YouSaid · the spoken record

Tad Smith

lines on the record: 52
first: 2024-12-04
most recent: 2024-12-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And that question is a thousand times a day forever. And by the way, I'm chairman of the board of the Fine Art Group now, which is the largest art advisory and merchant bank. When I say merchant bank, we also do art lending in the world. It's based in London. So I still get the question. And you know what? Art can be a very good investment, in my opinion, but honestly, you should buy art that you love. It's really that simple. And by the way, then it's an expensive piece. Maybe get a little help to make sure that you're not getting fleeced. But if you buy something you love, you'll always love it. And by the way, and you'll become a part of the story of it, and the story will become part of you. And that's really what you're buying.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really simple, embarrassingly. So I don't know how many times I've been asked, is art a good investment? I really don't. I mean.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So I don't know, we're on for a wild ride, and I think it's going to be really interesting. I will say, I don't think his recent... CNBC appearance was as clear as he has been. He is world class at communicating, and that to me was not, I didn't really follow the story particularly well in that interview for what it's worth.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The value proposition. Now, admittedly, the story about micro strategy is vastly more evolved than it was even three months ago. Bernie's call was a work of art in terms of story. And I'm saying that with admiration, I'm not diminishing what he did. But the story, and it's actually a story he wandered into. Is incredibly powerful and it has a memetic quality set aside the sort of get rich thing. It makes sense, right? How do you unlock a multi-trillion dollar multi-100 trillion dollar debt market and give it access to Bitcoin in a world where the regulatory environment hasn't quite caught up and there are lots of countries where you can't spend on the convertibles have a unique quality? All these things are positive.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See where it takes me. For someone who has an interest in it, well, let me put this, in my own personal opinion, I would feel really badly if I didn't have a call option or some position in it. But you're right. It's for, I don't want to miss out the speculative firmer, it's different than it was a year and a half ago”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is good. Now, I have to tell you at 380 from my portfolio, I kind of like the stock again. I kind of like it again. Now, I wouldn't put as much as I had sort of in January a year ago when you gave me a real vision about where it could go. But I think it's more interesting than it was at 500. And I'm not knocking the stock. I'm not knocking anything about it. I'm just saying the stock is mimetic. Above a nav, when you start getting navs, two and a half, three, three and a half, 3.8, 4, anybody can just weigh in and say what it is, which means the value of that asset to me becomes more volatile than I'm willing to pay for And that's where it is to me today.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly what you're saying, which is if we're in a world of price discovery, people can disagree on what the value of something is, particularly when it's well above MNAB. Now, we can make arguments about it, but really you and I are debating a story or anyone who's short is debating a story with us if we're long. In that environment, things can get volatile and the prices can plunge or soar and they can stay where they are for long periods of time or plunge for long periods of time. And that's what's so powerful about taking profit. I did buy a call option to protect me if it soared back 3600. Then when a week before last, I think it was when it started going $75 per day. I took the call options off and I think we got out at like 535 and now we're 380 or something. And by the way, this is not anything other than luck, which is the discipline of taking profits when things get a little nutty.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now I am privileged to have as a partner in our investment firm Dan Tapiero, who has been for years a very, very astute observer and a participant in the markets. And I asked his opinion about two weeks ago, and he said, you know, Tad, I would take a little profit if I were you. And when Dan says something like, you know, and he wasn't giving financial advice, I'm like, certainly give it to me. I take it. In fact, I'm an investor in the fund, so I rely on his investment advice. But I took it. And so what I did several weeks ago was collar the stock. And interestingly, that gave me a lot. And then also on the high end of the collar, but the collar was approximately 300, $600 just to give you real math. And then bought call options on the 600 because I was at the time thinking this thing could go far higher. It's so easy, right? Again, it's a story. I buy into the story of going up into the right. But one of the things that concerned me about it is...”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let me tell you what I have been doing. And on March 5th, sorry, November 5th, I remember because it was Election Day, I appeared in another context and someone asked me about this, and I said, I like the stock. And importantly, the stock was in the 200s at the time.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was so powerful, and that's why I think I said to you at some point how much I appreciate your wisdom in that, because it set in motion this whole other series of things. That really created a lot of value for me and my family over. Had a short period of time, and I'm eminently appreciative”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I became interested in micro strategy sometimes. The summer of last year. So I bought a moderate position and I don't remember what it was. And of course it went up a year ago. It had a nice rally. And then in January I'm thinking, hmm, how do I feel about this with the new ETS coming out if it's basically just an ETF? And it was actually you, by the way. And I don't remember where, I'm going to find out where it is. I'm going to send it to you. You made this incredibly thoughtful, eloquent description of where micro strategy could be going and why it would create value and why the ETS were not a good model. And it's because of you, I didn't sell.