Transcript:
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Mark Eckerle:
Hello, listeners, welcome to this episode of Cryptonomix. Before we jump into today’s discussion, please keep in mind this recording is for general education and is not intended to constitute investment advice. Any opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily represent those of Withum. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of Cryptonomix, brought to you by Withum. I am your host, Mark Eckerle. And today our guest is Adam Armstrong, who’s an advisor in our Withum Wealth Group and is our resident crypto advisor when it comes to a wealth management practice. So with that, welcome to today’s show, Adam.
Adam Armstrong:
Thanks, Mark. Looking forward to it. Should be a good discussion.
Mark Eckerle:
So let’s kick things first off with quick background of yourself before we dive into the meat and potatoes of today’s episode.
Adam Armstrong:
Sure. So I got my economics degree, I guess if you wanna go all the way back to college days at the George Washington University and all through school, interned with the big banks, you know, UBS, RBC, as a broker got my first job right out of college in DC and hated the hustle and the cold calling. So I decided to move into the advisory space, true fiduciaries and registered investment advisors. So I started working with Fisher Investments out in San Francisco, fortunate to get a job there. Worked there for over five years as an advisor and a trader, learning more about market structure and what not, beyond just advising clients on what to do. And then my wife and I decided it was time to move back towards the East Coast and we found Withum Wealth and I’ve been there since late 2017 working first in New York City and then we both decided it was time to move home after having a baby in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of New York City and working remote in a one bedroom apartment wasn’t quite gonna cut it for a long time. So we’re both from the Boston area and we’ve been up here now pushing two and a half years. So it’s been great.
Mark Eckerle:
Nice. Yeah, you’re part of the many of the COVID exodus from the city. I mean, it was everyone kind of scrambling the city and moving out.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t by choice, right? It was more the fact that, like I said a newborn and working remote and our apartment actually was, we didn’t have a door on the bedroom. It was a loft. So there was literally nowhere to hide. I remember there were calls where, you know, the market’s falling apart in COVID and my wife has to scramble and take the baby into the bathroom to muffle the crying. So, here we are. Right. What doesn’t kill you. Makes you stronger. I guess
Mark Eckerle:
It’s the memories from from the pandemic, right? Everyone’s got some of their own. So, jumping into today’s episode, we really want to cover two things today. One is we’re gonna focus the first half of today’s episode on, I can’t really say the current banking situation because it’s gonna kind of be a recap of the last called 30 days or so, right? What events transpired around Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature. And then we’re going to kind of take a total 180 on the second part of the today’s episode and discuss how Withum Wealth Management and how our wealth management practice can assist crypto founders and people in the digital asset space and kind of help diversify their portfolio because, myself included, right? Any folks in the digital asset space tend to be crypto maximalist almost, if you will. So trying to draw that line in the sand and figure out what makes the most sense from a portfolio perspective. So that’ll be part two of today’s episode. So let’s, let’s jump right into Silvergate, right. Number one, can you break down kind of what happened, what transpired back in early March and what ultimately led to them shuttering their doors at the end of the day?
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, Silvergate’s going to be the most simple one we talk about today. The most straightforward, they were their largest customer was FTX. And I think at this point you’ve probably done podcast or two or several on them. Check
Mark Eckerle:
Out our episode on FTX was released last November.
Adam Armstrong:
There’s a nice plug for you. No, but they’ve had so much of their revenue tied to one client that clearly is not around anymore. They much more voluntarily, I’ll say, had what we would call more of an orderly liquidation where they opted to shut down their operations, stopped doing business, it wasn’t profitable. When you lose a big enough client like that and an integral part of your business like that, at certain points, it just makes sense to throw in the towel. And I think that’s what happened there. Now, it certainly sparked a lot of fears in the industry, right? Which we’ll get into in a minute, but I think their shutdown was much more orderly than some of the others we’re gonna talk about in a minute.
