Primary Topic
This episode discusses the concept of acquiring second and third citizenships to gain more freedom, reduce taxes, and ensure a backup plan in case of political or economic instability in one's home country.
Episode Summary
Main Takeaways
- Obtaining a second or third citizenship can provide significant tax advantages.
- Multiple citizenships offer greater personal and financial freedom.
- The process of acquiring additional citizenships can vary widely in cost and complexity.
- Having a backup citizenship can be a strategic move in case of political or economic instability.
- Countries like St. Kitts, Nevis, Turkey, and Malta offer citizenship by investment programs.
Episode Chapters
1: Introduction
Overview of the episode's primary focus on second citizenships and the benefits of diversifying one's national affiliations.
- Ryan Chaun Adams: "Given the state of the world, the question is, is it a good idea to diversify your citizenship?"
- David Hoffman: "You are a sovereign individual, and you can choose to be independent from the nation state you were born in."
2: Guest Introduction
Introduction of Andrew Henderson and his background in helping people gain multiple citizenships.
- Ryan Chaun Adams: "Andrew, welcome to Bankless. It's good to be with you."
- Andrew Henderson: "It's good to be here."
3: Benefits of Second Citizenship
Discussion on why people should consider a second citizenship, focusing on tax benefits, personal freedom, and as a safeguard.
- Andrew Henderson: "For the same reasons you want to be in crypto. The government's done a pretty bad job managing the money supply."
4: How to Obtain a Second Citizenship
Explanation of various methods to obtain additional citizenships, including investment, ancestry, and naturalization.
- Andrew Henderson: "You could get Mexican residence, spend some time in Mexico, apply in five years, while also getting St. Kitts and Nevis citizenship for 200 grand."
5: Challenges and Criticisms
Addressing common criticisms and challenges of acquiring multiple citizenships.
- Ryan Chaun Adams: "Some might think this is peak selfishness. This is unpatriotic."
- David Hoffman: "None of this is an endorsement of Nomad Capital services."
6: Case Studies and Examples
Real-life examples and case studies of individuals who have benefited from second citizenships.
- Andrew Henderson: "I have five citizenships. Might work on one or two more."
7: Practical Advice
Practical steps and advice for listeners interested in pursuing multiple citizenships.
- Andrew Henderson: "Check what's called citizenship by descent. Do I have an ancestor?"
8: Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Summary of key points and closing remarks.
- Ryan Chaun Adams: "This is really just like a case for a second citizenship, not a case for a specific service provider."
- David Hoffman: "We're here to learn."
Actionable Advice
- Research Ancestry: Check if you qualify for citizenship by descent in any country. Start gathering necessary documents.
- Consider Investment Programs: Look into countries that offer citizenship by investment, such as St. Kitts and Nevis or Malta.
- Assess Tax Implications: Understand the tax benefits and obligations of having a second citizenship.
- Plan for the Future: Even if you don't plan to move immediately, having a second citizenship can be a valuable backup plan.
- Stay Informed: Keep updated on global political and economic trends that might affect your decision.
- Consult Experts: Seek advice from professionals who specialize in citizenship and immigration law.
- Start Early: Begin the process early to avoid any rush or unforeseen complications.
- Diversify Locations: Consider having multiple citizenships in different regions to maximize your options.
- Evaluate Costs: Be aware of the financial requirements and weigh them against potential benefits.
- Prepare for Cultural Differences: Be ready to adapt to new cultures and legal systems.
About This Episode
Is it a good idea to diversify your citizenship given the current global landscape?
We brought on Andrew Henderson, an entrepreneur, a global citizen to nearly a dozen countries around the world, and the founder Nomad Capitalist - a company that helps people maximize their freedom by getting multiple citizenships and passports.
Hear why considering a second or even a third citizenship might be beneficial, the most crypto-friendly jurisdictions, and what an exit tax entails. Andrew also shares why he renounced his US citizenship and provides insights into the costs and process of obtaining a second passport.
People
Andrew Henderson, Ryan Chaun Adams, David Hoffman
Companies
Nomad Capitalist
Books
"The Sovereign Individual"
Guest Name(s):
Andrew Henderson
Content Warnings:
None
Transcript
Ryan Chaun Adams
Welcome to bankless, where today we're exploring the frontier of second passports and second citizenships. This is Ryan Chaun Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. There's a rabbit hole we're diving into today. Given the state of the world, the question is, is it a good idea to diversify your citizenship?
We're talking about your nation state citizenship, of course. And we've seen some recent crypto hostility in the west. The question is, what if it gets worse? Should you have a backup plan, a place to immigrate? Andrew Henderson on the podcast today.
He's an expert in this. A few questions we ask. Number one, why should people think about a second or third citizenship? What are the benefits? Number two, what are the most crypto friendly jurisdictions?
What does he recommend? Number three, what's an exit tax? What does that mean? And why did our guests choose to renounce his us citizenship? Number four, how much does all of this cost, and how do you do it?
How do you go get a second passport? It's worth asking the question, why are we doing this episode? My answer for this is because the idea of being, like, sovereign as an individual from your own nation state that you're born in is interesting. And without endorsing it, we want to understand this activity that one can do. There's a book that we have cited in the past many times, the sovereign individual.
David Hoffman
And there's a lot of content in there that aligns with some of the ideas here that you are. You are a sovereign individual, and you can choose to be, like, independent from the nation state that you just happened to be born in. And so this is what we are exploring as an idea here today. It's just worth knowing that the strategies that our guest Andrew illustrates on this episode is a possibility for you, whether you enjoy it or not. So that's kind of the motivation here.
We're here to learn. Yeah, and let me expand on what David said. Just. Just give you guys a trigger warning and then a disclaimer. So the trigger warning is this.
Ryan Chaun Adams
This episode might rub some of you the wrong way. You might hear some of the claims Andrew's making and just think, oh, my God, this. This is peak selfishness. This is unpatriotic. This is just another example of the rich elites getting on the lifeboats and leaving everyone else behind.
So we talked about some of those critiques toward the end of the episode, and I think, David, you and I will be talking about some of those critiques in the debrief that we're about to have, too. So if this is not your thing, of course, feel free to skip the episode. There's lots of episodes. Episodes on the Bankless podcast. Uh, and then lastly, a disclaimer.
None of this is an endorsement of nomad Capital services. Um, this is the company that Andrew founded. We don't know what they're like. Neither David nor myself have used them. Do your own research.
Price it out if this is something you're interested in, they're just the guys. Talk to that we, that we discovered. This episode is really. It's just like a case for a second citizenship, not a case for a specific service provider. So with that said, let's get to the episode with Andrew Henderson.
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David Hoffman
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Just another way Uniswap is helping you. Swap smarter bankless nation I'm very excited to introduce you to Andrew Henderson. He's an entrepreneur. He is a global citizen at home in nearly a dozen countries around the world. I'm actually not sure where he is today.
Ryan Chaun Adams
Maybe we'll ask him that question. He's also the founder of Nomad Capitalist, which is a company, an organization that helps people maximize their freedom by getting multiple citizenships and passports. And that's what we're here to talk about today. Andrew, welcome to bankless. It's good to be with you.
Andrew Henderson
And hopefully reduce their taxes too, because they're going crazy in some of these places, but it's good to be here. They really are. And you know, some, there's some crypto hostile jurisdictions out there too, that we probably want to talk to you about, because we got a crypto audience. But I have to ask the question, so what citizenship are you logging in from today here? Like, what jurisdiction?
Well, I'm sitting in Ireland doing meetings with some people who work for me this is actually interesting. I was on the radio in Ireland a couple days ago, and she's like, well, how do I move somewhere and get a citizenship? I'm not an irish citizen. So you want to go some places as a tourist, you have a residence permit. In some places, maybe some places you go, you are a citizen.
You want to mix it up a little bit, and you want to, as I say, go where you're treated best. If citizenship is the best in a certain place, that's one you want to hold. If it's better to be a resident, then that's better, you know, better to be a tourist. Sometimes that's better. In places like in Europe, go as a tourist.
So I am in Ireland. We've got some great people here. Does that mean are you a citizen of Ireland then, Andrew as well? No. Okay, so this is a resident tourist.
Ryan Chaun Adams
Okay. Do you consider yourself, like, do you identify with any country that you are a citizen in particular, or are you more of just a global citizen? You're a citizen of the world, don't actually have any sort of meaningful alignment with any country. I mean, I have five citizenships. Might work on one or two more.
Andrew Henderson
Certainly there's ones that I've spent time in that I've come to appreciate the people. I also understand, for me, I think you should judge yourself by your accomplishments and your identity. And when I look at, we've got a YouTube channel with about 2700 videos on it. I've been doing this for a long time. And one of the biggest retorts we get from people who watch our stuff for the first time is, oh, well, if the US is so bad, why are people moving here?
Well, the difference between a multimillionaire leaving and people coming who are in search of low wage service work, a lot of respect for people who come and want to work hard, but it's not a one to one comparison. And so for me, I think if you're at a level where you are an entrepreneur, you are successful, you're firing at all cylinders. It's probably harder to be identified with a lot of places. That's how I look at it. I can go to any country, no matter how much I like it, and say, yeah, there's still a lot of people that I probably don't really identify with that much.
