The Worst Investing Mistakes To Never Make (Uncut) 03-26-2025

‘I Got Burned’: The Worst Investing Mistakes To Never Make | ‪@BonnieBlockchain‬

hi David hi Bonnie um we’ve known each other for a long time a long time yeah long way back oh many years I can’t remember I met you two months ago it’s like dog years I met like dog years oh right right two months is like five dog years but yeah we met at Sailor’s party we’re working on something together but we’ll talk about that later right right um I remember that day at the party I walked straight up to you guys and I introduced myself what what inspired you to walk up to us and I didn’t know

anybody so I was like I flew all the way from Taiwan I might as well just make some friends right but you could have approached anybody there but you chose to approach our group why I know what you want to hear and I’m going to give that to you because you guys look the most interesting and chill and laid-back and cool like that’s the cool kid area yeah it was the cool kid area your instincts are correct and now look at us look who we are now we’re both in Taiwan doing a podcast um okay so who is Bonnie

changen for my audience okay wow that’s a very deep question I run a YouTube channel called Bonnie blockchain so it talks about um blockchain crypto just to confirm blockchain is not your last name right no Bonnie blockchain is a channel everyone should check out Bonnie blockchain thank you yeah very good very good channel so most content are in Chinese some are in English yeah yeah um I started it because I saw this Gap in the market because I was like most um crypto content are in English and like a lot of people don’t

understand it so I translate all the content to Chinese type yeah okay why did you start your channel why yeah who’s interviewing who it’s your it’s your show I hijacked it no okay um wait wait what was your question why did you start your channel okay it was Co right so I bought I started buying Bitcoin way back because I had a really good friend that was mining I was living in Dubai at the time and he he’s like this guy with ADHD like he has so many ideas and he would actually go and do it like one day

it could be like he want to start this modeling agency and he wants me to invest or like the next day would be he wanted you to invest or model invest okay invest yes presumably could have done both but anyway continue yes okay um no I can’t do both multitask you’re good at that no no no no like you have to starve yourself I gave you a compliment Bonnie just let’s move on okay um the next day it could be hey I I want to start this jewelry shop and you should invest and then the next idea was hey I started mining in my own bedroom

and I was like are you crazy what do you mean mhm and he was telling me about Bitcoin right yeah and he said you have to start mining this and that I was like there’s no way this is crazy like what do you mean you’re mining this internet money MH but he convinced me to buy some right so I I was just holding and it was not that expensive back then I moved back to Taiwan Co hit and I was working for a television Company MH and we’re like it was like a variety show with you know like the Asian style I do yeah like

all the very cute stuff is this online can we find it yes you no you cannot okay slip yes you can you can we had cheerleaders on you know like all these really pretty girls fortune tellers like very interesting people on the show but then later on I was like you know what for traditional media to run they need a lot of I I don’t want to say clickbait but they want like oh like this relationship open relationship with like five people like all that I don’t find it fulfilling at all like after a while

so I was like I need to start doing my own thing and which is investing either stock or crypto and at the time crypto was really hot right so I started researching I there weren’t many crypto YouTubers in Chinese so why don’t I just start one mhm so yeah it’s been three years I know you have questions for me um but for my American Canadian European audience watching it’s it’s a shame that your channel and I told you this offline when I saw you last month it’s a shame that your channel was primarily Mandarin she

does a lot of good English interviews as well um people should check that out but it’s a shame because I really genuinely think your content is better than a lot of channels in in the West for a few reasons one I think you explain things clearly crypto is not an easy concept to explain to the Layman and you do that very well but you don’t dumb it down for people you know you don’t like you don’t explain just the servers you go into depth and you you analyze things on your own you dissect other people’s research reports uh which

is which is you know you people are lazy people don’t want to reach a 10 page report from Masari but you do that for us which is really important and the flow of the conversation with your interviews but as well as your solo presentations I find really good it’s just it’s easy to follow and you know I don’t even like watch you I just put it in the background while I’m doing something but my my litmus test which is how good a channel is if if I’m doing something else and not even watching the channel I just listen do I learn

something after 15 minutes if the answer is yes then it’s a pretty good channel so I encourage people to I I don’t know download it translate It audio into or maybe just watch the interviews yeah where yeah watch the interviews we’ll be doing a lot of those later but um such a great compliment thank you well I meant it it’s um people should check out your channel yeah you speak fluent Chinese I I fluent is a debatable term fluent I can order in a restaurant fluently people don’t know you’re from that’s a

good compliment too considering that I haven’t really spent much time here I I grew up in Canada but I was born in taipe okay so you grew up there you moved there I did I moved to Vancouver when I was four so you’re Chinese should be like four-year-old level but it’s not three-year-old level three three is there a big difference between three and four Google translate helps me out because I go everywhere and I you know I translate the text but I can I can have a conversation we can do this in Chinese

if you want let not and okay your background and your story can you tell us how you got into YouTube sure yeah yeah well I I did Finance at McGill so that’s a school in Canada monreal know okay and I um wanted to work in finance I because I don’t know I liked money but the study of Finance isn’t just about money which is why I do my show and I’ll get to that the study of finances to understand the world one of my favorite investment investment professors in school it was called applied Investments his name was Ken

Lester and I just love the guy um he told us that to be a good investor you have to have worldly knowledge so for two semesters in a row it was applied Investments we were given $250,000 Canadian of the uh schools endowment money real money to manage you have to apply for the class and anyway it was a we put in groups of four we had to manage real money M and for the entire semester two semesters actually one semester and then we had summer break and second semester we didn’t really talk about Finance we weren’t

taught math or derivatives or calculations or formulas or theories we just talked about the world he just gave us books to read books that had nothing to do with Finance philosophy like science he just encouraged us to go explore whatever it is that we were interested in outside of our core studies which was finance and he said look to be a good investor you have to put your money into things that you really understand and so you if you don’t understand anything besides the theories that were taught to you in the

other core classes like math and whatever you can’t invest in anything that really got me passionate about studying Finance because I was studying everything around me that I enjoyed learning about so then I did macroeconomics research right after school for a firm called BCA research I did that for five years I rotated around I was an analyst and um I really enjoyed it after about five years somebody reached out to me on LinkedIn they said hey we have an opportunity as a producer for this company that has a media side

um and would you like to would you like to you know come in for an interview at the time I was thinking of transitioning into another job I wasn’t sure about media um I don’t have a lot of media of experience prior to that I worked at a school newspaper as an editor and that was about it I really enjoyed that I managed a team of like 90 people so like the management part of the job but I never envisioned myself as a journalist I wanted to work on Wall Street that was like my goal so I was like all right

I’ll take this for a couple weeks or a couple years maybe and then I’ll put this on my resume it could be interesting and then when I apply for an NBA I might stand out I don’t know that was my thought process so I did that for two years as a producer my manager at the time uh the anchor left and then they were like we don’t have anyone to be on camera like you do it so I and some other reporters were just thrown into the spotlight they liked me so they kept me I did that for three years and then afterward I decided to start my own

channel this was late 2022 I made the decision to quit and start my own channel doing similar things but that channel was more Commodities focused and I wanted to be more General Finance MH because I wanted to expand into a broader audience and so I started my own channel in 2023 the David Lyn report I couldn’t think of anything more creative I’m not a very creative person Bonnie I’m Bonnie blockchain yeah so well okay I think yours is better no you have the word blockchain in m just my own name so that’s

basically my story in a nutshell okay um a lot of questions there sure growing up MH what was your relationship with money you told me this was a chill interview these are these are really deep questions okay my relationship with money um I’ll start first that is yeah yeah tell me what you mean by that as in like I never really learn how to invest or like how to budget you know cuz that’s just not how my family worked M and so I started investing into like very conservative Blue Chip stocks after

I started working how old was this this were you like 22 I started putting money into like blue chips yeah I was very conservative until crypto and that was um Co that’s an interesting statement you just made crypto isn’t conservative for you it’s def are you kidding crypto yeah crypto is definitely not okay so I was like the most conservative investor Blue Chip t C that type you know yeah like big companies Taiwanese stocks um um like US Stocks too but only like mag s like big one okay 22 this was like I don’t want

to reveal how old you are but this was a while ago so yeah the mag s back then is not the same as it is now okay that’s interesting and so you was there like a mind shift that you had at some point in your life with your investing style because you’re you’re taking on presumably more risk now you’re less risk averse than Maybe you were before yes which is interesting because people usually get more risk adverse when they age okay so I heard a few people told me hey you are too young to invest in the

most conservative stocks so you were influenced by pure pressure I was I was no that that wasn’t in that wasn’t pure pressure it was like you are right I can take a little more risk yeah yeah so I did that and I got burned a few times like the the reason why I started the channel is because it’s like a journal of my learning experience as well I’m learning like everybody else it’s just maybe I spent a little more time doing this because this is my full-time job right okay so let me answer your question growing up I never thought

about money cuz like I was taken care of I didn’t have a job when I was 12 you know why do I have to care about money I come home after school there’s food in the table yeah and what is money it’s like yeah the the concept of money didn’t really exist when I until I got to college and then I had to start paying my own bills you know I I I thought of money in the sense when I was growing up you asked me when I was growing up I thought about money in the sense of how much it could buy like toys and things that I could relate to at the

