Learn more about Bitcoin IRA at: www.bitcoinira.com
Find Chris Kline on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/klinec/
JC: Welcome, everyone to another episode of The Future of BizTech. I’m your host, JC Granger. And I have another fantastic guest with us on the show today. And listen, if you end up loving this episode, please show your love and appreciation by following this podcast wherever you’re listening to it. And be sure to give it a five star review preferably with some cool comments that helps out the algorithms. Because that is how other techies like you and I find cool podcasts like this. And today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing the Co-Founder and CEO of Bitcoin IRA, Chris Kline. Chris, thank you so much for being on the show. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself in What does Bitcoin Ira do?
Chris: Absolutely. Thanks for having me JC. it’s a real pleasure to be here with you and your audience. My name is Chris Kline, I started the company called Bitcoin IRA. We were the world’s first platform that allowed clients to open fund and trade their retirement accounts with digital assets, first being Bitcoin. Originally from Colorado and I hail from Sherman Oaks, California today.
JC: No kidding, Colorado because I’m in Denver. What part of Colorado are you from?
Chris: I grew up in Aurora, Eastern Plains and then went to college in Boulder. I lived downtown by the stadium for a few years.
JC: Wait, wait, wait, are you a Buff? Are you a Buffalo?
Chris: Yes, I am a Buff..
JC: I am a Buffalo!
Chris: No way! Really? Go Buffs!
JC: And it’s Sko Buffs now! I don’t know if you if you’re keeping up with the lingo..
Chris: Yeah I heard the kids added an SK to it. I don’t know.
JC: It’s like they’re kinda like that they were too lazy to say “let’s go”. So they said SKO. Which is it’s funny. I like it. But it’s weird. You don’t think I’m too old for that. But..
Chris: They still take their keys out for third down. You remember that?
JC: They do. Yeah, the jingle the keys… Something stay something stay which is good. I used to get little marks on my knuckles. You do it so hard. They end up cutting your fingers.
Chris: Well you know how many lost keys there were every game too?
JC: Oh, that’s right. They just come flying up. For the audience. If you know, you know, right? If you went for division one college school, there’s always little traditions. You know, football games, Chris. That’s hilarious. I had no idea. Okay. I guess I’ll get back to the podcast now. So this is fascinating already, though. So when I heard about what you do, I was like, Okay, this is interesting, because people are going to have a lot of opinions on this. Right? Whether they be educated or not, they’re going to have opinions. You know, there’s there’s risk factors that I’m sure that you’ve heard a million times of like, well, you know, Bitcoin goes up and down so much. But let’s get to that part later. Let’s first talk about this. You provide this from employers to allow their employees or themselves to put these IRAs into that digital asset that is for one that’s innovative, and really cool. I like it from that perspective alone. But who is your perfect client? So what kind of companies do you work with? When you are, you know, that you’re partnering with that are using this kind of service from you?
Chris: Yeah, I mean, it’s usually FinTech players, forward thinkers. Early on, we’re a lot of the Palo Alto, a lot of groups we worked with to make this a reality, you know, you need to have a wallet, you gotta have an exchange, you have to have a custodian, a bank, all of them right away. Their employees were like, Can we do this, and we found a way to make it possible for them. There’s a lot of options for employers out there that are beyond just you know, what happens most.. I’m an entrepreneur. So the last thing you’re thinking about is, especially when it gets to the breakdown of payroll, you know, the payroll, payroll taxes, the insurances, the California, there’s so many of them, and then the 401k. And usually, when it does, it gets tacked on, it’s Oh, we got you all these healthcare options from from A to B, and for your 401k, it’s Hewitt or ADP, total resource, or OI is another big one. And it’s pretty traditional options. So employers can look at a lot of times their employees just in general will open up a separate account and contribute to that. So that’s one option, just letting them know it’s there. And the second is smaller companies that don’t necessarily have 401, K’s or one an option alternative can look at simple IRAs, you structure one for your employees, they behave in the same way with contributions and things. But our ideal client is such a wide spectrum. And that’s why you know, people call Bitcoin the revolution. I try to be a little bit less abrasive, and I call it the evolution and there’s it’s such a range of people you know, early on when we started this back in 2015, the first guys were super nerds, I call my engineers, NASA scientists that were retired or were still working IBM guys, the guys that were on the cutting edge of things and AI and machine learning that knew about crypto, but now it’s across the board. We’ve got nurses from Wisconsin, we’ve got my family members all have one, it’s a unique addition to an alternative for your retirement planning that a lot of people are interested in for a lot of different reasons.
