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Why Crisis is Actually Your Greatest Opportunity

Episode 70 · 22 April 2026 · 58 min

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Why Crisis Is Your Greatest Opportunity: Creative Destruction Examples from History

These creative destruction examples start with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when a city used devastation as permission to rebuild better. Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino follow the pattern through the 1973 oil embargo, airline deregulation and Bitcoin. They also lay out how to act before a crisis forces you to.

In this episode, Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino explore the powerful concept of "creative destruction" and why moments of devastation—from the Great Chicago Fire to global financial shifts—are often the exact catalysts needed to build a life of abundance. They discuss why crisis gives us "permission" to rebuild better than we ever thought possible and how most people miss the opportunity because they are frozen in fear.

Whether it's the 1973 oil embargo paving the way for fuel-efficient innovation or the rise of Bitcoin in response to the 2008 financial collapse, history shows that when old systems fail, superior solutions emerge for those ready to see them. This conversation dives deep into the Five F’s—specifically focusing on Finances and Fitness—as Randy and Anthony tackle the future of AI energy needs, the economics of space tourism, and the hidden cost of the NCAA transfer portal.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the speed of change or stuck in a personal "ash pile," this episode acts as a grounded guide to help you assess your premise, look change in the eye, and start building your own version of a world-class city.

Crisis as an Opportunity for Growth: From the Great Chicago Fire to Bitcoin Mining and Flare Gas

What you'll discover:

  • How Chicago rebuilt after the 1871 fire with steel-frame skyscrapers and wider streets
  • What the 1973 oil embargo taught Japanese automakers, and the fight over AI data centers and the grid
  • How Bitcoin miners use stranded energy and flare gas
  • Creative destruction explained, from nylon stockings to airline deregulation and Southwest
  • A pattern for any crisis: check your premises, get advice, and don't wait for perfect conditions
  • In the Abundance Briefing: the Bitcoin Lightning Network, space tourism, vertical farms and the NCAA transfer portal

Timestamps

  • [00:00] The Great Chicago Fire of 1871: how a city rebuilt itself better
  • [02:02] How to change before a crisis forces you to
  • [03:48] AI's energy demand and the race to build power
  • [05:05] The 1973 oil embargo and how Japanese automakers seized the moment
  • [06:31] Maine, data center bans and the fight over the grid
  • [09:17] Bitcoin miners, stranded energy and flare gas
  • [11:04] What is creative destruction? From nylon stockings to electricity
  • [14:44] Demystifying Money and the railroads
  • [15:57] Airline bankruptcies, deregulation and the free market
  • [17:19] Herb Kelleher, Southwest and building a culture of kindness
  • [19:09] Why do we resist change? Comfort, fear and grief
  • [23:23] The system that needs to be destroyed: money, banking and Bitcoin
  • [25:31] Government spending, debt and politicians' incentives
  • [28:02] A pattern for any crisis: "check your premises" and get advice
  • [30:52] The waiting trap: why perfect conditions never come
  • [32:40] Questions to ask in a crisis: what opportunity is hidden here?
  • [33:33] How government policy set back renewable energy
  • [34:28] Break — Sponsor: AG1
  • [35:21] Abundance Briefing — The Bitcoin Lightning Network
  • [41:17] A nine-day bank wire vs. a 10-minute Bitcoin transfer
  • [43:23] Shutdowns, sanctions and the case for censorship-resistant money
  • [44:03] Space tourism: who's driving the price down?
  • [46:56] Vertical farms: more food on a fraction of the land
  • [51:49] The NCAA transfer portal: a "bifurcation of abundance"
  • [57:44] Wrap-up

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino (Dr. John Oberg isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:14] opportunity out of crisis. And I want to go back to October 8th of 1871. Chicago was burning. There's, you know, if you think back then, all the buildings were wood and everything just the fire was spreading throughout the city and the whole city was on was a blaze. Uh 17,500 buildings were destroyed. 100,000 people, which was a third of Chicago back then. So, a third of the city was homeless. Businesses gone, livelihoods erased. Um I mean, Chicago was it was devastated, right? Well, a lot of cities, a lot of places, they'd retreat. They wouldn't know what to do. They'd rebuild, play it smaller. They're they're in the middle of crisis. Well, what did Chicago do? You probably guessed from the story. They did the opposite. Uh they saw opportunity, not tragedy. They invented fireproof construction techniques. Uh they pioneered steel frame skyscrapers. They created modern modern urban planning and they built wider streets, better infrastructure. They really used it as an opportunity to upgrade their city. um within 20 years of this complete you know crisis Chicago hosted the 1993 World's Fair uh amongst other things and they turned into a worldclass city instead of an ash pile. So really the crisis gave them permission to rebuild better than anyone thought possible. Um so you know and the the I think a lot of times we worry about the crisis it's going to create scarcity but a lot of times it it gives us permission to create abundance.

[01:53] So how do you create abundance in in in new ways and disruptive technology or businesses or health or whatever? I mean, without the urgency, I guess, would be a better question, right? Like, how do you do it? How do you do it before you're sick or before your company is on hard times or whatever it is? Well, I think that's a that's a that's a question about uh your desire and motivation to to have a to have a goal in the first place, a destination in the first place, right? If you know, I know so many people that are they're they're they're unplanned for the future. you know, they're they're in a job or they're they're in school and they don't really they don't really have a vision of where they where they want to go. And it doesn't have to be a precise and exact vision, but it has to be at least a couple of steps ahead of them. So, if if you're just kind of going along to get along, you know, that's you're just you're going to be average or or below average. On the other hand, if you're, you know, creative and you and you got a plan and you're motivated to try things, even if even if you try five things and four of them fail, um, you're going to be much better prepared to both avert crisis and deal with crisis as it as it comes to you. So yeah, I think it just comes down to, you know, I want to be something or someone and um not sure I'm not sure that that's, you know, going to be everybody. It it's going to be an 8020 — kind of deal.