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, you appeared in January of this calendar year, and I should have dug it out before our chat. I'm so sorry, Kreston. And there was a moment. Sorry, quick digression.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You go deep on this. Guess what? It's profound for anyone who thinks about money, value, investments Because it's here now. It's not something that we can defer into the future. It's coming now. So 100%.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the way, what does it even mean? Let's talk about money management. What does money management mean in the 2030s? You know, Raoul Powell talks about this, and he's not wrong. I mean, when he says it, he almost apologizes for talking about it because it sounds so completely crazy. But let's just step back. I mean, what does it mean to be managing money in the 2030s when the machines do it? I guess.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is my purpose? And I don't know the answer to that question, but I'll tell you one thing. I'm optimistic. I think it means we're going to be freed up to think about what it really means to be human beings. And that's really powerful.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even creative ones, as we were talking about earlier. And what that means is how you think about building a life of a house ownership as strange and controversial as is going to be when I finish the sentence is less important to me for my kids than how they think about a life of purpose. What does it mean? Because think about it. Certainly in my generation, all of us were preachers of the late industrial era. We got our education, we got all of our life choices. Not all of our life, our professional life choices were framed around how do I earn a living, how do I have the ability, the blessing, if you will, to be able to pay $6 million for a banana and eat it, all of that. But that isn't going to be the situation with the generations behind us. They have a different question, which is, oh my gosh, I can't even make a piece of art that is better than a machine does.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's looking better and better by the minute. I'm telling you, it looks good, which is, that's a point. The second thing for the vast majority of that century, machines will do better tasks better than you do.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. And I agree with you. I think it's very difficult to come up with advice. But I will tell you what I told my 25-year-old son about that. And it's not necessarily financial advice, but what it was was a little bit of life advice, which touches financial advice, which is those, you too, by the way, Preston, because you're, I think, considerably younger than I am, one of the things to think about is the probability that you live a very, very long time. And I'm talking about a century. and healthy century, not an unhealthy century, is really high. Really hot, and by the way, every day it's looking better”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Accelerating Bitcoin in particular. You say that's pretty exciting. Now, admittedly, we've set aside the volatility. We can talk about that too. La Cerie de Hulu original furriers Arives, Avoc Amy Rossum, Furriers Suil Agent du FBI, Alice Black, a la Porti, Mysterious, Ecalculatris, Mesa Meus Colour Visome, La Frontier Lobien Elominque Premier's Episode de la Serie Furius, Sur Disneplus”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for those starting out who want a home and they say, what do I do? I mean, this is not financial advice, but the observation, I'll say the best way to look at its history. And if you go back, and I'm going to get the numbers approximately correct because they came around on Twitter, I think, from Pomp or somebody, he said that the median house price in, I think it was 2016 was 666 Bitcoin. And when he said it again, more recently it was $6. Now it's actually lower because that was before the most recent pump. So the question is, wow, if we had simply, sorry, in rehearsed six initially 660's recently you look at it and you say, no, I was right. 666 initially and six recently. You look at that and you say, oh my gosh, if you just invest in an asset or you just put away a little bit of any sort of asset that's growing 50% a year, 43% a year, whatever the current growth rate is, you will catch the home. Maybe you will catch up. You will be able to afford one. Now, again, not financial advice, but it shows when you look at the way these assets are”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Depending on what your net worth is. If you own your own home, then you can do whatever you want to it. But that to me is a lifestyle expense”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, the way we solve that, right, is we have the government give us a subsidy on our mortgage debt, and so we can have a long-term fixed rate at, I don't know, whatever it happens to be if you've been in it a while, maybe you're as lucky as 300 basis points, if you've been in it more recently at 700 basis points than everywhere in between. So the way that we have managed to deal and outrun the money prayer in terms of value is that we lever up. Now, I'm not sure whether that is good for society or not. It's not clear to me, but I'll tell you one thing. Everything else being equal by which I mean if we're talking about unlevered versus unlevered, I would go with Bitcoin any day of the week.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the way, interestingly, the bellwether for me is my wife, who cares obviously about family finances, and she doesn't want to buy any more property. She's like, absolutely not. Let's put it in Bitcoin. Let's put it into something else that's equivalent to Bitcoin, Bitcoin or proxy or something. And it's a complete non-starter for her. And again, this is going to accelerate. I alluded to several minutes ago there are ways in a fiat world we compensate for the fact that real estate or other things don't meet the hurdle rate and we should talk about leverage briefly. You can imagine when I'm talking about comparing real estate to a Bitcoin investment, I'm talking about two unleavered investments.