And so for me, being born at the edge of the United States, I find it hard to understand. How is it someone born right over there is canadian and I'm american? It's just a very weird concept that I think people in the bankless audience understand probably. Yeah. Yeah, I think they do.
Ryan Chaun Adams
I think we have some nomads in the bankless audience, both from a, like, they travel all over the world. They don't necessarily have one residence as their home. But certainly we're financial nomads in that we have already exited our existing financial system to some extent, kind of the fiat system, and now we're doing more on crypto, maybe just to give you a quick overview of the audience and who you're kind of addressing today. So a lot of people listening are. They're definitely into crypto, right?
And so they probably have assets on the blockchain so that they actually own, that's kind of in the jurisdiction, the property rights system of the blockchain. So call them kind of nomade investors. And they certainly know about concepts like tail risk events. They know and acknowledge. We've done so much content on this.
Empires, fiat systems, they all have finite lifespans, right? So they don't take it for granted that the system that they were born into is going to be the system that is alive and well in the future. And also, I should say, probably most of them, almost all of them, I would say, don't have a backup to their fiat citizenship yet. Probably most listeners of bank lists, I'm just assuming here, we've not done the surveys, but they probably only have one citizenship. So, David, I know you have one citizenship, right?
You're american. I have two citizenships. But it's only by virtue of the fact that I was actually born across the border, as you said, on the canadian side, and my mother's american, so I managed to kind of get two in the process, but I haven't gone through the, you know, the process of collecting it. I think you're probably addressing a lot of people here who are like, what? I mean, I was born a citizen of x country.
Why do I need a second citizenship? And there's also, I would say, a group that you're addressing of, like, there's definitely millionaires and billionaires that listen to bankless. Like, there just is. They've done well in crypto, they've done, done well in life. But there's a lot of people who haven't made it financially yet that listen to bankless as well.
They haven't achieved financial freedom. And so they're probably thinking like, cool. I mean, the rich people get multiple citizenships, but this sounds like some kind of a yacht club that I'm not a part of. I can't join anyway. That's some context in terms of who you're addressing on the podcast today.
Is that helpful? And I've seen your show for years, and I think it's an important message. I mean, I've worked with a lot of folks over the years at nomad capitalist who are in crypto. It's a great audience. I mean, for me, I think why you want to have a second citizenship, and I would even argue now you probably need a third citizenship.
Andrew Henderson
For me, I kind of want to have plan f g, maybe even h. Maybe that's a little bit extreme, but for the same reasons you want to be in crypto. I mean, the government's done a pretty bad job managing the money supply. Look at inflation, look at all the things. I mean, look at the countries that we're from and all the upheaval these days where people can't afford rent, they can't afford groceries.
And that's going to have meaningful consequences on people who are citizens of those countries. Why? Because if you want to live overseas, if you're an american, you already are wed to the US tax system, so you need the second passport to potentially exit the US. And if you're in crypto, unfortunately, it's harder to get out of the US tax system while staying a citizen. I guess there's places like Puerto Rico, but it's harder to get out of the US tax system than it would be for an entrepreneur because you're engaged in what they consider, generally speaking, a passive activity.
Passive income for Americans abroad is not taxed that favorably. Having a second citizenship, number one, allows you to get out of that system. I think Canada or Australia is slowly moving, if maybe not to the front door, through the back door to a kind of system where, hey, you can't leave.
Australia gave some guidance last year. Basically, I'll shorthand it. If you don't live overseas the way we want you to, maybe you'll remain an australian taxpayer. And so. Wait a second.
I was born in Australia. I lived there and paid taxes. I wasn't. But let's just say that's just you. You pay your taxes for as long as you can in Australia, and then you say, you know what?
I'm sick of this. I'm going to leave. There is going to be an exit tax to get out, which is actually why if you're just starting out, if you're a pre yacht club levels, you're actually in a good position to go and do something before they get you for a big chunk on the way out. But I mean, for the same reasons, the government shouldn't be trusted to do anything else. You want to have second citizenships.
And what I've argued, and this is one of the hard things for people who are new to this concept to understand, I'd rather be St. Lucian than american. If I can make money on my own terms, what do I need the United States for? The US? Us citizenship is great.
That I can move to the. I can live in the United States, I can get a job that requires me to be a us citizen, and I can work physically on us soil. Well, increasingly, I bet any of us could go and work somewhere else in Dubai. We could get a job there somewhere else, or we could get a remote job from a us company that doesn't care where we live. Nomad capitalist hires people all over the world.
We don't have any Americans, which maybe tells you something about the way the world's going, but we don't have any Americans. But we could theoretically hire an American if they didn't live in the US. And if you're in crypto and you make your own money, what do you need? So I'd rather be St. Lucian because guess what?
St. Lucia's not going to impose a bunch of dumb regulations. They're not going to try and tax me if I don't live there. If I'm St. Lucian, I can also choose to live in St.
Kitts, and they don't tax me even if I do live there, you know, so I want more freedom of movement. I want a passport that's agnostic. I mean, look at the Julian Assange news in more recent times. You know what? I'm a former us citizen.
I'm just as proud of not having to be associated with that kerfuffle and not having to have that on my hands. So this is why you want a second passport. You're detaching from the system the same way you did from. And I love how you call it fiat citizenship.
I just think that economically and from a freedom perspective, countries like the US are going to be much more aggressive in the years to come at taking your money and taking away your freedoms. We could go into any of that, but that's why you need it. I don't even think two is enough. Listen, you should get your canadian passport. But Canada and the US have become more like the same country.
I mean, Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh up there, it's not heading in the right direction. Yeah, they certainly feel like a very similar country. Let's talk a bit more about why people are getting second citizenships and third citizenships. And you listed a whole bunch of reasons. I just want to set the context for this.
Ryan Chaun Adams
So some people hearing that might be cheering you on and being like, hell yeah, Andrea, that's right. We're nomads. We want to live in different jurisdictions. Others might be listening to that and might be squirming a little bit because they might be thinking about, well, is this just running away? Is this, like, unpatriotic, that kind of thing?
We'll get to those critiques at the end. I don't want to address that yet, but we'll get to those critiques for people who are interested in it. What you basically said kind of reminds me of a book long hallowed by folks in crypto called the sovereign individual. Have you read this book? Yeah.
Okay. So the basic premise is governments may in the future provide a deteriorating quality of goods for their citizens and kind of like an economic mix. It just like, isn't worthwhile. And they'll begin to kind of capture their citizens and entrap them in the systems. Like Fiat is maybe one example of that.
Right? And there's this classic choice type of theory. I forget who wrote this in the 1970s, but basically, if you are responding as an individual to a deteriorating set of goods and services, you have three options, right? You can use your voice, try to change that. And so the example of this would be political action, right?
Getting involved in politics, trying to move the system in a different direction, or loyalty. So you've got voice, loyalty as another example, which is you just remain loyal to the system that is not providing you the benefit. You just kind of like, take it on the chin and keep at it. Or exit is the third option. So these are your options.
Voice, loyalty and exit. And with nomad capitalist, what you're doing with a second passport is having the option to exit, which is like a valid choice when there is a deterioration in the goods and services. And this is very much what we do. If, say, your ISP is not providing you good service and the Internet sucks and you switch to an ISP that does provide good service and you're getting value for that dollar. So exit is really the choice that you're emphasizing.
Do you have any reflections on just that in general before we further establish why people want a second citizenship? Listen, I went to a restaurant not that long ago, and it used to be one of my favorite restaurants, and I went and they were always so nice to me, and I don't know what happened to the, the one or two guys who are always so nice, but now they're not so nice and the food's not quite as good. So guess what? I'm probably not going to go back, at least not as often. And so I'm exercising my power of choice.
Andrew Henderson
He's fleeing the restaurant. He's running away like a coward from the indian restaurant. It's a travesty. No, it sucks. And I decided not to go back.
And I think I look at this much like relationships. One of the faults that, I mean, I don't know if it's mistakes that I've made in the past in personal relationships and probably with some employees too, is you spend too much time. Like, you see the good in them and you want it to work out. I'm a person. I'm successful.
I want other people to be successful. I see. Hey, here's your skill. Let me help you. And sometimes they've got a bad attitude or sometimes they won't put in the effort or whatever.
They just can't. Maybe you, you overestimated their skills and you keep like, lecturing them, like, okay, I'm gonna give you. Eventually it loses its input and it's not gonna work. Or you have a relationship where it's just like, you're not gonna change the person due to any number of factors. And I would argue it's increased competition among countries.
As the sovereign individual talked about. We have an event called Nomad Capitalist Live. It's hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I spend my winters. I've been going there for ten years. It is as good as many us cities.
In my opinion, probably the best value city in the world. You would not think about going there 25 years ago. Never would have thought about it. The reason you don't go there today is because 25 years ago isn't enough time to build a brand like the United States that people flock to like Coca Cola. So maybe 75 more years from now they'll have that Coca Cola like brand and people will realize Malaysia punches well above its weight.
But it hasn't developed that brand yet and they haven't probably done a good enough job marketing it and talking about how free it is and everything else. But to me, you go to the places where they offer you the opportunity and you walk away from the relationships, the bad relationships. I mean, how many we've all been in some relationship could be a friendship, could be a love relationship where the person thought they were going to shame you or manipulate you into doing what you wanted to, right and some of us probably stuck around longer than we should have. And, like, try to, like, come to some agreement, like the political process you're talking about. We try to come to some agreement with the people, and it's like, no, this person's a manipulative person.