JC: Well that’s really cool. So let me ask you this then. When you hook up with a I imagine you could you could do this for Fortune 500, you could do this for even kind of small to medium sized businesses correct? It’s really just an option that they could that they could carry for the for their employees right? If so, okay, let’s get to the part that I because I know we’re gonna have to talk about this a lot, right? The risk factor you know, people watch Bitcoin shoot up, crash, shoot up, crash. Now, listen, you only lose money when you sell. Right? So technically do you hold you haven’t lost anything, right? That being said, and that’s what IRAs kind of the entire premise of 401k.
Chris: Exactly. Right?
JC: It is the whole. But then the question is, is like, where is what have you seen as the historical benefit? And let’s let’s get rid of any of the, the original people who accidentally bought Bitcoin when it was .01 cents and are trillionaires. Now, let’s get rid of them. And let’s just talk about like the last five years, let’s say in the last five years, if somebody had put in, you know, maybe a third of their IRA over into a digital asset that managed, like you’re saying, what could they have? You know, what have they seen happen? And where do you see, you know, the next couple of years, just from the point of view of just Bitcoin, maybe not the industry, but just Bitcoin.
Chris: So we actually have clients from five years ago, right, first one entry price $250, it was actually the director of the US Mint, former director of us, Ed Moy, we worked with him on in past occasions. And so we wanted to be the first and he’s held he did, he just did a small contribution, you can put six to $7,000 a year based on your age to a retirement account. So he did that. And now it’s upwards of 300,000. That’s our beginnings, obviously, not pennies, right, it’s still in the dollars, actually hundreds of dollars moving forward, that obviously, there’s waves of people that come into this because there is a FOMO factor that kicks in. But what most folks are really hyper focused on is the finiteness of Bitcoin, it’s going to do a lot of cool things with with payments across borders, as an alternative to other monetary instruments out there, but it’s one of the only few we have available today that is truly finite, there will only be 21 million Bitcoin ever mined. And in the last year, the Federal Reserve is done, like trillions of US dollars being added to the balance sheet. And folks are looking in that regard. And that’s one of the driving factors that you see.
JC: So I mean, right now, as we’re talking Where is Bitcoin roughly? Like, just what’s the value of a Bitcoin?
Chris: It’s just about 57,000. So it’s about 8-9000 off, its all time highs around 65,000, which it was felt said earlier this year around April.
JC: And you know, you see these fluctuations in the market in the weeks or months, and they go big swings, right. You know, and something can happen, you know, China making regulations recently where they’re like, Nope, none of that, and it affects the market. Now, those data points will happen. But you zoom out. Yeah, ultimately, and I’m asking the question, but I’m saying it from almost an assumptive point of view, because just from the logic, but tell me if I’m wrong, when you zoom out, and even with these certain data points in there, nobody can technically shut it down. Because it doesn’t belong to any in particular. Right? So that’s the first part. So it’s sustainable in the sense that no one can just turn it off. Right? Okay. That’s the first part. Second part is this, it’s finite. And which means that eventually, there’s a supply and demand issue. So in your opinion, then zooming out, regardless of these day to day or week to week or month month fluctuations, is it safe to assume, is it always just kind of always going up until it runs out until everyone has all the Bitcoin? I mean, how does that work?