time right um I was like really into music actually my dream was to become a musician that didn’t work out and so now I’m doing podcasts so I I um I thought about money in the sense of how much it would cost to buy a violin or a piano this was till when maybe my mid teens MH I was taking some like entry-level economics classes in high school no way yeah they offered some entry level economics classes and then this was like actually college level they gave it to us in high school and I started reading about the economy

and I understood I think that’s when I first started to understand that money is not an ends to just buy things it’s an ends it’s it’s a means to move everything in our life so um wait you learned that in high school it’s something that I thought about right because the flow of capital and the flow of money is is is deeper than simply what you want to buy with it but anyway we can get into that later uh no I want to get into it now see this is why I like Bonnie she doesn’t let me off the hook when I’m a kid and I want to buy

something it cost me I don’t know $10 to go buy some candy in a movie store at a at a movie theater okay where did that $10 come from came from my mom and my dad where do they get their money from they got it from their jobs where do they get their jobs from they got it from because the economy is functional and capitalism works and so they’re able to have the opportunity to grow their own wealth um where does income come from these are kinds of Concepts that I was not exposed to before I started

really think thinking about it um we had like stock portfolio like simulations and I remember uh the first time I did this the assignment was you have one month you can buy whatever you want and the person with the highest returns in the class win some sort of prize I can’t remember what the prize was like a grade or something and I I know I did I was like I called my mom’s friend who was a broker I said what what what do I do uh I I don’t know what to buy don’t tell my grade teacher but anyway he um he said well you have one

month so you probably want something that’s really volatile so he just made me buy oil Futures so at eight I was 12 years 13 years old at the time that is crazy so I was like okay what are oil Futures he was like well you know what oil is right you go to the gas station you buy gas okay and then like this this is he explains this to a 13-year-old quite well uh Futures are just instruments that allow you to buy things at you know you can not buy the physical you can buy things that are traded on

markets so anyway so I didn’t win it it it went down a lot my relationship with my relationship with money was always one of apathy I would say and just ignorance until I took classes in University and you started making your own money I think that’s I started making my own money after University I got my first job after University wait so okay this is very hard for me to understand for me I have to earn my own money to really understand what $1,000 means this means this much amount of work or like or the

amount of time you spent making time or effort you put in because when you take money from your parents it means nothing it’s just a number well at least in my case like I start understanding money my mom would need work for it when I was a kid she would be like do chores so people were talking about this idea of bringing up kids like that what you’re doing actually when you’re doing that is you’re training them to work for other people as opposed to training them to be entrepreneurs so my my my my parents are

pretty conservative when it comes to like you know making money actually that’s kind of hypocritical because my mom had her own business but she always was like she wanted me to take the safer route which is to work for somebody else which is the opposite of what I’m doing now but so when you train your kids to like earn money through chores and whatever task they give you what you’re really doing is instilling them a responsibility to work for somebody else and so you’re training them to in the

workforce whereas you could have been like hey here’s $10 or here’s $100 go grow that right here go buy some lawnmower equipment and go down the that’s what I would do with my kids I would be I would give them like $200 go buy whatever you want I would teach them like if you buy this let’s say it’s a lawnmower you could in theory make x amount of money with that piece of equipment if you go down the street and you know you solicit your neighbors to go cut their lawns so it’s a different approach but I was given an allowance

when I was a kid because my mother made me do the dishes and you know clean the room and all that kind of stuff so I don’t know I don’t know how it worked with you but this reminded me of something so I used to travel to us a lot and you know a lot of American airports they the trolley you actually need to put in like I I don’t remember $7 or8 $9 to get the trolley what trolley like the trolley for luggage $8 yeah it’s not currency you’re looking at US Dollars okay anyway yeah like seven or nine I can’t remember so but people

will actually leave their troles everywhere after they don’t need it anymore mhm and they’ll have this staff collecting them and put it back and everybody has to just pay so what we like my dad used to make us do is when we were waiting for a flight like we were there early he would just ask us to go collect trolleys and like sell them for five did you understand as a kid like okay I if I if I profited $5 let’s say yeah I could buy something with it like did it mean something to you did you have like an urge as a child to like

buy things no no no no I so you so you didn’t have a need for money no but that was like an interesting way of teaching kids I think yeah I don’t know if it’s legal but I I don’t I don’t think it’s a law against I don’t think it’s a law against it technically it’s child labor but so if you’re under 16 you’re breaching child labor laws um I think everybody was happy they’re like like oh instead of spending seven now I’m spending five right it’s great right yeah why were you investing when you were 22 and I’ll answer the same

question why was I investing yeah I don’t know I really don’t know like there was just money sitting in the bank doing nothing right you could have bought stuff with it you could have wasted your money I bought my stuff and I still have some money left mhm and it was just sitting there I don’t need it I mean you were old enough to understand that if you had bought stocks like you did you could have lost money right so you did take some risk I mean if you wanted zero risk you could have bought treasuries

you could have bought money market funds you could have collected at low yields right you could but you chose to buy equities right I don’t know if I was thinking that much okay just just because you just bought things you understood and liked yeah yeah okay my first stock was tsmc because you liked till now yeah yeah and you held it you never sold it no okay no wow um why did I want to buy stocks that’s a good question I don’t know it’s just because like I said I never really thought about how money worked until I

start started really studying it I used to look at it in terms of how much I can buy like oh like right now I can buy a car and later I can buy this I can buy that like my net worth can afford a certain type of thing but then like you said it could like later on you realize money is just a tool to move things or like to help you with things m i don’t look at it as what can I buy with this instead I look at it as what can I do with this like who can I hire or like what type of production can I upgrade

and all that yeah yeah yeah your your relationship with money completely changes once you start running your own business oh yes well at least for me I don’t think about money is what do I buy with $10 I think about how do I grow my business with $10 everything I do there’s there’s this is add value to my to my company and ultimately my net worth and there’s I have a I have a budget for things that don’t do anything for me like they’re just fun and the rest of it is like does it add the add value long term right it’s I think about

money is everything I do is an investment into my own company I’ve disclosed as many times in other interviews I own zero public Securities right now oh I have some Bitcoin and ethereum and salana that I bought years ago I never sold it I don’t trade it I just leave it there um does it stress you out no I don’t care right I really don’t care like it’s just there and H yeah I am not invested in any companies right now because I’m still in the startup phase so every dollar that I have is invested in my own company so I

am invested I’m just invested in the David ly company because I can I have more confidence in my own Roi if I know that I hire somebody or you know expand someone’s salary or buy some equipment or invest in a trip or whatever I can reasonably estimate how much return short-term and medium-term and longterm I could make from that investment whereas I have no idea what tsmc is going to do next month do you I don’t you’re speculating whereas I’m investing there’s a difference okay stop attacking me okay do do you feel that way I feel

like I’m being attacked there’s nothing wrong with speculating um but every time we buy a stock we’re speculating I’m not I’m not just singling out every time you buy Nvidia or anything you’re definitionally speculating um Benjamin Grahams book who was the mentor for Warren gr uh Warren Buffett and the intelligent investor and I think chapter two he outlined the difference between speculating and investing and it is a very simple definition it’s just the degree of risk that you take if you believe that you know for certain

because I don’t know you have insid or information that tsmc is going to have good quarterly earnings next quarter you’re not really speculating you’re investing but you don’t have that information I have information as to how I’m going to do my company is going to perform in the next quarter MH so that’s that’s the difference between for me investing and speculating um I’m investing in my own company now and then as soon as it grows big enough I’ll diversify into other things so that you know it’s not just dependent on the

cash flows from one company the tsmc example though how I look at it is you get a bunch of smartest people on Earth working on something that is benefiting the world mhm and and you are owning a piece of it I have a piece of ice stuck in my mouth Karma she’s for attacking me I’m waiting for your Counterattack because I know that’s what you’re going to do it’s not an attack but what what I how I see this is well there you own a piece of the smartest people working on the smartest product sure right I can work

on my own company but I also want to be a part of that that’s awesome absolutely like being a part of something you really trust or believe in right but this is that like tsmc but then earlier I said a lot of crypto are not that safe or not conservative is because after Bitcoin ethereum salana there was a period time I started investing in a lot of projects I did not really understand and that is I think a mistake mhm because why are you called Bonnie blockchain and not Bonnie Finance or Bonnie money or you know I talk about

finance and stuff I that’s exactly why I’m asking you this because your com your channel was pretty Diversified in it scope you talk about Chad gbt talk about I actually it’s interesting story because I I told you this right that my cousin yeah um he watched your show and he has nothing to do with Finance so she’s pretty well known in taian so she he was like oh wow you’re meeting Bonnie I watched her show nice anyway um you talk about AI a lot so I’m just curious why you branded yourself as a blockchain

channel it’s CU it’s too late to change my name no it’s not you literally take takes 5 seconds it’s a conscious decision so I want to get into that you decided not to change it now why um just because I thought it was too late the moment I was like hey I might want to change it to something else I was like it was already at 150k not a lot but I was like there are a bunch of people 150k subscribers oh no no it’s too late it it is too late as like I was like there was a a group of people that already used you being called that I

don’t know abely like you’re trying to make me invest in my own company sell my own stock all of my stocks and change my channel name I’m not giving you Financial advice but you do what you want yeah I thought about it mhmh but this channel is still mainly crypto I see like when there’s a crypto crash I talk about it when there’s not all Finance people want to know everything that’s going on is there a crypto crash going on right now you think the economy how is it doing I like this one she answers my questions with a question the

economy is doing all right it’s the Atlanta fed GDP now tracker which is um a forecast of the GDP from the Atlanta fed is now a negative territory for the first time in many many years so it went from positive 2% GDP growth next Quarter Two readings ago to negative 1.5 to negative 2.8 how is was that good that’s not good mhm it’s um it’s because trade data came in recently and that was really really bad manufacturing data came in really bad so it’s possible that if the data improves next next month um

it’ll go back up to positive but right now the forecast is a sharp contraction in the economy next quarter uh the markets think so which is why all week everything’s been down and uh just yesterday Trump announced tariffs on Canada Mexico well he didn’t announce them he put them into effect mhm and I’m from Canada so uh our prime minister Trudeau immediately uh used retaliatory tariffs 25% on us Imports um the Bank of Canada is projecting Canada to be in a recession this year because of the trade

