All Forum Posts by: Ross Bowman

Originally posted by @Michael Flight:

@James Elden Bitcoin is a store of value.  Buy it and hold it like holding digital gold. Ethereum and several of the Layer 1 blockchain protocols will be valuable because of the network effects and amount of projects on the chain.  The other coins are software projects so unless you know something about them you are gambling like buying a hot stock without any knowledge of the underlying fundamentals.  

I have been in real estate more than 35 years and have had some home runs but none with returns of 11,000% .  My strategy with Bitcoin is HODL (Hold On for Dear Life) and the others I invest in are protocols or projects I understand and have a good use case for success.

Cash is trash.  And the USD will also soon be digital.  

Spot on. It's wild to me how many brilliant RE investors will dismiss the most impactful digital "land grab" of our lives. 

This thing is here to stay.

In the next 10-20 years, everyone will own it. Not getting in early is insane. 

I don't trade it or try to beat the markets. I just stack and HODL with a 10+ year timeframe, as that's really where the gains are. With the USD going down the toilet, this thing should not be ignored any longer. 

Overview: converting detached garage into a studio to rent on Airbnb, or month to month. There is already an attached garage at the house, so I don't need another. 

Cost: 50-70k (construction + furnishing)

Financing: SoFi personal loan of 70k @ 13% APY, 7 years. No origination fees or prepayment penalty. 

Monthly loan payment (principle + interest): approx $1300. Can pay it off early.

Estimated monthly income: $1500-2000

Monthly total mortgage (principle + interest + PMI): $1800

I've always wanted to house hack but I'm a little scared to make any big moves right now with the current economic/global uncertainty. Not sure if this is a rational concern or if I'm just giving myself an excuse to not take action.

Any thoughts on this?

Hey Jason! Would this be the same as a Business Line of Credit?

I was trying to secure one of those, but didn't have any luck since I only have a small few doors so the revenue isn't really significant yet. Or is a ULOC different? 

Honestly, your views on the state and state violence align pretty closely with the bitcoin community and how we think too. 

Maybe check it out before writing it off? 

 Some answers below:

Until about twelve months ago, no one believed the US government could effectively impose a nationwide moratorium on evictions, either.  The government is able to directly control property because property is tied to the US monetary system. 

Until FDR forced everyone with in-country gold holdings to sell to the US government in 1933 at a set price, no American citizen believed that they could be forced to give up their depository-held gold against their will. Without your private keys, there is literally no way for anyone to take your bitcoin from your cold storage. As an example, this is why the German government was never able to take the bitcoin from that hacker in the recent arrest. Without the keys, there is literally nothing you can do. And the keys can be kept in your memory. 

In my personal experience, absolutely no one in Greece in 2014 believed foreign, unelected bureaucrats could keep Greek citizens them from withdrawing their own money from their own Greek bank accounts the next year.  Same answer as above. Your bitcoin is not kept in a bank - there is no technological way for any nation state to do this. 

You believe Bitcoin is bulletproof because a series of circumstances JUST CAN'T HAPPEN. So I don't take what you've saying as an insult. I would ask you to consider that you might not know much about how institutional force, violence, or repression works. It's certainties like yours that get people in the most trouble.

I'm not saying it can't happen due to a series of circumstances.

I'm saying it due to a deep understanding of the bitcoin protocol. There are somethings that are actually impossible - this is one of them. 

As long as you control your private keys, nobody can touch your bitcoin without your consent. This is why bitcoin is so fundamentally disruptive and should not be ignored by any investor. 

I have a detached garage that I plan to convert to a small studio, to list on Airbnb. It is legal and within regulations where I live. I could use cash to finance this, but I'd rather use leverage. These are the methods I'm considering:

- 401k loan

- private home improvement loan

I can't use a HELOC because I don't have enough equity in the house itself yet.

Can anyone weigh in on some ways to finance this? Would either of the above methods be good, or is there some other way I haven't considered?

The only way to shutdown bitcoin is by shutting down the internet itself, which the US government cannot actually do without crippling the economy. 

Please dont take this as an insult - anyone who thinks bitcoin can be "shut down" simply does not actually understand what bitcoin is. You literally cannot shut it down. 

 If you think this is crypto-currency-pimping, you should check out reddit and twitter.

I actually think the discussion about it is pretty even-keeled here and I've never seen any outright shilling. 

It's something we SHOULD be talking about it, as you can already borrow against your bitcoin and use it for RE projects. It will only become more relevant to the RE world over time, so it's good to learn about it. 

Bitcoin and real estate are too VERY different things. 

TLDR: I dont think "either or" is the right approach.

I do both of them. Both have worked well and both have very different goals and uses. Of course, in hindsight, yes it would've been great to put ALL of my real estate money into bitcoin in 2015. But hindsight is always 20/20. 

Note: I say bitcoin and not "crypto" because altcoins are bogus. But you get the idea.

Which one are you using man? I'm still exploring the options but definitely think there's something big here.

We're still super early though, as most of the RE community either doesn't get it yet or doesn't want to.