Chris: That’s a good way, that’s an interesting way to look at it. So, our mantra in Bitcoin and one of the newer ones is when in doubt, zoom out. So you nailed half of it, when in doubt, because you’ll at the daily aberrations. You’ll see weeks or months where it’s down. September’s are always rough that you if you zoom out, it reminds you Oh, yeah, this thing is, this thing is up a lot over the last five years, it’s beating every instrument availables, S&P all those things, but when you say, when they look at that, what keeps that I guess, intestinal fortitude at play is that there’s a bigger picture happening here. And it’s not when we just run out, it’s actually the most divisible asset as well. So divisibility is huge. With gold, you can only divide it by ounces, right? Or quarter ounces. Maybe there’s a 10th ounce out there a gram. With real estate, it’s houses, right? It’s a full house, usually that you’re looking to investing with Bitcoin, it goes to the 11th decimal point, it’s called a Satoshi. And I know it seems weird because we’re of a generation. We’re all entrepreneurs. We’re a generation of stacking commons, right? We want to get one more comma on our bank account, but think the other way beyond just two decimal points, the 50 cents, the 75 cents that we have with us dollars, but now you’re looking at to the 11th decimal point, a Satoshi could be something you go to get lunch, it could cost us a satoshi someday, and we start worrying you think in that way. And in fact, they’re already doing that not quite to that law, actually, to that level in El Salvador. Last month, it was announced it’s there now their reserve currency, they’re mining Bitcoin with their volcanic power, talk about just disruption. They’ve been taking something that is been a problem for them. And they’re mining Bitcoin using the power of geothermal power of the volcanoes that are there.
Chris: That’s a really big scene approach to Bitcoin. Why, you have China that is like banning it, which is China, anything that shows revolution, democracy, People’s Choice, rights, that’s what you’re going to see come out of there, and lack of control as a state controlled economy. And so you’ve got this cool dichotomy happening. which is also happening here in the US, but we’re having a conversation about it right. But hear U.S. wise, there’s new regulation, you got a new SEC chair that actually is crypto-friendly, or at least crypto experienced. But you’ve got a lot of folks eyeballing this space and wondering how are we going to regulate it, the buzzword is how’s it gonna get regulated? Truthfully speaking, Bitcoin has a larger microscope and a tighter microscope on it than almost every other financial class out there. As an entrepreneur running a business, if anybody’s in banking or finance, you know, your KYC AML standards, ours are 10 times as robust, we have to go back, we go back even into the criminal background activity, which no other bank does. And that’s just for the standard of what regulation is where it’s headed. At the end of the day, what’s driving it, a lot of guys are making a lot of money in crypto, and the government wants their piece. That’s really the driving factor. That’s what we’re looking at.
JC: Let’s just let’s call it what it is, right?
Chris: Yes, spade to spade.
JC: And it is. And you know, there’s other sides too, I mean, not to be super, you know, critical of it. Because there are things to consider that if you don’t have regulation, if you don’t have transparency, there are certain types of people in the world that are going to exploit that right. So that there is a good actual more
Chris: Oh regulation, we applaud it when just you know, just to clarify, I applied it. It’s we need the guardrails, I was around in 2017, when even Paris Hilton had some type of token that he was offering. It was chaos. It was like.com era, everybody had a website, even companies that didn’t exist had websites. And that’s now behind us. And you see, the process by which people are getting into this space is, is in a much more guardrail type fashion, especially your business.
JC: And honestly, it’s for the better industry, because you even nobody has Bitcoin wants it to be so dramatic. They like the highs, but no one’s gonna like the lows, you need something to be stable, right? Stability is really the long term play. So let’s talk about the benefit to businesses specifically. So walk me through, like, why would a small business let’s say, let’s say a business, one to 5 million gross a year, right? Maybe it’s a software company, right? We’d like tech, let’s call it let’s talk software. So software company making, let’s say 2 million a year, and they’ve got, you know, 15 employees, something like that. Okay, what is the benefit for them offering this? Oh, there’s obviously a benefit where it gives options to employees. That’s awesome for that. But is there you know, what other benefits are there is there a way that the employer itself somehow benefits either financially or structurally or tax wise. And then other than just the benefit of being able to offer something cool to people.
