Mailbag, incl: Buy Berkshire and go fishing? December 28, 2025

24:52I've interviewed him before. Really, really great guy. He doesn't get it, whatever. And I'm just trying to make that point here that it's just like if what you're doing is if I am just buying this, waiting for it to go up in Aussie dollar terms to sell to make more Aussie dollars, fine, no judgment. But, you know, I really hope that people don't mistake that for what I am advocating for. Do you understand like there is a real difference here? What it's really about, the way I like to phrase it is it's just changing economic frames of reference. You know, you can measure the economy in bananas if you want, or Toyotas.

25:34It doesn't matter. Everything's relative to everything else. There's an Einsteinian dimension to all of this. And there's this like, well, in Australia, our frame of reference is the Aussie dollar. Bitcoin is a different frame of reference. You're not investing in it, I don't think. The corollary to Page's law is that, Page's other law, is that whenever Bitcoin is mentioned, Ren, we'll go off on a tangent about Bitcoin and eventually we'll get back to the question that was asked. Sorry. No, it's good. So I'm going to challenge you though on it actually, funnily enough. Not in its ideology, and you're probably right about the share price or share ticker reference in the same way, but you've talked about in the past, we've only relatively recently, even in internet time because we're doing this mailbags in order, you've talked about this, we both talk about the maturity phase of Bitcoin, which is adoption then maturity, right?

26:21And the adoption phase does lend itself to greater amounts of purchasing power as it increases relative to fiat currencies. I would argue that adoption is the use of Bitcoin in place of money. I would argue you're adopting Bitcoin if you're spending it rather than because you don't sell Bitcoin, of course, you spend it, as you've told me. But I would argue the investment bit is actually, I think, over time my purchasing power will increase faster than just the productivity benefits. so that part is an investment return. In the same way, you could adopt cash but then put money in the bank, you get an interest rate from a term deposit, which is investing that money even though you're adopting the use of fiat currency for your spending.

27:02I would argue there's both going on. You're right to highlight the longer-term kind of the base case for Bitcoin as an alternative or a replacement for other types of money. I would still argue, though, if you're intending to earn an increase in purchasing power. I'm trying to do it always really carefully here, that is effectively an investment return in that context, at least for as long as it takes to go from relatively modest, though large alternative to being the final money. Yeah, look, I am being a little bit of a pedant with it. But it is, you very quickly slide into semantics. Yeah, sorry.

27:38It's not, I mean, I hear what you're saying and I think a lot of people will listen and go, you're really splitting hairs here, Andrew. Like, is it an investment or is it this? And it is true, but it just, I mean, someone else said a really good point on Twitter actually was that, you know, well, if I'm going to do Bitcoin, shouldn't I be studying FX trading? Because if it's another money, isn't that what I'm doing? And it was actually a really great point. And I was like, yeah, but again, people trade FX to make more of their local money. That's the point. The point of it is to get more of your local money.

28:13And while it's sort of an indirect, yes, it's true. So as adoption continues, I do expect one Bitcoin to be worth more of the local currency. I'm not ever doing it with a view. I'm never selling. Like I'm never selling. Like they'll reach a point where it's just like, okay, now I'm going to take profit, convert it back to Australian dollars and hold it in Australian dollars, which again sounds a little bit weaselly because it's like, well, I probably will have to do that to spend it because most places don't accept it. Not by then, mate. Yeah, well, yeah, it's true, really. Honestly, over a long enough time frame.

28:50But it's also the point is like if I end up selling it, it really will just be a very, it'll just be a terminal exchange step to get the good that I want. The good that I want is not Australian fiat. It's what I will very quickly turn around and buy with that fiat. So it's a subtle difference, but I just make that point because, again, And when you've been in it for a while, and there are friends I've been in it with as long as I have, and, you know, you have a chance like, oh, when are you selling? Like, no, never. Why are you? Oh, because it's up. And it's like, that is a mistake. You know, and again, we can point to shares or property or anything that you want.

29:30It's a sort of like you're purely making a decision by anchoring on your purchase price, which is irrelevant. I don't care if it's magic internet beans or it's BHP shares or whatever. And I think that it's pedantic, but it's worth making that point. Yeah, that's fair. I still argue that it's both, but the point of both is well worth making rather than thinking about it as a buy, gain, sell, buy something else, which I think you're absolutely right. Yes, and even if you are going to frame it entirely as an investment, I don't think it's – this is where we get – it's a similar debate. Not you and I have, but it comes up a lot.

30:10how would you distinguish between trading and investing? Yeah, that's a great point. Because that comes up all the time. And people use it just in conversation where you and I would take it to mean, no, you mean I'm investing in Woolworths shares. Right, right. Where they would say, no, I'm trading Woolworths. Like, are you though? And like, where do you draw the line between a trade and an investment? Now, I can't make an investment without doing it by end or selling. Like there is a trade in there. So it's exactly the same kind of problem, but both of us, I think it gets under our skin and we push back and we go, are you trading?