War and the Atlanta fed like I told you is projecting the us to be in recession as well so um things aren’t looking great it’s possible that Trump was just using these tariffs as a negotiating tool so uh we’ll see if he resends them and takes them back after a while but right now if we’re pricing an information that comes in now it’s it’s looking like probably a contraction I’ve talked to many people who have friends who just got laid off this week because uh because their companies know that their sales are going to be down you’re

talking about Canada I’m talking about Canada and the US right now what Trump is doing and I had an interesting conversation with a guest recently about this what Trump is doing is he’s turning David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage upside down the theory of the theory of comparative Advantage is that when there is global trade everyone is better off because you are trading with a partner by producing something that you’re better at producing at versus a partner who’s not as good at producing

that thing so if I’m better at producing silk and you’re better at producing computers I will trade silk with your computers but now we’re turning that completely upside down because we’re putting trade barriers between that so now I don’t want to trade my silk for your computers because I’d rather it’s probably less expensive for me to just make my own computers mhm so what’s going to happen is we’re going to push or Trump is going to probably push a lot of other Industries around the world and

other countries around the world to really start developing their own Industries whereas before they traded with the US China for example if the US imposes even restrictor tariffs and restrictions on Chinese trade instead of the Chinese buying us chips they will just be forced to buy their own long-term it’s actually a losing proposition for the US so nobody that I’ve talked to no economist likes tariffs and the idea of protectionism you’re just objectively better off without any trade barriers

imagine if you were Trump why would you be doing this well he said this he wants he wants to use this as leverage right he wants to negotiate other terms and conditions with his trading partners and then he would probably take the tariffs off last month for example he announced tariffs on Canada Canada uh he wanted Canada to have a fenel sar which is somebody in charge of you know um overseeing the distribution of fenel into the US he wanted 10,000 additional Patrol officers On the Border he wanted um a host of other things and

Canada agreed and he took them off the table well he didn’t take it off the table he postponed it by a month yes and now that month is up so uh I think if more terms are met then it’s possible that these tffs will be taken off I talked to Art laugher about this who was given the presidential medal of freedom by Trump in 2017 MH or 2018 I can’t remember but in his last term and art laugher was the um he worked for the Nixon Administration and he was part of the Council of policy advisers for Reagan so he’s very well versed in

government he believes that Trump is a free Trader at heart and he’s just using this as negotiation and laugher had a good story one time he actually said this to Trump he said Mr Mr President I believe you are a free Trader at heart because look at your wives all your wives are imported from Eastern Europe so he did he he did say that um apparently Trump did not appreciate the joke okay so yeah I mean his wives are imported so I don’t think you actually like trade restrictions he said so yeah cuz he’s a business guy so he should

know all this right yeah I mean look he understands trade and he understands deal making I think I’ve read his book when when I was uh well one of his books when I was a uh 12th grade I was in anyway I read I read one of his books in high school and he likes to negotiate with people uh using like I would say unconventional methods um he wrote in his book that he one of the deals he made in real estate in New York because he was a real estate developer before President and he really wanted a building mhm the guy

wouldn’t sell it to him eventually they gave him a really high price he didn’t want to pay that price so what he did was he started slandering that building and convinced everybody else around him that that building sucks and that they shouldn’t buy it so eventually he drove the price down and because nobody wanted it and then when the price was low enough he picked it up so uh he plays hard ball when he negotiates and I think he’s using that on the international Arena so can I say the economy doesn’t

look good now but this could just be for the moment I think the economy is still strong right now but the markets are projecting weakness but then when everybody believes in something that’s going to happen really Bonnie you don’t think so no no I don’t think so really but in this case we’re talking about what the markets believe and the markets believe that the economy is going to be worse yes I mean whe whether or not I believe it see that’s the thing with investing right that’s why there’s a market if you

believe one thing and somebody else believes another you trade if every One Believes one thing there wouldn’t be a market because everyone would be selling and there would be no buyers or everyone would be buying and there’s would be nothing to sell MH um if you think that the market is wrong and that there isn’t going to be weakness you should be buying the dip right now I am there you go Bonnie the bull but I don’t know if I call it buying the dip I just constantly buy your dollar cost average no I just buy

when it’s relatively lower I will invest long term so the fact that it’s 320 or 330 right now doesn’t matter to me like if I really believe in a company and I know I’m going to hold it for the next 10 years it doesn’t really matter if it’s like 300 or 310 or 350 that’s a right approach if you’re a long-term holder yes so am I buying the dip yes I am but is it because I think it’s going to go up shortterm not NE necessarily mhm yeah I mean it’s not even that much of a dip we’re still near all-time highs

for the S&P yes what about crypto what about crypto Bonny you okay you hold Bitcoin ethereum and salana instead of stocks so I I don’t know what salana is trading at today I really I haven’t looked at it I don’t know see that my point is i h i don’t it’s just there um and I’m not trading it I’m not doing anything with it I just have it so but why crypto why not a stock cuz you say you want to invest I did I I traded stocks when I was in my 20s and I realized I’m not a good Trader so I stopped doing that why weren’t you an

investor cuz with Bitcoin it seems like because I didn’t have patience I think it’s a personality thing at the time I wanted to you know I was hanging out with a bunch of like you know they call the DJ Finance Bros and like I literally went to the bank I got a line of credit because I was like 21 22 I just started working in have money I got a line of credit from a bank and they’re like why do you need it I said I literally sit this with a straight face I said I’m trading stocks which is what what you

should tell a bank when you’re getting a lot of credit by the way and the adviser was just like okay how old are you 21 do you have experience no okay um what stocks are you buying I don’t know yet okay approved it was approved it was approved wow I got a few th it wasn’t a lot it was a few thousand Canadian and I used it all on trading options specifically covered calls so a cover calls you buy something and then you sell the option the cover call um I never I never sold naked calls and then that got too boring

for me so I just stopped doing covered calls I just started trading options I just started buying like naked calls and puts and I lost everything and um I was like you know what I’m not really good at this and um my friends were like why don’t you buy something you know hold it longterm and I did I held it for me that back then three months was longterm I made like 10% on something I was like that’s enough time to scalp so I just didn’t have patience if I help if I had held those positions until now I would

have made a lot more I should have been like you yeah but you’re holding crypto so that is true so why am I holding crypto I bought it because I was covering it at the time so it was just 2020 I was a late adopter I I never bought Bitcoin early because I never really understood it we can talk about that but um I started for my job as a journalist as an anchor I started interviewing a lot of people in crypto so I was like I need to educate myself and the only way to do that is to buy it and have skin of the game so I bought it

and then it did force me to look into it a little bit more um and then there was a big downturn as you know in 2022 I sold some of it in 2021 not because I knew there was a crash coming I didn’t I just you know I I made some profit and I took profits that was it and then left the rest there but the only reason I bought crypto was so I could understand it more right now I don’t I don’t really care what happens to it so you don’t care that’s very interesting like I would leave it there I don’t check the

price every day but I would care if it crash not that it will worry me but I will care I’m not I’m not a hedge fund Bonnie I mean I’m not a I’m not a crypto fund right I don’t like it’s not my main business true so if my main business crashes I would care if the David Lynn stock crashes I would care yes but if salana goes down 50% which it did after FTX I think more you know yes did I go down yeah but like I just did I buy more no no that I sell no I just left it alone and I did something else with my

life and I think that allowed me to sleep safely cuz you know a lot of people leverage themselves to the point where it’s like okay well if it goes down what do I do with my life oh yeah you should never put that kind of stress on yourself for any kind of investment MH like your net worth should not be your determinant of your personal happiness and life satisfaction yes yeah it’s interesting what what you just said because I talk about blockchain and crypto right so I mean I started trading meme coins for a while this was like

probably a year or two years ago M and that was probably one of the worst decision I’ve ever made but no because you learned from it yes yes the reason why I wanted to start trading meme coins is because I need to understand what everyone else is doing right so you can talk about it I don’t like to talk about things that I don’t understand I don’t like to pretend that I understand it right so that was bad like financially that was bad but it’s a good lesson so like you said my focus should be on the