Chris: I mean, the driving factor is employee satisfaction, which is a big deal these days. I mean, now that we’re remote, the world is flat, especially with software engineers, I’m sure everybody knows, it got a lot more competitive really fast, because you didn’t need to live in Palo Alto to get paid what you wanted to get paid, you could live anywhere. And it opened up a whole new generation, I think of software engineers that are now available across the US map without having to be in a particular place. So it gives you a competitive edge there that you can say that some of these are alternatives that are available with your retirement savings that we match with. Obviously, corporate matching has always been a piece of what companies used as far as their tax strategy. And everybody’s is different. So I try to do but there’s, there’s obviously a reason a good reason why we offer these benefits to our employees. And then beyond that a lot of businesses that we work with, including our own has put Bitcoin onto the balance sheet. So and it’s crazy to think about right, but obviously Elon Musk led the way with like 1.5 billion earlier this year, MicroStrategy has done a series of buys, they’re almost well over a billion dollars on their balance sheet. And even a small company like ourselves, were able to take and have a little piece there. Because even for this year, what we accrued across the year has grown and that means that’s a pay, it helps the bottom line, it’s another strategy to grow your business. Now, obviously, if you’re in startup mode, and I’ve been here where when we actually bought the domain for Bitcoin IRA, I remember having an argument about man, we’ve never paid that much for a domain before it was worth it, obviously. So every now and you’re thinking about something like that, buy the domain. But when you’re sitting and you’re making bills, buy bills either won’t be keeping yourself cashflow, positive months or weeks at a time, probably not the best mood, because you don’t even tell your boys “Hey, we can’t make payroll because Bitcoin went down 20%”. And the third thing is I’ve just started to see this fracture surface is obviously celebrities. You’ve heard of NFL players and other NBA players demanding a portion of their contract with crypto. It’s starting to happen with employees too. There are mechanisms our platform has abilities to plug folks into these things that your employer or employee could say hey, I want 10% of my paycheck to go into Bitcoin or be paid to me as Bitcoin and that’s really cool. If you really..
JC: Do you see people doing it because they believe that zoom out that it will okay, it’s kind of like, you know, we grew up that real estate never went down until it did right? But even when it did, then it came back like, if you zoom out even farther out of 09, I mean, granted that was not good for anybody really, except for people already had a ton of money who got good deals on buying stuff up. But if you were to zoom out technically speaking, real estate still does hold, it still does increase in value that is still the number one way..
Chris: Capital intensive though now that’s where it’s..
JC: But this is what so I’m gonna relate this to the to the Bitcoin question is this.. Is Bitcoin the new Real Estate where because it’s finite, and because if you zoom out big enough, right, if you’re a trader, it’s a whole different story. But if you’re someone who’s doing the long haul investment, in your opinion, is it something that is a smarter bet than putting it into a high yield bond or a savings account? That is traditional for people to put their money aside in? You know, do you recommend that people say, or, you know, and if so, what percentage of their savings? Should they put in there safely? And what should they not? Like? Should they go all in and be like, Okay, we’re not trying to go crazy and go all in, but you should put 10% or whatever, like, what is your advice? Just from your experience of how much should we put into things like this have a concept like an a Bitcoin IRA.
Chris: For everybody different, right? We all have our individual lives, that we live in our individual bills and credit worthiness, but you nailed it on the head. As far as is this another alternative to those things because of the prohibition to get in to people, especially younger generations are getting priced out of this market, it’s it’s, it’s almost impossible to to build enough wealth that you can get the down payment, get the financing, get the costs, and then survive the mortgage. And first, basically, you’re gonna have an empty house furnishings things like this is a different way of doing things and looking at, okay, I’ve got I have built up some savings. It’s not enough for x, but it’s enough for y. I mean, as far as our platform, we’re not financial advisors. So we don’t throw out like percentages that are make sense. I can tell you an aggregate-wise, most folks are in the 5 to 20% range, depending upon their risk tolerance. I’ve seen clients that have gone all in one of our early clients left his job at Intel, I kid you not, he found out he had a 401k that was with fidelity. And he found out he couldn’t touch it until he reached 59 and a half or quit his job. And he looked at myself in the mirror and said, Well, it’s a long ways to 59 and a half. But I can quit tomorrow. And I’ve got this and I already wanted, he already wanted to be an entrepreneur, he was like ready at that stage of his career. So he did it. I remember saying this is crazy and we’re still friends today. And now I think he turned 300 into probably 4 to 5 million. And he’s able to help finance over time this development of his small business. So you know, everybody’s got that moment in time where they make a decision on what they’re going to do and but not having getting off zero is the bigger conversation, having a zero exposure to Bitcoin, that’s when you’re going to be kicking yourself a few years down the road.
JC: Got it? So let’s talk about this. And let’s talk about the platform itself, your platform? How does a company interact with it? Can they sign themselves up? Is it completely, you know, walk through? Or do you guys as a part service where you have to have someone on your team, get them in their paperwork and stuff? Like just what is that user interaction with your platform?