Mark Eckerle:
It definitely kicked off a bunch of events throughout the month of March, which I think bank number two, right? Jumping right into SVB in Silicon Valley Bank.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, I would say if anything, Silvergate was maybe foreshadowing some weakness in the industry, right? So, whether every client was made whole or not from Silvergate, you know, we can dig into the details there, but I think the point was there’s a weakening underlying fundamentals within the whole digital asset space that is now a concern for some of these people doing TradFi banking, right?
Mark Eckerle:
So, like you said, it was foreshadowing of the industry or not so much the industry, but of what events were going to occur in the coming weeks after Silvergate, right? Everyone was kind of a little panicked, worried, especially from like a VC perspective, which I think helped spark some of the concern around Silicon Valley Bank and what ultimately led to the run that they experienced. So, why don’t you dive into SVB and kind of, it was a four or five day window of just pure uncertainty from any customers of SVB, right? They kind of made that announcement on Wednesday or Tuesday and then by the weekend, every transaction was pending and no one knew what was gonna happen. So give us a breakdown of kind
of what happened, what led to that and where we are today.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, I think before I can dive right into that, I need to take a step back for everyone’s sake, and maybe this will be elementary to some people, but for others I think setting the stage is important and what’s been going on the last year, right? To fight the inflation, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates, okay? And even before that, any bank that’s ever been around and profitable, they make a majority of their money on what’s called the net interest margin. This is the net interest that they capture when they lend out money to consumers, whether it’s credit cards or let’s say the most common one is mortgages. Okay? So I issue a mortgage at 4% or 3%, or 6% more so today, right? And I take in, that’s what I make the interest off that mortgage on a bank deposit.
Adam Armstrong:
I am the bank, I pay out interest to holders. Okay? So if you think back two years ago, everyone was refinancing their mortgage down below 3%, that was the bank’s income, and no one was getting anything on their checking accounts. That’s what the bank was paying. So they captured that spread, right? If they’re taking an income at 3% and giving out zero, they’re making a 3% net interest margin on cash deposits that they have. Now it’s the bank’s job to also ensure that they have enough loans generating interest for them to cover any assets that they have that they would have to pay out interest on. Okay? So that’s important to understand when you factor in 2021 being such a phenomenally liquid year for everyone due to the pandemic era stimulus and the relief programs for small businesses and stimulus checks, whatever you want to call it, there was a lot of money, liquid money out there for companies, for individuals.
Adam Armstrong:
So Silicon Valley Bank was in a unique position where a lot of their clients, about 50% of their clients are venture capital backed or startup, you know, angel type companies and a lot of digital asset businesses within that fall, under that realm, Silicon Valley Bank was experiencing an exceptionally large boom in deposits from all of this new money that was coming around. And so Silicon Valley Bank had a problem they were taking on and people were giving them more deposits. They were having a lot of trouble lending out enough money, believe it or not, selling enough mortgages, getting enough loans to people at good enough rates. So what they did was they had to do something to generate interest, and they purchased at the time were fair market value bonds yielding, you know, 2%, right? Some of these were mortgages, mortgage backed securities, I should say.
Adam Armstrong:
And they started to go out further and further in duration. Now, whether this was a smart idea or not, we can debate that in hindsight what they did was fine. Let’s be clear about that. What they didn’t do was they didn’t hedge against the interest rate risk of saying, okay, well if rates go up are long duration, low yielding bonds going to be protected by anything. So they didn’t hedge. And I think that’s really important to set the record straight as well. So let’s fast forward to this past year. The Fed starts hiking rates and all of a sudden they have to pay out 4% on their deposits, but they have all these bonds that are only yielding 2%, right? They couldn’t generate the loans back then. And so now they’re in a pickle because they’re underwater, their bonds are only yielding them 2% and they’re paying out 4%.