main business instead of like all the Investments like so later on I kind of pivot my investment strategy into I’m buying all the things that I don’t really need to look at every day okay so things that aren’t very volatile well comparative to relative to like memin yeah mem coins they a lot of them they survive for 24 hours I think we’re on the same page I think you and I both bought things for similar reasons because we want to learn not because I expected to get rich from it right no no no that’s a very different mentality

because if you wanted to get rich off mean coins you would have you would have approached it differently MH yeah you would have allocated different positions you would have looked at it differently you would have traded more frequently whatever right but you approached it from a learning angle I can understand that yeah and I got burned David well what did we both learn F I got burned with options you got burned with meme coins yeah so here we are doing a podcast terrible we could have done a we could have done a a a

hedge fund but now but no we [Laughter] didn’t hey your channel grew very fast you started coming from you a year ago right no I started in 2023 okay it’s been exactly two years okay two years Yes actually yeah what day are we yeah 2 years yeah how’ you do that what is different from other channels I don’t know I don’t know what’s different is it because you’re funny or is it because you don’t blink do you think I’m funny kabani no why do you keep laughing at my jokes is it because you ask very smart

questions is it because you upload very frequently what is it I’m very lucky to work with a lot of really smart guests the guests make the show people don’t I I like to think people don’t watch for me they they watch for my guests MH yeah I do upload more frequently than I think other channels in the space I do like one two a day well I’m I’m in Taiwan I’m half on vacation so I’m doing only one a day now that’s still a lot kind of and and I do that just to keep it going because there day I don’t think people

understand how hard it is to upload that many videos yeah you just have to sacrifice sleep and a lot of other things yeah or like interviews they think you really just sit down and check chat with people but no you prep yeah absolutely so how do you prep for an interview what did you do before this interview I I I researched Bonnie Chang oh that’s terrible no no I learned a lot no okay let’s say you’re about to interview like um expert in some film that you’re not familiar with sure what do you do okay

well it depends who it is so if it’s somebody I know well I would just ask him about this week’s or today’s market movement let’s say he’s a Trader or an investor and we just talk about the news so my process is I get up every morning I have a really good team my producer helps me with topics every morning and we just look at what’s driving the markets that day and then that would be the program for maybe a Trader I have on later in the day if it’s somebody like okay I just had I’ll give you a recent

example I don’t know Arthur Hayes I just interviewed him you know Arthur Hayes bitm co-founder I just interviewed him last week great interview so we spent a couple days just researching um his views we went through his Twitter profile we went through his tweet tws uh we pulled up some crypto news and events that maybe he could talk about like we talked about biped for example um he tweeted about the ethereum roll back so we talked about that um we talked about Perpetual Futures because he’s a Founder

he’s a creator of that um so you just kind of look at what the guy’s done and and and it’s like preparing for any kind of conversation like you go on a date right do you do like no thinking whatsoever same kind of concept right you have an idea of what you want to get out of that conversation and you just think about I don’t okay well don’t you just go on a date look not everybody is naturally gifted as you some of us have to prepare okay what do you stand in front of a mirror and be like hi I’m David lint

like how maybe I should do that no but I just think about it’s the same it’s the same concept and the point I’m making is it’s the same concept for any conversation whether you’re doing a professional interview you’re on a date or you’re going to meet your mom or whatever it’s like you have an idea yeah you have an idea what you want to get out that interaction and so you kind of I reverse engineer the result by thinking about the types of questions I would ask or the types of conversations I would like to have and so knowing that

what is my process well if let’s say Okay I want to interview Arthur Hayes I want to get his VI Bitcoin views then I looked up all the Articles he’s written about his Bitcoin views or you know what does he think about the Bitcoin strategic Reserve well it so happens that you wrote an article on medium not too long long not too long AG criticizing the Bitcoin strategic Reserve for a lot of reasons and he talked about some other things he had a $1 million Bitcoin call for I think later this year he actually correctly called 100,000

Bitcoin for this year you know these are all things that I wanted to talk about to him about and so I looked it up so I’m just using him as an example but it’s the same process for everybody but that like whatever he’s talking about you are pretty familiar with because you are also a Bitcoin investor Le let’s talk about like gold you do talk about gold bonds and that yeah do are you investing in those things no I have nothing besides Bitcoin ethereum and Sala right so how do you real estate real

estate right how do you ask those questions it well it doesn’t it’s not dependent on whether or not I’m invested I’m just you know do you understand it like for example I hope I do do you I hope so do you I’ll let the audience decide let’s be specific so let’s say gold for example right it’s um I’ve covered gold enough over my career to understand the drivers mhm so US dollar real interest rates inflation expectations um Central Bank demand buying from retail investors buying from institutional investors Chinese demand

is really big so these are all topics that we can touch on for that one particular asset class and so I just find news regarding those topics so every asset class has I would say macro drivers that are more important for that asset class and so I just find news for those variables what is one guess that you really like having on Bonnie Chang oh my God no she’s going to cut that out isn’t she no like surprisingly good or you weren’t exp surprisingly good no one really surprised me because I went into the

bookings knowing who they were like I knew exactly how good they were going to be um I think a few people may have changed the way I looked at things who I’ll give you some examples so one of my school Idols was Eugene F MH who was the Nobel Laurette in 2013 um he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work that he mainly did in the 70s so it was like a long time ago and he was one of the people most closely associated with the efficient market hypothesis which is the theory that markets are efficient and

there’s different forms of efficiency there’s strong medium and weak form um it means that the market participants all investors in the market have access to the same information basically what he’s saying is you can’t beat the markets long term because everybody has access to the same information in order to beat the markets you have to have an information Advantage which is strong form efficient which means you have to have Insider info basically uh but for everybody else we see the news we see

prices we see whatever it’s information that everybody else has you might get lucky one year but averaged it out over a period of many years or decades you would not be outperforming the market is his theory okay and that really I mean I’ve studied it but listening to him explain really challenged me my existence like why am I doing my job if the theory holds that you can’t really beat the markets and all I’m doing is asking people how to beat the markets really when you think about it but do you really believe that that you can’t

beat the market well see the fund managers I interview don’t believe that right do I believe it I haven’t I’m not see see I’m not a professional investor I don’t know I don’t know if I believe that or not he has enough proof and evidence that he’s formulated this Theory a lot of people disagree with him he want the Nobel price for his proof I would like to think yes we have access to all the same information but most people will not the people that he’s not saying it’s impossible to be the markets

he’s saying the people that do have asymmetric information right interesting if you’re somebody who doesn’t over the long term you will just perform a about the same as the market if you’re good mhm and in fact most funds lose most actively managed funds lose money yes over the long term mhm there was a book I’m not sure if you read this David conman Thinking Fast and Slow we had to read that in college he explained there was a chapter where he explained um how well he he’s using an example um there was a he they got a

monkey and a board full of stocks and they got the monkey to you read that he got the monkey to throw darts to the board and that board outperformed most managers they surveyed that year I’m not saying most managers are not as good as a monkey but you know I feel like the traditional Finance landscape is people using all these big words selling you things you don’t understand in Chinese we call it gang right all the product that are tall huge and up there like you know all the terms they use they just

look very professional just to really make money off the product you buy they’re trying to sell you something they might might not even believe in that is possible right yeah and I don’t know it’s like I I feel like YouTube or like channels like yours kind of help people more people um learn about all these things that used to be like those mysterious like things that are very far away like you don’t really get economists talking about their views before YouTube how how do you even talk like hear from Arthur

Hayes people like you know or Michael sailor they won’t they they don’t go on TV and tell people what they think but with YouTube and channels like yours people have access to these type of information instantly and I feel like a lot of like big names right now they don’t want to they they’re trying to explain things in a way they want people to understand now they used to not want that I think you’re right that’s where channels like you and me come in so you take information from somebody else

who’s like a big name or whoever and then you filter that and then you explain it in a way that people can understand yeah because maybe not everybody understands what Michael sailor is trying to say but you explain it uh in a way that people do so that’s that’s the value that’s the alpha that you add as a channel it’s not so much that you have insid or info or maybe you do it’s that you are able to educate the audience whereas maybe they haven’t either paid attention to a topic before they just don’t understand it and they

don’t really care to listen to it MH so the hedge fund example I feel like right now people don’t see hedge funds or like those traditional Finance people in the way they used to look at them before what which way is that which which is you know they always outperform the market and they always know what they’re talking about they always you know what I mean like I sometimes I feel like people you talk to they are an expert so they have to have an opinion even when they don’t know what’s happening mhm but for you to be

presentable on camera or in front of an audience you need to believe in something you can’t say I don’t know but I don’t like most people I think for most people I don’t know do you feel like there’s a lot of fake confidence out there yes yeah yes people who they’re fake gurus they’re all over YouTube yes that’s that’s an interesting topic on its own yes you know how do you differentiate yourself from a fake Guru who’s selling a course or whatever I just say I don’t know when I don’t know right yeah like I don’t want to pretend

to be the person that oh yeah I know what I’m doing I make however many millions using this trading method you don’t you don’t rent a private jet and post pictures of a joke yeah I know you don’t you know I like I like people just being themselves and like I like people who are the same on and off camera well let me ask you this question why do you think people watch our show I don’t consider myself an expert you said you don’t consider yourself an expert I think you’re an expert in crypto But but

so why should people care about us if we’re not experts because like you said we do the homework for them okay and the fact that we spend more time on it maybe you’re better than or I am better than the average person that doesn’t really pay attention to it but I cannot say oh I’m like I know what going to happen I don’t but I have an opinion well if I have an opinion then it’s based on all the research that I’ve done it’s not like oh I I I can tell with all these like charts and lines and all that like

