Bitcoin Treasuries with Acropolis | Chase Palmieri & Tim Kotzman | TLT-083

Jackson Mikalic (00:01.737) All right, welcome back to The Last Trade. We got a full house in here this week. We have five of us. So we have Michael Tanguma and Brian Cabellus, my co-hosts. We have Chase Palmieri from Acropolis and we have Tim Cotsman from the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast. Chase and Tim, thanks for joining us this week. How are you guys doing? Chase Palmieri (00:21.247) Great. Tim Kotzman (00:22.926) Thanks for having us. Jackson Mikalic (00:24.435) Awesome. Well, it's an exciting week. We're going to be kicking off with the last trade officially next week, a new format. So we'll tease it out a little bit this week and then we'll get into more of the topics or interviews that we want to discuss with Chase and Tim. Maybe to start from the very top, in a historic week, President Donald Trump took the office back on Monday. His inauguration speech was focused, I'd say on the future of America and what he described as the golden age. And so naturally being a Bitcoin podcast, we'll be discussing today about the orange age for America. So gentlemen, I want to hear what your thoughts are just over the course of the past week. Chase or Tim, maybe I'll kick it over to you just being the guest today. How, you know, how have things gone this week? Are they kind of in line with your expectations? Are you excited about what the Trump administration will be doing for the Bitcoin space and in the United States more broadly? Chase Palmieri (01:19.893) I'll go first, Tim. It was good to see Trump and the administration fulfill at least one of their initial campaign promises to the Bitcoin community and pardoning Ross Ulbrich. So that is, I would say, good signal that perhaps the larger conversation that has been surrounding the strategic Bitcoin reserve, that maybe that will ultimately come to fruition as well. And certainly the betting odds on Polymarket are suggesting that the likelihood of that is increasing day by day here. you know, maybe this was the wrong expectation. I was kind of hoping to see an executive order in the first couple of days, but Bitcoiners tend to have a low time preference. And I think we're going to see a lot more business friendly regulation, the repeal of Saab 121, ultimately a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And so, yeah, I think all previous headwinds are now tailwinds. Tim Kotzman (02:16.526) Yeah, I had a similar response. was, you know, maybe from all of the social media a little too expectant of something, like literally on day zero. And of course the expectations of something in the inaugural address, like... saying anything about Bitcoin or digital assets. It's not the right audience. It's not the right time. So that made sense. now we're sitting here with Senator Cynthia Lummis chairing, as of this morning, the new digital assets subcommittee, banking committee in the Senate. so we really have, from my view, three things in play. We have executive Congress and the state level. And I was listening to a spaces this morning and just interesting to kind of wrap it up with the fact that like Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world. California is the fifth largest. So the fact that you have legislation introduced in 11 states so far and soon to be probably, you know, many more is just very encouraging. In addition to everything on the executive and legislative fronts. Brian Cubellis (03:38.672) I totally agree with that, Tim. I think it's being under-talked about the amount of work being done at the state level for strategic Bitcoin reserves. But just reflecting on the past week, mean, it's been a crazy week, It's been legitimately insane in the sense that we were all excited for the inauguration on Monday, but what we didn't expect was Trump to launch his own meme coin last Friday night. That took me by surprise, at least. I don't know if you guys were expecting that. I did not really see that one coming, particularly given he's already launched some other altcoin, World Liberty Financial, whatever it's called. And so this is actually his team. let's put it towards his team, not him. Donald Trump is not on soul scan launching these coins. But his team has now launched two altcoins. Actually, three, you want to count, Melania's, which came on Sunday. And it was just fascinating to watch play out because from my perspective, like it's indicative of where sort of broader crypto is today, generally speaking, in the sense that, you if you rewind like five, seven years ago, the broader crypto space was very much about like decentralized forms of utility and pioneering tech and all this blockchain infrastructure that was going to be super critical for all these applications in the future. They've completely just given up on that narrative. And it's basically just gambling. And meme coin speculation is the primary driver of the crypto markets, ex-Bitcoin and ex-Stablecoins. And so I think like Trump, the incoming president of the United States, doing this a few days before his inauguration is just like this microcosm of where crypto is today and sort of lost in its narrative battle that it's been waging sort of adjacent to Bitcoin for many years. And now they're just in the spot where it's honestly somewhat refreshing because it's just like, they're just going be honest about it. Like there's no innovation here. It's just like, this is financialization of the attention economy. Anyone can launch their token and see what happens. It probably rug pulls, probably gets dumped on retail. The other thing to note about Trump's coin is the supply dynamics, like the tokenomics, quote unquote. 80 % of it. Brian Cubellis (06:06.764) is locked up by insiders. so the reason why it was so crazy to watch over the weekend is because there's only 20 % of the tokens that are free floating. So the circulating market cap, think at its high got to like $7.5 billion, or at its high, like $15 billion, but on a fully diluted basis. So the entirety of the supply, will vest and be released over the next three years. It actually got up to like 72 billion, which is even bigger than like the largest meme coin currently, which is Dogecoin. So it's just like truly insane. And then like it also just sucked all the liquidity out of crypto markets. So like basically as this was happening, as it got sort of ninja launched on Friday night, basically the entire altcoin space like collapsed in a matter of minutes as all the liquidity got sucked into Trump coin. People were just chasing it for the next like 48 hours, basically. And so yeah, lots has happened. lot has happened, but I would agree, Chase, like the freeing of Ross is a good signal of potentially more positive things to come. Trump through World Liberty Financial is also buying wrapped Bitcoin. So that's kind of being less discussed. It's not real Bitcoin. It's wrapped Bitcoin. But there's some accumulation going on. The question I have for you guys on SBR stuff is like, Michael Tanguma (07:34.368) So first I just want to in Brian's defense I don't believe he shit coins. I don't believe he has a big bag of altcoins he knows a lot about token economics and all the things around Milana and whatever else he talked about there because He has a good friend that has now become a friend ours. Hopefully he listens this one or he could share it. won't say his name that has made an insane amount of wealth Brian Cubellis (07:35.62) Go. All right, sorry. You go. Brian Cubellis (07:58.234) I'll send it to him if he doesn't hear it. Michael Tanguma (08:02.88) trading these alternative currencies. so Brian gets texts late at night about these ultra long positions. So that was Brian's part of being chief strategy officer is keeping his ear to the pulse of what's happening in the crypto market. But with all that said, I'm glad you took it in that direction because I think the SBR stuff, it's an interesting thing that we haven't talked about, but the reality is we've kind of said it here. It wasn't gonna happen day one. There was a good tweet that came out about. There's the Ross component, there's the Jan six folks, there's immigration, there's Lumis that happened today, there's SAV getting repealed for companies to come in, companies to get exposure. There's a lot of things in an order of operations that had happened before an actual like anything around strategic accumulation that always had happened. So it's like kind of crazy for us to think that. So think we are all on the same page there. What I do think is it really fascinating is the signal that Trump coin sends to like there are no more rules, right? It's like everything's game on free market and people, it's like what makes this pod be even more important in educators because people are just gonna lose so much money in