Adam Armstrong:
That’s a loss, right? So that puts them in a bad position. And I believe it was Wednesday, March 8th, I want to say they announced a capital raise or indication for a capital raise. And that raised a ton of red flags, okay? People started saying, why, what’s going on? I believe the next day Thursday they announced a sale of some of those bonds, which is something you should never have to do as a bank. And they sold them at a nearly 2 billion loss. That was a second massive red flag that they needed the liquid cash to start paying for some of these deposits that were fleeing. I should also mention another aspect of what happened in 2022 while the Fed was raising rates, companies that were hit the hardest were not necessarily digital asset companies, but tech VC backed, right? Those types of companies got hit the hardest in this 22 selloff that we had in the market.
Adam Armstrong:
So that coupled with the fact that the Fed was raising rates so much is really what led to their deposits drying up and sort of a, not a run on the bank quite yet, but their deposits were drying up left and right. So they were needing to pay out this money and they weren’t liquid enough to do that. So that’s where it came in, that they had to sell these bonds eventually. And then on Friday, I think there were about two hours worth of time when people could get their money out until the FDIC stepped in and put them into a receivership. So, I need to go back to how they got all this money and what they did with the loan side of their business to, for you to fully understand how they got into this sort of pickle in the first place. And again, if they had just hedged their interest rate risk, it would’ve cut into maybe, you know, 2% of their profits to hedge this risk and they’d still be around today. It’s really quite fascinating that their risk management department didn’t do anything to recognize that they weren’t hedged on this type of a problem.
Mark Eckerle:
So I know it was a multitude of events over a right, like you said, you had to go back and kind of paint the picture as to how SVB got to where they were and what ultimately happened. But when the two red flags really came up in early March, right? The financing round and then the sell off of the bonds was effectively after that is when customers went to retrieve their deposits, right? Because I think that is what really opened everyone’s eyes into, Hey, I think SVB has a problem outside of these two red flags. It was just, okay, here’s hindsight is 2020s. But, once those two red flags hit and then customers went to retrieve their funds and they experienced the full run of the banks, that’s when everything hit the fan.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah. If you were on Twitter on Wednesday after they announced the capital raise, it was blood in the water, blood in the streets, and everyone, you know, word was spreading quick from Wednesday afternoon, I would say, to start getting your money out. And I would say Thursday is when people really started to pull their funds and then Friday is when everyone tried to do it and they shut it down. Yeah. So I was talking with clients of Withum, I was talking with individuals about whether they should be pulling money out of banks and, you know, everything. I think most people were able to get a lot out early that next week, which is great, but there were certainly companies out there that had payroll held up and other things that, you know, may have caused some problems.
Mark Eckerle:
Because I believe, and I mean it was a crazy couple days, I just remember fielding a bunch of calls. I’m sure you were, you were busy, but when the uncertainty going into the weekend when everyone’s account, right, they would log in and I think everything was just status pending. So there’s pure uncertainty. What was the news that came out like Sunday night or was it early Monday morning before the markets opened around every customer would be made whole, or the feds stepped in to alleviate that kind of, that uncertainty and that doubt. Can you talk us through that a little bit?
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, so it was, it was a joint initiative by the Fed Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC. So those three government bodies came together and said, we’re going to bail out the customers. Okay. I think this is also a really important differentiation. I hate hearing in the news that, you know, oh, another bank was bailed out. No, the bank failed. The bank is gone, its assets have been sold off, which we’ll touch on in a minute. The bank went under, if you were a shareholder of Silicon Valley Bank stock, it went to zero end of story, right? No one was bailed out except for the individuals who had money there. And yes, I haven’t heard any stories of people not being made whole. It’s just a matter of whether you had access quick enough to, you know, pay for day-to-day operations.
