My Inaugural Mastermind Event and Our First Installment of “Free” Bitcoin

Welcome to your Sunday digest…my weekly breakdown of the things we’re thinking about and talking about in the Global Intelligence world.

This week, I’d like to start by telling you about a big, virtual event I’m planning for August.

I’m calling this event the Mastermind. It will be live, uncensored, and will feature special guests from the Global Intelligence Network—a group that includes highly placed bankers…financial journalists…and thought leaders of every stripe.

Together, we’ll be tackling some of the biggest, most disruptive financial issues in the world today and giving you our insights on how you can navigate and even profit from them. We’ll also be taking your questions live.

Many of the special guests will be familiar to you, as they have appeared in the pages of the monthly Global Intelligence Letter.

Among those set to take part are Kim Iskyan, an expert on international markets who worked in emerging economies for nearly three decades, has advised Fortune 50 companies on political risk, and has helped build stock exchanges from scratch in countries that few people could find on a map.

Ian Bond, a pseudonym for a banking senior executive with over three decades of experience in wealth and asset management for Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Citigroup. He has built major businesses on four continents and owns online stores that generate millions of dollars in revenue annually. (He’s using a pseudonym to protect his employers.)

Zoltan Istvan, an entrepreneur and real estate investor with many international properties who has visited over 100 countries and written for National Geographic, The New York Times, and other major publications.

I’m extremely excited to bring these guys together because I know the level of insight and expertise they possess. I hope you’ll join us.

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Next up, I’d like to tell you about an updated figure in our Global Intelligence portfolio.

I love this update because it concerns how we’re earning bitcoin…without having to buy it.

One of the recommendations I’ve made to you is to open a crypto interest account. But not just any crypto savings account…an account with a New York-based Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, company that I think offers one of the coolest earning opportunities out there today.

Here’s how it works. The company will allow you to deposit stablecoins, a type of crypto that are designed to be, well, stable. The purpose of these coins: to maintain a constant, stable $1 valuation. And they are very good at this, typically fluctuating only a few fractions of a penny around $1. So basically, if you swap your dollars for stablecoins, you’ll still have the same amount of money.

But here’s the difference: if you stick your dollars into a regular bank, you’ll earn, at most, around 0.6% interest a year.

If you turn your dollars into stablecoins and deposit them with the DeFi company, you’ll earn 8.6% interest a year.

And that’s not all. Here’s the really cool part: You can choose to take your interest in bitcoin. (You can also choose to take it in more stablecoins, so essentially dollars, if you prefer.)

So, this is a way to get into bitcoin with very little risk.

You take minimal risk because if bitcoin goes down, you haven’t lost anything since you were going to get at most 0.6% interest at the bank anyhow. (And bitcoin would have to go way down to make your gain less than 0.6%.) But if bitcoin goes up in the months and years ahead, as I think it will, your interest will actually be worth way more than 8.6%.

Anyway, so how’s our investment going so far?

Well, we opened our position in this investment in late-May, and in mid-week we got our first bitcoin interest payment. At the moment our bitcoin was paid out, it equated to a gain of roughly 0.27%. (This value will obviously fluctuate up and down constantly with the value of bitcoin, so I’ll be updating this when the interest is paid every month.)

So, in less than two weeks since we opened our account, we’ve already earned the equivalent of about six months’ worth of interest from a regular bank account.

That’s the power of crypto and DeFi. (Get the full details on this investment in the DeFi report available as part of your Global Intelligence Letter subscription.)

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Finally, this week, a personal update from Prague and some stories I’m hoping to bring you in the months ahead.

Spring has now firmly arrived in the Czech capital and it’s truly glorious, particularly when you catch the sunlight shimmering off the red-tiled roofs in the Old City.

After a cold, wet spring filled with COVID lockdowns, the crowds are out and about enjoying the sun and the return to normality.

For one of my treats this week, I joined the lines waiting outside a local ice-cream parlor. I went for the pomegranate flavor, which was surprisingly good.

I got COVID vaccine shot #1 done on Monday, with #2 scheduled soon. This has cemented my desire to get back on the road and start looking for opportunities for us.

First on my travel list is Malta, which I hope to visit by mid-to-late July.

The Mediterranean country, a hugely popular destination for northern European tourists, has piqued my interest for a couple of reasons: Malta real estate has long been a popular investment, but prices have fallen hugely due to COVID. This means there could be some big bargains on the island.

Second, the country has a new digital-nomad visa. For just $300, you can get a one-year visa to live and work in Malta…truly one of the most gorgeous countries in the region. That sounds like an amazing deal to me.

Once I get back on the road, I’ll be doing some on-the-ground research on both these opportunities and reporting back to you. In the meantime, that brings us to the end of this week’s digest.

If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to contact me through the contact form on the Global Intelligence website here.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

P.S. Only a small group of VIP Global Intelligence members can get access to my inaugural Mastermind virtual event. If you want to join them and be “on the inside” of Global Intelligence, join the Global Intelligence Lifetime Circle.

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