[03:42] — Yeah. I I'm just thinking about like, okay, I I've I've been watching the energy and the grid a lot lately, right? because all of this talk about we're running out of energy and data centers and everything that AI needs and now it's it's pretty amazing how fast companies and states and nations are building electricity and energy data centers etc. But I'm just thinking there were people that were on this before. There's macro people that I would listen to and they were for at least a year, 18 months. These people have been talking about, hey, you need to put money into electricity into copper that you know or you know that's needed like all the things that are needed for the electrical grid. There were people that were ahead of this, right? Um, and there's other people that, you know, but I'm I'm thinking about somebody like Musk who is ahead on some of this, but even in his case, it was sort of crisis, right? Like he was developing technology to try and go to Mars and now some of that is being beneficial to building out power plants and data centers in the US.

[04:53] Some of the some of the things he was working on. Um, it leads me to think about something too, like some of this stuff's a little accidental. we go back you're this is before your to you were at Toyota I think but if we go back to the oil embargo which you probably remember better than I do I remember it briefly right and for for our young listeners uh in 1973 OPEC cut its oil supply and there were lines at gas stations you literally would have to go get in line I think at one point if I remember right there was even like different days depending on I don't remember if it was your name or your license plate number or It was odd or odd or even days. If your license plate ended in in a odd number, you went on certain days and an even number you went on other days. — Yeah. So, I mean the the gas price, you know, and gas prices went up, I think, 400%, there were lines. We didn't have enough. Um, well, Japan had companies like Honda and Nissan and Toyota that had been building these cars that were really gas efficient for years and there was really almost no market in America while Detroit was building, you know, cars that got very poor gas mileage.

[06:03] Well, that all of a sudden those Japanese cars, they were just, you know, they were kind of right place, right time. So sometimes it's just — being smart enough to take advantage of the opportunity. — You know, you have something and all of a sudden the market just plays right into your your wheelhouse. — Exactly. Conversely, you mentioned data centers and electricity. You know that 80% of the world who doesn't really see the future. Um we have people in high places. Maine just passed an ordinance or a law outlawing data centers, outlawing the expansion of the grid. So we have, you know, people like certain senators from cold weather states saying that we should uh block all turn off AI and block all data centers. You know, let's go back to the stone age. Okay, let's get rid of fire. You know, fire can burn people. So let's let's get rid of that. the wheel that the damn wheel. You put a wheel on a car, you can run somebody over, you know? It just it's it's insane that the they you can't look to solve the the issue that that data centers are causing. I mean there's no doubt they are there are they you know some you know municipalities have let the let the hyperscalers get away with a little bit too much tax re you know tax breaks and didn't really understand the impact on the grid and the price of electricity to everyday consumers. So okay let's deal with that. Let's not The answer isn't shut everything down. The answer is not do away with fire. It's how do we contain it? How do we deal with it? How do we make it better? How does it how do we that work towards an elegant solution that benefits everybody? And that's where good you know, people who are who are unafraid of change, who want a better future for everyone, including themselves, you can be a little bit selfish. Um there's nothing wrong with that. But instead of you know bomb us back to the stone age.

[08:22] whether it's Maine or I know Ohio is pushing back. I don't know. There's a bunch of places pushing back, right? The the free market is just going to move somewhere else and it might be they move here to Texas. We're building data centers like crazy in Texas. There's there's however many companies we talked about, you know, previously building data centers in space. Now they're talking about going to the moon, but the Middle East, which has, you know, generally cheap energy and lots of sunshine and whatever else, they're building data centers over there, like they'll just they'll just move somewhere else. And that the jobs, that economy, etc. Uh, you know, this it reminds me a lot of the Bitcoin network. When I first got into Bitcoin, over half of the mining was done in China. And in particular, it was it was mostly in northern China where they had all of this hydroelect electric power that just wasn't being used, right? They had all these rivers and there were very few people there, but they had huge power that was green, clean energy that was unused. Well, they started hooking Bitcoin mines up to use all this unused power and mining. Well, China made mining illegal. Guess what? They fled.

[09:31] Like like almost half the miners in China fled or over half. It's still like 25% of the world's hash rate even after it was illegal. But they lots of them came here to Texas. Texas became number one. Uh New York did the same thing. New York had some had a bunch of hydro power in northern New York that was being used that people had no use for and they just added too many regulations and they packed up and left. They'll do the same thing with the data centers. They'll just go somewhere else. It's just going to screw the people in the local communities. But somebody will take advantage of it. I mean, continuing with the Bitcoin thing, you know, the flare gas, if you drive around Texas and you go by these oil wells, you know, people that aren't from here or whatever, they'll inevitably go, "Why is there fire coming out the top of that?" And it's because they're pumping oil and the na they don't have a way to capture the natural gas and they burn off the natural gas. There is almost nothing worse for the environment than that. It is it is a hilacious thing. Well, they've started taking Bitcoin miners. They take the natural gas, they save it, they put it through a generator and they run Bitcoin miners. So, it's actually not just carbon neutral, it's carbon, you know, it it's sending us in the right direction. It's taking that really destructive stuff and, you know, cleaning up, burning it, using it. So, um I think that's a good example of, you know, we have this crisis. It's ruining the environment and people figured out, you know, how to make money with it. how to make money out of, you know, with the — So there, you know, there's there's a lot there's just there's a lot of examples. Let's — you mentioned creative destruction before the call. How does that how does that fit in here?

