October 26, 2026 – E-2 Visa & Business Credit Christopher Gurski and Wise Wolf Bitcoin ATM Tony Arterburn

00:04 Intro 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:25 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of school for startups radio. I hope you’re out there making some money, growing your business, taking care of the future of your family, and having some fun along the way. We have a great show today, and today is an example of why I just love this show. I don’t love me doing it. I just love the data, the resources, the information that I get to share. 2 amazing guests in a field, 2 fields. I know nothing about.

00:59 Jim Beach: First up, we have Chris Gurski, who is going to teach us about E-2 investor visa and Business Credit, and how you can get it so that you’re not responsible for the leased office and leased cars that we all have to sign these personal guarantees about. And then Tony Arterburn is with us, equal the field that I know nothing about. Gold and Bitcoin ATMs in convenience stores. He is the wise wolf, and we’re going to talk about all sorts of things. Gold and fighting inflation.

01:33 Jim Beach: All of the things, the Bitcoin, how many Bitcoin there are, what that means to us. And so it’s just a a veritable plethora of information. You know, we’re coming up here pretty quickly on our 3000th show, some 6000 guests. We are trying to create a mosaic that you can look at all of the little pieces that are relevant to you and hopefully get the big picture at the same time.

02:01 Jim Beach: Each little tile has something to do with entrepreneurship and small business or something that should be relevant to you. And we hope that you check out the ones that are useful. We have so many great leadership guests that I hope you have picked a style and are sticking to it and using it to become a great leader. We have so many guests on creativity. I hope you’re finding new ways to be creative. We have so many guests on finance.

02:33 Jim Beach: I hope you’re finding new ways to fund and grow your business. That’s what I’m here to do. And to give you the tips, the tricks, and the techniques to be successful. We’ll be right back with a great show. We are back again. Thank you so very much for being with us. You know, as your business grows, one of the things that will surprise you is that no matter how big the business get, it seems they still want your personal guarantee.

03:05 Jim Beach: I remember one time I had, I think, 30 different car leases on my personal guarantee, and that was funny until all of them hit a, or we’re in a parking lot and we had a horrible hailstorm, and all of a sudden I had 30 leased cars that were damaged in my credit name. Boy, would it be nice to have business credit. Our guest is going to help us learn about that world and see if it’s possible. Please welcome Christopher Gurski to the show.

03:37 Jim Beach: He is the founder and CEO of The Credit Genius. I love his story. He came to the United States as a former NCAA swimmer and arrived with no U.S. Credit history, no established network, very limited knowledge of American banking, and has built up his world around creating credit and background history for people just like himself. It’s a great story. Christopher, welcome to the show. How you doing?

04:03 Christopher Gurski: Jim, thank you so much for the introduction. I’m doing very well. And yeah, I appreciate the intro and I’m more than happy to talk everything about banking and credit today, how you can leverage that in the US as an American, but also as an international, like me, coming from Germany. But there’s so much to talk about, so much potential left on the table, so we can definitely dive right in into all the questions and hope to help your audience and the people you’re listening.

04:37 Jim Beach: 150 clients. I didn’t mention that in the intro, very impressive. What did you think of America when you got here? Where you, obviously you were excited to get here. You moved here by choice. We didn’t arrest you and bring you here. What was it like for you? You were 18, right?

04:55 Christopher Gurski: Yeah, I was 18 years old. Um, already 11 years ago in 2015. I got a swimming scholarship. I was a swimmer in Germany on a competitive level, on the national side of Germany, and then this door opened up for me to study and swim in the US because there’s one big disadvantage in Europe. We don’t really have university or college sports teams. So the value and the appreciation of being an athlete in the US is a total different, total different landscape.

05:28 Christopher Gurski: And it was, for me, the only way on how I can combine my academics and also my athletic athletic career. And in my opinion, there’s no other place to do it that way than in the US. I think you have a great university and sports system. And yeah, this is what this is what excited me the most, you know, to keep on swimming. Keep on studying.

05:55 Christopher Gurski: And yeah, then I got a little bit splashed by all the opportunities in the banking and credit system because I slowly realized, hey, this is a lot different than I was used to back home in Germany and in Europe. And I realized pretty fast, okay, even the Americans are not fully utilizing all the options to not only, you know, for your personal things, personal travel, but also in terms of, you know, scaling your business, using capital, using other people’s money or using the bank’s money to fund and grow your business.

06:30 Christopher Gurski: I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs, also Americans, in my last 10 years here, that bootstrap their business, even though there were other opportunities out there. So this is what I’m doing now. I’m helping American and international entrepreneurs scale and build exactly that, starting from personal credit. And then also, you know, tapping into the into the business credit side of things, adding the right trade lines and then just making the business very appealing to the banks.

07:00 Christopher Gurski: So people have a bigger opportunity and more leverage to really get that business going and to grow into a positive trajectory.

07:08 Jim Beach: Excellent. I want to ask one off topic and then we’ll come back and do this, but I just I’m curious to hear, especially from a non-American. What are your thoughts about the having women in? Oh, no, let me make sure I say this right. People who used to be men in female locker rooms and there was that one particular swimmer that was Leia, Tom, Tom, something like that. What are your thoughts on that whole issue? And what do the Europeans generally think?

