Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as we come to a close of this trial, you are tasked with making a very important decision – one that can have significant ramifications for your financial future.
As you weigh the evidence for the last time, I would ask you to set aside your emotions when you analyze the arguments of each side of this debate.
On the one hand, you have the Plaintiff – cryptocurrency – the “new kid on the block” who is appealing to your emotions. It’s stating its case for you to invest your hard-earned money in what it is claiming is this new and exciting asset class that EVERYONE is talking about. Plaintiff offers no concrete evidence in support of its arguments against Defendant.
Plaintiff’s attacks against Defendant are without substance – resting its entire case on accusing the Defendant, real estate, of being boring and past its prime. Nobody cares about real estate, they say. Crypto is pleading you to take its side in this investment debate and ignore the Defendant if you want to be wealthy.
The problem with the Plaintiff’s arguments is that it offers no data or concrete evidence as to why you, the jury, should side with it and put your hard-earned money in crypto. However, there’s a reason Plaintiff is appealing to your emotions. It has no other leg to stand on. That’s because the data doesn’t back up its arguments. The numbers work against its favor.
Crypto can not be trusted to build and maintain wealth. On the other hand, the data strongly favors the Defendant’s position. Cash-flowing commercial real estate (CRE) has and will continue to be a reliable asset for creating, growing, and maintaining wealth. In light of recent economic developments, the case for Defendant has never been stronger.
I will now outline why you should rule in favor of the Defendant, Real Estate:
Crypto’s outcome is out of your hands…
The one trait shared by most crypto investors is that they like to speculate – gamble, for lack of a better word. They could care less about data, numbers, and analytics. And because crypto has no underlying value or intrinsic worth – nothing you can feel or touch – there’s nothing stopping crypto from bottoming out.
Crypto price shifts are purely a function of investor sentiment and not due to any underlying economic metrics. Why hang your financial future on emotion?
For all of the reasons above, when you invest in crypto, the outcome of your investment is out of your hands and completely in the hands of the mobs. And all the mob is concerned about is getting rich overnight – with their investment choices dictated by buzz on social media and Reddit.
When you invest in real estate, the outcome is not out of your hands because you have the choice in what assets and in what markets to invest in, and if you invest passively, you choose who to partner with. This is how you can control the outcome of your investment, and because real estate is illiquid, you’re insulated from herd behavior. Your fate is NOT in the hands of a crazed mob.
You can’t scale…
You can’t scale with crypto or meme stocks because you can’t count on reliable returns. Looking back at ten years of returns from crypto will offer you no predictability on returns for the next ten years – hardly the ideal situation for scaling. Real estate, on the other hand, is reliably predictable.
Real estate may go through short-term declines, as we saw in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Still, it always rebounds, and over the long-term, real estate offers reliable upwardly trending cash flow and appreciation.
You can replicate the success of real estate if you invest with a long view. Data and statistical evidence clearly establish the cash-flowing CRE performance over time and can be relied upon to make future projections. This makes it possible to scale the success of CRE by scaling dependable cash flow and appreciation.
You can’t replicate the success of crypto because crypto returns depend solely on appreciation – that someone downstream will buy the crypto at a higher price than you bought it. Many investors have made a lot of money from crypto, but more have lost money. Predicting and scaling the success of crypto is impossible.
Hype…
Hype shouldn’t determine the value of your investment. Do you know what happens to the hype? It inevitably cools because it can’t be sustained. Remember Beanie Babies?
Many people thought it was a good idea to blow their family budgets and savings to hop on the Beanie Baby hype train. Everyone but the founder of Beanie Babies lost their shirts.
The value of your investment should not rely on hype. It should be based on underlying fundamentals and real-world supply and demand. People need real estate for shelter and for places to shop, eat and work. It meets a real-world demand unfazed by hype.
No value…
If you could never resell crypto, what value would it provide you? None.
It doesn’t make you any money, and it’s not even good at what it was designed for – as a medium of exchange. It’s hardly accepted anywhere except the dark web. That’s why crypto has no intrinsic value. It has no value independent of what the public is willing to pay for it.
On the other hand, CRE has value apart from whether you could resell it on the market for more than what you bought it for. If you could never resell cash flowing CRE, it can still provide you with value through income from rents and leases.
Tangible assets like real estate make it so you can never lose the entirety of your investment. The underlying land, the building, and fixtures all have value. The same can not be said of crypto, and that’s why when crypto crashes, it crashes hard. That’s why it can’t be relied on to build and sustain wealth.
Case Closed!
If you invest in crypto, you might as well buy a lottery ticket or go to Vegas. It’s speculating – betting on the market going up after you buy it. Crypto has proven to be one of the most volatile assets on the market.
Returns from crypto are unreliable and unpredictable and can’t be modeled. Real estate is boring and doesn’t get any attention or hype, but it just provides predictable, reliable returns to its investors.
That’s why you should rule in favor of the Defendant, real estate.