what's about to happen. All the 15 years are gonna look like child's play compared to, because we're gonna see the same thing. So you said Nebcoins and speculation, like sure that's right, but they're gonna recreate all the old narratives again and we see this with like a lot of the tokenization stuff that BlackRock's chilling and people are gonna come to inflate Bitcoin and that, it's just gonna be chaos. So there's gonna be two sides of the coin, Bitcoin's gonna pump. And a portion of this that just came out, I don't know if Jackson you have it ready or we'll play it at some point, which is like XRP being in discussion. And I wouldn't put it past these guys, because the amount of capital that Ripple and XRP have to influence a lot of things, for them to push some 10 % intrinsic reserve by that, yeah, maybe if you wanna play that. Jackson Mikalic (09:56.758) I'll try it. Tell me if the audio comes through. Michael Tanguma (09:58.43) Okay. Michael Tanguma (10:03.04) it's not, it's, yeah, so I mean, at the end of the day, it's Brad Garlandhouse explaining why you need a diversified basket of crypto, of course. And it's sad because that speaks to 90 % of investors. And then, yeah, I don't even, can't, it was just based on that. Jackson Mikalic (10:04.863) All right. Well, yeah. Go ahead, Michael. Jackson Mikalic (10:23.189) Well, yeah, I just want to echo what Michael said too. Brian, your past experience at Coinbase leading the tokenomics research really shined through there. Appreciate the analysis. yeah, mean, on this stuff, it's going to get really hairy, I think, because we're now going to see a battle between... Brian Cubellis (10:35.472) Yeah, exactly. Jackson Mikalic (10:46.794) people who want to push forward a Bitcoin strategic reserve and now people who want to push forward a crypto strategic reserve. And politicians haven't changed just because Trump got in office, know, money talks. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens over the next couple of weeks if we're going to move toward a Bitcoin strategic reserve at the federal level or if it's going to look something more akin to what World Liberty is doing with their wrapped Bitcoin, their $47 million initial investment. And so, Michael, it really does time to what you said, we're going to see rug pulls of epic proportion this cycle because we have massive pools of capital coming into an IOU on the Ethereum blockchain of Bitcoin. And now we're going to see the conflation. I was hoping we're going to avoid it, but now we're really going to see the conflation of Bitcoin and everything else at the national level. I think where the signal shines. Go ahead, Brian. Brian Cubellis (11:37.924) I think. I think there might be a silver lining though, because I see where you're headed with this. I have the same thoughts around like, well now, it's of back to the drawing board in terms of educating and distilling why Bitcoin is fundamentally different than the rest of crypto. The newsletter that we put out today, I tried to speak to that and really just in simple terms walk through why Bitcoin is very different than the rest of this stuff. back to Frontcoin, it's like, I saw some statistic that like 50 % of the wallets that came into that coin were brand new wallets, had never touched Solana before. So it was a massive onboarding event in like the worst possible way because these people are gonna be rugged, particularly if they like bought the actual top, you know, over the weekend. But the silver lining that I alluded to is like, it's sort of in, My optimistic take is like this event, Trump coin specifically, like speed runs the education for some folks because otherwise, like I think all this stuff would have happened regardless, even if Trump didn't launch his own coin. Like I think there would still be sort of an altcoin phase to this cycle. But now it's so apparent, like going back to what I was saying around like there's no illusions about what Trump coin is. Like it is a completely speculative gambling-esque bet. So I think if that's your first entry into crypto, maybe you just learn your lesson faster and you arrive at Bitcoin faster than you otherwise would have. Is my very optimistic maybe a silver lining here? Michael Tanguma (13:21.312) Yeah. I the problem with that is like, it is for some, but the reality is we're in an echo chamber bubble, like people still need to get burned and like they're gonna go, like it's gonna look more advantageous to buy like whatever the convertible bond that does X for Bitcoin and I get downside limited and upside. Like there's just gonna be so much like noise around it. But I do think we kind of can't gloss over the impact. Like there's an emotional thing that's really interesting like the Ross getting pardoned because there's like the aspect of once you have a kid then it's like a different level because you can always like understand how it's unjust but then imagine if your kid was unjustly put in prison. But then from the impact where it ties into this is like if you really take a step back that is some crazy stuff where somebody was locked away for two life sentences and Bitcoin. Chase Palmieri (14:14.357) plus 40 years. Michael Tanguma (14:16.234) plus 40 years, Bitcoin influenced that version. Because that's what happened at the end of the day. And that ties into all the pictures at the inaugural ball. You couldn't even understand if it was like some other event or if it was not inaugural, I'm sorry, the crypto ball. Because it had Bascent, Vivek, it had like all the players. Like it's intertwined now. And so again, positive. It's just like the whole thing is there's two sides to everything. And the same way we talk about here, single point of failure is like there's two sides, the bags you're gonna pump people are going to get kidnapped. Right? Like they can both happen at the same time. And so that's, Chase Palmieri (14:53.653) Yeah, maybe just to jump in here for a sec. Maybe one other positive to this is that a Bitcoin strategic reserve in contrast to this stuff, it starts to seem a lot more responsible. So maybe and I don't know if Trump really plays for DHS or not, but the Overton window definitely if it shifts all the way to this meme coin madness, then a strategic Bitcoin reserve seems a lot more responsible on the nation state level. Jackson Mikalic (15:22.059) Yeah, I think I totally agree with that. And I think another silver lining in all of this is that regardless of what happens at the federal level and when it happens, it ties back into what's happening at the state level. think there's a dozen now states that have legislation introduced and the more local you go in politics, the less corrupt it tends to be, at least is my perception. Right. And so you'd imagine then people at the more localized levels as they come up the curve on Bitcoin, they're going to want to opt for Bitcoin in their community on the balance sheet. Michael Tanguma (15:22.26) I don't... Jackson Mikalic (15:52.056) not for this diversified basket of shitcoins. And so the state, think, the state adoption will be interesting just as states begin to attract more capital and talent based on being Bitcoin forward. But then we'll even see that microcosm play out as well within towns, smaller municipalities, cities, etc. I think that's going to be really interesting to watch because I can't imagine them having a Ripple and Solana, Ethereum, Treasury, and they're going to stick to Bitcoin only. Michael Tanguma (16:18.56) Yeah, the other aspect of all this is you which you said earlier about politicians are gonna just change and that we know I don't even know we can go down a laundry list, but who's a What's this is There's a there's a there's one that's a staple politician that just has like insane Like returns from the stock market. It's just like there's like even inside trader like tracking Yeah, yeah Pelosi so where I'm going with this Jackson Mikalic (16:43.445) Pelosi? Chase Palmieri (16:44.117) You'll see my state. Brian Cubellis (16:44.144) Pelosi, yeah. Michael Tanguma (16:47.57) Where I'm going with this is like just like how VCs could accelerate the bagging the God I can't speak today. Just how VCs accelerated the rugging for like the Just return profile and all the things with accelerating token dumping. Well politicians are gonna be able to accelerate the rugging on How they can return capital because all this stuff is highly liquid And so Brian, I don't, I didn't fully follow like the transitioning of rat Bitcoin or whatever, but it's that core notion of everyone, mostly altcoins because they're going to turn it into Bitcoin. And so it makes complete sense that like, I don't know how liquid Trump is probably not very liquid yet. A lot of like court, you know, situations before the presidency that like, if he needs to pack his bags before this thing