#1397 – The Expat Files: Bitcoin, Legal Arrangements, and Ecuador’s Power Crisis

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now I wonder Hello there all you ex-pad wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started Alright first off. I'd like to congratulate everyone who didn't think I was nuts when I first started talking about Bitcoin when it was somewhere around $200 yep, that's right 200 bucks and I talked about it at 500 and 800 bucks and a thousand and twelve

[00:52] hundred and fifteen hundred and 2009 and on and on and on you know ever since I started doing my seminars about 12 or 13 years ago now I've had at least an hour sometimes too dedicated specifically to Bitcoin and crypto I'd have two or three Bitcoin specialists Bloviating on the subject people would really get an education in Bitcoin and blockchain whether they wanted it or not It was really new so I thought man they've got to hear this So anyone who came to my seminars from the very beginning was able to get in on Bitcoin Very very early on not only were they brought out up to speed able to get all their questions answered they were actually able to sit down with their iPads cell phones and computers and Buy a bit of it right then and there of course

[01:41] I don't have the exact number of seminar attendees who pulled the trigger. I'll put it this way There are an awful lot of Bitcoin millionaires out there who want to buy me a drink I get nice little emails from past seminar attendees all the time now I know there's a lot of new listeners to this show people are coming on all the time And I'm forever getting emails trickling in saying Johnny. Tell us your Bitcoin story. How did you get started? Well, you longtime listeners know it already. I don't want to bore you but since Bitcoin is now let me check it $103,000 I thought by popular demand I'd plow through my personal cryptocurrency and Bitcoin story Because it really is so strange so unconventional Anyway, I believe it was my second or third seminar in I think

[02:27] 2013 or 2012 I think about 20 to 25 people attended from all over the world basically The seminar of course was held in and around Guatemala Now one guy drove all the way down from Canada Yep, all the way down from Canada in a small Winnebago style trailer So he came to the seminar with his new wife. She was Russian he Canadian, of course His name was Dan good-looking guy, but really nerdy, you know Not all nerds are created equal there are nerds and then there are nerds and then there are super nerds Nerds at a completely different level. I'm talking about the kind that when you talk to them Most of the time when they talk about something other than the weather It tends to go way over your head now remember. I'm an engineered by training

[03:16] so I can listen to and talk techno and nerd speak as well as the next guy when Necessary and I have lots of engineer and nerd friends and acquaintances and man if you've been around nerds enough yourself You know, there's a difference between the very bright the brilliant and the extreme outlier Like for example Elon Musk who admits to being on the autistic spectrum So anyway after the week-long seminar was done remember this was over a dozen years ago now Dan come up to me and said Johnny I've got this trailer and me and my wife are gonna stay down here for As long as possible. We're not going back to Canada. He said the Canadian government was out to get him They were cruel and inhumane. They shut down his business, which was E. Golder it was in fact the very first business in Canada where you could buy gold online and the Canadian government didn't like that at

[04:06] All they do not like innovation Nor do they like free speech or anti-vaxxers or truckers, etc Turns out he said they shut him down and grab some of his assets because he didn't have the right permits That's what they claimed. He didn't follow the rules what rules he was the first in that kind of business Oh, well, they just didn't like his business or the way he did business. So they shut him down So he said them I'm leaving. I'm starting a business elsewhere So he came down to Guatemala first up my expat insider seminar So anyway, he said Johnny I have this trailer and there are no trailer parks around I don't know where to park the thing He said I guess I could park on a street, but I don't know which streets or neighborhoods are safe He asked me if I had any suggestions

[04:52] He says I only needed to park it in a secure place for a week or two a month at the most Till the wife and I find a house or apartment now at the time I lived in a really nice gated guarded community with lots of space In fact, the lots were so big there was so much space between the lots. You couldn't even see your own neighbor's house Pretty much total privacy and I said Dan, you know, you could park it in front of my house I'm in a cul-de-sac and there are no other neighbors in sight. It's completely safe 24-7. There's nobody around no traffic driving by nothing No one in the neighborhood would dare say anything. There's no one around so he did he parked it right in the cul-de-sac in front of My house by the way when he first landed in Guatemala City He contacted me about two or three days before the seminar and I let him stay in front of my house then too