30:46And I'll let you have a go at it, but I kind of come at it with, well, trading is more about speculating on short to medium term price movements. Investing is trying to buy something that in and of itself, for want of a better term, its intrinsic value is growing. And even then you can kind of probably pull that apart in various ways, but there is a qualitative difference in the way those things are framed. How do you distinguish between the two? Investing and trading. Yeah. It's hard, right? Yeah. I was going to say, I've never really put my mind to a specific definition. Timeframes would be my answer.

31:28Yeah, that's a good one. And not in an absolutely specific timeframe. The other one is probably that back to your intrinsic value question, I'm buying something for less than it's worth if I'm investing. I'm buying something I hope goes up if I'm trading. And generally that's because if I'm buying BHP shares and going to sell them tomorrow, I think the charts that might go up today and they'll sell them tomorrow, so I'll buy and sell. And the trading is the point. Investing is the owning. So it's I will buy and if I'm right, the value of the company, the intrinsic value will increase and I should be made better off as long as I paid a reasonable price for that.

32:05Yeah. But yeah, it's a great question. I haven't turned my mind to formalising an answer, but I probably should because it really... Yeah, well, I only bring it up by trying to make sense of my pettiness with investing in Bitcoin versus adopting Bitcoin. All right. Can I give you a Ben Graham quote? Go on. Please. An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principle and an adequate return. Operations not meeting those requirements are speculative. See, I think that's lovely. I think it's way too conservative to describe even what investors think they do when they're investing.

32:44Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know that. Graham used a word, I think it was certainty, did you say, of capital preservation? What was the first phrase? An adequate return. Promises safety of principle and an adequate return. Promises safety of principle. I mean, promises is a very definitive and absolute term. I think, like I say, Graeme is wrong or was wrong because Graeme is better than me. I don't think that's an adequate description of investing because I don't think that promise can be made with anything other than frankly cash and you would say cash gets devalued and you're absolutely right.

33:22but I don't know anything promises safety of capital. I don't know what, you might say Bitcoin. And again, we're being a bit nitpicky, but I don't mind the quote. I think it undervalues the idea. I suspect there's something out there from Buffett which talks about what he's trying to do. Well, he uses voting versus the weighing machine. Right. That's probably a much better one, actually. That's a great one. That's exactly what it is, right? Voting is the, I think other people will think it's worth more in a little bit of time, weighing is I'll wait and weigh and see what, if it's heavier at some future time, then I will have done well.

33:59Let me take us in a weird direction and then you can very quickly move on. We haven't even got to Ryan's question yet. He's only mentioned Bitcoin. Sorry, mate. It's like the definition of pornography. It's like I can't, I know it when I see it. Yes. I think it was a judge who originally phrased it. It's hard to define, but you know what it is when you see it. It also comes up in the context of Bitcoin, open networks. Email is a good example where it's sort of like creating filters for spam. Now, you know what, as soon as spam hits your inbox, you know what it is. Try codifying that as a rule set.

34:40You can't. But we know what it is. Like as humans, we see it, okay, that's spam. How do you tell a machine what is spam? How do you tell a machine what is, what's the difference between a French art house movie and out-and-out pornography? Yeah. You know, it's really, really tough. And this is the same with trading and investing. I'll give you one more from Seth Klarman because I think it aligns better with you. Sorry, I'm sorry. Go on. Sorry, not sorry. I was going to say, yeah, never sorry. Not sorry. To me, speculating slash trading has to do more with the notion of buying something with the idea that you will trade it to someone else as soon as you can realise a favourable price, while investing, on the other hand, would imply a willingness to own that something for a very extended period of time.

35:25That's pretty good. Bit closer? Like that a lot. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Justice Potter Stewart from the US Supreme Court. Quote, I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so, but I know it when I see it. Yeah. End quote. It's kind of like, it's a bit cheeky and it's funny, but it actually gets to a lot of sort of problems out there, be it in investing or, you know, filtering for spam. By the way, there's something fun about that too, being an adult movie description, not when I see it, as in seeing it.

35:58There's kind of a bit of a play on words, one level of kind of like you're talking about seeing it, which is kind of funny in itself, rather just as a metaphor or a general line. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

36:16Should we go to Ryan's question? Yes, we should. At this point, there might be... One day we're going to have a mailbag episode where we actually go... No questions. We haven't done any questions yet. That day's not today, Ryan. Now, to the simple questions. That's right. 36 minutes and 11 seconds if you're listening at home. You often tell people, he says, that if they can't beat the market, just go buy a broad-based ETF and go fishing. But wouldn't the better advice be to buy Saltpatz or Berkshire and go fishing? I own both those shares for the record. I assume you would point out some of the risks of placing all your capital in just one company, like the Buffett and Milner succession plans.