Chris: The first question we always ask folks to look at is how much is your are your employees actually using your 401k? Because you’d be surprised when you actually look at the data of what who’s using it? Why are they using it? And usually they do a survey with their clients, with their employees, like, “Hey, why aren’t you guys using this?”, because that’s usually the standard they’re not using, we’re gonna we have another epidemic or pandemic happening since the way before COVID, which is we have 60% of Americans and recording to a recent survey about two years ago with the auto not not prepared or having started for retirement yet. And even when corporate matches any of them, they’re not making the decision to do it. And some of that lacks just something they’re interested in. And they rather have the money in their bank account to do emergency funds with or other things they’re dealing with in their lives. And so once you do that, then you get it you know, where you stand. If it’s not really popular, then you can encourage employees that aren’t using it, you can all you can get your be one of two ways you can use your 401k. Or you can use just a standard IRA. And that’s where you get a whole bunch of clients, employees, they say great, I’d love to do that we point them in the right direction, we set them up as kind of like a group within our community so that there’s a representative that’s there to help any of the people that need help with their accounts.
Chris: And they and they come in as I came from XYZ companies, we all know how they how they operate. The second layer is if you’re small or don’t have anything, or it’s just really not being used, and you think you may want to change it up. SIMPLE IRAs is a strategy they use where the group will create something, they can make contributions as a match, and then each employee has their own. And as long as it’s there for two years, then you can start being moved. So you’re not as locked up as 401K’s. 401 k’s are locked up as either you’re in as an employee, or you reach that age of 59 and a half. And then the third, it’s a little bit more robust. And there’s groups our selves can help you and there’s other groups that are out there. You go to your existing 401k provider and you can create an addendum to your operating agreement of your 401k where you can actually slide in the option to have required for employees to have bridge accounts to other places, self directed bridges is kind of what they’re usually called. So now that that mechanism is in place, any of your employees can say I want to do this money moves from the 401k over to the sub account and through the bridge. And now they log in and they’ve got complete control either through the mobile app or the desktop to to see their funds and then trade between any of the digital currencies that are available on their platform.
JC: That’s really cool. I like that. So let’s now let’s talk about how are you getting the word out there? So I’m marketing guy, you know, that we’ve talked about before, I always have to ask a marketing question because it fascinates me. So how is Bitcoin IRA even.. I mean, you’re on a podcast. That’s one. Okay, we know one. Alright, you’re doing PR, great. What other methods are you using that have either been successful or not successful? As far as getting the word out about you guys to the right people?
Chris: Yeah absolutely. Obviously, you don’t have a business until you get on at least a couple of stages of a ladder and yell from a megaphone. And it’s that people have to know it’s there. Early on, press was key, you could drop a press release, you’d have 50 to 100 people volume. And then we had these really interesting where we did the right thing, right things come, we started growing our client base and over and people would hear about us that we’re with other investment groups, there’s so many of them out there, you can Google investment information, you see ads out the wazoo have joined our subscriptions, you will some of those guys found us shut and actually open an account and did an LS a dissertation on the experience and what why they did it and what it could mean. And that was crazy. Because an entrepreneur I walked in, like on a Tuesday. And as everybody popped out of their cubes, like we have a problem. And I was like, oh my god, what’s going on their phone hasn’t stopped ringing for like six hours. They’re like 27 people on hold right now. And I was like, Okay, that was a new evolution, just natural growth, natural growth. That happens sometimes when you got a cool product to get lucky, right? We had a cool product, new and innovative. Beyond that, obviously, you got to spend money with the big boys, you got to go over to the things you got to spend money on those things.
Chris: And what’s nice is that as you spend enough money, they take care of you. I’ve learned over the years, but you have to reach those thresholds, right? And then outreach like this, I do a lot of educational seminars, just I just go like they invite me I was at a young professionals organization, and I, in Beverly Hills about three weeks ago. And I mean, these are players and I just went out and education, you know, understanding a lot of people don’t even understand the history of money. You know, where did money start? What how has it evolved over the years? And how does Bitcoin fit into that, and they’re having a human being. So almost all the other businesses that are in our sector, they are really heavy tech driven. We came from a background that we understood the paramount of crypto customer service, when it came to people’s retirement monies. They’re saving for the long term, some of them are moving, our average climb moves $65,000 from another 401k or an IRA. So they’re, they’re moving a big sum of money to do this. Having a human being to talk to you is a pivotal difference we’ve made and it helps build our business. Well, I know a lot of businesses will say Oh, half of our our clients come from referrals from other clients. And that’s probably BS, we truly have 30% of our clients are coming every month from other clients that have experienced us had success with this and they share it with..
