wanna be your first customer, do my lawn, every week for and I'll pay you, like, a 100 I don't know, whatever we pay you. And then you go, well, we need to get a bank account so you can pay me. I'm like, no, I can just pay you directly as a 14 year old to your wallet, to your self custody wallet, because even if I try, you know, there there may be an issue with Coinbase,
[00:58:02] Cody:
you know? There is. There's a there's an age limit. There's an age limit with Coinbase. Yeah. Yeah. When I set that up, that was a deal. Yep. See, again Same same issue. See, we have this tool,
[00:58:12] David Bennett:
this bitcoin tool that allows freedom and it's so hard to actually pick that freedom up, understand what it is, and use it as the tool that it was meant to be used for. It's very hard because we're we're almost programmed for the last 4 generations to trust somebody else to do our shit for us. That's why we have 401ks. That's why. We have to have, I don't know, employee ID numbers and bank accounts. And, and the only way that we are able to allow to transact with one another is through a third, what's called a trusted third party. That's a bank. Right. But I could have just paid you directly.
No bank, no nothing, nothing at all. And the only way that that really works, especially if there's an issue, like if you were 14 and you know, you went up to coinbase and set up you know set up a wallet and they're like oh not no dude you're 14 all I would really have to do is tell you to go buy a cold card from coinkite and I teach you how to set up your own wallet and I can transact with you freely Wow. And you would be able to transact with anybody else freely, and there is no bank. There's no trusted third party. The issue becomes how nervous do you get pushing that send button?
And I still have problems with it. I mean, I transact in Bitcoin all the time, but you know, if I'm sending $5,000 I'm like, Yes. I'm blue. So I'll look at the wallet, send the wallet that I'm sending to. I'll like, look at the address versus what I've pasted in, in my actual transaction. I'm like, do they line up? I mean, did, did I get spoofed? I still go through that. Yeah. Do you know, to this day? So I understand the, the notion of feeling safer with a third party, and that's something that I think humanity is gonna have to take years for that to become undone.
And I think we're gonna have to. And it's gonna be people like you that talk to other people about maybe we should do the work and and really understand these systems so that we don't get freaked out when we take our own bitcoin away from coinbase because we should. We we should have no coin Coinbase should not be allowed to have any bitcoin at all. They've been a bad actor in the space for a long time. But all exchanges, you know, like cracking is another exchange bit stamp. There used to be a bit max, which was funny. I'd watch people leverage, take bets like a 100 x that, you know, they'd like buy a long, long futures contract and they'd have, like, $1 to their name, but they were somehow able to leverage it up to a $100 worth of Bitcoin and then lose and just watch them get wiped out, you know, and it's like, it's not funny when people start posting the the suicide hotline number.
And and again, that's why it's like, this is, you know, you're you're sort of at that that point that you'll cross over and become so serious about it like you were doing with your own businesses. Like, you first started using their mowers, but then you bought your own. Yep. That's self custody. And now you're responsible for the maintenance. And and if something breaks on it, you're well, I'm sure you would have done the right thing and try to help repair somebody's mower if it was somebody else's and broke it. But the point is, is that now it's yours and it's a, that's a different deal.
And all I would say, you know, at the end of this conversation is consider learning more about Bitcoin. And if you want to learn more about Cardano, can't stop you and I won't, but I don't think it's worth your time. I really don't. But I do think it's worth your time to learn about hardware wallets and what that means what self cut because that's part of self custody you you you need to keep your stuff in something like a hardware wallet that's what I have okay do you have a coin kite? I have a ledger a ledger okay I, I, I do recommend coin kite products.
I used to have a ledge. Actually I had 3 ledgers and the only reason the reason I don't use them anymore is because they, they're kind of insecure, not the ledger itself. But they've demonstrated that they've had a couple of they've demonstrated that they're not as good with operational security over at ledger because they've had at least 2 hacks of well, their but their hacks are about, like, your, email address as a customer. You know, like, some of your some of your information. It's not, I don't think people are gonna lose their money if they have a ledger because of, you know, their private keys got taken up. But see if you've got a, if you've got a ledger and you're, using that to sign transactions on Coinbase, is that what you're doing?
