542: Why Investors CANNOT Ignore AI and Blockchain

The Wealth Formula Podcast is one of the longest-running personal finance podcasts still standing. For more than a decade, I’ve shown up every single week to talk about investing, markets, and the forces shaping the economy.

What’s interesting is how much my own thinking has evolved over that time.

Early on, I was more rigid. I was—and still am—a real estate guy. But back then, I didn’t give much thought to ideas outside that lane. I was dogmatic, and I didn’t always challenge my own beliefs.

Time has a way of doing that for you.

I’ve now lived through multiple market cycles. I’ve watched the stock market melt up to valuations that felt absurd—and then keep going. I’ve seen gold go from flat for a decade to parabolic over a year.

I’ve seen interest rates sit near zero for a decade and then snap higher at the fastest pace in modern history. And I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, that diversification is about survival and that every asset class has its day.

One lesson I learned that I am thinking a lot about these days is: ignore major technological shifts at your own peril.

Back in 2014, I first started hearing people talk seriously about Bitcoin. At the time, I dismissed it. I listened to the critics, was convinced it was a scam, and didn’t take the time to truly understand it. 

That was a mistake—not because everyone should have bought Bitcoin, but because I ignored a structural change happening right in front of me. Bitcoin went from a cypherpunk expression of freedom to the largest ETF owned by BlackRock.

Today, the dominant story is artificial intelligence.

And whether you love stocks, hate stocks, prefer real estate, or focus exclusively on cash flow, you cannot afford to ignore AI. 

This isn’t a fad. It’s a general-purpose technology—on the scale of electricity, the internet, or the industrial revolution itself.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to invest in. It’s hard to look at headline names trading at massive valuations and feel good about buying them today. 

But investing in AI isn’t about chasing a single company. It’s about understanding second- and third-order effects: energy demand, data centers, productivity gains, labor displacement, capital flows, and how blockchain and decentralized systems intersect with all of it.

What experience has taught me is this: you don’t need to be first to invest—but you do need to be early in understanding. If you wait until something feels obvious, most of the opportunity is already gone.

This week’s episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast is focused squarely on AI and blockchain—what’s real, what’s noise, and where the long-term implications may lie.

Listen to this episode. You’ll come away smarter. And years from now, you may look back and realize this was one of those moments where paying attention really mattered.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you notice any errors or corrections, please email us at [email protected].

 Welcome everybody. This is Buck Joffrey with the Wealth Formula Podcast. Coming to you from Montecito, California. Today we wanna start with a reminder. We are in a new year and we are already doing deals, uh, through the Wealth Formula Accredit Investor Club. You can go and sign up for that for free. Uh, wealth formula.com just hit investor club and you just get on there and, and you’ll get onboarded.

And from there, all you gotta do is wait for deal flow and webinars coming to your inbox. And, um, you know, if nothing else, you learn something. So go check it out. Uh, go to. Wealth formula.com and sign up for Investor Club now onto today’s show. Uh, the, it is interesting. I don’t know if you are aware it’s a listener, but we are, wealth Formula is, uh, probably I would say one of the, certainly in the one of the top longest running personal finance podcasts still.

Standing. Uh, I