Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on main street.

Frank Curzio: What’s going on out there? It’s Thursday, March 17th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. It’s my favorite day of the year by far. NCAA tournament day, more important than anything, my daughters being born, you name it. I’m just kidding. You know, there’s some person out there going, “Oh man, he’s such a piece of garbage. He just said that.” I’m kidding. I’m kidding. It is an exciting day. I love it. I used to go away every single year for 20 years, see my friends, watch basketball all day Thursday from 12 to basically 12, get drunk, hang out. But now that I’m an old man, I don’t do that anymore. I’m just going to go someplace and watch some of those games, but it’s NCAA tournament day. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And in a little while, I’m going to break down my picks. But first, first, first I have a special interview set up, first-time guest, and his name is Lark Davis.

Frank Curzio: Not a crypto investor. Right now, you’re going, who, who is this guy? Well, Lark has one of the biggest social media presences in the crypto space, with close to one million Twitter followers. I’m pushing 10,000. One million Twitter followers and over 500,000 YouTube followers. Lark is not your traditional crypto YouTuber, which caters to a super young audience and just throws out some names to buy, and just whatever. He’s a professional trader, I know what I’m doing, I’ve been doing this, whatever, a year or two, right? No, he’s been doing this for a very long time. And the reason why he has one of the biggest followings is because he’s not full of shit like a lot of people that I see, especially through YouTube. He’s not telling you how he became a millionaire in a week and how you could do this.

Frank Curzio: No, he’s a former English teacher, got into crypto years ago, and started videotaping educational videos, and also talked about the biggest trends within the industry and just breaking it down, which are the best cryptos to buy off these trends, which ones are BS, or you should avoid. And because of his teaching background, I think this is why he has such a massive following. He knows how to explain this incredible trend, this industry, to the masses in easy terms, which you almost never see, you almost never see in this industry. You want proof? Read any white paper, read a white paper. I have to read white papers like six, seven times. I don’t understand technology. It’s crazy.

Frank Curzio: So, here’s a guy that just totally did it from scratch, started blowing up. And there’s a reason why you have a big, big following like that, is because he’s a good guy. He’s getting it done. You’re going to love this interview. He’s going to be sharing lots of ideas, so pay attention. If you’re not familiar with crypto, again, he’s going to be breaking it down very easily. A couple of trends we’re going to talk about, major trends like NFTs, metaverse, and he’s not going to give you ideas that are the main place that everybody knows about within these industries. He’s going to talk about some other companies that are just developing. His network is massive. It’s going to be a great, great interview. Enough of the buildup, and let’s get to that interview. Lark Davis, thank you so much for coming to Wall Street Unplugged.

Lark Davis: Thank you so much for having me on. Excited to be here.

Frank Curzio: So, you’re a modest person from what I know and what I see, but I’m not going to be modest because you have a very, very big following with crypto. You have a very big following on your YouTube channel. Very big following on Twitter, across the board, hundreds of thousands. When did you really start getting into crypto? And when did you turn that corner and say, “Wow, holy cow. Why are all these people listening to me?” And it got bigger and bigger and bigger. When did that all start? Because right now, you’re one of the names out there and influencers that people feel like they could trust in an industry that you know has a lot of people in it that you can’t trust.

Lark Davis: Sure, sure. You know, I really started to get into crypto in 2017. And it’s interesting because when I got into crypto, first I looked for ways, well how can I start earning crypto and sharing my journey? And I actually started posting on Steam, which I don’t even know if people are using Steam anymore, but it was basically a place where you can post blog posts and people up vote it and you get paid for it. It’s a pretty cool idea. And so I started posting stuff over there, travel and whatnot. And I started posting about crypto because I was super into crypto, and surely enough, those posts started becoming the most popular ones. And people were asking all these questions, and I was sharing my journey, talking about learning about crypto and the things I’m doing and my investing journey, so to speak.

Lark Davis: And I started making videos on YouTube because it was taking a long time to try to write out all these blog posts all the time. And I thought, oh, I’ll just record a video and talk about it and share my thoughts. It’ll be quicker. One thing led to another, and then suddenly way more people are watching my videos and engaging over on YouTube than on Steam and bada bing, bada boom, by November of 2017, I decided to quit my previous job as a teacher and go full time into crypto. And I’ve not looked back since. It’s been an absolutely amazing journey.

Frank Curzio: What subject were you teaching?

Lark Davis: I was teaching English. Before that I taught at a university, political science. So yeah, it was good. I liked it. It was fun being a teacher. But now I’m teaching different stuff, I guess.

Frank Curzio: No listen, teaching is great. And I know you always use that background, whether it’s English and writing and video and stuff like that, and bring it forth. I mean, it’s important, and the reason why I asked and you mention the teacher thing is in this industry I think what people forget, and I don’t see that you forget or actually do this, and it’s probably intentional because you have a teaching background, is crypto is a new market to so many people.

Frank Curzio: And I think the people who are in crypto believe that everybody knows the simplicities of crypto, but even in your videos, you break it down in very simple terms, as someone maybe looking at your video for the first time that doesn’t know anything about crypto. I mean, is that intentional? Because I noticed that. I don’t notice that a lot, especially when white papers are written. It’s Chinese to 95% of people-

Lark Davis: I absolutely try to keep it simple, just really basing on the idea that if you look at the statistics, and it really speaks to reinforce what I’m trying to do. And we’re actually about to release a massive beginner’s guide over on my website. That’s really exciting. Well, based on this exact idea that there’s so many new people who have come in. We had 200 million new people enter crypto last year that know nothing. And welcome, everybody, if that’s you, but they need knowledge, they need education, and they need this stuff to be broken down in an easy enough way that it’s not going to be, oh my gosh, this is so hard. It’s actually pretty easy, but it is a big learning curve.

