# Illiquidity can help investors hold through volatility

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/illiquidity-can-help-investors-hold-through-volatility/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Grant Cardone](https://realalpha.app/people/grant-cardone/) · Grant Cardone is CEO of Cardone Capital. · Built Cardone Capital into a $5B real estate portfolio and raised more than $2B from everyday investors.
- Host: [David Weisburd](https://realalpha.app/people/david-weisburd/) · Weisburd Capital
- Show: How I Invest
- Episode: [Why ‘Quality Over Quantity’ Is Keeping You BROKE](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/), Mar 2, 2026
- Moment: 45:01 to 50:07 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/illiquidity-can-help-investors-hold-through-volatility/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2701

## Quote

> “When you buy real estate, you don't sell it the next day. It would take **six to nine months** to sell this asset.”
> — [Grant Cardone](https://realalpha.app/people/grant-cardone/) at [46:28](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2788) · How I Invest

## Takeaways

1. He says real estate can take six to nine months to sell.
2. His example pairs property cash flow and depreciation with Bitcoin exposure.
3. He says the fund can keep the real estate while managing or borrowing against Bitcoin.

## About this segment

Grant Cardone argues that illiquidity can keep investors from selling during market swings, and illustrates his view with a real estate and Bitcoin deal. The case rests on holding both assets over time, not trading short-term moves.

From “Why ‘Quality Over Quantity’ Is Keeping You BROKE”, Mar 2, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/)

## Transcript

From the transcript How I Invest publishes with the episode.

[45:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2713) I have this term I coined, the virtue of illiquidity, and it came from my interviews with crypto investors. So if you think there's hundreds of millions, if not billions of crypto investors, there's a couple 100, let's call it 500 or so that are fund managers. I've interviewed the top decile, top 10%. And they all said in one variation or another, off the record, that the number one thing that determined their return is whether the capital was liquid or illiquid.

[45:36](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2736) So all the things that they were doing, all the research, all the all the access, all of that paled in comparison with just not selling. Yeah. See see see Wall Street wants to talk all you guys into liquidity, but liquidity is not what you want. You want illiquidity. Now when there's an opportunity, you want liquidity. But really, you'd what I don't want and the reason I love real estate and Bitcoin combined is because I take an illiquid asset, which is real estate.

[45:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2758) It's real. It's hard. It it can't move. You can't steal it from me. You can't take it down. Like, you cannot steal my real estate. It's impossible. It's 330 units. It's $300,000,000. It takes up a whole block in Boca. It sits in front of a golf course. None of this is gonna change. I I see the ocean from every window. It's very physical. Then I combine it with something that's digital. I can't even find it in space or time.

[46:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2781) I can't even locate it. It sits on something called the blockchain. You combine those two, bro. It's like a like, it's a physical and a tangent a a digital. One cash flows, one doesn't, one has a utility, one, I can't even put my hands around it. Right? You combine the two together, I now have an illiquid asset. When you buy real estate, you don't sell it the next day. It would take six to nine months to sell this asset.

[46:46](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2806) I combine it with a very liquid asset that goes up and down like this and I don't have to worry about it going up and down anymore. I just need time. Imagine owning the Vatican or where where you know, right, the 16th Chapel in in in the fourteen hundreds or whenever it was built, right, and what it's worth today. You want real estate for long periods of time. And and if you believe Bitcoin's here to stay, you want Bitcoin twelve years from now.

[47:08](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2828) You don't you don't really care about the next twelve days. You care about the next twelve years. I love Bitcoin. I'm a Bitcoin bull. But isn't it dangerous to hold it in a real estate portfolio? And why is that not, like, adding a lot of risk and a lot of leverage? Well, I would just tell you, if you're just a Bitcoiner, right, you you wouldn't do my deal. You you would just do the Bitcoin, and you'd buy it at 68,000 or $66,000 today.

[47:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2850) You'd sit and wait for your 1 Bitcoin. But look, 99% of the world does not even know what Bitcoin is. Okay? If you said BTC, they'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about, dude. Is that BTC or STD? Like, I'm not sure what you're talking about. 99% of planet earth does not know what Bitcoin is. They do not know Michael Saylor. They do not know what the white paper is. They do not know the book, the Bitcoin Standard.

[47:48](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2868) Period. End of story. They don't know what the word fungible means. Okay? Like, they don't know. 99% of Plan Air understands real estate. We created a vehicle that is very understandable. Piece of real estate, the cash flows, physical location, 101 Meisner, Boca Raton. I bought it out of bankruptcy, $230,000,000. It should've sold for $3.50. There was 14 other institutional investors. I closed the project in ten days.

[48:14](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2894) Paid cash, 230,000,000, ten day close, bought it from Blackstone out of their debt fund. K? It was a distressed asset. We stole it. You can Google it. 101 Meisner. Now here comes the Bitcoin story. We added Bitcoin on top of it. K? The real estate investor now owns the real estate, the cash flow, gets the depreciation, and we added a $100,000,000 of Bitcoin. We added a thousand coins to that purchase, a thousand and 75 coins.

[48:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2922) You have the real estate that I can condo out of and pick up 200,000,000, sell off the condos, the investors will make 200,000,000, and we still own a thousand and 75 Bitcoin. I have the best of two worlds. You end up with one Bitcoin. Okay? I end up with real estate, the condo exit, the real estate exit, the cash flow, the depreciation, and the Bitcoin. If the Bitcoin skyrockets and I own a thousand 75 at purchase and it goes to a million dollars tomorrow, I could sell off my Bitcoin and make a billion dollars.

[49:09](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2949) $1,000,000,000 is what we would make. If that takes one year, two years, five years, or twelve years, I think it goes to a million dollars one day. I I make a billion dollars on the real estate. Twelve years from now, I could profit my investors on the Bitcoin or borrow against the Bitcoin, and I still own my real estate. So I don't have to make a decision on one or the other. Now we won't do either one of those.

[49:28](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2968) We'll combine this. We're gonna keep adding Bitcoin real estate hybrids, and we'll go to the public markets and see if the public markets give us a the institutions, your buddies, if they're gonna give me a premium for combining 10 or 12 or 15 or 20 of these together. And we think they will. I think a lot of people underestimate behaviorally how to invest. So they think I'm gonna buy one Bitcoin. I'm gonna ride it up and down.

[49:53](https://realalpha.app/v/Uh6AC9QX-ws/?t=2993) And the data always shows most people have loose hands. They will sell.