07:38 Christopher Gurski: Yeah. I’m asked to say I’m a little bit more conservative when it comes to that. Um, I think especially in in sports, you know, the difference between the biological man and women is really visible, you know, especially also in swimming. You know, men just have a big, big advantage um through, you know, just the body structure and everything. Um, so I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I don’t mind, you know, people who, uh, who have all the LGBTQ, uh, community.

08:09 Christopher Gurski: Um, but I just, I think it’s a good idea to separate it on the biological way um, for, for, for, for sports. Um, I know, you know, especially in Europe, um, the, uh, the way of doing things is a little bit different than in the US, um, but I think uh, the US in terms of that is in uh, is in a proper trajectory.

08:35 Jim Beach: What is happening? What’s happening in Germany? Is it a very huge controversial issue there as well?

08:41 Christopher Gurski: Um, to be honest, um, Germany has different problems at the moment. Also politically, it’s not something that’s top of the mind at the moment. Not that I’m aware of or still follow, you know, German news and European news. Um, I just know it was a big, big, big topic when the last Olympics um happens.

09:04 Jim Beach: Right.

09:05 Christopher Gurski: But I think that that whole, you know, focus on that specific topic faded away a little bit and ranged, I think, more common sense and common, common acceptance, um, what makes sense on how to judge and and make decisions on that.

09:19 Jim Beach: All right, back to the important stuff. By the way, I agree with you. I’m pretty conservative on this issue and I would not want my daughter. I have 2 daughters. I would not want them in a mixed group and I’m fairly doubtful about men and men’s desires. I know men and we’re all scumbags is my take on it, you know? All men are bad. So I just sum it up there and move on. All right, let’s do.

09:48 Jim Beach: Let’s move on and get back to you and your 150 clients. So you came to the United States with nothing and in 4 years had a successful business up and running? Is that the correct math?

10:00 Christopher Gurski: Oh, no, not quite. I came here on 2015. On a so-called F-1 student visa.

10:06 Jim Beach: Okay.

10:07 Christopher Gurski: Um, I I studied business in Indianapolis and, you know, I swam for my university, um, you know, to get that to get that scholarship. Um, and then after I I finished my bachelor, um, in in business, admin and supply chain. I actually moved back to Germany for about 4 years and worked in management consulting in Düsseldorf, Germany, um, really loved my job, but uh, something was deep inside me that I learned in the US, this um, this spirit of freedom, you know, to create your own, to create your own thing and be self-employed, to start your own business.

10:46 Christopher Gurski: This is something I really learned and valued from my university studies in the US. And yeah, then 4 years ago, I started my own business in 2022. Um, moved to Dubai originally, and also, you know, set up my whole company, company there, but then I slowly, you know, added my U.S. LLC structure to it and then grow it um, throughout the years.

11:11 Christopher Gurski: And since last year, since last year, I’m officially back in the US on a so-called E-2 investor visa, which is a great option, in my opinion, for all international citizens who have an E2 treaty. It allows you to invest into your own US business and then get work authorization for 5 years. And this is what I did last year and I’m living in Miami, here in Florida. And what we do, we assist the clients here on site, make the right banking introductions.

11:43 Christopher Gurski: Make sure the company setups are founded correctly. And then, you know, we we grow the business with them, um, going to fuel them with personal and business credit, um, through our guidance, this is in a nutshell what we do.

11:59 Jim Beach: I love it. Tell me about the E-2 visa, so explain that for us Americans that have never had to worry about that. Explain the planet.

12:08 Christopher Gurski: For sure. So, um, they’re also the many, many different visa options out there. Um, that you can do, although analysis is also, you know, an area where there are a lot of changes um, in the recent months and and years. But one thing that’s still untouched is the so-called E-2 investor visa. I think in my opinion, it’s the best business visa you can get from someone coming, you know, from Europe. There are certain countries out there who have a so-called E2 treaty.

12:41 Christopher Gurski: And when your country has that, like Germany, um, you can basically invest about a 100 or $150,000 into your own U.S. LLC, and you have to show the an intent that you, uh, that you’re good for the US economy, that you’re good to, you have to bring money in, that you create US employees, and this is exactly what we’re also doing with The Credit Genius, you know, hiring US and employees and grow, grow the business down here in, in Miami. And then it gets issued for 5 years.

13:15 Christopher Gurski: You can legally work here, can almost say as much as you want. And the nice thing is it can be renewed indefinitely. So as long as your business is up and running, you can stay for a long period of time if you want and need to. And so yeah, it’s a great option, you know, to get started, also to get your social security number in the US.

13:42 Christopher Gurski: I can stress that this is enough, but of course, many people take it for granted that they have the social security number. Me coming from abroad, I would argue that my social security number with 10 years of credit now is probably the most valuable asset I have because it allows me, you know, to grow my business to take out business credit and also to start investing into real estate here in Florida. So I’m very, very happy.

14:12 Christopher Gurski: Um, I got that going and I started, you know, uh, and I started to take credit seriously in the US from from early on.

14:21 Jim Beach: All right. Well explained. How hard is it to get? If you have the money, how hard is it? To get the E-2 visa.

