Did you know that 1 in 7 Americans now own Bitcoin? If you’ve been curious about cryptocurrency but don’t know where to start, this episode is for you. Host Kirsten Howe sits down with Jirayr Kembikian, CFP® and Managing Director of Citrine Capital, to demystify Bitcoin and explain why it’s fundamentally different from every other cryptocurrency on the market.
In this conversation, Jirayr introduces his “three buckets” framework for understanding the crypto landscape and explains how Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap, national debt concerns, and unlimited money printing are driving unprecedented adoption. He reveals the shocking truth that almost a third of all dollars ever created were printed in just the last five years, and why Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system makes it the most secure computer network in the world. Whether you’re a complete beginner or have been crypto-curious for years, this episode provides a grounded, practical perspective on what Bitcoin is, why it matters, and what it could mean for your financial future. This is Part 1 of our cryptocurrency series—stay tuned for upcoming episodes on how to own, acquire, and store Bitcoin safely.
Time-stamped Show Notes:
0:00 Introduction
1:43 Why Bitcoin exploded over the last decade, built on decades of failed projects before launching in 2009.
2:45 Why everyone gets Bitcoin wrong at first—it requires understanding math, cryptography, engineering, and energy simultaneously.
3:43 The “three buckets” framework: Bitcoin (hardest money with 21 million cap), stablecoins (dollar-pegged), and all other crypto (centralized authorities that can negate transactions).
6:03 What backs Bitcoin: How proof-of-work energy consumption secures the network and makes it the most secure computer network in the world.
7:34 Other cryptocurrencies’ harsh reality: Constant hacks, downtime, and mysterious blockchain reversals.
7:46 The economic pressure driving Bitcoin adoption: National debt over $30 trillion makes printing money mathematically inevitable.
10:21 The jaw-dropping stat: Almost a third of all dollars ever created were printed in the last five years.
11:03 Basic economics: Growing demand meets Bitcoin’s fixed supply that cannot increase.
11:31 Preview: How to own, acquire, and store Bitcoin—covered in upcoming episodes.
11:51 Bitcoin’s transparent 100-year distribution schedule fixed in code versus unpredictable dollar printing.
12:18 The halving cycle: Every four years, new Bitcoin supply gets cut in half, creating scarcity by design.
Get in touch with Jirayr!
Managing Director & Co-Founder
Citrine Capital
jirayr@citrinecapitaladvisors.com
415.494.8262
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Absolute Trust Talk. I’m Kirsten Howe, the host here at Absolute Trust Council, and I’m so excited today to have this episode—or I think it’s going to turn out to be a series of episodes—about cryptocurrency, and more specifically, Bitcoin. This is something that has fascinated me for a long time, and I know virtually nothing about it, so I’ve invited an expert to talk to us about Bitcoin. I think this is going to really be interesting to the audience because I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to know more, but I don’t even know where to start.
All right, so without further delay, I would like to introduce Jirayr Kembikian. He is a Certified Financial Planner, a wealth advisor. He’s the Managing Director and co-founder of Citrine Capital, which is a San Francisco-based wealth management and tax planning firm. They primarily serve tech professionals, founders, and business owners. He specializes in navigating the complexity of equity compensation, private investments, and, not surprisingly, Bitcoin wealth strategies. He has over a decade of experience guiding clients through liquidity events and complex financial decisions. So Jirayr brings a very grounded yet forward-thinking perspective to building and preserving wealth, and I think you’re really going to see that forward-thinking part today. Jirayr, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Good. So as I said, we’re going to be talking about cryptocurrency generally, but we’re primarily going to focus on Bitcoin. What I want to start with is—you told me, this is fascinating to me—that one in seven Americans own Bitcoin, which is a fascinating fact. But let’s start with a little bit of background on cryptocurrency generally and why it has become so popular.
Yes, so as we all know, Bitcoin and crypto have exploded over the last decade or so for many different reasons. It all started with Bitcoin, and actually, before Bitcoin, there were decades of failed projects that contributed to what Bitcoin ultimately became. So it launched in 2009, and I never would have thought approximately 15 years later that it would be what it is today. It’s truly remarkable.
So were you an early, early, early skeptic way back in 2009? No, this is just not going anywhere?
