Hey, hey, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix. I'm your host, Cedric Youngelman.
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In this episode, I sit down with Grant Cardone, world-famous entrepreneur, sales master, real estate mogul, and the man behind the 10x movement.
We talk about how he went from being broke and hating sales to building an empire in real estate and now bringing Bitcoin into the mix.
Grant shares why your house is not an investment and how he scaled from single-family homes to owning thousands of units.
We also dive into his Bitcoin journey, the big vision behind combining real estate with digital assets, and why he believes the future belongs to those who think bigger, take risks, and play the long game.
If you want to understand cash flow, wealth, and the bold mindset it takes to 10x your life, this conversation is for you.
If you want to get in touch with me, it's Cedric at TheBitcoinMatrix.com, where I also just got the new merch store up and running.
So you can go get your Bitcoin Matrix gear or cash is trash t-shirts, mugs and hats.
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And now, let's enter the Bitcoin Matrix with Grant Cardone.
Cash is trash. What do you do? You get out.
Grant Cardone is an American entrepreneur, sales trainer, author, and real estate investor
known for his 10x philosophy of massive goal setting and action. He is the founder of Cardone
Capital, which manages a multi-billion dollar real estate portfolio and a globally recognized
figure in business, sales training, and motivational speaking. Cardone has authored
multiple New York Times bestselling books, including the 10x rule. Grant Cardone,
welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix podcast. How are you?
Hey, it's so good to be in the Matrix with you, my friend.
Yeah, man. I'm excited to get into it. I kind of, you know, one of the things I was noticing
when I was just kind of looking into your background is you graduated from college with
an accounting degree.
Yeah. I don't seem like an accountant to you.
Well, you know, when you start listening to how you structure your deals and how, you know, we'll get into it later, maybe things like accelerated depreciation.
I mean, the accounting kind of comes out, the accountant in you.
Yeah, I didn't.
I didn't.
You know, unfortunately, for all the accountants in the world, I hope I don't open with offending those guys.
But I went to accounting because I thought I was going to learn about money.
I had no clue.
at, I guess I was 18 years old when I signed up for college.
And I'm like, okay, I'm going to be an accountant.
Cause I asked, hey, what's the best business degree you can get?
And they said accounting.
So I said, okay, let's go do it.
I thought they were going to teach me about money,
how to get money, how to invest money,
how to multiply it, how to create wealth.
Dude, there's zero.
Like I'm in my fourth year and I'm like,
when's the money going to come?
Nothing.
It's all principles of accounting for the money.
And so I wish I could give credit to college for learning about accelerated depreciation,
but I did not learn that in college.
I learned it when I was 35 years old and I was trading a deal.
Actually, probably learned about it a little later than that.
But most of what I learned in college was only bad habits.
and most of what I've learned in real life about success in business and
multiply money has been from being in the arena. Yeah.
Not in the college.
Well, maybe talking about the arena,
what did you do when you came out of college with your accounting degree?
Yeah, well, I did. I did. Cedric would, you know,
probably 45% of all college students do is I went and did something I didn't
study for. So I ended up selling cars,
graduation night.
I'm graduating from college
with an accounting degree.
I guess I was
20, 21
years old then. I'm selling
a Toyota
when I
should have been getting my degree and my
gown and hat. I'm selling
a Toyota to the Chevrolet
dealer's wife.
That's funny.
And how long did you sell cars
for. I got paid twice on that deal, by the way, but not everybody understands what that means.
Right. How long did you sell cars for? I sold automobiles. It was the only job I could get in
the town that I worked in. I literally got out of college. I was in the unemployment line.
One out of four people were unemployed where I lived. I was living in a refinery town in Louisiana.
I'm in the unemployment line because I've been trying to get jobs and I can't get jobs.
And my uncle grabs me out of the line and says, what are you doing here?
He called me Neff for nephew.
And he's like, Neff, what are you doing here?
Because he didn't know my name.
I'm an identical twin.
So he didn't know which one I was.
And he said, Neff, what are you doing here?
I said, I'm in the unemployment line.
He said, you didn't go to college to be unemployed.
And I said, I know, but I can't get a job.
And he's like, I'll get you a job selling, selling Toyotas tomorrow.
And I said, I didn't go to college to learn how to sell cars.
and he's like, you didn't go to college to be in this line either. You're going to go to work.
