2025 Recap w/ Matt Odell: Gold's Run, DAT Reckoning, Quantum FUD + 2026 Predictions

Brian Cubellis (00:01.465) All right, we are back. It's the last trade. have Matt O'Dell in the studio with us today. Matt, thank you for joining us on the week of Christmas. We appreciate it. How are you doing? ODELL (00:12.038) Pleasure. Merry Christmas. Michael Tanguma (00:14.124) I'm excited to have Matt on because I didn't share with you guys or him that there's been all this like narrative around OG's dumping and I wanted to ask him specifically if can you please just stop selling his Bitcoin because this fucking price is you know killing everyone. Matt. Brian Cubellis (00:26.613) You ODELL (00:31.974) God, wish I had eight, I wish I had 80,000 Bitcoin to sell at a hundred K that would have been fucking dope. Brian Cubellis (00:37.967) Yeah, what would you be doing right now if that was the case, ODELL (00:41.818) Yeah, I I'm definitely I definitely wouldn't be on this show. look, I think I think that's it's it's. I think your audience knows it's we kind of said that in tongue in cheek way, but I we hear that narrative every all the time it's been ever ever since I've been in Bitcoin. The OGs are dumping on you. You know, it's a Ponzi. You're buying their bags. Michael Tanguma (00:45.282) Hahaha ODELL (01:11.418) I don't think that's new for this cycle. I think what's different is the size, just the absolute numbers, but that always goes up. Unless Bitcoin fails, that will just always go up and it will be always bigger and bigger size. I think there is a good argument that they finally had liquidity to do it in bigger sizes. But once again, I think you could have made that argument three years ago. There was more liquidity than the three years before that. So I think there's a little bit too much emphasis placed on that. And part of it is because on social media, Bitcoin transactions are public and saying, this 40,000 Bitcoin just moved to Kraken or whatever, you get a lot of retweets on. Brian Cubellis (02:01.203) Yeah, it's a good point too, because you can't win either way with either of the narratives, right? Because it's like, if none of them were selling, then people would say, Bitcoin's so concentrated with the oldest, largest holders. And so in either direction, there's going to be critics about it. But I agree with you. think it's one, it's already been happening each cycle and continuously throughout Bitcoin's history. But it's natural. I would say it's like... genuinely healthy for the market for there to be continued distribution into the future. ODELL (02:35.182) I did hear a theory that I did not verify that, and I'm not a tax attorney, fortunately, that a bunch of people did move to Puerto Rico in 2015. And supposedly, you have to season your assets for 10 years to get zero cap gains, zero federal cap gains. so that's also a position that might change in the future depending on what administration exists. So to be able to reset your cap gains, sell now, not pay cap gains, rebuy in actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I think that was probably part of it. But then, yeah, I mean, this is natural and healthy. You want to see this as a new money is being adopted by the world. This is exactly how supply gets distributed. Older sellers. want to live their life, they want to pay for things, they want to buy a new house, a new ranch or something like that and new people come in. And I'll say on the ETF side specifically, it's been pretty like, it's probably the single, one of the single most bullish fundamentals of this year is how receptive the market has been to the ETFs and how much they've been bought at scale in such a quick amount of time. Michael Tanguma (03:59.453) What would you say this is a I don't see it's a hot take but it's something that doesn't get discussed a lot and I think we were Brian I recorded on Monday and it was like working through this thesis of I do feel strongly that we haven't been in a bear market like independent of gold in a bull market. Yeah in a bull market we've been in a bear market and like I guess the three main anecdotes I would look at are gold to Bitcoin ratio Brian Cubellis (04:15.157) In a bowl, you mean? Michael Tanguma (04:27.221) The anecdotal adoption from peers, and if you want to get more empirical, is like talking to hardware manufacturers and their purchasing. That'd be a signal for net new buyers. And then the... Forget the last one is like the basically that the volatility drives in net new adoption Like the reflexivity and that the reason why i've had this price appreciation. It's very similar to gold It's not like retail buying gold. It's sovereigns This price appreciation has been some sovereign some institutional, but it's what you said. It's the etf flows But that's not necessarily retail That's people that have brokerages that knew of bitcoin for 15 years and didn't want to do anything outside of just buy it through fidelity Why I'm bringing that up is because if that's kind of the market structure that we've lived through, then if you have people selling because of liquidity, and then you have to your point whether it's seasonal selling, but also... whatever the hell's going on and what potentially happened in October 10th with like there's somebody out there selling in the market, that that's really where we're at. And the outside relevance to that is be looking at gold and equities, right? Like that's what is the curious part of all this is gold and equities are ripping and BTC sitting like in this range. That's the best rationale I've been able to come up with like what the hell's going on, which also sets up a very bullish opportunity moving forward, if that's even nearly right. ODELL (05:52.774) Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things there that I think you hit on that I agree with. First of all, I've been a cycle believer, mostly because I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years and we kept on the four year cycles. And I've had a very reasonable approach to whether or not the cycles would die is I want to see it. If the cycles actually don't play out, then the cycles are dead. Or we moved on to a different cycle, some kind of liquidity cycle or something like that. I think we're probably close to calling the cycles dead just because it wasn't a traditional bull market this year. I mean, no matter how you cut it, but the big one to me is priced in gold. I mean, we didn't hit a new gold all time high. So that's unexpected. I still think there could be an argument that maybe due to just the maturation of the Bitcoin market and different access points, particularly ETFs and stuff like that. Maybe it gets elongated. So maybe it becomes like a five-year cycle or something or a six-year cycle and maybe next year is supposed to be the bull market, but that also feels like cope. But overarching how I'm looking at it is I think we're basically in a global depression right now and retail is poor. don't think people just don't have money. I think market participants are spooked. I think it's very chaotic times we're living in that is kind of being papered over. And as a result, large allocators are going to safe haven place. And that makes that lines up with why gold and silver are ripping and why they're at all time highs. But I also think that lines up with why the S &P 500 is at all time highs, because it's really the mag seven that's at all time highs and carrying the rest of the S &P 500. And I think market participants are rightfully thinking of those top seven companies, top 10 companies as basically safe haven plays. Like I think Google is a relatively safe play if you're a large allocator, Apple, maybe to a lesser extent Nvidia, but I don't think the US government's gonna allow these things to fail. And I think market participants are pricing that in as well, while not wanting to go into something that doesn't have cash flow, something like a gold or a silver. While Bitcoin being young, ODELL (08:16.365) still being young, is not being treated as a safe haven asset. And that kind of makes sense. Like if you don't hold self custody Bitcoin, I think it's really easy to think of it as a high risk tech stock play. the reason I think of Bitcoin as a safe haven is because it's so tangible in self custody. But if you never actually feel that, if you never actually see the core value prop of Bitcoin as being able to spend and save it without permission, then I think it's really easy to think of it as a risk on asset. And then the last piece you mentioned, which is a lot of trading nowadays, because we live in this digital world of social media and like, people used to like joke around about the 24 hour news cycle. Like now it's like a two hour news cycle. Like we really live in a momentum world. And it feels like something broke in October, specifically in the shit coin markets. And that chart, if you look at the chart, I'm not a big chart guy, but if you look at the chart of gold, silver, S &P 500 Bitcoin, you can literally see October 10th when the shit coin market had its apocalypse. And I think the rumors are true that at least one big market maker, I mean, the big rumor is winter mute got absolutely wrecked on that day and has been unloading Bitcoin because that's like the only thing they have a value to liquidate. So I think it's a combination of all those things but I will say that Michael Tanguma (09:40.142) you ODELL (09:41.934) I thought I would always be happy with Bitcoin at 88k, but seeing gold and silver, silver, particularly, it's like, what is like Bitcoin silver to silver is silver. Like, it's ridiculous. don't, it's really hard to wrap your head around it and it feels like a kick in the nuts. And I think that's part of the reason why people's attitudes are just, it feels like a deep bear market, even though we're in, we're not really in one. Michael Tanguma (10:06.38) Yeah, the theme of, this Brian Cubellis (10:11.539) You ODELL (10:12.912) You ODELL (10:37.265) you Michael Tanguma (10:37.776) serious note though, that is a huge aspect that most people don't remember in 22. The only reason we knew FTX blew up was because the leaked financials, whoever leaked the audit, and then that's when they had the run and basically everything else fell apart. So right now nobody's out there speaking up or incentivized, but if something like that happens, that's when everyone, tide goes out and you find out who's naked and if you're actually, Bitcoin is secure. Brian Cubellis (11:05.813) I will say also though, like you kind of alluded to this