36:51But with both companies themselves being so diversified and the very long-term history of outperformance versus the ASX 200 or the S &P 500, isn't there now enough evidence to support this being the much better long-term play? Thank you in advance, of course. Feel free to use my name. Cheers, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. I did, I will, and I only just read that then. So as you know, putting it at the bottom means You've got no chance of me stopping, even if you wanted me to. What do you reckon, mate? Buy an ETF and go fishing or buy Berkshire or Solpads and go fishing? I mean, this comes back to these qualitative decisions.

37:25This is your job as an allocator of capital, right? And everything sits on a spectrum. There is a world of difference between Berkshire Hathaway and a penny-jeddful biotechnology company that's pre-revenue. Like they're both equities. Like we can label them the same. It's like comparing Dogecoin to Bitcoin. I knew that. You knew it was going to go there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's just, and so on both hands you could sort of say, well, one, they're both putting it in or, you know, an egg in one basket and that's sort of risky. It's like, but is it though? Like they're very different.

38:05And it's just the way I would look at it, I would say Solpads or Berkshire are up one end of the spectrum, but I would still say that they are not as far left or right, whatever way you want to go on the spectrum, as an index fund. Index fund is the least risky you can get in terms of exposure to equities. It just covers a far wider net. Buffett's great, right, but he's not going to be around forever and, you know, lieutenants who have been, you know, anointed as successors, they're great too. I've got very little, I'm going to lose a second. I don't even own any shares, but I would lose no sleep whatsoever.

38:45But things could change, like radically, to a bigger extent than they could with an index fund. The worst case with an, well, not the worst case, but like let's say Berkshire turns out to be a giant Ponzi, right? It's sacrilegious to say. Mate, do I sit down before you say that next time, mate? Do you see it in my portfolio investing in Berkshire? I mean, you've almost got to take your hat off for such a long-running policy, right? It was like, well, you scammed a lot of people, but it's impressive that you got away with it for so long. But it could be. And if that was to happen, it's going to go to zero, but it is also a constituent of the S &P 500 ETF, and its impact on the ETF is negligible.

39:29Don't forget, too, like this is not the point that Ryan's making because these are conglomerates, so they're a little bit different. But if you go back to the Nifty 50, right, like the biggest, best company, was it the 60s they were around? 70s, I think, Nifty 50. Okay. Late 60s. Like who was it? General Electric and Ford, was it? Oh, I've gone blank. You can look it up. Before my time, despite as old as I am and as obvious as my memory is failing me at an accelerating pace. These were the biggest and best companies in the world. And if you were to sort of buy them at the peak of their influence, I don't think you would have done that well.

40:09You would have underperformed. And yet you would have been able to say, they've been around forever. They've always been the best performing. They have huge competitive advantages. They have scale advantages, this, that, and the other. And it's just, you know. And Howard Marks has made the point, like, the pace of change is accelerating really rapidly. It's not an original thought, but we've made it and echoed it here on the podcast before, is that the biggest company in the world in the year 2040 probably hasn't been incorporated yet. But you go back to, gosh, I didn't even know when Google was found.

40:46But if you went back to like 1990, it wasn't around in the original tech boom, I don't think. No, Yahoo, oh, the original tech boom. No, I don't think it was. I don't think it was. No. Google was founded in 1998 on September 4. It wasn't listed. No, it wasn't listed. with Sergey and Larry literally in the garage. And Yahoo would have been the big search engine of the day. No one could have imagined how Yahoo wouldn't have smashed them. Now, with AI and everything that's sort of happening, I am convinced that the biggest companies in the world have not. No, they've not been written about. They may have been formed, but if so, they are literally sort of in the garage at this kind of point in time.

41:272004 was when Google came to the public markets. So 15 years after the dot-com. I remember being on telly when Facebook listed. Yes. And Facebook listed at a PE, a trailing PE of 100. Yep. And me, because I knew everything, remember I really hope this is, I hope no one's digitised a lot of these archival things because I do not need this to follow me around. He says it now on the podcast. I mean, it just made zero sense to me that you could pay so high a price and yet it was an incredible investment. Actually, what happened was it listed, and do you remember this, it kind of crashed. It did. Not long after it listed.

42:17Yep, yep. And I remember thinking, ha, ha, ha, told you. It's the Homer Simpson thing. You're like, everyone's an idiot except for me. And it just, you know, we know what it's since done. And it's not even like Facebook's got issues, right? But still, had you bought it at the IPO, at that PE of 100, you've done incredibly well. So IPO price. Investing is hard, man. Investing is super hard and the great thing about the index is that you know whatever this company is, at some point it will include the biggest best company in the world, right? That's the beauty of it. $38 a share on listing date for Facebook, valued at$104 billion.