[11:13] Well, it's you [clears throat] know creative destruction is when a new technology arrives initially there's something gets destroyed but after something as something one thing is being destroyed something normally is being created go back to the horse and buggy the car you know you mentioned um you know World War II cryptography led to you know needing faster um the faster capability to read code. So that that begat the transistor, you know, and and on and on it goes. And so again, back to the the whole concept of, you know, the the definition of a crisis. Here we are with AI. Um, you know, oh my gosh, it's going to displace every single white collar worker and robots are going to run every factory and, you know, everyone's going to be out of a job and who's what are we going to do? And and it's silly because we've we've had creative destruction since the dawn of man, right? I mean, we went we went from stone tools to iron and um you know, on and on it goes. Uh the the story of the lites is one of the silliest stories that that really is misunderstood by people. In the 1800s, someone invented a um a machine that was able to produce nylon stockings um with a machine versus manually. And everyone thought, "Oh my god, the Leite the Leites raised heck about it." They actually raised heck because the quality wasn't the same, not because they were out of jobs. But what happened? uh nylons were produced cheaper and the masses were able to afford them. Whereas it used to be a luxury item only the upper upper income people could afford. Now suddenly everybody could afford it. And instead of losing their jobs, it created tens of thousands of jobs. And the technology was just the beginning of multiple technologies that were employed in manufacturing that brought the price of goods down. And Randy, in your book, you talk a lot about the fact that during the 1800s, the standard of living was increasing by the day because as technology was being introduced, goods and services, the cost of which was reduced, wages were going up. So people could afford the luxuries that up until then had only been available to the elite. And now the workingclass people were in the early 1900s were able to afford electricity, um, better clothing, then they got to Now they got transportation. So we built roads, they were able to travel. All of these things that scared people turned into amazing opportunities for the world. Literally the world. We would not have the interstate highway systems, the train networks, the aircraft that we have if it wasn't for innovation and technological change that initially created some form of disruption.

[14:40] — go ahead. — We talked about it before. We talked about it before how it's just you just shouldn't be afraid of things. Embrace — All right. We're gonna plug my book since you brought it up, Demestifying Money. You can find it at Uh but uh yeah, I mean the trains are a good example, right? So most people don't know this, but you know there was a huge bubble in creating these trains and they were laying track and they were building the engines and you know the the stations and all this stuff. Well, most of those companies went out of business. But guess what? The track was still there. The trains were still there. the the little towns that popped up along the way to service those trains and create stops were still there. The workers were still there. They just reorganized under a different company. Somebody if if you got 10 companies and eight of them are run poorly and they go out of business. That's not an efficient use of funds. The free market is unbelievable in its ability to pick winners and losers. Right? Politicians think they can, but the free market actually does it. And then the ones that are the most efficient, that offer the most value to the customer and the average person, they survive. But the track's still there. The same thing happened staying in transportation with airplanes. What was it like the 80s, I think, or I remember when I was a kid, airlines were going out of business right and left, but they're still there.

[16:08] The airports were still there, the gates were still there, the pilots, the planes, all of everything was there. or they just ended up, you know, a different company bought those planes. — Well, what happened was the up until, and I I'll get the dates wrong, so you can fact check them, but let's call it 1980. The airlines were heavily heavily regulated by the federal government. So, they regulated the routes, the gates, the price. Um and airlines some airlines were able to navigate that, some weren't. And then came deregulation, the free market. Imagine that. The the free market comes into play. And now capital chases opportunity, right? Capital chases efficiency. And so a tiny little company called Southwest Airlines decides, you know what we're going to do? We're going to fly really short routes. We're not going to assign seats. We're going to have free bags.

[17:13] We're going to be cheap. No frrills, no peanuts, nothing. And they took off. Herb Keller, read about him. Uh, and we're going to be nice. That was the other thing. Uh, that was one of the inspirations for me and the the the culture I wanted when I started my company was to be kind. Uh, Herb wanted to be nice. You wanted people to smile. You wanted people to look good. And this airline changed everything because every other airline that was used to, you know, the all the frills, all the highost operations and so forth. Um that would turn a plane every hour. Herb just figured out how to turn a plane every 20 minutes. Um all of those things changed because of one huge disruption. — I mean, it brought it it brought us the New York to Los Angeles. To this day, you can fly from New York to Los Angeles for 350 bucks. If you pick the right time of day and the right flight and you do it in advance, you you couldn't drive for 350 bucks. You couldn't take a train. You could walk for 350 bucks to Los Angeles, but you could fly there in five or six hours. So, it's just again another example of embracing change. You know, you can argue with change. I mean, gosh, I know so many people, some very, very close to me that when something is disrupted and something is changing, they just complain about it instead of figuring how do I leverage it?