JC: Well I mean, I believe that just because it’s such an innovative idea, you know, I can’t imagine you have a million competitors that are doing Bitcoin IRA account, right?
Chris: We get these waves after holidays. So everybody gets together before the 4th July obviously you get this wave of newbies because just naturally people together talking about things bitcoins in the news, its volatility is what drives it’s a it’s almost a sex appeal to it’s got sizzle. It’s something to chat about. I gets people and then when you do the math and people that got in early,really it’s like it’s sounding cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs four years ago, Bitcoin and IRA, are you nuts? And I remember the banks and the regulator saying, Are you sure? And I was like, Yes, this people want this. And they have we have over 100,000 users now and created our own industry, we made our own competition, because it got big enough, they showed up.
JC: Well, that keeps you on that keeps you on your toes. Like it’s like Tesla, you know, there’s the reason why they let some things be public. And I think whether whatever your opinion of Elon Musk is, I thought it was an interesting play. Because really, if your competition can start catching up, it forces you to keep pushing that edge and keep innovating. Otherwise you get complacent, you know, and then somebody will leapfrog you. So I think it’s..
Chris: (Inaudible) What are we innovating today?
JC: That’s good. I like it.
Chris: And it may be something as simple as somebody comes in from the service and says these two things aren’t connecting on the mobile app because of XYZ reason and how are we going to innovate our solution to that? Because we’re on the cutting edge. Nobody’s ever offered 24/7 trading, we were the first dude in 2018. It was crazy. I remember sitting there we did it like just around November 1st, about the five, six year anniversary, the first 24/7 trade on the platform. And I remember sitting there on Christmas and being like please somebody trade, we gave you this tool use it. And I remember my daughter’s opening gifts and all sudden my phone starts buzzing. And I’m like, oh my god, it’s happening. And it was we were waiting. And that’s what you build those things. And then we listen to our clients. Innovation really comes from other people asking for and that’s where mobile apps come from new products, new features. Once you get to a certain level your clients will help drive your roadmap if you listen.
JC: That’s actually really inspiring. Let’s talk about let’s talk about roadmaps here. So I have a two part question for you. The Future of BizTech, that’s the title so we got to talk about the future first when asked what the industry you know, would be Bitcoin or specifically software, you know, platforms that deal with it. And even just like you said, you know a retirement account and how that plays? Where do you see the next five or 10 years in your industry based on either regulation, or innovation or technology? You know, just like if you’re having a beer with the buddy like, I swear, man, I swear this is gonna happen. You just wait, you just watch. What is that that you say in that moment?
Chris: You know, my big thing right now is watch South America. And that’s in the next two years, you know, we had this whole conversation in the 60s and 50s, about communism and Southeast Asia, right? That’s why we were in Vietnam, was it it was called domino theory. If one state falls, then the next day.. in El Salvador is having amazing success with this, it’s going to take some time for them to prove it. Its viability for its population base, but they’re already using people are buying McDonald’s and Starbucks and paying bills and paying, they’re doing things there. Brazil is next, they’re just about to, and watch how it can spread like wildfire there, it’s important to remember bitcoin is not an American thing. It’s a human thing. This is a way that this these these currencies can be used. In other sectors, Africa is another really interesting place to watch, because it’s so underbanked, they have all these telemed communication towers everywhere, but they have less than a very few banking infrastructure. Another place that you’ll see Europe is already this melting pot, right? European Union, European Central Bank, this whole concept, and they’re very forward thinking. So I would watch, it’d be very, very interesting to see how this thing spreads across the globe. And it spreads across the US the type of people that are looking at it, and the people you’re going to be hearing about it from I always sit back because you know, obviously being the Bitcoin guy for years now everything giving Christmas, it’s always a conversation. So I learned to sit back and watch how people that one time thought it was crazy, or now have their Coinbase account opened up. And they’re trading and they’re learning things and they’re in it’s beyond just an asset that’s worth $1 today that you can sell for $1. Tomorrow, $2 tomorrow.