14:30 Christopher Gurski: Yes. Um, it has a fairly good approval, right? I think about 90% of E2 cases get approved. Um, but you need an immigration lawyer. To make it properly.

14:42 Jim Beach: Right.

14:43 Christopher Gurski: So I think almost all of these 2 cases, they get represented by an immigration lawyer, and then you obviously need to check a lot of boxes. It takes about 6 months to get that visa up and going. You need to show up to an interview at the consulate in your home country. For me, it was Frankfurt, and then you know, an officer takes a look, a close look at your file, at your bank statements, at your business plan, um, and then, you know, fingers crossed that you get approved.

15:18 Christopher Gurski: But overall, you know, the US is still a welcoming place for investors, especially the ones who are bringing a lot of business to the states.

15:28 Christopher Gurski: So yeah, there’s a good good chance that you get approved for it, especially if you’re working with a proper immigration lawyer.

16:07 Christopher Gurski: Also, you know, a natural, um, next thing for, for our business, at The Credit Genius, to not only help with, you know, the LLC formations, the banking, the credit, but also making the right introductions to immigration lawyers, that we know are trusted, that we know have, you know, have some good experience with our clients, so we can guide them into the right direction and connect to good people, um, to not only, you know, making the banking and credit happening, but also, you know, the full the full life and the full American dream happening here.

16:13 Jim Beach: And the business plan that you presented to the case officer in Frankfurt, was that the business plan for your current credit business?

16:20 Christopher Gurski: Yes, that was the business then for The Credit Genius LLC that I’m on your rights right now. This is, uh, sorry.

16:28 Jim Beach: And so tell us about the business and the services that it offers. Is it only for foreigners or does it also help us Americans build our personally and business credit? Let’s start transitioning into that part of the conversation, Chris.

16:42 Christopher Gurski: Yes, definitely. So our clients actually split, I would say, 50-50 range between Americans and internationals. But the service scope, obviously, changes a lot when working with Americans do have established credit. For the Americans, we mainly focus on the business credit side of things, and analyzing the business credit reports, analyzing, obviously, also the personal credit reports. Because here’s the deal, since the financial crisis 2008, 2009, um, banks become became a lot more careful in terms of issuing business lending and business credit. To people without personal guarantee and without solid or good personal credit.

17:19 Christopher Gurski: So, um, taking a look and optimizing the personal credit before you touching base into business credit is something that’s basically mandatory um, to do. But if you do both in parallel and also with the right partners. And so what’s important there is in the end, the right banking relationships. I was just in a Chase event last week here in Miami and this room was filled with relationship managers, senior relationship managers, because those are the people in the end who underwrite your application and your line of credit or your mortgage, all of these things.

17:56 Christopher Gurski: So, um, I can’t stress this enough, but the relationship in banking and credit is so important that you’re getting to introduce to the right people because there are always different hierarchies. We have a banker that goes for businesses up to one million and one for one to 50000000 and then we even have a guy for 5 to 20 million. And these are the peoples in the end, um, who are the trusted persons who uh, who work together with you on a daily basis.

18:29 Christopher Gurski: And our job is more like in the intermediary to make the profiles look as strong as possible, both on the personal and business side and then tap into the to the applications with special processes. In the end, I can give a concrete example when applying for a business credit card, for example. There are 3 main ways on how to apply for it. The first thing is you can go online, obviously, and just apply on your own.

18:59 Christopher Gurski: But what we’ve seen, you know, the online application route is usually the worst one in terms of results in terms of approval rates and also credit limits. The second one, you make a regular paperwork application at a branch through a regular manager. This is already a little bit slightly better than doing it online, but the third and last option, doing a so-called DocuSign application through a relationship manager, is the one who unlocks credit limits of 100 K and more because actually, you don’t need to submit financial documents, a Chase, for example, up to a credit limit of $150,000 per card.

19:38 Christopher Gurski: So you do have a lot of flexibility through those relationships to make good results happening.

19:44 Jim Beach: Excellent. Have you heard a sob story as bad as mine with my 30 cars all getting hail damage at the same time?

19:52 Christopher Gurski: Not as bad as this one. Can you elaborate on that again? Or was the impact for you?

19:59 Jim Beach: Uh, You know, all of the cars were totaled because, you know, they have 30 of them.

20:05 Christopher Gurski: That’s insane.

20:06 Jim Beach: You know, of course, they didn’t believe us, and then, you know, they started getting calls from other people, and then they realized, you know, checking their weather data that there had been a horrible category 27 hailstorm at our address, you know, and we our parking lot backed up to the police parking lot. And the police had, you know, a 1000 cars out there and they all had damage too.

20:29 Jim Beach: So it made the news and everything, and we were, you know, able to just walk away from all of them and turn the cars over. And, uh, I don’t remember the name of the leasing company. This was 22 years ago or something, but it was a, actually more than that, 27 years ago. It was just a living hell to get out of it. You know, we had to take pictures every single dent, you know, and each car had 50 dents.

20:58 Jim Beach: You know, that was part of our proof, you know, and you know, it was just, uh, it was a nightmare, an absolute living nightmare for me in particular because I had all of the stuff in my name and then the office lease was in my name. No, we hadn’t gotten there yet. We hadn’t gotten to the point where I was separated from the business and it was just an absolute nightmare.