Mark Eckerle:
So you mentioned it went to zero, were they purchased, cause I think there’s still customers in this space, there’s still clients that have accounts at SVB and money still there. So kind of what’s going on today.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, so, it’s funny on my way into one of the offices up here in the Boston area, I drive by a Silicon Valley Bank branch and I remember that Monday morning there were news crews and there was just a piece of paper taped to the door saying, you know, we went under call this number, people lined up outside. So, you know, I think First Citizens is the bank that bought them. Okay? So they, they bought their assets and liabilities. There’s about, I think there’s still some held up with the FDIC, but still first Citizens Bank of North Carolina bought 72 billion in assets and loans off of them. They bought that for a discount of 16 and a half billion dollars. So what’s that? 55? Something like that. Billion dollars for $72 billion worth of assets and liability. So for folks that are struggling to find a new bank that use SVB, maybe looking there could be a logical first step because they’re, you know, if they’re willing to take on the type of clientele that SVB had, maybe they’re going to have similar benefits or beliefs or services to what SVB did as well.
Adam Armstrong:
I’m sure they’ll use a lot of the same in a bankruptcy proceeding like this. Like what will happen, they’ll probably have to sell off, you know, some of the land, some of the buildings, some of the assets that they do have to recoup the losses that they had and
Mark Eckerle:
Then understanding of it. I think that was the, the biggest impact on of the three banks that ultimately went insolvent. I think the trickle effect of the events of SVB partially led to the closure of Signature, but I think it was also other uncertainties in the market. So why don’t you kind of talk us through how the collapse of Silvergate and SVB ultimately led to basically shuttering of Signature, even though there’s rumors and ideas and skeptics out there that they were fully solvent. So, I’m curious as to just the why in your opinion, around what happened with Signature.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, I know we talked last week. Did you listen to the the Daily podcast?
Adam Armstrong:
So, first I would shout out to the Daily, it’s a great podcast as well, not as good as this obviously, it’s a New York Times podcast and they had Barney Frank on, who was a board member of Signature. He also was instrumental in the Dodd-Frank legislation around regulating banks. Okay. And it’s worth a read, but it doesn’t sound like they were nearly in as much trouble. And, you know, maybe they didn’t hedge like SVB or they didn’t have the bad bonds that they had taken out. I know they did to some degree, everyone did. I mean, even Bank of America, JP Morgan, they were buying bonds too, but a lot of these bigger banks had better risk measures and so they hedged right? Where it wasn’t an issue for them. So I think Signature, from everything I’ve heard, Signature was okay.
Adam Armstrong:
It was just, they’re the next link in the chain when you talk to, okay, if you’re a digital asset company and you don’t have your money at Silvergate and you don’t have your money at SVB, Signature was the next link in the chain, right? So it was logical that people started pulling their money there. And I think the FDIC just wanted to get ahead of it. There’s, you know, you mentioned these rumors and what’s been going through the rumor mill, take it with a grain of salt. But a lot of people suspect that, you know, Gensler’s been out for the crypto space for a long time. People suspect they wanted to make an example of crypto and that’s why they shut them down. Not that they were insolvent or anything like that, but they just wanted to continue to limit the access of US dollars going into digital assets, essentially.
Mark Eckerle:
Yeah. And it’s really made it difficult from a digital asset company in the space that’s trying to do things right, that’s trying to check all the boxes, right? They’ve been onboarded or accepted at Silvergate, SVB, Signature because those are the banks willing to work with companies in that industry. And it’s unfortunate that the three biggest providers for a lot of the companies that we work with ultimately went belly up a lot of, right?
Adam Armstrong:
What are you to do? Yeah. What are you to do?
Mark Eckerle:
And we’ve been having many discussions with both clients as well as just prospects, right? Just like you’re fielding as well around where to go. Obviously I think the obvious choice that a lot of companies that we’ve worked with open accounts at JP Morgan Chase, I think that was the first starting point, but they haven’t always been as friendly to a lot of digital asset companies historically, right? They have their own risk profile and their own risk appetite. So it’s trying to understand where to turn when, as you mentioned, Gensler may have his own prerogative here. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC.
Adam Armstrong:
It’s all speculation. It’s all speculation. We’re not saying anything for sure.