[18:52] — you know, what do I what do I do? So, we know that this creative destruction is actually really good for the world, for humans, for the average person, for abundance. Yet, to your point, most people fear it, right? They're scared of it. Do you think it's change? Is it comfort? Is it why is there such an aversion to something that's so good for — I you know, I just I think it's that you use the word comfort. You know it it's ch change is disruptive physically. It can be can be disruptive physically, uh mentally, you know, um intellectually. It's it's over my head. I don't understand this change. AI is a little bit like that. It certainly was for me in the beginning. I couldn't it didn't it didn't make I couldn't get it my wrap my head around it and it it annoyed me to the point where I I said I got to listen to people talk about it. I got to go study it and now I actually go have to lift the weights. You know, I got to go lift this AI weight and try to build the AI muscle so that I can at least be conversant with it and to the extent I need it um I'm I'm able to use it. I happen to be I'm not in need right now of the highest level of what AI can do. I need it for pretty mundane task in comparison to what other people are using it for. Um would I like to have an agent doing some of my work for me? Sure. I'm not sure I'm ready to pay a couple thousand bucks a month for that agent, but you know, we'll see how that goes. But yeah, I think it's all those things that you know, you you can have a visceral reaction to change. You know, just think when when a friendship breaks up or you're in a personal other personal relationship and it's not going well, you know, it sends a shock through the body, through the mind, through your emotions. Um, you you end up in denial.

[20:59] the multiple stages of death is an example of of people having to get through a significant change. You know, when you lose someone, you have to go through the the various steps to to come to grips with it. Very very difficult to do. So I think that's where it is. what should be what should we be destroying now? — Like we're talking about this creative destruction. What what kind of needs to be destroyed um and the entrenched and this I think this is a good example of where people are avoiding change but we've we've we've got a bit of a society where people have entrenched views and have zero open-mindedness to listen to other people they just believe what they believe and they don't give other people a chance to at least talk about it [snorts] and and understand that, you know, maybe I'm not going to agree to change, but I can live in the same world with this person. You know, we're at a point now where certainly in our country and and Texas is a good example of it where people don't even want to live in the same world as you because they hold a different opinion. They don't want to work with you because they hold an opinion. They show disdain for you because they have a different opinion.

[22:26] Um it's hugely dangerous um as we've witnessed in history, right? You know, you can go back to the Civil War, you can look at World War II, you can look at, you know, a lot of different things in a in history where people who at least didn't just refuse to listen. Um, so yeah, I think that's that that needs to be destroyed. I'm not sure technology is going to do that. Um, but we'll see. Right. I I think there's a lot of things. It's uh you know I think some some of the energy systems and getting away from coal and some of the less efficient uh you know I think human drivers uh like I I just is you know I don't want to force anybody but moving that and just for safety for you know the flow on the road a lot of different things but you know the the thing I didn't really have an answer when I asked this question but the big thing to me that needs to be destroyed is the current monetary system the banking system. I mean, this is this is my fight, right? And it makes me think about Bitcoin was started specifically because of the crisis of the go global financial crisis. I mean, Satoshi was fed up with crappy fiat money that the government could print and was very clear that's where Bitcoin was coming from was this system that was stealing in particular from poor and the middle class and created something that, you know, took that as an opportunity to launch and create interest on a money that couldn't be printed, that no government could control, that nobody could close your bank account and all of those other things, right? I mean, it It's trying to destroy the banking system, right? Like people and people are resistant to it. Like we would rather pay a bank to have our money than us hold it ourselves in something that can't be counterfeited, can't be grown.

[24:29] Um I mean it's a superior money in almost every way. Yet 99% of the population just isn't there yet. And it's growing. It's growing faster than the internet at this phase. But um but there's definitely creative destruction going on there. uh that is going to disrupt banking at at some point in my — The only the only um I hope you're wrong, right? You know, I I I have Bitcoin as my back stop as well. Um, I I I hope that we can destroy this lack of self-reliance that we that we seem to have embraced across the globe. You know, free this, free that, free health care, free, you know, uh, come into uh the the country and you get benefits of of of coming here, you know, universal basic income. um that kind of thought process or or what you know what's the government going to do for me? Um we we uh if we don't start u spending within our means we're we're you going to be right there this it it can't go any other way. Um the the good news so on the upside, you know, the the incoming Fed chair is saying those exact things that we've we've you know the um our fiscal policy has to change and this this concept of 2% in inflation in 12 years still destroys 31% of the value of a dollar in in 12 years. So half a generation is going to lose 31% of the value of a dollar that's already been devalued, you know, tremendously. So, um, I think that's the existential crisis that, you know, the fact that it's in the hands of politicians does not give me a lot of hope. Um, — they're not they're not changing because they're not incentivized to change, right? Look, look at all the fraud stuff in this. What's this kid? Nick Shirley.

[26:44] — he's finding all he's just handing them all this stuff. I mean, California literally brought up a law to make it illegal to point out fraud by the media. — Like, you know, — there's a perfect example of not being willing to listen. — You know, not Gee, Guy, thanks a lot for helping us find this. Um, I saw Dr. Oz yesterday or Saturday. They they found 70 78 um hospice organizations that they shut down. — It was like $700 million. And he said not one of them called to ask us to turn the money back on. Now, if you were a legitimate business and you got caught up at a sweep, wouldn't you have your lawyer pick up the phone and say, "Hey, dudes, you know, I've got some sick and dying patients here that I need to take care of." — Not one of them did it. — And it was all uncovered by, you know, basic, you know, basic stuff that people knew was going on. They knew it was going on, but it was somehow feathering their nest, and they allowed it to continue. So, — let's um let's try and put a bow on this thing. Anthony, what um so if somebody's in a crisis, could be personal, health, relationship, whatever, right? What what's the pattern like what is let's let's kind of let's give people some kind of things to think about, look at, — in any of these.