They're, they're not looking to come to an agreement. They're looking to dominate. They're looking to win. They're looking to be selfish and have it their way. That's the US.
And by the way, I got some comments from people that if you have the passport, you should pay. That's the privilege. So what you're seeing is a shifting of, of obligation onto citizenship, where it used to be benefits back in the nineties, when Kuala Lumpur wasn't the competition of the western world, when Dubai wasn't the competition of the western world, when nobody was moving to Panama to retire, when everyone just kind of stayed in the western countries and they had all the power. Yeah, citizenship is all about you're one of us. Look at all the privileges you get now that there's competition.
Now people are leaving. They want to beat you over the head with it. And so to me, that's an abusive relationship. Would you stay in that in your personal life? Well, you know, in your personal life, you have sex with the person.
You have a nice, you know, you, you talk about you. You don't have any of that with the government. You just pay them and they shame you and bully you, and then it's. You're running away like a coward. Well, you know, you're one of 330 million people in the United States.
If the culture has shifted, it doesn't matter what you think because there's probably already a place where they agree with what you want. And these, these, I'll tell you what I'm going to say. Just for people who are watching the Airpod pro, they really was a real downgrade from the regular Airpods. They fit in so nicely. These Airpod pros.
I'll tell you what, they got to bring Steve jobs fall out of your earth. No, they consistently fall out. You could get multiple sizes. You know, there's like some size choice. I got something.
It goes in the bin. I don't know where the. This is my Larry David esque ramblings on Airpods. Well, okay, so let's talk some more about the second citizenship. You know, like one, one point just to reinforce what you're saying for a minute.
Ryan Chaun Adams
Again, we'll get to some criticisms toward the end of the episode, but just there was a time and a place where the US very much was that upstart country to flee to is a country that's very much formed by immigrants from the old world to the new world. Like the land of opportunity meme that was very much born in the US. So at some level, this type of country's competing for citizens and talents on its good and service, goods and services and on its opportunity has always been in play, right. And so it remains in play right now. But let's talk about specifics.
So why should an individual listening to this, who has a citizenship in one jurisdiction, why do they need a second citizenship? Or like, what factors go into what are the common reasons? So you mentioned a few in the intro. I just want to dwell on this a little bit. Is it about a backup plan?
Is it about like if shit really hits the fan in the country that I'm in and I need to pick up and move, then I already have that way established. Is it about tax, like lowering my tax burden? Is it about additional property rights or culture? Like, what are the main reasons when you talk to people at nomad that people, like, why they go through the process and the pain of getting a second citizenship? You make a great point just real quick on the part of people moved.
Andrew Henderson
If you're from the US or Canada, people fled where they were from to move to where you live now at some point. And it's an issue of empires never last forever. So I think that's one reason why you want a second citizenship. If you're in the dying last gasps of an empire that sounds to me like a tiger. You've backed into a corner.
I mean, they're not going to just, oh, you know what? We had our time and, okay, that's great. Now China's going to run things. So, okay, everybody, you're free to do what you want. Of course they're not going to do that.
So again, I mean, a lot of the people we work with are from countries that are heavy handed. If you're from Liechtenstein, I'm a little bit less worried than if you're from the United States. I mean, I would want to be protected no matter what. But, you know, I mean, I've interviewed, you know, presidents of countries like Georgia, you know, 4 million people. He's like, you know, when you, when you start to shake things up, people come up and tell you because it's a small enough place, you fired someone, they know they're pissed off.
Like, you know, you get more of it. Is anyone really think that the US or Germany or the UK or Australia that anyone's listing. I mean, look at how many countries are now moving their capital into these brand new middle of nowhere areas like South Africa has, Australia has now Indonesia, Egypt, where I just was. They're building a brand new capital. Why?
One of the things that they talk about is they want to be far away from the people. They don't want the protests to come to their door. You know, Tahrir Square in Cairo back in the Arab Spring, that's pretty close to the government. If the government's 80 miles east, hey, all is well, let the peasants riotous. So you want to be protected from that, that they can't do whatever is heavy handed.
I prefer a plan a personally, but I understand not everyone's ready for a plan a. So that's plan b. If plan b is, I like where I'm living. I'm happy to pay tax. And we see in the tax journals all the time, they're coming after people with crypto more and more.
That's. I mean, I love everything crypto stands for. My one frustration is, you know, the people who have billions of dollars at their disposal to go up to people who don't pay their taxes, whether you think it's fair or nothing, that's their job, and they're looking increasingly at crypto. So if you're willing to live in a place and you accept the tax rate that comes with that, and you accept that there could be an unrealized capital gains tax to pay when you decide to leave, and that the lower the better, then fine, have a second passport. And I would say, psychologically, you want to start spending time either in that country or you want to have a residence permit somewhere as well, and you want to spend time there because to your point, I mean, if we all said, I'm going to leave when things get bad enough, have you been watching the news the last 25 years?
I mean, there was no time in there that you would have said, hey, back in 1999, I would have said, this is bad enough, but, you know, we're the frog in the boiling pot. You know, we've grown used to the fact the government's reading my mail. I saw that came out the other day in the news. They're listening to our call. You know, whatever.
You know, we get accustomed to things and our freedoms get eroded slowly, and we just say, all right, I'm never going to leave. So my philosophy is if you say, all right, I'm going to get a residence permit in some country and I'm going to go there on winter break or I'm going to go there on summer break or I'm going to spend my. Whatever you want to do, I'm going to be comfortable. Maybe you buy a property. Even so, I own a property.
I have a residence permit. Maybe I've got a citizenship or I'm working towards citizenship, something like that. I'm going to be better equipped to leave if I'm taking that plan b route because I'm going to be comfortable where I'm going. I think that's a big psychological point and that's why we have our event in Kuala Lumpur and not Orlando or something, because I want people to come and see what it's like. Oh, this Malaysia.
This is pretty good. This is pretty livable. What a great city. I think the biggest problem that people in the western world have is they're from the US and they went to the UK. Well, the UK is essentially the same country.
It's trending in the same bad direction. If you haven't been to some places that you're not almost uncomfortable with, you probably haven't seen all the opportunities that are out there. I could afford to live in Monaco. It doesn't work for me. I could afford to live in Paris or something.
That's not what I'm interested in. I want to be in places that are moving in the right direction. And that probably means places that have some more room to grow. That means a bit more emerging, places where I'm more personally free. The taxes are lower or non existent and it just feels better.
And so if you are going to be forced to, hey, things are terrible in the US. Go to someplace you've never heard of before, you're going to push back on that. So I think having the plan b is the first place to start. Get comfortable with one or more places. Start traveling.
If you have dual citizenship and you haven't claimed your other passport, get it, see what it likes. See what it feels like to travel on that canadian passport in your case. Because hey, you could decide not to be a us citizen. You could still come to the US when all likelihood is a Canadian pretty easily. You could travel without some of the tax restrictions.
You could live overseas without those restrictions. The embassies are nicer to you. So see what that feels like. To get ready. For me, I decided to move overseas immediately.
I think you learn a lot by doing that. I ultimately got comfortable enough to give up my citizenship and I think plan a is the better way to go because when something bad happens, it's too late. Robert Kiyosaki came to one of our events and he said, where can you get in three days? Well, part of Robert Kiyosaki's plan to your earlier point is, hey, I've got a jet ready to charter. Right?
What if you're fighting to fly commercial? You couldn't fly commercial during the COVID for example, if you're canadian, you couldn't leave. You could only fly. If you weren't vaccinated, you could only fly private. So like, my thought is when things get too bad, there's times when they, when they pass a new tax law and you have seven days before the law kicks in, if you're still here, it affects you.
I mean, there's literally been the case in some places. They just, it comes up. Nobody thought it was going to pass. You got seven days. Well, are you going to relocate your entire life in seven days?
No. Are you going to move when the next pandemic happens or move when the next, whatever happens, probably not. You're going to sit there and you're going to just kind of, okay, it's not that much worse. So I want you to have multiple places you're comfortable with. Like Ryan said, we have a pretty wide audience here at bankless.
David Hoffman
We have billionaires who live inside of the US who have already made it, but perhaps they only have one citizenship. And then we also have listeners who intend to become millionaires at the very least. But I'm going to go ahead and guess at the general case for most of them, most listeners is that they haven't really considered this possibility. And maybe it's because they haven't had the motivation to yet. They haven't decided that it's worth the time, the resources, the research in order to make this happen.
Maybe you could also give the case about why I, this might become more relevant in the future, why the motivation to become dual citizen, triple citizen was going to become more and more useful as time goes on. Is this crescendoing? Is this getting worse? What are the catalysts for this? Well, my parents and I, we talked about this around the kitchen table when I was in the late nineties, when I was a kid.
Andrew Henderson
And my father would say, look, here's the economic freedom rankings. The US just went down one. Or here's. He would read different statistics. I think the US is like the 25th freest economy in the world.
So that's not Somalia levels. Let's not devolve ourselves to like, well, they just moved to somalia. But there's 24 places, including some ex Soviet Union states, that are now more free. So got the 44th best passport, according to the index that we put out. I mean, go where you're treated best is you find the best.
You don't settle for 44th place. You deserve better. And so I've been talking about this stuff since 2012, and I will tell you over the last. What is that? Twelve years ago, I went to public school.