takes off, not saying that's the reason that journey before. Brian Cubellis (17:34.778) Well, yeah, that was going to be my question is like, you made some good points around why it was sort of crazy to think we would get an SBR executive order or legislation on like the first few days or even the first few weeks or months. The other component of that though is like, it wouldn't make a ton of sense to announce it without having bought any. And like, I don't... think they're that dumb to be like, yeah, we're going to buy X amount of Bitcoin and we're starting in a month. Like that just doesn't seem like something they would do. And so I think it's my base case is like they're they're already in the process or going to be accumulating prior to any like actual legislation that gets passed. Chase Palmieri (18:23.381) Are they allowed to do that though without having express sign off? Brian Cubellis (18:27.696) It's a good question. I don't know. Jackson Mikalic (18:30.057) Yeah, maybe changing gears real quick. One thing I wanted to highlight was the Bitwise Doe GTF. I'm sure you guys may have seen that. I think it's just like... Michael Tanguma (18:40.373) Ha! Jackson Mikalic (18:41.056) We're getting crazy here. Wall Street politicians, we're just gonna go all in on the shitcoins. And I can't, maybe you guys have an idea, I can't think of a justification for launching this aside from making money. I don't know how a firm would speak seriously to a wealth manager or an investment manager and make a case for why Doge should be included in a serious investor's portfolio. But maybe I'm missing something. Is there something? Michael Tanguma (19:09.152) You're right, it's incompetent. It's not even about making money because the amount of nominal money you make on something like this versus the credibility you will lose makes zero sense. It's fully incompetent. It's just incompetent. And if you use their ETF, like that's who you're working with. It makes zero sense. Jackson Mikalic (19:26.399) Yeah, I don't have much to offer there aside from, it's just disappointing to see. You'd think a firm that wants to be buttoned up and work with serious allocators wouldn't launch a product like that, but it ends up, think. shining a better light on firms that are doing it the right way, whether it's Fidelity or what we're doing here, focusing on the signal and Bitcoin. so one other thing I wanted to touch on before we get into some of the other discussion points was some corporate treasury that we saw, I believe Tether officially, or sorry, Tether invested in Rumble, but Rumble officially announced that they've added Bitcoin to the corporate balance sheet. And then there was one other, was Critical Metals Corp, which I think Trace on Nasdaq announced that they're looking to purchase up to $500 million of Bitcoin, maybe starting with a $100 million initial investment. What are your guys thoughts on that Chase, Tim? Chase Palmieri (20:22.101) mean, just more dominoes falling like the the Bitcoin, the corporate adoption of Bitcoin treasury, I believe is going to be the story of the year, probably the story of the decade. There's so much trapped cash in these, you know, checking accounts and cash equivalents. People are wising up to the idea that, you know, they're being debased and that the thirty six, thirty seven trillion dollars of debt is going to have to be printed away. So companies are looking to protect themselves. They've got enough examples in leaders like MicroStrategy and Semler Scientific and MetaPlanet kind of leading the way. Yes, doing some things more than just buying and holding Bitcoin, but the shareholder value story is there. The proof is in the pudding. And how long can these corporate treasurers watch these other companies run away with this finite asset before they have to dip their toes in? Michael Tanguma (21:17.856) Boys, we got breaking news on the pod. Brian Cubellis (21:19.818) I was just going to interject. We may have had some of our earlier questions answered. We've got a digital asset stockpile. Michael Tanguma (21:26.816) Trump order on crypto to develop national Doge stockpile that wise is not incompetent. They are geniuses. Chase Palmieri (21:31.637) No. Jackson Mikalic (21:35.851) I'm the idiot now. I'll take that one. Michael Tanguma (21:41.158) the market reacting to this. We look like we got up to hundred and six thousand and then they heard it was Doge and they said all right we got to sell. Tim what do you got? I think you're on mute. Jackson Mikalic (21:53.855) Tim's on mute. Tim Kotzman (22:01.55) How about now? Yeah, I got a screenshot. Michael Tanguma (22:03.05) We got you. Brian Cubellis (22:03.301) You're good. Tim Kotzman (22:08.398) From an account at 12 sale about three hours ago Trump order on crypto to develop national digital asset stockpile according to Fox so He wasn't sure if that was legit or not. Maybe it is As far as these other companies adopting a Bitcoin and Treasury strategy It's encouraging because it's a way to normalize it when I was talking with Matt Cole. He said really some of these players are gonna need want or need 10 to 20 companies at a minimum, just from like a diversification standpoint. So I think the more we can normalize it, the better and for better or worse, I mean, it's been around for a while now. It's like, well, what about Ethereum? I'm going to stick with Bitcoin. Well, now there's Solana. Well, I'm going to stick with Bitcoin. And it just, to all of your points, it seems to become the more responsible thing. you know, if we start with a meme coin, but then the president announces something to do with Bitcoin. It almost, this is crazy to say, it almost seems presidential then to say something about Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (23:14.676) Yeah, people have needed the air cover everywhere. We're seeing it across the space from RAAs to businesses to individuals to family offices that they know there's something here, but between administration, regulatory, air cover, and maybe this is a good segue for what we talked about, Doge, Solana, like businesses are also gonna need shepherds through this process. They're gonna need to know what to look at, how do they allocate, how do they custody. So maybe Jackson, let you kind of, I don't wanna see your thunder. Jackson Mikalic (23:45.962) You'd love to do that though. You always say you don't wanna do it, but you love to do it. I'm just messing. So Chase, one thing I wanted to say and then I wanna hand it over to you is even though if we see a digital asset stockpile, I think what ultimately the forcing function is is part, there's three parts of it in my mind. I'm just riffing on this as I go. There's the local governments that will opt for Bitcoin over digital assets. Brian Cubellis (23:47.395) You You Tim Kotzman (23:50.382) you Jackson Mikalic (24:14.699) I think other sovereign nations understand Bitcoin may be better than political grifters and they're likely going to opt more skewed toward Bitcoin in my opinion. It doesn't mean it's going to be Bitcoin only. And then the third would be corporations are going to adopt Bitcoin over crypto assets. So Chase, maybe I'll give it over to you and Tim of course as well. I want to hear from both of you guys. But I want to hear first about Acropolis because what you guys are doing is an area of the market where I don't think that there are any players that are doing anything differentiated, right? Like we'll talk about the custody landscape, that's just one piece of it, but we're going to see a repeal of SAB 121 soon, and that's really going to, that's going to allow for a lot of things on the corporate side, on traditional financial institutions stepping in, banks stepping in. So maybe just to paint a picture, what are you guys doing at a very high level and why is now an opportune time for the business? Chase Palmieri (25:12.201) Yeah, so at a very high level, Acropolis is working to simplify and scale the corporate adoption of Bitcoin Treasuries. And we're doing that with kind of a repeatable process and a secure custody solution using multi-institution custody. And so on a high level, you can think that, okay, Bitcoin is this scarce asset. But another thing that's scarce is talented folks with backgrounds in corporate finance and treasury management that understand Bitcoin, the asset class and how to properly allocate towards it in a company's business and implement that treasury strategy. So what we do is we're essentially your outsourced Bitcoin treasury team. You can come to us and move a lot faster than trying to go out and find this talent and hire for in-house Bitcoin treasury expertise. And so we'll help companies from everything from their accumulation strategy to getting them into on ramps secure multi-institution custody to a creative debt and equity financing