[28:21] — Yeah. I I think it's important in one of Anne Ran's books, she wrote uh check your premise, you know, so you you you believe you're in a crisis or you're you see a crisis coming, check your premise really carefully to be sure that it's real and what is what is what what are the effects of it going to be on you you personally, professionally, intellectually and understand it. Don't be afraid of it. Look it in the eye. Now, what am I going to do? What can I do? What's immediate? You know, who do who should I reach out to to get advice and counsel? Uh never be insular about dealing with something, you know, get help um or get get advice. doesn't mean you have to follow it, but listen because someone someone or something um can give you some some guidance to affirm your your your position and your thoughts or to give you a new insight. But you really have got the first thing you have to do is assess it and then you take action.

[29:33] The action can be I'm not going to do anything about it. Don't need to. I'm fine. Cool. I'm not going to waste energy on this. I'm going to continue putting my resources elsewhere or you oh my god, I got to do something right now and it's got to be big or it's something in between. It's tweaks, tactical adjustments. It's, you know, just, you know, making a move to the left or move to the right, not politically, just, you know, from a perspective of whatever whatever the behavior change needs to be. Um it could be simple and recognize that you're probably not alone. — You know, you're not you and generally other than a personal crisis, uh you if it's macro, you're definitely not alone. There are other people having to deal with it as well. So — I think that's the advice I would give — I think that's all great. Um, you know, I also acknowledge that most people are going to resist change until crisis forces it, right? It's um, you know, bird in the hand is better than two in the bush and comfort and sometimes it's um, you know, sunk cost fallacy, but — but a [clears throat] lot of times the the crisis removes some of those handcuffs, right, and those fears and everything else. Um, and I think the trap though, even when people think about it, is I I watch people I think a lot of times they're waiting for perfect conditions or waiting to figure everything out, right? If we think about what you did during COVID, you didn't wait for it to be perfect. You didn't wait for there not to be any questions.

[31:09] You took the data, you act you you processed it, put it together, made a decision, and ran with it, right? You didn't you didn't wait for everything to be lined up just so I think that's — Yeah. And and I think getting back to the avoidance and being prepared. We were prepared in the sense that we you know we had a little bit of financial flexibility. We had really good people that could execute this thing. You know the additional business had to be executed on. So in in any in your the advice I'd give to anyone is do everything you can to avoid a crisis. You know keep your eyes on the road. you know, make the changes now, little changes now that improve your your existing environment and then when when something happens, you're going to be better prepared to respond to it. So, I don't like I don't really like this. Don't be fat, dumb, and happy. You know, just, you know, be be h be happy but not You know, always try to improve yourself. Be a lifelong learner, be a lifelong worker. Um, don't put your feet up on the desk. It's not worth it. Um, it's not fun either. So, I get, you know, advice from an old guy. That's what I would tell you.

[32:30] — So, I I'm a big believer that a lot of our quality of life is quality of our questions. So, I asked AI to give us um some questions to ask about this, and I think I think they're worth going over. So, what opportunity is hidden here is a great question. What's now possible that wasn't before? I think that's another great one. Uh, who who is frozen in fear that I can outmaneuver, which is a lot of what you did with Pella. Um, what dying system needs replacing? How fast can I process this information and reallocate resources, which you definitely mentioned earlier, right? Um, and you talked about building, you know, resilience, whether it's cash, skills, but, you know, I think I think being being adaptable is is another I'd add I'd also add to that who else is involved in this? And I I say that if it's if it's a purely uh private enterprise group that's involved, it's it's going to give you one set of answers. If the government is involved and you mentioned energy earlier, no one did more to destroy our movement towards renewable energy than the government by um renewable energy. Everyone said, "Well, they needed to be subsidized because they were more expensive." Well, it they needed to be incented to lower their cost so they wouldn't be more we wouldn't need incentives, right? you know, that's just so if the government's involved, you know, discount double check, man, because they're they're going to make make the job they could make your job harder. So, — it almost always has the opposite impact of whatever they're trying to accomplish is as — over and over.

[34:18] — History is replete with examples. — read Ry's book. He's got he's got a got a lot of good information there about — Wow. Another another plug. There we go. All right. Uh All right. Let's uh we're going to go to break and when we come back uh Anthony and I will still be here talking with the abundance briefing — here at Tales of Abundance. We know that fitness is just as important as money or milestones. It's one of our F5s for lots of other. Taking care of my body while I build my life is one of the more time consuming and difficult goals to chase. That's why we're partnering with AG1. It's a daily drinkable habit, less than a minute, that's formulated with 75 plus vitamins and nutrients and designed to support energy, digestion, and immune defense. It even has a few grams of protein uh that we're all chasing these days. And if you want to try it with our affiliate link, you'll also receive a free AG1 flavor sampler plus vitamin D3 plus K2 with your welcome kit when you first subscribe. $72 value. Go to shop.dream 3G1.com/tails.