Frank Curzio: It is a big learning curve. I’m going over to the YouTube channel, for those of you on our YouTube channel watching and not on iTunes. It is a big learning curve, and let’s start there. What are some of the things that for beginner investors in crypto that you tell them? For me, when I do interviews, I’ve been doing them such a long time, I really do my research. I watch a ton of your videos before, and I get prepared for this.

Frank Curzio: And I know one of the biggest things that I saw was contrarian, but maybe you could even dig into that, why that’s important, because you don’t hear the word contrarian in crypto a lot. Everyone wants to buy at the top when things are most excited, but you’re kind of calm and saying, hey, be a little bit patient. That’s just one thing. I’m sure there’s others, right?

Lark Davis: Buy high, sell low. It’s the way of life. You’re absolutely right about… I know we do. I know we all do sometimes. Everybody gets caught up once in a while. Look, the reality is, is you want to be contrarian to some extent in crypto, and my advice to new people when they’re coming in, take your time, learn, don’t FOMO. But most people FOMO, right? Because they only brought in their interest peaks. Well, look at this, this has gone up a thousand percent in the last year. It must be really interesting. I should buy now. It’s a winner.

Lark Davis: Unfortunately, that strategy, you’re going to go all in at $69,000 for Bitcoin. It’s tricky. Dollar cost averaging in is just such a simple way to get exposure to the top assets in crypto, taking your time to educate yourself of what crypto actually is. Because if you understand what you’ve actually bought, you’re much less likely to panic sell it when it’s down a few percent or even a lot of percent, right? You’ll go, wow, this is actually really special and cool, and I’m going to hold onto it.

Lark Davis: And of course being contrarian is probably one of the biggest things that will lead to success in this market. I was here through the entire 2018, 2019 bear market. And the whole time I was just saying, just buy Bitcoin, guys, just buy it and hold it and wait. And you know, it’s just a matter of time. Same situation, what we’re seeing right now with this bearish market. The volumes have dropped off. The public interest has dropped off. The Google trends have dropped off. The views on YouTube have dropped off. Everybody wanted to buy at the top.

Lark Davis: Now that we have a 50% discount on Bitcoin and Ethereum, 90% discount on some alt coins, where are the buyers? Nobody wants to buy. Everybody who was saying, “If only I could have bought at $30,000 when it was $69,000,” well, we’re getting those price points again. Where are the buyers? Smart money is buying though. We are seeing those on chain accumulation trends actually happening, but it’s not a mania. We don’t have a retail mania right now. We have a smart money accumulation phase going on.

Frank Curzio: All right, let’s talk this, smart money accumulation phase, because you’re someone who’s been in this crypto market for a while. I consider you a crypto diehard. And when I see crypto diehards, like individual investors, we had Biden come out and talk about his executive order. For me, I called it a positive. I said it was a positive. And I know a lot of the bigger names say it’s positive, but I understand why so many people think it’s a negative, it’s anti-government, this is why Bitcoin was created.

Frank Curzio: However, and I want you to correct me and feel free to go against me, so my theory on this is if you’re really a Bitcoin holder and you’re holding long-term, you need institutional money to come in. That’s trillions of dollars, trillions and trillions of dollars. And to get there, you need that. And for those guys to come in, there has to be a regulatory framework. Of course, it is the government. We know they can’t run businesses. That’s why there’s a huge discrepancy. I want to get your thoughts. Is this good news, or is it something that’s not really a big deal, or is it negative for the industry?

Lark Davis: I don’t think it’s a negative at all. I definitely think it’s heading in the positive direction. The unfortunate reality of the Biden executive order is to an extent it’s a bit of a nothing burger. It would be nice for it to be more effective. But basically what he said is that we’re going to direct a bunch of agencies to look into these six areas. We want to make sure it’s not being used for illicit purposes. We want to make sure sustainability, we want to make sure financial inclusion, all that stuff. So basically, all the three letter agencies that deal with finance stuff go research it and then come back to us with some policy recommendations. That’s kind of what the executive order was. It didn’t actually say we’re going to do this, this, and this specific new legislation or anything like that. It was just kind of like let’s make some committees, let’s talk about it.

Lark Davis: But that’s a really positive thing at least to be moving in that direction because it is giving what investors, a lot of investors, have been demanding for a long time, regulatory clarity. And I know there’s a very strong faction of people in the Bitcoin community who are, you know, absolutely no government, very libertarian, very cypherpunk sort of aligned. And that’s absolutely fine. You can still do that within a regulatory framework. You can still have some of that freedom. There are always going to be services out there that offer that to you.

Lark Davis: But as you literally hit the nail on the head, if you want money to come into this market, we’re talking about all the money sitting in bank accounts. We are seeing those bank connections starting to happen. The New York Digital Investment Group has partnered with dozens of banks, I think potentially even hundreds, if we count all the individual branches, to let those banks offer Bitcoin to their customers, to buy, sell in custody at the bank. Those stories are starting to come. Every few weeks, we’re seeing a new story like that coming out. That adds up. You want institutional money to flow in, you want pension money to flow in, all that stuff, you need a regulatory framework.