[01:03:11] Cody:
No. I I actually haven't got it set up yet. Oh, you haven't got okay. So I have it, and and I've been trying to set it up. Uh-huh. But I have to figure out how to. Yep. It's kinda confusing. Well, it of course, it's confusing. And you've got 4 businesses to run, and you're 18.
[01:03:26] David Bennett:
And now you got a guy sitting across the table from you saying, well, now you gotta spend more time to learn to learn this and learn it well. And you're not the only one that has that issue. You're I mean, you're like, there are millions of people that are like, I know I need to learn this, but I don't have the time because your real life is happening out here. So first of all, don't ever, don't ever feel bad. You know, if you need help, I will, I will help you out with it. Okay. But, and you also have some time. I don't think, I don't think Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, is going to rug anybody just yet.
And and it may not even be him that makes the decision. See, my problem is is like, what if the United States government says we we will pull all your licenses and we will send all of you to jail unless you give us all of the Bitcoin. Why isn't that the government that was trying to ban
[01:04:20] Cody:
coin basis?
[01:04:21] David Bennett:
Yeah. They're they're They were trying to get rid of it? They're they're not trying to get rid of it. They're essentially right now, they're in coin base in the United States, justice department. And, just not trade. It's not treasury. I can't, let's just say the judicial department are, oh, it's the, God, what's the fed, the fed treasury department, justice department. They're kind of like all ganging up on Coinbase but it's not just Coinbase and Coinbase is suing them back. Yeah. For like you know being being buttheads and that's, but see what I'm looking at is just a bunch of people that think the exact same way that got us into 2,000 and 1 and 2,008 and the whole COVID thing.
I'm seeing those same people infiltrate the space with that same thinking, And I know where that thinking goes. It never ends up anywhere good. It ends up with shit like planes flying into buildings. People, like, thinking that they're, you know, 401 k is safe in in 2,008 when it wasn't, and they lost all of that. Mhmm. And then we're seeing, like, all the people that saved hard over the last year, you know, few years have their money destroyed in front of their face, and they can't do a thing about it because of inflation, because we can't tell the government to stop printing money.
We when I see those same people and those same attitudes come back into this into this space that is supposed to be a pressure release valve against all of that, that's when I'm like, I don't trust you. I'm not going to do business with Coinbase because I don't trust the people that are behind it. And again, It doesn't mean that you're, you know, you're in a situation where you're in danger. I don't think you are, but if you were to just not learn any more and you keep buying the stuff and putting it into 3rd, 3rd party custody, the danger increases.
And so start because you've, I mean, even though the time is an issue, we just talked about it. Start now. I will help. I will. I will do what, do what I can. We'll like, even after I'm gone, I've got your phone number. You've got mine. If you've got questions, you can call me. But I, I really recommend getting off off of the heroin that is Cardano. I just, I honestly it's it's I think it's just bad for you. But,
[01:06:47] Cody:
what what do you think the price of Bitcoin would go to?
[01:06:51] David Bennett:
I don't know. I don't make I I I am not one of the people that do, price predictions, and there's a reason that I don't. It drives me crazy.
[01:07:01] Cody:
It should. It because I I I'll watch them, like, listening on, and they're, like, oh, this coin's gonna go to it's gonna go to 1 penny, and it's not, like, you know, a price of a penny. And they say it's gonna be at a penny next week. Mhmm. And then, like, 3 weeks from then, it's it's, like, down. Yeah. It's It drives you crazy. It's, yeah.
[01:07:21] David Bennett:
That's what gets a lot of the people that I was talking about, the whole suicide hotline posting number getting posted is because people will watch those things and they will just go buy anything that these people talk about because they've got a YouTube channel. Mhmm. And I mean, I do my best on this show to not talk about the only reason I will talk like on this show. The only reason I will talk about another coin is. Tell people how it got hacked or how its wallet got maneuvered into vectoring coin away from the owner or some other intense failure that nobody will actually tell you about because it's not in their best interest. It's in their best interest for you to pump their bags. So they've got, if they've got a bag of card.