I come up with this conclusion and everyone should just buy in this CU so what we know from this is that Bonnie is not a technical traitor definitely no no I don’t you don’t you’re not you’re not interested you just don’t think it works or why I have no time to do everything yeah yeah and Technical trading is the antithesis it’s the opposite of what you yeah do it’s a it’s a different philosophy because you want to be a part of a society if you want to call that the tsmc society you want to be a part of that you want to own the

equity you want to feel like you you’re you’re invested in a group of really smart people technical analysis is the opposite of that a lot of technical traders do not know what they’re trading they don’t care they don’t care it’s a ticker and they look at it and they just see lines and charts uh and they look at the candles and and they make forecast based on whatever the numbers are they don’t really care what the underlying Equity or you know fundamentals are so it’s the exact opposite of what you do

that sounds a lot cooler though does it yeah it’s okay you don’t want to be cool then bunny no I don’t okay I don’t I think you’re pretty cool as you are you don’t need to thank you try harder why do you think people watch you well like I said I don’t think they watch me they watch my guests you don’t think they watch you if you replace me with AI that was sufficiently Advanced that could ask my questions that have the same banter as a guest they would still watch the channel that’s what I believe you can say that about everybody

I just do the homework you know you can replace me with an AI That’s fine you have a really high engagement rate though I don’t know what how you do it because you don’t post let’s talk about growth for your channel f because you’re growing really fast when I met you December 31st end of the year you were at 249,000 subscribers oh my God how do you even know I don’t even know what do you mean I just I you showed me your channel and I remember oh wow okay and you’re at what 278 today I don’t know you 278

today thank you so that’s uh 29,000 subscribers gained in in uh 60 days that’s yeah that’s really good that’s in other words that’s 15% of your base grown in 60 days what’s interesting to me is that you don’t post as often as me you have like three four posts a day or sure a week rather a week sometimes even one so the engagement rate of your videos is really really high meaning people who watch those one or two videos a week they subscribe or they’ll comment you have like thousands of comments per

video and you just sit there and you talk like you don’t like you don’t play with the camel you don’t like jump off a building like like it’s just like I I honestly like I’m impressed how do you do it thank you I don’t know I I talk about things that I would find interesting okay and not just like the news itself sometimes like you get a market crash or you know a big event but what I want to know is what happened why and has it happened before what does it really mean instead of like like oh the

market crashed and see I think this is why you have a community because you talk about things that you find interesting and so if other people find it interesting as well this is this is a this is another philosophy if you think it’s interesting then you probably will find other people that will think it’s interesting as well and then you’re building like a bonding Community you know it’s like a lot of people watch you because you have shared interests so um I’m just really impressed at how fast

you’re growing given H little you’re publishing I would love to publish more but okay why what what do you mean why why do you want to publish more I feel like there are a lot more topics that we can cover but it’s just like what’s stopping you short-handed okay well that’s a to that that’s topic for another day this is why you should collaborate with me more yeah I feel like for example all the AI stuff why did I start talking about it because I’m interested in it right I would love to learn more but I’m

not an engineer like I’m not a tech bro I don’t understand so I study it and what do you mean you study how do you study it I spend time just reading and trying out new tools you know all that there must be something you’re doing that is really making the audience stick like your attention I don’t I haven’t seen your stats but your attention rate must be really high like the audience must watch you from the beginning to at least 3ars of your video I’m sure this one will be high retention rate because of

my hair or because okay have I blinked enough for you I just think that you’re doing something and I I don’t know what it is I’m trying to ask you like you’re doing something that because you probably think about this every day how do I make the audience stick to at least 50% of my video I don’t think about that you don’t no I think about that every video I do see I should but what I think about more is how do I get them to come in like click as in not clickbait but you have to let them it’s like a shop right so your

thumbnail and your headline yes so I constantly change my thumbnails AB test and all that how do you get your thumbnail ideas from I just draw on a paper and show it to my editor yeah okay it’s not nothing too like fancy yeah what I do is just in front of a computer I’m like okay well David Lynn should be here I should be there and his eyes has to meet my eyes and you know all that yeah he should blink every once in a while yes yes do you think about your thumbnail before you make the video no I

do that I Mr Beast does that yeah one of the people I work with who are an investor of mine used to work for Mr Beast so he taught me that M he said you should start thinking about your thumbnail even what is our thumbnail this is your show Bonnie I I don’t want to influence you okay if it was yours yeah what would the thumbnail be well your face I mean yeah I feel like it should just be your face I mean it’s like an attractive face you should just no text oh my goodness that’s a terrible thumbnail maybe a bit

of text but I don’t I I don’t know I don’t I have to think about this I don’t know what my be because this this is not a market related conversation but how do you know how the conversation would go beforehand because a lot of like you you script out your conversations you send me a bunch of questions I send you a bunch of questions but we’re talking about a lot of other questions that are not on the question Winston Churchill famous quote World War II why are you laughing okay okay okay he said he said plans are useless but

preparations are indispensable MH mhm I like that so just because you have a list of questions you’re not following them I know you’re not but the fact that you’ve taken the time to think about it has made you mentally prepare for this conversation right but what I’m saying is for thumbnails it’s really hard because sometimes we could talk about gold and then like a more interesting topic came up and that is better for the thumbnail sure I would use that instead yes absolutely yeah yeah so I I’ll see

what theb I’ll have to watch this and see what the thumbnail should be yeah so my I I look at it as a shop how do I get people to come in first and of course I put a lot of work in the editing and like the script and everything so I would hope that I have the confidence that people would stay but first they need to come in to see hey this is good MH I’m telling you they do stay or at least me and like I don’t even watch your stuff like I watch it and like my Mandarin isn’t that good I don’t understand everything but you know I

just it’s also like an exercise think how much do I understand so how much do you understand 50% that’s good oh thanks cuz there are a lot of like big words and stuff you know yeah stop using big words Bonnie let the ABCs like me understand more but I just I I feel like I the things I do understand it’s like oh I didn’t even think about that it’s like I now I should look into that more as a content Creator is like you know that’s a good idea what’s one secret how do you keep people watching your stuff

if it’s a secret bunny I’m not telling you or anybody else oh no come on man what’s what secret you mean what I like how do you maybe how do you structure the conversation I start with the most important topic that I think people would click on so it varies right let’s suppose we’re doing a conversation with an inter with an investor today or a Trader right now uh Dows down 500 points today so let’s start with that it’s just people I always put myself in the shoes of my audience there are people who just want

to understand what’s going on with their money they want to learn how to make money they want to understand the market so okay well Market’s crashing today let’s start with that let’s not talk about anything else let’s just talk about what’s driving the new cycle which is the markets are tanking so what do we do my first question is okay is this the start of a bigger bare Market or is this like what what do I care about if I’m an investor right I want to know if this is gonna be even worse or is this the end

so now my guest was saying well you know I think this is just a kind of a Bu The Dip scenario okay why so now we understand his logic now we get into his logic um actually a very important lesson I learned in my very first job working at BCA research my manager pulled me in and he was asking me about a bunch of things and he said look our clients pay us for our rationale not for our calls because anybody could you have a 50-50 chance of getting any call right you just guess and you can get the call

right for the wrong reason that doesn’t make you right that just makes you’re lucky MH so people pay a lot of money for our research because they like the way we structure our thoughts and they like all the facts and figures and research and calculations we’ve done to support the final conclusion which is by this stock or whatever could be wrong but and they have been wrong many times but they still have a lot of clients have you ever interviewed people where you just look at that person you’re like

I cannot upload this interview I feel like you’re about to share some stories no I’ve done that I no I mean I wouldn’t have interviewed in the first place there are a few interviews that I’ve done that I haven’t uploaded um because it hasn’t turned out the way I wanted it to um and sometimes you know you try to pull the information out it’s like it again it goes back to do I find this information interesting as a viewer and the answer is really really no then I wouldn’t do it but it very rarely happens Bonnie because um

