“If you go into a local community bank and ask for $50,000 in cash, you’re going to get a lot of questions—and very likely they’re going to say, ‘Come back in a week, we need to order that.’ The cash doesn’t exist.” Former Goldman Sachs risk manager Trey Sellers spent 15 years inside the machine before realizing the wealth you think you control is just a ledger entry someone else manages.
Bitcoin is so much more real than the dollars you see in your bank account. When you're holding Bitcoin with private keys, it's digital but physical in the way you actually interact with it.
— Trey Sellers
Timestamps
04:38Why traditional banking is a permission structure—and what happens when you can't access your own money
07:37The ledger illusion: How fiat currency is less real than Bitcoin despite being tangible
11:13Fractional reserve banking is dead—banks now operate with infinite reserves through Fed intervention
14:28How banks create new money through loans: The special licensure that gives institutions monetary superpowers
18:37Why holding a Bitcoin ETF isn't sovereignty—and what financial independence actually requires
22:16Information asymmetry and fee extraction: How custody models hide what you're really paying
28:11Mathematical certainty vs institutional reputation—when cryptography beats brand credibility
35:05Silicon Valley Bank collapse decoded: Interest rate risk, balance sheet mismanagement, and payroll crises
38:46Bitcoin treasury strategies demystified—why buying corporate shares to own Bitcoin usually underperforms
44:00The $500 million melting ice cube: How S&P 500 companies destroy shareholder value by holding cash
47:38From Wall Street to sovereignty: Trey's five-year path to financial independence through Bitcoin
56:14Raising kids in a Bitcoin world—teaching autonomy when institutions demand compliance
Trey Sellers is Vice President of Sales at Unchained and author of FireBTC, a newsletter on financial independence through Bitcoin. He spent 15 years in traditional finance at Goldman Sachs and Truist (formerly BB&T), running risk models and managing institutional portfolios. After achieving financial independence in five years, he left Wall Street to focus exclusively on Bitcoin. He writes weekly on how Bitcoin enables true financial sovereignty beyond traditional FIRE frameworks.