support if they choose to go that route. a lot of this really comes to the corporate communication strategy. So investor relations, stakeholder engagement, employee engagement, getting everybody kind of aligned and understanding why the company is moving in this direction. And to kind of cap that off, we also provide specialized tax and accounting support. And so really anything that a company would need to implement a Bitcoin treasury, we have this repeatable process in place. We have, you know, decades of industry expertise and you can go ahead and add a very kind of efficient pricing model. You can get your allocation today as opposed to trying to set this up in house and allocating at next year's prices. Michael Tanguma (27:03.38) Yeah, it's super exciting. It reminds me of calling Acropolis a Bitcoin treasury business, like calling Google an internet technology company when it starts and then now it's just a technology company or a company. Because when you think about when Google first came out, you had to think about AdWords and all these things in marketing and understanding the internet that were still so early. But eventually you just use it all day long. have G Suite when you spin up a company in the same way that you will have Bitcoin as a core. treasury and then you'll naturally need to incorporate that technology in your business. And so that migration now to Chase's point requires a lot of stakeholder engagement because that's ultimately what's led for, we bring this up a lot in Leashman I think is coined this term of like the Bitcoin companies. So the companies that have adopted Bitcoin so far have orange dictator, have somebody that is able to top down push, but the reality is that's not how most companies governance is structured. And so they need to get buy-in. And that's why you see the individuals holding Bitcoin, because it's the consensus of one, but at a corporate level, it requires a lot of... Handholding, work, engagement, driving from an outside perspective, as we know from individuals, we usually, it's helpful to have peers to be in the room to help explain it because it's always just helpful because we all come from a super energetic point when we talk about it and usually need a little bit of different temperament. So super pumped for what you guys are doing and the launch of Acropolis this week. Tim Kotzman (28:32.153) Yeah, if I can underscore a couple of different aspects of this. So obviously you had MicroStrategy for a while. They were kind of it. And you fast forward to Q1 2025. There's literally this week at least it seems like at least coming across my screen, like one company per day that is launching at least the intentions of having a Bitcoin treasury strategy. And to Chase's point, the conversations that I've been a part of, like the very few individuals that actually do have the expertise to not only launch a Bitcoin treasury program, but communicated effectively. They are being courted by multiple people and like people that have a certain expertise that have a presence on social media. mean, they're having conversations with some of the most accomplished, most energetic, like everyone's being pulled in a million directions. So, And even just from a corporate communications and stakeholder standpoint, mean, I see guys in the space that have 10, 20, 30, less than 50,000 followers on X and they're advisors to companies on their Bitcoin treasury strategy. mean, that's, I just think it's going to really kind of be a moment this year where if you're not. kind of in in the next couple of weeks or couple of months, you're going to be like trying to get in touch with somebody that you're like hundreds of messages down their list of like, how do I even start? And I just like, like, well, just reach out to Acropolis. So I'm thankful that in my seat, because it's been a slow trickle, but it's picking up of like, on ramp. Tim Kotzman (30:33.782) Yeah, I've talked to Michael. Acropolis? What's that? So I just see this like really accelerating because of every single tailwind that we could sit here and discuss for hours on end. So yeah, I don't think that could be understated even if... you have a, let's say, mid-sized to larger company where they can kind of do it with their existing staff, to Chase's point, it's gonna be weeks or months, if not longer. And that's if you, like, kind of are clued in and even putting aside the buy-in standpoint, just operationally, you know, if we're in a bull market and the price is ripping, I don't know, like, time is of the essence. I'll just leave it at that. Jackson Mikalic (31:19.787) Yeah, those are, I those are all great points. There's that meme that goes around these days where it's like, you can just do things, right? But if you just do things in Bitcoin, you could end up getting rug pulled in many different ways. So I'm curious, Tim, it ties into what you just said and Chase, I would love to hear both of your thoughts on this is like, as companies start to think about their corporate Bitcoin playbook, where do they start? Right, Tim, you said like, these companies are thinking about where do I start? Well, what's the answer to that? Where do these companies typically start if they want to push this forward in their organization? Tim Kotzman (31:49.614) you Chase Palmieri (31:50.793) Go ahead, Tim. Tim Kotzman (31:53.324) I mean, I think that's... kind of an impossible question from the aspect of if someone maybe understands and understands Bitcoin as an asset, but from a corporate treasury standpoint, where do they start? don't, outside of pointing them to Acropolis, I don't know where I would point them. So like that in and of itself, I think should speak volumes. Like even... people that are out there advocating for companies to put on their balance sheet outside of some banks in other countries where you can custody digital assets. Like, I don't know where else you would start. And it's not like, as you guys might say, like talking your own book, like, I don't know. Would you reach out to an exchange? I mean, in the U.S., you outside of BNY with a waiver, like who would you reach out to? I don't know. Chase Palmieri (32:58.003) Yeah, I think there's two things that were blockers keeping companies from even being able to get started until very recently. Obviously, one of those is the FASB rule changes. So from an accounting standpoint, that is huge. Like we really can't underscore that enough that now the appreciation on a company's Bitcoin holdings can be passed through as net income and not marked down to its lowest point as an indefinite and tangible. so just as like a being able to even start to have the conversation with the CFO and the finance team, that was a deal breaker out of the gate that has now been addressed as of Jan one. And the other is really the work that we're all doing together with multi-institution custody. I mean, this idea of a corporation like MicroStrategy holding billions of dollars of Bitcoin on plastic devices that are being held by actual team members, that's just a, it's a non-starter. And so to me, Jan one marked the start of corporations, at least even being able to gain momentum if they're already educated on why Bitcoin deserves a role in their treasury as this kind of modern treasury reserve asset. Those two blockers have been knocked down. And that's why I think we're going to start to see some real runaway growth here. Tim Kotzman (34:17.916) Okay. Michael Tanguma (34:18.112) Yeah, I think one thing to call out that Tim references, you can't really get ahold of anybody in this space, which is really hard because everything's built for like, and Brian's been there at Coinbase, unless you are like a sailor, it's very hard. You can have people with 20 to a hundred million dollars that can't get ahold of Coinbase. So that becomes very difficult. But then the other part is, it sounds super simple, but this Bitcoin only focus ties into it because in the same way that we talk about Asset managers and institutions being exit liquidity when the market runs, it's not going to be any different for corporate treasuries if they don't get educated on the volatility and understanding how to size the asset. And nobody's going to really do that or very few people are going to do that if you're launching Doge ETFs and you're talking about a diversified basket of cryptocurrencies. so again, a lot of these things are actually really simple, but nobody does them for a number of reasons. Tim Kotzman (35:01.87) you Michael Tanguma (35:11.678) And we've kind of hashed them out, so we don't have hash them out here unless we want to, but I think that's just simple version of understanding the asset and being able to go and understand what the goals of the company are and then how do you size it appropriately are so simple but are fundamental if you're gonna have