Roger Hamilton, CEO of Genius Group, was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access. Genius Group is a leading provider of AI-powered, digital-first education solutions, striving to disrupt the highly standardized system of traditional education with a personalized, flexible and life-long learning curriculum for the modern student.
Hamilton spoke about his company’s intention to become a “Bitcoin Treasury Company,” holding 1,000 BTC by early 2025.
Hamilton spoke about his company’s intention to become a “Bitcoin Treasury Company,” holding 1,000 BTC by early 2025.
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00:00Roger, thank you so much for being here today.
00:07Very good to be here, Kevin. Thanks for having me on.
00:10Absolutely. So, Roger, let's dive right into it.
00:14So, the viewers who are unaware of your company, Genius Group, what is it that you guys do and what do you guys offer?
00:20Well, we're an AI-powered education company, which is delivering personalized education to over 5 million students around the world.
00:28We're also a Bitcoin treasury company, so we believe in a post-singularity future where everyone's going to be learning differently,
00:36the skills we're going to be learning, and the way we need to be thinking about how we're earning a living as well as how we're designing our life.
00:45That's everything that we do here at Genius Group.
00:48Wow, that's awesome. What a great company.
00:51Now, you mentioned something about you guys positioning yourself to be a Bitcoin treasury company.
00:56Now, I've heard you guys have a goal of holding at least a thousand Bitcoin by the end of 2025.
01:01Why did you choose to pursue such an exciting strategy?
01:06Well, I got to see Michael Saylor speak in front of a whole series of CEOs early in 2024.
01:13That was when he had already been going for several years as a Bitcoin treasury company with MicroStrategy.
01:19At that point, we were looking at our own business, which as a small public-list company had the same questions on how do we ensure that we are staying relevant as we are building the business for shareholders to see that the value we're creating is growing with the digital economy.
01:35We believe that the future is an economy in which you're not just going to have 8 billion humans, but you're going to have over 100 billion, which is a massively much bigger number than that.
01:46You're going to have like 100 billion AI agents and robots that are going to be creating an entirely new digital economy.
01:52And they're going to be using a digital gold to back their currency, which is what they're going to be using to transact with each other.
01:57And we believe that digital gold is going to be Bitcoin.
02:00So setting up a Bitcoin treasury is something we still delayed until November time in 2024, very soon after the elections, when it became very clear that the new administration was going to be embracing crypto economy.
02:15And that's when we decided to launch our entire treasury.
02:20And as you said, we set this thousand goal because if you look at most of the predictions that are out there by the experts, you know, really the minimum that we're going to see Bitcoin go to within the next five years is maybe a million dollars.
02:33You know, there's, you know, Michael Saylor said $21 million within 10 years.
02:36And so if you do have a thousand Bitcoin, that's going to give you a billion dollar treasury.
02:40And there's only 21 companies in the world today that have a thousand Bitcoin in their treasury.
02:45We already have gone over 400. We have 420 as of this week.
02:48And that's much faster than we were expecting.
02:51But we saw a lot of support from our shareholders and also at the same time, a lot of acceleration in the market itself when it came to this interest in Bitcoin treasury companies.
03:01So we're excited to be on this journey with other Bitcoin treasury companies from around the world.
03:05Wow, that's that's amazing. And, you know, education is such a huge, huge area that I feel like AI doesn't really have much educational platform to it.
03:15Right. We have a lot of basic AI softwares out there, but it sounds like Genius Group is really doing their best to bring that education in it.
03:22So because the business is designed to use your AI education platform, could you provide a background on genius education and how your platform leverages AI to enhance learning?
03:33And what distinguishes genius you from other edtech platforms in this rapidly growing market?
03:40Well, the biggest thing I would say is that in almost every other case with edtech platforms, and there are a number of them out there.
03:47When you go there, you will find a series of courses for you to choose from.
03:51You're not necessarily shown which is the right course for you and you may not even know what's the right course for you as well.
03:56The very first step that happens when you come to Genius is you meet your AI mentor.
04:02So we have AI mentors in a whole range of different areas.
04:06If you go to student AI, for example, it is the number one set of AI tools and AI mentors for university students.
04:14If you go to our genius team AI, you'll see that we have got a C suite of AI, which includes our own chief AI officer, which is Alan Turing AI.
04:24And where you can get answers to your own company, how you can be utilizing AI within the company.
04:31In fact, there's a five minute test you can take with Alan in a conversation where he will determine where is the area in your business that you can actually make the biggest impact with AI and applying AI and then what the steps are and how to go about doing it as well.
04:46So what's really important here is knowing that AI already is at a point where it can really guide you much more effectively towards a personalized path of where you want to go.
04:56And that is one of the biggest areas, I think, in education that is missing.
05:00For many people, they think education is simply information, but we live in a world of too much information.
05:05So we're not actually looking for all the information.