42:58A week later,$26.81. And at that point, its PE ratio was 85, and this is quoting Wikipedia, quote, despite a decline in both earnings and revenue in the first quarter of 2012. Yeah, I remember it. Now, I'm going to look it up now,$104 billion. It is now, this is American dollars obviously,$1.7 trillion. $10. Call that 17 times in value in 13 years. Starting from a very high P. Right. Another good example of why PEs in and of themselves are useless. Mm-hmm. Really good as a rule of thumb, really good in the context of a broader understanding of the business and its growth potential and et cetera, et cetera.

43:44But it's just like anyone who goes, well, I don't ever buy a stock with a PE above the market average. It's like you just don't ever get those companies, right? That's right. It doesn't happen. Should we get back to the question? Yes, please. Yes. So buy Berkshire, buy Solpets or buy an ETF and go fishing? Well, I mean, I'm really going to dodge the question. It's only you can answer it, Ryan. I mean, I'm a stock picker. I pick all of, I mean, I've got a little bit in ETFs with some residual in the super and some for my US exposure, but not really much. I pick stocks because I'm arrogant enough to think I can do it okay.

44:20Mate, that's. Go on. Yeah. Well, I don't want to say it's worked out okay so far, but I know the moment I say that is the moment that the universe makes you step on a rake, right? Correct, correct. And I'm very hyper aware of that. I think, you know, it is always in this game pride before fall and every time in the past where I've felt obliged to do a bit of a victory lap and oh, I'm so smart, it always ends very badly. So me, what would I do? And they're the only options? Berkshire. 100 % every day. Then self-pads, then the index. But that's me. And I'm either going to look really, really smart or really, really dumb.

45:00I tell you what, though, you know, Berkshire, and this is Buffett's own words. It's like we can't grow like we used to. We never will grow like that. I think it's a mistake to look at Berkshire's long 60-year history of 20 % CAGR, a compound annual growth rate. I don't think that's going to sustain itself. I don't think it can mathematically sustain itself. No chance. In the next 50 years, it would be bigger than the world economy at some point. It's the grain of rising. You can't grow that big. It's one of the top 10 companies in the US by market cap. Yeah. It cannot grow at that rate. It's that great of the sky.

45:31Right, you can't. Yeah. So I'm mindful of that too. Yeah, totally right. I mean, that being said, the ETF can also not grow more than a certain rate. The question is, to your point, what rate is that? The excess returns can't be done forever, as in to that degree, those 20 % returns. But there's stock 499 in that index. Correct. They could grow a lot. Correct. Like Google was that. It entered the index at the bottom position and now is up at the top. 100%. So, Ryan, I will actually give you a different answer. If you're genuinely going to buy something and go fishing, I think it's got to be the ETF.

46:10I say that with Berkshire and Solpats being my two largest single holdings, literally, I think. Yeah, definitely. Now, how can I do that? because I'm not just going fishing. If go fishing means buy it and forget about it, I don't think you can afford to. And the reason is maybe Buffett is the master Ponzi schemer and maybe Solpats is run beautifully but the company enters into an insurance contract, doesn't do insurance, but just for the fun of it, let's go with that, and makes a promise of something not going to happen and the thing happens and it bankrupts itself. Now, neither is going to happen, right, except if it does, you can't diversification is the only free lunch in investing we haven't used that phrase for a very long time if you say to me everything in one stock, go fishing I can't in any good conscience say to people despite them being my two largest holdings buy one of these two, why?

47:01Because you have existential risk that you simply don't have with an ETF and the increment particularly now around your very good point about Berkshire let's say Berkshire does 1 % a year better than the index over the very long term that'd be a very good result Would I bet that on the Buffett slash Buffett successor slash the guy, Ajit Jain, who runs the insurance business, not making a massive scrap and blowing the whole thing up? No, I would not. Not in a go fishing kind of way. Now, I'm very happy with my shareholding. I am over-indexed, overweight in Berkshire. I'm overweight in Solpats, right, dramatically in percentage terms.

47:35So I'm very comfortable with them. I like them a lot. I have nothing against any of them. But if you're saying pick one, never look again, go fishing back in 40 years, I can't say, buy one of these over the ETF. I just can't because anything could happen. And anything could happen to the index as well, but anything's going to happen to the index either at an economy level, in which case we're all in baked beans and shotguns, or at a company by company by company by company for 200 different times or 500 different times. I couldn't. I couldn't all consciously say just buy one of those two. Now, if you're saying I'll put some of my money in there or I'll put some of my money in there and watch it like a hawk, then, yeah, maybe I'm having a different conversation with you.