My dad had passed 15 years before that. So he kind of took me under his arm and said,
just come on, dude. I'm going to show you. You got to learn sales anyway. And so sure enough,
I got a job selling cars the next day. I hated it. Hated the idea that I was a car salesman.
imagine spending five years to get a college degree in accounting. And now you're flipping
Toyotas. It did not feel good. Did it ever start feeling good? Did you start liking being a sales
person? Yeah. I mean, it started feeling good when I quit resisting it. So it's a hard job,
and retail sales is very, very difficult. It's even more difficult if you don't know what you're
doing. Nobody that's no good at it likes it. Everybody that says they hate sales is basically
just saying, I never learned how to do it. The first two years was miserable because I didn't
learn anything. I wasn't reading books. I wasn't studying. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be a bartender
and not ever get a lesson. You're not gonna like being a bartender. Like you're not gonna like
anything if you don't know what you're doing and if you're failing at it. And I was failing more
than I was winning. And then I was 25 years old and a guy threw me a cassette tape and I threw
quit my car and I started listening to it. And this guy had a system and the system was how to
actually control a customer from the greeting to the close. And I was like, oh, I didn't know
there was a system. Shit. I just finished studying for 17 years and got out of college and I quit
studying. That's the first thing I, one of the first things I really learned about life and
success is if you're going to quit studying, you're going to get miserable. Like it's when we're
learning and getting, we get better at things and that's when we're happiest. And so literally like
this little cassette tape was 25 minutes. I listened to it. I'm like, Oh my God, this is
amazing. And I was so inspired and excited to take a customer for the first time in two years.
I was excited to go try this one thing that I learned on a customer. I tried it. The guy told
me this. I remember this. He says, don't call it a payment, call it an investment. And I was like,
this is great. It was so stupid. That's the only thing I learned the first time I listened to this
tape. And that night I'm like, sir, your investment's $336 a month. And the guy's like,
yeah, that sounds great, man. Let's do it. And I was like, oh my God, this is magic.
And then I fell in love with sales and I became great at it.
I've written, I don't know, four or five books on sales, ended up becoming one of the leading authorities on sales, retail sales, customer satisfaction, customer attention, customer conversion.
I've traveled the entire planet working with Fortune 500 companies and smaller or bigger.
These are multi-billion dollar companies that, you know, paid me to go out and teach.
And this is, keep in mind, this is a job that I hated.
So sometimes the things you hate, dude, sometimes the things you don't understand are the ones that are really the stairway to the next evolution of who you are.
Right. Well, speaking of maybe the next evolution, when did you fall down the real estate rabbit hole?
I was 28 years old.
I had, I was starting to make some money in sales and I was starting to stack it.
I think I had at that time, I might've had, I don't know, 28, probably had 30 or 40,000 bucks.
That was a lot of money to me because I got out of college with $40,000 of debt. So I'd gotten
rid of the debt. I was out of credit card debt and I was starting to stack and I was starting
to have confidence in myself. I started looking at real estate. I'd always believed in real estate.
It makes sense to me.
It's real.
And I found a little single family house in Bel Air, Texas.
It was $78,000.
It was 1986.
Let's see, I'm 28.
Yeah, 1986.
I put $3,000 down.
I'm amazed.
I'm like, I'm putting three grand down, and I get to own the house for $75,000.
I had to sign a note.
Bank gave me a loan.
I rented it to this girl named Jana.
Jana, she was awesome, by the way.
Jana paid $4.75 a month, and my note was $2.75.
And I'm like, it's 200 times 12 is 24.
I put three grand down.
In 15 months, I had my down payment back.
I'm like, I'm going to become rich.
And it was like, bang, I was off to the races.
And in the next three years, I'd have, I don't know, 500 units.
Wow.
what was it like scaling? Well, you know, the scaling thing, it's interesting because I learned
the power of scaling when I was 30, before 30, I was traveling on the road, teaching sales,
250 days of the year. And I was starting to get paid a lot of money or whatever was a lot of money
at that time to me. And I said, I'm like, I got to do something with this money now. And I really
didn't understand scaling my own business because it was, it was just talent driven. It was like
just being a, you know, being a, I was a talent and I could get in front of an audience and people
were paying me for, for this consulting advice. I bought that one unit. I bought a second unit
and I'm like, I'll never scale this two units at a time. So the third deal I did was 48 units.
And you know, the, the, the thing about real estate, real estate is one of the easiest hacks
on scaling there is in the world. It is probably the, I've been in a lot of businesses for over
40 years and my consulting business, education business, the internet, even becoming a social
media, you know, whatever I am, you know, have an influence on the internet, writing books,
doing big events, a company, 10X Health Company, another consulting company.
We do about a billion dollars a year in sales now.
And those companies compared to scaling real estate are so complicated.
real estate I can go by remember I went one unit two units I had 500 units in in under four years
it was just buy buy a building buy another building buy another building like you're
investing into the scale and um somebody somebody said to me yesterday actually they said you haven't
hired anybody uh in in a couple years and I'm like uh I bought three companies what are you
talking about.
Right.
So I don't have to go out and hire Bob.
Why don't I just buy the whole company?
We've increased our real estate portfolio in the last four years by $3 billion.
They all come with employees.
They all come with customers.
They all come with plumbing roofs like income cashflow It a fantastic business So you can do them one at a time But if you can buy my third deal was 48 units My fourth deal was 38 units
My fifth deal was 92 units.
That was the scale.
It wasn't a single family house.
I actually quit doing those after the first two.
How did you start, you know, you have kind of all these epiphanies when you're young.
How did you, you know, you buy the first house with 3,000 down.
So you're talking like a high leverage ratio there.
You start scaling up really quick.
How did you start thinking about leverage and how to manage it?
