Decentralized Mindset

Rich Dad Radio Show welcomes guest and friend, Mark Moss, in the studio to discuss market cycles. Mark Moss is an investor, marketer and strategist. Moss was successful in real estate, owned a couple of businesses that became Fortune 500 exits, and invested heavily and successfully in real estate development. The economic crash of 2008 proved a hard hit for Moss;

“Mike Tyson says everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face, and I got more than punched in the face. I got knocked out.”

Moss says while he recognized he knew how to make money, he didn’t understand what he terms the ‘financial casino thing’ that was happening. Moss dug his heels in to educated himself.

Money Doesn’t Disappear…It’s Like Energy.

Money transfers, he says, like energy. When Mark lost his wealth, someone else received his wealth. This didn’t sit well with him, he relates. He vowed never to let that happen again, but to in fact, be on the receiving end of wealth transfers. He’s spent twelve years researching and learning about wealth transfers, and began writing a financial newsletter and creating videos. For the last six years, he’s embarked into the educator side with Youtube and a podcast. Learn to do it, he says, then teach it.

There are three angles to look at it, he says, three different revolutionary cycles converging. Look at them from these different angles; a political structure, a technological angle, and from a financial angle. It’s important to have these perspectives because one indicator isn’t conclusive. You need several indicators to see which way they point.

“But we also want to expand past financial. Let's look at the other areas, because solutions come to problems. Things are reactive, cycles are reactive. So what happens in the political-social area pushes technological. Then that drives financial. So I think a lot of people are looking for financial answers. What comes next? Will the dollar remain the reserve currency? Will it be the Yuan? Will it be an SDR? Will it be whatever? But they're looking at it from only a financial angle, and without understanding the technological side or the political side, they can't really get to the answer they're looking for.”

Investing Cycles

Starting with the political-social side, we can see that the world is in turmoil. There are two cycles to look at within; a regime change (or 84 populist uprising). 84 years ago, we had World War II and Hitler and Mussolini and even FDR changed the United States with the New Deal into a socialist type of nation. 84 years before that, Karl Marx wrote the communist manifesto, which then led to the European Spring, the largest European revolution.

Three 84 years cycles equals a 252 year cycle, which is a revolution cycle. 250 years ago, we had the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the birth of democracy, capitalism, et cetera. 250 years before that? The Protestant Reformation.

What is important over those 250 and 500 year cycles, is that they were both representing rejecting globalism or centralization and moving toward de-centralization.

“In the Protestant Reformation, the church, the Catholic church and the government together, and there was only one way to God, through the central control. But the people, interesting point, 70 years earlier had gotten the printing press. They'd gotten the Bible. They learned that I don't need a central control. I can go de-centralized. Now I can have an independent path.”

250 years ago, it was the same thing in rejecting the monarchy, rejecting the established government in Europe. They created a decentralized government.

History is littered with stories of governments getting too oppressive, Moss says, and being overthrown. We are, right now, at the 84 year and the 250 year converging. While it can’t be localized to a specific date or year, we are within the decade that Moss believes this convergence will occur.

Hard Times Bring Strong Men-Strong Men Bring Great Times

The Fourth Turning is a principal and key area of Moss’ research. There’s four 20-year cycles within an 80 year cycle. This cycle is reactive: hard times bring strong men, strong men bring great times, but great times bring weak men, and weak men bring bad times, but bad times bring the strong men again. It’s cyclical. We can see that today, he says. We have bad times with weak men living off of the wealth that was created two generations before them. Academia and politics people have no reality because they’ve never produced. They are living off the wealth of the past.

We have natural laws like gravity. With enough money and technology, we could suspend that natural law of gravity, but eventually we are always going to have to come back to it. Another natural law is ‘sow before you reap.’ You must produce before you consume, Moss says. It’s a natural law. We can get away with consuming without production for a while, but eventually, we have to go back to producing first.