It was hard for me. Twelve years. It is a lot. There's a lot more westerners who get it. We have a lot more people coming for plan b.
And we've had some of the centimillionaire and billionaire people coming in and saying, I don't just want a second passport. I want every passport I can get my hands on. And they'll usually walk it back to, like, four when they realize what's involved and the work and all that. But, I mean, the trend is dramatically up. We get people all the time.
I never thought I would call you. It's kind of a fun thing to watch on YouTube. I don't know where my country has gone. I never thought they would lock us inside. I never thought I couldn't leave my country or come back to my country.
I never thought they would think that two thirds of my wealth should be taxed. I never thought this. I never thought that. I think it's only going to get worse, quite frankly. I think more countries are going to tax people the way the US does, to where you basically can't leave without giving up your citizenship.
And again, I think that goes back to people are hurting. And so the guy who wants to live overseas with his crypto millions is not going to be a very sympathetic political target. And so the best system there is to exit if your government comes and says, hey, you know what? We need some extra cash. And we figured out I that even though an extra $123 million a year isn't that much extra money for the budget doesn't move the needle.
It sells politically. And, hey, some crypto fat cats that we don't really understand, and they bought some coin. I don't know how it works. They're probably laundering money. Yeah, take their money so I can get my free healthcare.
There's going to be more of that. I mean, there wasn't that desperation 25 or 30 years ago in the western countries, but there increasingly is. And so you want to pass port to be able to remove yourself. Now, if you choose to move overseas now, the residence and or passport reduces your taxes now. And I think the one thing your audience can take away is if you're trying to become a millionaire or if you're trying to make more money, no matter where you're at, many countries have an exit tax.
And so if you leave a country like Canada or Australia, or if you give up us citizenship, they're going to say, how much unrealized capital gain do you have? And we're going to tax you on that because, hey, we're not going to chase you down. We're not going to have any mechanism to know when you sell that stuff in the future. So you could just pay us on the paper gain now. And there was just actually a Supreme Court ruling on something kind of related where they're like, yeah, we can bring out wealth taxes.
We can tax you like that. Yeah, no problem. So I guess I say it this way very simply. I prefer everybody to leave right now, lower your taxes, and make sure that you're somewhere safe when the first starts flying or somewhere multiple places safe the way I have. But I think that the ability to turn on or turn off a residence or a citizenship when they come down the pike and say, hey, effective next week or next month, we're doing this thing.
You don't have time to respond to get a second citizenship. So my initial point was, I feel like I'm Noah building the ark here. People laughed in 2012. Why does an American need another passport? Some still laugh now, but I feel like it's going to only become more and more.
I don't say this because I hate the US. I could probably run many other businesses that actually made more money. This is a relatively niche business. We're very good at it. But I could find something else to sell if I wanted to.
I've run other businesses in the past. I fundamentally have believed my entire life that the western world is going the wrong direction. And I just think it's a good thing to be prepared. And I think that if you're in crypto, you're going to have to take a hit of one, two, 5% to protect the other 95% to 99%, because I just don't think that your government's going to play fair. You're not a politically sympathetic group, neither am I.
And they're just going to be more and more desperate for cash. And you want to be ready. I think people can kind of understand that narrative. I've always considered my citizenship of Canada and the US as kind of an asset and like, for, for most of my life, and I still, I think I net believe that. But there have been times you like, it just began on behalf of crypto natives where you're like, wow, look at this list of blocked countries for this crypto airdrop or this defi tool that I want to use.
Ryan Chaun Adams
It's like Iran, North Korea and the United States of America. And you start to kind of wonder like, am I the one living in a financial prison? So you're telling me if I use a VPN from another country or am I a citizen another country, then I can access this airdrop free money, basically. But because I'm in the US, then I can't. These types of things are like, I guess part of the frog boiling maybe mini wake up calls, let's call them, but let's talk.
Actually, I just want to emphasize what you just said because I think a lot of people are actually unaware of exit taxes because they've not even considered exiting. You mentioned Canada, you mentioned Australia, you mentioned the US. Just like, can you clarify once again what an exit tax actually is? So if I choose to leave the US, does that mean if I assume residency in another place or if I get a second passport, then am I taxed at some level or do I have to actually renounce my citizenship? And you said the exit tax is a tax on unrealized gains.
Let's just make sure people are clear on what an exit tax actually is and the implications of it and how you sort of plan for that. This is the reason I think plan a is better, because if you're planning on becoming wealthier, it's always easier to say, hey, 25% will be more comfortable when I have more money, 25% or whatever the rate is, is always 25%. It's going to sting. So what happens is when you change your tax residence status, so getting a second passport doesn't change things. Now, I have seen with some of the, you mentioned a crypto airdrops where someone gets a second passport.
Andrew Henderson
And I guess some of those projects, they said, hey, if you can show us the other passport, we're cool with that. I'm not sure if that applies to all of them, but I know we've had that call where it wasn't, we don't give it to Americans, it was, you need to have some other passport. Bank accounts don't work that way. If you're an American, you're an American, you're an American, you could have 100 other passports. So the getting the second passport doesn't change the tax status, doesn't trigger the exit tax.
If you were to move overseas as an american, that also generally won't trigger it. Now, you could go to Puerto Rico and there's some interesting things with how that works, and that could kind of be a pre exit tax plan. But then you're living in Puerto Rico and you've actually got to live there. So let's just take that out of the equation. When you end your tax residence in a country as an american, as a us citizen, or a long term green card holder, you have to do that by renouncing or relinquishing.
Ryan Chaun Adams
Hmm. Everywhere else, you just become a tax non resident. So if you leave Canada and you go through all the proper channels now, they are checking more and it is more difficult than it was 20 years ago because more people are doing it. But if you go through all the proper channels, if you cut your ties, if you minimize your time in the country, if you do all the things you're supposed to do, you're out of the tax system. And now you can keep your canadian passport and you can go and live wherever you want.
Andrew Henderson
Now, if you go and live in France, then obviously you're going to become a tax resident of France. So you either want to move to a tax friendly or tax free country or you want to move to a series of countries and then have a tax friendly tax residence where you spend, let's say a month in the tax residence and then you spend a couple months each in the rest. Anyway, that's where you're going. So obviously you can't choose anywhere to go because other countries, you could become a tax resident as well. But just leaving where you're from, Canada, Australia, Germany, what have you, keep the passport, leave the tax residence, you'll have certain restrictions on how much time you can go back and visit all of that.
But any country with the next tax, they're basically going to say, yeah, what haven't we taxed? They're all a little bit different. But the general principle is, well, you're no longer our taxpayer, so you're like, you're dead to us, so pay us what you owe and then go and be free. And so generally that's a capital gains tax rate. If you're an american, it takes giving up your citizenship to do that.
You can lower the tax burden by living in Puerto Rico. You can lower it if you're an entrepreneur running a business by living overseas. But if you want to fully get rid of the tax burden, you have to renounce us citizenship because that has what's called citizenship based taxation a Canadian will pay tax as long as they live in Canada. It's called residential based taxation. You're taxed based on where you live.
Most Canadians do, ironically, live in Canada. Most Australians live in Australia. So the US has the disadvantage. I think other countries might eventually follow suit in some way. We're already kind of seeing moves in that direction.
But it's about changing your tax residents and when basically, once you're off their books, they're like, well, hey, I mean, if you didn't leave, you would have had this capital gain accruing. So it could be an interesting companies. We had a guy, he hired us twice, and the value, I don't remember how much, but the value of his company went up dramatically where he was actually raising money, where it was easily provable. What his company's worth, he couldn't afford to renounce because he just didn't have enough money to pay the capital gains bill because he couldn't sell any more shares. Yet he would be Bill charged with his company worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
He would have had like $100 million bill and no way to raise the cash, so he literally couldn't.
That's why I think you want to get out first. If you're in the US, there's a $2 million marker that as long as you've been tax compliant and you haven't had, like, a ridiculously high income and a federal tax to match, you get up to 2 million. So that's kind of the marker. So if you're, you know, you get. Up to 2 million, you know, like, of gains that are basically tax free.
Ryan Chaun Adams
If you renounce or if you exit, you're not. You're not a covered expatriate. Right. So you're not. And so, yeah, you're not liable for all the, all the hoopla.
Andrew Henderson
If you're over the 2 million, you still get an exemption and it goes up every year. But, yeah, I mean, it's better to be under $2 million in the US. And that's a big decision because you're choosing to renounce. Now, if you're canadian, you know, they probably let you come back. If you choose to be St.
Lucian or something and you have to go and get a visa, it's not guaranteed, right? There's no guaranteed right to return to the US. So, I mean, that's why I think getting comfortable, we've had people come to us who are in crypto. Hey, I've got $600,000. Okay.
Find a few places that are affordable. Get comfortable with them, see how you feel living outside of the United States. And when you hit that $2 million number, then make a decision, but don't get to $2 million, then, like, holy cow, do I want to never come back to this place. I mean, you're not going to make that decision. Yeah.
Ryan Chaun Adams
The US kind of like, I guess, presses you into a very high stakes, sort of, like, situation. Not only do they tax you if you are a resident of another country, but kind of like the exit tax and exit criterion is somewhat harsh. And I'm not sure what it looks like to ever try to change your mind. If you kind of, like, exit the US, then you want to come back, if that's an option. But I would imagine that's not an option.