[05:43] I let him keep it in front of my house for the whole length of the seminar as well By the way that week turned into two weeks turned into a month turned into around six months You know how those things go best laid plans and all that but I didn't care Dan was a good guy a great neighbor We had some nice long talks most of them over my head, but I'll tell you there was something strange going on I started noticing after he was there about a month around two sometimes even three in the morning I'd see the lights on in that trailer I thought you know, he's a night owl But I knew a lot of super nerds who were night owls because they were really into online gaming In fact addicted to gaming spending hours and hours a day doing it

[06:29] Lots of engineers and software guys are addicted to gaming. I know quite a few do you Most of the gamers I knew were gaming with their buddies in other parts of the world India China completely different time zones So they kept those weird kind of hours Therefore I thought two or three in the morning He'd be up with the gamers or maybe since he was a newlywed there was some of that kind of action going on But I noticed there weren't the usual suspect telltale signs like primal sounds or the trailer itself rocking and rolling None of that Anyway, he'd been staying there with his wife in that trailer in front of my house for about a month And one day we were sitting out front in the morning and I said to him Dan Sometimes I see you got your lights on in the trailer at two or three in the morning

[07:14] Is that because you're gaming with guys in different time zones? Just wondering he said yeah I'm gaming all right, but now they've got a new payment mechanism to buy into the game and upgrade and stuff They're using this new kind of virtual money on a blockchain called Bitcoin He said eventually it's gonna spread from gaming to all levels of finance and I'm buying some It's gonna explode. He said I don't know when but it's gonna explode He said anyone could buy it but there are only a few exchanges where you can and one of them is in China He said sometimes I'm up at two or three in the morning trying to connect with this exchange to buy some Bitcoin. I Said Dan tell me about this Bitcoin stuff. I never even heard of the word blockchain. What's that all about? So he tutored me little by little he talked about the Satoshi white paper and how he'd read it

[08:03] He'd gone through every line of code He said the blockchain concept was an amazing digital innovation not only for a crypto But could be applied to many other things to any ledger. He said that needed to be Unchangeable and super secure he said his brother in Canada was also a super smart nerd was buying a lot of Bitcoin right now Too as well as some of the smartest people he knew and I said well Dan How much is this Bitcoin stuff at the time? He said around 30 bucks, but he said he'd been buying it at $5 and it just popped up recently It's around 30. In fact, he said there were a couple of places you could get free Bitcoin He had five free ones himself just by logging on and signing into a certain website Imagine that in the early days a free Bitcoin offering just for signing on to a website five free Bitcoin

[08:53] That's a half million dollars today, but he said they weren't doing that anymore now that bitcoins around 30 bucks So anyway for the next couple days I kept asking them to explain more and more of it to me That was the first time I ever heard of a crypto mining or blockchain for things like hash rates often on Rams and stoches and back then even the engineering types that I knew didn't know anything about Bitcoin or blockchain only Dan, but it didn't take long within a half year or so. They started to catch on But still I'd say about 90% of my regular engineering buddies That'd be most of them didn't buy any Bitcoin at all Until a couple years later when it popped up into the thousands five thousand or so That's when my own brother also an engineer started buying Bitcoin when it hit 5k

[09:40] But back to when Dan was still living in his trailer in front of my house Anyway, I'd say about two months later. I bought some Bitcoin the hefty price I ended up paying for my first Bitcoin about 65 bucks a coin Well, you know what happened next But here's what you didn't know I asked Dan to give a Bitcoin presentation at my upcoming seminars that's when he became known as Bitcoin Dan and Then of course at my next seminar a guy named Oscar Miner came down and also an expert in Bitcoin And he was even mining the stuff himself He too stayed in Guatemala after the seminar and never left. He's still there now Since he too had moved down here for good I asked him to do a little presentation on his Bitcoin journey and how to mine He's done that at most of my seminars, too

[10:27] Then Captain Mango came down to a seminar like Bitcoin Dan and Oscar Miner He never left to go back to the States He got heavily into Bitcoin developed a teaching module on it that many people have taken Basically hands-on course on how to buy and sell Bitcoin and other cryptos yourself he too talks about his take on Bitcoin and other crypto coins at the seminar and Then there's our man chase people know him from the seminar, too He came down to one of our very early seminars went back to the States for a while Decided to come back as a repeat offender and when he did he stayed for good He's also a crypto expert mostly in what people call shit coins now I stay away from him, but there's a lot of money in them