Michael, like the bank stepping in, whether it's the progress on the regulatory front, all the &A that we've seen over the past several months, like it does feel like there is some sort of handoff going on in terms of in past cycles, entering a bear market, like those deals or excitement around the industry completely disappeared, right? people retreated from their stance around getting involved with digital assets or Bitcoin. And we're seeing the opposite of that right now. Like despite what the price has done sort of past six months or so, like the banks, the fintechs, traditional sort of institutional incumbents are still putting their chips on the table, making moves to this space because one, they've seen the client demand and they know that assets are leaving their platforms to get exposure in other ways if they don't offer it. and so like all of that stuff is mo- moving in one direction, which is like extremely constructive and positive. which is just very different from sort of like past entries into a proverbial bear. Michael Tanguma (12:17.774) Yeah, I mean, maybe this is a good segue into we talk about this a lot, like how many people are actually holding spot Bitcoin today. And when this thing rallies, it's going to be very spiteful and people are going to be very upset between ETFs, digital asset treasury companies and everything else that's hanging out there. People that are around in 2017, 2020, a lot of people have been shaking out of the market, whether it was BlockFi FTX selling digital asset treasury companies. gold and so you're gonna see the market take the longest path and then when it rips everyone's gonna be off sides and we already see this now with the sentiment because people it's just kind of like dead out there. So the question to Matt is how are your DAT trades this year going? ODELL (13:00.173) It was like the... Yeah. Go. ODELL (13:06.639) I mean, the joke is... because most people second trading like 99 % second trading. We're just waiting for that one listener who rotates his entire position into gold and then we'll start ripping. You mentioned DATs, which are horrible acronym. don't know, Bitcoin Treasury Company, Digital Asset Treasury Companies, because now they have like Ethereum and Zcash ones. I think that's also part of the reason why sentiment is so bad right now is because You know, in 2017, Ethereum was born like, I guess in 2015 or 2014. 2017 was like really Ethereum's big year. We had like the Bitcoin cash stuff, like Bitcoin was a little bit chaotic. ICOs were happening. It seemed like, I mean, at least from my perspective, it seemed like I was the crazy person or an idiot and I was sidelined and I was missing out on all these generational gains. And then the water came out and they all got wrecked. From that we had like this beautiful Bitcoin only Bitcoin maximalist culture that kind of was born and that to me that was like the start of the the good old days and they always joke around like you don't you don't know you're in the good old days until after the good old days pass and I think that the final but It was it was it's time-sensitive. Like it was never gonna last Bitcoin was gonna continue to mature and that was gonna disappear But the final nail in the coffin, I think was the Bitcoin Treasury companies And why do I say that? Because between 2017 and maybe let's point to earlier this year or late last year, it was like we all got rich together and we all got poor together. And like you just had this great community that was crazy with you. And now it's like everyone's getting poor on different things and rich on different things. And it just splintered everybody. And so that's how you end up in a situation where we're what? think like 30. ODELL (15:04.849) 35 % down from all time highs, but some people are down like 95 % because they have like a leveraged meta planet position. And it was leverage on top of leverage and the water came out and they got absolutely wrecked. So I think that's part of the reason for the significant negative sentiment. And I also think that's probably part of the reason why we didn't go up as high as people expected right? Because I think a lot of the retail that wasn't poor. came into the treasury companies, they thought of it as like a time machine. This is something we see with investors all the time. They think they missed out. So they add additional risk on trying to catch up, preferably catch up, and they inevitably get wrecked. And I think that was part of it. And we just, it took a lot of the wind out of the sails of people buying Bitcoin, buying actual Bitcoin and moving the price floor up because of Michael Tanguma (15:58.157) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (16:02.87) It's a good recap on some of the sentiment and culture because something you just hit on is you reference like everyone in it together. So when it's down, you're down and then you have memes about being down. And then when it goes up, you're up together. You hit on 30 % down and 80 or 99 % down. You didn't hit on the people that made money, right? That are like rich behind the scenes that got into whatever any of these deals exited. But then also, the quote unquote influencers that got involved because now they can't say anything because they basically shepherd folks into this like, you know, slaughtering house. So you have like to your point different lanes that everyone's in versus like everyone's just long this underlying asset. And so it's created kind of like a structural from a cultural perspective fragmentation. We don't have to go deep on the debts, but I do have to bring I just brought it up because we have listeners that listen every week. But and they keep commenting in the the YouTube Comments about like how sailor lives rent-free and that like we're idiots and I'm like guys We're just trying to help you like not lose your shirts. It has nothing to do but they listen every week So I just wanted to make sure we touched on how how positive constructive dats are for the Bitcoin ecosystem ODELL (17:15.82) mean, look, sailor's sailor selling his own stock for cash right now. So you could take that from him. Michael Tanguma (17:21.706) I didn't send you this last night. was, I don't know if you guys seen this. I'm shocked I'm bringing it up, but I was scrolling Twitter and there was a first time I've ever seen a strategy B, strategy with a B, at. Brian Cubellis (17:35.177) like a business intelligence ad. Yeah, nothing to do with Bitcoin. Yeah. Michael Tanguma (17:37.17) business intelligence ad and I was like is this how desperate this is like a back this is like a roundabout way to market to retail and equity because like everyone knows they don't have a business intelligent product that's has any competitive mode or value yeah it's very interesting what's going on over there ODELL (17:42.275) you ODELL (17:54.956) I, yeah, I don't know. I mean, you mentioned like the people that exited. Like, I just don't think there actually were that many people that did. I think, I think part of the reason sentiment is down and the fracture of the community is that all these like B tier influencers, low A tier influencers, like all joined boards. they like all joined the treasury board. I have almost everybody did, which is trucking insane and then started showing you their stock. Like they made a potentially they made comp like they got like a salary that they got some, you know, you know, they got some bread out of. And the worst part was like, they pretended like, this is good for Bitcoin. I'm doing it for Bitcoin. It's like, no, look, you're doing it to, you know, to get your bread. You're doing it to get a payout for your years of Twitter posting. It's fine. Just admit what it is. But I think a lot of, you know, these guys also invested in the stocks and stuff. And there was maybe a one month, two month period where like the MNAS were really ripping. And I bet you a lot of them doubled down rather than actually taking profits. think, I mean, I was skeptical on a lot of that and publicly skeptical on a lot of that, but even I thought like they were going to have like at least one good pump out of it. You know, then the pump never came. Like they were all like setting up for the bull cycle that never arrived. And then the old water all got pulled out. So I think a lot of people got wrecked and that also adds more downward Bitcoin pressure because I think there's been a lot of eyes on whether or not like, Sailor sells his Bitcoin, which I think is probably overstated and they're well capitalized, especially now that he's stacking dollars. So I don't really think, I don't expect, you a complete failure of micro strategy to bring down the rest of the market. But what people don't realize is a lot of the holders of the treasury companies were leveraged themselves. And so when their margin calls come due, what do they have to sell to meet that margin requirement? They have to sell Bitcoin to cover that, which brings Bitcoin down, which brings their treasury company further down. And you have this vicious negative feedback loop. Michael Tanguma (20:09.645) Yeah, we've seen that. You referenced something that was in... So like the notion of pattern recognition, it matters. being alive in this space and there's every couple of years you reference the ICOs and then there was like DeFi in that summer and then the DAC crazy you just there's always something that comes out of nowhere you can't expect and it just steals people's Bitcoin so like that's just helpful if you're it's truly they just take takes people's Bitcoin because people also don't recognize if you're not buying Bitcoin with your dollars you're buying this it's still the same thing you're selling it or converting. But then I think we both came to this independently, because I heard you reference it, and I think I shared internally that I knew it was a scam or it didn't make any sense when I started thinking, am I missing out? Am I crazy? Because that was the ICO stuff. When ICOs were ripping, you're just looking at it like, do I get in? And those white papers were floating around in 17. And you're like, I excel spreadsheets? And you're putting allocations. And then you feel crazy for a little bit until the market falls down. You're like, oh, yeah, that was better just to stay in cold storage. ODELL (21:13.873) You Michael Tanguma (21:14.693) and relax and that was like the aha moment is like yes don't even touch the stove because once you touch the stove that's when not touch the stove but once you like put your bags you load your bags