Market Disruptors

Moss hosts Market Disruptors, a podcast, that in part, discusses and studies the history of cycles. It’s a positive message, Moss says, and he believes there is great hope on the other side. He iterates: Solutions come to problems. The world is rejecting centralization, globalization, and pushing for decentralization. We are at the peak of globalization right now. Pre-pandemic, there were ten countries with a million people, each marching populist uprisings.

Centralization is a problem. The money printer is a problem, as in, unlimited money supply. Censorship is a problem.

“We used to be ruled by law, like the Constitution, but today, we’re ruled by men who constantly change the rules.”

While the world is rejecting globalization and inching toward decentralization, we have problems that need to be solved. We have a technological revolution that’s happening. These technological revolutions happen in 50 year cycles. The industrial revolution changed humanity; from the cottage industry to the factories and cities. Steam engines from horse power and manpower. Steel allowed us to go from two story structures to skyscrapers. Electricity revolutionized the world. Then to oil and automobiles. In 1971, we had the age of the microprocessor, which allowed personal computers and the age of information, the internet and everything we do today. Fifty years since the advent of the microprocessor, we find ourselves in the fifty year cycle of another technological leap. And this time, it’s giving us decentralization.

2021 is the 50th anniversary of fake money

Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard in 1971. 50 years later, we are here and cryptocurrency is the revolutionary leap we find ourselves at. This is the decentralization.

“It's Bitcoin. And the reason why it's Bitcoin and not cryptocurrencies is because when you understand the problems, the unlimited money supply, the changing governance, the centralization, we need something that answers that. So we need something that's decentralized, that nobody can control. We need something that's censorship resistant, that nobody can censor. We need something that has immutable law, not governance. So all those cryptocurrencies have a governance. We need immutable law. And so, when you understand the problems and that we need a solution to that, out of the 8,000 or so cryptocurrencies, there's only one that fits that bill.”— Mark Moss

What Moss finds interesting, is that while we find ourselves at the 250 year revolutionary cycle that is rejecting centralization and embracing decentralization, we also converge into the 50 year technological cycle-Bitcoin, which is bringing us exactly what we need.

Uprisings…

“I think it's pretty evident where we're already here. I think, like I said, there was 10 countries with a million people, each marching. Just in the last two weeks in London, there was a million people marching. And of course, the media doesn't tell you that. We can see all through South America, Chile just put a new constitution in. They've been taken over by communist. Argentina, all through Central, South America is all regime change. So we can see it. It's happening. We're in it right now. We're in the middle of it.”

Moss believes people get lost in words; socialism, fascism, communism, capitalism. He sees two systems; one that is essentially planned and controlled, and one that is free, open and competitive.

Technological Revolutions Create New Economies

Each technical cycle can create new economies, Moss says. Some revolutionary things like Uber just extend the existing economy, but technological revolutions will create new ones.

Looking at the financial side, we can see it being reset. People question if the dollar will reamin, or will it be the digital Yuan, or will we go back to gold? “I think they are all asking the wrong question,” says Moss.

“They haven’t looked at the other two revolutions that are there.”

First, people are looking for a centralized answer from the powers on high to say,

“This is the new system,” but the future is DECENTRALIZED.

A decentralized future where Bitcoin is Moss’ reserve asset. Many S&P 500 companies are now using Bitcoin as a reserve asset.

Countries, such as El Salvador, are using Bitcoin as a reserve asset.

“So, it's a decentralized movement where I choose what's best for me. You choose what's best for you. Good luck. Place your bets accordingly. And we're already starting to see that. So I don't think... Well, everyone's looking for that answer, that central answer. That's not what the history tells us the future holds for us.”

The other side that Moss feels should be looked at closely is the political, social, cultural side. The side that tells us that we are rejecting globalization to go to decentralization. Added to the technological piece that creates new economies, which is the decentralized technology.

What Will Be the Body Count?