I’ve uploaded 790 videos as of today since 2023 wow and I only have maybe less than five cases where that’s happened so is it because it’s not interesting enough it’s always my job to pick out information that’s interesting and in a 30-minute conversation of let’s say one answer isn’t good or you know it’s not interesting I’ll just cut it out there’s always something interesting in a conversation I find so there’s there’s always something that’s salvageable and if the guest is not saying something interesting it’s that’s

my failure as a host to bring out the interesting information because these are people that are really smart that I talk to so there’s always something to talk about and not everybody is good in front of a camera some people get nervous yes you know not everybody is very good at articulating thoughts like the really really smart people that I’ve interviewed are like Rainman they can’t talk very well but they’re super smart so it’s my job to like speak to them in a way that allows them to feel comfortable enough to share

information and I and I speak differently to different people what is this right now you tell me Bonnie I don’t know I don’t know you’re different ways this is me feeling comfortable around you that I can share my secrets and fear and hopes and fears with an audience that may not have known this information about me but yeah what is the biggest problem with financial I asked you that question I also put that down okay all right great minds think Alik ladies first um I think this is from my experience I don’t know about um

news in Canada or us but in Taiwan I feel like a lot of news are copying each other and they are executed by a lot of interns that don’t know what they’re talking about they don’t know what the news is about they copy and paste they would probably pull out some other information and because their kpi is either reach click or views they would put down something that they think the viewers want to see for example the market crashed like 80% or like Trump did this or that you know like something that is

very something that touches the human psychology like you just want to click but does do you really learn something from it not necessarily but because their manager or their bosses want like their kpi should be hey I want to see your growth over a year or like two years instead they want the report every day like how how many clicks or how many views did you get today I see what you mean they so yeah they’re short-term thinkers they air on the side of being too Sensational I know exactly what you

mean and so their bonus is dependent on the clicks they get this month so I don’t think the problem is the intern or the staff it’s the bosses see sometimes I sacrifice clicks for Quality conversation yes because I know a specific guest will not get me a lot of clicks Eugene FMA has interview with me probably one of the most in influential things I’ve done in my career MH less than 50,000 views but you know if my only metric was clicks I wouldn’t have aired that right so let me ask you this now I have an

answer to that myself is what makes you think people click on AUM thumbnail where a headline generally speaking okay any channel whether you’re Mr Beast or you’re you know Bonnie blockchain why do people click there are so many reasons first every every time they click they get what they wanted right the next time when this shows up they want to click again because they know okay I’m getting this you know standard you won’t give me some [ __ ] today so it’s consistency but what are let’s say some ingredients

that thumbnails that that go into a successful thumbnail oh just I have two but I’ll ask you first itself yeah colors okay font okay size oh sorry I don’t mean thumbnail I mean just the title not the image the title yeah oh the title even though I I’ve been told thumbnail is more important because that’s what people see first but yeah the title has to ask a question that they want an answer to that’s good yeah okay yours I think people click for one of two reasons one the title elicits an emotional response either it’s

happiness or fear it’s like oh markets are down it’s crashing I’m afraid of losing my it AF or number two it presents new that I didn’t know before the best thumbnails do two two things both of those things it’s it elicits an emotional response and also gives you new information markets are down because Trump you know abandoned Ukraine okay that’s that’s two things right now I’m afraid of markets crashing but now I’m also not sure why Trump did that so now I’m curious to click on it that’s just

an example but you’re giving the answer in the thumbnail Market is crashing because yeah I I’ve thought about this a lot should I give the answer in the thumbnail I don’t have a definitive answer sometimes it’s yes sometimes it’s no it really depends on the topic I find that a lot of times stating the fact or the just giving it away is actually more powerful mhm let me give you an example is there gold in Fort Knox I’m just off the top of my head there there’s an a going on Elon Musk wants to audit Fort

Knox he wants to find out how much gold there is is there gold in Fort Knox Elon musk’s Doge reveals that’s that’s a good thumb that’s a good title I would click on that I would counter that okay because people when you upload that video people already know the answer if they’re interested in this if it’s a yes or no people already know like people who are interested in this that’s why I don’t like yes no questions as well yes you’re right yeah so like it has to be something that they have not thought

about so let’s suppose they don’t find in this I’m just making it up let’s suppose they don’t find gold there bombshell report there’s no gold in for Knox see I just gave the answer away but now I think you’re more inclined to click on the second one because because now you now it’s like this dramatic piece of information that you want to know more about I would add but they found this oh okay but they’ll be like you know something something interesting about Chinese media I’ve noticed you can fit more information in the title

because every word is its own character and you have a character limit of 100 words sorry 100 characters I don’t know if it’s true yeah sure but you you are able to add what you just said because you have higher character well no you have the same character count but you have more information to fit in because every Chinese word is maybe two three characters Max and so you can fit more ideas into the title but whereas in English words our words are like one word is like 10 characters right so you

can you’re constrained by the number of ideas you put in the title so Chinese creators are at an advantage I tend to think it’s easier in English cuz Okay you know how like Financial channels they always say do this now in Chinese you can’t really say that like that’s very strange first of all you’re never supposed to do that cuz that’s Financial advice and that but what I’m saying is you know you can the emotions that you said you want to trigger if you say do this now or like you got to know like

three things you have to know it’s very hard to express that in Chinese maybe but going back to your example of stating a piece of information you can fit more information true because you have um more words you can fit into the 100 character limit that’s something I noticed as soon as I started watching your channel I was like the first because I can’t read Chinese very well so I’m like copy pasting into Google translate and then Google Translate is giving me like this like like 50-word translation I’m like

there’s no way I could the first thought is there’s no way I could fit this into my own title true true and then I thought about it I was like yo it’s because Bonnie’s channel is in Chinese and you can fit more Concepts not even words but Concepts into the title and so when a Chinese viewer is scanning it like really quickly it’s like already their brain is processing more information that is very interesting yes yes and sometimes you know because viewers spent I don’t know half a second looking at your title and they decide

within half a second if they want to click on it so you cannot add too many Concepts it has to be just enough I’ve been told 5050 characters is the optimal but I I don’t know you had comments about Chinese subtitles I did yeah I I was it’s a culture shock to me how everybody in Taiwan watches media with subtitles yes um I mean I I know subtitles help M but even in Chinese not just English yeah yeah I I I know like you know you watch like Taiwanese TV anything yeah game shows drama news and I’m just like how do they have time for

this like how how do they do this because especially with news channels like they need a faster turnaround time it’s like how do you anyway they must be working around the clock and it’s not something I’m used to because you know in North America we don’t have subtitles on everything we do it on our shorts for like social media because well the obvious reason is you can’t listen if you’re on the train or whatever at work and so you have to look at it and also it keeps your attention SP but like you

watch anything on American TV there’s no subtitles unless you are watching Netflix and you like subtitles buture I know cuz it takes so much time that’s the bottleneck for you it is because in Chinese if people don’t know one word One pronunciation can mean a thousand different things yeah and you have to manually select which word like it’s terrible terrible as in for people that’s trying to type subtitles within a short period of time mhm of course there’s Ai and stuff but right now A in Chinese it still sounds

very Robo is MH like people don’t actually talk like that so the subtitles and stuff like I want it to be as natural as possible so okay just typing subtitles I used to type my own subtitles how long did it take you for each video that it would take like six hours crazy you had an interesting question you sent to me MH quantity versus quality yes I’m curious to I have an answer but I’m curious to get your take um I think quantity is at least once a week that but quality is more important cuz you see a lot of big

channels they don’t upload that often but when they do people will watch it yeah because they know hey I’m getting something out of this yeah yeah so for me if I had had to pick one of course yeah yeah yeah because you have to see this is an interesting question because you’re assuming they’re mutually exclusive you have to have one or the other for many channels it is you’re right yeah Stalin I like quotes Joseph stalon had a quote there we go how are you able to talk to me for an hour so much patience Bonnie quantity is

a quality in itself oh think about that do you just write those quotes down I I have a lot of random stuff floating in my head wow yeah true I agree yeah but for people who solo like YouTuber they don’t have a team I guess you kind of have to you publish as much as you need to right yes so this is the way I think about growing my company because you went back to how did I grow so fast actually I could have grown faster um but anyway the only metric I care about is watch hours over a month views but

more specifically watch hours because people can click a lot but if they don’t watch a lot you know your your retention is low your watch hour is still low it doesn’t matter so what is watch hours it’s just the number of hours that has been accumulated on your channel over a period of time let’s take a month for example watch hour that is the only driver that I think drives the valuation of a media company because your sponsors care about how many views they get um your your audience your main kpi being

watch hours will determine how popular your content is and how long your audience is watching your show for and then you can adjust your strategy that way your growth rate and how many people you need to hire are dependent on the watch hours you want to Target for for a certain month so what are the variables that determine watch hours it’s just two things really break down the math your total watch hours equals the number of unique visitors on your channel times the average amount of time each visitor

watches M so knowing that you have two ways to grow your channel you can either focus on the number of people watching or the amount of time people watch your show or your channel overall not just one show but your channel overall the second variable I think is easier to control that’s just a simple function of quantity if you publish more videos that are obviously not like crap every day but like things that are aligned with your audience’s interest the more you publish the more watch hours you will accumulate just by the

number of people let’s say you 100 viewers right everybody watches 1 hour a day your total watch hours over 30 days is 30 * 1 30 hours so no 10 300 hours wow I’m also not going to okay forget calculus I anyway um but let’s say you all a sudden double your content now you have two hours of content every day the same assuming this is a big assumption assuming you have the same audience who is able to watch your show now they’re watching 2 hours per day 2 * 10 * 30 that’s 600 hours per month you’ve just

doubled your watch hours so there’s there’s there’s a diminishing marginal returns after a while right so finding that optimal I don’t know what that is yet but you do have diminishing marginal utility after a certain period of time after a certain number of videos I believe that number is maybe three or four but I haven’t maxed that out yet three or four a day a day and you well in your assumption people who used to watch you for an hour a day they would watch for three hours now yes or they will watch a little bit of this a

little bit of that a little bit of that really the total accumulation would be different so here’s the second part the first part of the equation is the number of people you can’t get one person to watch your show for six hours a day nobody would do that right let’s say you publish six times a day right will you get the same person watching six hours no that’s why you have to grow your audience base so that someone’s interested in crypto someone’s interested in Gold someone’s interested in real estate you have have different

people watching different content throughout the day are you considering how algorithm work I don’t really know what the algorithm is it changes every like I don’t know it changes all the time so I don’t really think about it as much there are some metrics that are consistent so in terms of importance so audience retention is one of them right we talked about that um I think audience retention I think about I think click through rate yes is another really important that’s thumbnail click through

rate is thumbnail audience ret is just the quality of your videos those are really the only two metrics that really matter what I heard is they first push the content to people that subscribe to you that always watches your and then if they click if most people click then they’ll push it to a wider audience yeah that’s why you find when your video reach like a big amount of views your your click-through rate is actually lower because YouTube pushes the content to people that don’t usually watch