JC: Sure
Chris: It’s one of these these tokens doing. The theory of the smart contracts. And what daps are is a revolution to Internet. everybody complains about privacy on the internet, right? We all feel like big brothers listening, we think about buying a couch and all sudden we see seven ads about buying a couch.
JC: Hey I’m marketing, hold on. I’m a marketing guys and I take offense with that..
Chris: ..more privacy for us in a new era of what the internet is and how we we ask for our advertisement. We don’t get sped our advertising. We put those things out there based upon smart contracts. And with voting, there’s a lot of cool applications that you’re going to start seeing, okay, Bitcoin is not just money and digital currencies, not just money, but it’s actually just to positively impact our lives and make things that are difficult, a lot easier. We just use the blockchain technology and application that’s out there.
JC: Yeah. And it’s funny. So I like we said earlier about El Salvador it is, you know, I think that when they launched it, they didn’t do the best job. I remember reading about a little choppy. Yeah, a little choppy in the beginning. But you know, whatever, you know, again, zoom out, zoom out, right? Like, what’s the long term, but what you said about Africa is what I think is something I’ve been watching how, I feel like Africa is so primed to leapfrog more than anyone. I think South America can make great use of it, and it can, but there’s so many different things happening there. I don’t I think that Africa is where I would watch personally just at standpoint. And they got the population that like, like, here’s the thing, if they can just build the car, they’ve got all the gas in the world, you know what I mean? Right? Like, and so I feel like if that hits there, they figured out you could see Africa leapfrog in ways that nobody probably found even possible and because of not just Bitcoin, but blockchain in general, right. Like you were saying, like there’s, it’s not just what Bitcoin is, it’s what it’s the foundation of how it operates that can be used in so many different ways. So let’s now talk about your company’s future. Okay. So my audience likes to hear some insights scoops. So what do you have? Give us juice man? What do you got for us? What’s what’s coming that no one else knows about?
Chris: We did the First Earn Program and Q1. So people are earning in the first light Bitcoin sending advertisements, which is awesome. 6% on casting and news, that’s that one’s done mobile app came out this year was awesome. What we’ve got coming in the next two weeks is, the we right now have about 10 to 15 assets available. And that’s because the industry has been growing slowly. But in a couple of weeks, we’ll be expanding it to 65 to 70 available digital assets to buy and invest with. And that opens up what we’re just talking about all these applications, they’re doing something revolutionary in their own sector, and a piece ability for you to say, hey, you know, kind of want to be a part of that. That’s really cool what they’re doing. And it’s kind of like the next evolution of Kickstarter a lot of ways because that’s what these companies are doing. They’re using tokens and using communities and technology to do something different than it’s been done before. So I’m excited. There’s some really cool ones on there. But yes, we’ll be I guess, 6X-ing the viable assets for investment on our platform.
JC: And when you say asset, you mean like Dogecoin, for example, like..
Chris: Yes Doge, there’s Cardano and Link already on there. We just rolled those out kind of quietly a couple of weeks ago, but it’d be all those different types of tokens or cryptocurrencies. There’s 14000 in this space plus, so it’s not all of them, but at least it’s this next generation of players.
JC: That’s really cool. So again, it gives employees more options. which makes them happier. And that gives him like, I mean, again, it’s a competitive market right now. It’s hard to find labor in certain industries, you know. So this could be a way that they help entice employees in. So that could be really cool. So let me ask you a personal question now, right? What did you want to do when you were kid? What did you want to be when you grew up? And then and maybe this is it, maybe this is it? But if it’s not, how did it get here? Right? Like, I want it like what a child, Chris Kline..
Chris: I want to be a senator.
JC: Really? You still could. You literally still could.
Chris: I know I, I think that, honestly, our country is gonna miss out on a lot of great leaders. Because when you think about it from a leadership standpoint, and where you’re at, do you really want to put yourself and your family through what it takes to be in politics thing? It’s not what it was when I was a kid. I mean, I was born under Reagan, but I’ve studied all of them. So yeah, I wanted to be a senator I ran for like every public Office or Office at school, otherwise, I crushed it, I was so good in campaigning, and I worked on a few political campaigns out of college. And that’s where it turned me the other way, because I saw under the belly of that beast, and it wasn’t what I was just kind of. So that’s why I did a little reset in my mid like, early 20s. Obviously, I had a business degree international finance. And I knew I didn’t want to work for corporate America forever. When I was growing up, the average median income in like Denver was 41,000. I was like, Well, I gotta at least make 100 grand so that we get this when we were kids, right? So different. Now. I took a jump at 2625, sold all my worldly possessions, bought a one way ticket to California and packed one suitcase.