Andrew Henderson
That's right. I did renounce my citizenship in 2017. I mean, I could come back the same way anybody else could. Now I've got a loud mouth and I make YouTube videos about how, you know, we host this event and we talk about, I think the US is going the wrong direction. So, you know, the people who issue visas are humans.
I probably have a lesser chance than someone who just, you know, quietly. You have to wait in line, basically, in the immigration. Right. But the point is, if I want to, if I don't have an irish passport or canadian passport or whatever, there's 42 or so, you could just come back. Even if you can come back, there's conditions.
Have you been to Iran? Have you been to Cuba? Have you done this? Have you done that? But if I ever wanted to move back, yeah, I mean, I can get an e two visa, which means starting a business, but they don't have to give you that.
And depending on which passport you have, maybe harder. I could get a green card by investing, but now I'm a taxpayer again. I guess you could get married to someone. But so, I mean, all these things have some level of human involvement. I know people who've renounced and they don't have great passports and they get us visas and they came back.
One guy came back and his wife gave birth in the US, so all of his other children would also be american because his first one was born before he renounced. And they literally came back to give birth on us soil just so their kids were equal with the citizenships. But he had renounced and he and his filipino wife got visas. But anyway, you know, if the issue always is, are you going to be a sympathetic person when you go in and say, hey, I'm getting married to an American. Can I please apply for a green card.
You know, I mean, depends on where you go, depends on where you live. There's a whole lot of factors. But I mean, they don't have to say yes to anybody. I mean, they literally said no to the guys helping them. Like in Afghanistan during the war, the translators.
Oh, you met a guy from al Qaeda once. Yes sir. You can't come to our country, stay there and die. You think they're gonna, you know, you think if they do that to their own allies in a war, they're not gonna, some of them aren't gonna be like this guy, renounced with his crypto millions. Let's let him come back.
No, I mean, there's no way to reclaim. Citizenship is the bottom line. Got it. So I think in a few countries there are, but certainly not in the US. New projects are coming online to the mantle layer two every single week.
David Hoffman
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Make sure you're vote ready by staking your CTSI. Before the votes open. Let's talk about the us examples some more, and then we'll talk about like non us examples. So if a us citizen is kind of listening to this and they want to think through the plan a or the plan b, but they're definitely interested in kind of a second passport somewhere. There's tons of countries, right?
Ryan Chaun Adams
So what should they choose? What's kind of like on your top five list of countries or jurisdictions that might be fit for a second passport? And then what does that even look like? How do you apply? Does that cost money?
Like how much? Just shade in some details here. I mean, we've helped people get a couple dozen different countries passports, so there's a couple main things to do. The first thing that I would check is what's called citizenship by descent. Do I have an ancestor?
Andrew Henderson
So in your case, some people actually, you know, their, their mother was born in Canada and they didn't really realize that, but like in Canada, if you're born there, you're a citizen. Same as in the US, same as in Mexico. I think we had a guy once his parents were born in Mexico, he didn't realize he's eligible to be mexican. So that's kind of an extreme version of citizenship by descent. What most people do is they go through their grandparents.
So if your grandparents are irish, for example, or if you have great grandparents who are italian, Slovakia opened it up. You can go back even further now. So certain countries go back certain distances. A lot of them are in Europe. But we had a guy who, his dad was from St.
Kitts and Nevis, which actually has a passport by investment program, but his dad was actually born there, so he could get that. Or they're mexican, or they're whatever. So Latin America and Europe have been the big ones for us, where go back to the family tree and if someone was a citizen, every country has their own rules of how far back you can go. We're going to charge you for that. If we do that for you, we're going to go through and find your documents.
Maybe in some cases we have to go digging through a church. We seem to get the complicated cases because we're a bit more expensive than some of the local lawyers, but we get. We do the cases, they can't handle what we're digging through archives that no one, whatever could figure out. So that's the first thing you look at now, it might take you, I think, I knew a guy recently, it took him four years to get his italian citizenship by descent. So if I wanted to get out quickly, I might pair that with something else.
But that's one way to look at you're getting a pretty good quality passport, something in Europe, generally without much money, you're just basically paying service fees and maybe a filing fee. Not that expensive if you don't qualify, or if you do qualify in crypto and you just want to be able to be out sooner, you can go through citizenship by investment. The price is going up. I don't know when we're running this, so I'll make it more neutral. The price of these caribbean citizenship by investments, which have kind of been the go to, is they just harmonized it $200,000.
So that's a donation you're going to make, and you're going to get a caribbean citizenship from a country that doesn't want to bother you, probably can't bother you. It's a business transaction. They do due diligence on you, and you get a passport in these days, probably call it nine months. I mean, the paperwork time has to get thrown in there as well. But that doesn't require you to really have any connections.
You don't generally have to go there. Even other countries like Turkey have that where you buy real estate. So if you want to kind of kill two birds with 1 st, you buy real estate, you get the passport. Egypt has that as well. That's probably the best second passport.
Vanuatu is not as good of a passport, but they've got a program that's going to stay around the hundred thousand dollar level, so you can just make donations, but what's called citizenship by investment all the way up to in Malta, they've got a program being challenged by Europe. It may not be around that much longer, but it's going to cost you about a million dollars, and that's going to get you the same European Union passport that if you're lucky enough to get through your ancestry, you can get for basically free. So whenever I see someone who, like their grandfather was italian, I'm like, you know, I have clients who pay a million dollars to get that same European Union passport. Okay, one's Italy and one's Malta. But if you have any of them, you can live in all the countries and you can generally have pretty similar travel privileges.
So those are the two big ways. You know, we have, we've had people who, they go in and they hire 100 people and they get given, you know, they're given citizenship. You've seen, you know, the president of Serbia or Russia or France, you know, give celebrities citizenship. So there's ways sometimes to do that if you're a big investor. And then the other way, of course, is you just move there.
If you get a residence permit somewhere, they might have a requirement to spend one day per year or six months per year or nine months per year for x number of years, at which time you can become naturalized. You probably need to speak the language or at least pass a test, and you probably need to learn a little bit about the history. So that's kind of like someone coming to the US and you see them waving the flag at the swearing in ceremony. That's what you're doing somewhere else. Except most other countries are more flexible than the US in terms of how long you need to live there, that kind of thing.
But that's not for someone who doesn't want to move. So you could do any combination of those. You could get mexican residents, spend some time in Mexico, apply in five years, while also getting St. Kitts and Nevis citizenship for 200 grand. You're covered in the next year, and then you could be digging through the archives to see if you could become Slovak.
And if you got all those three, I mean, that'd be a pretty powerful combination. You'd be able to go to a lot of places. So it's basically the ancestry. Just look at that. Or it's pay to play.
Ryan Chaun Adams
You basically have to buy something or you have to be a resident. And it could be some combination of those three things as far as how you're kind of going to get in. But it's not the case that you could just spin a globe and put your finger on the map and just hit a country and you're just there. You have to go through some gates and through a process. You can't just select your country and just be like, I want to be a citizen of x.
Yeah, I mean. Like Switzerland, you have to be voted on by the locals.
Andrew Henderson
So, I mean, some countries don't allow dual citizenship, so for me, lifestyle and financial opportunity costs are important. I understand that we all want to save money. I understand that the idea of paying $200,000 to basically get a book seems silly to people, again, especially if you're from the west and you've been indoctrinated your entire life to think like this is as good as it gets. People often default to it sucks here, but it's still the best that there's out there it's not. But anyway, is $200,000 as a one time cost, is that better than tying up your money in real estate in Turkey?
If you don't want to live in Turkey, is that better than going and spending six months a year in a country if you don't want to spend six months there, is it better than going and living in a country to become naturalized where the taxes may not be what you want? I mean, some of the most tax friendly places in the world, like southeast asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore, the Gulf, Dubai and Qatar and all those, even Panama in Central America, they're all pretty stingy, if not outright, they just don't give citizenship. So sometimes the places that are tax friendly and good for actually living in aren't places where you can get a citizenship. I mean, I would say the citizenship through naturalization plays, either in Europe, where you've generally got high taxes, outside of some places where they've got lump sum or non dumb programs, those aren't always as friendly to crypto investors. So Ireland is a non dumb program, doesn't really work for crypto.
So Ireland would be a great passport, no language to learn, spend six months or so a year, get the passport in five years, but it's not tax friendly if you're in crypto. So, I mean, unless you're, you know, you're, you know, you're not going to pay more than $200,000 in tax while you're living there. You would have just been better off getting the other passport. Ireland's got a great passport. Maybe you love the country.
I'm all for that if it's worth it for you. But you have to balance, you know, what is it worth? Don't move to a country you hate just to get a passport. And certainly don't move to a country with crazy high taxes to avoid paying $200,000 for a passport. Now, it was $100,000 in some of those countries up until very recently.
And I was telling people it's going to go up at some point. And now it has under pressure. From who? The United States and the European Union, who see more people are doing this, and suddenly they have some concerns. I want to open up the lifestyle conversation in this whole campaign, because I would imagine that this involves giving up your lifestyle.
