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Bri Teresi - model, golf influencer, and host of Free the Money, sits down with Income Insider TV to make the case that crypto, precious metals, and self-custody aren't fringe ideas. They're the foundations of genuine financial sovereignty in 2026.
Bri Teresi is not the typical crypto commentator. Before she ever discussed privacy coins or precious metals on her show Free the Money, she was modeling for Guess Jeans and building an audience as a golf influencer.
But her story, rooted in a Sicilian immigrant family that held physical gold, read Austrian economics, and debated the Federal Reserve at the dinner table, turns out to be the most authentic possible origin story for someone who now spends her days educating everyday people on sound money and financial sovereignty.
The full Income Insider TV interview is available on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple podcast platforms. The full video can be found here on YouTube:
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Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Why precious metals and crypto are complementary, not competing - and what scarcity means for both
- The "not your keys, not your coins" principle explained simply, and why it matters more than ever
- How meme coins have distracted from crypto's real purpose: removing financial middlemen
- The risk of centralized AI and the case for decentralized alternatives
- Practical first steps: privacy coins, silver, and crypto IRAs for those not ready for self-custody
- The Free State Project and the growing movement toward physically co-located, like-minded communities
From Gold Bars to Bitcoin: A Family Foundation
Bri Teresi grew up physically holding gold and silver in her hands, a gift from a grandfather who made her write essays on monetary history. "I really owe that to my grandfather," she says, "who at such a young age instilled these values in me."
Those values, skepticism of centralized monetary control, reverence for hard assets, and a focus on generational wealth, eventually led her to cryptocurrency just as naturally as they led her family to real estate in Silicon Valley during the 1960s.
The family's story is instructive: her grandmother arrived from Sicily by boat, seven months pregnant with twins, in pursuit of the American dream. They built wealth through property ownership and the principles of sound money. Teresi sees direct parallels to what she advocates today, owning assets that cannot be arbitrarily devalued, and passing that knowledge down.
"It's never too late to start. A lot of people feel like they're left behind — that's just frankly not true today. Every day we have choices with our money." ~ Bri Teresi, Free the Money
The Case for Both Metals and Crypto
One of the more interesting threads in this conversation is Teresi's refusal to choose sides in the metals-versus-crypto debate, a debate she finds artificially tribal. "If I see opportunities in many different places, I'm going to invest in things I think are going to be successful. There's not just going to be one thing," she says.
Her framework for why they complement each other centers on shared properties: both have capped or scarce supplies, both are neutral assets, and both are censorship-resistant in ways that fiat currency and traditional banking are not.
She points to the BRICS nations' growing preference for gold over U.S. Treasuries as real-world validation. When sovereign governments want to hold something outside the dollar system, they reach for neutral hard assets.
On silver specifically, Teresi is bullish. She notes the U.S. has now classified silver as a critical mineral, and its industrial role in AI infrastructure, data centers, and national security creates a demand profile that goes well beyond monetary store-of-value arguments.
Her approach: treat silver the way Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin describes, buy incrementally, every two weeks, as a percentage of income.
Related: Why 15% of Your Portfolio Should Hold Gold or Bitcoin - Ray Dalio
Self-Custody: What "Owning" Crypto Actually Means
This is where Teresi gets to what she considers foundational. Most people who think they own crypto, whether through ETFs or balances sitting on Coinbase, Binance, or another exchange, don't actually own it in any meaningful sense.
"Not your keys, not your coins" is the operating principle, and she's lived its consequences firsthand: she lost funds when Voyager collapsed, and had her PayPal account frozen years earlier, an experience she credits with shaping her deep skepticism of custodial platforms.
Her wallet recommendation is Edge, which she favors for its user-friendly interface. She's clear that ease of use isn't a luxury, it's the barrier between the average person actually taking custody of their assets or leaving them on an exchange out of friction.
The seed phrase problem, having to write down a string of words, physically secure them in multiple locations, and never forget them, remains the industry's most stubborn UX obstacle, and she's watching developments around address-free transactions with interest.