[35:28] Uh, still here with Anthony and the abundance briefing. Anthony, we're going to start out. We we talked about Bitcoin in the first half of this a little bit, but the Bitcoin Lightning Network uh has hit a 100 million active users last month. So, let me ask you, you own Bitcoin, but do you are you even aware of what the Bitcoin Lightning Network is? I'm guessing no. I I have no my stuff is on one of the one of the major trade Bitcoin. I don't use it for buying anything. So, I have no idea what the hell the Lightning Network is. — That's an amazing start and we're going to work on getting you on self-custody so you don't have to count on you don't have to count on an outside bank to hold your your wealth. But, um but okay, the Lightning Network. So, one of the the things with Bitcoin when it came out is it was supposed to be peer-to-peer cash is what Satoshi wrote about in the white paper. I can send money to you, you can send money to me. We don't have to have Chase or Bank of America or whoever in the in the middle of the transaction taking fees, etc. Well, the Bitcoin network and part of why it's so secure it can't just send unlimited. if if everybody was using Bitcoin to pay for their coffee, the network wouldn't run very fast and the fees would be high and everything else. So on top of the base network, they have created this it's it's called a second layer network and it's called the lightning network. And what it is is it is a version. You're still sending Bitcoin, but you're sending it. Think about this being as if the Visa network is built on top of the current banking system, right? And you you use a Visa card that doesn't necessarily go through Chase, it goes through Visa or Mastercard goes through Mastercard and their processing and then works with the bait. This is the same relationship. The Lightning Network is built as a second layer on top of on top of the Bitcoin protocol. So if you go buy your coffee, which is what they're talking about, it's only a 100red million seems like a lot, but it's in, you know, 8 billion people, it's not that much. Um, but you go do that and you can process it very similar to how you send a Venmo transaction. Uh, and a lot of times you can even, you know, scan it, whatever, and it goes across the network. that the fees, by the way, the reason for this, I don't know how many people are aware of this, but you go to your local coffee shop and you buy coffee, there's what, 3% fees they're probably paying on average. Sometimes they're paying 3% plus 30 cents a transaction. You can do that instantly on the Bitcoin network and that it's a fraction of a penny is the fee and it settles instantly where when you get a credit card it takes what you you used to work in that industry 20 30 days for it to officially settle something like that.

[38:29] Well, the the um the merchant gets the money the next day, generally speaking, depending on on the on the arrangement, and then you'll see it in your in your statement, it it affects your credit limit right pretty much right away. — Let me ask you, you gotten totally confused. So if if I go into a let's say a coffee shop accepts Bitcoin and my Bitcoin is with a centralized call it a version of a Bitcoin bank. how does that how's that going to work? Am I going to have a a credit card? Am I going to have it or can I can I pay for my coffee in that environment? or do I have to have possession of, as you say, self-custody of my Bitcoin on a what do you guys call it? — You're probably you're probably going to put it in its own wallet. So, think about just like you have money sitting you have money in different bank accounts, right? You've got a checking account. You probably have a savings. You've got brokerage accounts. Those are all different bank accounts. Okay? You can have your Bitcoin in different accounts the same way. when I'm talking about cold storage, which for now we'll just say fine, leave it at the leave it at the big guys. But you really want your coins that you don't need today in ultimate security, you put them in cold storage, and there's a right way to do that. Um, so I think people should make sure they're following best practices there. But that's it. But just like you have cash in your pocket, you've got a you've got money in a checking account, and you've got money that you can spend daily, you can have a different account.

[40:06] Now, there's lots of different Lightning wallets. Uh I use Strike primarily uh as as my lightning wallet, and I can go in, I can use Strike and and just scan it like a QR code, whatever, you know, like a chip reader. Uh, think of it like like a Venmo. — That's a different bank account. I mean, Venmo really, that's what it is. It's a different bank account, right? You take some of your Bitcoin to fund it or put in that wallet just like you would fund your Venmo or your checking account. — Does that Does that make sense? — Yeah. And I guess the only thing So, that's that's fine. It kind of explains what the what the network does, but does it maybe it's a broader question for another another episode. Bit Bitcoin I I view and I've been taught is a store value of um the stored value. Does it really make sense to have it available to be used and is as currency? Does that make a Does that make a lot of sense given what uh the real intent of Bitcoin was supposed to be?

[41:17] — Well, the real intent could be debated, right? Satoshi wrote about it being peer-to-peer cash. When I first got into Bitcoin, it was freedom money and it was so that the banks wouldn't be in the middle. And I remember when I first heard about it, I had just sent money to my Hong Kong brokerage account from It took nine and and I would send money. It would take nine days every time to wire the money. Chase charged me $40 to do it. And — it would show up not only nine days later, but like if I sent $10,000, eight out of 10 times, $10,000 wouldn't get to Hong Kong. And when I would ask them, they would say, "Oh, is the exchange rate? What exchange rate? I'm sending dollars and there's dollars going into that account." But somewhere over the course, and by the way, they were like, "Well, it could go either way." No, it — Of all the times I sent money from from my American account to my Hong Kong account, not one time did if I sent $10,000 10 times. I might get 10,000. I might get $9,999.98.