a good experience with this asset, because anything else in here are gonna be left. holding a bag, which is not to mention the last part is like yield. Yield, know, Brian was referencing like, you know, the stuff that's gonna happen like corporate treasury is here to go through the same learning curve. Hopefully it's not as bad, but they're gonna look at this asset sitting and they're gonna say, well, somebody's coming to me now that can either take my dollars instead of Bitcoin and give me downside protection with some nominal, some yield, or I can put this Bitcoin and generate some yield. And they don't know the 15 years or the past four years with, you know, 3AC, Genesis, blah, blah, blah. that they're just gonna get hurt again and all that's gonna come because we saw this with Coinbase last week, launched the wraps, whatever they were doing around lending and so I think that there's a lot of really simple things that just take focus and most people aren't focused in this industry and that's why you don't see them out in the market. Tim Kotzman (36:13.679) Michael, speaking of focus, at the sake of saying breaking news, David Bailey did tweet, people, it's a Bitcoin stockpile, Bitcoin. And I think this just underscores that. In addition to just like the price volatility and someone trying to like get their arms around that from an education standpoint, you have, I don't know who said this, it's like crypto is like this window dressing that at least for me, maybe draws in attention and maybe that's for better or worse a funnel into Bitcoin. like we've seen this administration before from like just a total, like you've seen four years of it. the showmanship, the dramatics are going to continue. So like if you want to like read every single Fox headline and be like, it's this, it's that. Like some of this stuff is like it's meant to grab your attention and like it's not going to stop. Like some of it's entertaining, some of it's funny, some of it's annoying. Maybe it depends on what your temperament and personality disposition is, but Like the theatrics will continue is what I'm trying to say. And so that amount of focus on Bitcoin. Tim Kotzman (37:43.106) That's where it should be, all of these things are a funnel into Bitcoin, but it's kind of a double-edged sword, if that makes sense. That's kind of my thought. Jackson Mikalic (37:55.498) Yeah, no, I tend to agree with that, Tim. And one thing I was just thinking about as you were saying that is shifting back into the Bitcoin corporate strategy, regardless of what happens at the federal level, we'll continue to monitor the announcements of announcements that people like to put out into Twitter. I'd be hard pressed to find corporate strategy is looking to issue debt and equity instruments around Doge or Ripple, right? And so Chase and Tim, all these questions are for both of you guys. Like, I'm curious to hear, as you guys think about corporate strategy and Bitcoin, do you think there's going to be a lot of other companies this year that tend to access capital markets through debt and equity issuance? Michael Tanguma (38:27.747) Ha Jackson Mikalic (38:47.891) Or do you think it'll skew more heavily toward more of a vanilla strategy where adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet and then maybe kind of exploring from there? Chase Palmieri (38:57.779) You know, it's hard to say. I'm seeing both in conversations with clients. So for example, a lot of clients don't want to touch that stuff and maybe rightfully so. And they just want to lump some into Bitcoin with an initial allocation and then have their ongoing accumulation strategy set up with their kind of DCA into the asset. But we have had clients reaching out to us even just this week that are saying, you know what, we actually don't want to make an initial allocation. We want to go raise debt or raise equity to make that initial allocation, to raise the capital for that initial buy. So that's actually surprising to me. We provide those services at Acropolis to kind of help companies approach capital markets and do these kinds of financings. There's clearly an appetite out there for some folks, but You know, we would encourage people, our clients, to start with an initial allocation, set aside an ongoing accumulation strategy, and then possibly have the discussion around raising equity or debt capital to kind of pull forward future purchases. Jackson Mikalic (40:11.349) Chase, what are those conversations looking like right now? You kind of described, but what I meant is, what do those profiles look like for the conversations you're having? Are they largely private companies? How, of what size? Are you speaking to public companies now too? How are those conversations developing? Chase Palmieri (40:29.461) So we are speaking to some Publix and those are the companies that are more interested in tapping the capital markets because they just have that advantage over privates. I would say we're seeing kind of a 50-50 split in clients between public and private. The privates are certainly bigger than, you know, we kind of talk about how we're willing to serve the mom and pop restaurant. And that is true. If you want to reach out to us, we'll... have that conversation with you, but we are definitely positioning ourselves for kind of upper market. But we're seeing both. We're seeing private and public, and honestly, we're seeing all jurisdictions. So because Bitcoin is this global asset, we're talking to publics in India, publics in Middle East, so publics in Europe. So really anywhere that is a public entity right now and can tap those capital markets. They're sitting on the sidelines watching MicroStrategy run the playbook. And I do think that there's a little bit of FOMO there. So yeah, we're kind of seeing a bit of everything. Michael Tanguma (41:37.748) Yeah, I suspect similar to Bitcoin. Well, it's sexy on the institutional or publics or the corp treasury. The reality is there's just going to be much more. I'm always confident like or make a heavy bet. It's gonna be much more on the privates and for basically the reason of consensus. Like it's easier to do and then there's so much there's so many pools of capital out there and the beauty of like something like Acropolis is this notion of at the end of the day, there's already a lot of actually like Bitcoin held on behalf of treasuries, but they generally don't have a real... solution thinking through long term. If it's sitting in hardware devices, well, you naturally need to bring that somewhere if you have to manage your accounting or lend against that or do other things from an operating perspective or if you just need to have financial services in the future. I think that the corporates are definitely get a lot of the buzz and they're sexy, but the private capital is going to be very interested in especially like I think Tim, we've talked about a little bit. What does it look like from a convertible perspective into equity if somebody can allow for some creative financing for a sexy cashflow positive private company that you can help get some Bitcoin on the balance sheet and then convert to some of the equity at the holding company level and get some of those dividends to start stacking your first version because maybe you just aren't ready. think there's gonna be a lot of interesting things that can be in the private markets with a lot of the excess capital that's just sitting on the sidelines. Tim Kotzman (43:01.356) Yeah, it's interesting to hear, Chase, what conversations you're having because from the few conversations and things I've picked up on, it seems like it's just a journey for everyone. They start with putting it on their balance sheet and then as, especially if they're a public company, as these, as they're going along on their journey and these. options are making themselves apparent and maybe they're seeing what MicroStrategy is doing and trying to follow in those footsteps that it's kind of walk a mile, see a mile. The other thing I think is interesting and not totally related is on the state level, you've seen legislation being introduced for a Bitcoin reserve. And even with some of these other projects having some capital and having, you know, maybe some voice in someone's ear somewhere, you haven't seen what maybe we would have seen a few years ago, which is some sort of Dogecoin reserve at the state level. So I think that tells me that, I mean, it's encouraging, obviously, but it's also just I think a sign of like people are when they have to be serious, they're serious. And when they have to understand something, hopefully they are understanding the difference between some of these assets. Michael Tanguma (44:28.416) yet. Jackson Mikalic (44:28.553) How do conversations differ between global companies or international companies versus domestic? Chase Palmieri (44:36.359) Really the only difference comes down to accounting treatment in those jurisdictions. Not everybody all over the world is getting this FASB update as of Jan 1. So other than that, the asset really is global. It really can provide the same benefits to a corporate treasury in the UAE versus a Texas LLC. So the really only thing that needs to be accounted for if they're not tapping their capital markets that they're in is the accounting treatment, which is pretty worked out. And we have kind third party partnerships, alliance partners that we can lean on in different regions to support that. Jackson Mikalic (45:18.185) Yeah, I mean at the end of the day everyone's facing the same problem, right? mean all fiat currencies are being devalued. We have a US dollar centric regime globally and so when that liquidity expands and contracts within the dollar it has all sorts of rippling effects and systemic issues in other countries as well. So it's not surprising to hear that the traction so far has been globally because at end of the day there's really no escaping this. you can't put as many other assets on your balance sheet, so everyone's just kind of stuck holding these currencies that are being devalued, some at 10 % a year, others at 50, others that are hyper inflating. So yeah, mean it's exciting to hear. There doesn't seem to be a lot of companies at the moment that are addressing these issues, and I love what you guys are doing as it relates to just tapping into capital markets. and also providing the education as well because that's still going to be needed. We're really in the first inning of what these conversations will look like in terms of being able to communicate value to investors on the public side and then on the private side getting the buy-in of other stakeholders and partners at the firm. Michael Tanguma (46:30.004) think one aspect of this that we've talked about a lot and this is gonna like exemplify it and people still they won't talk about it for a while is the version of like you asked international or domestic like around custody and where it sits because it becomes very nonsensical if you're sitting in El Salvador and you have it at Coinbase and they found that out via Twitter and they had to bring their Bitcoin home. But in the same way that it was nonsensical for the University of Texas and A &M's endowment fund, which I believe now is the largest in the country, to have their whatever billings in New York, and Kyle Bass had it driven down to Texas and put in the first North American bull in, depository is the same thing around the custody aspect. That custody will be required over time to be localized and It's just a thing that most people aren't thinking of. like when it's a 1 % allocation, nobody's going to be worried about it. But if we all know it ends up at five and then 10, people are going to naturally have issues. And that's really where this notion of SAP getting repealed and the bank sitting in. But then eventually people are going to wake up and be like, wait, should they have all of it? And then you can kind of see this multi-institutional world start to proliferate. And I think the same thing with Indian clients, UAE clients. They may not want no exposure to custody in the West, or maybe only one of those keys. Brian Cubellis (47:57.036) It's an interesting mix of localized while also remaining global in the sense that it's sort of like everywhere and nowhere. If you're using multistake with keys distributed across the world, where's your Bitcoin? It's kind of everywhere and nowhere, but you can still have that localized support with one, two, or even all three of the key holders being in your jurisdiction. So it is a... Jackson Mikalic (47:57.215) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (48:24.044) It's an interesting sort of vision of the future that I think we're just beginning to scratch the surface of and people waking up to those realities of, because it just hasn't like, you haven't been able to custody an asset like this ever before. So like what you referenced, Michael, around like bringing the gold from New York to Texas, it's like, you don't have to go that route. You just spread it out. Chase Palmieri (48:45.321) Yeah, and maybe I should have mentioned this, but Acropolis offers three different tiers of service. So our base tier is just the concierge onboarding into multi-institution custody. So none of our kind of outsourced Bitcoin treasury team services with that, but then our higher two levels of service, those it's where you really get to have access to our team and our resources, our education, quarterly meetings, et cetera. Jackson Mikalic (48:45.61) Yeah. Chase Palmieri (49:11.621) And that highest tier, our Olympus tier, that's where we offer multi-jurisdictional multi-institution custody. Jackson Mikalic (49:16.245) We lose chase. Jackson Mikalic (49:21.621) Chase, what are your thoughts on just the corporate treasury market? know in the investment memo that was put out this week, the market is about $12 trillion. I think it's $11.6 trillion between public markets and then what was estimated to be in private markets as well. How do you think about Acropolis capturing that market? on what time? I mean, this is almost like an impossible question, Tim. I asked you an impossible question earlier. So here's another one. But I'd be curious to hear like in 2025, what are your thoughts, ballpark, or however you'd think about it. And then over the next decade, what do you think Bitcoin corporate adoption looks like and how much of that $11.6 trillion in today's value flow into Bitcoin? Chase Palmieri (50:06.163) Yeah, I would say, and we did kind of express this in our total addressable market as part of the investment memo with early riders. We anticipate over the next decade for corporate treasuries to be sitting about 20 % of that treasury in Bitcoin. And so you can imagine that a decade from now that 9 to 12 trillion in cash and cash equivalents sitting in private and public combined balance sheets. that that number might be double. So, you know, if you call 20 % of that, you're looking at essentially 20 % of maybe $20 trillion of market cap available. So obviously Acropolis is not going to be the only player in this space. We have a pretty amazing technology and head start right now, thanks to our partnership with OnRamp. But this space is going to grow. With Saab 121 being repealed, we do expect more of the institutions and banks to come in and try to provide these services. Now, I think we all understand that Bitcoin as an asset class is unique. It's a digital bearer asset. It takes that 100 plus hours at a minimum to really start to understand the different properties that make this valuable and to be able to communicate that to an executive team so that they can communicate it with their shareholders. So we feel really good about our position and our head start here. And yeah, we just hope to maximize the opportunity. Jackson Mikalic (51:41.098) Yeah, I mean, it's really exciting. It's a massive market. And I'll be keen to watch how this plays out just with companies looking to deploy that strategy. Are they going to try to hire internally or are they going to lean on a firm like Acropolis to advise them on how to deploy a strategy? I think it will be the latter just because chase to your point, it does take so much time and there's only so many people out in the, let's say Bitcoin industry at the moment who... also know corporate strategy and corporate adoption and treasury management. So I do think that you're really well positioned as a company just because A, these companies don't have the time or resources to hire it internally because we're so early in Bitcoin. And then B, you're providing so much value for what it seems to be like an extremely reasonable price or in line with, you know, typically how these things are managed. So that's a great opportunity. I'm really excited to see what happens in the, you know, in the coming years as we march toward that $11 trillion number and much of that will be accrued into Bitcoin in public and private markets and in the US and globally. Chase Palmieri (52:43.167) Yeah, and maybe one other thing to mention there is that when you work with Acropolis, because our pricing model is based on the percentage, you know, basis points on your assets under custody, our revenue is aligned with the growth of your Bitcoin treasury. And so we're not actually adding any fixed overhead to your business. So that's another advantage for why a business would want to move forward with Acropolis as opposed to bringing it all in-house. Jackson Mikalic (53:11.115) Tim, what are your thoughts and the MicroStrategy True North thoughts as it ties into capturing the $11 trillion corporate treasury market? Tim Kotzman (53:22.446) Hmm. We just think