Mark Eckerle:
Yeah, and I don’t know the details around Signature specifically. So it’s like you said, it’s all what’s in the rumor mill, but from a company perspective, right, where do I turn, where do I go? And some of the financial institutions that we’ve seen in this space that are still active, still working through it, it’s not a guaranteed slam dunk, but happy to kind of throw out a couple names. Like we mentioned JP Morgan Chase, we’ve also seen State Street, Metropolitan Commercial Bank and BankProv as well, which I think BankProv is kind of up in your neck of the woods, right?
Adam Armstrong:
I believe so, yeah. Providence.
Mark Eckerle:
And then also, which is a fairly newer bank. A lot of these are on the smaller side, unfortunately, you’re not gonna find a big national bank because they would’ve already been opened their doors to crypto, unfortunately with where we are. And another one is Customers Bank who’s fairly new. So just some possible alternatives as to where to turn for any of our listeners that are still kind of held up in this ongoing circus of financial institution frenzy, if you will.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, I, I don’t know that I have particular recommendations. I would also say to look at the banks that acquired these two, right? Yeah. So for Citizens acquired SVB and Flagstar Bank out of New York is who acquired the Signature Bank assets, so that could be another one. And they acquired about 30 to 35 to 40 billion, not as big of a discount. I think they acquired, I’m just looking at my notes here, 38 billion, which included 13 billion in loans for only a two and a half billion dollar discount. So again, that kind of makes you wonder why was it not discounted more if Signature was in more trouble, right? You know why you would think if they were similar in a similar spot to SVB, they would’ve been able to acquire their assets for a steeper discount. So again, we’re just speculating here.
Mark Eckerle:
So to put a bow on this part of today’s episode and where we stand today, right? This is a little bit post frenzy, right? So we’re about 30 days removed from the whole FIAs of what happened in March, where do we stand today, right? Is there expectations, potential rumors in the market of other banks that could be facing this? Not to name names, but I’m just thinking could this lead to further or do you think we’re at a stable position now in the market where things are starting to settle down, die down? I’m just curious just to kind of, to wrap up what actually happened because it was a crazy time in March. Very unfortunate time for a lot of customers.
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, I would say that most of the sort of super, super-regional banks like SVB that were thrown into the rumor mill, like First Republic comes to mind is a big one. PacWest was another big one that people were concerned about. Everything I’ve seen and we’ve seen on our team and our desk is comfortable with those banks still, we think this was pretty contained as far as a crisis goes. That being said, the knock on effects of banks tightening their credit lending could be significant. Okay. So that you’ve heard the Fed actually talk about this in their last few meetings where they’re saying we might actually not have to raise rates as much because financial markets and credit markets are getting tighter just from this banking issue. So even if you’re, you know, a big bank like JP Morgan Chase, if you’re less likely to lend to the marginal person, that could impact, you know, a lot of knock on effects down the road.
Adam Armstrong:
Lending is the key to growth. And if lending starts to dry up around the edges and on the margins, it just has, you know, spiral effects that can happen down the road. So that’s a major concern of ours, in terms of, you know, recession implications, but not as far as like more banks going under. In 2008, 2009, you saw a couple of the, you know, in 2008 you saw Bear Stearns and Lehman go under, right? And they were the biggest buy assets and then you had hundreds of more banks go under in oh 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. It went on for years. All these banks going under, under, under, but they were so much smaller in comparison. So, you know, you see the volume of bank collapses go up, but the big ones have already happened. So, I’m sure there will be more, but they might be super small regionals or they might get, you might see a lot more mergers of solid footing banks taking on those that, you know, maybe are in a little bit more trouble.
Mark Eckerle:
Okay. All right. So, pivoting now, right? You mentioned as far as what you’re seeing in the market and what’s come across your desk, well, let’s talk about what that looks like. What is a day-to-day for Adam Armstrong, what is Withum Wealth and what we do here in our wealth management practice? So kind of give us some background as to what you and your team do on a daily basis and what we can do for a lot of the clients that you work with.