even partially you just become a bag holder and then you go down with the ship because people hate to invest in something and then tell you that they were wrong ODELL (21:33.478) Yep. No, I think there's a lot of similarities cycle to cycle. Once again, I don't know if this is an actual cycle. It's just a really, it's been a weird year. It's been a very weird year. That chart, you did pull up the chart. It's crazy. Like you look at the, I mean, I think there could be an alternative timeline where the shit coin casino doesn't blow up like crazy. And, you know, we're sitting at new all time highs right now. But then also, know, shitcoins are like, they'll be around forever and people like doing degenerate things and it's always gonna be a case. You just have to, you have to play this game. This is such a long-term game and there's so much survivorship bias, you only see the winners. Michael Tanguma (22:18.05) Quick question, because Jackson has a bunch of, he prepped very heavily for this and I told him not to because Matt will not look at your notes. I'm just joking. But I do want to ask one thing to put you on the spot. What is an example of an A tier influencer versus a B tier influencer? Can you give us, if you feel comfortable giving an example of that? Because I thought they were all like C tier, but. Brian Cubellis (22:23.125) You Brian Cubellis (22:31.785) Haha! Michael Tanguma (22:41.73) You don't have to answer. ODELL (22:44.0) I mean, I think Sailor is probably an A tier influencer. I think Mallers with XXI is probably an A tier influencer. I think Dylan LeClair with Meta Planet was probably an A tier and then I think everyone else wasn't. Pretty much. it's like every and you even saw it with the treasury companies, right? It was like, I'm joining like Arrange. We're like doing Brazilian micro strategies like what the fuck like what are you doing? You know, or like I don't know Semler scientific. It's like are you kidding me? Like I And and and for the narrative narrative wise right it's like narrative wise on the Bitcoin maximalism culture Bitcoin only culture is like what's the difference between Semler and Solana? Michael Tanguma (23:22.316) But they can't get access to our capital markets, Matt. Like, they can't get access to Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (23:25.373) You ODELL (23:38.802) Like how, like, I don't know how you can really justify it. At least with Solana, I think that you can do things with it, I guess, right? Like you can be degenerate and do dex things or like buy tether or something. But it's just, I think it broke the culture. I think it very much broke the culture. And it is what it is. It was probably going to happen regardless, like I said, but at the end of the day, was the nail in the head of the online Bitcoin culture, at least. Brian Cubellis (24:14.8) Yeah, one of the funny things about all that conversation is the whole narrative around can access you cannot access Bitcoin, right? Like, we need an equity structure, a debt structure that invest in Bitcoin, which is it's crazy. Like once you actually think a little bit more about it, because on face value, I could understand why some people could perceive that to be true. But it's just a matter of creating new Brian Cubellis (24:26.183) in every country. Brian Cubellis (24:40.988) parameters or investment mandates to allow to allocate directly into Bitcoin. Like it's not it. We had this conversation early on in the business. It's like trying to explain to an institutional allocator. does Bitcoin fit into a venture type of investment? Is it a real asset? Is it, know, how do you think about investing in Bitcoin? And the answer is, well, you just think about it as its own asset class. It's really not that hard. And so I think one of the biggest issues with all of this is you don't necessarily need to you don't necessarily need to try to fit Bitcoin into an existing bucket, you can allocate to it directly and we're actually seeing that, right? But more so through the ETFs in the US. But to think that we all of sudden need a bunch of companies to provide equity exposure to the underlying asset is just very flawed thinking, in my opinion. ODELL (25:26.415) Well, mean, no, it was it was just a lot like that was that was the big lie. Right. The big lie was I am joining the board of this Treasury company because I want to sell Bitcoin to institutions. But the only reason the Treasury company wanted a podcaster on the board in the first place is because retail was the market. The entire market was retail. If you you if you look at and this is this is just the case, probably probably micro strategy, the least so. But even then, you look at how a sailor presents himself and his public appearances, it's all for retail. It's almost overwhelmingly for retail. You know, like retweets the MicroStrategy podcast and everything like everything is, you'll never sell your Bitcoin, it's all for retail. And that was just the reality of the situation. Like they pretended it was for institutions because they had to in terms of the narrative, but they were focused on retail. And if you look at the best calls this year, it was actually institutions fading it, right? It was Jim Chanos. Everyone made fun of Jim when he came out and he was like, I'm going short micro strategies, MNAV. And they were like, but it's already under two, like how much lower could it go? Fucking nailed that trade. He went long Bitcoin, short micro strategy, harvested the loss of MNAV premium. Sailor played right into it, continuously dumping common during the whole process. And then the other one, is what conspiracy theories are made of, of JP deleveraging their books on micro strategy in spring, they've nailed that one too. They were right. there's, think there's a decent argument that they helped cause how quickly it unraveled. But if they were like looking at their books and micro strategy is sitting at a huge premium and they have a bunch of, they have a bunch of holders that are holding large leverage positions. Like it makes sense that you want to de-leverage that risk and you want to reduce that risk on your books. That's what they were known for during the last financial collapse, Fortress Balance Sheet. Michael Tanguma (27:32.368) Yeah, I mean, look, the dad holders are down. We don't have to keep lay rid on the point though was just to call just, I mean, we're recapping, also. I think they will come back in some respect to Bitcoin's price and to the extent somebody listens and just like really does their diligence, they never made any sense. But the last heuristic that I'll leave you guys with unless you have something else is that you generally know something's a scam or a cult if you need a community. investments don't generally need communities. They happen organically. You don't have to like try to propagate one. And so that's like one of those flags that you kind of you were referencing about. You have to get an influencer to propagate or amplify your business. ODELL (28:17.788) I mean, they will come back because Bitcoin is going to come back. Like Bitcoin is, you we could talk about that. I mean, probably look, I think people should stay on the stack sets, learn how to hold actual Bitcoin and use real Bitcoin. But like we could be close to the bottom of some of these Bitcoin treasury companies just because Michael Tanguma (28:23.159) Unless quantum, unless quantum and then we were wrong and it was really gold. It was really the trade was gold. Brian Cubellis (28:25.183) you You ODELL (28:46.918) They've been absolutely hammered. And I think a lot of investors are questioning Bitcoin itself and they hold Bitcoin and Bitcoin will perform. Now, the question as I think you have to actually ask yourself as someone who's already listening to a Bitcoin show, if you're listening right now, is do they outperform Bitcoin? Right. Because that's the opportunity cost. They'll look great on paper, even if they just go back up with Bitcoin. Will those premiums happen? Because that's how you should actually be thinking about these things. is you are taking additional risk over holding spot Bitcoin, holding real Bitcoin. And that additional risk should be rewarded with some kind of premium in the future. And I really question the ability of the smaller ones to actually be able to accrue any kind of real premium. There's an argument that a company like MicroStrategy that has 650,000 Bitcoin will figure out a way to harvest yield off of that or, you know, leverage their position somehow to make real substantial gains. But the smaller ones, like they're just zombie companies that hold the real asset. Michael Tanguma (29:52.963) Yeah, and there's like mo- Brian Cubellis (29:53.066) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (29:53.212) Yeah, I mean, if you use the analogy of the ICO going back to that, right, like a lot of those ICOs just never got anywhere close to recovering to where they previously were in 2017. So I think it's fair to say, Matt, what you just said, I think is incredibly accurate, right? Like there's going to be assuming Bitcoin comes back, which we could talk about quantum for sure. But I think we're all quite bullish going into the long term here. Assuming Bitcoin does come back, then yeah, I mean, some of these companies are going to are going to look strong, some of them are just never going to come back at all. And so that's where I like, I wonder how much retail interest there actually will be in the future because so many people came in and that like May, June timeline where things were just like crazy. Everyone was like fervorishly bullish on the treasury companies and a lot of people got wrecked. And I don't know if they're going to want to ever park capital back in some of those trades. ODELL (30:44.402) Yeah, I just wonder how much new retail really came in. I think we just didn't really see a retail surge. And I think part of the reason is because everyone's poor. I think this is I really do think we're just in a quiet global depression. The one aspect I would mention that well, two things first, the fact that you said assume Bitcoin's coming back is like the most bullish fucking fundamentals is how bear sentiment is right now. Like you're literally on a Bitcoin show. You work for a Bitcoin company and Brian Cubellis (31:12.415) You ODELL (31:13.838) And we're we're caveating Bitcoin recovering, which is very rare in Bitcoin's history. Yeah, fair enough. And then the second the second thing is the shareholders of the ICO promoters actually did quite well. Like EOS