it's all going to go higher. And at the risk of breaking more news, President Trump did just sign a crypto executive order establishing a working group to look into the established, to establish a digital asset stockpile. Brian Cubellis (53:42.832) And then the other fine print there, because I'm looking at this too, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the federal government. So I think perhaps why this is being called a digital asset stockpile is because basically what they're going to do, at least to start, is just keep everything they already have. And they've seized a lot of other assets outside of Bitcoin at way smaller amounts in dollar terms. And then the other one in here is agencies are permitted from establishing or promoting central bank digital currencies in the US or abroad. So that's great. Yeah, and then working group and a framework for digital assets within 180 days. So that's pretty soon. Tim Kotzman (54:17.612) Yeah. No, no. Jackson Mikalic (54:25.963) I'm just waiting for Trump to, okay, Tim. Tim Kotzman (54:26.19) No CBDC, that's good. Brian Cubellis (54:30.094) Yeah, huge positive. Jackson Mikalic (54:32.691) I was just gonna say I'm just waiting for Trump to announce like one of those AI trading bots for meme coins for the Strategic Crypto Digital Asset Reserve. It seems like the next evolution of this here. Well, any other thoughts before we pivot into the single point of failure of the week? Was there anything that we didn't touch on yet for Acropolis or just Bitcoin Treasuries? Chase Palmieri (54:59.379) No, mean, the only thing here is that we announced this week that we're no longer just working kind of behind the scenes with these clients, that we are now available globally. So yeah, please reach out. Jackson Mikalic (55:11.773) Awesome, so Chase and Tim, you guys may not be privy on this yet because we just started it like a couple weeks ago, but we're doing Single Point of Failure of the Week, and Michael, I think you had one this week. It's really just to call out either bad practices or misfortune in the industry, whether it's at an individual level or it's at a business level. And the purpose of it for the listeners is to just reconsider things because a lot of what we discussed today is, and just in general, is really bullish, right? But I think people tend to miss or there's a disconnect between if you're really bullish on Bitcoin and you think that it goes, Tim, it goes higher this year and in the future. Well, you need to also think about the risk profile and the vectors are only going to increase with the price. And that's what I think there's this disconnect where what has worked in the past, if you're managing a $500 per Bitcoin or a thousand or $10,000 per Bitcoin, is really not going to suffice or cut it when Bitcoin's 100,000 or when Trump launches his AI bot to trade Bitcoin. it's seven figures, right? But like, seriously, there's this disconnect where as the price appreciates over time, there needs to be more maturity and evolution as it relates to managing the assets. So Michael, think you might have had some, I have some stuff too, but I want to hand it over to you. Michael Tanguma (56:30.346) Yeah, I think there's another one that Jackson's referring to that we'll probably more riff on, but I wanna just highlight, we try to do one a week, but they just come up every week and it's hard not to bring them up because I think that we have a unique. that we get to hear from about this stuff. to make them quick, one was we met with a prospective client, ended up being a client, but he had taken a picture of a seed phrase and stored it. And again, you would think, well, why would somebody do that? How dumb could it be? It's like this guy's actually super intelligent. He had collaborative custody set up. And I think he only had one seed phrase, but long story short, because Google images are like, when you get into somebody's Google account, you can effectively search for different kinds of images. So you can imagine whether it's somebody at Google or somebody that got access to his Google account, they already know what to look for when you look for the BIP39 words. So you're able to pick them up. So they were able to get into his collaborative custody account and then actually sign, upload the key. And so all they needed was one more key to sign. They didn't get the asset. So MultiSig did help there. The other one was, God bless this person, has millions of dollars, split up the seeds. This is what you see a lot. please don't do this or really change it is you'll split up the seeds whether it's a 12 or 24 word and you'll cut it in half and then they'll give it to somebody and then they'll keep half which is already a big problem because it seems like it's not but the reality is you're... cutting the amount of variance, so you already have six of the words, now you can start to brute force the last six to get to the private key. But what this person did is took it a step further and they stored those words in Google Sheets. So again, if you know how to scan for that information, you already can start to put that together. We don't say this to freak people out, it's just a reality that you think about family members, boomers, we know have all the money, they're gonna come into this space and they're gonna hear not your keys, not your coins, and they're gonna go and try to do these things. Michael Tanguma (58:31.446) and it's just gonna be, you know, a disaster. anyway, anything to add there guys before we jump in? I think there's the main one which is the ledger situation. Jackson Mikalic (58:41.801) No, I think it's great and at the end of the day, people anchor to what they see on Twitter specifically. And what you see on Twitter is the people who spend countless hours perfecting their setup or in their opinion, perfecting the setup. And for most people, they're just too busy, not technically savvy enough, not interested enough to do this the right way. So I always emphasize the fact that self-custody has a ton of merits. But the people who do it for all of their bitcoin or most of their bitcoin are in the .01 % of people who should be doing it. And to think that your setup is adequate or on par with those people, you may be deceiving yourself in some cases. I was like that for a while where I was just half-assed it and fortunately I never lost a material amount of Bitcoin. Definitely lost seed phrases before for like smaller balances but, and that'll be bigger one day so that'll hurt but, what I'm trying to drive toward is, there's not going to be one solution fits all. Everyone has a unique situation. I always think about this because I'm from the traditional finance space where people have their own portfolios to meet whatever they need to do in their lives, right? And that's why they work with financial advisors and that's why it's a multi-trillion dollar industry. And so the same thing happens with Bitcoin, right? Where there's going to be different solutions and most people just don't have the time to do this the right way and that's okay. But you also don't want to be doing it the wrong way because as Michael mentioned, just two examples, there's countless examples we see every week. Like we could probably do two hour podcast just talking about all the things that we see every single week. So just to call to action, like reconsider things. If you think that there is going to be a strategic Bitcoin reserve and there's going to be a ton of momentum this year, then get ahead of it as well. It doesn't mean you need to work with us. Obviously we'll help the people who see value in it, but at least like upgrade what you're doing before the Jackson Mikalic (01:00:39.115) pain becomes too acute and that's really when you start to mess things up. Michael Tanguma (01:00:42.464) Yeah, redundancy and fault tolerance are key, like in life, right? And similar with Bitcoin, it's like you just don't want to get knocked out of the game by a single point of failure. The other one that is even bigger, and it's what we've talked about, and it's sad and scary, and I guess he's back with his family, but the Ledger co-founder getting kidnapped, and I don't know if it's true or not, so I'm just... I'm getting a little trouble saying things that you see on Twitter, but it's like they sent a part of his pinky to his family. And again, this is what Jameson tweeted, so go get mad at Jameson if it's true. But the point there is what we've talked about before. It's like you would most people be like, well, that's a public facing person associated with crypto. So that's why it's like, well, at end of the day, we all know all this data is out there and it's just a matter of time before and people can do it today. Discern how much Bitcoin almost everyone on this pod has if you really go deep because between chain analysis