Lark Davis: I actually saw a great statistic that was something around like 70% of investors that were asked by… I think it was Fidelity, said they would only invest in Bitcoin when they could get a Bitcoin spot ETF product to invest in. They didn’t want to handle self-custody. They didn’t want to have the real stuff. They wanted to have something they can go to the brokerage account, buy essentially real Bitcoin, but just a paper version of it. So, that was a pretty shocking number to me when I heard that, because that means the interest is there. People just want different products available and they want more regulatory clarity on taxes and custody and all this stuff. So, I think the Biden order is moving us in the right direction.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I agree. And I don’t know if it’s that it makes it so much where they’re looking for these products or ETFs, I think they’re just looking for it to be easy. Where again, we’re talking about the masses here, where, oh, I have to establish a wallet. Oh, why do I have to open up an account on every single exchange? How come I can’t go on E*Trade and be able to buy any stock I want? So I think the easier, and we’re seeing that compared to even a year ago and especially two, three years ago, the ease of getting into crypto and buying Bitcoin, I think you’re seeing more and more people.

Frank Curzio: And also from my end, I’m seeing retirees ask, you know what, I’d like to get into Bitcoin. I really know nothing about it. And that’s a great conversation. That means it opens up the door for maybe 401ks and things like that as an alternative.

Lark Davis: Exactly.

Frank Curzio: I’m seeing that, and I’m with you. But I also understand the other side. I understand this was created to, you know, against the government, libertarian. I understand it, but if you’re really a holder of Bitcoin long-term, you need to see that. If you really wanted to go to 250, 300,000, even higher, whenever that time period is, you really need to see institutional money come in. That’s how I feel. And again, we could be wrong on that.

Frank Curzio: But I wanted to get into specific markets with you because one thing I love about crypto is this is where all the innovation’s taking place. And when I say innovation, I’m not talking about EVs. That’s an old trend where you’re building on, you’re looking at data analytics, AI. These are existing trends, add-ons, how they make them better, cybersecurity. I’m talking about brand new innovation that’s disrupting world markets.

Frank Curzio: And one of those things is NFTs. There’s a lot of confusion on NFTs because I think people took it as a joke at first where it’s bananas and apes and people selling these things, and the huge fluctuation in price. But I want you to talk about NFTs because some people think this is a fad, but the applications for this in what I’m seeing right now, I’m blown away. I don’t know if you are, but I think this is going to be a massive, massive trend. And you’re seeing more and more people not only get into it, but really start to learn more about it. Are you seeing the same thing on your end?

Lark Davis: A hundred percent. NFTs are amazing, and NFTs, verifiable digital scarcity, verifiable digital ownership. If you ever collected sports cards or magic cards or something as a kid, or you like, I don’t know, any kind of rare items, then you should understand the value proposition behind NFTs. Now, I want to make it clear that what we’ve seen over the past six months to a year in the NFT space is to a very small extent on par with the 2017 ICO phase, where we had just rampant cash grabs, rampant scams. And we’ve seen some of those recently. We had a 70 million ICO… ICO, I call it an ICO, NFT sale the other day for horrific art that ended up being a massive joke. And unfortunately these mass raises are happening, because there’s so much money in the market that doesn’t care and is just greedy and looking for the next thing to flip and make some cash off of, just like the 2017 ICO space, much smaller, mind you.

Lark Davis: But that being said, even if 90, 95% of NFTs are going to go to zero, the reality is that this technology is super exciting, super interesting. We are talking about collectibles. We’re talking about music. That’s an interesting application. Profile pictures. All these kinds of interesting use cases are starting to come up in the NFT space, and it’s super exciting, super interesting, and it will be a very big part of life moving forward, as we see more and more companies adopting NFT technology. Look over the last year. We’ve had probably a hundred major international corporations announce that they’re integrating NFT technology. And even if those are early pilot programs, fast forward five years or 10 years, when it’s a completely normal integral part of our digital experience.

Frank Curzio: You said something funny, fast forward five to 10 years. We try to do that, fast forward five to 10 years, but when a concept comes up, you get so excited about that everybody wants to see it right away. One of those things that reminds me of is the metaverse. We saw Facebook completely change its name. I don’t know if that was just because they knew that their sales were going to go down tremendously once Apple switches privacy plans and now it’s going to Google. I mean, I don’t know why nobody believed them when they said that’s really going to impact them, but now we can see, it really impacts them to changing their symbol to meta.

Frank Curzio: Talk about the metaverse here, because we have Decentraland. We have Sandbox. I mean, those are two tokens you could buy. And I know you cover this industry extensive. How big do you see this being? Because the companies obviously believe it. We’re seeing Nike come in, Walmart come in. You’re seeing major companies across the board really pushing forward with this agenda. All the big name companies, all the big FAANG names, basically, are involved in this trend, building out just different extensions of the metaverse. Where do you see this industry? And maybe, how can investors play it outside of Decentraland and Sandbox, if you’re able to give away some of those things?

Lark Davis: For sure. The Walmart metaverse is funny. I can see that. You know, let’s go hang out at the Walmart metaverse, guys.

Frank Curzio: I know. Yeah.