21:21 Christopher Gurski: Did your personal credit take it from it as well?

21:25 Jim Beach: Yeah, oh, not just from that, but from all of that experience. Yes, it got absolutely destroyed. And I was lucky to walk away from that with housing that was paid for. You know, I ended up with a house that was paid. And so I really didn’t need credit there for a while and I just kind of put my head down in the sand and walked away from it. So, uh, what should I have done? How could you prepare something like that?

21:54 Christopher Gurski: I mean, there are some ways for credit repair. It’s not, to be honest, something we specialize in.

22:01 Jim Beach: Right.

22:02 Christopher Gurski: Um, because everything that surrounds credit repair is always, um, let’s say in a, in a gray area and this is not like the, the main thing we want to focus at, at The Credit Genius. But you know, there are some things if it’s, if it goes to collections, you know, um, you always have a way to prove and show that in the end you, you paid, you paid the collections. So really the data reporting is key that in the end the most accurate information are put in there.

22:36 Christopher Gurski: You know, if you, if you, if you did send paid you all your late payment or if you paid off your collection, um, this has to be reflected on, on your report, in some cases, you know, if it’s unjustified, they’re also um, based on, on how to delete certain entries on your credit report, and this can definitely help. But as I mentioned, we’re not specialized in credit repair. We’re more on the side of credit building, you know, on how to make the right next steps moving forward.

23:11 Jim Beach: But yeah, we only have a few minutes left, Chris. So let’s move on to that. How do I transition into building permanent business credit that’s different from my personal credit? So what’s the first step?

23:23 Christopher Gurski: Yes, um, there are a few certain steps we always do when, uh, for example, a new client comes to us or we found a new entity in the US. Um, one thing that I would always do is, uh, is to apply for the so-called Dun & Bradstreet number, the D-U-N-S number. This is one of the starting points for your business. To establish business credit. Um, It’s a little bit different on uh, in in the business trade side compared to the personal credit, on the personal credit.

23:57 Christopher Gurski: I think many of you are familiar with Equifax, TransUnion, and experience, on the business side of things. The main bureaus are Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax business, and Experian Business. And what you can do right away. Once you found your LLC, you can get your D-U-N-S number, and you can already add a few business straight lines to U.S. LLC. No matter how old it is, no matter if it’s already running or not. We’re not affiliated with them, but one service, for example, is called Nav Prime, Nav.com.

24:32 Christopher Gurski: Um, The nice thing is you can uh, transparently check all your business credit scores. And they also add a business credit line or a business trade line to your reports by this subscription service. And then obviously, um, once your, if your personal credit is established, getting the first business credit cards, um, for, for the entity, under the EIN number is very useful. Not all banks reports to the business credit bureaus. One example is American Express actually rarely reports their business credit cards to those business credit boroughs.

25:06 Christopher Gurski: Chase, for example, dust reports, at least to Equifax business. So you really have to spread out a little bit with the banks to establish business credit. Chase is definitely a good one, also known for getting out high limits. Um, then um, US Bank. We also work with what’s Truist a lot. Those are the banks who in the end report, also your business credit cards, to the boroughs. But I would also be a little bit careful on some of the issues.

25:39 Christopher Gurski: Um, I can give a concrete example, um, because, um, a few Americans, But like in the mid-sex, mid, mid 600s and I say, hey, I’ve been paying off my car since eight, nine, 10 years. Why is my credit score not rising? And then I saw on the on the personal credit report that the Capital One business credit cards are getting reported. So for example, Capital One is one of the only issuers that reports the business credit cards and even the credit utilization of those business cards to the personal credit report.

26:15 Christopher Gurski: And I’ve see this many times with American clients already and that these business credit cards from Capital One in that example, that they heard massively the personal credit score. So, um, summed up and the resume on this, um, in my opinion is you really have to be a little bit careful on, on where you’re applying and how you’re structuring it, and uh, you just need to stay away from, from certain, from certain products because they work a little bit differently and they report also a little bit differently to those, to those credit barrels.

26:51 Christopher Gurski: But, you know, getting started on uh, to summarize that again, getting started with a Dun & Bradstreet number on a brand new LLC, adding the first business straight lines um, to that LLC, um, and directly also having, having the opportunity to monitor those business credit scores. I think the neat neat mix and then getting started with the first first business credit cards on the LLC and to make the loop complete. This is in the end where the senior relationship managers should come into play and handle those applications.

27:25 Christopher Gurski: I would not go online. I mean, in most cases because, you know, the results can always be better if you have someone experience working on your case.

27:36 Jim Beach: Great advice.

27:37 Christopher Gurski: Yes.

27:38 Jim Beach: With Dun & Bradstreet, I learned, just go ahead and submit everything to them. If you have a positive year, send them your P&L in your tax return and stuff, they love accumulating that data because then they can report. Yeah, we’ve actually seen his books and he actually did what they said. And, you know, that kind of thing, be proactive odors, go out there, get your D&B number, and work it. You know, you can work it. And that’s one of the big things I learned.

28:07 Jim Beach: So, Chris, great, great, great information. You are a true genius. How do we get in touch with you? Find out more. Learn more from you, please?