and all the leaked CRMs and the Coinbase and Gemini and all those exchange accounts having because like people, there are the people there that have access to that that go and leak that. information the CRM like all the data sets so point being is that then you'll be able to discern who how much Bitcoin somebody owns and this guy like a public figure and the problem with it is you really think about this individual probably was targeted because they have asymmetric information about like the vulnerabilities in ledger if there are any or other ways to get capital Like the person didn't just take them because he's the co-founder of a business, they took them because he has something that they needed and they thought that if they took him, he could make one or two decisions or give up information that can move large sums of money. And Brian and I talked about this, like that just doesn't happen in the traditional markets. At least in the United States, you don't take Bezos, you don't take these guys. Obviously they have security, but they also like, can't move that amount of capital freely without taking weeks. Brian Cubellis (01:02:38.713) They're not holding vast majority of their wealth in bearer instruments. So it's... Michael Tanguma (01:02:44.16) Exactly or have exposure don't have businesses that have vast amounts of wealth in bear assets that they can potentially divulge of where there's vulnerabilities and so anyway, I think that's like a very big part because Over the course of this year, we'll see more of this, sadly. And it won't always end up with a person getting back to their family. And we just generally don't talk about it a lot, because it sounds like talking in your book or FUD, but the reality is we need to really do a piece on this. I think we've seen all this play out already with gold. There's a reason why we ended up with banks. Now, gold failed because banks centralized, and that's what the goal on our business is to decentralize the asset in a way. But the reality is like, Gold into banks because people go and hit you over the head or hire militias to go take your asset. So that's where this all ends. So unless you're prepared for that, then you should rethink, it's Jackson's point, and not listen to your local podcasters that tells you not to keep your coins because what's implied there is you're basically gonna shoot somebody when they come to your house if they come for it. And so. Brian Cubellis (01:03:46.176) The implication is you're willing to die for a trade. Now that trade is the last trade, so it is an important trade. But I would suspect most people are not willing to die for Michael Tanguma (01:03:49.376) exactly. Michael Tanguma (01:03:57.822) And the kicker is the people that talk about willing willing to die for the trade or actually not the people willing to die for the trade. So if you go on Twitter and anybody's with a gun or stuff, they're probably not the person. They're going be the first person to give the guns, speaking from a Texan perspective. Chase Palmieri (01:04:11.355) Yeah, mean, the the loudest proponents of self custody Bitcoin are essentially making themselves targets. Michael Tanguma (01:04:19.38) Yeah, and they generally have a self custody platform or a hardware device. So they're in the game of selling plastic devices. They have to be loud about it. Jackson Mikalic (01:04:29.139) Yeah, one other thing that is not as heavy, but it's still things that people do is leave Bitcoin on exchanges. And so there was a client that signed up with us recently, wanted to move a decent amount of Bitcoin from his exchange account, which he happened to use Robinhood. Don't ask me why he would do that. But he a decent amount of Bitcoin on Robinhood. And for weeks, like I'm corresponding with this guy over email call, and he's trying to get an answer from the Robinhood team as to why his transfer hasn't gone through to his on-ramp vault. And eventually they get back to him and say, well, since you're a resident of New York, you actually can't transfer your Bitcoin out of your Robinhood account. So now he just has this Bitcoin and Robinhood that if he actually ever wants to own it, whether it's in self custody or it's in multi institution and have control of the asset, he'll have to sell out of that position, deal with the capital gains, and then repurchase the allocation. And so there are people, I talk to people all the time, not everyone is holding their own keys. A lot of people have... fortunately been safe in some circumstances on some exchanges. And that's fine, maybe it'll continue to be safe, but you actually don't control the asset. You can't move it where you wanna move it. And so then you have this IOU where the only thing you're gonna get out is dollars. So just pay attention to that. It's an unfortunate circumstance, I think, between Robinhood's policy and then they're just like, yeah, if you move out of New York, let us know and then you can move your Bitcoin out, so. Michael Tanguma (01:06:06.538) Yeah, PayPal, I had that same experience with somebody on PayPal. It's funny, because we go, you can find this deck, we're pulling up the losses, Jackson's gonna kill me, or is this an updated number? Brian Cubellis (01:06:18.16) The number on the chart is wrong. But the 600 is roughly right. Jackson Mikalic (01:06:18.187) That's the wrong... Yeah. Michael Tanguma (01:06:19.712) Okay, so it's wrong. we have it on this 600 billion in crypto losses on a slide deck. It's on a website if you're listening, but point of bringing it up is it's actually shocking when we talk with prospective clients before they onboard and we pull up this slide because it's really important to anchor to what we're saying is not just because we're saying it, it's like, it's the facts, it's the truth. In 2022, everyone forgets what happened and it's going to happen again. And then, but... Jackson Mikalic (01:06:22.571) Come on, man, I gave you the right chart. Michael Tanguma (01:06:48.446) they just kind of like look and they're like, yeah, I'm BlockFi or like I'm FTX, I'm Prime Trust. They just like reference it. As part of the learning curve, it's like, that, that, like how long, how much longer do we have to go through that before people are like, I just didn't get rugged in my entry point. And to Jackson's point, like. These exchanges, and I think a lot of people anchor to TradFi names, but the problem with that is that they anchor to maybe one day they're going to let them take it out. It's like, think people underestimate the complexity to just send Bitcoin from like a company perspective. For us native, it's not hard, but you think about compliance, worrying about OFAC sanctions, having to do that from every client. Like it's not just a given that these companies or ETFs are eventually going to let you redeem. And it may be years from now, once the ruggings occur and consumer protection all those things happen, in the meantime, there's all the different instances where people are gonna wake up and have to have a taxable event on this huge gain if they wanna take delivery. Jackson Mikalic (01:07:46.249) Yeah. Chase, Tim, anything else from you guys before we wrap it? Chase Palmieri (01:07:52.317) No, just thanks for having me on. For people who don't know my background, this is kind of full circle. I was a fan of the show and reached out to Michael trying to do something in the Bitcoin space. And that's how we came into my role at Acropolis. So this is a really cool full circle moment for me. Thanks. Michael Tanguma (01:08:12.052) Yeah, I mean, it's actually a good plug because Early Riders is an investment. It's our Bitcoin denominated firm, venture firm. And this was always the thesis is that the best builders were going to be coming in this cycle, coming from the traditional startup, entrepreneurial technology finance world, seeing Bitcoin and wanting to build a new infrastructure for this next cycle and kind of next wave of adoption. so thanks for reaching out. It's been exciting and we look forward to seeing what you guys build. Tim Kotzman (01:08:38.83) Yeah, and I'll just add that on several large exchanges the sell walls are now up around 120,000 so you know the price is probably only a hundred hundred and two hundred and four thousand But you know time is of the essence for anyone that wants to reach out To any of us even just to start a conversation, so appreciate you guys having me on Jackson Mikalic (01:09:01.045) Tim's a mega bowl. I love it. Michael Tanguma (01:09:02.912) Yeah, Tim is the FOMO bull. Tim, are your bags packed or are are you all in? you? Let's go. Tim Kotzman (01:09:07.47) I'm all in. I'm all in. Jackson Mikalic (01:09:09.963) Well, thanks guys. It was fun. Brian Cubellis (01:09:12.152) I love it. Yeah, thanks boys. Michael Tanguma (01:09:14.538) guys Chase Palmieri (01:09:14.997) Thank you.