"When crypto is on an exchange, you don't control your private keys. You don't have true ownership unless you control your private keys."— Bri Teresi, Free the Money
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Meme Coins and the Distraction Problem
Teresi is blunt about what meme coins have done to crypto's reputation and clarity of purpose. In her view, they've been a "major distraction," generating headlines about rug pulls and get-rich-quick schemes when the original promise of cryptocurrency was something far more structural: removing financial middlemen, enabling censorship-resistant transactions, and giving individuals sovereignty over their own money.
"Hopefully people can realize what crypto was really meant for," she says, "and we can return to the original ethos." That ethos, in her framework, is about infrastructure and freedom, not speculation.
Related: Decentralized Masters Review - Is the Crypto Educational Platform Worth It?
The Digital Control Grid: AI, Surveillance, and the Choices Ahead
The conversation moves into territory that's become increasingly mainstream in alternative finance circles: the convergence of centralized AI, digital identity, and financial surveillance.
Teresi draws a direct line between her experiences with platforms, a large Snapchat account deleted overnight, Facebook payments frozen, PayPal funds seized, and the broader trend of private companies accumulating enormous control over people's digital and financial lives.
She's a student of Catherine Austin Fitts on the concept of the "control grid," and is watching decentralized AI projects (she recently interviewed someone from the NEAR Foundation) as potential counterweights to what she sees as a winner-take-all dynamic in AI development.
Her concern about centralized AI isn't conspiratorial in tone — it's pragmatic. Data is revenue. The more platforms know about you, the more leverage they have. And she sees the push to implement Know-Your-Customer (KYC) requirements across internet platforms as the next logical step in that progression.
Her advice for navigating this: use AI as a tool, not a crutch. Prefer decentralized AI alternatives where possible. And be conscious of what you're trading when you opt into convenient, centralized services.
Living on Crypto: Is It Actually Possible?
Teresi says yes — and she's already doing part of it. She uses the BITC card to transact daily, converting crypto to spendable form for everyday purchases.
She points to Joël Valenzuela from the Dash ecosystem and the Free State Project as someone who has lived entirely on cryptocurrency for years, and describes a growing ecosystem of tools that make it increasingly viable: Spritz for bill pay, AAVE for lending and borrowing, and reloadable crypto-linked cards for day-to-day spending.
The Free State Project itself, a physical community built around liberty-minded principles, represents for Teresi the logical endpoint of the values she holds: not just a digital philosophy, but an actual community of like-minded people living differently, making collective decisions about how to raise families and conduct commerce outside mainstream systems.
For Women Getting Started: Just Go For It
Teresi is deliberate about speaking to women who feel intimidated by investing, crypto, or alternative finance. Her message is direct: the resources are there, the communities are responsive, and the empowerment that comes from understanding and managing your own money is worth the learning curve.
She highlights Angel Pui, a web3 builder she recently interviewed, as an example of the kind of role model she wishes more young women had in front of them. Her message to younger cousins heading to college: go into engineering, and take advantage of the narrow window of opportunity in web3 that exists right now.
You can find Bri Teresi's full interview with Angel Pui on her YouTube channel:
Discover how cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin can supercharge your IRA or investment portfolio.
Where to Start If You're New to All of This
Teresi's practical recommendations for someone beginning their journey toward financial sovereignty:
Precious metals: Start buying silver incrementally from a reputable dealer. Treat it as a percentage of income set aside regularly, not a one-time purchase.
Crypto: Look into privacy coins — Zeno, Zcash, and Monero are her current picks. Privacy is going to matter more, not less, in the environment we're entering.
Not ready for self-custody? Consider a crypto IRA through a reputable custodian. She has used iTrustCapital since around 2020 and recommends them for those who want crypto or gold exposure within a tax-advantaged structure without managing their own keys.
And above all: it's not too late. The tools exist, the communities are accessible, and the education is out there for free. Taking one concrete step, buying an ounce of silver, opening a self-custody wallet, or asking a question on X is how it starts.
