The Phone Call From Teeka I’ll Never Forget

I (Houston) am writing to you from Money20/20 in Las Vegas. 

What I saw here this week took me straight back to a phone call I got from Big T three years ago, where he told me something I’ll never forget…

“Nobody realizes how big this is.”

It was the summer of 2023. I was at my desk in Delray Beach when Teeka called me from his yacht.

“Houston, is the BlackRock news real? Please tell me this is real.” 

He sounded like he was about to reach through the phone and shake me. 

Of course, Teeka already knew. As an ex-Wall Street guy, he’s more plugged in than anyone else I know. 

But for news this big, he wanted a second set of eyes, and he knows I watch my research feeds like a hawk.

The news was real. 

That day, BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager – had filed to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

BlackRock’s record with the SEC was 575 ETF approvals and one rejection. If this one went through, anyone with a brokerage account could buy bitcoin like a stock.

“Nobody realizes how big this is. It changes everything,” he told me. “Why is bitcoin not up $10,000 right now? Does no one understand what this means?” 

That’s when it really hit me. 

A wave of new buyers was coming, and I’d spent months sitting mostly in cash. 

We now know exactly what that meant: Within 18 months, spot bitcoin ETFs would pull in more than $35 billion of new money.      

To understand why that phone call stung, let me back up for a moment…

By early 2022, I’d moved most of my crypto into cash. My portfolio had peaked at about $1.3 million, and I wanted to protect what was left.

Then Celsius, one of the biggest crypto lenders, collapsed. A few months later, FTX’s implosion wiped out $200 billion in crypto market value in a matter of days. 

In early 2023, bitcoin started climbing anyway.     

I watched from a distance, too scared to put money back into a market that had just been devastated. 

By the time Teeka called me in June, bitcoin was up about 60% from its November low.

I felt like a fool. I’d been waiting for a starting gun and missed the run.

I estimate that waiting cost me roughly $500,000 in missed gains. 

Don’t get me wrong. Building a seven-figure portfolio from six figures of student debt taught me how to handle risk. 

But I’m still human. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. I share them with you to spare you the trouble of repeating them. 

That summer definitely taught me an expensive lesson (I’ll come back to it in a moment). 

And today, I’m seeing a familiar disconnect between what’s happening to crypto prices and what’s being built behind the scenes. 

That’s what brought me to Vegas.

What I’m Seeing in Las Vegas