48:09but if you and again let me say very clearly i think there's no chance that this goes wrong with these guys and i have lots of my portfolio proportional terms in these two investments right so i'm i'm absolutely speaking out of both sides of my mouth in one sense the other is not at all they are not my only stocks i earn and so what would i do you you mentioned ryan the um the performance i think that's really relevant and appropriate what i would say personally is i would never just buy the ASX 200 instead of SOPATs, for example. I would buy a basket of ETFs, including overseas ETFs, for the reasons we've talked about before.

48:44And Ram's point, which is the top eight or nine companies in Australia are going to grow very slowly. So I would diversify across ETFs as well as within those ETFs to replace. I would buy them plus Berkshire and SOPATs. That's a perfectly good approach too. If you had a four-stock portfolio, which was ASX 300, S &P 500 Berkshire saltpads, I think it's great. Person. I'm just saying, well, you should do, Ryan. I can't tell you what you should do. But I'd be very happy with that. I just couldn't say buy a company, go fishing. I love the saltpads. I love Berkshire. I just think at some level you're taking risks you don't need to take.

49:18And one of my favourite Buffett lines is people who take, what is it, they risk what they have and need and what they don't have and don't need. In other words, past a certain point you're taking risks that even if they pay off are not smart. Buffett said he wouldn't play Russian Roulette with a million chambers and one bullet because what's the upside and what's the downside? There are some games that aren't worth playing. I think diversification is just too easy an option to take rather than not and missing out. Yep. I mean, I hope that helps. It's frustratingly vague with lots of conditions on it, but that's just how it is.

49:52It's got to be, right? That's another good rule of thumb, actually. Anyone who gives you financial advice that is just black and white. I mean, sometimes it's, you know, should I go to the casino why should I buy it into ETF? I mean, that's pretty black and white. But generally speaking, as a rule, I'd run a mile whenever you hear black and white advice. And what advice works best? The black and white stuff because you don't have to do any thinking. The person in the shiny suit says, I've done this for a very long time and I have some grey hair and I've got a diploma on the wall behind me and I think you should buy this.

50:18It's like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. That person seems to be confident. Confidence sells, right? Oh, hell yeah. Two easiest ways to sell. First is confirm people's existing biases. I really like this dress. What do you think? I really like it too. Okay, I'll buy. Easiest I've ever made, right? The second one is if they're not sure, project confidence. Because if they're really not sure, they're like, well, I've got to hang on. We hate uncertainty. I'm in the sea. I want to find a rock to grab onto. You say this is the right rock. You go, okay, fine, that's enough. I'll do it. I often say that to friends.

50:46I say what the finance industry sells, the product is certainty. That's what you're selling. And confirmation wise. Throw those together. They're the most powerful things in the world. It's very confusing. It's very uncertain. and it feels very risky. I just want someone to go, no, this is right. Yes, exactly. And just a fireboy. That's what you're selling. And that's why we've often joked if we were ever to launch together a newsletter and our marketing was, hey, we'll give you some ideas. Probably, you know, four or five out of ten won't work very well. The others will work out maybe but not straight away.

51:20Also, it's going to be hypervolatile. We fully expect your wealth to drop by 50 % multiple times along the journey. What do you reckon? Do you want to sign up? Like no one's signing up for that, right? So it's just... The one next hot stock though. Well, you know, as long as there's some, what's the word for it, like validity behind it, absolutely. But it's just like you have to... Obviously, we should do it so that we'll sign up to it. Right, yes, yeah. You do not give ifs and maybes and buts and on the other hand, that just does not work. Certain circumstances over time, maybe, yeah. But that's the best advice you'll get.

52:00Hey, Al sent us a message. He said, dear gentleman of the pod machine, knee firmly bent, ring kissed. I've been listening avidly for the last 18 months or so and I love the weekly updates, particularly those in the mailbag edition. I'm not sure what that says. You know, it's one of those words where, I really like that. You don't like the rest of us, are we trying to tell us, Al? It's at this point, Al says, I must declare I'm not a Motley Fool Australia member, but I am in the US and I did intentionally subscribe to your podcast as I find you more relatable and entertaining. That's probably more of a criticism of them than a compliment for us, but there you go.

52:37Listening from overseas, says Al, the RBA's antics may not be totally relevant, but as Mr. Ram Page will attest, sound money not being the current favourite of any central bank, a simple Control X to remove RBA and replace with, quote, any central banker, end quote, makes the stories thoroughly entertaining. I love a good rant myself, says Al. Yeah, the Fed, end the Fed. That's the bumper sticker on the car, right? Defend the police, end the Fed. We need a version for the RBA. RBA, go away. There you go. Coming to a bumper near you. Yes, it'll catch on. RBA, go away. Yeah, I'm not kidding. After about three or four of things, I'm not going to mention any of them.