is block one is still one of the largest holders of Bitcoin period. It's just you got no rights to that Bitcoin as an ICO participant, which ironically, you don't actually have rights for a lot of these Treasury companies, but you kind of do. Brian Cubellis (31:18.779) Well, some people don't think that it's going to happen, so that's why I had to say that. Brian Cubellis (31:21.982) You ODELL (31:43.376) You know, it's like a little bit wishy washy there, but you're still a shareholder of the company that's holding the Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (31:49.858) Let's go! Brian Cubellis (31:50.491) Yeah, on. Michael Tanguma (31:50.711) before because there's a lot of recap stuff, but this just popped up because Matt's not on Twitter and I was looking at this deal. I think this is a very like prescient note, I guess you had somewhere. It says Bitcoin has been running for 17 years at a protocol level. No transaction has ever been blocked. No coin ever sees. Not enough people appreciate the magnitude. I think this is important to tie into this like narrative that's happening in quantum. But before we in there, we brought something similar up when it comes to stable coins, because that's like obviously the you know blockchain of this year everyone's excited about it and when you really break down the mechanics of stable coins like obviously they provide value in moving dollars around the world but the reality is how much counterparty risk how much mechanics go into that and it really brings a light like the elegance of Bitcoin that there's no intermediary and you can move billions of dollars without any counterparty and so that aspect I think from like all this narrative whether it's MSTR, DATS, ETFs it gets lost on most people because it's still a specular exposure for most and when you start talking about like this narrative quantum and the the notion of changing soft hard fork and just like the I don't know if aloofness is the right word but like the the casualness of like we can just change things really quickly and it's not a big deal and we can freeze people's coins and others are like yeah of course we can do it It's just it makes zero sense and so maybe we can just touch on that because I think that's that's something that a lot of people honest or Honestly, this ties into why most it's so hard for people to get exposure to Bitcoin because think about it If the hardcore people that have been around forever cannot wrap their heads around quantum, how the hell can we expect everyone else to ape into BTC as their store of value moving forward? We believe it is, but there's still a large gap for most, and this is an easy example of that. ODELL (33:46.483) Yeah, I mean, a couple of things here. First of all, I posted that on Nostr and was screen-shotted and shared to X. Nostr is an open protocol for speech and identity. You can think of it like the Bitcoin version of Twitter. And the easiest way to join Nostr is to download Primal in your favorite app store. yeah, the quantum thing, first of all, talking to large capital allocators, like it is something that's on top of people's Michael Tanguma (33:51.159) What's that? ODELL (34:16.987) And no one understands it. I don't really understand it either. But I think it's, you you can think of it as like a magic computer that breaks cryptography. And it's theoretical and we haven't actually seen it in, you know, used in any practical way. But one of the scary things about quantum is that there's a strong incentive specifically for governments to be doing quantum research in secret behind the scenes because you can encrypt you can potentially break encrypted messaging and other things that rely on cryptography of your adversaries, right? So specifically the Chinese or the Americans. And on top of that, the relatively correct belief, I think, that AI leaps have pushed innovation timelines across the board where you don't really know what could happen in five or 10 years or 15 years. Now there's a couple of different pieces here on the quantum side. The first piece is like, will my Bitcoin be stolen? I don't think that's a real fear. I think if you're using the best practices in terms of custody and you're using segwit addresses that are hashed and you're not reusing addresses, you're pretty well protected against quantum in the next five to 20 years or something like that. Now, I don't think that's a reasonable answer for people. Like if you're like a large allocator, you're thinking about like allocating $10 million and you're like, oh, I don't really think it's that big of an issue. No, they want like tangible solutions, right? And so I think what we need to do on a protocol level is offer people an even more hardened kind of quantum resistant address type that people can choose to go to in an opt-in basis. I think that will help at least on the narrative side. I don't know how important that is, but might as well do it. It doesn't really hurt. Then the second piece is like this fascination beyond what happens to the particularly vulnerable Bitcoin that is not in the newer address type. And those are the older coins. And meme wise, the best way to look at it is Satoshi's coins, Because Satoshi has like a million of them and then there's like four million others. But he's the creator of the protocol and that's a lot of Bitcoin. ODELL (36:37.735) And it's this really, really weird fascination about not allowing that to get dumped on the market. But I think it's very, very short-sighted. I think as a community or as stakeholders, because supposedly communities are scamming, according to Michael, as stakeholders of Bitcoin, I think it's important that we nip that in the bud. Because the key value prop of Bitcoin is that at the protocol level, no funds have ever been seized. No transaction has ever been blocked. Now, yes, people can always coerce you into giving them your private key. Governments can come and raid your house, put a gun to your head, threaten you with jail time, take your Bitcoin private key physically. We can't avoid that. But on a protocol level, the fact that this thing's been running for 17 years without any protocol level seizures or any protocol level censorship is the fundamental value. And that is insane that we've been successful with that. I don't think people really appreciate how amazing that is that that's, we don't see anything like that in the digital realm. We've never seen anything like that in the digital realm. And so you're kind of, it's a classic example where the quote unquote cure is worse than the disease, right? You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And I just, I'm not like, the big thought process I tell to people is like, okay, so like, sailor has 650,000 Bitcoin. What is more likely? it more likely that some, Genius creates a magic computer that steals Satoshi's Bitcoin or that the US government steals sailors Bitcoin and and and why and in that situation will we freeze the Bitcoin if the US government stole sailors Bitcoin no and we definitely wouldn't preemptively steal it and why would if the Navy SEALs or Delta Force or whatever figured out where Satoshi was and charged him with money laundering and Raided his house and forced him to give him the million Bitcoin and then put it in the SBR, would most of Bitcoin Twitter be cheering that on? But God forbid someone comes up with a magic computer and takes the million Bitcoin that way. that's just like there's a complete, there's a complete lack of logic there. And at the end of the day, I think you just, you let it be. We put an opt-in, we put an opt-in address type, we add protections going forward, which I'm very confident we will have. I think there's very strong consensus on. ODELL (39:00.839) We don't touch the old coin. If it gets stolen, it gets stolen. If it gets spent, it gets spent. If tomorrow Satoshi moved his Bitcoin, was that quantum attacker or was that Satoshi being like, I'm gonna move my Bitcoin because you guys keep dreading me that you're gonna take my Bitcoin. Like if he wanted to burn it, he could have sent it to a burn address. He did it. Brian Cubellis (39:18.037) Yeah, I was gonna say a couple of a lot there, but a couple of things off the bat. Like the notion of like, you the random person creating the quantum computer in their basement, like that's not even really like a realistic path, right? Like the whatever a theoretical quantum computer looks like with the whatever it is, like million stable qubits like that will require such an insane amount of Michael Tanguma (39:18.243) So, again. ODELL (39:22.918) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (39:45.938) capital expenditure, energy, infrastructure, that it really could only come from the Chinese government or the US government. And in that scenario, are they just going to market dump the coins if they were to even go through with some sort of action? That's one side. The other thing I was going to say about all of this is I'd be curious if you could opine a little bit around the work that has been going on for years around this stuff. It's not like... the development community hasn't been thinking about this. And I think that's the problem with some of the more recent discourse that's a little bit more on the fear-mongering side of like imminent threat. The timelines have compressed whatever, however you want to phrase it, but there are, there is people thinking about this and there's work being done and there's potential dips and like there is a path similar to what you described where you have a new address type and you give people time to migrate and probably. Air on the side, I would agree with you. Like I don't think you can do anything to those more vulnerable coins without sort of sacrificing some ethos of the network and why it exists. But maybe just for the audience, like where are we in terms of some of those bips that exist and like why, I guess, you why is it important to know that just because if you do end up in this like fear-mongering stage, like that can be counterproductive to the existing work that's already been going on. ODELL (41:08.253) Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things here. First of all, you said like, what would the attacker do with a million Bitcoin? Maybe they create a debt. You know, like maybe we can trade it publicly. We compete with MicroStrategy. I mean, it's really hard to see how there's a bunch of startups, by the way, that could potentially in collaboration with the government, you know, find this magic computer. Michael Tanguma (41:19.951) Quantum death. ODELL (41:36.519) But like it's hard for them to monetize quantum in any kind of real way except for attacking Bitcoin or espionage against foreign governments. Like there's only really two obvious ways of, and like you said, once they have it, like are they gonna tank the price of Bitcoin or are they gonna try and monetize their investment to the fullest? On terms of quantum research, yeah, this has been top of mind for years, like for a long, long time. In the most recent term is like early fall, There was a big quantum focus event with top developers in the space at Presidio Bitcoin in San Francisco. Blockstream Research released a great paper like last week. I think a lot of the alarmist tendencies are twofold. First of all, it's great for engagement. People want their star to rise, so they create panic and rage. I think the second thing is if your obsession is to block to freeze Bitcoin preemptively, steal Bitcoin preemptively. By the way, the only way you can do this is preemptively. Like you can't do it after the fact in terms of someone from taking someone's Bitcoin that's already vulnerable after the fact. You have to do it preemptively. If that's the goal, then there actually is probably a little bit of a rush. If the goal is to slowly and conservatively move to improvements, then there's not that much of a rush. Like we're in a very good spot right now. Particularly if you're using Bitcoin with best practices. And we have to be very careful because if you're rushing, if we move everybody's Bitcoin, if we tell everyone they have to move their Bitcoin to a novel new signature scheme that's supposedly quantum resistant, otherwise their coin gets stolen. Like that can be an attack vector in itself. Like that could have a back door. We could completely fuck that up. We can ruin the entire Bitcoin experiment right there and then. So you have to be very careful and deliberate. But if the concern is we're going to have to give people five years time, 10 years time to do this, blah, blah. Then you start to feel the rush and you start to feel the panic because they want to freeze people's Bitcoin. So I think that's where a lot of it comes from. It's not actually from people worrying about their own Bitcoin. But once again, I'll repeat, like when has anyone ODELL (44:02.629) Like who buys Bitcoin and is concerned that someone else's Bitcoin is going to get stolen and then might get sold is like a ridiculous concept. Imagine buying gold and being like, well, a war might break out and the Russians might steal Chinese gold and dump it on the market. That's insane. Like, do you mind your own fucking business? and let the market dynamics play out as the market dynamics play out. Earlier this year, people were cheering on that the strategic Bitcoin reserve was going to be seeded with stolen Bitcoin. No one was like, let's fork out that Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (44:36.655) So, okay, we set the stage really nicely, because I didn't know if we're gonna go here, and this is a little bit, I'm not gonna say I believe this, but I'm not gonna say I don't believe this, there's a non-zero chance. I don't wanna say this is coordinated, but there is a narrative that's come up the past six months around this, all the way to Ray Dalio, believe, citing quantum as an issue for his investment thesis at Bitcoin. And we already discussed human incentives when it comes to the economics. And so we talked about like the influencers and at the end of the day, there was economic incentives. to do something that kind of fractured the reality of some of these people and what they were about. So I'm prefacing that because if we look at what's happening today in this past, call it 18 months with ETFs and even Saylor, there's a centralization of BTC happening with a certain number of economic actors. We can call it BlackRock Coinbase, maybe it's FutureJPM, Fidelity. And the point being is it makes sense on a trajectory perspective that Bitcoin's going to double or triple in price if they sit on 25 % let's call it 20 % of the BTC today that that would rationally be 30 to 40 percent in that future state and if this narrative persists and everyone's economically or theoretically economically inclined to Fork Bitcoin because we're afraid that somebody's gonna dump our bags and again, we don't care about the underlying We just don't want our bags. That's like the you know, it's always the the solution they create the problem in the solution That is something that is interesting to me because this was coming up probably six months ago. I was having a conversation around like the fork wars and like B cash and you know, the gentleman that is a friend, he was explaining how like Trace Mayer at the time saved his ass because he's like, Hey, in these like forums, if you dump your B cash today, you can get 0.5 BTC at the time. And so, but this is the problem with giving up rights to your asset. When you go into a third party custodian in an omnibus fashion or even an ET. Michael Tanguma (46:37.799) Because they're gonna make the decision for you and it's already been called this past week by very notable people that like well This is not gonna be a fork. They're not gonna give you the option We're just gonna go to the thing that's quantum resistant like this is this earlier that's already being talked about and so just curious like how you see That potentially playing out because part of this discussion was like if you're a nation state and you're sitting on the right coin You're holding it. You're like, well, I'm just gonna dump all the fork and you know sell the wrong Bitcoin, right? The thing that forked over. And so I think it's just an interesting angle because I definitely believe there's a non-zero chance that 10 years from 2017 when the original fork happened where we could see something like that. And this is the very early stages of that narrative beginning. ODELL (47:17.991) Yeah, I I think there's two concerns here I have, right? I think the first concern is that we panic rush into insecure crypto. Crypto being cryptography, not shitcoins. And I think it's important to realize that there's like, this is so far above most of our heads. There's like 20 people, there's like 20 people that can like figure out, you know, novel new crypto schemes and whether or not they're secure or not. And even among those people, like the really way you find out if things are secure is by testing them over time. So it's not like that's not like the most easy process and it's why it should be opted in slowly and be very deliberate and very careful about it. So that's the first concern. And then in terms of you know, stealing, I'm not going to say freezing and stealing people's Bitcoin preemptively. It is such a slippery slope, where does it end? do you... If we can freeze vulnerable... Imagine imagine saying like Bitcoin's censorship resistant, except for the creator of Bitcoin, we stole his a million Bitcoin. If you can do that, then why does North Korea have Bitcoin? Are we gonna freeze North Korea's Bitcoin? Should we freeze the CCP's Bitcoin? Are terrorists using Bitcoin? Should we freeze their Bitcoin? If you're China, should we freeze micro strategy's Bitcoin? And I think because of that, I think that fork will fail. think it probably, I think it's better for the industry if we just nip this in the bud quickly. But I think actually push comes to shove, like actually the time, like if there was a fork presented. I think a lot of large allocators would be very hesitant about. making a decisive move. Because Bitcoin's value is that it's a neutral asset that doesn't require trusted third parties. If you see the creators Bitcoin get frozen, how safe is your Bitcoin? And I think people actually sitting down and thinking about this question will probably hedge themselves. And they won't market dump one side. So for instance, BlackRock. ODELL (49:40.041) You know, they're holding it on behalf of the ETF holders, right? So it's not actually their Bitcoin, right? They're a fiduciary that's holding Bitcoin for their shareholders. Are they going to market dump on this type of fork if there's any type of questionable, if there's any question in their mind of if it's the right decision, they probably won't. They'll probably sit tight, I think, in that situation. And so then really, kind of the market gets determined on the edges. Right. And I think there's actually probably a lot more conviction on the side of property rights in Bitcoin land. And one of the key things we have going for us on Bitcoin is that so much of the supply was distributed early to very ideologically minded people. So that are holding self custody that can easily participate in this type of market that don't have to deal with boards, that don't have to deal with fiduciary responsibility, that don't have to deal with potential liability from their actions, they can just make a decision. And then all of a sudden it kind of looks similar to the Bcash situation where you had a bunch of companies that had boards that had fiduciary responsibilities, that had potential liability concerns and teams of lawyers or whatever that were on the Bcash side that didn't have conviction. And then you had the original chain of Bitcoin that was a lot of individual ideologically minded holders that had a lot of conviction. And that side was the side that won, right? Michael Tanguma (51:09.922) Yeah, I guess the pushback there would be, and this is the way it was posited, was that it would be much more hectic and chaotic to have basically two coins out there with ETFs and asset managers. And I mean, part of the S1 is you're giving up all those rights to the issuer to pick whichever fork. ODELL (51:18.248) Yeah, well. ODELL (51:24.724) Yeah, I mean, that will suck for them and it would be fucking hilarious. I mean, that would be the best part about the situation would be, and this is what I said about the non-stuff too, which is like, fortunately, like mostly behind us. But if they forked, it would have been great to see like the large corporations have to deal with it, right? Like they're gonna, it would suck for the users. It would suck for the shareholders and whatnot. who would learn a hard lesson on custodial risk, but it would be at least entertaining to watch the chaos that unfolds. And of course they don't want to see a fork, which is also probably why they shouldn't push it in the first place and might not even support it in the first place. Because like I said, I think there's pretty strong consensus that, okay, let's