[11:12] They're shit coins. Yeah, just have to know what you're doing and man. He knows what he's doing anyway over the years We've had two three even for Bitcoin and crypto experts speaking and giving presentations at my expat insider seminars So while you guys and gals a couple hundred you now anyway who've been to my seminars There's just no excuse for you not to be on the crypto train We've been training people up at the seminar Since Bitcoin was two or three hundred bucks, and you know I feel really good every time I get an email It says Johnny. I'm a millionaire now. Thanks for turning me on to Bitcoin Oh, and I get emails from people saying Johnny I was always interested in the block chain and Bitcoin, but I had no confidence I was scared to get in took me going to your seminar and hearing those Bitcoin speakers

[11:59] That gave me the confidence and now I had a network I was worried about getting in and losing it here's so many stories like that people making mistakes Getting hacked losing their passwords and their keys etc etc bottom line It's nice to have a personal network of crypto guys to lean on So I'm thinking now that Bitcoin hit a hundred grand I'm glad that some of the crypto guys have introduced you to have given you the confidence to invest And I'm really glad a lot of you have become millionaires So now of course the question is since bitcoins over a hundred grand now. What happens next you know over the years I predicted that it would hit a hundred K by January 1st 2025 people thought I was nuts But it did sort of on schedule a month early actually lucky guess Maybe maybe not so then what's next well?

[12:46] I always thought at a hundred K a lot of people would take profits They bought really low it two three four five thousand ten thousand bucks And they said themselves they picked the number hundred K as a place to take profits of course nobody knew when it was gonna Get there, but lots of people pick that nice round number so I think what'll happen next is there'll be a lot of swings back and forth as longtime holders take profits and Institutions governments and insurance companies get in and start buying because that hundred K markers were a lot of brokers and Institutions said they would be getting in because the market the Bitcoin market that is was now considered mature It's proved its metal as an investment vehicle So you can expect a lot of fluctuation for a while around a hundred thousand and then after things calm down a bit though market

[13:33] Stabilizes it'll go sideways for a while like it always does then 110 120 hundred 30k not financial advice here, but you know people are always asking my opinion anyway Congrats to all you guys and gals out there who bought Bitcoin didn't sell held on to it had patience doing those huge swings So then what happened to Bitcoin Dan well He went on to be the first person in the world to teach an accredited Bitcoin course at a university University of Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala City UFM in fact I believe that was the first University in all of the Americas to get a Bitcoin ATM Oh, and one last thing remember Dan head is trailer parked in front of my house for about six months Well, he found an apartment actually a house a really nice house and a great gated guarded community

[14:19] Only about 15 minutes away from my place. He said Johnny. I feel bad about overstaying my welcome by so many months He said I'd really like to pay you some rent. So I'm gonna give you one Bitcoin at the time I think it was three or four hundred bucks. I said Dan you don't have to do that He said no, no, no, I want to do it if I don't give you something It just won't feel right and you know thinking back on it now that bitcoins a hundred grand that works out to a rent payment Just a little less than $20,000 a month Probably the highest monthly rent ever paid for a place in all of Guatemala. So bringing this thing full circle here I'd like to thank all you guys once again Who very early on when I was talking about this thing called Bitcoin you actually pulled the trigger and bought some you didn't think I was

[15:05] Nuts. Well, maybe you did think I was a little nuts, but you didn't let on so thanks for that Right moving on. You know in last week's show. I told a little story about what I call the troubling Immigration scam, you know, it's a pay-for-play green card scam where you get married to someone in the States Someone you don't even know but he or she goes through with it because you pay him five ten or twenty thousand bucks It's a pay-to-play thing Well, you know, I got some responses from people on that most of them couldn't believe what they were hearing I had some emailers that said ten or twenty thousand bucks just to marry someone and give a green card I could use the dough. Where do I sign? I'll take one make sure she's skinny though But most people wrote they thought it was a dirty shame They said it was an extreme abuse of women since nine out of ten people who took advantage of that scheme were women

[15:56] Latina women living in Latin America They'd pay their money to a Latino guy up in the States who was a US citizen or had his residency They'd get married and she'd automatically get a green card Though most if not all women who've signed up for that report physical and sexual abuse sometimes extreme Physical and sexual abuse because you see the guy they marry holds all the cards if she doesn't play ball Do what he says etc for the next couple of years one phone call and she's deported And he being an American citizen just gets a slap on the wrist in any event The guy gets to 5 10 or 20 grand and she's taken all the risks So anyway, the emailers who wrote a comment on that story in last week's show nearly all expressed anger disbelief even discussed

