Hyperinflation Horror: Lessons from Macedonia, Solutions in Bitcoin
Investment Portfolio Update - March 2024
(Listen to audio version of me reading👆)
I fought the “Crypto Bros” and the bitcoin evangelists for a few years...
That cost me tens of millions of dollars in Fiat.
More importantly, it cost me my families wealth, the ability to be spied on, and have my wealth confiscated.
Fortunately one of those things didn’t happen.
Do you think that a corrupt government, no matter who is in charge, will be stopped at anything moving forward as the system continues to collapse?
One of my good friends that I work with now at Bitcoin Trading Cards has a story from growing up in Macedonia in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. The Berlin wall had just fallen and communism was defeated. They experienced a hyper-inflation there with 62% inflation each day. He said his parents would run to the Black market once they receive their paycheck and the value would be slipping through their hands as they carried it, like sand. They would exchange it for German Deutschmarks, which was the most reliable thing they had available in the black market.
Then one day he said his family all got together, and everyone was freaking out, but no one had died. What was going on he thought to himself? At around 10 years old, he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. He found out years later that the bank where his grandparents had put their entire life savings had taken all of their wealth.
A “bail-in.”
A “trusted” third-party like pensions, endowments, insurance companies, brokerage accounts or banks or credit unions are all relying on you believing that they will be there in a year or in 50 years when you need them.
Do you know that’s a guaranteed certainty? Heck they don’t even know if that’s guaranteed.
All you have to do is watch this FDIC video where they literally talk about taking the depositors wealth and banks collapsing. This is here in America in just the last 18 months.
I know this ruffles a lot of feathers and people get scared, and it’s very triggering. I went through the same process over the last 15 years as I read story after story of people in similar situations.
The greatest threat we have in front of us is apathy and indifference. This that can’t happen here in America. Like we are somehow different. Like we are above all these other people around the world.
Unfortunately, these things are happening here in America, banks are collapsing, they have collapsed and more are going to collapse, and we are no different than other human beings around the world.
I have seen this story for 20 years of my life playing out and have continued to prepare as much as I possibly can, and spread the word of my studies and my experiences. I know most will not follow them, we all must go our own ways and make our own decisions. Ducks fly together and community is the number one aspect of survival situations.
Here is my allocation last few months:
Bitcoin (NOT “crypto”)
Bitcoin continues to eat up the entire portfolio and over four year tranches. This will continue to happen as we are just starting to hit the bull-run phase of the Bitcoin four year cycle before the halving. The last two years were the bear market and I took a lot of flak from people which is good to check yourself.
My mission isn’t in making Fiat gains, maybe sometimes it’s too idealistic, however, my belief is in building a completely new future built upon a true monetary foundation of rock.
There will only be 21 million bitcoin EVER and there are 42 million millionaires in the world. They all have to fight over that small amount with all their worthless fiat dollars….
Bitcoin has network effects and the Log chart helped me realized why bitcoin continues to go up and to the right over time. Fundamentals like wallet creation, coins in long term storage, and hash rate all keep getting stronger in each market.
We have about ~61% in bitcoin.
**I expect bitcoin to become majority of my portfolio again in the next few years as fiat decreases in value.**
Real estate (positive cash flowing rental real estate)
Another one of our tenants just moved out and there are some fixes we need to make at the property. They took pretty good care of the property overall but even when you have good tenants issues still arise.
Real estate is a full-time management game hence why I believe having a pure money you can save in to get ahead is MUCH easier for the average person.
I needed 10 years in real estate in order to have the experience and knowledge to manage properties, buy correctly, and raise money, etc..
We have about ~14% in rental real estate.
**Remember that the dollar is debt. Real estate like bonds over last 40 years has become more expensive and produces less yield if you don’t buy properly.**
Commodities (gold, silver, oil wells, uranium, copper, wheat, corn, etc..)
I think that silver is going to do very well in the coming years because of the green revolution. Whenever it comes it will do well to have silver or gold.
Personally I am not buying anymore.
The ounces I do have will stay in case of crisis but I could even offload some to buy the faster horse, bitcoin. This asset class is manipulated a ton by the big banks, central banks, and commercial traders and there is no way to audit them.
We have about ~11% in commodities and physical gold/silver.