Finance stuff for example or your click through rate drops over time drops over time but that doesn’t mean it’s bad yeah it just means YouTube pushes it to people that’s interesting that weren’t familiar with you you should aim for a high initial clickthrough rate is what you’re saying initial yes but then later on if I look at my Channel all the videos with the highest views their click-through rate is not the best okay is is because I believe YouTube actually push these two that is possible a new group of audience

that is possible especially for finance not everyone’s interested in finance and so if it pushes to a large audience there will be people who won’t click on it you’re right I noticed your videos more than mine have a longer shelf life meaning you’ll po something like let’s say three days ago it would get maybe 20,000 views the first day and then like I check a week later I’m like holy what how’s it 120,000 how did that happen like do you how how how do you do that because with interviews I think it’s

also because I need time to add subtitles and do the editing sure I don’t want to talk about what’s happening right now I want to talk about like your philosophy like it something that can last for a long time so even if I click on this video a year later I can still learn from from this yeah you have a different approach than me cuz I cuz I can’t cuz I right now I cannot make like a video a day so see that this is an example of a good Creator because you know your own constraints and then you you you you tailor your content

around your constraints whereas let’s say hypothetically if you had a team of 20 people right and your expenses were not a concern you could in theory film all day six hours a day or whatever you could live stream you could do a lot of things you could have a mix of Evergreen content plus current news that you live stream you know you can have everything right right so if I remove the production constraint you could do all of it but right now because you have that constraint you’re focusing on Evergreen

content but I also think if I only talk about current events that like why don’t they just watch news because that’s even faster than me for sure like I can’t beat CNBC yeah you can you can live stream it well okay I’m not trying to play that game I’m not trying to like be the traditional media because you are beating CNBC in many respects because people follow creators like you now that is because you talk about a whole different thing like they feel like they can relate to you like the questions you

ask because I feel like on CNBC or like Bloomberg they cannot ask dumb questions but here I can I’m like I’m a dumbass tell me about yourself you know what I mean you are also a viewer when I’m interviewing you I’m learning something from you and I’m imagining like thinking like oh what what would the viewers want like what would they want to ask so I’m asking that too yeah you yeah you could pull the viewers this is one of the advantages of our of channels like us is that we can engage with our viewers

directly through tweets Community posts whatever I don’t know Discord you can ask people what they want to hear you can solicit questions by email which is what I do and then you can just ask questions that your community want to hear whereas if you’re mainstream like CNBC and Bloomberg you don’t really have that option at least not on a daily basis so I think there’s a little bit of Disconnect when you’re really really big and that’s one of the things that you have to be aware of when you get bigger

in scale which you will I’m Bing on a million views sorry a million subscribers for Bonnie and by next year I’ll try so once you get even bigger than you are now you will have I believe you will have the issue of becoming more distant with your audience because you can’t relate to a million people so it’s like how do you make every happy the question is the answer is you don’t MH and so you know the bigger you get the more disconnect I find you get with your audience and so you have to find other

ways to engage them other ways to talk to them other ways to interact with your audience which is why I I’m pushing towards more live streaming because you can actually get comments live and when you say disconnect what do you mean making content that I want versus content that the audience wants but that means you grew not the media company you grew as a person well we’re always growing as people I’m just there’s always topics that I may find interesting that other people won’t right and so I just don’t

talk about that but as I grow bigger and I have to cover more things there’s some people are alienate and then other people I won’t and so it’s like okay how do I make everyone happy this is my question when I grow bigger and my solution to that is actually quantity because I can create gold content Bitcoin content and stocks content three times a day so the gold people will watch that the Bitcoin people will watch that yeah what I find myself doing is you know like I said I like to ask questions right but as you grow in the

industry for example if I learn if now I’m like a defi Dean like I know everything about defi sometimes if I’m interviewing a person that is also a deun I’ll just hear why you pointing at me I’ll just hear what you say and in my head it will not spark a question because you just naturally think everybody should understand that already that is you growing right but then every time I try to drag myself back to wait hold on I know this because I spent so much time on this but then for a person that just got into crypto or Finance

they don’t know what this means just as like as simple as like a Futures a lot of people you think people know what it is but I think most people don’t the hard part for our for us is explaining what that is in a way that not only is easy to understand but interesting for somebody and it’s interesting for different people right a concept is you need to explain it differently to different people in order for them to relate to you right so let’s say what is money for a 90-year-old they want to know how to protect their wealth and how

to retire so then you explain Concepts like that you explain to a fiveyear how many Pokémon cards can you buy right you have to explain video that reaches everybody you can’t that’s what I’m trying to say understand your demographic understand your audience and then cater it that way you can’t reach everyone in the same video what you can do is make subchannels or different channels or different videos within the same channel targeting different audiences but in one video you can’t but you can try to reach as many people as

you can yes if your goal is to have a broad-based audience that is not just crypto Focus then you then yeah you have to think of questions that are more appealing to other people may not be investing in crypto or in my case because I’m not a crypto focused Channel like maybe you I try to explain crypto Concepts a little bit like more as an economist and not so deep which is where you would come in like you would you know get in a little bit deeper I ask my mom or I don’t ask her she watches every video of mine multiple

times and she would tell me if she understands what I’m talking about she ask you if you understand no I would oh you ask her no I would ask her yeah okay what did she say if it’s like over 70% it’s a good video because she doesn’t know anything about crypto well I I would hope that she does now but you know like she’s a mom that really don’t really care about digital assets and think it’s very dangerous and stuff if she understands 70% and she’s like oh I learned this and that it’s a good video

what is her what is her number usually 50 70 80 no she she would say people don’t like only a few here and there she doesn’t understand that’s good yeah so you’re yeah that’s I I would agree with her because you explain things in a way that I think that’s what makes your channel popular is you explain difficult Concepts in an easy to understand way or approachable which is very hard to do because you yourself have to really understand it yes before you’re able to do that yes yeah so yeah there is a constraint

because you KN you do more home work than most other people so you spend more time on every video but it works out because like I said maybe you spend less time on a video than some other channels I I believe you spend a lot more time per video than me I think that I I believe that but your engagement rate is higher where where where I I’m if I I’m pretty sure if I looked at your analytics that would support my theory I grow by Brute Force you grow because you you Target your engagement I think

so I’m recruiting my troop yeah absolutely yeah so what’s going to get you to a million subscribers how do you do that what’s your next what’s your next uh step here just to make more videos more high quality videos cuz I I do my own research but so I want to focus my time on that so I can’t really go that deep into the production anymore if I want to make more videos M yeah right now like I still wash all the edits and stuff like if if there’s any ER if you had to grow your team who would you hire next what

kind of role would you hire next social media manager that you know just kind of go through everything with the editors yeah that role okay M all right what would you say to yourself if you could go back to when you first started YouTube oh uh that wasn’t my own channel that was a long time ago um not your own channel my own channel uh you mean like mistakes I’ve made or could or you could be like good job you’re great I never tell myself that I my my only competitor in my field is myself from a month ago I know that

sounds very cheesy that is the only Benchmark so you put up with me for 90 minutes may as well put up with me now I’m just throwing every cliche at the book but it’s it’s true though Bonnie I don’t care what other people are doing I should have probably hired sooner I was very conservative with my cash at the beginning I could have grown faster I think that’s probably the only thing I would change because I didn’t start hiring editors and producers until six seven months in oh wait so you used to edit your own stuff everything I did

myself wow okay see I’m not that talented so I don’t know how to edit well you’re talented in other ways I mean I set up by own camera but I literally was filming in my mother’s spare bedroom for the first six seven months because I didn’t know when I would make money so I moved back with my mom after my after I quit my job and I had my it was like spare room like this she had a room and I just set up my cameras and I set up my workstation I edited everything myself it was the first couple months was rough it was

like 14 hour day seven days a week um I had enough cash flow to hire people within 4 months but I was still a little bit like conservative still so I didn’t make my first hire until 7 months um knowing what I know now of course hindsight is 2020 but knowing what I’ve done now I could have just spent my cash a little bit sooner I would have grown faster that’s because now you know you can actually make money yes in the beginning I wasn’t sure but even when I was making money I wasn’t sure if I could keep making money because you know