Lark Davis: Anyway, it’s a weird and wacky world. Now, the metaverse technology, basically this is digital online experiences, digital worlds where you can go and do stuff, but also it crosses over into a lot of different sectors when we start to talk about the crypto space. We’re talking about NFTs. Most of the metaverses are using NFT technology for in-game items, in-game skins, in-game real estate. That’s an interesting one. We’ve seen, for example, Decentraland and Sandbox, which are the two big metaverses right now, the real estate, the digital land inside these metaverses has literally sold for millions of dollars, millions of dollars for a tiny parcel of digital land inside the metaverse. It’s a crazy world that we live in. That has been a great investment opportunity for people who bought those digital lands two years ago and were able to flip them, of course, now for huge profits.

Lark Davis: We will see other metaverses, other games having similar returns. Which ones is the question. There’s a lot of them out there. Most of them are not going to have those kind of returns. But we are definitely seeing a lot of interest coming into this metaverse space. And I think the thing to realize about it, and you alluded to that in your question, was that we want it right now, and it’s just not here right now. We have, for example, Sandbox and Decentraland are still pretty early in their overall experience. I mean, I think it was only a few months ago that Sandbox came out with basically their alpha version. And that’s just, you know, those are the biggest ones, the most developed ones. We’ll see big companies coming in too, and those big companies will probably use some kind of NFT stuff maybe in metaverse tokens and all this jazz.

Lark Davis: The real question I think is going to come down to interconnectivity between these different metaverse worlds. Can you take your NFT hat from Decentraland to Sandbox, to the Walmart metaverse, to the Facebook metaverse? That will be the real question I think looking forward, is how do we interconnect all these? But for somebody looking for a crypto opportunity outside of the big boys, one that I’ve been really interested in and talking a lot about has been Wilder World, which is a very cool metaverse that has got beautiful art. Basically, the concept is it’s a digital version of Miami, so they’re selling land and cars and all this stuff that you can buy now. And their metaverse should be out in the not so distant future, but they haven’t launched it yet. So, that’s an opportunity to get in before the launch, unlike Decentraland or Sandbox, which are already out in the wild.

Frank Curzio: Now where you, someone who’s coming into the industry for such a long time, I realized when I was going through your videos, you have a lot of interesting ideas, alt coins, coins that you never heard of. And again, you’re upfront in saying these are aggressive, but it’s a way to try to get in early ahead of the trend before they list on exchanges. How do you find these names? Is it just because you have massive connections?

Frank Curzio: I mean, I’ve been doing this podcast for 14 years, and it’s been downloaded millions of times. So you just, I can’t explain to people how important that network is, of just people across all sectors that email you, and so when you have that big following, a hundred thousand, is this how you’re finding ideas, and how do you weed out the ones that are really cool from real people, compared to ones that are just guys that are looking to pump and dump some of this stuff?

Lark Davis: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really good question. I mean, obviously my network definitely gives me exposure to a lot of opportunities. I’m continually approached by a wide variety of people saying, “Hey, take a look at our stuff. Hey, would you like to be a pre-sale investor in our token here?” Also, I do find things we do in the weekly newsletter. I do a weekly token sale section, which I actually write myself. So, that helps keep me up-to-date on the new coins that are coming out.

Lark Davis: But yeah, definitely having connections obviously helps to get in as early as possible, but keeping an eye out for everybody who doesn’t have a huge social media following and people constantly hounding them to invest in their tokens, is to actually find the good information online. There’s a few launchpads, for example, that consistently have high performing sales. DAO Maker, Polkastarter. Those are two that consistently have very high returns in the market. We also see, for example, launchpads on Binance, FTX also continually having high performing sales. So, we see really good returns coming out of the sales on these platforms. And you just need to follow them along on social media, follow their Twitter accounts, find out what it takes to be in those sales. And the potential is really, really big.

Lark Davis: I mean, as DAO Maker as an example, they’ve had so many public sales that have literally done like 100X. So like, okay, sure, you’ve only got a two, three, four, $500 allocation, but $500 times a hundred is a lot of money, you know? So, those opportunities are out there for regular people to get involved, too.

Lark Davis: And one thing I just want to mention too, about the altcoin space, I generally approach it with a sort of venture capital mentality, based on the idea that a lot of these are not going to make it, and look, I try to find the best ones, I try to find the ones that I think have the highest potential, great VCs backing them, solid teams, decent, at least tokenomics, a good idea that I think that they can actually implement and people are going to want to be a part of, want to use.

Lark Davis: But that being said, I don’t always get it right. I’ve definitely invested in some duds over time, without a doubt. But for every dud, there tends to be a 10X coin or more. So, if you invest a thousand bucks in this coin and a thousand bucks in that coin, and one goes to minus 95% and the other does a 10X, well you come ahead pretty well. So, that’s kind of my approach to an alt coin invest. It is super risky, and some of them are going to go to zero, but the ones that don’t are going to make well up for the ones that you didn’t.

Frank Curzio: No, I appreciate you saying that too, because I think that gets lost where, you know, you don’t want people putting all their money into these things. This is speculative. The thing that I love, and being a person that’s followed small caps for over 25 years, the risk reward here has never been greater. If you’re willing to risk that capital, your returns are so much greater than anything you can buy in the market today, especially with the valuations, these IPOs and SPACs come out, which is insane.

Frank Curzio: And that gives you an opportunity to invest in a ground floor, because all you need to be is right on one of these things. And you’re right, it’s 10X. And if you’re early enough, it could be a lot more than that. And it’s not like we’re cherry picking. There’s a lot of names like that, but there’s also names that are going to crash, so you want to be careful. Now I saw you mention that 3.4 million users coming into this market. Or was it billion users, three or four-

Lark Davis: Billion. Billion users. Yes.