David Hoffman
And of course, what lifestyle you hop into is probably pretty different depending on where you actually end up. But I'm sure that there's some kind of common denominators here. Like, I'm sure you're more of a traveler by default in this new life that you're building for yourself. Maybe you can kind of unpack what this new life might look like for people, or what are some of the choices that they're making here. Somebody laid it out to me pretty well.
Andrew Henderson
He said, you're more of a dopamine focused person. You like to keep moving. And so I created the trifecta approach, where you could have three different homes that you spend four months a year in. And if they're all more emerging places, is you might be a tax resident of nowhere, and you might actually need to go and get a tax residence if you want to open a bank account, for example. And so you get a tax friendly place to be a tax resident.
Not everybody's like that. Some people are the opposite. And so you can move to a tax friendly place. So whether you travel or not is really up to you. I like to keep moving.
I become a bit more sedentary as I get older, but largely it's because I just, you know, I have business in different places. There's been different residents and passport deals where I've just, you know, I've bought small properties in different places and I bounce between them. That especially came in handy during COVID You could lever between those so you can choose how much you want to travel. For me, the lifestyle of just getting out of your country. I remember going on a trip when I was a very young adult, and I met a couple of girls, and I'm like, this just feels a little easier and a little more comfortable and even a little bit more cerebral.
Like, we can have more intelligent conversations than I'm used to where I'm living in the US, it just feels, like, better. And I've kind of proven that right in all my years of living outside of the country. So I think that if you live in the US, that's a pretty bad place to meet. Well, I guess there's people who come from all over the world, but if you're going to be traveling and meeting people, most of them can't come to the US. And that was one reason why didn't I want to move to Puerto Rico at the time?
One reason was I was single. And I said, I'm not going to meet anybody who's going to be able to come and live with me in Puerto Rico. The person I'm going to meet needs a visa, and they're probably not going to get one. Or if they're european, like, they're just, they can't be there all the time. I'm not, probably not going to be as an American.
So I think that if you look at it not as what I'm running from, but what I'm running to, I'll tell you what. I look at other people's YouTube videos. I screenshotted a comment from a guy. He said, I can only dream of having the title of husband. And he speaks for so many people, I guess, in the US and I guess the western world, where I feel like so many people are at each other's throats, that everything's a war, including meeting people.
And I see so many people just feel locked out of having friends and having love relationships. I'm planning my 40th birthday party. I said, okay, I'm going to do something nice. I've got 19 people flying in, in some cases from halfway around the world. No one is from down the street, 19 people I've met, and some people that I knew from when I was in the United States.
And I, you know, don't know. Probably most of my friends who are in the United States who are 40 years old don't have 19 people coming down the street to go to their party. And so I think if you look at it, what do I get? Not what do I give up, but what do I get? And looking forward to that.
The lifestyle piece fits a lot better. Would you say that the clients that you work with or the people that you talk to, who do this activity, this nomad capitalist activity, are they outgoing? Are they looking for experiences? What's the archetype of a client of yours? I think it's all over the place.
David Hoffman
No strong common denominator. I don't. I'll tell you what I mean. We have people from all over the world now. It used to be very western centric, but people from all over the world see this as something that you have to do.
Andrew Henderson
I think we were one of the first people talking about the western world doing it. But, yeah, we have people who are very introverted. I remember one guy told me, like, he moved to Dublin, Ireland, for tax savings, and he said, well, I don't like it because it rained too much. I've never been in Dublin when it's raining. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's one thing.
The weather is not as bad as people think. But he ended up moving to a small island with, like, 20,000 people or something, whereas other people, yeah, they want to be in Dubai. They want to be around those social opportunities. So I think it's all over the place. Obviously, some people are single, and so that means they're looking to find friends.
They're looking to find maybe a relationship if you already have a family. We've got a guy who's speaking at our event this year. He's been a friend of mine for years. He's got five kids. They live my trifecta approach, and they don't even own the real estate that.
I met him in Bogota a couple months ago. He was staying in a hotel. They got two hotel rooms for a family of seven, and they just travel the world. His wife homeschools the kids. He works remotely.
And, I mean, they're kind of a self, you know, self fulfilling unit. I mean, they are within the family. I was going to ask you about that. If there's any sort of lifestyle trade offs that you see, like, if you subscribe to the style of living, whether you can have a family, it sounds like there are some cases where you can. Can you have property in the way that sort of the white picket fence idea of middle class America.
Ryan Chaun Adams
You get a garage, you fill it with stuff, you put bicycles in there, and you just have different toys. You have a lot of physical possessions. You get really plugged into your community. Your kids go to the same school. They're brought up.
Are these sacrifices that you really have to give up? If you're going with at least I can't remember if there's plan a or the plan b, but whatever the plan was, where you sort of like live in different countries and you kind of like, exit the US entirely rather than just having a second passport as a backup. Well, plan B would be I'm going to stay where I'm at, but I'm going to have the tools to get out and be prepared if I'm going to get us on board. That's the plan B. I'm going to get an offshore trust.
Andrew Henderson
I'm going to have a, you know, but I'm going to be ready to go, but I'm not going to go. Plan A is I'm moving out now the nomad and nomad capitalist to me, another speaker told me, he said, my family moved from Sri Lanka to Australia. My parents did. And now me, I'm moving with my wife to Dubai. One generation, that's hard because I have so many clients.
The one thing where they never move or they never renounce that, they talk about it and then they stop at the end is immigrant parents. I spent so much time and effort to come here for you. It's like, well, that, that's the sunk cost fallacy. But so many of them buy into it. This guy didn't.
He said, listen, we got a generation worth out of Australia. And then I moved. That, to me is the nomad. I enjoy traveling. I like different lifestyles.
I like going to Colombia and having the food, and I've got friends there, and I like that culture. But then I want to go to Asia. I like seeing different places. I like watching the world evolve and watching the emerging world and people making more money and stuff is happening. I like that.
And I've always been a believer since I'm eight years old in giving charitably to places that I wouldn't live. I mean, my charity list is developmentally disabled, orphanages in India, it's animal shelters in Cambodia, it's that kind of thing. I like to go to Cambodia and see my investments, but I'm not going to live in Cambodia. So for me, the community and giving back was never the place that I wanted to be. I never understood, you know, nobody in Scottsdale, Arizona, needs charity that badly.
Like, you know, and I kind of feel like it was selfish to, like, give to people in Scottsdale, like some of the richest people in the world, just so I would feel good to be part of the quote unquote community. Like, I would rather sacrifice the sense of community and know that, like, people who are really much, much, much more in need are taken care of. That I played some small role in that than, like, I went to the Rotary Club and we had punched together and we're all friends. But if you want the house, you can have that. I have a number of homes, and I like having the tea kettle and I like having the clothing that I don't have to pack.
And I go there and it feels like home. But if you want all the stuff in the garage, then I guess you probably just want fewer homes and you can have the house with the garage. And I think Dubai is a place that if you're in crypto, it's still good. If you're in business. They do have a new corporate tax for most people, but for crypto, it still could be good.
I mean, they're doing that, right? I mean, you have these beautiful skyscrapers with apartments, but you also have lots of villas with that kind of lifestyle that you're used to. And I think that a lot of people who are western, who subscribe to that white picket fence. Yeah, they like to go to the gulf. I talked to a guy, he grew up in a compound in Saudi Arabia, and he said it's not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
So I think that you're seeing in that part of the world, they're kind of catering to that audience. They've got a cheesecake factory in Dubai. They like the american brands over there. You can have that kind of lifestyle, or you can be more of what I am, where I just enjoy the rush of different places. And by the way, I'll tell you this, having a home in Colombia and going there for a couple months, a year turned me on to hiring people in Colombia.
That turned me on to hearing about business opportunities. That turned me on to, let's get a person to come and do some sales stuff. That turned me on to now we have. To me, being in different places shows you business opportunities. And that's part of why I like it as well, is you're seeing what's beyond your country off the top of your head.
Ryan Chaun Adams
What are the most crypto friendly jurisdictions, in your experience, when you talk to people in crypto doing that sort of thing? You mentioned Dubai. What's the top five list of crypto friendly jurisdictions? The UAE has probably been, I think one of the better ones. One place Belarus was talking about from a tax perspective, being good, maybe that's not a place people want to live, although I think probably people kind of I mean, geopolitically, you may disagree, but I think the quality of life there is actually not as bad as people would say.
Andrew Henderson
Malted kind of thrown its head in the ring. I think Bermuda had done some stuff. I can't say I've kept up with those as much. I will say there's certain, like, among the Caribbean, citizenship by investments. There's some that are, like, more open to crypto source of wealth than others.
That's something we've had to kind of figure out the hard way. So it's not as easy as, like, I'm going to pay in bitcoin. So those are probably a couple that stand out to me. I think that what I'm always looking at is small countries. And so we kind of go back to where we started, which is, I think, too many people are proud to be from the US or from Canada, and that's too much of their identity.
I meet people all around the world who come up to me and say they met the love of their life, or they found happiness, or they just moved overseas for more freedom. And they're enjoying life because they watched me. And to me, that's a much better identity to have that you made a change than a nationality that you had no control over. And I think that smaller countries are more attuned to that. When I was just in the country of Georgia recently, one where I think a lot of people are doing bitcoin mining, I think they were very much open to that as well.
They want people to come and do that. They work crypto friendly real estate deals are on the blockchain there. They've moved over to that. So add that to the list. Whenever they're mentioned in a movie, like the whole country comes together and has a moment of national unity because no one ever talks about them.
