On a recent trip to Canada, I found myself seated next to a Crypto Maxi during lunch—one of those all-in, ride-or-die believers in the future of digital currency. I didn’t expect the conversation, but I enjoyed it. People like this don’t just open the door to their world easily, but if you stay curious, life presents learning opportunities. And if there’s one thing a good investor needs, it’s a healthy dose of greedy curiosity. The world moves fast, and the ability to think beyond the obvious is how you find the next great idea.

This particular lunch happened two days after Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, tried to pull a Trump-style move by backing a new meme coin called $LIBRA (because, you know, libertarian branding). Hours later, he yanked his support, sending the coin into an 89% freefall after an initial surge. Given how the Trump meme coin performed a month earlier, plenty of speculators—including my lunch companion—piled in, hoping for a quick win. Instead, they got rugged, just like those who gambled on other meme coins like Melania, Caitlyn Jenner, or even the 15-minute-famous Hawk Tuah girl.

If you look up the definition of a meme coin, it’s supposedly meant to be humorous, lighthearted, and community-driven. Really? Because what I learned over lunch made it sound like the same old pump-and-dump scheme, just with shinier marketing.

Here’s how the game works: Developers create a coin and set a maximum supply. A select group of insiders get in early, injecting just enough liquidity to make transactions flow. If the coin gains traction—meaning price movement and hype—the insiders start cashing out. In the case of $LIBRA, the creator, Hayden Davies, arranged for Milei to post about it on Elon’s platform (X) exactly three minutes after the coin launched. That one post sent $LIBRA soaring from $0.000001 to $5.20. Nine early investors cashed out, pocketing $87 million. Then, as expected, the price cratered back to $0.15, and now the same creators are blaming Milei for pulling his endorsement. Classic.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is basically the digital version of the pink-sheet, boiler-room stock scams that guys like Jordan Belfort made famous. Financial hustlers have been around forever; they just evolve with the times. One of my mentors used to say, “Money always returns to its rightful owner.” In other words, know the game you’re playing—or expect to get played.

From there, our conversation shifted to Bitcoin. At the end of last year, 19,918,068 Bitcoin had been mined—94.5% of the total 21 million supply. This scarcity is what makes Bitcoin the core investment for Crypto Maxis. My lunch companion had held Bitcoin through its wild ups and downs and wasn’t naïve about the possibility of another brutal dip. But things have changed.

For one, institutional investors—who avoided Bitcoin for the last decade—are now heavily involved. The recent SEC approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs has also made buying crypto as easy as purchasing a mutual fund in a Schwab, Fidelity, or Vanguard account. And with Trump signaling support, plus sovereign wealth funds getting involved, the FOMO is real.

The big question isn’t if you should invest in crypto, but how much of your portfolio to allocate. Right now, I have about 1% in Bitcoin ETFs and would consider increasing my position if the price dips below $90,000. But here’s the problem—plenty of other investors are thinking the same thing. It’s going to take a major risk-off event to create a true buying opportunity.

Long-term? Crypto Maxis predict Bitcoin could hit $750,000 by the end of Trump’s next term, with some bulls eyeing $1 million in the future. That’s a potential 7x return from today’s price. The logic? Widespread adoption, institutional buying, and Bitcoin’s finite supply. Imagine a future where the last Bitcoin has been mined. What will the price be then?

I don’t know the answer, but I’m willing to bet it’ll be higher than today. And I plan to stay in the game for the long haul.