05:07You know, if I went to Paris and I landed at the Charles de Gaulle Airport, you know, and I want to go to Eiffel Tower,
05:13someone coming and teaching me every single street in Paris and giving me a map doesn't help me to get to Eiffel Tower.
05:20I don't want to know what information.
05:21What I want to know is someone who can say I've been there before.
05:24Here's where you are right now.
05:25Here's where you want to go.
05:26Here's the scenic route.
05:27Here is a fast route.
05:28Here is the cheap route.
05:29You get to choose.
05:30And for most of us, we're looking to get somewhere in life.
05:32Someone else has already been there.
05:34Mentors can support you on that journey.
05:36And being guided on exactly what the steps are that are right for you and only you at your point in life is much, much more important.
05:42So we link everything into who you are personally.
05:45We have a passion test, a purpose test.
05:48We have the genius test, which measures your talents.
05:50And once you know what these are, then you're not only taking a learning pathway, which is right for you, but it's one that you're passionate about,
05:56one that's meaningful, and one that's going to, as we like to say, not take you to your day's work, which is just how you can earn a dollar,
06:02but it actually takes you to your life's work, which is what you can have remembrance for.
06:05It's what you would do if AI was actually doing all the work for you.
06:08And this is one of the most important aspects of this world we're moving into,
06:13where there's more than one expert saying that we may even reach AGI, which is the singularity,
06:19super human intelligence, this year.
06:21And if it's not this year, it certainly will be in the next couple of years.
06:24When that happens, most jobs will be totally transformed where they are today,
06:28what we end up doing with our time and how we end up harnessing AI.
06:32And then going to places we could never imagine going to before is no different from the days when everyone was on a horse with one horsepower.
06:39And someone said, hey, you can be at 100 horsepower, 1,000 horsepower.
06:42And when you realize everyone's moving to the car and the horse isn't even going to exist on the motorways in the future,
06:47when you realize that, you realize, wow, I don't have to be the one that's putting all the energy in or even learning how to ride a horse.
06:52I don't need to figure out how to have a job in the current form where I'm the labor.
06:57I can figure out ways that I can actually be part of a much larger digital ecosystem.
07:02And if I understand AI, if I understand how to harness it, it's going to enable me to go to places in my life,
07:07in terms of my lifestyle, in terms of what difference I can make in the world that I couldn't have done before.
07:12And that's a really important change, which is much more than just getting skills of AI or learning how to invest in Bitcoin.
07:18It's about understanding that we're all going to live a very different future.
07:21And that's what Genius Group is all about. In fact, the word genius comes from that saying everyone is born a genius.
07:27But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it'll go for its whole life believing that it's stupid.
07:33So this is not about us all going through standardized testing to basically be a better computer.
07:37This is about us all following our own mission in life, our own purpose in life.
07:41And as a result of that, we all end up becoming better humans.
07:44Yeah. Wow. That's that's brand new to me. That's awesome.
07:47Now, last question. And thank you so much for coming on today.
07:51So lastly, can you provide an overview of the announced rights offerings and how it plays into your strategy?
07:58Yeah, I would say that what's exciting is that this is the week that we have published our perspectives.
08:03So anyone who is a shareholder can look at the perspectives.
08:07We have announced a record date for the rights issue, which is this Friday for this week.
08:12So it's actually happening right now. And in that rights issue, what we are offering is for every share that a shareholder holds,
08:19they have the right to a second share at 50 cents, which is a big discount on the current traded price.
08:26And 100 percent of that is going towards our Bitcoin treasury.
08:29We've calculated that off the back of the current number of shares that we have,
08:35that if we're successful, this could raise up to 33 million dollars.
08:38And in addition to the additional debt financing that we are going to have to complement this,
08:43that means we'll be able to purchase another 50 million dollars worth of Bitcoin.
08:46You know, we were following some other companies that got to a thousand Bitcoin and some of them took six months and took 12 months.
08:54We are at the moment only two months into our journey.
08:56If this is successful and again, it is if because it all depends on our shareholders.
09:00But that would mean that we are adding potentially another 500 Bitcoin on top of the 420 that we have.
09:06We're already very close to that thousand within three months of announcing our strategy.
09:11So we do believe that we are moving quickly, which is great, given that we ourselves have high hopes for the future of the digital economy.
09:20And for anyone who is interested, all you need to do is go to our investor site and all the information is there in the prospectus.
09:27There's also an investor deck with slides and additional information, as well as contact details, if you'd like to find out more as well.
09:36And we will have the right period when anyone who has a right, you can trade the right if you don't want to actually utilize it yourself.
09:42That's going to go on from this Friday all the way through to February the 14th.
09:47And so all happening right now.
09:50Wow. Wow, that is amazing. Roger, thank you so much for coming on today. What an amazing interview.
09:56I know I'm excited to follow up with Genius Group in the future.
09:59I'm super excited to see what you guys offer going forward.
10:02More educational around the AI, the Bitcoin strategy, everything. Super exciting.
10:08Thank you so much, Roger, for being here today.
10:11Thanks very much, Jevin.