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both of us agree that we wouldn't put any more money into real estate. Could put in a Bitcoin. In other words, even real estate in Florida is beginning to get eroded by that conceptually. And so I don't see that stopping, Preston. I see that beginning to accelerate. And by the way, we're not Gen Z, we're not millennials, you're talking about call it a boomer at a Gen X that is right on the cusp of boomer. I'm close enough to boomer to know it when I see it. So, by the way, if it's happening here, it's going to happen everywhere and it's inevitable. And my guess is it accelerates.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm sitting next to this nice guy on the plane, and we were talking about, you know, it's really fun to live in Florida and beautiful night, it's great, landed. And I said, you know, insist you live here. I said, yeah, how often do you get to North Carolina? He says, he said, he goes quarterly. And I said, oh, are you going to board? He says, no, he's an executive coach. And then somehow we got into real estate because you can't talk about Florida without talking about real estate, right? And he asked me, oh, do you remember? I said, yeah, do you live anywhere else? Which is code for you also a New Yorker? And I said, well, no, the only home I own is actually here in Florida. And he says, oh, that's interesting. Me too. And I said, well, why? He says, well, because, you know, I just think it's, I just only want one home. And I said, well, he says, what do you do? I said, well, actually invest in tech. He says, oh, really? I said, yeah. And I also invest in Bitcoin and crypto. He says, really? I do too. The guy is older than I am. I'm sort of a first year of the gen X. He's probably a boomer sort of a few years older than I am. And we talked about it. Guess what?”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Warhol, an icon of value in the world of art. Okay, so that's story one. So already you can see that art, if I'm not alone and I can't be alone, if I'm not alone, artcoin is beginning to encroach even on things like art as a store of value. Second point, I'm literally coming back from, I think North Carolina last night late.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Decided I wanted to buy a little painting to go right here behind me. And I had one in mind, and it was a cute little warhall toy robot, sort of techie, but old school and really great. You notice it's not there yet. It's actually on the way. But what I said to my guy who was buying it for me, I said, you know what? I'll put a deposit down now, but I really don't want to pay for a few months. And he says, why? And I said, I want to pay for a few months because I'm feeling really good about Bitcoin and really good about some other assets I have between July of this calendar year and now. So I paid a couple of weeks ago. And lo and behold, the value of the thing, which hadn't arrived yet, the value of the thing has gone way down relative to my currency, right? Which was Bitcoin as an example. And so what does that mean? What that means is Warhol is worth less than Bitcoin terms to me in the space of three or four or five months.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is truly finite. It is just done. So you're not going to win. Nothing else is going to win. No other asset's going to win on scarcity. In terms of desire, well, okay, maybe a single da Vinci, but not for long. We'll come to that in a minute. And then the second question, and this is the hard part for people to get comfortable with, people talk about volatility as the issue. I think volatility is an issue that sort of amplifies the fear. But the real hard part is the desirability. And for that, The world of Bitcoin calls it adoption, which to me is the proxy for desirability. So at some point, I've bought into the thesis of scarcity and I've bought into this thesis now of desirability as we approach literally a trillions of dollars of market cap. And so those two things, boxes are checked. And so now my behavior is beginning to change, which goes directly to your question. I'll give you two quick anecdotes. Story number one, in June.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I love this question. So let's go back to the point I was making earlier about the thing that creates value and sort of almost the honeycomb for beans is things that are both scarce and desirable. Okay, with that as a fundamental way to think about it, you've talked many times that there is literally nothing on earth that is both digital, frankly even analog anymore, and more scarce than Bitcoin.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do agree with it, but I have a premise that maybe you share, which is that a truly great inspiration, creative inspiration in this example, takes time. Interestingly, the materials some art takes centuries. Look at Notre Dame, for example, takes centuries, right? And literally generations work on it. Pyramids take long, long periods of time. But some great art really doesn't take that long what it is is it was just an inspiration that was, wow, I never saw it that way before. Oh my gosh. And the story is so memetic and powerful that it's just irresistible in some way. And then, of course, we've set aside already the point I think you made earlier, which is very important, which is there's just social cred in owning something. So social grid piece, we both agree on that. Let's set that aside. It's less interesting than the memetic quality about why art is attractive other than social.