[42:26] irritated me they stole money. Two, it irritated me it took nine days. three. It irritated me that Chase charged me $40 to send my money over there. On Bitcoin, even the regular Bitcoin network, you can send it in 10 minutes. Okay? And for I don't know, fees these days are still under a penny on Bitcoin, but that won't always be the case. They'll go up eventually, and they have been higher at other times. But for me, that was like, oh, there's a use case. Now, most people aren't sending money to Hong Kong every day or whatever to fund a brokerage over there, but it is like for me that was a real use case having sent money around the world and being able and I'd had, you know, an experience in the past where I had a much worse experience. We we'll save for another time, but um but that is what it was supposed to replace. And now look at all the places where government is locking down people's accounts or you know the worst case is the Canadian truckers that happened during co where the government you know shut that down. They shut down gofundmes. They shut down all kinds of stuff. Uh but you know it get Iran with by the way last week in the straight of Hermoose Iran Iran is like we will take Chinese one and we will take Bitcoin to go to go through um Russia and Ukrainians Russians and Ukrainians are both using Bitcoin to flee the country because they can take with them. It's it's hard to take other valuable stuff with you and you send it in, you know, instantly for a fraction of a penny. So, all right. I don't want to We could go deeper on the Lightning Network and um but next topic.

[44:03] — This one I think is just kind of fun. It's interesting. I got a feeling this isn't isn't uh as exciting for you, Anthony, as it is me, but space tourism prices have dropped 80%. So, are you going to take the family to you gonna take family to space? — I would do it. I I would I would love to do it, but I don't want to go up like Katie, whatever her name is, and bring a Daisy. You I want to go up there and hang out a bit, you know. Um so, yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm interested and hopeful about this. Um I don't know if they'll they'll take a 70-year-old guy into space. Um Bill Shatner did. He was in his 90s, so I got I got some time left on the runway, but I would love the idea of space tourism. I don't think my wife would go with me. I [laughter] think she'd be happy. I think that she she would probably want me to take a one-way trip um these days, but uh yeah, I would definitely do it. So, do do you have the economics behind it? You know, what what does that mean? 80% down, what's it what's it costing now?

[45:07] — What's happening? What's been happening is SpaceX, Blue Origin, and there's a bunch of international competitors and they're driving the price down, right? I know the Russian government sells like trips into space or whatever. Uh but anyway, a suborbital now, so we're not all the way there, but a suborbital flight is now below $50,000 a person as of this month. Uh the projections are that hotels in space, so imagine a hotel orbiting space, uh will be $200,000 for a week-l long stay by 2028. seems pretty ambitious to me, but the fact that it's coming and if it's 200k, I realize the average person probably can't afford that. By 28, but by 30 it'll be cheaper. By 40, it'll be cheaper. Um, — so fun. I I think that would be — I think that's again another form of creative destruction. So um you know you think about the hotel industry on earth you know take a look at you know like choice hotels and Hilton and Marriott and so forth and look at all the brands that they have acquired over the years because those smaller hotel chains couldn't compete really right or they were extremely profitable and they had niche markets and the big guys gobble them up. I mean, I was looking at choice hotel the other day. For some reason, I going somewhere and I think they had 30 brands. So, now you at enter space, you know, how how's that going to shake out?

[46:37] You know, the big guys are not going to sit around on that, right? They they are going to either be disrupted, right, or they're going to participate. So, I think that'll create a tremendous amount of competition. Um, yeah, I think it's exciting and sounds like fun to me. So, I'm all for it. — All right, another quick topic. Uh, vertical farms. And this is this is really interesting. I've been kind of following this technology for a while. But the big thing is that vertical. So vertical farms are just they they have a farm and they build it in layers like in like they could talk about like once we have self-driving cars, we won't need all of these parking garages and they're talking about turning those or even some of these office buildings that are being left turning office buildings into farms. And they're unbelievable. They make an unbelievable amount of food. But the problem has been the cost. it produ it just costs too much to produce the food. Well, now they are just getting to the point where there's a price par with growing it a more on a more traditional farm. And the advantage is if people are listening like why do I want this? Well, number one, it just takes a lot less space. So, that frees up again abundance. There's more real estate. If think of all of the farmland, if all of a sudden we needed 1/5 or one/10enth or 120th the farmland, it might even be more like 1/100th. All of that farmland becomes available for other uses which helps lead to abundance for whatever that is. But the other advantages are it uses 95% less water and no chemicals are needed because it's indoor, it's enclosed, so you don't need to have chemicals, GMOs, whatever it is. And I forget, I should have pulled up this number, but the average meal in America has something like I want to say it's over 2,000 miles.

[48:30] People have to fact check me, but I'm pretty sure it's over 2,000 miles that it's traveled to get to the table. But imagine in New York City if all of a sudden we have these vertical farms in Manhattan and people are getting clean, fresh, organic food from a few blocks away instead of halfway across the country or across the world. So it really creates more health abundance — Are they doing it hydroponically or is there soil involved? I'm trying to understand how how an office building would I get the floors but is it vertical within each floor or how are they doing it? — I think both, right? I think it's it's just layers on top of each other. They can create light in there. They can create the perfect living conditions. They don't you know you don't have droughts. You don't have freezes. you don't have whatever else, right? Um, you know, it doesn't get burned from too much sun, etc. So, you know, the fact is if it it's not that long ago that it cost way more than it did just to produce it the traditional way. It's now at price parody. You got to think in five or 10 years that it's going to be significantly cheaper, less l especially go up.

[49:40] — It doesn't sound like um the family farm will benefit from this. It sounds sounds more like the uh the the big food big egg would be the one that would buy an office building or the capital that would be required to build something like that. Um — my my guess is it's mostly new players. I know there's some there's some uh Silicon Valley like tech people that are involved in this, right? Because a lot of it is new technology. So, I mean, but it doesn't mean it can't happen on a local farm or a local city or, you know, I'm sure it's like anything else. The technology will get better. At some point, Anthony, I would hope that if they had this, you could — you could have it in your own house or your own yard, — right? And just have all the food you need, uh, you know, on a local level. — Your robot can take care of it. — Yeah. I mean, the robot can replace uh manual labor. So if you're doing it in New York City and because you don't have the weather, you're going to have air conditioning and heat and so on and so forth to create the growing environment.