Well, back then, I didn't really understand leverage.
The more dangerous part of the leverage equation in that situation is I was dependent upon one tenant.
Now, I agree with you that the leverage, $3,000 to $78,000, that leverage was very dangerous, but I didn't scale that leverage.
Right. You started managing it.
Yeah. See, I bought one unit. The first unit I bought with three grand. The second unit I bought
with no money, 100% financing. The third deal I put 20% down. So I quit doing this over leverage
after the first two deals, but more in part, more dangerous than the leverage that I used.
I sold those first two single family homes off because of the leverage. But the more dangerous
part of that equation was the dependency upon one tenant. The moment you get rid of the one
tenant phenomenon, you know, you actually remove the worst part of the leverage formula,
which is when I bought 48 units, I could lose 12 customers before and I would still be at 75%
occupied, which means I'm cashflow positive. In the first scenario, if I lose one tenant,
I'm 100%, I'm completely done. I mean, the game's over. If I lose, well, I can't lose two tenants
because I don't even have two doors.
So the way to reduce the leverage first,
and nobody ever talks about this,
is the scaling the number of units.
In real estate, in any business, by the way,
the most important, in Bitcoin,
the most important number in Bitcoin
is not what you paid for.
It's how many units do you have?
Either how many Satoshis do you have
or how many Bitcoins do you have?
Same thing with gold, silver.
How many shares of Google stock do you have?
Guys like, man, I bought Google when it was brand new.
Next question asks is how many shares do you have?
Because if you have one share, bro, you ain't rich.
You got to scale, right?
You have to have the number of units.
So this is why I always say a single family home is the worst real estate investment you
will ever make in your life is a single family home, whether you live in it or rent it.
A lot of people seem to start there.
Yeah, they shouldn't.
You should end up there because you made wealth, not start there to create wealth.
It's an American phenomenon that we feel so entitled that we need to own our home.
This was this was programming by the banks so they could sell a 30 year mortgage and trap people.
A home is not an investment. It is something people should do when they are wealthy, not something on their way to the wealth target.
Because Elon owns one house. He only owns one house, by the way, because he's got 19 kids or something.
And he's Elon and he needs a place to protect his kids.
Otherwise, he wouldn't own a home.
When he was scaling to be one of the richest people in the world, he didn't own a home.
Warren Buffett.
And I get this argument.
It's crazy how many people argue about this home thing.
Their last bastion of freedom is your single family home and your address that you probably don't even own, by the way.
Even if it's paid off, you're still due property taxes.
So you don't really ever own it.
But, you know, Warren Buffett has one home. Steve Jobs had one home. Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison is a home freak. He loves houses. OK, well, he's worth 200 billion dollars, too. Like he's got 23 homes or something. But that's not where his wealth, as you know, was created.
Donald Trump. How many homes does Donald Trump have? None. None. He owns no homes. He owns
Mar-a-Lago and he happens to live there. He owns Trump Tower and he happens to live there.
He runs the White House and happens to live there, but he doesn't own a house.
And I think people take that out of context and say, well, I can't be, you know, I can't be those
people, well, you can't be those people because people are doing things in the wrong order.
You know, you should have a home once you're wealthy and use houses to produce income and
cash flow and tax write-offs to rent to other people and one day live off the cash flow.
That's at least my premise that so many people hate me about.
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Yeah, it's so interesting.
It makes me wonder, you know, should people, you know, maybe sell the home they're living in to forge their way towards more wealth?
That sounds like kind of like the logical path we're outlining.
I did.
Right.
I did.
I made the same mistake.
I bought a house for myself in La Jolla, sold it, took all the money, put it into a house in L.A.
After I realized what I was doing, I'm like, how are you going to get rich?
Do you keep buying stuff for yourself?
You're buying stuff for yourself.
Okay. I bought this beautiful house in La Jolla, California.
I bought it with no money down, by the way. It was a great deal.
I didn't use any of my own money. I used my credit line.
It was on the beach, on the ocean, in a correction.
There was a massive correction. I bought it.
So I didn't spend any of my money. I took the $3 million. It grew to $9 million.
I made $6 million. I took the $6 million, bought another house in Los Angeles,
told the IRS that I was going to improve it and sell it and flip it.
Called it an investment property.
It wasn't.
One day I woke up and said, what am I doing with all this money in this house?
This is ridiculous.
Sold it.
That's the last time I did this.
I sold that house.
I took all the equity, parked it into an apartment deal, 1,100 units in Florida.
This is 2012.
Massive correction going.
Moved myself to Miami and rented a condo.
I went from living in Lionel Richie's house with Leo DiCaprio as my neighbor, overlooking Dr. Dre, watching Eminem drive to my house.
Keanu Reeves is right behind me.
Like, it was so cool, dude, living in this thing.
But I'm paying.
I'm paying.
Grabbed all that dough, gave up the house, put the money in this Miami investment, 1,100 units.
I think we put $15 million in that thing.
I scrapped all my equity together, borrowed money from my brother, my sister, my mom, everybody, banged my credit cards.