But what are the countries that are going to be friendly to emerging technologies? The country that is the underdog, that needs the attention, that needs the win? That's why I think the US, while there are a few people in government who seem pro crypto overall, will probably be anti crypto. It's a threat to them. Whereas a Georgia or a malta or a Bermuda or a UAE seems it sees it as an opportunity.
Ryan Chaun Adams
I see people getting, like, digital citizenships, I think, from jurisdictions like Estonia. Is there anything to that? What is up with that? Why was I seeing this? We actually have the former president of Estonia speaking at Nomad Capitalist live this year because he did two things.
Andrew Henderson
He was part of the team that did taxes on a postcard like this one page. Do your taxes in three minutes, which a number of other countries have done. And he helped introduce eresidents, which was basically get an id that you could open companies, you can open bank accounts. And then what happened was, this is the problem. And this may not impact you if you're all crypto, but if you run a business, as I do, and people want to pay you in fiat, the banks in these countries often say, well, that's great, but we don't want the risk of opening accounts for people who've never been here who got this e resident card through an embassy so you could use it, like, set up companies and, like, validate that you're who you say you are.
It didn't work as well. I know, like Palau is, you know, giving away like these, you know, residence permits for, like, digital nomads that are, you know, more easy. I'm a fan of kind of traditional stuff. I want a real residence permit that leads to permanent residence or leads to citizenship. I want citizenships.
The e stuff can be, you know, interesting at times, but I don't think it moves the needle that much for the stuff we're talking about. All right, well, so I promised at the beginning we'd get to some of the criticisms here. So let's dive right into the criticisms of people who've hung with us this far and maybe still have questions or their blood's boiling for some reason or another, so let's just address them head on. So the first is this. Is everything that you're just articulating, Andrew?
Ryan Chaun Adams
Is this unpatriotic? Is this kind of like running away? Like, why not just instead of exit, take the time to make the place that you live better and use voice and, you know, have some national loyalty here. Andrew, what? Like, what do you make of that criticism?
Andrew Henderson
Well, I think loyalty has to be two ways. If you go back to a personal relationship, you can be apologetic, you can want to improve, you can want to do all the right things despite being imperfect. If the other person just digs their heels in, what's there to do with that? And so again, yeah, you know what? I am more understanding the person in Liechtenstein that says I'm going to stick around.
Why? Well, Liechtenstein essentially functions like a small town in the US. I don't think that many people are angry with the mayor of their town. Right. I mean, I don't know.
I don't know who's really upset about the mayor of Avon Lake, Ohio, where I graduated high school. There's 20,000 people there. People get together and they do stuff in their community. But in the United States and in some other countries, that is overshadowed by the state government and by the federal government, and the federal government gets to trump all that. They set the tax policy.
You can move from one state to another to lower your taxes, but just by a little. And I guess what I say is, whether you look at where your tax money goes and what you get back for it, whether you look at how the government treats you, are they loyal to you?
I'm thankful for my dad for having these conversations with me. I'm thankful for the lessons I learned growing up. Yeah, I had a couple of good teachers that impacted me. But for me, it's people that make the difference in your life because, yeah, there's some other successful people from Haven Lake, Ohio. Why aren't they also successful if it's just.
If the government merely being there is what makes them successful? I mean, I heard, sadly, a couple of people died of drug overdoses. I've never done a drug in my life. Why is those two different outcomes? Maybe it's much more about the family and the people who are in your community.
And so, yeah, I'm loyal to my dad for that reason. I invited him to my 40th birthday party. Hey, come and speak at the event and hang out with Nigel Farage and all that. I don't understand why this kind of nameless, faceless entity that's called a country. And again, the bigger the country, the more nameless and faceless it is.
What exactly do I owe them? And by the way, to the extent that, yeah, I did go for many years to public schools, my parents paid a boatload of taxes, and I lived in the US, and I paid a lot of taxes for a while. And so if you're a productive citizen, at a certain point, it's like. It just becomes too much. Listen, I'm not all for paying zero tax, by the way.
If you live a lifestyle where the net result is zero tax, well, we have statistics. Almost no one's volunteering to pay more tax, but I'm willing to pay something. I just happen to think that I shouldn't be a political pawn because I've chosen to be successful based on things less related to my country and more related to the people that I was around, that I shouldn't be the political pawn to say, well, now you should pay 70% so that everyone else can get free stuff while the government continues to mismanage the money. Again, less of an issue in Liechtenstein or Andorra. But big issue in the US, UK, Canada, Australia.
David Hoffman
What about this idea that if we are making sure that we have dual or tri citizenship in order to just prep for some sort of event where we need to exit? Well, everywhere. All countries are a fiat regime, and fiat regimes kind of suck no matter where. Where you are. So what about this idea that if shit really hits the fan, just like there's no place to actually run, like, sure, you've built your ark, but where are you going to dock the boat?
And so what about this idea that it only really works if you're accepting this lifestyle while there are also good times, but in the event that there are bad times, like, well, it's bad universally. Well, I think there's good times in some places while there's bad places in others. This idea that the world is all in one state at any one given time, this, to me is kind of a North American almost pornography, where I think Ronald Reagan said, if everywhere else falls, well, maybe more relevant back then. Look at what's happening with brics. Look at what's happening.
Andrew Henderson
Multipolarity is a big thing now. I think that it's hard for people who've accepted their nationality. That's such a big part of who they are. It is hard for them to accept that. Just being american in the grand scheme of things now, nobody cares.
When I talked to my banker in Singapore, she manages a lot of money. I said, would you either have an american or an indonesian client? She said, Indonesian all day long. And we have Indonesians with $100 million net worths. There's plenty of rich people in these countries.
These countries are becoming richer. The average person is. But you're seeing some people becoming really rich. They come with far fewer regulations for that banker. It's so much easier to service them.
They're more profitable customers. So this idea that, like, I'm an american, I'm sorry to tell, and I'm not saying it's because I hate anybody, but it's just the truth. Nobody cares. You know, Americans, it's like, oh, well, I'm sure that the Caribbean will want my money. They don't care.
You're 8% of the clientele. And I think that it is a reality now. You know, the dollar is becoming a smaller percentage of the world reserve currency pie. It's becoming smaller. I'm not saying the US is irrelevant, but I'm saying it is less and less relevant.
And I think that's an adjustment. And so I can tell you this in terms of what I call hard freedom is the us government following the Constitution? Are they doing everything that's written down? Are they like, oh, we have this constitutional. Well, that's great.
If the people in charge don't follow it and no one can force them to follow it, that's great. You have some words on a paper, right? I've got someone who's going to speak at my event. They signed a contract, I'm not coming, they said. And it's like, okay, well, what am I going to do?
What's that worth? Now? There's soft freedom where it's just like no one's ever been in the business of screwing with people. It's more of a live and let live mentality. And if that's the culture, that's a hard culture to change.
You know, when I, when I talk to my friend in Montenegro who helps me pay my tiny property tax bill, she goes in on a Tuesday at 01:00 p.m. and there's some guys smoking at a card table. These guys are not, you know, you pay, you don't pay, you're six months late, whatever, right? There's not a formal system there. And I think that, you know, if you get out of a handful of western countries, you will find things are pretty darn informal and people don't want to bother you.
And, yeah, I guess what, I guess if Malaysia dominated the world tomorrow, maybe they'd get their fork and knife out and start ripping into people. They're not going to do that. And I think even then it would take a while because the culture is just live and let live. And so if you want to be free, I think that's worth something. Now, depending on what you want to be free from, there's different places that are better.
I mean, in Asia, they're not going to respond as well to a pandemic if your goal is to be walking around outside of. They're, they're very, you know, health and safety kind of minded, but, you know, they're gonna leave you alone on the streets every day, I'll tell you that. So I. This idea that there's nowhere to go, I've kind of debunked this on a couple occasions, but I guess having, you know, been to all these countries, it just feels to me like a nice thing to say to reassure yourself that I don't need to get a second passport. I'll be fine just here.
And if you're fine, just. That's great. That's great. But you've got to own what comes with living in a place. And again, I'll say this.
If you're in crypto, I get the libertarian argument. I never signed the social contract to pay tax. Well, listen, whether you sign it or not, if you don't pay your tax in crypto, they're coming for you. They're beefing up their enforcement. They have a target on your back.
And again, I don't believe in these high tax rates, but they're like, you live here, so take the good with the Badlandhouse or understand there's a place that in every value you have probably better represents you than the place you happened to be born. What about the fairness argument here? And maybe this is the last critique that will levy at you, Andrew, to get response for. It's basically kind of like a populist type of movement, but just basic fairness, which is like, we talked a lot about these citizenships. They cost money.
Ryan Chaun Adams
Even going through Nomad getting consulting, if you have ancestry, it still costs money, but in some cases, it's explicit. One hundred k to a million dollars to go buy your citizenship somewhere. So some people listening to this might be just like, okay, this does not seem fair at all. Even if they are wealthy, they might have a moral issue with the rich people getting the lifeboats and the Titanic is sinking and kind of the poor people all go down with the ship. Yeah.
What's your take on that critique? That this is just not fair, not the way it should be? And so if you're wealthy, you shouldn't take advantage of this. And if you're poor, you can't. And so it's, like, not fair fundamentally.