[50:46] So you're going to have energy needs to do that. Um and maybe they'll figure out by then they'll figure out, you know, how to deliver cheap energy to produce that stuff. But that would be amazing to be able to have that would do away with food deserts, right? I mean that that's one of the biggest issues is food deserts in big cities. Um and you know transporting you you mentioned transportation you know I was just in I I I am in Columbus Ohio right now and the difference in fresh produce meat and uh fish here versus near the coasts whether it's California where we are in Texas and it's just tremendously different the your shopping habits you know you're more in the freezer section than you are in the fresh boot section here. It's just uh it's amazing. So that that' be great. I hope they figure it out because God knows we need it. — Yeah. All right, last topic, best topic. Uh you had brought up you wanted to talk about the NCAA transfer portal and uh tell tell us what you're thinking there.

[51:54] So, fact check me on all these numbers, but there's something between 1,500 and um students, student athletes as we used to call them back in the day, who enter this thing called a portal, which means they forfeit their existing scholarship in the hopes that a preferred uh university will pick up that scholarship and bring them to their new destination for new opportunity to play and in many cases to earn um you know a paycheck in a a form of a paycheck. And as it turns out five or 10% of the people that are entering the the portal are doing great. You know they're highly recruited. The big 10 schools pack 12 pack whatever they are these days. The the uh uh where's uh Texas A&M these days? the — SEC, thank you. They those schools are picking off the best of the best, literally paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars a year to come to their schools.

[53:06] the problem is more than half, I think it was 60% of those student athletes entering the portal don't get an offer. So 750 to a,000 student athletes that had a scholarship, four-year scholarship or partial scholarship to a university now have to go home and live in their parents' basement or go to the school as a walk-on. And the the fundamental issue is the only thing that's changed is supply. Demand hasn't changed. So the same numbers of kids are needed to to get to these schools. And what they forgot about was every year there's a fresh crop of vertically grown freshmen who want to enter those exact same schools. And most of them come in at a much lower price or no price at all. I mean there's still a few that get paid handsomely, very small percentage. So now all these kids are really, you know, kind of left out in the cult in a way and they have to reearn their position uh that they had. They they had a scholarship and now it's gone. So it's a bifurcation of abundance. Some some are just raking it in, others are literally left out in the cold. So, it's a an example of unintended consequences in a universe of disruption. Um, the government again, it wants to get involved. We'll see where that leads us.

[54:46] Uh, it can't be good if history is going to repeat itself. Um, I'm sure the market forces in time will will make adjustments as needed. uh probably will probably result in fewer and fewer average athletes, you know, entering the portal. They'll just stay where they are and be grateful for what they have. Um but it just it was just interesting to see that. I I had no idea until I read that article yesterday. — Well, I think uh we we've talked about creative destruction a lot today that's going on. I think the NCAA needs to be destroyed. I think it's a a terrible in, you know, thing that's taken advantage of kids for years and and just they've had this monopoly. Nobody's challenged them and now they kind of don't know what to do. So, it's messy. It's getting better. But, you know, the fact that these kids are creating millions and millions and millions of dollars for universities and now they're getting some of it, I think, is I think it's great, right? Because look, let's be honest, they were pay like lots and lots of these big schools were paying kids before. It was just, you know, envelopes full of $100 bills.

[55:55] — Yeah. Or a job, a no-show job at an auto dealership or whatever the case might be. Yeah. But you're right. The NCAA should be ashamed of themselves for what they did for so many years and for fighting this when it became apparent that they were they were going to lose that that court case. And I again, I'm confident and I'm I'm really happy for the the people that are making, you know, the the significant dollars that they're making. They deserve it. They absolutely deserve it. And in the long run, the market will take care of itself as long as the government doesn't get — Well, and back to your supply and demand thing, right? Another big reason that the supply is changing is lots of kids that could go pro are now staying in school. like you're hearing it with this NFL draft that comes up this week. There's multiple kids that they were like those kids would have gone in the draft before and been a third, fourth, fifth round pick, but now they're staying in school because they're actually making more money to stay at a college program than they would make as a fourth round pick in the NFL. And even some guys that would be, you know, the the quarterback out of Oregon that probably would have been the second pick in the draft, — he went back to school and he may not make NFL money, but I think they're paying him three, four, five million, so he's doing But he's but he's extending his career — because he can he's still going to have a three to 10 year career when he when he does decide to go to the NFL.

[57:18] — So he has the two or three more years as a as a college athlete. He's going to have a longer net net. — He's going to have more abundance in his life had than he would have had as a — a draft pick that could easily get injured. And it's once he gets in injured it's over, right? Now, he get injured in college, but — Andy's got another year to build his — Become more mature, grow into his body, you know, put on weight, all all that all that type of stuff. So, all right. Good episode. Uh if you're still here, you obviously like it. Download. I know lots of you listen. We get we got more downloads and listeners than we have subscribers. So, if you're not a subscriber, uh, please hit that button on whatever thing and, uh, go out and spread a little abundance in the world. Thanks, Anthony. — Listen and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcast. Click follow for more content like this, or go to talesofabundance.com to join our community and get free tools.