I went into debt and then went and rented in Miami.
And that $15 million today, those 1,100 units in 13 years is worth $315 million.
That house, that house that I lived in in Los Angeles is probably worth.
Well, Alice Walton bought it from me.
So, but it's probably worth, I sold it for 17.
It's probably worth 30 or 40.
So it would appear that that single family home was a good deal.
I could have stayed there and still made more money on it,
but that house ain't worth 300 million.
So that, that property that I, I said, I'm selling the house.
It's an, it's a liability.
I don't need a house to own.
Supposedly, I'm going to convert that dough to real estate.
the cash flows and has unlimited tax write-offs, by the way. I'm going to put 15 in that deal and
I'm going to let it start spitting cash at me. It was paying me 12%. It paid me 12% every month
for 12 years. So imagine that. I refinanced the deal at three years, got all my 15 back,
still own the asset, just refinanced it again two weeks ago. I pulled 50 million out of it one time.
I just pulled another $77 million out of it, still own the asset and it's still cash flows.
So I pulled all my money out the first time, pulled out another 40 million after that, pulled out another 77 million last week.
No tax implications.
Zero.
Still on the asset.
But you know what?
I had to rent.
Oh, woe is me.
And where I moved to, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but where I moved to, what was crazy was I rented a condo in Miami.
And the guy that rented the condo to me loses money.
I'm paying less in rent than he pays.
in HOA fees, property taxes, and the cost of his money. So I agree. I love renting. But let's say,
you know, you're in your rental and after a few years, you know, you kind of want to eliminate
maybe location risk. I want to live here. Maybe you have children, you want them in the same school,
or you just like that block. You like the restaurant nearby. Maybe you also want sort of
to do things to the domicile,
like add like a home water filter
or do augment the property in a way
maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable as a renter.
What is sort of your take on like,
maybe people want to buy
so they can kind of do those things?
Yeah, dude, look, I have 14,200 units.
If you want to add a water filter, but I do not.
Well, maybe people don't,
they don't want to do it to a rental.
They're like, oh, I'd live without the water filter
because I won't do it to a rental.
So I want to buy so I can have all those.
If that's all it takes to keep you for another 14 months, let me do it for you.
Just go ask the guy that owns the property.
He'll do it for you.
Fair enough.
I don't know.
Now, if it's, well, I want to be in the right school system.
You can rent in the right school system.
In the top 50 cities in America today, only two of them, only two out of 50,
is it cheaper to rent than to home.
In 48 of them, it is 50% cheaper.
So Austin, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta,
LA.
I mean, just go down the damn list, dude.
It is cheaper by 50%.
One, in just payments alone, the average payment in America today with HOA, property taxes,
maintenance, and what did I miss there?
Mortgage rates is about $3,800.
The average rent is $1,500 nationwide.
Yeah, if they don't treat you right, leave.
Okay.
Now, if you want to be in the right school system, you would move.
Look, I would rather personally pay $4,000 in rent than $4,000 in a mortgage.
We're assuming I'm getting the same school system.
Right.
Your kids do not know whether you rent or whether you have a mortgage.
They have no clue what your credit score is.
They don't know if a car has a car payment or a car lease.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, they don't know.
And by the way, you're sending your kids to schools that you don't own.
You rent the school, you don't own the school.
Right. Good point.
So now, does there come a time where I'm like, you know, I own two homes today.
So I'm not like, I own a house in Malibu, $40 million.
It's a complete waste of money.
It's unbelievable.
Okay. I think I'm going to make money on it one day, Cedric.
But I think it's still stupid.
I'd rather have $40 million of Bitcoin.
I have another house in Golden Beach.
It's $42 million.
It's amazing. It's fantastic.
It is a pain in my ass as well.
And I'd rather have $42 million worth of cash flow real estate that pays me another $4 million a year.
And I rent two blocks away.
So I'm a renter.
And every time something breaks, I call up and say, fix this now.
I love that.
No, that's great.
When did you start noticing or fall down the Bitcoin rabbit hole?
Yeah, it's interesting.
About 12 years ago, I was a guy called up.
It was a multi-level marketing company.
that wanted, they were involved in Bitcoin.
I didn't know what Bitcoin was, had no clue.
And they said, hey, we'd like Grant.
The owner was a big fan of mine.
He's like, we'd like Grant to speak
at our conference in Vegas.
And my guy sent the contract for the fee.
And they said, well, we can't pay you in money,
but we can pay you in Bitcoin.
And Jared's like, nah, we don't know what Bitcoin is.
And I heard Jared say that.
And I'm like, that's our fault, not his fault.
I said, Jared, find out if you can pay cash.
He said, no, I cannot pay money.
I can only pay you like this.
And I said, okay, well, 12 years ago, Bitcoin was 500 bucks or 480 or something like that.
Okay.
I said, Jared, look, I'm there anyway.
I like the guy.
He's a nice dude.
Seems like he's got a great business.
There's going to be 500 or 600 people there.
Maybe I go there and I sell them something else.
I don't know.
Shit.
You know?
and maybe they'll buy some books while I'm there.
