Richard Carthon is the CEO and host of Crypto Current, an educational platform about cryptocurrency and blockchain. They create content that impacts thousands of people through its daily newsletter, podcast, blog, and social media. Richard is also a Managing Partner at Crescent City Capital and Acacia Digital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund and venture fund respectively.
In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran interviews Richard Carthon, the CEO and host of Crypto Current, about investing in a crypto bear market. They discuss how cryptocurrencies build generational wealth and promote transfer of wealth among countries, share tips on crypto market trading, and define non-fundable tokens (NFTs) and Web3s. Stay tuned.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- How Richard Carthon learned about cryptocurrency and how they work
- Richard’s thoughts on Satoshi Nakamoto
- How cryptocurrencies promote transfer of wealth between countries
- Common objections to cryptocurrencies
- Tips for crypto market trading and how to manage a bear market
- How low-income earners can benefit from crypto
- Richard defines non-fundable tokens (NFTs) and Web3s
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
- Crypto Current
- Crypto Current on Twitter I Discord I Facebook
- Crypto Current podcast
- Richard Carthon on LinkedIn
- ”Yan Pritzker on the Easiest Way to Continuously Invest in Bitcoin – Swan Bitcoin (Episode 94)”
- Yan Pritzker on LinkedIn
- Swan
- Lightning Network
- Dr. Mark Stephany on LinkedIn
- “Dr. Mark Stephany | [Digital Money Series] Alleviating Poverty and Improving the Environment With Bitcoin: Making the Progressive Case”
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
Welcome to the revolution, the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran.
John Corcoran 0:40
All right, welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, the host of this show. If you are new to listening to this podcast, go check out our archives because got all kinds of great episodes with smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs ranging from we’d get did quick and a few weeks ago, we have Netflix, Kinko’s, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard. I’m also the co-founder of Rise25, where we help connect b2b business owners to their ideal prospects. And today I’ve got Richard carthon. He’s the CEO and host of Crypto Current. So this is part of our crypto series that we’re doing introducing my audience to some of this emerging technology and ideas that are going to be prevalent in the years ahead and have a big impact I believe on society. Crypto Current is an educational platform about cryptocurrency and blockchain. And it does this through easy to understand fun, digestible content that entails all kinds of different videos or blog posts or podcasts or YouTube videos. He’s also involved in a number of different projects including a cryptocurrency hedge fund cryptocurrency venture fund, FinTech education for college students. We’ll get into all that been featured on The Today Show did a TED talk has a lot to say about some some concepts. And so I watched some of his videos on YouTube, and thought he does a great job of explaining some of these concepts, and I’m slow on the uptake. So selfishly, I wanted to have him on here so that I can ask him questions. And you all could benefit from that as well. And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b businesses get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you podcasts and content marketing. Go to our website, rise25.com, if you want to learn more about it. Alright, Richard, first of all, you know, there’s that saying, if you want something done, give it to a busy person to do and you got like five different projects you’re involved in. But you actually played football and baseball at Tulane, which is just insane. So I’m so impressed by that. And clearly, you you embrace that mantra of you want something done, give it to a busy person do it. But where where did this interest in crypto come from? You know, how did how did that first come about? I understand it was from a job that you had while you’re working on your first startup.
Richard Carthon 2:55
That’s right. And John, thank you for the great intro, and thanks for having me on the show. So going back to 2018, I have experience when I first got out of college working in the financial industry working at Merrill Lynch, I ended up leaving that job to do my first startup full time where I had a calendar application, I was able to raise money, I was able to hire my first employee all of that. And basically, I got to a point where I found that inflection point between I need to raise more capital, but I need to build out some more features. And so to help with doing that, I essentially decided to take myself and my employee off of payroll, and then go and get a job at this AI company that was in town. And literally the very first day I was there, and this is the beginning of 2018. My boss says, Hey, what do you know about crypto? Have you ever heard of Bitcoin or Aetherium? I said, what is that? And he said, Trust me go look into it. And that one conversation kind of just changed the whole trajectory of like my career and where I was going to head and everything else because as I started to research the crypto world, I saw this as the future I saw this as my internet moment of this is where the world is headed. How can I educate myself and be at the forefront of this new and emerging technology? Which is blockchain?
John Corcoran 4:15
Yeah. And was it immediate? Or did it take a little while because personally, I feel like it’s taken waves of education. And I’ve probably listened to over 200 hours of podcasts content, different interviews, people talking it through for you, was it kind of a an instant thing or did it take a little while before you got to kind of the light bulb moment?
Richard Carthon 4:38
It took a while. So like as I was first looking into it, I had my hesitancies I as I was trying to get research there was kind of two distinct pieces of content that was being made at the time it was either Schilling which basically means I’m going out and I’m trying to sell you on this thing. And if you do these things, you’re gonna make a ton of money, you’re gonna get to buy the Lambo and all that kind of stuff, which I didn’t really buy into And then you had super highly technical people talking about very thing like, very in depth things that were super over my head, I would, my eyes would glaze over, I couldn’t pay attention. And so I wanted to be able to learn and also wanted to be able to while on my journey of education be able to educate others. And so that’s how I came up with the concept of Crypto Current podcast I’ve now been doing for four years, we’ve done over 300 episodes, but the whole goal is to bridging the gap between people who know nothing about the space with thought leaders, and I learned through conversation and I like to be able to if someone can explain something to me and I can then repeat it back to them in my own way, I know that I got it and I know that my audience can get it as well. And so it was definitely more of a gradual thing. And as like topics came up that I want to learn more about I would just find someone I want to interview interview them on that topic. And through doing that enough, I was really able to take in a lot of really good information.