28:17 Christopher Gurski: Yes, we’re pretty active on the social media channels. You can go ahead and follow me on Instagram, for example, at the.credit genius. I’m also active on LinkedIn. You can find me as Christopher Gurski there. And um, if you want, you can also book um, a free consultation with me and my team on uh, thecreditgenius.com. Pretty simple, just a quick questionnaire.

28:42 Christopher Gurski: Um, and, you know, for all the people who are coming from a podcast, we also have a have a special, with a free assessment, where you’re basically analyzing your personal and business credit score free of charge, and then you can just uh, see what the logicalness next steps are and if working together makes sense. That’s what I always offer on these on these podcasts here. And yeah, I hope you had I hope you got some good value out of this call.

29:14 Christopher Gurski: Generally enjoyed the conversations and the questions from you. Really appreciate it.

29:19 Jim Beach: Thank you. And we will be right back.

Intro 2

29:24 Unidentified Promo Voice: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually.

29:28 Unidentified Promo Voice: Oh, my gosh, I’d love the opportunity to do this.

29:34 Unidentified Promo Voice: Thank you, Jim.

29:36 Unidentified Promo Voice: Wow, that’s a great one.

29:39 Unidentified Promo Voice: You know, that is a phenomenal question.

29:44 Unidentified Promo Voice: That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer.

29:50 Unidentified Promo Voice: That’s a great question.

29:53 Unidentified Promo Voice: Oh, that is such a loaded question.

29:57 Unidentified Promo Voice: And that’s actually a really good question.

30:01 Announcer: School for startups radio.

30:06 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so much for being with us today. Very excited to introduce another great entrepreneur to the mix. Please welcome Tony Arterburn to the, I didn’t say that right, did I? Arterberg?

30:19 Tony Arterburn: No, you did. Oh, you nailed it.

30:23 Jim Beach: Okay, I thought I…

30:24 Tony Arterburn: Yeah, it was right out of the gate.

30:27 Jim Beach: He is the founder and CEO of Wise Wolf, Gold & Silver Exchange, and a monthly investment strategy called Wolfpack. He has an incredible life history. He got out of high school and went off and became joined the United States Army. But prior to that, I guess he was at the 2001 junior world championship or powerlifting, where he has had an incredible career and won lots of awards and things like that. In the army, he served as a paratrooper and a military policeman in 3 foreign wars.

30:57 Jim Beach: We want to thank you so much for your service, Tony. And he was one of the very first army command companies to land in Kandahar right after the September 11 attacks. He has run for Congress, and out of that developed a true media personality, and he has 2 shows that he is also very proud of. One is called the Arterburn radio transmission, and another is called Paratruther. Very excited to learn more about those. Tony, welcome. How you doing?

31:25 Tony Arterburn: I’m doing fantastic. I appreciate you having me. Thanks for that. You did an extensive bio, which has been a while since I’ve been on a show where we, I even included my powerlifting career. I appreciate that.

31:40 Jim Beach: We offer a service where I will follow you around and every time you go into a new room, I will introduce you like that. And for the upgrade, Tony. I also include, and world-renowned lover, you know, something like that.

31:54 Tony Arterburn: Oh I love that.

31:56 Jim Beach: I can also… I could say that your beard could power lift by itself. So we have all sorts of alternatives.

32:03 Tony Arterburn: That sounds very intriguing. I’ll have to follow up with you on that. I might need it.

32:10 Jim Beach: All right. So, how many streams do you have right now of income? It seems like you’re burning a lot of different things. What you working on the most.

32:20 Tony Arterburn: You know, that’s a great question. What do I work on the most? I mean, it, the mission I have, what I felt that I needed to do the last 10 years is talk to people about the monetary system, uh, gold, silver, bitcoin, why that fits into our current paradigm, and every year it seems to be, you know, I guess I’m, I’m not a genius or anything, but it’s kind of tapped into something, you know, about 10 years ago I thought was going to be really important in the coming years.

32:55 Tony Arterburn: Turns out I was right. Um, So that’s my primary business.

33:00 Jim Beach: What’s that? What was the 10 year epiphany that you had?

33:04 Tony Arterburn: Yeah, just looking at people using Bitcoin ATMs and I looked into it. I understood what Bitcoin was going back to like 2014, but um, I was in a point where I was looking for something else to do. I’d been in real estate. I’d been in retail, I had a gasoline business, uh, convenience store business for a while. That’s what my family did And I was just in a in a point in a place where I had almost no capital, but I wanted to do something and I saw Bitcoin ATM.

33:39 Tony Arterburn: So, you know, I bought my first one. I wish I would have had a time machine. I’d go back and tell me just by Bitcoin. Don’t don’t sell it. Um, but, you know, Bitcoin. Was trading like $400 a coin. And so I got into the Bitcoin ATMs and uh, that kind of spurred me into looking further down the rabbit hole of what what money is and and fiat currency, what fiat currency represents, like the modern dollar, you know, why we don’t have a gold standard anymore, why that matters.

34:14 Tony Arterburn: And that gave rise to what the company I have now is called Wise Wolf, uh, Wise Wolf, Gold, Silver, Bitcoin. And, um, oh, it’s been a, it’s been a heck of an adventure.