In my experience, everyone gets Bitcoin wrong, at least the first time, us included. So we had back in 2014, approximately, clients that were bringing Bitcoin to us—and maybe other cryptocurrencies at the time, but specifically Bitcoin—bringing it to us. And no surprise, we brushed it off as being very speculative. And it’s really one of those things that takes so many different disciplines simultaneously to understand. You have to understand math, you have to understand cryptography, you have to understand computer engineering, you have to understand how energy works. And all these things are not super related, and it’s no surprise that many, including us, got it wrong the first time.
Okay. And so my admission that I find it confusing and I don’t know anything about it—that doesn’t make me different.
Okay, yeah. [laughs]
So from that perspective, I really—when I start talking about Bitcoin and crypto, I always think about three different buckets. In bucket one—and this is really what the current legislation has already started to solidify and potentially continuing to solidify—so in bucket one, there is Bitcoin and nothing else. We believe it is the best store of value. We believe it’s the hardest money possible—hardest in the sense that it’s hard or impossible to create more of. There will only be 21 million Bitcoin, and that’s different from virtually—I’ll skip over to bucket three, which is every other crypto. So crypto means that there is a centralized authority that issues the tokens, which is very different than Bitcoin. Bitcoin has no central authority, which is often why you refer to it as—or hear it referred to as—decentralized. With crypto, you have a central organization who controls the money supply. They also, in many cases, have the ability to simply negate transactions or roll back transactions, which can be very problematic or concerning for some folks if they’re on the unfavorable side of that. And we often refer to bucket-three crypto as kind of a casino, where I suppose there is a purpose for a casino, right, if you’re going into it to gamble and speculate. But we really don’t think of it as prudent in a financial plan and from an allocation perspective.
And then, to backtrack a little bit, in bucket two are what’s called stablecoins, which the recent legislation supports and solidifies, where essentially you have a cryptocurrency which is pegged to the dollar or some kind of asset—but specifically the dollar is the most popular—and that’s extremely popular for many people overseas who simply don’t have access to the dollar and need some kind of somewhat stable currency to transact. And it also provides a lifeline for lowering costs and being able to transact across borders and whatnot.
Okay, so Bitcoin is different from every other crypto. Every other one has unlimited—they could just keep, I’m not going to say print, because I know it’s not printed—releasing more and more of every other crypto.
That’s definitely one part of it. The other big part of it is what backs Bitcoin. So we often hear about Bitcoin uses energy, which is absolutely true, and there’s a reason for that. The energy consumption is a way to secure the network, and it is a way for folks who—so if you’re not spending energy or money, essentially, you can cheat the system. And that’s really the way that Bitcoin is designed. It’s called a proof-of-work system, where the energy is supporting the Bitcoin network, and as a result, it is the most secure computer network in the world.
Okay, so the other cryptocurrencies are more vulnerable?
Yes, absolutely. There have been numerous hacks across other cryptocurrencies. There’s all kinds of downtime. As I mentioned previously, there are numerous mainstream cryptocurrencies outside of Bitcoin that have had their blockchain—or ledger is another word for blockchain—they’ve had their blockchain reverted back for unknown reasons, which is—well, you can say what you want about that, but it’s not right from the Bitcoin perspective, right?
Yeah. Okay, so talk a little bit about the central authority and how Bitcoin specifically, I guess, has developed as a store of value. What are the pressures that led to that happening?
Yes, that’s a great question. So I would go back and start this conversation with the growing national debt. And this is not a US problem. This is a global problem, but we’ll focus on the US for the context of this conversation, where we’ve seen, over time, especially over the last five to 10 years, our national debt skyrocket. And this is not a left-versus-right problem. This is an everyone problem.
It’s a fact.
It is a fact. It is an absolute fact, where, as of today, I want to say we’re in the high $30 trillion of national debt, and that realistically is only going to continue. So from a mathematical perspective, from a factual perspective, once you get above a certain point where—similar to how if you have a lot of credit card debt, for example, right, where it’s difficult to keep on top of the interest that is accruing on that credit—to service the debt…
Yeah, so just in order to service the debt…
Mathematically, the only way forward is for the government or Federal Reserve to print more money, and that is one of the main foundations on why Bitcoin has become so popular—is because the US dollar, and virtually every other currency in the world, is continuing to get debased via unlimited money printing.