[16:42] Except one his name's John. I think you'll find his email interesting goes like this. Hi, Johnny I have zero interest in being an expat of any kind But talkative expats tend to be some of the least boring people to check out With your podcast Johnny easily rating as one of the best to listen to great voice excellent content Notable perspectives and not afraid of occasional cuss words or politically incorrect stances However, he says I just had to respond to your latest podcast where you discuss the troubling immigration scam as you put it Your spin on it in terms of public interest was fine in my view as far as I'm concerned though anything

[17:29] Interesting is worth considering and consuming for a brain food or entertainment But no way am I gonna agree with you though on the aspect of that form of immigration being tantamount to slavery in my viewpoint when an adult engages in consensual behavior to submit to a legal arrangement That is designed to benefit both parties and the law has no say in the set arrangement It's simply absurd to refer to this as indentured servitude or a form of slavery He says the world isn't perfect and life offers exquisite sets of challenges that often leave us unhappy But if you want to gain legal citizen status quickly with minimum exposure to coyotes and dying in the desert

[18:14] With an empty water bottle melting in the Sun next to your parched corpse Well, then working at a budget hotel cleaning toilets and returning home to service a husband You've chosen to pay to be your husband for a couple of years is truly a minimum risk Compared to the other alternatives and frankly resembles nothing like slavery Better yet if she doesn't dig cleaning toilets in an Arkansas budget tell and she decides she truly hates the losers She paid to marry she can simply up and leave kick that toilet job to the curb and divorce the doofus Then return home to her sweet family in South America happy safe and sound and Johnny think of the guy Does he really want to get paid to marry a South American?

[19:01] Site unseen, which is a crap shoot in itself Would a guy do that just to help her gain legal status without some kind of marital benefits? I don't think so. He says Johnny. Love you, man, but I'm not totally digging your stance on this one Peace Johnny signed John. All right, John. Thanks for that get your point It certainly isn't black and white. It's not cut and dried Especially when first world ladies write to me and say things like it reminds them of a mail-order bride situation like when guys send for a girl from Russia or Romania That's basically sex for residency, too Same thing in the Middle East in India with arranged marriages, you know a guy gets set up with a girl when he's 12 or earlier

[19:48] Based on his parents getting paid a dowry from the little girl's family Which could be a big chunk of dough or a couple of cows and a goat So anyway people are either outraged by it or they think hey, why not? It's capitalism, right? No one's being forced to do anything In fact the girl going into that situation has to know when she gets there She's most likely gonna have to perform the duties of a wife now as far as my stance on this thing I understand there's no force involved. The two parties have made a deal What I don't like about it. What really turns me off is the fact that it's an immigration scam There's just no way the US needs any more unskilled uneducated people with no resources who can't even speak the language That's the part that riles me up and I don't even live in the United States and that pisses me off

[20:37] Because you know what's gonna happen when she gets her green card and eventually does get divorced after that one or two year period There's a huge chance. She'll end up in the social services system there are dozens of programs and handouts and freebies for people living on the bottom rungs of the ladder or on the edge as she most certainly will be because She obviously couldn't qualify for a visa on her own That means she had no higher education no skills and certainly didn't speak English And you need those three things minimally to qualify on your own for a visa and immigration scams and immigration scam And it just ain't right. That's my gripe. It's just not fair to native US citizens Who were born and grew up in the States? Alright moving on you've heard me talk about the daily blackouts that are happening in Ecuador

[21:25] Now I was never a big fan of having a plan B in Ecuador You know that but we talked about it here and there on this show because the big retirement rags up in the States like international living And a ARP Conde Nast, etc They always list Ecuador in the top 10 retirement havens for US citizens. They've got lots and lots of expats there So it's worth mentioning even if we're mentioning what not to do Anyway, you've heard me say over and over again that the power does go out here and there in most every country in Latin America Sometimes momentarily a minute or two and sometimes for hours at a time like in Ecuador and you could either live with it or have a diesel Or gas generator or go solar which is the absolute best solution of all in fact in my last three homes I've either been completely off to grid or had supplemental solar power. So I do know a bit about it