add very reasonable, more quantum hardened crypto into Bitcoin and give people opt-in ability. I do not see consensus on freezing people's Bitcoin. And I think it just hurts us from a narrative point of view in the short term, but it probably doesn't even matter that much. I just talk about it because people are curious about it. Michael Tanguma (52:37.55) So we're not forking. ODELL (52:40.86) I think there will be forks in our future, like, absolutely. I also think it's interesting here, right, because it does show that the whole soft fork versus hard fork thing was a little bit of a narrative, PsyOp propaganda thing. Because, like, technically proponents of this call this a soft fork because it is, at the client level, backwards compatible. But, like, if a soft fork includes freezing the creator's Bitcoin and stealing it, Like, is it really backwards compatible? Like, why not just hard fork? And I think that probably will open up a lot of people's eyes if they keep trying to push that narrative that it's, you a no risk, quote unquote, soft fork. Like a soft fork could just as easily result in a chain split as a hard fork. If anything, a hard fork might be more, less risky because at least like preemptively you're like, okay, in a year there's going to be two chains and people can decide. Brian Cubellis (53:40.461) It gave us a lot to think about, It's just funny because I feel like six months ago, the big conversation online was about core and knots. And maybe that still is the case, but it seems like it's muted compared to the quantum conversation now. And my gut instinct is that people are kind of looking for a reason to point to as to why this year shaped out the way that it did. Right? And so I didn't really hear much about quantum six months ago or at the start of the year. I didn't hear anything about it and nothing's changed at the fundamental level for Bitcoin. Yet I think expectations and sentiment is just so much in the gutter and people are grasping at narratives now to explain why that's the case. mean, that's just like my left bell curve take. I don't think anything necessarily changed from six to 12 months ago. And if anything, it's just like the soup du jour of what can we get people worried about, get them to sell their Bitcoin. And I don't know. mean, I don't know much about it. I learned a good bit from this conversation, but I particularly don't think that this is something that everyone needs to get their panties up in a bunch about and sell their Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (54:52.821) It's the last remaining FUD, right? The FUDsters have really run out of narratives to FUD Bitcoin. It kind of is the last remaining one. Yeah. It's existed forever, though. ODELL (54:59.764) Well, this one's fresh. Usually it's recycled. Yeah. Well, yeah, go on, Michael. Michael Tanguma (55:04.655) I think something hit me last night, I don't know how true this is, but it feels like it would happen. We're just gonna end up with a plethora of quantum shitcoins that are gonna come out post this. ODELL (55:17.49) We already have them. They already exist. This did happen in previous cycles. They just never really had that much. What people don't realize, by the way, is Ethereum and Solana and all these account-based models are way, way, more vulnerable to long-range quantum attacks than Bitcoin is too, because they basically reuse addresses from a Bitcoin's point of view. They reuse addresses by design, which is crazy. I will just say on the independent... On the larger capital allocator side behind the scenes, we heard this question a lot previously. Like 1031, we heard this question so much that we put a blog on 1031 in January of this year on Quantum. And basically about how, you know, the best devs in the world are working on it and we're not too concerned about it. And we kind of faded it, but we wanted a blog post out there so that we could just answer people like really easily, like, oh, here's something tangible you can go read. I what I do think is fascinating if you want to compare it from six months ago is it does seem like six months ago there was a concern. You had like people that are were pro Bitcoin soft forks. wanted, you know, covenants or CTV and all this other stuff. And then you had the ossefires like people like, Bitcoin never should change ever. mean, sailors specifically in response to someone said the first rule of Bitcoin should be do no harm. And now the ossifier camp is like, let's freeze the creator's Bitcoin in a contentious fork. It's like been a complete flip in less than a year, which is pretty crazy. Michael Tanguma (56:55.555) So because I know we wanted to chat on some of the biggest things this year and heading to next year, but one thing on the quantum note, this is more like psychoanalysis on you mentioned institutional allocators and in general narrative. I truly believe like from an individual perspective, most people do not want Bitcoin to succeed. And it has nothing to do with like, Bitcoin has to do with things that are new and change. So if you change the perception of value and how it's stored and what does it look like and you can't touch it you can't feel it, you have to understand it. And quantum scratches that itch so perfectly. It's like all the FUD that's come about, it's kind of been dispelled, regulation, administration. The quantum's that last piece and it's a ghost because you can never touch it. It doesn't exist, it's all theoretical. And the thing I always gravitate, and it's again left bell curve, but it's very like, I don't want to say first principle, but it's very common sense. Parker has a great analogy about payment. It's like, if we get from zero to one, incensorship-resistant money that's finite, we can figure out payments. That's the easy part. And it's like, if we can get there to this asset at $2 trillion and where we're going, it's not to say quantum to migrate is the easy part, but we can navigate that. And there's enough economic incentives to do it. And so it's just a rational take. And then you just size it appropriately. And then you do your diligence. risk just don't allocate that much money to Bitcoin if you come to the conclusion that it isn't as big of a risk and you'll fix it and you get to naturally and then that's what you get paid for in the future. But yeah, all this like kind of crazy thought of it being existential doesn't make any sense. ODELL (58:33.552) I mean, the last piece I would say here, which is kind of interesting, because I've been thinking about it more lately, is quantum is an industry just like filled with hype, right? And press releases based off of that hype, and there's a bunch of different quantum stocks, and no one knows how they're going to monetize. And we very much live in a post-truth world. It's really hard to see what's real and what's not. Probably the only way to tangibly verify for yourself that quantum exists and is actually practical and it's used and can break crypto is if the early Bitcoin is stolen. Like, I don't know, like, like if the US government comes out and is like, yeah, we have a quantum computer. Like, do they? Like, I don't know if they do. we broke Chinese encryption. Like, did they? Like the Chinese might know maybe if like some, you know, they had some secrets leak or something like that, but how would you know they actually had one? It's like, actually, it's an interesting thought experiment. It's like you freeze that Bitcoin. It's like, do you even know quantum was reached? Like, did we actually ever reach it? Or did we just all switch to backdoor crypto on like signal and shit and all of our communications because the NSA finally had another chance to have backdoors and everything. Michael Tanguma (59:40.527) I think there'll be a... Michael Tanguma (59:52.612) I mean, based on, again, we don't know anything about quantum, but like the notion of the time and value to crack an address, I feel like there's lower hanging fruit that we haven't discussed. We don't even know, like unknown unknowns that will be cracked and weird shit will be happening. There'll be a canary in the coal mine before any of this even got close to being relevant. ODELL (01:00:10.964) Well, the argument is that they wouldn't do the canary because they would be going for bigger fish. Right? Michael Tanguma (01:00:17.805) Yeah, but the game theory there is you don't know when you're gonna get to the bigger fish. So the logical thing is take the bird in the hand versus the other deal. All right, Matt, since we're on this, biggest piece of noise and signal that is under discussed, because we can't do dats in quantum because everyone knows that it's, mean, anybody listening, would hope understands their noise and that. Yeah, yeah, from this past year, like under appreciated noise, okay, and then signal that. ODELL (01:00:22.056) Exactly. ODELL (01:00:39.56) Are you asking me? It was the SBR. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. What a letdown that was. So far, at least. Michael Tanguma (01:00:52.685) We still, do you think it'll happen? think. Brian Cubellis (01:00:53.555) I mean it exists, it exists, we're seizing more coins. We still haven't gotten the audit. Brian Cubellis (01:00:53.872) Brian, where is the audit? ODELL (01:00:57.992) Yeah, we haven't gotten the Fort Knox audit either. Like Elon said, richest man in the world, so we're gonna have a Fort Knox audit and then got a black eye and left the administration. Michael Tanguma (01:01:08.323) Well, Doge was also noise, but that's a different story. ODELL (01:01:10.676) That was 100 % noise. can't believe people actually thought the government would be more efficient. Michael Tanguma (01:01:14.511) We were with Pomp in New York in February. He on Twitter, so this isn't a secret conversation. He would ask, what's the likelihood of the balancing the budget? And everyone's like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's like, I think it's going to happen. He's like, can't believe you guys don't see it. It's like, what world do you live in? Brian Cubellis (01:01:30.965) balancing the budget for the year. ODELL (01:01:39.845) A lot of people believed it. I think Elon believed it too. If I wanted like a home run non-zero chance call, but out there for next year, would actually be that to catch up for, so strategic big room reserve, I think had very high expectations. Technically it exists via executive order. Michael Tanguma (01:01:45.039) We need Marty Jones for that one. ODELL (01:02:04.244) I think a lot of us were hoping that we were going to see