YouTubers they come and go all the time I was like okay it’s my third month of being positive I was still living I could have moved out I was still living at home I was like okay what do I do with my cash is my is my is my is my uh question that I asked first thing I did was hire an editor second thing was move out and get my own rent and then I grew my team after that nice nice um if I could answer the same question I would probably say think longterm like I was worried about the cash flow at first as well I

was but you know now looking back like if you told me in my first month of youtubing you if you say hey one day you’re going to work with let’s say Michael sailor or like even binance and all that sure yeah I would be like what are you talking about but then now you actually work with these people and it’s like your daytoday don’t you feel that way like don’t I would tell not to worry that much well what were you worried about no worry as in like oh uh is this going to work and and I wasn’t worried like I

couldn’t live my life I was just like should I go all in cuz I have I had a job at the time yeah this is my question for you cuz you told me offline you had a job yes at another Media company and then you started your own YouTube channel as a side hustle right yeah at what point did you think I could do this fulltime when I started feeling like because when I started it did not feel like I don’t go around tell people I’m a YouTuber right cuz it’s like such a new role mhm but then later on after I think

half a year a year I was very comfortable this is my main thing now like the TV host and all that I don’t even feel like I’m proud to tell you I do that mhm I’m more happier sharing that I’m doing this crypto YouTube that is when I’m like oh it’s time it wasn’t like I’ve made enough money now I can do it myself I mean YouTube itself I mean there has to be a point where it’s like your YouTube was higher than your salary and so it was net negative for you to stay at your last job no no no it wasn’t like that it

wasn’t like that okay no um cuz I haven’t you know like the sponsorship Google ad is very little so I don’t even look at that um sponsorship I think the first for the longest time I did not have sponsorship came much later yeah so that oh so sponsorship came after you quit your last job I can’t remember the exact timeline but I wasn’t counting on that I see yeah and when your channel is small like the sponsorship money is so you took an even bigger risk than me I don’t know but I had my tsmc so I wasn’t

worried I wasn’t that worried I mean I was worried about basically I was rich so I didn’t really care you know if this that’s the mentality you have to have as an investor it’s like I have enough cash so if something fails it’s okay but you still you still want to be successful so I was like just humble bragging this girl no what I was trying to say is I was still definitely worried about cash flow are you kidding me see for me I took I believe I took a smaller risk than you even though I quit my job first

why is that smaller risk because I had an audience already in the finance space you had no audience in finance because your last channel was not Finance related right people didn’t know you as Bonnie Chang for finance then you you for whatever you were doing before so you are have you have a completely different audience now yeah than maybe before so you started literally from zero I didn’t start from zero us I used to have 90% female watching me what is it now 90 watching me as in like my my previous work okay it was about like

traveling and all that like the girly stuff variety show it was 90% girls now it’s I think 80 something per that makes sense yeah yeah you’re in a male dominated field yeah see my very first video on my YouTube channel you can see on my oldest video had 140,000 views or something wow that’s because I have an audience already that’s what I’m saying did you like tell people you’re going to this new channel I also have Twitter I have a Twitter account I mean I don’t have a huge Twitter uh following I mean

but it was enough to to draw the audience um and I before my first video I already had 2,000 subscribers just people waiting that so that algorithm kind of helped the first video was already pushed to 2,000 people and then it got pushed to more people yeah within my first video got 10,000 subscribers within the first week I got 30,000 subscribers anyway the point I’m making is I already had an audience so it was less making is no that’s you that’s you you’re the queen of humble ranks okay okay wellow I see but if I had done

let’s say I did the reverse right let’s say I went from Finance to Lifestyle I would be from zero so that I wouldn’t do that yeah why did I even do that well that was the first question I asked you but what really motivates you like right now because you you’re successful you have cash flow you you have your tsmc you know you know it’s like you’re retired it’s fine but I’m not retired but like you could I’m just saying why are you still doing what you’re doing cuz I still need to learn a lot more

like there’s so many interesting people do it okay hold on so there’s learning and then there’s producing content you could learn by yourself by watching videos reading whatever you just do that by yourself be a private investor be a private person don’t you think it’s cool to be able to talk to who whoever you want yes is that why you do it that is one of the reasons okay like I could just talk to David Lynn how great is that I mean yeah I I i’ be very liit you’re very lucky Bonnie I’d be very

limited interviews but that too and also like a lot to learn and also people say well Financial Freedom is not a set number it’s always adjusting as you go right so I can’t retire would there be a point where you would stop I don’t think so so this is this is your career for life I would hope YouTube will be around for the next I mean it’s not just youtubing it could be another platform right but you would keep broadcasting yes yes yes cuz this is interesting like I’m having fun I don’t feel like I’m working you

found your purpose in life did you have like a I don’t like to use all these big words it gives me like this chill okay like my purpose and my goal I yeah I ask people about those questions but I don’t yeah see it’s difficult being interviewed right yeah it’s harder being interviewed than interview I find yes yeah so you don’t like the questions you ask that’s that’s good that means your questions are hard sufficiently difficulty what is your purpose in life yeah it’s to educate as many people as I can about finance and

economics but do you not feel like your purpose changes as you grow definitely I didn’t have a purpose for a long time now I find found one maybe my purpose will change in the future maybe my purpose will be to take care of my family I don’t know but my career Focus will always be purpose will be to the the word I hate the word influence cuz that doesn’t mean see we’re doing the same thing I don’t like purpose and like educate and but I do want to educate people because I think there’s a lot of there’s a lot of power

in educating people that’s why I really like teachers I really respect teachers School teach they should get paid more they do in Scandinavia but yes in the US and everywhere else they should um and I think a lot of and it’s so powerful what we can do which is to educate people online for free people can watch watch a Bonnie video for free and learn about whatever right you know um that was not possible 20 years ago you have to go to school you have to pay money go to the library I would like to think I’m

learning with them instead of educating them because do you feel like you need to leave a legacy before you die no you don’t have that ambition can I give you another quote or am I out of oh man give it to me do I have a quote quot oh man I don’t I can’t remember who said but I like this quote we die three times oh my God confucious no no not confucious what do you mean confucious you don’t know what the C do you know what the quote is we die three okay no no you what do you what do you think I want to say no no what do you

think I going to say no something about like you start living when you realize you’re whatever no you die three times the first is when your body dies oh the second is when you’re put in the grave the third is the last time your name is spoken okay come on that’s a little too like dark I want to live forever you yes you want to live forever but do you do you really think after you pass you care about if people are still talking about you absolutely except for your family yeah like I want my family to talk about

me but one day your family will pass then what then it’s fine at that point I probably don’t care anymore well you physically can’t care yes exactly but what you do in life mhm should have an influence in eternity do you not think that it what you do in life should still matter in your death do you not think that no I do think that but eventually it will pass unless you’re like super successful maybe maybe that’s we define success differently right yeah for me success is simply long after me and everyone I know now are

gone mhm people will still talk about my work in some way because it’s still on YouTube sure it’s on the internet the internet doesn’t die exactly but you think about the people who have built Society we still talk about them long after their dead not all of them are super rich not all of them are super famous across worlds but everything you see around the world everything you see in your life was created by somebody and there’s always some influence that those people have had even after through the dead

that’s what I want to be in media so I love that thank you bigger purpose yeah I think there’s always a bigger purpose than yourself in life and yeah we’re doing something in New York together yes we are what are we doing there’s a great conference hosted by block works great Media Company digital asset Summit March 18th to 20th and uh I invited Bonnie to co co-host with me yes because uh Bonnie is awesome oh thanks and we’re going to be interviewing people together some really really cool people yeah some really cool

people people can check out the speakers list I won’t reveal any names yet but people should just tune in to our channels later in March they can just look at the web page and see the biggest names there’s some yeah there’s some there’s some very influential people not just in crypto but also um fintech mhm economics it’s just I’ve done this a long time and this is probably the best guest list that we’ve put together um in my career so I’m really excited about that I’m really excited you’re joining

us yeah super excited this is the first time I joined like um conference in us I think yeah the first time I met people in crypto outside of Chinese speaking region was the sailor party I think okay I met you guys right and then this is going to be the second time I join any event of course is this the first time you’ve filmed at a conference yes you I live interviews at a conference okay I also don’t really go to conferences yeah yeah and is this the first time you’ve collaborated with another YouTube channel doing interviews

at this scale for sure okay so a lot of first for you yeah so what are you most looking forward to just all these people I used to you know read on the news I can actually talk to them like it’s great cool this is one of the perks of our job we get to meet cool people and you’re right about the list CU a lot of times you look at the guest list you’re like oh there are a few that are really big but you know this time it’s you see all the names you’re familiar with I felt a little intimidated personally by

who by all these people that we’re talking to how do you feel that way I mean do you do you cope with that somehow I haven’t started thinking about it you will yeah I’m going to start feeling the stress you know how this collects your data it’s okay we’ll work on it together okay thank you David thank you Bonnie it’s fun