[22:14] Now Ecuador has had these major outages because they're almost a hundred percent hydroelectric which they bragged about for years and had big PR Promotions all over the media padding themselves on the back funny how no one in government ever planned for a drought You know rivers do dry up that's been known to happen There are droughts periodically every 30 to 50 years like clockwork and now there's chaos and confusion and everyone's scrambling to get a gas or diesel generator you heard me talk about that in previous shows, but here's what you didn't know in 2023 about Six hundred fifty thousand barrels of diesel were consumed for a private electricity generation in Ecuador We're talking about Ecuador before the drought now in 2023 650,000 barrels of diesel per year

[23:00] So then the drought hit so far in 2024 consumption of diesel has passed three million barrels and will reach four million by the end Of the year, that's a massive increase six hundred percent more than last year Of course, this is happening because people are doing everything they can to keep their businesses running and they need those generators to keep the lights On and the refrigerators going so here's what's happening shipping containers are arriving daily at the port of Guaya Kale filled with generators from China and other Asian countries 200,000 or more are coming in each week 200,000 generators imagine that each week all being loaded onto trucks headed for keto Cuenca Manta and the other cities The demand is overwhelming even though the government is telling people power rationing will end soon

[23:46] Still no one believes that the government has made promises and has lied way too many times sound familiar There is even a bigger problem though Ecuador has two Refineries neither of them produces diesel so it all has to be imported which is ironic and embarrassing for a petroleum producing country Oh, and in addition to the demand for diesel generators for business and personal use The government's electric utilities will themselves soon be needing a huge amount of diesel because they just contracted for two new Generator barges from Turkey they operate on diesel Now as mentioned people are thoroughly pissed off at the Ecuadorian government Wouldn't you be with your power going off eight to ten hours a day?

[24:31] Continuously, so in order to soothe the savage beast the government is providing a dollar 18 per gallon diesel subsidy The import cost of diesel is two dollars and ten cents a gallon, but it's selling for at the gas stations and stuff 92 cents a gallon less than half the import price So in other words the government is providing a dollar 18 cents per gallon subsidy With money they don't have remember Ecuador's currency is the US dollar That means sucking up to the IMF and the World Bank for some big-ass loans Or selling off more mineral and petroleum rights to China Bottom line if you picked Ecuador as your plan B. It's hard to feel sorry for you because you were warned By the way if you're living in Ecuador and don't install solar power. I'd say you're an idiot

[25:20] Ecuador as we know is on the equator. It's named after the equator That means it receives the most intense and direct sunlight on the planet That's where solar panels will be most efficient any solar panel So then why when you visit Ecuador you see almost no solar panels on people's roofs I don't get it by the way speaking of solar here's a little tip don't waste your money buying second-hand solar panels or Second-hand solar anything like converters or batteries the fact is being that I was an engineer in a past life I'm pretty interested in solar And in the past 20 years, I've seen it explode. It's amazing to see the cost of new systems plummet We're at the point. You could get a six kilowatt cheap grid connected system installed for a little more than 3,000 bucks

[26:10] My first system was half that size and cost four times as much That's just for the panels and inverter, but that was 20 years ago So my point is if you search Craigslist or the Latin American versions of Craigslist Olx.com or in cuentro bintecuatro. You'll see all kinds of used solar panels and inverters for sale. Don't bite Not that they won't work. They probably will but today's standard solar panels are putting out around 500 watts Remember a standard solar panels about 1 meter by 2 meters or 3 foot by 6 feet actually a little more And I'm seeing all kinds of used panels being sold cheap 50 bucks 75 bucks two three-year-old panels at 250 to 370 watts

[26:55] Not a good deal because the older panels will take up twice this space as the new panel for the same wattage That means you'll have to have twice as much aluminum or steel racking as well Just don't bite on the used stuff. You'll find out it's not worth it and use lithium batteries I wouldn't touch them either. Not that they won't work They probably will but they and the solar panels do degrade over the years and you really want to buy new batteries because you'll get A five or ten year guarantee with them use batteries like a used car. No guarantee So there you have it. Just a little solar power installation advice from someone Who's made all the mistakes and knows better? You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan be we can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult

[27:42] Just send me an email the expat files at Gmail dot-com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at Gmail dot-com. No spamos