Bottom dollar. I mean, I got a bag of Bitcoin. I do the same thing, except I know these people will talk about how, like, 15 different coins are gonna go up and that you've got to sell these other 10 coins. Mhmm. Because they've adjusted their bags out of those coins into these other coins. They're just waiting for you to pump their back. Oh, I see. So if, but with me and a lot of the people that, that I respect in the space, we only talk about Bitcoin. And it's like, so the only thing that people can can charge us with is as as a crime is you're you're just you're like anybody else. You want people to pump your bags. Uh-uh. I got one bag. Mhmm.
Pump my bag? Sure. I'll take that as I'll I'll take that as as, you know, however it's offered, but there are no bags. I do not own more than 1, you know, one of these things. Cause I don't believe in any of them. I've seen too many of them fail. I've seen too many of them just go away. Shit. I've I mean, I can't even, I've forgotten more names of coins that were famous 5 years ago and are nowhere to be found right now. Then I've then I've then I know about now is I just stopped. I I stopped 10 years ago looking at this crap, you know, or, well, 9 years ago. Once I got rid of my, once I got rid of my theory, I pretty much stopped and I'd kind of forgot that I even had those until Elon Musk started talking about it. And I'm like, well, it's not fun anymore. So, and that was what, 2020.
Wow. Somewhere around there. He was, that's when he was really high in 2020. Yeah. Everything was up then. Yeah. Well, that was that, that was, that was, last bull market cycle. And so, and you'd also asked me, what do you think about this bull market cycle? I, the only thing that I can really say is I think it's going to be different, but I don't know how There's there's too much institutional and political stuff that has now recognized Bitcoin's existence. Mhmm. And back in the day, even the the guy that, you know, the name Satoshi Nakamoto comes to mind, the guy that released the white paper, did the initial programming of the system. When WikiLeaks announced that they were going to start taking Bitcoin for their donations, the like, literally the first thing that came up with Satoshi Nakamoto riding, riding them back saying, please don't do this, please. Please do not put Bitcoin in the spotlight right now, but we're, it's too young. It's too fragile.
We've really got to build up the network effect to get this thing solid. Wow. So even the creator himself was like too soon. Mhmm. But for, on WikiLeaks side, the only reason that that organization still exists, that's the whole Julian Assange thing. If you know about him. Right. Right. So the only reason they still exist is because they started taking Bitcoin back then against the advices. It saved their ass. You know, it's like to, to this day, it still saves my ass, but I can't depend on any of the other ones, But we've gone an hour. God, an hour and 11 minutes, Cody.
We gotta get out of here, dude. Okay. You got stuff to do. Last thing I'll say is about price predictions is it's
[01:11:16] Cody:
it's I can see why it's hard to do them because everything changes Uh-huh. So rapidly. I mean, I mean, it's hard to it can I mean, it's just hard to manage? Just
[01:11:28] David Bennett:
be careful out there. And that goes for you too, folks. And we will talk to you later, man. Hold on. I gotta I gotta find my thing. Where's my thing? There is that it? Yep. That's it. That's the buffer music. Because all this was episode 929 of Bitcoin. And, Cody, I hope you, take what he said to heart, especially about the entrepreneurial spirit and doing things at an early, early age. He basically blew the doors off of all of us. There's no recovery for any of us ancient old screwballs, but, hey, at least the future is secured. I'll see you on the other
[01:12:11] Cody:
side.
Introduction and Guest Introduction
Cody's First Business: Lawn Care
Expanding into Snow Removal
Seasonal Work and Income Management
Third Business: Excavation
Fourth Business: Septic System Installation
Challenges of Starting Young
Balancing Work for Others and Self-Employment
Bitcoin
Self-Custody and Financial Independence
Consensus Rules and Bitcoin's Security
Avoiding Altcoins and Shitcoins
Learning About Hardware Wallets
Concerns with Third-Party Custody
Final Thoughts and Price Predictions