Whatever dude I was on my hustle I was not where I am today I in a different place financially today than I was 12 or 13 years ago We were just coming out of a big contraction
I'm like, bro, this is not the time to be picky about how they pay you.
And we took it, dude. It was a $16 million payday and I didn't know it.
And I still have that Bitcoin today. And that's how I got orange peeled because somebody gave it
to me. It was a gift basically, you know, that I didn't say no to and I didn't sell.
And, and, and then I started watching it. My awareness, my awareness, like, like Tesla,
nobody told me about Tesla. There was no Tesla standard. There was no white paper on Tesla.
I didn't read a book about Tesla. Uh, I got into Tesla once and I'm like, God damn, this is amazing.
I didn't know a car could go this fast.
And that's what happened to me at Bitcoin.
Basically, I wasn't educated about Bitcoin.
I was provided with a taste.
And then I started playing with it.
I started looking at it.
I'd watch it when it corrected.
You know, I'd read stuff about it lightly.
And then last year, I met with Mike Saylor.
Mike was, yeah, starting to get a lot of traction
with MSTR and he hadn't done the strike or the stripe yet. And I met with Michael, my brother
introduced me to him and I'm like, Hey, Michael, how can I do what you do with, with, with real
estate? And Michael's like, he knew me. I didn't know Michael knew me. He's like, man, you got a
massive audience. Most importantly, you got a big audience and two as important as that you have
trust with your audience. Okay. Three, you have a real product, real estate that people already
believe in, they do not need to be orange peeled on real estate. He said, add Bitcoin to the
purchase. And I'm like, okay, but how do I do that? He's like, you need a public entity
and then repeat what I'm doing and just add the real estate. And I'm like, well, I don't have a
public company. He's like, that's your fucking problem. That's exactly what he told me. That's
your fucking problem. I'm telling you what to do. And that was late last year. By January,
we had done our first fund.
We bought a $72 million piece of real estate
and added $15 million of Bitcoin.
I wasn't public.
I still don't have a public entity at this time.
But I decided not to wait to figure that part out.
I said, no, I called Michael.
I said, Michael, I'm going to go put these entities together
and not go public.
And I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do the proof of concept.
I'm going to validate the marketplace.
I'm going to put 12 of these funds together and then I'm going to go public.
He's like, okay, whatever, man.
Just, you know, don't be a pussy.
That's what he told me.
And so we put our first deal together in January.
It was $72 million of real estate, $15 million of Bitcoin.
We paid cash for both.
So I bought the real estate, paid cash, bought the Bitcoin, paid cash, no leverage.
put the two together in an LLC, called it the Melbourne Project.
I paid for it and then I funded it for my audience.
We raised $88 million.
That asset today is probably worth our NOI is up about 6% and the Bitcoin's up about 25%.
So the two together is probably up in January, September.
the real estate and the Bitcoin are probably up 20% this year already. And I own both of them,
not one of them. I have cashflow. I have depreciation on the asset. I have $30 million
depreciation. Nobody gets that on Bitcoin. Nobody in the world can buy Bitcoin and get a write-off.
I do. Okay. We have cashflow. You don't get real cashflow. You can call it yield if you want,
but it's not. I'm talking about cash flow yield. We're paying $360,000 a month to own Bitcoin and
the real estate. We get the increased rents over time. These are $1,800 rents that we think will
be $3,000 rents in the next decade. Also, I have a utility that you cannot say is not a real utility.
people live in that asset. They live there. By the way, this is not an easily
duplicatable asset. Real estate is very difficult to build. It's becoming more and more difficult.
It's becoming more and more unaffordable. It's got a massive moat around it. Does it have problems?
Yes, it does. But it's got a massive moat. Great real estate in a great location is one of a kind.
So the same argument for Bitcoin that there's only 20, what is there?
21 million pieces?
21 million.
Yeah.
That one deal in Melbourne, there is no other project in that location.
There will only be one in that location.
If the location's sick, if it's a ridiculous location, it's probably more rare.
And I'm not saying that location is.
Let's talk about the latest $335 million deal.
That deal, that deal, that location is irreplaceable.
planner, one of the best locations. It's a top 20 locations in the United States and maybe the
planet right now. How did that come together? That deal was a deal I've been shopping for 20
months. Before we were doing the Bitcoin deals, I was shopping this deal. I knew the deal was in
trouble. We've done 12 of these Bitcoin funds this year now. And this is the current deal we're on.
It's called the Boca Raton Bitcoin Fund. This is a $230 million transaction. We paid cash,
for it and took it out of bankruptcy from Blackstone. Blackstone was the dead on the deal.
And we knew the guy was behind. And we also knew that Blackstone couldn't buy it because they're
the debt. Blackstone wanted to buy it. They wanted to tap the guy out and they were hoping a guy like
me wouldn't show up, but they can't squeeze a guy out of their own debt. So I put together what's
what's called the stalking horse, went to the bankruptcy court and said, I'm offering $228
million for the project. I'm writing a check for $20 million right now. And I will close 10 days
later with all cash once you award me this project. The stalking horse is a unique way to
create a market around something in trouble. This is a distressed seller on a perfect asset,
not a distressed asset. Okay. And so the stocking horse that we wrote up, it's a bit of a complicated
financial structure, but it said in the agreement to the bankruptcy courts, anyone that wanted to
replace my stocking horse had to match my offer, close in 10 days, put up 20 million.
and I had first right of refusal to top their bid.
