Can Bitcoin help you retire early? with Trey Sellers | SLP727

**Trey Sellers** (0:00)
A lot of people think about reaching financial independence as like a light switch. You either are financially independent or you're not. And what this allows you to do is think about it more like a spectrum, more like a journey, instead of this on off switch that I think people sometimes get hung up on. And that helps you to maintain motivation as you're going through this.

**Stephan Livera** (0:18)
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Today we're talking about Bitcoin and FIRE, financial independence, retire early, or maybe just financial independence. For some people that are only interested in one aspect of that, obviously, this has been kind of a thing for a while. And I know Trey Sellers, joining me on the show today, has also been interested in this and has been talking about it for a while. Trey is also working at Unchained as a VP, I believe.

**Trey Sellers** (0:42)
Yeah, I've been in the sales organization for about four years over there.

**Stephan Livera** (0:44)
VP of sales at Unchained, and of course, the author of firebtc.io, which is a newsletter and of course, the creator of the firebtc calculator. So we're going to get into all these things today. But first of all, welcome to the show Trey.

**Trey Sellers** (0:59)
Yeah, thanks. Really excited to be here, Stephan. I've been a long time listener of yours, and I know we've connected a few times at different conferences and that kind of thing. So I'm happy to be here.

**Stephan Livera** (1:09)
Excellent. And so yeah, look, let's just talk about obviously the big topic for you is Bitcoin and fire. Now, people who've been around a while, you might have heard this term fire, financial independence, retire early. Generally, people think of like, okay, the 4% rule. And I guess there's maybe this intersection of Bitcoin and fire. Now, ironically, some of the fire people don't actually like Bitcoin that much, right? They've kind of famously been against Bitcoin. But I know you're trying to do your part to try to, let's say, seed Bitcoin either into that community or just generally. So what has your experience been like interacting with the fire community from a Bitcoin perspective?

**Trey Sellers** (1:47)
I don't really try to interact with them too often, actually. I don't think it's really that fruitful to try to inject Bitcoin into the fire movement. I certainly write in a way that is accessible to the traditional fire movement. But I found it's a little bit like pushing on a string, right? And that's generally the case for Bitcoin is that people are ready for it. When they're ready for it, there's something that happens in their life, or they come into the right thread, or their timeline puts Bitcoin in front of them in a way that actually resonates at some point in their life, and then they start getting curious. And I think that's true for people of all different contingents. So, what I primarily focus on, though, is helping Bitcoiners see this view of personal finance in a way that's very structured, and that can actually put together a plan for getting to a place where you are intentional about reaching financial independence, and framing that in a way where you can maximize your sat stacking, where you can put yourself in a position of, you know, really being in good control of your expenses, and just thinking about things from different angles there, that I think a lot of Bitcoiners don't think about. There are a lot of people that I've come across where it's like, okay, I understand Bitcoin, and I know I want to stack as much as possible, but they haven't really thought about that in terms of like a comprehensive view of their personal finances, and how they should think about their spending, what kind of timelines they should be thinking about, what does an actual withdrawal process or withdrawal rates look like, how much Bitcoin do you actually need to get to some certain level of enough? We always say like, you can never own enough Bitcoin, but that's like not technically true. It all depends on your goals and what you're trying to achieve. And so I just try to frame things in different ways that will allow Bitcoiners to put a more structured and intentional view on their personal finances for their families, for their kids, and so they can get to a place where they feel like they've got control over this, and they're not just stacking stats, stacking SATs with no end goal in mind.

**Stephan Livera** (4:00)
Right, like the idea is to have a holistic plan around your SAT stacking and not just kind of sort of this willy-nilly ad hoc process, but actually, no, you've got actually a plan to this. So can you, if you were talking to somebody and trying to contrast, let's say, just traditional, you know, trad-fi-fire versus, let's say, a bitcoin-aware fire approach, how would you, let's say, contrast those two approaches? Can you just quickly explain, what's the trad-fi version of fire and what's the bitcoin version of fire?