34:27 Jim Beach: All right, Tony.

34:28 Tony Arterburn: And so what I…

34:30 Jim Beach: Stop, you got to allow me some follow-up questions here. Back up and explain what a fiat currency is, what Nixon did, why that was important, and yeah, explain that, all the realizations, you said, I had figured out how the current, or the system works, and then blah, blah, blah. You got to tell us how the system works, man. That’s what, you know.

34:52 Tony Arterburn: Oh, good. Well, that’s why, as an interviewer, I know you got to, you got to press and let’s unpack it. But, um, really what what a fiat currency, fiat means by decree in Latin, and it means basically because we say so. And so when you get a modern, uh, a modern dollar is a fiat currency, um, and throughout history, you’ve seen different experiments, the French had a fiat currency for a brief period in the 1700s, the Chinese had a fiat currency for a brief period, but the average lifespan of a currency not backed by gold or not backed by silver is about 26 years.

35:33 Tony Arterburn: It runs a lifecycle. So they always go to zero. Um, that’s what history shows us. And in 1971, the United States went off the gold standard. Um, a lot of people think that inflation is just part of our uh, our everyday lives, like it’s just part of being an American, part of living in the modern world. Um, but if you were growing up in the 19th century during the 1800s, there was no inflation.

36:02 Tony Arterburn: And if you went to see George Washington’s inaugural in 1790s and you got a new pair of shoes, those shoes would cost the same in 1902, uh, over a 100 years later because we had a gold and silver bimetallic standard, the money that we had had intrinsic value unto itself. And that’s a simplistic way of explaining it.

36:24 Tony Arterburn: But in the modern sense, you know, when we talk about our grandparents, like, oh, they’re able to go to the movies and get a hamburger for a nickel, you know, like, you always hear that and, and, you know, gasoline was a dime a gallon and all of that stuff that we go, wow, that’s so crazy that things cost so little. Well, In relative terms, things cost about the same when it comes to gold or silver, uh, but in dollars, we’re just off the map.

36:56 Tony Arterburn: And then that’s why you see this crazy thing with housing prices and all the rest and affordability. So it really just comes down to the fact that in 1971, we stopped having a gold standard for the dollar. And after that, the currency of the United States, and then every currency in the world, became back by nothing. So we have a system now where they’re going to create more and more dollars, more and more currency units in other countries, and that debases the purchasing power, but you’re not taught that in school.

37:31 Tony Arterburn: Um, it’s not something that you go over and you’re talking about, you know, savings and other things, but you can’t really save your way into prosperity anymore because of that. You know, the previous generations, the why this is important, you know, your grandparents, especially your great grandparents, if they had $100 and they put it away, it would still be $100 in 10 years, you know, because of the the monetary system that we had was backed by something.

38:01 Tony Arterburn: So what’s important today is to understand that, you know, the governments of the world, they’re going to continue to print their way out of problems because there is no set, you know, standard for anything. They don’t have to account for it. It doesn’t have to be backed by anything, which leaves you, uh, really in a uh, difficult situation when it comes to, you know, work and and housing, your value and protecting your your assets and other things. That’s why I find that gold and silver.

38:34 Tony Arterburn: They have an interesting story to tell in human history. And I think it’s probably more important than just about anything else right now on the world stage.

38:45 Jim Beach: All right. Very good explanation. Of that. What do we… Take from that as we plan our portfolios now. So we can’t get into Bitcoin at 400 now. It’s, I don’t, I haven’t checked recently, 130. I haven’t been checked. 130,000 a coin now, I have no idea.

39:03 Tony Arterburn: Bitcoin’s down from last year, but there’s there’s a lot of factors for that. You know, it’s it’s trading around 83,000 as of this morning.

39:12 Jim Beach: Wow, it’s way down on the last time I’ve paid it any attention. So talk to me about gold versus Bitcoin, why you love Bitcoin. Would you still invest if you could? Do you think that it’s the tarnish is off? What are your thoughts?

39:28 Tony Arterburn: Golden Bitcoin, gold, silver, Bitcoin, they all serve the same, pretty much the same function as a store of value. They just have different properties. Gold has been considered money through pretty much throughout human history. It has a long, long track record. It’s ingrained into the consciousness of humanity for the most part. And central banks remember it. Bankers remember it, you know, governments remember gold. So gold will be a part of our, it’s part of our reality now. It’ll be long, long into the future, probably forever.

40:03 Tony Arterburn: The build will be a store of value. So, you know, gold is, I think, a lot more stable than Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s volatile in the sense that it’s still has a lot of adoption yet to do. Uh, you did miss the boat on Bitcoin either, by the way. Um, nope, nobody, I mean, if you’re, even if you have $20 and you can, you don’t have to buy a whole Bitcoin to own Bitcoin. You can own small pieces of it and that’s fine too.

40:36 Tony Arterburn: Um, And only get so much and Bitcoin for sure has a capped amount. There’s only 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. And to give you a metric to go against, like there’s 22 million millionaires in the US. So if every millionaire in the US said, you know what, I got extra capital, I’ll think I’ll own a Bitcoin. Well, they can’t because there’s not enough. So the scarcity issue of owning a whole coin.