53:18My investments, says Al, are almost exclusively individual companies. Note, not shares. I have been listening and learning. Well done, Al. See, we made that point earlier in the pod. Yeah. And my broad-based passive ETFs read VOO and VTI. See, Al, you don't use those. You can't say you've got companies and not shares and then say VOO and VTI. I don't even know what they are. I almost want to just finish the video. Vanguard SP500 ETF. That's a US-based Vanguard SP500. Okay, that works. What's the other one? VTI. I bet that's not the total market. Let me see. VTI is, yes, total market stock index.

53:56There are US listed indices or ETFs that we don't have here listed in Australia. We have alternatives. All right. With predominantly US listings, given my experience and exposure to having worked in the US in the past and having had more knowledge of them and some non-US ETFs for a bit of balance. I do have a small, here we go. I do have a small amount, less than 500 bucks, Azal, in IBIT, I-B-I-T, which you would know what that is, Andrew, I'm sure. It's BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF. It's actually a factoid of the podcast. It's the most successful ETF in history. It's how you define it. In history, from the launch.

54:34It's how you define it. In fact, it is now the main source. In terms of BlackRock's ETF revenue, they generate more from IBIT than they do from any other ETF. Just let that sink in. This thing's 18 months old. Anyway, just probably nothing. Probably nothing. May as well happen to hit your way into a cot and charge a lot of fees, isn't it? Never get between. This was always my argument, dude. I said it to you off air. It's just sort of like, you know, never get between an investment banker and the opportunity for fees. That is why I will say with 100 % conviction that it is just a matter of time before Comsec and, in fact, the major banks do it as well.

55:11They can protest all they like. It's like as soon as someone else does it and they realise there's money to be made, they will do it. Cynical reasons? Absolutely. But they'll do it. So then on to my question, and yes, there is a link to Bitcoin. Thank you, Al, from the bottom of my heart. If I'm Bitcoin curious in a larger way, sorry, Mr. Phillips, your recent losses, it's all right, Al. Do you have a view on investing more in the, not iBit, thank you, Al, it is the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, as I'm sure you know. Given I can use a brokerage account I currently have, or should I go directly to Coinbase, PayPal or another to buy Bitcoin directly?

55:54I'm unclear of the pros and cons. Now, everyone knows, not your... Not your keys, not your coins. Your coin? Yeah. Thank you. I was going to say, I couldn't work with the seed phrase. I couldn't work with the actual phrase. Not everyone knows it. Obviously, I forgot it. Ibit or buyer and broker? Again, there's no right or wrong. I'm very mindful that perfect is the enemy of the good. A lot of people in the space will be very forceful that you must self-custody. And I think that's, I mean, I think it's the better approach. I really do. However, you know, if that makes you uncomfortable, you know, don't not do it just because, I mean, if that's going to stop you from, see, I'm trying to, I'm going to tangle myself up with my own semantics now because I was going to say invest in or whatever.

56:45It's not as hard as you think. Self-custody is really not as hard as you think. It's unfamiliar. It's new. It's a new thing. And I always give the example of email, and I'm old enough to remember setting up my own email clients. It's so difficult. That's right. Do you remember? Yes, yes, yes. Oh, what a nice. Now you go to a website, you know, and go to Gmail. Boom, you've got an email. It's the easiest thing in the world. But even then, we got over that hurdle. The tooling is increasing. But if you're uncertain, I think Ibit's a pretty good bet. I have a follow-on question, mate, which is I think you've already answered in roundabout way anyway.

57:23It's probably the same thing. Bitcoin has its own advantages or features, maybe is a better word, the same as gold does in different ways. You know, gold is a bearer asset. In other words, it's worth what, you know, if you have it on your car, on your person, as they say, you can redeem it for whatever someone will pay you for it. You don't have to prove ownership. And more accurately, there's no counterparty risk. Thank you. Yeah. And you can hold gold in a safe. You can bury it in the backyard. You can have someone say, you know, they can keep it for you at the Perth Mint. You can own a gold ETF.

58:01I'm going to, I'm no Bitcoin true believer, as you say, but I'm going to go as far as to say there is a lot of parallels in exactly that scenario. for all the reasons that we just talked about. You have risks of bearing your own assets in the context of losing the gold or the combination of the safe or in Bitcoin sense, losing the seed phrase or whatever else, you know, the access to your Bitcoin. That is taken away by some degree of having someone else do it for you, but then you have the counterparty risk of what if they do the wrong thing, what if they get hacked, what if gold gets stolen out of the vault.