And in addition to their offer,
they had to pay another $2.5 million.
Every increment above me had to be $2.5 million
and I had a breakup fee of $2.5 million.
That meant they would have to get $5 million above me
in order for me to lose the deal.
So we basically squeezed the market out.
Even people that are a lot,
like I'm competing on deals with the biggest companies in the world, the Blackstones and
whatever. All these guys have trillions of dollars. But what they don't have is they don't
have one guy in charge. I'm a one man wrecking ball. I can move a lot faster. I'm doing one deal.
They're doing a thousand deals. They have a board. They have investors, blah, blah, blah.
So anyway, we got the deal. We got the deal. We paid $230 million for it. I had to go from $228 to $235 was the final deal. I think we paid $235. And then I stacked $100 million of Bitcoin on top of that.
So the deal wasn't $235,000. The deal's really $335,000, which is quite insane in a marketplace where people are trying to pay less for real estate and they're trying to raise less money, not more money.
I'm actually going the other way to create a big moat around this new company that I'm creating.
And for your viewer that may not know, real estate's in a lot of trouble in this country.
There's trillions of dollars of real estate that's in trouble, which is attached to real companies and institutions and pension funds and some big ass companies.
So there's two groups of people in trouble in this country in real estate.
The small REITs, under a billion and a half, all of them are in trouble.
And no offense if you're a REIT and you're listening to this.
if you're not in trouble, good for you, but you know the rest of your friends are.
They're all in trouble because they're too small.
And they're forced to distribute all their cash.
They have to distribute 95% of their cash,
which means they can't reinvest in their companies.
And they can never put Bitcoin in their balance sheet.
Then there's a bunch of giant ass companies out there.
I'm 5 billion. I'm not a big company.
These are monster companies.
80,000 units, 100,000, 140,000 units.
Then there's the monster monsters, 140,000 apartments, 25,000 hotels,
400 million square feet of office buildings, airports.
Like they got so many freaking issues.
Industrial, like they got, they're sitting with hundreds of billions of dollars of problems.
and these big companies.
And this is not talked about.
Nobody's talking about this.
I don't know how they're covering this whole thing up.
You're a great listener, by the way.
I know, you know.
I'm enjoying this immensely.
In 2008, Suzy Q, the prostitute or the stripper
or the pizza delivery girl was buying three and four houses.
In 2020, it was, I'm just going to make up some names.
It was Blue Rock and Star Dude.
And they're out buying, they weren't buying four and five units, dude.
They were buying 40,000.
Okay.
It wasn't the pizza guy buying two extra units and not qualifying his income.
These guys were buying 10,000 units in 2020 on adjustable money.
That was due in three years.
and they would do that in Florida, 10,000 units, 10,000 in Georgia, 10,000 in Texas,
10,000 in the Carolinas, dude. Like this was, and nobody's talking about there's,
and that's what we're buying today. We buy all that stuff, dude. We're buying,
we're stealing real estate right now. So, so the, the, the play is if, if the real estate is worth,
you know, this, I'm trying to buy it down to the coffee cup handle. I'm trying to buy
it below replacement costs. If it costs this much to build it, whatever I can buy below that line,
I'm going to fill it up with Bitcoin. Okay. And none of these companies, Starwood, MetLife,
New York Life, these are monster real estate companies. They cannot put Bitcoin on their
balance sheet and they will never be able to put Bitcoin. I don't care how much they talk about it
or want to do it. There's 190 REITs in America. That many of them could put Bitcoin on their
balance sheet. One Bitcoin. Forget $100 million of it. So we want to exploit that problem. And by
putting the two together, we think we could disrupt an old legacy business that hasn't
changed much in almost 70 years. Yeah. At one point you tweeted,
Bitcoin Maxie said, Grant, you should sell all your real estate and buy Bitcoin.
Grant said, Maxie, why not use my real estate to buy Bitcoin and keep both?
Combining real estate with Bitcoin gives you massive write-offs, real cash flow, rent growth, liquidity, good leverage, hedge against Bitcoin, and appreciation from both.
So it seems like you're bullish on rents and rent growth.
Yeah, look, I was in a room on Spaces last night and a guy said to me, he's like, you know, Grant, you're still better off owning the Bitcoin only.
I'm like, no, you are.
That's what you believe, bro.
because you believe, and some of you guys believe,
not you, but some Bitcoiners just believe
that you're going to be the only product on the planet.
And if you believe that Bitcoin's going to become
a trillion only currency asset class in the world then you right and I wrong I just don believe that And if that happens it going to be a bit And even if you do believe that where are people going to live
Because I can't live in my Coinbase account. So I still need a place to live, whether I rent it or
own it, whether it's one bedroom, two bedrooms or a castle, it could be a hotel, it could be on a
Camping trip, it could be an RV.