Adam Armstrong:
Sure. So we work with primarily individuals, but a lot of those individuals are business owners or executives at businesses. And we do, you know, everything from investment management, portfolio management, right? Actually managing and investing their assets for them on their behalf to financial planning, you know, generational planning, insurance planning, whatever that might be, right? So I’m a CFP, my degree is right there on the wall behind me, but all of our advisors have, you know, we have some CFAs, many CFPs, some CPAs on our staff as well. And our close relationship with Withum on the accounting side is great because folks that have a preexisting relationship with Withum in some degree, whether it’s doing your taxes, you know, businesses, consulting, audit, outsourced accounting, whatever it might be, you can leverage Withum Wealth Management, sort of, we call it a second opinion analysis, but we can take a look at your portfolio and what you’re doing from an investment perspective and just for being a Withum client free of charge.
Adam Armstrong:
And, you know, you can use this as a sounding board. So that’s really great. Recently we’ve been for the past six months now, we can pat ourselves on the back for this, but we’ve been advocating for people to get out of cash holdings and into US treasuries. You know, I think this banking issue really puts to light of why that is. You just don’t need to hold so much cash at banks when you can actually get yield in treasuries and lock that in for a period of time. So that’s been a good thing for business owners to start to consider. You know, on the digital asset side, I think you mentioned, I’m, I would call it the resident expert here on our wealth management team, we don’t have digital assets as a part of client portfolios. It’s something we have explored. But for those that do have a majority of their net worth tied up in digital assets, I think it’s important to have a financial advisor and planner who’s familiar with digital assets and can understand, you know, how the blockchain works and things like that.
Adam Armstrong:
So, you know, we’ve written on digital assets in the past, it’s kind of more like how I would explain it to a 75 year old or a 60 year old who has no idea about digital assets. That’s how we, we phrased it and wrote it for our client base, I should say the majority of our client base. But that’s not to say we can’t get into the weeds and explore different ways that we can help clients who are into digital assets, but also have, you know, investments in dollars and, you know, a need for retirement planning outside of the digital asset space. So I think there’s a great fit for it, honestly. You talked about the crypto Maximalist, the Bitcoin Maxi’s, look, I own crypto myself, but what if it doesn’t go to a million bucks of Bitcoin? Or maybe it’s not that it goes to zero, but what if it just stays where it is? Don’t you also want to have some sort of hedge outside of crypto where you can continue to grow your net worth? And I think having that conversation with someone who’s not just going to poo poo crypto for being a Ponzi scheme is really important. And to have a rational conversation with someone knowledgeable is, you know, should be a priority for most folks out there, especially your clients.
Mark Eckerle:
Well, that’s the important part, right? Because it’s not to say crypto is going to zero, get out of crypto because you’re going to basically steer away a large demo for people that are interested in the space, right? Even if it’s just from a, I want to throw 1%, whatever it may be, just a small portion, right? Just want to get some exposure. So you go to have some kind of open mind when it comes to digital assets. But conversely, right, to your point, right, what if there’s always the what if scenario, right? Especially when you’re thinking of retirement planning and future generations and what your wealth portfolio looks like. Well, what if Bitcoin doesn’t go to $500,000 or six figures, whatever the latest pundit has speculated out there that it’s gonna go to the moon at some point. Not to give any advice here, but what would you say is a target makeup, right? Because I know originally and myself included what I say to a lot of people, is the best way to understand crypto, buy 50 bucks worth play around with. Just see how the technology works. But from a long-term portfolio perspective, if I’m thinking about like retirement and what my savings looks like it’s not to say put one to 2% in, but is there a a sweet spot? I mean, everyone has their own risk appetite, is it?