58:37And the ETF similarly, you know, a gold ETF and a Bitcoin ETF, there may be a difference in terms of who owns, whether physical gold or derivative exposure, same with Bitcoin. I suspect that it doesn't, unless you're a true believer who's there for the mission, as you are in part, you don't need, I'm going to argue, actually I'll make a statement when you turn me on. You don't have to have a view on Bitcoin, the Bitcoin technology, to choose the same way you would with gold, how you want to trade off those benefits and potential risks. Yeah. In the same ways you can hold it yourself, you can have someone to hold it for you, you can invest in an ETF which has exposure to it, that same three options could be applied to Bitcoin as easy as it could to gold.

59:19Yeah, I mean, it's trade-off. Even if you want to say, well, I do want to self-custody it, well, even within that there is trade-offs. I mean, I could have a hot wallet which is just on my phone or an internet-connected device which is easier to hack, right, because maybe there's a key logging software installed or malware on your computer or something like that. even within a air-gapped hardware device, you've got things like the BitKey, which is from Block, Jack Dorsey's company, you know, behind Cash App and Square and those kind of things. That's the one that's usually my go-to recommendation because it's just super, like, idiot-proof.

59:55It's so easy, right? Yeah. But then it's not as good as, like, people often point to the cold card as sort of the best hardware. It's fully featured. You can do all kinds of multi-sig stuff, but it's a bit more technically advanced. So what's the right answer? Well, the purist would say, you know, you can actually build your own from component parts. There are kits out there that will let you do that. But again, you don't want perfect to be the enemy of the good. Everything is a trade-off. Everything is. Even as you go up the Bitcoin protocol stack, so there's the base layer, and then you could have some funds on the Lightning Network and ARK and there's other things as well.

1:00:32And it's like at each stage you're trading something off. And this isn't a Bitcoin thing. This is an internet thing. That's what I was using the goal. The thing is it's almost agnostic in terms of holding something yourself, having someone else hold it for you, or investing in a financial asset which represents an ownership. Yep. Those are kind of the same. And frankly, superannuation or cash. Exactly, yeah. The right answer is the one that's right for you. As long as you go in, I think you can't tell someone what to do, but go in eyes wide open. Here are the trade-offs. To your point, you could lose the keys or something and it's gone.

1:01:06There's no tech support to call. It's gone. Right, forever. There's nothing that no one can do about it. That's kind of the point. Honestly, I just, I don't see how people, I think people over, they worry about that too much. If you're, as a grown adult, can't secure 12 words, it's like, you know, it's not that hard, is it? But again, no judgment. If it is like, yes, it actually terrifies the pants off me and I just want a big, well-regarded, regulated investment bank to hold it on my behalf and then, yeah, then do that. Who, by the way, are probably holding the ETFs you're investing in on your behalf in exactly the same way anyway.

1:01:46Exactly. So in terms of that's where the structure for me, so I did buy my Bitcoin using a hot wallet. Largely, just to kind of try it out, I haven't got enough that I can justify at least yet, as Ram might say, I haven't got enough to justify paying for an air gap device. Yeah, there are a few hundred bucks. And so I don't want to. And if I lose it, if I had Andrew level money, if I had 15 bitcoins, I'd probably be a bit more concerned about whether I wish. Only 15 says Andrew. You know, that's a, I would absolutely do something very different. No, I may not do it myself. I may still invest somewhere else.

1:02:25But yeah, I think that's absolutely right. My, I think because, and you made the point about people who are, I don't remember what you already used, also fundamentalists for fun, not anyone knows, but if you're all about the sovereign nature of it, if you're about the stuff that Bitcoin offers in some of those ways, then of course you want to do it for that reason because that's what you're getting. But you probably own physical gold and you probably got it in your backyard or a safe, right? And that's completely fine. And Bitcoin is as a thing, if you listen to some of those true believers, it's like going to a prepper convention and have everyone tell you you've got to buy gold but you've got to hold it yourself because you can't let, you know, those other people have the gold.

1:02:58Maybe they're right, but they're probably not and it's probably not a big deal. and you can hold gold without having to buy into the prepper thing, right, because you're just holding it because you want to adopt it rather than investing in it, as Andrew says, as money. And I think that's perfectly reasonable across the board. If you're investing in a financial asset or adopting that financial asset, maybe you might say. I guess that might be the only reason not to ram as I think about it. It kind of harks back, a callback, as the comedians like to say, to where we started, at least in terms of the adoption versus the investment thing.

1:03:26If you're adopting Bitcoin, you're probably not buying a Bitcoin ETF. if you genuinely are just doing it for the monetary use, the use as money rather than for the accumulation of purchasing power. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm not going to put my cash in an ETF and have to take it out every time and then, you know, to suspend it I'm going to have it in a bank account because it's money. Yeah, there's capital gains and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, for sure. In that sense, I'm probably not going to. I'm not trying to call back my own pedantic response to your own pedantism, but that idea, in my mind anyway, that you're investing in it to improve your purchasing power until such time as it becomes money, then, yeah, you might use an ETF for that because that becomes, you know, an attempt to improve your purchasing power over time using an appreciating asset, which is kind of, you know, whether we call it investing or not is kind of different.