Frank Curzio: Sorry. The M’s and the B’s are getting mixed up, but the billion users. So, that’s the type of adoption that we could see. I think there’s 200 million, and you would know this number better, I think, the total wallets globally or something like that, which is a very, very small part of the population. But a lot of this is going to filter into Bitcoin.

Frank Curzio: Where do you think Bitcoin could go from here? Not tomorrow, not next year, and maybe not next year, the year after, maybe in three to five years in terms of adoption, in terms of everything that’s going on. I know you’re a bull in this industry, but how bullish, I mean, is realistic? Is it 200,000? Is it 500,000? Is it a million in 10 years? Because you get so many of these forecasts and nobody really knows, but from someone that’s really dialed in, that’s looking at the numbers and the new people coming in, I’m just curious to hear your forecast.

Lark Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a million dollar per Bitcoin is not an absurd number, to be honest. And I think that statistic of 3.4 billion more users coming in is just so incredibly important. It’s something I just, I keep reminding people of, because if you don’t understand a single other thing in crypto, just to understand that right now there’s around 300 million people who have ever had contact with cryptocurrency, 300 million people globally who have owned cryptocurrency. Maybe they’ve had a little bit. And a lot of those people won’t be serious investors. So, 300 million people have ever had exposure to crypto.

Lark Davis: By 2030, it is estimated that we’re going to see the 3.4 billion people having exposure to cryptocurrencies. That’s using stablecoins, playing games. We haven’t even talked about play to earn gaming. That’s a massive space. Playing games, earning in-game items, playing around in the metaverse, getting NFTs for free, selling those NFTs, buying stuff in the real world. That’s the kind of future that we’re looking at.

Lark Davis: And if you look at the last year, last two years of adoption stories, more fiat on-ramps, more companies adopting, we’re heading in this direction. And let’s say that number, that prediction, currently Bitcoin, the adoption of cryptocurrency technology is outpacing the adoption of the internet. So we’re moving faster, thanks of course, to the internet. So, if we’re looking at that and we do get that 3.4 billion more users, that’s great, but let’s say it’s only half right. Let’s say it’s only half frame. We only get 1.8 or 1.7 billion users. That’s still incredible. Because we just saw Bitcoin go from its previous all-time high of $20,000 up to $69,000 with just 200 million people coming in.

Lark Davis: So, let’s add 1.8 billion people to that, plus all the institutional stuff that we’re going to see coming in when we start seeing regulatory clarity, when we get spot Bitcoin ETFs in the USA. 52% of global equity markets are the USA. So, a spot Bitcoin ETF in the USA, massively impactful. Let Bitcoin be sold at every bank everywhere because that’s where we’re heading. That’s where we’re heading. We had a banking group actually come out this year and say that they’re on schedule, according to the people they’re talking to in their banking group, to see 300 banks in the USA sell Bitcoin to their customers this year. That’s massive. That’s absolutely massive. So, when you start to put all that together, a million dollar Bitcoin no longer seems so absurd. When, who knows, but I still see a million dollar Bitcoin.

Frank Curzio: No, I love it. I love it. I love it with the numbers backing it up too. It’s not just, hey, it’s going on a million without any numbers, where I know you did the research and the data and everything behind it. So, let’s talk about that too. And we’ll finish it with Wealth Mastery, which is your newsletter that comes out, you talk about different trends, different things. And I want to give you an opportunity to explain if anybody wants to sign up. First tell us what it is and how people sign up for it.

Lark Davis: Yeah, for sure. I mean, first off, I’d like to say you can sign up for free. So, go ahead and take advantage. You can sign up for free, but every single week we’re covering just a wide range of what’s happening in the crypto space. We’re talking about decentralized finance, a literally step by step decentralized finance tutorial. We’re doing altcoin reviews, helping you sift through what decent altcoins are, what are crap altcoins. We call it as we see it. We don’t sugarcoat anything. If we think an alt coin sucks, we’re going to tell you that. We also do token sales. So, the newest, hottest token sales. Airdrops, I mean, literally we’re giving people opportunities to get free money with the airdrops. So, it’s big opportunity there. We’re interviewing industry leading projects, talking about NFTs, giving NFT mint updates every week. So, huge value in this newsletter for people.

Lark Davis: So like I said, you can sign up for free, for it to get started. We also have a premium option, which gives you a few more insider access points there. But yeah, we try to provide people with as many opportunities as we can in the market, because this is the crazy thing, even though we’re in this bearish phase and we have been, really, for what, three months now, money is being made every single day in this market. People are flipping NFTs. People are making money in Defi or making money on token sales. There’s still opportunities in crypto, even in a down market, still ways to make money. And that’s what we try to give people in that Wealth Mastery newsletter.

Frank Curzio: And if people want to find you, your YouTube channel, but what about Twitter here? Which is, I’ll bring that up too. So, how could they do that?

Lark Davis: Yeah, just come over on Twitter, say hi. Those are the two biggest places to contact me, YouTube and Twitter. So, come over and say hello.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And you only have 920,000 followers, man. Come on, you’re slacking.

Lark Davis: Yeah, I know. I know. Got to step my game up.