something actually put into law via Congress, which hasn't happened. It wasn't about buying Bitcoin. It was about just keeping stolen Bitcoin through criminal investigations or whatnot, criminal seizures that happened, and not selling it. But in the meantime, Trump is incredibly transactional. Everyone he surrounds himself with is kind of on the take with him. Right. And they've all been loading up their bags individually. Right. Trump Media, his stock has been buying Bitcoin. You have his sons with getting Bitcoin exposure, getting significant Bitcoin exposure. You have to imagine that friends and other family are also in on that as well. So I think there's an argument that maybe they've been packing their bags individually. And then next year is when they go hard in the paint on actually using their position of power to create upwards demand pressure on Bitcoin. And one way for them to do that is they did launch a sovereign wealth fund that bought 10 % of Intel. And I think it would be an interesting play to bail quote unquote bail out the industry, America first style by buying a significant portion of micro strategy at a discount. And I think the shareholders would actually be happy about it at this point in time. So that's the kind of an interesting scenario to walk through in your head is the SBR actually, it wasn't the real driver. What the real driver was the sovereign wealth fund, and that was buying equity in the largest Bitcoin treasury company in the world. Brian Cubellis (01:03:49.925) Yeah, I mean, to your point, right? Trump and the cabinet administration, friends and family, they didn't get involved in Bitcoin to lose money, right? Like that would be saying people get elected into public office and then they they just buy the wrong stocks and they don't mint millions or tens of millions over their career. So I totally agree with you. I think we're we're getting set up for something more exciting. I don't know if it happens next year. I mean, I could be inclined to think that, you know, something like you just laid out could happen. But I just generally don't think that you would be in a position of power, get involved, have family working in the industry or on board seats in the industry, buying Bitcoin at public companies for this all to kind of just dump in 2026. Michael Tanguma (01:04:33.122) Yeah, would you even touch on Kant or how much underwater are they like a couple billion dollars in their MSDR position before like when the price was ripping? Brian Cubellis (01:04:40.602) I think it was like 20 % of their treasury strategy at the start of the year. It was like a crazy number. It like a billion dollar position. Michael Tanguma (01:04:46.05) Yeah. ODELL (01:04:48.639) But I think they were doing options things and stuff too, right? Like, I don't know if you can just treat that as a spot position. Michael Tanguma (01:04:55.65) Yeah, I don't know. What? ODELL (01:04:57.673) And they're also holding all of Tether's treasuries and that line of business has been doing quite well for them. Michael Tanguma (01:05:04.622) It helps when you're, you know, you got access to, you know, howie. I don't know. So one thing just to call out, I think it's a little bit controversial, but I personally, and I'm curious your thoughts. And then also what do you think like under the radar was bullish this year is the whole stable coin narrative. And stable coin adoption from like banks and the main logic is really simple It's just a easier way for the market to digest There's a digital form of money and then the rails that are associated with it. We saw what tether did for the past 10 years I think that's like widely under discussed in the Bitcoin camp of all these banks effectively turning on even though they went, know And maybe missed the forest of the trees with getting stable coin integrations and what the plans are there's there's a large influx of narrative we've seen the YouTube just across the board and so I that that'll naturally end up in inflows in BTC. But Curious Shell's take there and then also just like mainly like what under the radar happened this past year or just you think is misappreciated for like where it sets us up nicely in the coming years. ODELL (01:06:12.149) Yeah, I mean, I first and foremost, like, mean, having having a pro crypto President Trump was a significant win over the last year of Biden and whatever Harris would have brought. I mean, we were like, we're on the verge of, you know, American Bitcoin companies getting raided by the feds and getting thrown into gulags. I mean, we had samurai that happened to samurai and them getting ending up getting jailed and sentenced was a leftover of the Biden administration in a very big way. And hopefully we see Trump pardon them. But he did pardon Ross. He took off a lot of the pressure off the industry. And the big one he took off pressure on was Tether, which has basically the biggest risk for Tether for the last 10 years has been basically, I always called it cruise missile risk. It was like the US government like raiding them with Delta Force. and making their lives miserable and seizing all their assets. And that seems like it's basically out of the picture now at this point. Meanwhile, they're on track to make 20 billion plus in profit that they've been stacking Bitcoin and gold with. And they have like 70 employees. The Tether story is pretty crazy. And when you're talking about stablecoins, everyone always fades Tether. Well, at least among suit circles in America, they fade Tether for like Circle and stuff like that. But Tether is the dominant one. Tether is the winner. They're the ones that are the overwhelming majority of volume usage around the world. And I think that is, you know, and at the end of the day, it's basically run like a small business among a couple of Bitcoiners and it's all completely closely held except for like, Cantor got a token, 5 % equity or something. So they had skin in the game. That's probably bullish as fuck for Bitcoin, I think. And that's as someone who doesn't actually use tether or have demand for tether, but having long-term Bitcoiners that are ideologically minded, that are more powerful than ever, that have a ton of liquidity and seem to be kind of investing in ideological ways, like there's no way you can underwrite the rumble investment, for instance, where they invested like a billion dollars into rumble from like a straight. ODELL (01:08:35.579) monetary point of view. you can't, there's no way, no actual financial allocator who cares about returns is doing that investment. They did that investment for influence and freedom of speech reasons and pushing tether usage and Bitcoin usage in the rumble wallet or whatever. So I think there's something there that is pretty bullish. The thing to watch is, you know, if that relationship becomes too close, then what you're looking at is something that is very similar to a CBDC, but it's privately held. It's like a private bank digital currency. And the last piece I would say on that is I do think the sleeper in the stable coin conversation, particularly with gold at all time highs is Tether Gold, which obviously does not compete with Bitcoin, does not compete with Bitcoin because it requires a trusted third party. any real world asset requires the trust of third party because there's no way for you to natively verify on chain that that asset actually exists. And because of that, it requires permission. It can be seized. It can be blocked. We've seen Tether do that in the past. But I think that would be very interesting if that adoption gets bigger, which I expect it to. But if it starts to thread in Tether US dollars, Tether gold usage versus Tether US dollars, then all of a sudden, I don't think there's such a strong argument from the US government that it like increases dollar hegemony. So that's something to watch. think that's something to watch. Specifically, I think if you look at the market caps, it's like $2 billion is in tether gold and like $200 billion is in tether dollars. So it's like 100 to 1 difference in quote unquote usage, if that's how you want to measure usage. So if that gap narrows, that should be interesting to watch. ODELL (01:12:12.532) Yeah, I mean, I think it's just interesting to think like Tether just came out and announced they did an investment in Speed Wallet, which is like kind of a shitty lightning wallet that doesn't really have that much usage. But the quiet piece is that Speed Wallet actually powers Stake and Shakes Bitcoin merchant processing. And it's a really good, it's probably one of the best merchant integrations we've ever seen Bitcoin, period. It's super clean. You know, it just shows you an inlaid invoice. It's like really easy to pay. Very good UX works really well. There's a world where why did they make that investment? Right. I think there's a world where maybe you can go buy a burger with Tether Gold. Right. And then all of sudden you start to think it's like, okay, so Tether Gold doesn't compete with Bitcoin, but it definitely competes with GLD and it probably competes with physical gold too. I definitely would rather own Tether Gold than own GLD. I probably even at size rather own Tether Gold than physical. There's an argument, mean, there's obviously physical is awesome, but hard to verify, hard to move, hard to transact, right? There's a lot of... ODELL (01:13:27.405) But spot Bitcoin is way, way easier in those intermediate sizes than gold is. If you're a sovereign and you're allocating to gold, it's easier to allocate to gold than Bitcoin, right? Because you already have processes in place to verify, store, move it around, and acquire it. But if you're in the middle tier, right, and you're trying, let's say you're just a random person, you want to buy $500,000 to $2 million worth of gold. It's really, really difficult to buy, verify, store, and do that whole process. You're going to pay significant premiums. It's going to take you a lot of time. And then if you want to transact it afterwards, if you want to sell it afterwards, it's going to be a lot more difficult. In a couple clicks, you can just get access to tether gold if you wanted to. So it's an interesting dynamic. Once again, I'd rather hold Bitcoin. But to your point about gold being this massive, mature asset, I mean, I think the stat is like over the last five days, gold added another Bitcoin market cap to its market cap. The engagement tweet is gold is up 21 million Bitcoin in five days. That's just crazy. Brian Cubellis (01:14:30.325) Saw that. Brian Cubellis (01:14:51.999) That was, yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:14:58.709) Yeah, that was going to be my sort of, and it was discussed. It's not that it was under discussed, but I think my sort of most bullish thing of 2025 was just the narrative that entered the zeitgeist of the debasement trade, I think was important for people beginning to go down the path of understanding sound money, understanding how Bitcoin improves upon gold's monetary properties. And I think the greatest sort of anecdote example of that was Harvard's allocation. to gold in Bitcoin. That is still under discussed. There was, I think, maybe one or two write ups about it in certain periodicals, but really, really under discussed in the sense that it's not only that they allocated to Bitcoin, it's that they did it in tandem with a gold allocation. So there's some understanding in that investment committee that both of these things are similar from an investment perspective, from an underlying thesis perspective. And I think that's super critical. Like Harvard is the epitome of sophisticated allocator in the world, like full stop. And so we've seen some inkling of like people, you know, following their lead, whether it's Brown or Emory or a few others. I expect that to accelerate in 26 because they are the bellwether of sort of institutional sophisticated capital allocators. And, you know, I think part of the reason why it's under discussed is because they were very quiet about it. Like they didn't do a big release around their thesis or why they did it. just, you know, it just happened to be disclosed in their filings. And so there was no fanfare around it. And I think that was purposeful in the sense that it's still taboo in their circles, right? Academia, their peers, their colleagues don't understand what Bitcoin is relative to crypto. There's a lot of conflation still. And so I think it's natural that they were pretty quiet about it. But as a result of that, it's really been under discussed. But I think you know, probably the most bullish thing that happened this year in my mind. ODELL (01:16:59.338) Am I correct that is their largest public position? Brian Cubellis (01:16:59.385) Yamin out. Brian Cubellis (01:17:02.549) Correct, yeah, it's bigger than all their single name stocks in that portfolio. Brian Cubellis (01:17:58.939) give I'll give the group and more importantly the listeners some hopium and it was kind of already addressed but not fully the size ODELL (01:18:03.639) You ODELL (01:18:13.431) Tether gold. By the way, tether gold is not quantum resistant for what it is. Brian Cubellis (01:18:13.734) Ha I mean, yeah. Yeah, but you guys kind of touch on it, but not fully. I think the hopium is that just the magnitude of the move in gold in this year paves way for a Bitcoin super cycle at some point. But the fact that this asset moved like, what, 15 trillion in a year and people don't think that Bitcoin Brian Cubellis (01:18:20.597) You Brian Cubellis (01:18:45.629) Anything is possible. Anything's on the table is what you're saying. Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:18:46.872) Yeah, yeah, people don't think that Bitcoin could print another couple hundred thousand dollars or even a few million dollars in a given year. I don't know when that happens and what the catalyst will be, but to think that a small market like Bitcoin cannot move incredibly high in a very short amount of time, I think is misguided. I just don't know what the catalyst will be for that. I mean, the big reason for gold, of course, was you actually have a major sovereign bid. The past three years in particular. but even more so like just a relentless bid from sovereign nations. And everyone thought that 2025 was going to be the sovereign year for Bitcoin. I thought that we were going to have a bright orange future. The orange man was going to usher in the orange coin. The everything was going to be great in America. Of course, we kind of got rug pulled, but Brian Cubellis (01:19:36.469) Are you enjoying your golden age, Jackson? ODELL (01:19:39.649) You happy playing with your bitcoins? Brian Cubellis (01:19:39.726) No, not at all. I'm not even, honestly, I'm not even having any fun playing with my Bitcoin. So it's just been a disappointing year overall for the market. ODELL (01:19:44.929) You ODELL (01:19:49.451) Yeah, don't think that's opium. mean, I think that's a key aspect of the thesis. Bitcoin, mean, Bitcoin will move when you least expect it in both directions. But it's definitely a play. It is interesting, though. Like I do think I've been thinking a lot over the years of like, when does Bitcoin get truly appreciated as a safe haven asset? And there's been multiple false starts on that. But like earlier this year was like a really bad false start. Like I just Like Larry Fink was on CNBC and he's like, this is digital gold. Like this is, you know, like one of the most powerful people in finance was like Bitcoin is the safe haven. now Bitcoin's at 88k and gold and silver at all time highs. And it just feels like, okay, does that mean we have to wait another four years or five years? I mean, I'm down to, I'll wait. I'd rather not, but like that's kind of how I'm thinking about it right now. Brian Cubellis (01:20:45.308) I don't think we are. I don't think we are waiting because in previous cycles, I think at this point, what is like over two months. Brian Cubellis (01:20:58.648) That's my real, that's my real hope. But no, I mean, in previous cycles, right? Like at two years after two months, excuse me, after the peak, the price would be way lower than it is right now. And despite all of the bearish narratives, all the FUD that's being thrown out, Bitcoin still at about $90,000. And so it's definitely showing more resilience than previous cycles. Of course, there's probably a number of reasons for that, but I just can't see a world where 2026 is like a big drawdown year. I'm not going to say like I can't see a world where things don't chop around again, but I just don't think that we're going to have a big bearish year in 2026. I think it's going to be either flat or it's going to be incredibly bullish. It's one of the one of those two, my opinion. ODELL (01:21:39.723) mean, dude, flat is so boring. rather down or up, but anyway, you brought up the four year cycle. I did a little bit of homework before I came on and I have the numbers. Currently we're at $88,000, right? If this was equivalent to the 2012 cycle, we would be sitting at $3 million right now. Brian Cubellis (01:21:43.728) I don't disagree, but. ODELL (01:22:05.11) If this was equivalent to the 2016 cycle, we'd be sitting at $930,000 right now. And if this was the 2020 cycle, we'd be sitting at $326,000 right now. I mean, what is my point with that? Well, first of all, I'm incredibly disappointed. That's the main point I have. But second of all, I don't know if... Everyone always wants to see like a V-shaped recovery. But if we have maybe the we haven't seen all the pain yet. Like you said, we're sitting at 90K sentiments really bad. You know, if that is if 80 was actually the bottom, that'd be fucking fantastic. But who knows? Like maybe we maybe we go lower first. I wouldn't I wouldn't be so surprised if we go lower first. Brian Cubellis (01:23:31.647) That's not the take. Don't summarize my take like that. Brian Cubellis (01:23:33.311) Ha! ODELL (01:23:36.244) You Brian Cubellis (01:23:57.75) The point was higher lows for Bitcoin dominance from a cycle to cycle perspective, which I think we've seen. I think we've seen higher lows in terms of where Bitcoin dominance falls in the cycle when alts run. We didn't really see that this year and it never fell below 50%. Yeah, we can pull that up, but I don't think it ever fell below 50%, which was my specific call. I didn't think dominance would fall below 50 % this cycle. ODELL (01:24:14.07) Do we have a chart? ODELL (01:24:24.468) Yeah, I I think when you when you look at independent assets, my competitor competing monies to Bitcoin, they should all trend to zero against Bitcoin. Now, the big over time, but like the big one that's been wrong so far is gold. mean, gold and silver are just ripping like crazy. But the reason that Bitcoin dominance is like kind of a scam metric is because it's it's not the same assets. Like if you look at the Bitcoin dominance number 10 years ago, it was completely different shit coins were. we're taking up the majority of market cap. And the human condition of gambling is that, you know, they're just going to keep coming out with new ones, right? And that's probably going to be the case, I think, for at least however long. But maybe Bitcoin hits escape velocity. I think now the real number I'm more curious is like Bitcoin versus gold and silver. Like, I think that's an interesting dominance metric. Brian Cubellis (01:25:17.722) Yeah, remember when everyone would dance on a... It's just funny when everyone would dance on the grave of silver, right? Like, people would pull up that chart and be, Bitcoin is much larger than silver by market cap, and now, if you were to pull that up, silver's got a double on Bitcoin. I just also think it's funny, I know, we'll wrap here, Matt, but it's funny that Michael brought that... Yeah, I know, I was gonna say, Michael brought that up, and then he just dipped. Cause he had to make Christmas cookies, yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:25:18.259) I would agree, it's definitely more useful. ODELL (01:25:35.305) Yeah, Tanguma just left. Brian Cubellis (01:25:37.373) He Irish'd. And ran away. Brian Cubellis (01:25:44.56) But appreciate the time, Matt. It was a fun conversation. Wish you a Merry Christmas and anyone who wants to get in touch with you, where should they find you? ODELL (01:25:52.15) All my contact information is at odell.xyz Reach out you have any questions feedback always happy to to provide and also If you haven't checked out Nostor download primal in your favorite app store. I'm very active there It's fun. We have an integrated Bitcoin wallet and we have a lot of big I'm heavily involved in primal development We have a lot of big improvements coming up in the next four or five months So if you don't necessarily like what you see, stick around and I think you'll enjoy it. Brian Cubellis (01:26:25.404) You're gonna love it. All right, well thanks Matt. Merry Christmas to you and appreciate the time, man. Brian Cubellis (01:26:28.053) Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. ODELL (01:26:30.209) Cheers, Merry Christmas. Brian Cubellis (01:26:31.894) Merry Christmas.