Paper (stocks/bonds/IRA/etc.)
My paper position has gone up 2-3x just in the past month because we hold a few of the bitcoin ETFs. The small IRA my wife had has really started to increase because bitcoin is going up. (In dollar terms).
This isn’t real bitcoin though, its bought buy the custodian but you don’t get to hold the keys. So it is counted as paper asset as far as we are concerned.
This could get taken by the government at some point just like any other 3rd party brokerage account etc.. I still don’t hold much of this asset class because I don’t trust other institutions right now. Thats not the chapter of the book we are in right now. I think someday we will get back to that but when there is more trust and stability in society.
Reminder here of the 3 bitcoin spot ETFs we invested in.
I am adhering to the "invest in what you know" principle and have deliberately not touched this at all as you have seen in recent quarters.
We have about ~2% in paper.
***Special tip: watch the credit market (bonds) especially the 10 year treasury, to see where the markets are going to go. That tells us where the stock and rest of markets will go.
Cash/Businesses
We have a dwindling pile of cash that we keep using to buy chunks of bitcoin with each week as our normal savings.
I always want to trade my finite time and energy for a finite asset.
Hence why bitcoin is the only equal or to a lesser extent silver and gold. Those are true savings, not dollars that are actually debt instruments from the Federal Reserve.
We also might still use some cash to invest in Bitcoin Trading Cards as well, we have been head down grinding away there the past 4 weeks.
Cash on hand is also good in case our long term view of inflation is wrong. If we experience massive deflation, and the dollar increasing in strength (DXY), then we will be able to use the dry powder (cash) to buy many more assets as well.
We have about ~12% in cash.
Remember
I have seen the perils of a Fiat debt-based foundation built on sand. I will do everything in my power to see the world built in a way that provides fairness, justice, property rights, liberty, and equity for all people. This is where the right and the left come together.
You cannot have capitalism built upon a Fiat debt-based currency. It devolves into socialism and then communism every single time without exception. We are living that nightmare currently. As for me, I am buckling myself in and strapping up for the fight ahead. It will not be easy and I do not know if I will make it. But it’s only fight worth having.
I know some may think that I have really lost it and “"drank the kool-aid,” however I have always been very conservative in my approach my entire life. When your education goes up on anything you tend to allocate more to it.
However when you believe something will become the new monetary system in the future and all the tech and trends point to it, there are certain times when people get to invest in things before it becomes mainstream. Think about Malibu or Miami real estate here in America when people were coming over in the 1600’s and 1700’s. Think about oil or railroads in the late 1800’s.
Many of us didn’t have that chance to win in those classes, but we do now. We are in front of the new monetary and tech/computer revolution. It will not be evenly distributed just like those other eras weren’t.
As Robert Kiyosaki, just recently realized that it’s Bitcoin that makes you change as a person. It’s not about more Fiat gains and trying to acquire more US trash tokens a.k.a. dollar bills. It’s about a completely new monetary system.
“Politics is downstream from culture,” as Andrew Breitbart noted and BJ Dichter always reminds me. If we change the hearts of and men and educate people on truth then I have faith that governments will reflect that transformation.
And if they don’t, government will be defunded by the new emergent monetary system, and will cease to exist.
Stay strong,
Brandon
I am always a student. I am no expert. Freedom advice, not financial advice.
Afterword
My newsletter is based off of 20+ years of historical, political, and monetary study plus my experiences in investing.
I spent the first 10 years studying politics and history.
The last 10 years I have studied monetary, fiscal history and policy, along with investing through what I call our “family office.”
In that time I have 15’xed our net worth through contrarian views and watching what people do, not what they say.
I believe you must know the financial and money games for ANY of the political side to make any sense.
If you like freedom and can’t stand politics and bridges to nowhere, racial polarization, division, hate, looting, and all the moral decay in society than you might just be a bitcoiner.
To fix all these problems we have a solution where you cannot be racketeered by governments anymore through inflation.
“Bitcoin fixes this.”
You don’t need a lot, just a couple percent is a vote for freedom and could change the world forever.
Study bitcoin. Invest in what you know.
I ONLY want to trade my finite time for finite assets, NOT trade my finite time for infinite pieces of paper/digits on a computer.
MAKE A FAIR TRADE FOR YOURSELF.