Andrew Henderson
I don't know how many wealthy people are saying that. I think that people who have opportunities, whatever they may be, take them. I mean, you know, it's not fair if you're a beautiful young person to maybe take advantage of those opportunities. But I think many people do. I think that, you know, first of all, one of the things that I push back on is, oh, I can't afford to do this.
I mean, you can get a remote job. There's plenty out there. There's companies like ours all the way up to big companies. You can be in freelance. You can be in crypto and build your own independent, passive wealth.
You can find a way to support yourself. My goodness, the cost to live in a place like a Kuala Lumpur, which is, I think, the best value city again in the world, you could, I mean, you could live there on $2,000 a month. I'm not saying, you're living like a king, but you could live a nice lifestyle there for $2,000 if you're from a western country and your country is so great and all this stuff you're paying taxes for, all the education and everything they gave you, and you can't scratch out $2,000 a month on your computer. How great was that country after all? You know, like, people.
People who are like, yell at me that, like, they can't afford what I'm doing. But they're 65 and they live in what they call the greatest country in the world, and they couldn't save a million dollars. Go back for your s and p 500. You would have had. I think we calculated if you saved $180 a month for 40 years of working, you'd have a million dollars in the United States.
Your country's not that great if you couldn't have afforded dollar 180 a month. So that's the first thing I think everyone can do this. There's digital nomad visas. Latin America has very affordable residence permits. You can work your way towards citizenship by living there.
Some of them are even tax friendly, if that matters. At $2,000 a month, it doesn't that much. But what I also say is, what's the fairness to the countries? You mentioned citizenship, that are offering that. I think self determination, sovereignty are important.
You saw a number of these caribbean countries. They broke away from the UK back in primarily the seventies. The first pitch was be a banking sector. Well, they had agriculture, but, okay, that often didn't work out. Then the pitch was, okay, be a banking sector.
Like we, you know, we want you to have some money so that you're not a basket case. You know, do offshore banking. Then they. They came and cracked in on that, and we're tired of offshore banking. And then it was like, okay, how do we make some money?
Let's do citizenship. I'll tell you what, I'm proud. When I watched the St. Lucia prime minister's address a couple of years ago, what do they talk about? I mean, my wife and I were joking about it.
We're like, we built a road. I come from the US. Here she is. She comes from Moscow. We built one road, but it's a tiny island.
They got 175,000 people. That's the biggest of the islands that do this. Or in Dominica, we're building low income housing. With the money. You've got a lot less bureaucracy.
Even France has less bureaucracy than the US these days for building stuff. But imagine Dominica, St. Lucia, I'm sure they have a little bureaucracy, but nothing compared to it. You get 1000 people chipping in 100 grand, 200 grand, they go for their small population and they do things. Basic human services that they've had, one thing after the other, perhaps that didn't work.
I think sometimes it was a western country, like the UK kind of rug pulling them on. That industry you have no longer serves us. I mean, how fair is it to a small country that wanted its sovereignty to be told, we like what you do one day and not the next? They found a commodity that they have. They're peaceful countries, they leave people alone, they do due diligence on people, and it's one way to get citizenship.
I think that that's good for those countries. And that's one thing that I'm proud of with our employees around the world, I'm proud of with our charity, I'm proud of even with the citizenship process. I like watching people who came in. In some of these countries, they get a $600 a month job and in three years they got the same opportunities that westerner would. And now they make $6,000 a month.
That makes me proud seeing that people from places where they never thought they would reach that level got it. And I'm never going to be happy if people are hurting. I'm nothing but the arrogance of folks in the United States who thought just because we're american, there should always be a gravy train. Where's our three cars in the garage and one of us works and one of us stays home, and it just should always be that way. Well, it's not.
And I think that's why, again, there's this kind of frustration among people in the west right now that it's not as easy as it once was. And that's partially because you can come and work for me and you can go from 600 a month to 6000 a month because the best talent should win. I. I don't know what's anything less fair than that. And I think it certainly has not been fair to some of these smaller countries that they've been held back.
I'm happy they can take my hundred thousand or now $200,000 and do a lot more than dropping bombs on people or paying off 3 seconds of the national debt's interest. Probably not even 3 seconds. Probably zero 3 seconds. I mean, like, you know, at the end of the day, I want my money to go to good causes if, like when I, when I reduced my taxes by leaving the country, not by renouncing it just by moving.
I had always been somewhat charitable, but when you go from paying 43% to, like, zero, hey, I'm going to give more to charity. I can tell you what the impact of me giving 43% of my income to the United States government is a lot less than giving 50 grand to some charity and 100 grand over here and whatever. Andrew, I think you've given a lot of bankless listeners some cause to thought and for thought on this episode, I'll say for myself, definitely part of the reason I wanted to have this episode is because I'm thinking about the chaos of the, sort of the decline of empires, and I'm sort of reminded of all of the chaos that happened in the 20th century and how cataclysmic that was and how quickly it sort of jumped on people's radar. And a little bit of preparation can certainly help. I was thinking of, this is one conversation with a jewish lady I saw a holocaust survivor, and she said this about Nazi Germany.
Ryan Chaun Adams
She said, the pessimists left, but the optimists stayed. And that kind of stuck with me as just like, man, if it's your family or if it's your life, you want to have a backup plan to all of this, because things can change in a hurry in the circumstances you were brought up with. So maybe this gives some folks some cause for thought of how to have a plan b or maybe a plan a. I'm going to ask you to do this so kind of summarize all of this for us, if you will, particularly for crypto listeners, and if somebody is interested in finding out more, going through the next step to seeing if, like, a second passport is good for them, what should they do next? What's the first thing they should do?
Andrew Henderson
I'm a fan of having a holistic approach. The service that I've built in our business at Nomad capitalist is built around. I wish this were there when I started. But I'll tell you, we're talking a lot about passports. We've had people call us, they won't work with us.
They go out and they get a passport from someone who just, hey, which beach do you like the best? We'll get you that passport. And then they're like, what did I just solve? You have to look at, what are my goals? I look at it as finance, freedom, and lifestyle.
And what I'll ask people is, if you've got 100 marbles in those three buckets, which go where? During COVID a lot of folks were saying, I don't care that much about taxes. I want freedom. I'm putting most of my marbles in freedom. And obviously I want a nice lifestyle.
So there's some going in there. You know, we have people who are, you know, run big businesses, the financial parts, more of it, asset protection, tax reduction, all that. You've got to ask yourself that question, and that's the basis on which you should move forward. So if you go to nomadcalpalist.com comma, you can learn about our services. We have.
I wrote a book. It's on Amazon. It's called Nomad capitalist. It's a collection of stories that kind of prepares you for what you should be asking. That's a good start.
We have an event called Nomad Capitalist Live. It's four days, about 800 people from around the world where we talk about this stuff. We bring in actual business owners from around the world. We've got crypto people, we've got bitcoin people. That's a place to come and feel it, or we just offer a service.
People who just want to hire us and they want us to figure it out. But I don't think it's about just getting a passport. It could be a combination of residence permits and passports. Sometimes we talk people out of getting a passport. Someone that says, oh, I'm australian, I need a second passport to stop paying tax.
Wrong. That's not correct. Right, canadian. Wrong. You don't need it.
You may need it one day, but right now you don't need it. Okay, I won't pay the $200,000. Thank you. Okay, let's get your residence permit. My approach has been, we have dozens of different citizenship options, dozens of tax friendly countries to move to.
If you want a bank account, we have banks all over the world for all different price points. I never want to be the person who buys into Dubai, is the answer. It's still good for crypto, but for entrepreneurs, there are better options, I think. Now, if you like the lifestyle, fine, that's worth it. But I think you want to know all the options.
And so just to go out and talk to someone who's in Dubai or Cyprus or Panama, if there's only one thing to recommend to you, you're probably not going to be served, and you're probably going to come out of it thinking, did I solve a problem? The goal was not to move somewhere. The goal is to solve a problem. And everything you asked about the lifestyle I've plugged into this, I want you to be happy where you go. I'm happier now than I was in the US.
There's still bad days, as there would be anywhere. But I'm happier. And I think understanding what motivates someone as a human being is important to where the things that you're bringing up don't become an issue. Because I do see a lot of expats just moving around the world that they go and do it for three years and then they move back. And nothing wrong with that.
But if the goal is to have a permanent improvement in your finances and your freedom, you're probably not going to get it by going back to the frying pan. I think that you go back to the frying pan because you didn't prepare well enough and you didn't take everything into account and you just got a passport and then you're not quite sure what to do with it. And maybe you paid too much for one you didn't need. That's my approach. So nomadicapitalist.com is the website, and by the way, we've got 2000 articles there you can read.
We've got the YouTube channel with 2700 videos. But we do help people with this every day. It's the most holistic service, I think. It's not for everyone, but it's designed for what I wish existed. That's funny.
Ryan Chaun Adams
That's what we say at the end of every bankless podcast. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Episodes are our podcasts and our movement is about going bankless. Yours is probably about going stateless and having some more autonomy in the nation state selection here. So, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on bankless today and explaining how all of this works.
It's been super helpful. We'll include some links in the show notes as well. We appreciate you. Thank you. Got to end with this, of course.
Crypto is risky. So is your nation state in lots of various ways. You probably don't understand right now, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone.
But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.