41:05 Jim Beach: Tony?

41:06 Tony Arterburn: Yes.

41:07 Jim Beach: Interject real faster. All of those 21 million coins already out in the marketplace, a lot of them are still being mined, right?

41:14 Tony Arterburn: There’s 99, I believe 99% have already been mined. It’s going to take another 100 years to get that last, uh, I want to say it’s the last one million coins.

41:26 Jim Beach: Why? We’ve gotten 20 million in the last 10 years. Why can’t we do one million in the next one year?

41:33 Tony Arterburn: It’s the way that the system was set up to reward those who mine it for the system to be. Uh, it’s part of the scarcity issue of it, like the further down, every, every 4 years it halves how many bitcoins can be rewarded for a mining uh, operation. So every 4 years it cuts it in half. And so like, that’s why it gets scarcer as that last, I think, one million coins or however many, to get to that end goal of, of, a 2140 something.

42:06 Tony Arterburn: It’s, it, it really is an ingenious thing the way it was set up because it’s incentivized even further based off of scarcity and price. But, um, I, the crazy thing is there’s really only about 16 million it’ll ever be available. Um, and if you look at like how the exchanges are, there’s like the exchanges, I only think I’ll have like one or 2000000 available for sale. So it’s it’s a very scarce resource. Um, it’s, it’s really interesting. It’s the exact opposite of the dollar.

42:40 Tony Arterburn: The dollar is just infinite. Like how many dollars are there? More. They’re just always going to be more. Um, gold, obviously.

42:49 Jim Beach: Koshi, whatever his name is, the guy who invented it. That Japanese guy?

42:54 Tony Arterburn: Uh, Satoshi Nakamoto. You know, I don’t know, again, it’s a history is fascinating. If you’re gonna see, if you were going to set up Bitcoin, it’d be the only way to do it was how they did it. And I say they, I don’t know if it’s a group of people or if it’s one person. Um, but it was basically anonymous, set up decentralized. So there is no corporation, there’s no government that overseas it. It’s completely just decentralized money that’s run by nodes and operations all over the world.

43:28 Tony Arterburn: So you can’t really attack it. You can’t really take Bitcoin down. It’s too entrenched into the uh, the financial system now and and and adoption is is relatively still very early. So, um, the scarcity aspect of that and the decentralization to me make it very appealing. Uh, in age where, you know, we’re we’re gonna see trillions of new currency units created to, you know, prop up our spending and everything. That’s not just the United States, but it’s worldwide.

44:00 Tony Arterburn: So, um, yeah, Bitcoin has a really interesting story to still yet to tell. And then, of course, the physical metals. You know, they’re hard to get. It’s why they’re called precious metals. I mean it’s hard to get gold out of the ground. It’s hard to mine it. It’s expensive. It’s, um, you know, the gold supply doesn’t go up at about 2% a year. So, It’s scarcity versus infinite, really.

44:28 Jim Beach: Is gold like diamonds, you know, I believe very strongly that De Beers has vaults where they move diamonds around with bulldozers because that’s just…

44:36 Tony Arterburn: Oh, yeah, they do.

44:38 Jim Beach: You know, there’s tens of billions of carrots withheld from the market to prop it up. Is gold propped up in any way the way diamonds are?

44:47 Tony Arterburn: No. If anything, gold is… No, I know what you mean. That’s the history of the De Beers family and like all the gold, the diamond mines that they had, you know, that’s they had great marketing. They created their own scarcity, you know, basically just got these giant warehouses, uh, uh, and facilities full of diamonds, and, you know, that’s why we, we got in our modern culture, you know, like a diamond is a girl’s best friend, and we keep, keep all this stuff for the wedding ring, you know, like the diamond setting and all that.

45:25 Tony Arterburn: Um, yeah, I mean, I buy diamonds too, but it’s, it’s not my primary business and they can, it’s a very fickle market. Um, but gold is like the reverse of that where you have a real supply issue, but gold is uh, because of the paper markets and the way trading happens, and especially since gold has been, when we left the gold standard in 71, it’s an adversary of the of the dollar system. So they used every which way they could.

45:56 Tony Arterburn: I’m talking about the central bank of the US, like the federal reserve, and the treasury, did everything they could to keep gold at bay, where it wasn’t showing like, oh, it’s now worth, you know, because in 1980, gold went to $800 an ounce from $35 an ounce in 71. So like 9 years later, it’s from 35 to 800. They did a lot of maneuvering back then with interest rates and other things and putting people into standard markets to keep it out of gold. Same thing with silver.

46:30 Tony Arterburn: Silver hit its all time high. Uh, in 1980 of $52. And it took another 45 years for it to eclipse that. So that back in 2025, we broke 52 finally after all those years because there’d been a much more manipulated than gold with the Bass Brothers?

46:48 Jim Beach: Absolutely.

46:49 Tony Arterburn: Yeah, it was the Hunt, the Hunt brothers in Texas.

46:52 Jim Beach: I’m sorry.

46:53 Tony Arterburn: No, you’re, you, that’s right. The hunt, the hunt family got railroaded pretty bad because they were, they were really exposing something that, the powers that be didn’t want to be exposed, which was, you know, the dollar not bad by anything, it shows its volatility. And they were buying physical silver, um, and the rest of the world started looking, oh, what these guys are doing. So they started buying food and like a lot of the supplies got shocked, you know, like it wasn’t the physical supply.

47:27 Tony Arterburn: And that’s always been the issue. Um, so, you know, now we’re in a world where yes, gold and sober down from where they were in January because of the war in Iran, really, which is the price of oil and uncertainty and all that. But long term against the dollar and against our financial system in general. I mean, I think it’s going to fare pretty well.

47:52 Jim Beach: So what do you think the market’s going to look like in the next 6 months or a year? What are you, bush or a little bit bearish for the short term?

48:02 Tony Arterburn: I’m probably going to be somewhat bears for the short term, especially towards the end of this year. I mean, Bitcoin may jump up and we start getting into the 100,000 range again on Bitcoin. Gold may see mid for, you know, 4500 or something going into December, maybe a little bit higher. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, um, crazily enough, we we have higher inflation because of the price of energy.

48:32 Tony Arterburn: And when you get this, you know, the markets look like they’re doing really hot because you have gross receipts that are higher because people are paying more. But at the end of the day, that’s why they talk about and had to raise interest rates by 25 basis points. Uh, you know, a couple weeks ago, um, is because we got to contract the money. That’s how you keep the money supply from going completely out of control as you raise interest rates. They don’t have a lot of room.

49:06 Tony Arterburn: You know, and then one of the things about the 1980 thing I always go back to is they raise interest rates to the teens. Like your mortgage was like 14%, you know, back in 1980. They did that to rein in the money supply because inflation gotten out of control. They don’t have that room to do that anymore because the debt of the U.S. I mean, the debt of the U.S. Uh, 45 years ago was a 10000000000 dollars. Well, it’s now $400000000 dollars.

49:39 Tony Arterburn: So you can’t.. Hard enough back then, you know?

49:42 Jim Beach: We try harder. You know, to have debt. So let’s blame it on that. They’re amateurs.

49:49 Tony Arterburn: Yeah, you know?

49:50 Jim Beach: Right. They weren’t good. We’re good.

49:53 Tony Arterburn: See back, you know, it’s funny when I was a kid. I was born in 79. So like when I was a kid, and politically, the debt was always talked about, the deficits, the debt, the overhead, the liabilities. We don’t even talk about that anymore. It’s kind of a foregone conclusion. Like nobody talks about the debt clog. Nobody talks about the liabilities of the debt ceiling. I mean, it’s not a thing anymore. It will be, by the way.

50:24 Tony Arterburn: Um, but the thing you don’t talk about, it’s the elephant in the room, you know, and so that’s what I focus on is, hey, how can you do all these things that you want to do politically when, you know, the checks are going to bounce. I mean, you literally, you’re going to have to print more of these currency units that you have to pay for all these things and that’s only going to debase the current value of what you have. So that’s why. You know, in 70, 1974.

50:59 Tony Arterburn: Uh, we got our first, you know, that’s when you got the IRAs and 401 Ks. They set up a system to try to outpace inflation through investments and other things. It’s the only way out. You couldn’t save anymore. Uh and have any sort of value, you know, uh, held in the currency. So, to me, that’s kind of what my mission is. Try to simplify a lot of this stuff.

51:27 Tony Arterburn: Because when I got into the business, like I said, it’s not just Bitcoin, but you know, gold was trading at about $1,100 an ounce when I started my business. And, you know, this last year we crossed over into $5,300 an ounce. Um, I just think we’re getting started. This isn’t, this isn’t like a bubble, you know, it’s not a, it’s not a fad. You’re just watching commodities start to really be repriced in new dollar value relative terms, if that makes sense.

51:59 Jim Beach: It does. It does. Yes. So, give me, we’re at about just about out of time, Tony, unbelievably, that went fast. I could talk to you forever because I was just learning so much. Um, I guess we got to just ask. How do we find out more? Get in touch with you all that. I’m just so disappointed. I have 21 questions I want to ask. How do we get in touch with you, Tony?

52:27 Tony Arterburn: Well, I’ll have to, I’ll have to come back anytime. Um, you, the easiest way to get in touch with me is just go, go to my personal websites, tony.gold, uh, T-O-N-Y dot G-O-L-D. It has links to everything, you can find my shows, and you can find a wise wolf, gold, and silver. And, uh, you mentioned at the beginning of the pro. We have a subscription program, which I started 4 years ago. It’s been really successful and 1000s of five-star reviews. People love it.

53:00 Tony Arterburn: It’s just a way to dollar-cost average. Precious metals from my team. And, um, that’s pretty much it.

53:08 Jim Beach: I’m sorry we ran out of time. I, you know. You know, that’s the big problem in life, apparently, is running out of time. So.

53:16 Tony Arterburn: That’s all right. Like I said, I’m happy to come back anytime. I try to try to condense stuff as much as I can. You know, this is a complex issue.

53:29 Jim Beach: We just want to learn it. Thank you so much for being with us, and we would love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

53:38 Tony Arterburn: Thank you. Appreciate you.

53:40 Jim Beach: Back at you. We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care and go make a million dollars. Bye now.