Chris: I ran in serendipitously to my now partners, other serial entrepreneurs, and just embrace the moment and hey, I got no roots, I’ve got no risk. I mean, worst thing, I always had $200, underneath the mattress at my motel that I lived in for a year that I could take a bus back home, like that was my ticket. And that all worked out. And what where I think I’m headed in the future is interesting because as entrepreneurs, there’s a lot of different styles. And I know some that are very successful, and some just can’t get enough, right, that victory of building something innovating something new, they’ll move on to the next thing, the next thing next thing, I was talking to one of our 11th client last night, we were friends. He calls himself number 11. And he’s like, What do you want to do in the next five years, if if this goes to a place where there’s an exit or an IPO? Who knows what will be, I can’t even.. with Bitcoin, you can’t think that far ahead. It’s just it, you’ll zoom out later. But you don’t zoom out while you’re in it. And so but I kind of want to go be a teacher and like a coach at a high school in like Middle America, I think that was really the later part of life. And because you know, a lot of teachers were involved in me, even though you don’t think about in the moment, you look back and I still have relationships with several of them from high school days, even back into the middle school days, and they have an impact. And that’s another place where you can really build the future. Unfortunately, because I had success in business. I don’t it’d be a different type of teacher and a lot of ways. So maybe instead of being a senator, in my later years, I might just go be a teacher.
JC: I think you’d do better for the world than being a senator for at this point. Anyway, with that. I think you’d have a better spot maybe in the afterlife too.
Chris: I really liked that question by the way, JC. That’s an awesome question. I bet that one gets all your..
JC: I got a few to choose from, I got a few interesting ones I like does that one’s just piques my own curiosity? Well, Chris, let me ask this. How can anyone listen to how can they get to the website? How can they reach you personally, if they need to try like big deals and partnerships.
Chris: Yes, you can first place is just download the app honestly so easy, you’re probably on your phone already, you go to the App Store, it’s Bitcoin IRA- download it, it’s got a cool orange egg because it’s your nest egg of retirement and Bitcoin. And once you’re there, you can fill out some information that’ll get you in touch with one of our account executives that can guide you in the right direction. A lot of folks will just start with their own like “Hey, I got to do $7,000 this year” let me just feel what this looks like experience it and then that’s where once you have a relationship we start talking about you bring up your employees and what they’re looking for and then we can kind of dissect what makes the most sense, “Is it worth it you have so many people and so much money sitting at ADP that it’s worth it to build that bridge account go through that those steps, it’s not expensive, it’s just a tenuous process or with a simple make sense or just just educating your employees Hey, we went to Bitcoin IRA, our CEO open an account they’re offering this special for all of our employees that want to open up an account because we’re expanding the the offering for more and more folks looking at it.
JC: Can people reach you via email or LinkedIn or anything like that if they need you?
Chris: For me personally, LinkedIn is my jam. That’s usually where folks find me.
JC: Alright
Chris: And that way you can we get to know a little bit about each other well, I usually I get so many chats I try to keep up with them. So message me there and then we’ll I’ll get you my cell and we can connect and talk more.
JC: Awesome. So again, what BitcoinIRA.com or download the app – it has little orange egg like you said, or Chris Klein. Klein with a K on LinkedIn. And..
Chris: Kline K-L-I-N-E. There are many ways we can spell Kline I guess..
JC: That’s true because there’s like EI or IEN. So for everyone listening out there again, if you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe to this podcast. Give it the five stars rating put in some cool comments, so other techies like us can find it and enjoy learning about all the amazing and helpful b2b software’s on the market today, Chris, thank you so much for being on the show. And I actually look forward to talking to you after this, especially since you’re a fellow buff and you piqued my interest, even for our company with what you got to do. So thanks for coming on the show.
Chris: Thanks a lot JC for having me. It’s a pleasure.
JC: Buh-bye