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In other words, the very brain that you and I are lucky enough to have that's creative and creates things, there is a machine or non-biological version of that brain. And for us to believe either A, it can't create things or B doesn't create art, it's just wrong. We have a biological substrate that has a non-biological substrate. They both are modeled after exactly the same set of processes, the same set of signals, all of those things. Surprise, surprise humans have no exclusive monopoly over art and I believe we won't even have a significant portion of it except as an oddity like the banana or the Mona Lisa or the Da Vinci or something like that. Obviously, collectible stuff will, the fact that, by the way, interestingly, how weird, right? We were talking about stories or how weird that in 2034, you and I buy a piece of art. And the story that we cherish about it is it was”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're right, but I think it's also important to see that the AI, the large language models and the neural networks behind them are modeled and improved upon. They're both modeled after and improvements on our own”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are in the world where the artist has a partner and the partner is a machine and the machine is bringing more out of the artist than the artist is bringing more out of the machine. So the artists are in effect both the machine and the person. And so art, which is an endeavor of our species, I would say is no longer an exclusive endeavor of our species. And moreover, I would say as we go forward, I'm not even sure we'll be the best artist. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. That's pretty direct.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in general, Christie's hasn't sort of, apparently the panel that I spoke on is off the record, so they won't release it, which is fine. I respect that. But I will say some things that I said on there. One is I predicted that within 10 years, nearly all art will be created by machines. Yeah, pause for a minute, right? Because isn't our fundamental premise that when AI replaces all of our jobs, we're all going to be doing art? Well, interestingly,”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You realize that you're going to run out of time. Now, maybe you can make the best investment in the world and work on your health and all those good things, but you are going to run out of time. So how do you transcend time? Well, you can build a pyramid, build a skyscraper, you can do a lot of different things. But one is how do you create a story or how do you pick by a story and weave yourself into a story that transcends, that transcends your own mortality. This is not a new thing. This is a timeless thing. And it's part of us. And there you go.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do it because the story is irresistible. I mean, in other words, the story, if I stretch to buy a painting or stretched to buy a banana, whatever it is, the story becomes part of me. And more importantly, I become part of the story. So you look at it and I become, as long as the banana is in existence, as long as the Da Vinci is in existence, the Salvador Mundi, as long as any of these famous things that are in existence, I have become a part of that story forever.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I want to add one other thing, which is they not only do it for the utility reason that you said, which is it enhances the value.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“that debate we can have that debate but if you just step back and you look at it you see ah that is how wealth is being accumulated and guess what if you own those assets and you just bought them cheaper and you held them you didn't have to do anything You had to do nothing. And you get really, really, really rich. And that, by the way, and if you didn't, if you didn't have the money to do it or you're selling your labor, you do any of these other things, you don't get rich unless you get really lucky.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that is why you see massive accumulations of wealth in highly concentrated areas where it's defined both desirability and scarcity. And interestingly, if you don't have that, then we can talk about how people have solved for that and where you don't have either scarceness or scarcity or desirability. It's generally you lever up. But let's set that aside. In the unlevered world, it's really those things. And that's it. And the secret to just observing, right, the secret to long-term wealth creation in a world where the money printer runs at a regular pace, we can debate whether it's 6.6 or 8.95 or”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“government for lack of better ways to say it creates significant amounts of liquidity in the system. Excess liquidity in the economy is like bees to the honeycomb on scarce and desirable assets. And that is such a powerful thing to see immediately. It sounds obvious. We talk often about some of a clinical way, people that own assets do well, people that are renting out their labor in exchange for earnings or something like that, or sell bananas on the street corner where the case might be. They don't do as well. If you looked at just the money printer, if you looked at just liquidity and the powerful effect it has on not just assets per se, it's not all assets. By the way, not all assets go up when the mic printer is running. It's the scarce and the desirable ones that go up.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thoughts on the fiat. Yeah, so it starts with a lay person's perspective, and I count myself as a layperson in this. We can start with a simple question. Why does art in a house in Aspen and Palm Beach and I don't know, Hillsborough or Palo Alto or East Hampton or Southampton, why do they cost so much? It's an interesting question. Why is it that Picasso can charge $20 million for a painting and something that looks exactly like it can be $5? Why is it that a necklace owned by Maria Antoinette or Josephine Bonaparte can be millions of dollars and the same necklace can be mere thousands of dollars? Why is it that MegaCap tech stocks can have sustainable for over a long period of time they can have very high multiples? And then, by the way, it's not far removed from inequality. And I step back and I say, well, you know what? One of the powerful things that we see is that when the”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So many threats to pull on that. That's really powerful. We go down the thread about fiat. We go down the thread about how long art can sustain value in a world where you do not have fifiats at a base system. And then we could also go down the thread, which is maybe interesting also at some point later on. Would you be willing to pay for art that's created by a machine and not a person? There's something inherently human that is required for you as part of the story for art. Because I literally sat on a conference. I was at a panel in Christie's in Hong Kong three or four weeks ago with a poet. And she creates art with a machine. And she called it not a tool, but a collaborator or a co-collaborator. So any one of the threads we could go down all three, where would you like to go?”