1:04:10So in that sense, that might govern where you chose to hold it. But if you think that today Bitcoin's worth X and in five years' time it might be worth meaningfully more and, again, not even Australian dollars but a number of cows I can buy with a single Bitcoin, then if you're going to redeem it at some point and do something with it, then an ETF makes perfect sense. To me, and not as advice, obviously, Al, but just if you think about, I would think about like gold and just think about how you're going to use it, what you see as important, what you see as worthwhile, what risk you want to take, what upsides you want to have.

1:04:42It kind of tells you there. I guess, Ram, can I round it out by saying, I don't know if I can, I was going to say the best option is the one you're most comfortable with. Yeah. Because it means you're doing that thing. You would argue, and I think you're probably right, owning is better than loading it. So owning it in the structure that makes most sense for you and is least frictional for you. No, don't let the bloke at the pub promise he was going to keep it for you. So I'm not saying anything is okay. But the things we just talked about, as long as you're aware of the risks and the potential rewards or benefits and you right-size that for yourself, it's probably the best way to go.

1:05:21None of those are bad, are they, mate? Coinbase, PayPal, owning it directly. using iBit ETF, are they all? Yeah, well, so just a couple of quick comments. One is not a one-way door. You can change your mind. Yeah, I'm going to start off slow. I'm going to do it this way through iBit and then, you know, maybe I just put$1 ,000 on a hardware wallet. That way if you completely stuff it up, it's not great, but it's not the end of the world, right? Yeah. So you can have a foot in each camp and you can just sort of like adjust as your comfort levels grow. I mean, the reason that the whole not your keys, not your coin thing has come about because you've got to remember, It's 16 years old.

1:05:56It's such a baby, right? It's so new and there's just horrible stories out there with exchanges that have been hacked and people have lost what is now worth billions of dollars. Yeah. And they thought I held Bitcoin because they opened up a FTX, Sam Bankman freed, right? It's unfortunate because the damage he did to everything was just reinforced people's prejudice. He's a very, very bad actor. He's in jail right now. and saw all these weirdo cronies and they deserved to rot there because they ripped off a lot of people. But people were going, I've got Bitcoin because I can see it on my FTX account.

1:06:32Yeah, but they said it was there. It wasn't there. And so people have learnt over the years, particularly with offshore exchanges, that generally speaking there's a lot of not very well regulated. There's a lot of cowboys that are out there. you know just don't take the for something you don't need to like with gold i probably should buy a safe right yeah with this i don't need it's actually much it's i won't get into the nuance of it but it's actually much easier and given that there there's a litany of bad examples and bad experiences out there it's probably worth sort of having a look into but this was why the etf was such a game changer it just it just created an on-ramp for institutional and traditional capital that just, you know, Fidelity is never going to have a Coldware wallet in the CEO's desk, right?

1:07:23They're just not going to do that. They're going to use an institutional-grade custodian and that's what Coinbase has, those kinds of services. And I don't want to give a shout-out for Coinbase because I think Brian Armstrong is not a very good actor. He's out there shilling all kinds of other nonsense as well. He's made his billions actually in that process. So there's a lot of bad actors in the space. So I wouldn't point to Coinbase as a wonderful advocate for the cause. But, again, as I say, it's trade-offs all the way through. I'll answer it more concisely. Start with Ibit, which you have, and then dip your toe in the water with the real deal and see how you feel.

1:08:04You'll probably come and go, oh, that actually wasn't that hard. Maybe I'll increase it. Or not. I can be bothered, you know. I think that's right. That's been my experience. Yeah. It's just give it a go, have a look around, see what makes sense. I ended up with two different apps at one point, just while I was playing around trying to find one that worked, just a bit of research online. And by the way, if it's interesting to you, you take the interest and go with it. If it's not interesting to you, then it tells you exactly what you need to do, which is stick with an ETF or something just easy and simple to do.

1:08:26I've got an ETF for my super. There you go. Because Common Bank wouldn't let me transfer more than a certain amount. Like they're just idiots about it. So I got the ETF. Very good. Hey, mate, this is our last episode for this year. yes wow okay so thank you everyone for listening in 2025 we've thoroughly enjoyed being with you thoroughly enjoyed talking rubbish and hopefully you've had a little bit entertaining a little bit interesting a little bit worth coming back in 2026 we will continue to release episodes right through the period but this year last one for this year so that's that year done and dusted it felt like only yesterday we were saying the same thing about 2024 but we will see you you know what you know what bugger it no more episodes for 2025 that's it I'm not going to do Anymore till next year.

1:09:10He's walking out. I'm out. Done. See you next year. I'll join you. All right. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services License 400691.