Frank Curzio: Well, the fact you have that many followers, and listen, we interview a lot of people from crypto, and also I see a lot of people with the YouTube generation, and I have to tell you, the content that you have and the stuff that you’re doing is really, really impressive, man. So, keep up the good work. I don’t say that often to people. It just seems like a really good source that people could learn about crypto and find ideas and really good stuff. I know how busy you are. I know you’re in New Zealand. I really appreciate you coming to the podcast. But yeah, keep up with good work, man. I really appreciate you coming on.

Lark Davis: Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Frank Curzio: What a great interview. I say what a great interview, right? It’s based on what your audience thinks, but sometimes I get really excited to interview. That’s one of the ones I really got excited about. I mean, I enjoyed it. You saw right away, Lark is not only smart, but he’s a really cool guy and it comes across great in the media.

Frank Curzio: And that’s not always the case. I’ve talked to brilliant people, and I’ve had them on the podcast and we’ve had lots of edits and they get nervous, even though they’re brilliant, you know, just sometimes you have to have some kind of media presence and understand. I mean, he has everything. He just checks off all those boxes. He’s humble. He wasn’t telling you, you’ve got to buy this, this is how you be a millionaires. He’s like, I’ve had losses, some of these things kicked my butt, this is how you do it. And you know you’re doing the right thing when you have close to one million Twitter followers. You have to be doing something right, for that many people to like you.

Frank Curzio: And sometimes you say, well, some people hate you, whatever. No. If you look at his audience and you see the following, and Twitter and stuff, and not only that, we talked about the network of people that he has, which creates so many ideas. I just thought that would be a really good source for you. As you know, we’re really into crypto. Crypto’s a lot of fun right now. Yes, it’s been incredibly volatile. Yes, some of these things are down, but we talk about the Biden initiative, how important that is, because we’re looking at 250 trillion in global assets and the management on the sidelines. A lot of that money, they’re clients, right? These institutions, their clients are begging to come into Bitcoin and alternative assets. That’s what they want. That’s not me talking. It’s Jimmy Diamond talking. That’s what they want. And it’s a massive market that’s liquid.

Frank Curzio: In order for these guys to get in, you need a framework, you need some kind of framework like Daniel and I broke down, and now you have that framework. You’re going to see institutional money start pouring in. Even if it’s just one percent, we’re looking at a very, very small one percent allocation. That’s a small allocation to any sector, when it comes to asset management. And at just one percent, we’re looking at what? Two, two and a half trillion dollars coming to this market. In Bitcoin, it just goes into Bitcoin, which more money could go into it. We’re looking at what is it? A 700 billion dollar market cap. You could see why this is a game changer, and how many comes around Bitcoin, the good projects and those leveraged to the biggest trends which we talked about just now, you can see where those things are going to go.

Frank Curzio: That’s why I’m so excited about crypto. Yes, you have ups and downs. Yes, you get your ass kicked sometimes, but we show you how in our newsletter, Crypto Intelligence, of how to buy these things, how to reduce volatility. You’re going to see names at the beginning of the portfolio that are up a ton. You’re going to see names at the bottom that are down right now because a lot of those names over the past year have pulled back tremendously. But we’re adding to those positions. We’ve been scaling into those positions little by little. I have to tell you, all those names, I was up 10X, 20X, 30X. Those that you see in the portfolio, those were down 20, 30% at one time in 2018, 2017, towards the end, even in 2019. But when you have good projects, good people backing them, things that make sense, you have utility features for that token. These things will explode.

Frank Curzio: Now, to me, this is a game changer. This is a game changer. I mention that a lot of times, and some people don’t agree with it. They want total decentralization. Lark agrees with me as well. Others don’t, which is fine. But if you really want Bitcoin, those of you holding Bitcoin over the long term, if you really want Bitcoin to go to 250, 500,000, you need institutional money to come in. It’s not going to happen for retail investors. In order for them to come in, they have to check off that box. They have to know that there’s regulation coming down a pipeline that’s in place. And the reason why the president’s focusing on this is you can see institutions who lobby are telling him, we need a framework. I’m hearing that from almost all the big names I talk to, even the security tokens.

Frank Curzio: Well, we’re trying to talk to the SEC, we’re trying to talk to the SEC, and the SEC’s just like, save a Coinbase. Coinbase was pissed off. Remember, they came out and said we approached the SEC 10 different times. We approached these guys whatever many times, and they didn’t even acknowledge. Now that you have the framework in place, again, and it’s vague right now, but the fact that you addressed it and you didn’t say no, we’re not going to do this in the US, it opens a door to massive innovation. Now, you’re going to see the floodgates open, and it’s not just the institutions. You say, well, maybe the institutions, it’s what their clients want. So, if you’re managing a billion dollars and you have hundreds of millions of dollars through clients, and they’re saying, we want alternative assets, we want Bitcoin, and you say no, they’re going to take that money out and they’re going to go to another institution. That’s why they need to get in.

Frank Curzio: Money’s going to flow in. These guys are going to do the vetting. They’re going to be investing in a lot of projects. You’ve seen that in venture capital like crazy. The money from venture capital that’s going into cryptos is unbelievable. There’s more money that was invested in 2021 than all the prior years combined. It was to the tune of close to 40 billion. So, you can see my excitement in this industry. I’m glad Lark shares that as well. And getting in now, in this market where you’re seeing a lot of great names are down 50% plus. Great names. The garbage is down. It’s probably going to stay down, but there’s really, really great names, just that whole deleveraging that we’ve seen over the past couple of months in all speculative assets, a lot of that has come out of the market, but now you’re going to see money flood in.

Frank Curzio: I believe it. I’m not BS’ing you since my company’s based on crypto. We’re based on a security token. And I’m really, really excited about it. So really, really happy to know Lark, have him come out of the podcast. I was really impressed with him. Great interview. But this podcast is about you, not about me, I say it all time. Let me know what you thought, frank@curzioresearch.com. That’s frank@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio: Now, it is NCAA tournament time, and Gonzaga is going to win, and I’ll see you next week. I picked Gonzaga last year and they didn’t win, and Gonzaga, although they’re great, they don’t have as good as team as they did last year. Doesn’t mean they’re not going to win it this year, but I want to go over this.

Frank Curzio: I’m not going to break down every single game individually. I’d be here forever. So, just want to tell you, a lot of you guys follow this, did pretty good, which was weird, on my Super Bowl bets, even the prop bets. And you said I got that wrong and I got that right, but the NCAA, I usually have a good track record for this, something I follow. I love college basketball. It’s my favorite sport in the world, but you never know what’s going to happen. I will say, although it’s pretty open this year, whenever it’s pretty open, usually the one or two seeds are the ones that get to the final four. Whenever you say, well, it’s pretty open, there’s not a dominant player. It’s usually those eight to 10 teams that are really better than everybody else. Not that they can’t make a run and make it to the final eight or one in the Final Four, but that’s what you usually see, which is kind of weird. And I think we’re going to see that this year.

Frank Curzio: So, I know everyone has Gonzaga going all the way, all the way, all the way. Got Arkansas in the west, which could present some problem. I’m not really sold on Arkansas. I saw them play a couple times. Texas Tech, I’m very familiar with. Everybody’s on them. Everybody knows about them. They have a good defense. Kansas really shredded them last time they played. The defense looked pretty bad. A lot of people are betting on Texas Tech. You might see them in the Final Four. I don’t see it. They just didn’t look good that last game. Again, I follow them. They were good during the year, but I think there’s just too much optimism. They’re not like a sleeper. Davidson’s a great team out of the division, and you have Duke, but I have Duke winning out to the Final Four.

Frank Curzio: I mean, I’ve seen Duke play Gonzaga. What’s great about this year is you have teams like Kentucky, teams like Gonzaga, not really Gonzaga, but Kentucky, Duke, Tennessee, Purdue. Well, not Tennessee. Tennessee actually rose above that. But you have Purdue. These are teams that could easily make the Final Four. Great, great teams, great players, but they’re just all over the place and not consistent.

Frank Curzio: So, it’s just like Baylor was. They lost a couple games at the end of the year and everybody forgot about them. I knew how great they were because they blew out Kansas. And they were awesome last year, but they did lose a couple of games, which they kind of came off of my radar. I had them going far, not to the Final Four. And they did have that. That was a team that was great pretty much for 80% of the season, but they just didn’t finish the season strong. And that drops a lot of companies off the radar, a lot of companies. Wow, you know what kind of podcast this is, but a lot of teams off the radar.

Frank Curzio: So, I have Duke in the Final Four in the west. In the east, you have Baylor, you have Kentucky. Kentucky is a coin flip. Kentucky I think may be the most talented team next to Gonzaga. And Duke actually beat Gonzaga early in the year. That was a great game. But Kentucky is great, and they have actually experienced it the first time. Usually they have one timers there. If they lost their tournament, I thought they’d play better, but they could obviously get there. You have Texas, that division, and Purdue, I love Purdue. I think Purdue’s going to beat Kentucky. I think Purdue has a shot to make it to the Final Four. They have just amazing players on that team. I’m just surprised that they’re not playing better, but they could beat anyone. And they’re super athletic. Get a lot of steals. Awesome, awesome team.

Frank Curzio: But I have Baylor. I have Baylor and Purdue, which is basically, well, that’s not chalk, but Purdue is the three seed. So I don’t have Kentucky, Kentucky is a number two seed. I have Baylor playing Purdue, and then Baylor going to the Final Four. So, I have Baylor and Duke, which I don’t know. I’m not a fan of UCLA. St. Mary’s is going to beat UCLA. I mean, the PAC-12 was disgusting this year, other than Arizona, but you don’t know because Arizona really didn’t play anybody other than UCLA this year. So, they really didn’t play anyone. So Arizona, we’re going to the south here, looks fantastic. They look awesome.

Frank Curzio: However, however, I’m going to make a prediction here. And it’s crazy because no one in the world has predicted this. So underneath Zona, which Arizona’s going to win who they’re playing, you have Seton Hall and TCU. TCU and Seton Hall, that’s a pickup, I think. If TCU wins that game, TCU has a very, very good shot at beating Arizona. TCU. Yes, I did say that. Why’d I say that? Because I’m very familiar with that team because I’m a Kansas fan, the Big 12, and TCU played Kansas three times in pretty much a two week span and two times back to back, because I think one game might’ve got canceled, whatever it was. It was early in the season. And they beat Kansas. And then they played Kansas the very next game at Kansas and almost beat them again. And then, when they played in the tournament, Kansas started pulling away late, and they beat.

Frank Curzio: But they are a legit team that you do not want to… They’re very, very good. Again, I saw they beat Kansas and they should have beaten them at home. They just, they should have beaten them in the second game as well. And Kansas just barely won that game. It came down to the last minute. And then, when they played them in the tournament, the Big 12 tournament, they wound up beating them. And then, they beat them by, again, very, very close, into like the last three minutes or so, four minutes. That’s a legit really, really good team, just like most of the eight, nine seeds. So TCU and Zona, be careful.

Frank Curzio: You also have, who else is coming out of that bracket? Houston. Houston, you don’t know, it’s a coin flip. Again, they haven’t played anyone, but a lot of people are writing them off. So, I don’t think Zona makes the Final Four. I just think they’re going to have a tough road, but maybe TCU, they’ve got to beat Houston. But more importantly, you have Villanova, very under the radar team, which shows up on every list, whether it’s BPI, ratio, all these lists, these guys, like most three pointers, most three pointers made. Those are the things you want to see in the tournament, which I look at, even BPI and stuff. And they’re just off everyone’s radar for some reason because they kind of just haven’t been playing. I don’t know, just not a lot of media spotlight this year for Villanova. It could be a sleeper, but they’re going to play Tennessee. Tennessee, look, Tennessee, of all the teams, they’re playing the best right now of any team in the whole nation. They’re playing better than Gonzaga, St Mary’s, Tennessee.

Frank Curzio: So, could Tennessee fall? Yes, maybe, but I have Tennessee going all the way through, beating Houston in the final eight and then going to the Final Four, and I have Tennessee. And then I, and I’m never biased here, but I think Kansas has a pretty good division. They have a good division. They do have a lot turnovers, but the last like seven, eight games that they played were very, very strong. They played great. I mean, during the season, I would’ve said absolutely no way, but they really hit their stride, and you have their fourth, fifth, six, seventh best players scoring 10 points a game, they’re stepping up. You’ve got everyone coming back. They just look really good right now. So, I have Kansas going through, although San Diego State will present a challenge in the second round.

Frank Curzio: Iowa’s in that division. That’s going to present a challenge, but they’re playing Providence. Providence is a really good team. I think Providence could beat Iowa. Iowa is a very, very good team. The best assisted turnover ratio in one tournament. They look very, very strong right now, but I just don’t see that they’re going to do it. I think Kansas is a better team and they’ve got to go through Providence.

Frank Curzio: Then on the other side, the two best teams are Auburn and Wisconsin. Auburn’s a coin flip, depending how they’re going to play. I don’t think they’re that good. I think they were overrated at the beginning. Now, they’re still a two seed, but I think Wisconsin, Wisconsin is a very, very good team. Good defensive team, good assisted turnover ratio. I think that they will beat Auburn and play Kansas in the final eight and then KU is my Final Four team. So, it’s Duke, Baylor, Tennessee, KU. And I have Duke beating Baylor, and I have Tennessee beating Kansas. Like I said, I’m not being biased here. And I have Tennessee winning the whole thing.

Frank Curzio: So, I have a feeling I’m going to get every single game right this year, which happens I think once every 400 years or something. I think Geico used to give away… We’re going to give away a million dollars or something, if you sign up to this. And they got probably 300,000 names, which they pitched Geico and everything else, whatever, all over the place, save money on your car insurance, 15%, whatever. 15 minutes could save you 15%, right? How many times have you seen that commercial? Man, the return on ad spend must be great because that commercial’s been around for like 15 years. Anyway, that’s my Final Four, Duke, Baylor, KU, Tennessee. And Duke/Tennessee in the final and Tennessee winning it all.

Frank Curzio: They are just… I don’t see any weaknesses on that team. I think the only thing, they could beat themselves, that’s the only thing. Arizona could be really good. I haven’t seen them play anybody. I saw them play a couple times this year, but even when they play UCLA, which was three times this year, I don’t know, they definitely lost once. I think that the other game was close and they beat UCLA. And UCLA’s not a good team. So yeah, the PAC-12, probably the worst it’s ever been, I’ve seen in probably 20 years. I mean, holy cow, what a crappy division, but let’s see, Arizona does have great players. Lots of height, looks great, but let’s see if when they start playing some real teams and when they get into those pressure situations, which is going to happen in the tournament, definitely going to happen in the tournament, but I think they could be the team that you see an early exit, Arizona.

Frank Curzio: A lot of people are picking them this year, but again, I haven’t seen anything. I mean, Kansas had the toughest schedule strength. Gonzaga has been great all around. Great, great team. Duke’s been up and down. Kentucky’s been up down. Arizona’s kind of like, I haven’t really seen them play anyone. If you look at all the other ones, Duke, Kentucky, Gonzaga, a lot of these guys played each other. Baylor are playing Kansas. A lot of these guys had tough schedules, even Villanova. The Big East was really good this year. Zona hasn’t really played anyone. They could blow everybody out and win it. But I just, I don’t know. I think the pressure’s going to be on if the game’s close and they’re going to choke. So, let’s see if I’m right on that one.

Frank Curzio: So guys, that’s it for me. Hopefully, you enjoyed that interview and you enjoyed the picks. Email me whenever you want about NCAA basketball. Again, one of my favorite times, and it’s nice to see the market going up, which means I might have a little bit of time to step away to watch a couple of those games and some really exciting stuff. So guys, questions, comments, feel free to email me at frank@curzioresearch.com. You are getting this Thursday. So hopefully, we don’t see one of my Final Four picks actually lose early on, because you’re going to get this and say, these guys are already lost. But I’m assuming that we’ll be okay in the first round, which again, starts today. So again, questions, comments, feel free to email me any time, frank@curzioresearch.com. Really appreciate all the support, and I’ll see you guys next week. Take care.

Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decision solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.