Meaning it can’t keep up with inflation?
Exactly. So the further the currency gets debased, you simply are losing your purchasing power over time, and we’ve seen that almost exponentially over the last five years. But if you look back any number of decades, that really has continued, but it’s definitely accelerated in the last five years or so.
Yeah. Okay. And if we compare the Bitcoin system versus the US dollar system, for example, with Bitcoin, as I mentioned previously, we have a 21 million supply cap. No matter what happens, there will only be 21 million Bitcoin ever in existence versus the US dollar. There is, of course, no supply cap, and it’s crazy to think that almost a third of the dollars ever created were created in the last five years.
Wow, I didn’t know that. That’s crazy. Okay, so 21 million ever—that sounds like it’s creating urgency for people to get in. Like, we’re going to run out of Bitcoin any day. But walk me through that.
You’re absolutely right, where there is more and more demand that’s growing via either retail or institutions or whomever. So there’s more demand growing and the supply simply cannot increase. So from a pure economics perspective, what happens when you have a growing demand but fixed supply? It doesn’t take much of an imagination to assume what does happen over time. So the question becomes, how can you own it? How can you acquire it? How can you store it? And there’s lots of different directions we can go. I think the biggest part to be aware of in this conversation is each of these buckets, if you will, have trade-offs, just like anything else.
Okay, so now we’re going to get into that. Well, before we get into that, I just want to focus—I want to go back for half a step. The 21 million—I don’t know why this intrigues me so much. When are we going to hit 21 million?
That’s a great question. So the distribution schedule of Bitcoin is fixed. It’s actually fixed in the code, and anyone can read that code. Approximately over the next 100 years is how it will get distributed. So that’s also a very interesting point, especially in comparison to other currencies, where no one can predict with any kind of certainty when additional dollars will get flooded into the system.
Right? Absolutely no one, and if they are telling you that, they’re probably lying.
In comparison to Bitcoin, there has been a fixed schedule since inception. This is something that some people may have heard of, which is called the halving cycle, which essentially every four years, the amount of Bitcoin every 10 minutes is halved. So after every four years, that amount of supply that’s being distributed—released to the network—is halved. So like I mentioned, over the next 100 years is approximately when it will be complete.
Okay, so they’re rolling it out slower and slower.
Exactly.
Okay. So let’s—now we’re going to, I want to transition into talking about the various buckets, the various ways that one can own Bitcoin. But let’s take a break. We’re going to follow this up in our next episode. Thank you, Jirayr, for introducing the conversation, and thank you all for listening, and I hope you’ll join us in our next episode.
Resources Related to This Episode:
- Absolute Trust Talk Ep. 139: Optimizing Your Portfolio with Alternative Investments https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/139-optimizing-your-portfolio-with-alternative-investments/
- Absolute Trust Talk Ep. 132: Trust Funding in a Digital World: Safeguard Virtual Wealth https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/132-trust-funding-in-a-digital-world-safeguarding-virtual-wealth/
- A Will is Not Enough – Securing Your Legacy with Estate Planning Life can change in an instant. A will is not enough to be prepared. Get free access to our actionable E-book Guidebook #1 and start protecting your legacy today. https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/guidebooks/
- Learn how to comfortably define gray areas and assess your unique needs to build a secure future now effortlessly. Check out Guidebook #2, Estate Planning Beyond the Basics, here > https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/guidebooks/
- Get our free introductory guide to the most used estate planning tool, family trusts, and understand how we plan to help protect your family. Guidebook #3: https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/guidebooks/
- Absolute Trust Counsel would love to offer access to our Incapacity Planning resource page: https://AbsoluteTrustCounsel.com/Incapacity-Planning/. We’ve collected our top planning information all in one place so listeners can find videos, guidebooks, blog posts, and a host of information with tips and strategies on implementing, planning, and protecting themselves and their loved ones.
- We’re pleased to provide a library of e-books to address common estate planning questions and concerns in practical, easy-to-understand language. https://AbsoluteTrustCounsel.com/Resources/.
- ASK KIRSTEN: If you’d like Kirsten to answer your question on the air, please email her at Info@AbsoluteTrustCounsel.com.
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