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm not surprised. I'm old enough to remember what the real Jamie Diamond talks about Pat Rocks. I'm old enough to remember real Pat Rocks. And they did never explode in value, but we know the stories of tulip bulbs and how those exploded in value and various other things. or frankly many cryptocurrencies or NFTs and earlier incarnations. And they have a story. There's a certain, oh my gosh, I'm in, I'm on the inside. I'm an insider. The money is moving. I'm seeing my value go up and up and up. And that's a powerful, powerful reinforcing story.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no. I have no idea. You're right on track. One of the most powerful aspects of any story and one of the most powerful stories we have is get rich quick. Meaning the notion that you can win a lottery ticket, the notion that tomorrow you can be free of all your financial burdens, the notion that tomorrow you can be a billionaire is a fundamental story. And by the way, and it is almost like rocket fuel for other kinds of stories around it.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so then there's a story about all these other things that I know you talk a lot about. There's a story about Bitcoin. There's a story about micro-strategy. There's a story about crypto. There's a story about all these different things. And the story is what, in my mind, drives outsized value. Utility is a fundamental feature of many of these things. But frankly, for a lot of the value, it's not having to do with utility. It has to do with the story aspect.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can have a And admittedly, it has all the fame advantages of owning it. You tell your friends, what I just put my wife in, that was once worn by Marie Antoinette. By the way, I'm not sure that's a compliment. And nonetheless, you step back and you say, okay, well, the piece of the story, and then you realize, wait, whether it is an NFT, an ordinal art, or frankly the petabone behind me, the reason we buy things, the reason we pay more than the cost of materials is often because there's a story attached to them. It gives us a story. And by the way, it can be the one that you said, which is it accrues to our social. Status. Often it's just the fact of the story creates value.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly And now let's step back from the story, which I think you've nailed on fame. And we're going to set aside the banana. You have two almost identical necklaces, and one is magnificent, let's say, exactly the same carrots, exactly the same gems, exactly the same era. What just happens to be have been worn by Marie Antoinette. So the piece”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things they are. What you have to understand is it goes back to things have value because we say they do. And the fundamental insight I had that was not immediately intuitive, I don't think it is intuitive to me, I thought the US dollar had value because you have to pay your taxes in it. Yes, check. It is a highly, highly valuable form of currency, meaning a utility of the dollar is phenomenal. It's really a great instrument. And yet, if we all held hands together tomorrow and we said, you know, Preston, the dollar isn't worth anything. Guess what? The dollar crashes. And that's a really, again, an insight, which means there's no difference between that and looking at a Picasso and saying, well, it's just paint in canvas. So why should it cost $20 million? Or the most extreme example that you started with, which is a banana that is 26 cents in Walmart and $6.2 million in Sotheby's and you don't even get the banana.”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think about it, we as a species, we tell stories. I mean, there's objective reality. There's a wonderful book out currently, Herrari's Nexus that goes into this. Objective reality is a mountain. There's a window behind me. There's a rock. My dog is playing in the yard. Then there's subjective reality, which is what I think is going on, but also there's a reality between you and me, Preston, and a reality among all the people that listen to your show and also in the world, which is called what he calls an almost an intersubjective reality, which is a storytelling reality. And our species is really highly evolved to tell stories. And the stories create movements. They create religions. They create manias. They create all these things. And guess what else? They create money and they create value and they create a stock market. And so when you look around why things have value and what”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were a lot of people with a lot of money lining up to bid from Ritzi Catalan's media. It's banana. And it's such an interesting moment of the times, right? Because it goes to what is value, what is money, where does money come from? Where does it go to? Why do people, I mean, is it crazy that a banana, which costs 26 cents in Walmart, could go for 24 million times that in Sotheby's? From my perspective, there's so much to hesitate to say, unpeel, unwrap, if you will, in this that I think it really is a good place to go to because it goes to the question of value. Why do things have value? Why would a banana be worth $6 million in one context and 26 cents in another? Why would a dollar be worth something here and something else be there? Why would a piece of code have value? And that's really about, frankly, when you get to it, it's really about...”
2024-12-04 · We Study Billionaires · BTC211: Bitcoin vs Art and Real Estate w/ Tad Smith (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT