Bear Market Diary 2023: Phil Geiger Interview
By @piratebeachbum - Analyzing The Bitcoin Bear Market Series - Volume 17
Name
Phil Geiger
Country
Texas
How do people know you?
I lead the concierge team at Unchained Capital, which has taught thousands of people how to hold private keys and has onboarded them directly to multisignature.
How long have you been into Bitcoin?
I started learning about bitcoin at the end of 2014 and quit my fiat career to work full-time on bitcoin in 2017.
How many Bitcon market cycles have you been through?
I experienced the final devastating capitulation of the Mt Gox 2014 bear market in my first weeks of owning bitcoin. It was a huge punch in the gut to see my initial “investment” crash 60% days after purchasing bitcoin, but it also encouraged me to learn more about what I purchased and has made every subsequent bear market a lot more fun. I think this is my 3rd bear market now.
Each new bear market brings out the best drama, the funniest cast of characters, and the best innovations from the top bitcoin companies.
What are you optimistic about in this space despite the current state of the market?
The collapse of these sketchy crypto lenders and exchanges is driving a significant new cohort of people to hold the private keys to their bitcoin. At Unchained, we celebrate every time we free bitcoin from the clutches of crypto companies.
I love that bitcoiners are buying significantly more sats for reduced prices from the failed crypto lenders who had been using bitcoin for their sketchy crypto yield investments. This is the process of bitcoin decentralizing from weak hands to people who understand that bitcoin is the strongest form of money and isn’t casino chips.
What tips do you have to those who are new to this or who might be upside down?
Change your denominator from heavily debased inflation money to pristine, fixed supply, bitcoin. When you measure your net-worth in bitcoin you learn to love the bear markets. More bitcoin for you!
That said, what you shouldn’t do is get so far allocated into bitcoin that you can’t handle the volatility. Be realistic about your current expenses and responsibilities, set financial goals (and stick to them), and plan for your net-worth measured in fiat to fluctuate. My favorite hacks of the last bull market have been the DCA applications and bitcoin reward applications. Earn bitcoin on every fiat transaction, set your DCA to something you won’t miss, and get into the mind-set that the only change you’ll make to your DCA is to increase the purchase amount.
Biggest regret during the last bull market?
Not planning for a sustained $17k bitcoin. I never imagined that the price would dip this low for this long. The suppressed market impacts even the strongest businesses in bitcoin and has led to great bitcoiners without a salaried position to drive bitcoin forward. Very tough to see, and I wish I had held off on growing my team so quickly during the bull market.
What have you learned so far in this bear market?
I always knew that broader crypto was full of degeneracy but the levels that we’re seeing today have totally surprised me. Companies that used to look like clear winners are now dead, the companies that I always knew were sketchy were sketchier than I could have ever imagined, and yet despite all of this, people are still addicted to yield and still ask me about it. We’ve seen what happens when you try to earn yield on an immutable asset with a fixed supply. I never realized how addictive gambling can be for some people.
What is the biggest fail you have seen during the last bull cycle?
The addiction to yield has led to a massive destruction of wealth. I mostly blame central banking and how it distorts incentives, but people who understand bitcoin should definitely know better than to let someone else lend out your bitcoin.
What do you think about all the influencers promoting companies and products that have imploded?
As a leader at a company that sponsors influencers, I have sympathy for most of them. They are, for the most part, driving the bitcoin narrative forward and deserve to be paid well for getting the message out there and for standing on the front lines of the media onslaught. There are not many ethical bitcoin companies that can afford to sponsor major conferences, influencers, etc, and I do believe that many of the conferences and influencers are adding a ton of value to bitcoin and accelerating people down the rabbit hole.
An overwhelming majority of the marketing dollars available are from shitcoins, because that’s all that shitcoins are. For example, Celsius, Voyager, and FTX were large sponsors and had gigantic booths at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami, which I wish didn’t have to be the case, yet their sponsorship money was used to fund the largest open-source bitcoin stage in bitcoin’s history. 3000 people learning about open source initiatives is good for bitcoin.
There’s a ton of grey areas. Shitcoining is totally unethical, but taking the shitcoiners money to promote bitcoin isn’t the worst outcome of the existence of shitcoining. We can’t just pretend shitcoining doesn’t exist. It does and it’s still where a ton of the VC and marketing money goes for some reason. I have seen many events/podcasts charge shitcoin companies significantly more for sponsorships and use those dollars to support bitcoin.
People are extremely quick to dunk on individual influencers or large events, but there are a lot of cases when it’s better for the influencer/event to have the money than the awful company that sponsored them. I wish hyperbitcoinization was easier but I think it’s going to get harder.
Why do you think people still listen and support these people?