“The body count… I believe all this change happens over the next decade and it's not going to be smooth. It's not. And so the way I look at it is the work I'm doing, the work you're doing, it's like everybody's on the Titanic and it hit the iceberg and it's going down. And the more people we can offload on the lifeboats, the less of an impact that ship going down will be. And so that's kind of what I'm trying to do. Let's get people onto as many lifeboats as we can."

"So I like to say on my channel I'm not here to wake up the sleeping sheep, I want to wake up the sleeping lions. That's who we really want to wake up. And I would say that while I do get discouraged by seeing the lack of attention by so many people today who are just reading headlines and don't really understand what's going on. I'm also really encouraged by the amount of people that are waking up. And I believe that the internet has created transparency where the government and the organizations aren't really able to hide this stuff anymore. I mean, you've been educated for a long time, Robert, and I mean, nobody used the word fiat before and now everybody uses that word and knows what that word is. And so I think that there's maybe half the people have fallen deeper asleep, but there's a whole half of people that are waking up to this and they don't want to stand for this anymore.”

Moss reminds us that solutions come to problems, and so we can see that the government has gotten more aggressive, more centralized, more authoritarian. This causes people to want to rebel against that and go back to freedom. People are actively looking for that solution.

This next decade, Moss says, is probably going to be rough. The transition won’t be smooth. Moss believes there is great hope on the other side, but he wonders how we will survive getting there.

Take responsibility, he says. Know that the government isn’t going to save you and that social security isn’t going to be there for you. It’s up to you. Increasing your education is the first part.

Mark Moss on Cryptocurrency

“I’m specifically recommending Bitcoin,”

Mark Moss says. The money printer is at the base of every problem that we have in society today.

The lockdowns, Moss believes, would never have been able to happen if they hadn’t been able to send people stimulus money. The vaccine program wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t have all this money. But where did they get the money from, he asks? The money printer creates wealth inequality.

We need a rule of law, Moss says, immutable law, and we need to be self-sovereign where I can store my wealth in a way that can’t be seized or stolen or inflated away.

“Inflation is theft.”—Mark Moss

True freedom, true censorship resistance, is to have the freedom to store our own wealth how we wish. There’s only one solution to this problem, Moss says.

“It’s Bitcoin.”

If you need to make money, Moss advises that you learn a high value skill. Typically around sales and marketing, and something you can do from anywhere over the internet because you may need to move jurisdictions. People need to focus on creating more wealth. Learn high value skills, skills that can be done from anywhere, as you may need to increase your freedom as this transition happens, he says.

You Want Stuff They Cannot Trace

Is Bitcoin always untraceable, because now governments are taxing it, and taxing you to use it? Bitcoin, Moss says, is an open network that’s anonymous, but not private. It’s anonymous where you can see all the addresses, though you don’t know who they belong to, but it’s not private in the way that you cannot see it.

Where they get you, he says, are the fiat on and off ramps. When you buy Bitcoin with fiat money, they have to get my KYC, (key), and know your customer. They get all the information. If you want to sell it back for fiat, again, they know the customer. Using software, they can tie all that back together.

But if you stay within Bitcoin, he says, and never go in and out of it, it’s completely anonymous. Like El Salvador, for example; giving people a way to earn money in Bitcoin. People are earning money in Bitcoin anonymously, spending it anonymously and nobody will ever know who that is because there was never any KYC attached to that.

Moss agrees that Bitcoin is not the only answer for the future or his future wealth.

“I own a lot of assets, gold as well, and real estate, but I’m afraid of having all of my real estate in the United States,”

Moss shares. With real estate in the U.S., he is concerned with taxes, rent moratoriums, eviction moratoriums, et cetera. Moss quotes Simon Black,

“You wouldn’t have all of your money in one stock. Why would you have your whole life in one country?”

He reiterates his point to learn skills that can be done anywhere in the world.

Mark Moss hosts the podcast, Market Disruptors and can also be found at https://1markmoss.com/