John Corcoran 5:56
Sounds familiar? I’ve done the exact same thing as love doing it. Well, you know, so there’s there’s the granddaddy of them all. There’s Bitcoin, right? Which is the original the OG right? And then there’s all these other you know, there’s, you know, Aetherium and there’s many many other types of cryptocurrency out there. There are some people who are full on like it’s Bitcoin or nothing. And there are other people that are kind of in the other camp that say like, oh, there’s other cryptocurrencies where do you fall in that range? Or do you even pick a side?
Richard Carthon 6:31
Yeah, that’s a great question. I am not a Bitcoin maximalist. Now I understand the argument for Bitcoin maximalism. However, I am an opportunist. And we’re, some of your largest opportunities are in altcoins. So altcoins are just alternatives to Bitcoin. Now, there’s one distinction I want to establish from the jump as we start to break into the world of crypto currencies. So Bitcoin, as it was intended, and what is mostly used for is as a currency is as a way to have a reserve of a holding value, and then being able to transfer that value across the rest of the cryptocurrencies, for example, the second cryptocurrency that came alive is Aetherium. Aetherium is a platform, it is not really meant to be an exchange of money and currency it is, think of it like an iOS so on your if you have an Apple phone, it uses the iOS system. And then on top of it, you have the app store where things are built on top of it. So these other cryptocurrencies layer twos because Aetherium is a layer one, these daps decentralized apps are built on top of Aetherium these are called decentralized apps. Dapps. And these are cryptocurrency. So all of these blockchain startups got wrapped into this world of cryptocurrencies. And they’re not just think of them as blockchain startups. And as we all know about all startups, 90% of them fail. So the 10% that make it though, have just such a large trajectory of opportunity, that it doesn’t make sense to only hyper focus on Bitcoin, you have to see the entire picture to be able to actualize on all of these opportunities that are out there.
John Corcoran 8:15
Yeah, yeah. What about the people that say that Bitcoin? You know, some people say it’s money. Some people say it’s software, other people and Michael Saylor, say it’s energy, which is an interesting one that takes a lot of explanation. Do you care? Does that? Does that even matter?
Richard Carthon 8:35
So you can make the argument for all three, and I don’t see a reason why it can’t be all three. Like, I don’t know why it has to be this or that. It can be a multitude of things. When you think about just the vet like what is money, like just arbitrarily when you have $1 Bill, like, what does this represent? You’ll get a ton of different answers. This is power, this is stability, this is freedom. Why can’t Bitcoin have the same type of response depending on how you’re looking at it? Ultimately, Bitcoin is providing a chance for people to take the power back to have their own control of their financial stability. The whole point of why Bitcoin was made was in response to 2008 financial crisis, when the housing market, what went under and then the entire world kind of suffered because of it. So Satoshi Nakamoto. Set up Sedona anonymous person came out, wrote the white paper for Bitcoin that was created in 2009. And from there, this one concept, this one, entity, 20,000 plus cryptocurrencies have emerged from then over the course of the next decade. Yeah, my answer is, Bitcoin, to me represents the future and financial freedom. Right, right.
John Corcoran 9:57
You know, it’s funny, you mentioned Satoshi nog Nakamoto so this is the creator of Bitcoin. And it bothered me initially that he disappeared off the map. So there’s a there’s a track record, he was active, no one knew who he was. But there were some people that interacted with him had direct emails or her or group of people. But it seems like it was one person and then just disappeared off the map. At some point said, I’m going to focus on other things. And it’s a little bizarre because now we don’t know where this person who this person do nothing about this person. What are your thoughts on that? And does that bother you at all?
Richard Carthon 10:43
It doesn’t, they’ve they’ve done some looking into. And it’s probably a group of five different people, both men and women who come under the umbrella of Satoshi Nakamoto. It doesn’t bother me that they came together and created this ultimately, by Bitcoin having a finite supply. It being immutable, it being built on blockchain, it makes you your own bank, and allowing for full transparency, and some psycho anonymous Saito anonyme, aka like, you don’t necessarily know who’s on the end of it, but you can always follow it in to a certain number of letters, etc, that is the transaction, they have inevitably created this amazing thing that is Bitcoin that doesn’t have to have one face, it doesn’t have to say like, I own this thing, I run this thing. And now I need to be at the forefront of it, for example, with Aetherium Vitalik, obviously, was one of the lead creators of it, and is seen as the figurehead of Aetherium. And a lot of people look to Him, when things are happening, like the 2.0 merger or other things like even though, the way things are set up, now, he doesn’t make the ultimate decisions because it is now decentralized and the community can now make whatever decisions and and overturn him by Satoshi Nakamoto kind of being this anonymous figurehead. It really keeps the the purity of creating a decentralized money that anyone can have access to. And that was meant to outlive the people that created it.