Nick Slettengren Podcast Transcript
Nick Slettengren joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Nick Slettengren. Nick Slettengren is a digital marketer by trade and crypto entrepreneur by evolution. He was co-founder of Power Digital Marketing, a digital agency, and exited twice with the figure rumored to be in the range of several hundred million dollars.
Nick has been involved in the crypto industry since 2015 as an investor minor, and now runs a leading crypto accounting firm specializing in crypto tax savings based in San Diego, California.
Well, good afternoon, Nick. Welcome to the show!
Nick Slettengren: Hey, Brian, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time and hailing out some of my old stomping grounds there in San Diego. So, I appreciate it. We’re just a couple hours apart. Me being in Kansas City, but again, appreciate you making the time and Nick jumping right into your first question. Can you share your journey from co-founding Power Digital marketing to your current involvement in the cryptocurrency sector? And what motivated your shift towards crypto?
Nick Slettengren: Yeah, of course, Brian. I mean, we started power digital in 2012, and that was right off the heels of my experience with some of the big digital marketing firms here in San Diego and you know, decided it was time to I was hit some glass ceilings in my career in digital marketing and thought I should go out on my own and try it. And it ended up being a success.
And, you know, largely because of, you know, the team, it My business partners and we really set out to create, you know, a culture within, you know, digital marketing, but also with our clients, you know, understood that we were data driven and ROI focused which I feel like a lot of people were missing the mark at the time, you know, trying to get a lot of people impressions and trying to get your, you know, your brand around, but there was nothing really tying it back.
With data showing that it’s impacting your bottom line. So really that was, you know, my focus in those days with power digital. And through that journey, you know, I loved disruptive technologies and the Internet was pretty disruptive, especially the marketing piece at the time. And it evolved into a, you know, a love for crypto when that came out.
And I was heavily influenced by one of our clients at power digital. His name was Marco from Genesis mining. One of the first mining operations. For Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a lot of other coins. And through that experience, you know, I became, you know, heavily invested into crypto, you know, around 2015, 2016 era.
And you know, I followed that through and we sold Power Digital. I was also, you know, working doing my own little mining operation at the time. And, you know, just continue to grow through, you know, learning different processes, learning about the different parts of crypto that were emerging, you know, mining was, was in that sector.
And then we started having that whole defy revolution and, you know, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s been very interesting to watch, you know, that crypto just evolved. So, it’s been very fun and it’s been a big focus of mine.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Appreciate the backstory from your marketing days, going into entrepreneurship, and then obviously fully fledged into that crypto environment, which is amazing.
I love it. Like I said, we, before we hit record, we talk about how big we are on blockchain web three and crypto here, just in this publication alone. So I appreciate that. And Nick, the next question I have for you is what inspired you to start a crypto accounting firm? And how does your firm address the unique challenges of crypto tax savings?
Nick Slettengren: So that’s a great question. I was looking where to get back in after doing some of the mining. I was looking, where should I get back into the market here? And I still love cryptocurrency, you know, mining was becoming a pretty consolidated, you know, and you had to have a lot of mindsets to keep playing that game, if you will.
And so, I was like, where can I get in? And what interests me and, and, and where can we start a company? So, and I’m always, when I’m starting a company, I’m always looking for a bottleneck. You know, you remember that scene in 300, the movie where the Spartans were fighting the Persian army and they, and they basically, their whole thing was, hey, we got to funnel them through this Canyon.
In order, you know, to make their numbers weaker. Well, you know, that was a classic bottleneck, and I was looking for that for my next step in my entrepreneurship journey and in crypto and that bottleneck happened to be crypto accounting. So I figured with all the regulation going on. And you know, the government like to regulate because they like to tax things.
And from my own experience, I started doing my taxes after the last bull run. And I realized how difficult they were. I had a bunch of high price CPAs from New York to LA trying to help me with this. They were both coming up with different numbers, which was very problematic. And I knew that I, you know, did some tax loss harvesting and some smart maneuvers to lower my tax liability, but those weren’t being seen or accounted for and the CPAs were ignoring it.
They were just having a hard time following my cost basis around from exchange to exchange, from trade to trade, and it was creating a big mess. So ultimately what I was able to do is I, I found a gal in the Midwest who was basically doing this out of her basement and she was ex Ernst Young and she started just doing crypto accounting and she went in and she completely stitched together my entire portfolio and was able to get me quite a bit of savings, you know, against my capital gains.
So that’s when the light bulb went off. And I said, we have something here. And I started incubating Count On Sheep, our company that we started now, it’s a crypto accounting firm about 18 months ago. And we’ve hired an individual from Ernst and Young to come on board with us and really help shape the way that crypto accounting is now done in the U S and globally.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. You know, we’ve had this run with crypto and now everybody is some people are just scared to touch it as you know, but once we find people like you, Nick, that can figure this out for us, save us some money. That’s just great news. We’re going to continue to bolster. We, the people, as I like to call it in this web 3 space.
So, I appreciate this story. Really? I really do. Thank you, Nick. Tax regulation in the crypto world can be complex and ever evolving. Can you discuss a couple of common misconceptions or errors people make when dealing with crypto taxes?