I still need a place to sleep at night.
And I do believe rents are going to explode.
I believe they're going to explode.
Like we're going to see rents double.
We're at about $1,800 a month rents today.
I think we see easy $4,000 rents by the year 2035.
What will Bitcoin be in 2035?
Will it be a million dollars?
Yeah, I think that could happen by 30, right?
Let's say Bitcoin's at $3 million in 35.
Could be.
Okay, good.
So I got $3 million Bitcoin and I got $4,000 rents.
Every time I move the rents on my portfolio,
if I never grow my portfolio another dollar, okay?
Every time I grow it, 25 bucks.
Every time the rents go $25 times 14,200 units times 12.
divided by .05.
Every time I do that,
I increase the value of that portfolio $85 million.
That's for every 25 bucks.
If the rents go up a thousand bucks,
that's 40 times.
I made $3 billion on a real estate portfolio.
So like,
I don't know how I end up being bad,
how it's terrible to have Bitcoin go to 3 million
and I own some of it
and I made $3 billion on a real estate portfolio because the rents went up.
And by the way, if Bitcoin goes to $3 million, fucking rents are going up.
Okay, Bitcoin is not a deflationary.
In my view, if Bitcoin goes to $3 million,
these people will have money.
Many of these people will have money for the first time in their lives.
Most of the people that are going to end up being Bitcoin billionaires
were not fiat billionaires.
You know, so you let me you think you're going to give all your money away.
But on the way to the charity, you're probably going to buy a yacht, a bunch of cars, big ass houses you don't need.
And who knows? Some of you are going to start acting like Charlie Sheen.
We'll see. See how it plays out. What would be your advice to young people?
Should they diversify or go all in on something?
Well, I would say the young people, depending on where they're at in the.
the acquisition for whatever it is they want, right?
I would say the first thing to do is go all in on yourself
and find that cassette tape that gets you good at something.
And, you know, back to that cassette tape story I told you,
that cassette tape was free,
and most people would have been satisfied with that.
But I wasn't.
There was an 800 number on that tape, and I called that 800 number.
I said, Hey, what else you guys got? Cause I need more than one word that works.
And I bought a set of tapes from those guys. It was $12,000. This is 1990 something.
And I paid the money, bro. I borrowed the money from my mom. And you know, I don't even know how
many times I've been paid on that. Like I've, because I kept improving myself. And so most
people would be happy with the one word I wasn't. So I would tell the young guy out there, look,
don't worry about getting rich. You shouldn't even worry about investments right now. Invest
only in your own self, just yourself. Just keep pouring money into yourself and your own education.
And then once you start getting surplus money, if there's surplus money now,
okay, what am I going to bet everything on? And I would tell you, bet everything on one thing.
I would not diversify. I would not find five coins to bet on. If you believe in a coin,
put every penny you have on one coin. If you're not sure, it's because you're gambling.
And I'm not going to gamble. I mean, I can count on one hand the number of times I've lost money
in my business, in my career, but I don't gamble. And you know, our space metric is filled with
degenerates. It's get rich quick. People don't want to buy Bitcoin at 116 because they think
They missed it. Well, you did miss it. And you're going to miss the next part of it, too.
I used to buy real estate for twenty five thousand dollars a units. Now I'm paying four hundred thousand, five hundred thousand a unit.
So inflation, bro. And so, yeah, I would go all in on one thing.
I would find one thing and repeat it over and over and over again.
And then once you get that one thing to where it's scaled out and you got real scale, then figure out something you can add to the one thing.
Like I'm adding Bitcoin to my real estate.
I didn't get rid of my real estate.
I'm like, let me add Bitcoin to the real estate and see if I can make it a more effective investment vehicle.
and then I don't look for another 16 things to do.
I'm looking for what, I'm not adding Ethereum.
I'm not adding Ripple.
Sorry, guys, I'm not doing it.
It's not, I just don't have the bandwidth
to figure out how to even pitch the story.
Am I gonna miss something?
Yeah, I'm gonna miss a bunch of shit.
I'm gonna miss a bunch of stuff.
I'm not gonna be a movie star.
I'm not gonna be a ball player.
I'm not gonna be a politician.
you're going to find one or two things you're good at, double down on them, then 10X it.
And then when you're done 10X in that, 10X that again.
Wow, Grant, this has been so dope.
My final question for you, has Bitcoin changed you in any way?
Yeah, I think it's changed, you know, once it really bites you.
Look, if you're a real estate investor already, you already know money's worthless.
Real estate investors have always done that.
You know, I've been buying real estate since I was 28 years old.
Every real estate guy I ever met, they're always broke.
They're real estate rich and they're cash poor.
But every six or seven years, they have these events that are good for them.
Now, the people that don't last in real estate are the ones that over leverage, overpaid,
mistimed it and bust out of the cycle and they don't do it again.
But the guys that made it, Sam Zell, Don Brin, Fred Trump, Donald's dad, you know, these
This guy's created fortunes.
