Let's make a hypothetical example -- let's say you had accumulated one bitcoin. You believed that 10 years from now it could be worth a milllion dollars (in todays money).
Now, that's a lot of money for a lot of people. How can that be maintained for long term (generational) money?
ie..i don't want to sell that bitcoin at a million dollars and then go out an blow it right?
What are some ways that btc could be safely maintained over the long term and hopefully grown?
I have some ideas myself but i would love to get some thoughts from the "collective". I'm putting together the next episode of my podcast and wanted to discuss this as the topic.
thanks!!!
McIntosh
I will create N numbers of XOR seeds and then I'll write a treasure hunt in my wills for my children
Chaotic good
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Funny! Not sure it's a good idea but funny :)
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Let's make a hypothetical example -- let's say you had accumulated one bitcoin. You believed that 10 years from now it could be worth a milllion dollars (in todays money).
Wrong premise. I believe that 1 Bitcoin is 1 Bitcoin. And will be 1 Bitcoin in 10 years.
How can that be maintained for long term (generational) money?
Generational wealth comes from foundations. Makes it physically impossible to spend the money or move it out of investments for your children.
Or brainwash your child into always putting the family business first and never selling it.
That's the two ways how old money families from Europe stayed rich for generations.
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In order to discuss managing money in current context we have to give a value to bitcoin beyond one bitcoin equals one bitcoin. I get it..but I am giving it a hypothetical value in 10 years of $1,000,000 (at current value) as a reference. If the dollar hyperinflates a bitcoin will be worth far more than 1M dollars in 10 years. When everything is in satoshis and the dollar is no more .. that's an argument. It's not valid at this point in my opinion.
"Makes it physically impossible to spend the money". I believe this is the core of what i'm trying to get at. We put it in a trust. We legally guarenttee how it's being maintained. But what can we do to allow it to continue to grow as investment (not just grow in $$ comparision value because the dollar is falling in value).
Or at least make it so that it never goes below 1 btc. in stock terms .. i put the the stocks in the trust and the dividends are distributed out as the payout so to speak. One reader had the idea of a lightning node. The btc provides the liquidity, the gains could be distributed as dividends to speak.
thanks!
McIntosh
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I think you can do in a trust whatever you want. Old money has in the "laws" of their trust that all the money is invested in stocks or real estate. You could make your trust with Bitcoin & Lightning node or Mining hardware.
But I think you should ask yourself first why you even want to dictate what you children and descendants are allowed to do with inheritance? Isn't this unethical? If they want to blow it all on cocaine and hookers ... why patronize them from your grave? If they are responsible and of age?
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Reminded me one story from Weimar Republic:
Our cook had been with us for ten years and my mother was anxious to mark the occasion by making her a suitable present. My brother-in-law had got hold of a dollar — one single dollar — and it was seriously considered that this would be the best present that one could make to this faithful servant. But then objections were raised. She was indeed a magnificent cook, but she was too simple and unsophisticated to handle such a fortune. The only way would be to set up a trust fund at the bank to administer the dollar for her!
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I am not sure what you are trying to say but an interesting story. I do think BTC will be worth far more than a single dollar thought...
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Providing high value services to stackers.
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What are some ways that btc could be safely maintained over the long term and hopefully grown?
This might be straight from something Saylor has said, but you could have a large multisig maintained by a foundation's board, or the board of some kind of trust.
In a world where we have other types of covenants perhaps you could explicitly restrict on what timeline and how the Bitcoin is spent.
It might help to familiarize yourself with how existing wealthy families maintain their wealth and figure out how Bitcoin could make this more efficient. I'm completely ignorant on wealthy families though and I suspect everything is a poor substitute for spending a lot of time with your future generations teaching them what to value.
I remember hearing that generational wealth is exhausted in 3 generations on average. To me this makes pursuing generational wealth seem like a losing battle and the time might be better spent investing in quality time with your future generations ... It also makes me think pursuing generation wealth is less about future generations and more about the current generation justifying their pursuit of wealth long after it has lifetime utility.
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A couple of thoughts. Saylor certainly would have good ideas on this and if it's enough wealth it would probably need to be handled in that manner.
I appreciate the rest of your input, but respectfully i will disagree with a lot of it. Please allow me to explain.
1). I have heard the stat about three generations. It's probably true on average but that doesn't mean it's true for everyone. It could be argued it's not true for many because of poor planning or other factors. Certainly worth looking into further.