Nick Slettengren: Yeah, Brian, you couldn’t be more on point with that. I mean, it is changing day to day, you know, it is like a weather system, if you will.
But with that said, you know, there are some constant myths that we need to dispel right away. One of them is that cryptocurrency is anonymous. You know, especially Bitcoin’s anonymous is what I hear from a lot of people. Like, you know, the government can’t see it. No one really knows that I have it. You know, I’m a self-custodian, you know, oh, I just keep it on my exchange.
No one can see it. Couldn’t be further from the truth as we all know. In fact, you know, Bitcoin’s like the largest distributed ledger ever created. So, it’s completely public. Anyone can access it. That’s what blockchain was built for. And you can go in and analyze it. You can go to the first block ever created.
So, you know, that’s a big issue and a big misconception. Another misconception on that as well is that the IRS doesn’t have your information. Well, I’ll tell you what, all the major exchanges have had to report, they report you to the IRS and they tell you exactly, you know, what they’re holding, you know, by law, so, you know, if you haven’t been served with any paperwork yet.
That’s all coming down the pipe. They’re going to start sending out notices saying that, you know, you owe crypto taxes and, you know, their past due, and there could potentially be penalties put on top of that as well. So, we’re finding it’s good to get in front of it. And, and, you know, it’s something you can’t hide from.
In fact, it’s even more out in the open with cryptocurrency. You know, it’s really important that people pay attention to that. That they are making this part of their you know, tax portfolio and they’re planning for this or they’re seeking out help like from a firm like ours who will do it for you.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I appreciate some of the insights. I did have a suspicion. Obviously, we deal with some crypto here as well. And had that sneaking suspicion that the exchanges were definitely reporting to the IRS and other agencies. So, I’m glad you’re sharing that with our listeners tonight. Really do and Nick last question of the evening here in your view, what are some of the emerging trends or technologies in the crypto space that entrepreneurs and investors should be paying attention to right now?
Nick Slettengren: You know, for one is it’s, it’s timely talking about crypto taxes, but regulatory framework is going to be big. We’re about to attend Consensus 2024 in Austin, a big crypto conference. And we noticed that a lot of the speakers are talking about regulatory framework, you know, and this is basically countries establishing themselves as crypto asset friendly and what those rules are going to be.
And that that’s opening the doors for wider adoption of cryptocurrency. So, make people feel more at ease with crypto and understand that there are rules to the game, you know, so we’re going to see regulatory framework come into play and that’s going to be really setting up to see how crypto evolves in the future.
So, a lot of that is going to be happening and certainly that pushes into the tax laws as well. So, we’re going to see probably a lot more tax laws coming up soon. One of the which we should mention is tax loss harvesting and the wash sale rule. So currently crypto, you know, coins are not considered securities.
And as not when they’re not considered securities, that wash sale rule right now, according to the way it’s written, it doesn’t apply. So, you got to be careful with that because when you do trade a normal securities, call it Tesla stock, for instance. You can sell out, take a loss on your stock. If you want to bank that loss and you can wait 30 days and you can buy back your Tesla stock right now, since we don’t see crypto as a security and it hasn’t been registered as a security, these wash sales are happening quite a bit.
So that loophole will probably be closing quite soon with this regulatory framework, but people are still using it to their tax advantage. Another thing that we should talk about is you know, I think the tokenization of real-world assets Larry Fink said this from black rock that, you know, this is a big part of what they’re focusing on.
So that’s worth listening to just off the bat, but this is kind of fractional ownership of things. So, imagine you have a apartment, you know, in Manhattan or in Tribeca, you know, or some really fancy part of New York. And you know, it’s, it’s millions of dollars, but you can’t afford millions of dollars, but you can buy some square footage inside that house and tokenize each square foot.
And as you sell each square foot for a fractional cost, you can own part of that apartment. No, you couldn’t live there, but at the same time you can rise in New York’s real estate value market. So, I think that’s a very interesting thing. They’re also talking about doing that with art. They’re talking about doing that with sports teams in the future.
So, this RWA is a real-world asset tokenization that can really be the future of a lot of the cryptocurrency environment. So that’s something to take a look at and I know a lot of people will be talking about that consensus as well this year.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you for filling in some of the things and again, I know you’re going to come back with a wealth of information from the consensus conference, which, you know, at some point maybe down the road later this year, I’d like to have you back on the podcast.
Any of our listeners, an update, but certainly you do appreciate you breaking that down for us. We have a lot of enthusiasts here in our audience.
Nick Slettengren: Brian, I really appreciate you having me on I’ll, I’ll leave you with just this that, you know, count on sheep welcomes anybody that comes from the podcast. We’d love to give, you know, anyone that comes through you all 10 percent off of their bill when they come to us and have us do their crypto accounting for them.
Also, we should note that we do this as a B2C service. Help people save a lot on their crypto taxes. And we also have a B2B service as well, a department that helps on enterprise clients and web three clients to get their wallets all in one place to work on their wallet hygiene, get their accounting done and push it to you know, their NetSuite and all their other ERPs.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Appreciate the share and we’ll certainly be following you really closely. And Nick, it was such a pleasure and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Nick Slettengren: Fantastic. Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Nick Slettengren Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