Okay.
Louis Vuitton.
What's his name?
Bernard.
That guy's a real estate guy.
That guy is not a fashion guy.
It's a fucking real estate play.
And long periods of time.
The Vatican.
The Vatican owns more real estate on planet Earth.
The Mormon church.
Big real estate owners.
Okay.
So why?
Because they know money's no good.
Okay.
And then once that hits you with Bitcoin.
I mean, that's already hit you, right?
The beautiful thing about the Bitcoin.
no plumbing, no termites, no tenants, no evictions, no property taxes yet, no paint,
no roofs, no HVAC. I mean, Brian is like sweet. So to the Bitcoin maximalists that said, Grant,
you should get rid of all your real estate. I'm like, okay, you really think I should throw away
a $5 billion company? Because, and this is the last thing I would say to you about that,
is that if I tried to take just Bitcoin public, I couldn't.
Hey guys, I bought a bunch of Bitcoin.
You want to go public with me?
Why would anybody do that?
Even though some people have actually figured out
how to do that shit, okay?
I'm going to take this real estate company, Cedric.
This year, we should take it public this year,
maybe January at the latest.
We'll take all the real estate that I have.
We're going to add a bunch of Bitcoin to that balance sheet
and bring it to the public markets
and become a publicly traded company
where people can have the best of two asset classes that are merged together and can't be
pulled apart. And in a future, I mean, this is how Bitcoin's changed me. It's changed me thinking
about, oh, wow, one day I'm not going to have a 10-year, I'm not going to have a 10-year
mortgage on my real estate. It's going to be a 30-year mortgage on my real estate and my Bitcoin.
And that means that piece of real estate will always have instant liquidity. And no real estate
on planet Earth has instant liquidity today. So we're going to merge these two. We're going to
evolve these two beasts. One's liquid, one's not. One cash flows, one doesn't. One, you get tax
write-offs, the other one, you don't. Both of them are going to appreciate as money gets printed.
But one's real, one's digital. You can't touch it. One has a utility and the other one doesn't.
And I think when we bring those to the public marketplace, we're going to create a new animal.
So Bitcoin's changed me and put me in a situation where I can offer something to the public now that will scale beyond just the real estate portfolio.
I can't wait to see where this goes.
I'll have to have you back.
There's so many places we could take this, but this has been so dope.
I'll leave it to you for any parting words and let people know where they can find you and your work.
No, dude, look, I know how hard it is to put these together.
So I really admire the fact that you can sit there and just let somebody run their mouth the whole time.
So thanks for letting me, you know, just, you know, being interested in what I'm doing.
And to all the Bitcoiners out there, you guys have been so supportive of the projects that we're doing.
And I've heard so many good things by so many people that are excited about us bringing people on.
And everybody that's investing with us in the last since January this year, 80 percent.
I think your audience will find this interesting.
80 percent of those people own zero Bitcoin.
They own no Bitcoin.
They have not read the Bitcoin standard.
They don't know what the white paper is.
They don't know who Mike Saylor is.
80% of every person, and we've raised hundreds of billions of dollars, millions of dollars
this year, have invested in this real estate Bitcoin fund, and they don't know what Bitcoin
is.
They don't even know where I'm keeping it.
They don't know whether it's going to go up or down, and they don't care.
They like the real estate and the added feature of a kicker that, oh, maybe that Bitcoin thing's a lottery ticket.
And I remember telling Mike Saylor this.
I said, Mike, how many people do you really think are going to invest 100 hours to learn about Bitcoin?
And he's like, what's your point?
I said, 83% of everybody that buys a book doesn't finish the book.
I said, if you think that everybody has to be educated to buy Bitcoin, this was before the ETFs.
If you think that everybody has to be educated to buy anything, I mean, it's just not real, dude.
I buy cars. I don't ever read their owner's manual.
OK, I download movies. I have no clue what it's about.
If the title is good, fuck it. I'm going to watch it.
And when it doesn't keep my interest anymore, I'm going to throw it away and move on to the next thing.
That's the consumer of the 21st century.
And so I think that we've created a vehicle here in Bitcoin.
The real estate allows me to do this because we have agreement.
98% of population, or maybe 100, agrees with real estate.
They're already convinced of it.
I don't know what percentage own Bitcoin or know about it.
What, 2%, 1%?
Something like that, yeah.
Tiny, tiny.
The other people you're going to have to educate,
or you just got to pull up in that Tesla.
and say, get in.
And when you get in, you look out the windshield
and you're like, damn, that's a big windshield.
And then you have the experience of the Bitcoin,
in this case, without the education.
And that's how I was orange-pilled, man.
So that's all we're going to do.
I think we're going to orange-pill a lot of people.
We're going to bring a lot of people
into the Bitcoin community that you guys can't convince
because you're trying to educate somebody.
And when they're being educated, they're not investors.
They're students.
Students don't invest.
Students learn.
You make great points.
This has been awesome.
Thank you so much, Grant.
Thanks, man.
Appreciate you.
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