2). Generational wealth to me means really long term money..as in hundreds of years. I have a 6th generation grandfather who was born around the time of the American Revolution. I take my name from hime actually. He lived during a pivotal time of American history. During the war of 1812 he sided with the winners (ie..the colonist fighting against the British). Because of his military accomplishments and chance (he was half European and half Creek Indian (by his mother) and became chief of his tribe at a young age -- -as a complete side notes the Creek indians trace lineage through the maternal side -- he was always considered a tribal member) he accumulated a great deal of land and other other assets. He owned a trading post at a busy crossroads and prospered until his very untimely death in his early 40's if I remember correctly because of a tribal dispute. In today's language he was wealthy - he lived in the best neighborhood, had a large piece of land and a booming business. He was a multi-millionaire in today's dollars.
Despite this great fortune it was all gone by the time his children where dead. At the time there where no real way to maintain wealth other than through raw power -- being the baddest/biggest whatever. Hope that makes sense. So it's not suprising that what he spent his entire adult life accumulating was gone within a few years.
For five generations between him and me the generations have been composed of families "just getting by". No real wealth accumulation. Sharecroppers and loggers, one great grandmother who was prostitute on a Mississippi riverboat. My parents have honestly done pretty well -- better than any of the recent previous generations -- during their lifetime. They where both first in their families to go to university. They have saved and not overspent for many years. And yet, by the "normal" example, anything they transfer to their children after death will be gone quickly.
We see many examples of families loosing very valuable assets (typically land/real estate) with a generation or so because the children have very different ideas about life -- ie they want to move to "the city" and away from the country. The land is divided up and sold and poof..it's all gone.
And yes..people can become consumed with gaining wealth to make them look good or whatever. But I know far more people who are just barely making it. Who live paycheck to paycheck with no emergency fund , no savings and such. People who can never afford to do anything nice with their children because it would push them over the edge of the financial cliff.
My wife and i discuss this issue a lot. We don't want to just "hand over everything" to our children. Let me give an example:
Wife and I die with a net worth in todays' dollars (after death taxes ..sigh) of 10 million dollars.
Let's say we have three kids so each gets 3.33 million dollars.
if we did that most likely that money would be gone within a decade.
But what if we took the concept of the trust and put the bitcoin asset in it. Then instead of dividing up the bitcoin into one-thirds the children each receive what amounts to a monthly or quarterly UBI (universal basic income) but instead of being paid by the government it comes from the trust. and it's never enough to make them so comfortable that they would not want to do anything but be lazy and fool around.
I have told my kids for about the last five years that it will take about $100,000 income to live reasonably comfortably by the time they get to the workforce in the next four for five year. Doesn't' mean they have a country club membership and drive a jaguar but they are doing ok. Not having to worry about buying food and gas and having a place to live. Looks like i'm going to be pretty accurate in that assessment. So REGARDLESS of how much money is in the trust I'm not going to be giving them even 100k a year (in todays dollars.... would have to be adjusted for inflation of course). But I would give them enough that if times where hard and they worked they would be ok and not impoverished. If they worked reasonably hard they could have a pretty good lifestyle.
That's pretty easy to understand I think..going forward from there it's more complicated. It would depend on how many children they have and so on and so forth. The idea would be that no matter the amount of BTC in the trust I'm not going to just blow it all at once on a generation.
Now I have no idea how much BTC i can accumulate before I die. That remains to be seen. I might not have enough that this works beyond a first first generation. The goal would be that it would be large enough that for many generations it could provide regardless of the current conditions.
Hope that helps at least making sense of what i'm trying to accomplish when I say generational wealth.
thanks!
McIntosh
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Thanks everyone for their input! Lots to think about. I'll be recording this episode for release on Monday (june 13) on the Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency podcast. Thanks again!
McIntosh
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i think the idea is the same as for everyone with a lot of assets nowadays (pre-crypto-rich) - you borrow against them and repay the loans with what your assets are producing or their appreciation
for bitcoin native solution, maybe you'll be able to deploy your bitcoin as lightning network capacity and earn from that indefinitely
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thanks @m3anm4chine!
That's a normal line of thinking I believe. I'm not sure about all the details of it and I will work that out before recording. There is a downside in my opinion if bitcoin continues to fluctate dramatically. I don't think it will be in 10 years but .. that's me thinking not for certain.
As for lightning...I like the idea...i love lightning .. i use it.. but at this point it's not exactly user friend in terms of asset management / liquidity. That veriy likely will improve in the next few years. Certainly worth proposing as a possibility!