They are for the most part educational and entertaining, and it’s extremely easy to skip the ad reads on a podcast or YouTube video. I would hope that these influencers are open and honest about the risks of custodial bitcoin and shitcoining, but if they are really taking on blatantly scammy, terrible companies just for the paycheck, they will be discovered over time and the grift will be over. I think at this point every bitcoin podcast has read ads for at least one bitcoin or crypto company that has failed.
What do you think helped trigger the current bear market?
Jerome Powell
Who was most exposed during this last market meltdown?
Bitcoiners were the least exposed. All of the shitcoiners were equally exposed because they all had their hands in each others’ cookie jars, and there’s nothing of value to DeFi and shitcoining once you get past the marketing.
What are your thoughts on Bitcoin Maximalism?
Bitcoin maximalism is the understanding that the entire world is in the process of converging on one form of money, and it will converge on the form of money that is the most scarce, easily divisible, most durable, fungible, portable, and neutral, which is bitcoin.
Why do you think there is an emerging narrative to demonize Bitcoin Maximalists?
Having control of the money printer allows you to transfer wealth from productive people to yourself in the click of a button. Bitcoin fixes that permanently so the people who benefit from the money printer really don’t like that.
Central banks hate it
Governments hate it
Shitcoiners hate it
Private banks hate it until central banks create the CBDC
All of these folks benefit from being close to or controlling the money printer.
What kind of damage do you think the latest price drop has done to buyer sentiment?
Less damage than the Mt. Gox collapse did to buyer sentiment. Unchained is seeing record volumes across multiple business lines as a result of this bear market. Companies that help folks eliminate single points of failure and hold the private keys to bitcoin are becoming more popular than ever. I think the traditional custodial banking model doesn’t work all that well with an immutable form of money.
What is it going to take to turn this around?
Time. When Jerome Powell inevitably kicks on the money printer after causing massive unemployment and crushing the real estate market, it’ll send everything north again measured in dollars. But we don’t care about dollars, only earning more bitcoin. It’s a great time to get more bitcoin while the dollar is bafflingly strong.
What are your tips for HODLing Bitcoin through this cold bear market winter?
Learn about the technical side of bitcoin if you haven’t yet. Everyone will eventually hold the private keys to their bitcoin. Learn about multisig for your long-term storage. Think about your bitcoin inheritance plan. Try mining. Run a full node. By the time you finish reading Human Action, it’ll be the bull run again.
How do you feel about alt-coins and NFT’s and stable coins right about now?
They are an inevitability of bitcoin’s massive disruption. Bitcoin simultaneously gave everyone the ability to print their own money and also gave everyone the ability to permanently reject other people’s printed money. It’ll take a while for people to realize the real disruption was the latter. Printing money does not create value, it can only move value from those who can’t print money to those who can.
Altcoins are marketing designed to enrich the founders
NFTs are digital receipts to JPEGs. The JPEGs cost essentially 0 to create and you don’t actually own the JPEG when you buy the NFT (you just own a receipt)
“Stablecoins” are not stable and are not the marketed currency (EG USD coin). The dollar is not stable (>40% of all dollars ever created were created in the last 2 years), and when you buy a USD “stablecoin” you are not buying the dollar, you are purchasing a database entry from a company that may or may not have the dollars they say they have. The “stablecoin” might have the value of the currency, but it also might not have any value, which means it is not stable. UST (the Do Kwon “stablecoin”) was supposed to be worth $1 but it was actually worth nothing.
What do you think about the whole collapse of FTX and Blockfi?
When you see a company offering you yield, always remember that you are the yield. Don’t lend out more of your bitcoin than you are willing to lose and don’t let anyone else hold a majority of the keys to your long-term bitcoin savings. Nobody cares more about your bitcoin than you do. I think there will be opportunities to pool and lend bitcoin safely towards some specific and productive shared endeavor in the future in some kind of collaborative multisig arrangement, but the bitcoin economy is too small for that today.
Do you think anyone will go to jail?
People might go to jail, but client bitcoin will likely not be returned
What is the best way to accumulate Bitcoin during a down market?
Earn bitcoin on every purchase you make with a bitcoin rewards card and set up a DCA for an amount that you won’t miss. Think about that old employer 401k that you forgot about, which is invested in pharmaceutical companies and government bonds and consider moving it into a bitcoin IRA where you hold the private keys.
Any tips you want to give to people new to Bitcoin?
Everyone always feels late but bitcoin is going to be here in 200 years and so a vast majority of bitcoin users haven’t been born yet. Set up a savings plan that doesn’t impact your daily life and just be patient. Hold the keys to your bitcoin otherwise you don’t own bitcoin.
Any last words of wisdom?
Bitcoin has always been a marathon, not a sprint. Forge those diamond hands and be patient. We are right about bitcoin and time has proven this true. All other currencies were permanently displaced in 2009, and you can tell this is true by looking at how much bitcoin you can buy for a dollar, euro, yen over the course of the last 14 years.
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