Adam Armstrong:
No. There’s not. And there’s an old saying, concentrate to build wealth, diversify to keep it right. So yeah, you could concentrate your assets and you know, in a bull run, hopefully you sell some, but not a lot of people do that. And I think keeping it to five to 10%, you know, really 5% of any asset should be your max. Any position should not make up more than 5% of your net worth. And I’d say the same thing to someone who’s obsessed with gold. Just what if gold isn’t the future? You know, you’re gonna want to have some stocks and some other assets in there too. And it’s more just about building that financial plan and saying, look, here’s how I want to live my life. Here’s what I want to make, here’s what I have saved today. How do I get from A to Z?
Adam Armstrong:
And honestly, it’s the planning. It sounds a little basic and boring to some folks, but if you can buy into the plan of, okay, I know I’m going to, by saving this and spending this, I’m going to get from A to Z. It doesn’t matter what the market does or what Bitcoin does, right? You just know that if you’re saving and allocating your capital appropriately, you’re going to have a successful retirement down the road. And I think that’s what resonates really well with a lot of our clients and helps them ultimately be really content happy, successful, not stressed. So it’s, it’s great.
Mark Eckerle:
No, it’s a fantastic point because right, we work a lot with founders, right? Or whether they just closed around and they sold some of their stock or they sold some of their qualified small business stock, whatever it may be. So they come into a large amount of money, right? And if someone is heavily invested in digital assets, their immediate thought is, well, I’m gonna put this into digital assets. What’s happened in the market, especially over in 2022 in the, the crypto landscape, right? A lot of those yield earning products have had some unfortunate consequences for customers, right? So a lot of people were turning in, whether it’s just buying a stable coin and saying, Hey, I’m gonna go earn eight to 9% cause I’m only getting 0.0001% for my cash that’s sitting at a bank account. Well, let me flip that and earn some high yield on that would be the thought process from someone in the digital asset space that just came into a ton of money. So I think approaching someone like yourself, right? And understanding how to diversify your portfolio into not necessarily cash based yielding products, but like you said, treasury, the yield pro, US treasuries and other stocks or methodologies, ETFs, whatever it may be, might not be a, I think it comes back to education, right? They just might not be aware. So I think having that conversation is critical, like you mentioned.
Adam Armstrong:
Well, you know, just to, maybe we can close on a little story here to give you an example. But in the Gold Rush in 1849, do you know who you know, was it the miners or whoever who made the most money? Do you know who made the most money in the Gold Rush in 1849?
Mark Eckerle:
I’m gonna say it was first movers.
Adam Armstrong:
It wasn’t. It was, now they’re a jean company, Levi Strauss, okay. Levi’s. One of the brothers went out there and they made blankets and clothes and things out there for the miners. And so there was this sort of picks and shovels terminology and approach to investing back then that I think you can apply today. And look, if crypto’s gonna take off and, you know, be the future, then yes, you should own some Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies and digital assets. But what will also do really well are the chip companies, the semiconductor producers, right? There’s, there’s real businesses that will also benefit. And so you can invest in traditional stock markets and still capitalize and profit just as you can in digital assets. And I think again, having someone who’s knowledgeable about both industries is going to be paramount for those folks that care about it and are passionate about it. You should work with someone who is too.
Mark Eckerle:
Awesome. I think that’s a great button on today’s episode. Where can listeners go to find out more about Withum Wealth?
Adam Armstrong:
Yeah, they can go to withumwealth.com. We’ve got our website there, full team of advisors. Most of us are located in the New York, New Jersey area. We have now reach across, out to the West coast, down to Florida and myself up in the Boston area and expanding all the time. So feel free to reach out. They can find my contact information there on the website as well – withumwealth.com.
Mark Eckerle:
Awesome. Adam, thank you so much for joining us on today’s episode. That’s all we got for Cryptonomix today.
Adam Armstrong:
It was a lot of fun. Mark, thanks so much. Thank
Mark Eckerle:
Thank you. All views expressed in this podcast by Mark Eckerle or his guests are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinion of with them. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
