Join Me in Las Vegas to Learn About the Future of Finance
The first time I walked onto a stage to speak was in New Orleans. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. The sweating. The shakes. The blurred vision. The ringing in my ears.
This would have been 2006-ish. I was still writing for The Wall Street Journal, and the organizer of some sort of family conference knew I lived in Louisiana and asked me to speak about family and money, vis-à-vis the weekly, syndicated WSJ column I was writing at the time: Love & Money.
Yes, the audience is supposed to be quiet while you speak. I get that. But after the initial applause dies and you’re living in a real-world version of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence…well, I completely understand the opening line to that song: “Hello darkness, my old friend.”
Today, I am an old hand at motor-mouthing on stage in front of an audience. And I look forward to it.
I’ve spoken at investment, gold, and real estate conferences in Europe, the U.S., Central and South America, and the Caribbean. And I always keep in mind one truth that a former boss told me when I started speaking at her conferences a decade ago: “You know more than they do, so just tell ‘em what you know.”
That’s true. And it works. Calms the jitters and puts into perspective why all the silence…
I come by this topic today because of an email I received recently from one of my colleagues back at the mothership. She told me I’m on the docket several times for the upcoming International Living conference in Las Vegas in February…the first in-person conference IL has held since the pandemic invaded our world.
I can’t wait!
Finally, back out into the real world, talking to a live audience.
I mean, the online conferences I’ve spoken at over the last 18 months or so have been great. But I miss the energy of real, in-person interactions.
I miss my readers approaching me with questions or to thank me for sharing some bit of investment wisdom that has turned a certain sum of money into a much-larger pile of dollars.
In fact, I’ve become friends with some readers who I met at conferences. We still keep in touch today and sometimes get together for drinks or dinner and a chat.
Plus, it’s Vegas. I always love going to Vegas for a few days.
But I digress. Back to the email…
My colleague wanted to know what I might like to talk about during one particular, so-far-unnamed session.
I was already on the schedule to talk about expat life in Europe, and the nuts and bolts of being a digital nomad.
Now I was getting a third session at the event and I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about: crypto.
As you likely know from my dispatches, I’ve been a crypto investor for years. My son in a tweet to a friend recently termed me an “DeFi OG” (an “original gangster,” slang for “one of the first” in decentralized finance). I got a kick out of that.
I’ve built (and still operate) crypto-mining rigs. I’ve invested in scores of projects across all manner of industries in the emerging and disruptive cryptoconomy. I’m earning more than 10% on my idle cash through various crypto-banks. Now, I’m moving into non-fungible tokens and the emerging wealth-creation opportunities arising there.
I regularly receive emails from readers who want to know more about all of this.
They recognize, as I do, that our future is on the blockchain, and they want to soak up as much knowledge as they can so that they’re ahead of the masses as this transformative disruption occurs. (Or is it disruptive transformation?)
Whether it’s a digital version of the U.S. dollar, bitcoin’s emergence as a store of value, or the arrival of crypto networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Cardano and others, the reality racing at us is a digital revolution that will fundamentally change typical daily life.
The revolution won’t be televised, but it will be globally visible through the implementation of blockchain/crypto technology across just about every facet of our existence. And it will be visible in the rising value of certain crypto assets that are powering the revolution.
And that’s what I want to talk about in Vegas…how we go about exploiting the revolution for our benefit, even as the revolution exploits those who aren’t paying attention or who refuse to believe an ethereal world can ever replace the tangible.
But that’s what makes a market—bulls and bears tugging this way and that.
I’ve staked six-figures of my personal wealth on the bullish side of that crypto tug-of-war.
I’ll tell you all about it in Vegas in February.
