AI Kills SaaS, Bitcoin Saves Treasuries: The Next Playbook for Founders

[Music] It all comes down to computers communicating. The information superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga [Music] transaction. The internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash. Okay, we're going. And we're live, boys. We are live. Another episode of Final Settlement. Today is May 19th, 2025. How's everybody doing? We got Cam Duty on the podcast today. Early writers advisor, founder of Brickyard, legend. How you doing? Best day of my life. Can I be Can I be my favorite VC? Maybe fiat VC, that's for sure. And then we got to figure out how much how big the transition is into Bitcoin. Uh, but super pumped to have Cam here on a bright Monday morning. You know, we what was yesterday like 106, 107 almost top ticked. I thought we were going to hit alltime highs with Cam on the pod, but it looks like we got a little bit of a retrace. Yeah, we got we got close last night. I think 106, a little over 106, but uh yeah, Cam, also I think you are probably the uh the most recurring guest of the show. I think this is your third or fourth appearance on an on-ramp pod. Um, so yeah, great to have you on. No shortage of uh things happening in the world in markets in Bitcoin. Uh the Knicks are in the Eastern Conference finals. Are we in a simulation, boys? Things are strange right now. We got bond yields spiking. The US has been downgraded again. Where do we want to start? Liam, I know you put together a list as always. Should we start with the downgrade? Yeah, let's start there. I mean, um, this is bond yields are something that are really interesting at the moment. It's kind of going to drive all of what, um, Trump does with his entire strategy because it's a a lot of Trump's global financial strategy is coming from Bessant at the moment, uh, in our view. And, you know, bond yields are higher than when they were pretty much. Uh, the 30-year is is above 5% at the moment. um it's pretty inevitable that the US uh got downgraded, but it kind of also ties into their existing um you know new market bill from the uh Republicans as well in which they are planning to do like 1.5 trillion in budget cuts while you know growing the budget by 4 trillion. So there's going to be increasingly more deficits moving forward. um there there is isn't really a ma uh a sustainable way to pay for everything that they have going on. Um it seems like a lot more of of what we're seeing before and and that's not great in a world in which we increasingly see multipolar world uh other company or other countries looking to acquire additional Bitcoin. Um what do we think about, you know, the the move from inside money to outside money, hard assets versus government uh government credit? Um, yeah, I mean I think Bessant I think Bessant did an interview last week that was fairly telling and you sort of alluded to it where he was painting a pretty grim picture of like you know hopefully we can kind of grow out of this but you know that was a very um exact you know a very hopeful stance of you know perhaps we can grow out of this but we're going to have to keep spending we're going to have to keep printing and debasing the currency effectively. Um, and this ratings downgraded. So, I think this is Moody's. I think um, a few years ago, correct me Liam if you know the exact date, but I think S&P and Fitch had a similar downgrade a few years ago. And so, this is um, not necessarily new. Yeah, not necessarily new, but just um, sort of a follow-on downgrade. Um, yeah, like this feels like feels like a nothing burger slash u like fed speak like I I think like go back from just a pure you know uh left barbell like um what's the movie uh the big short and when they went to the credit ratings like when was the last time they were actually objective objective uh and non-politicized right this is like close to 20 years ago and nothing's really fundamentally changed pre postction ction, but now they decide to. So, there's like some political, you know, potential um reasons coupled with Fed speak. You're mentioning Bessent and then this reminds me of um there just has to instill confidence in the market in the same way that they talked for the past two years we've been doing TLT and they keep saying inflation's 2 to 3% and we know it's like 7 to 12 to 15%. So, yeah, it's just just all like noise. Cam, any thoughts? Any thoughts on the global macro? I mean, I feel you don't have to have thoughts because Yeah, you don't have to have thoughts because just again, but you can. I mean, I don't This isn't totally my wheelhouse, but I I feel like the the the tenure is like the is like the referee that nobody listens to until they absolutely have to. And so it's sort of like the tail wagging the it's like the tail wagging the doll like a or dog. It's like um you know when you look at this chart it's it forces things to happen like okay um I guess we need to downgrade because something is clearly off. Um, and I I don't know how much of it is is like actually geared around um trying to drive any kind of like specific outcome. I think it's just like a okay, we have to cover our own ass. We have to do something about this. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe to articulate, I think what you're saying and where I think it's nothing burger is there's like 10 different ways from Sunday that that bond yield can spike and then effectively the government has to step in to provide liquidity to get it below that that price before things start blowing up. So it's just like it always just comes up every 3 months there's something happening because everything's you know fundamentally uh uh fractured and just interdependent. So whether it's like the Japanese markets or some other uh part of the world where something's happening, it causes a liquidity crunch, bond yield spike, and then naturally some random like either uh transparent or non-transparent form of liquidity steps in to produce more monetary units which has the purchasing power reduced, you know. So it all just like comes back to that. But then once you get into the mechanics like if you're productive humans like everyone here it's like how far can you go in the weed to understand um you know what the reason is this time and zooming out like yields aside like Cam this is a tweet from you so here are your thoughts um somewhat related is like this is this is sort of the inevitable long-term trajectory here um there's likely to be technological deflation into the future and the US government just can't have that with 36 trillion in debt and so you Printable money will be printed. Uh unprintable money, you don't you don't uh you sort of subweet Bitcoin here. You don't actually say the word Bitcoin, but uh unprintable money will be fled into. Yeah. You know, it's weird being a venture investor and a Bitcoiner, especially one that that talks about Bitcoin so much. It's like I want the people, you know, my kind of group of peers in the venture space is largely just uninterested in Bitcoin because, you know, you you I've said before on pause with you guys, you know, you can't justify key fees or carry on Bitcoin. And so, it's just sort of, you know, if you're a professional in the venture space, your job is to go and find companies and go raise capital and like, you know, it's just like sort of outside of your system. Um, and so there's there's sort of a a you know, like a hard obstacle that I think a lot of these people would be extremely interested in this if it was relevant, but it's just not to their livelihood or or so they think. And so I kind of I I want them I I'm kind of like speaking to them a lot of times when I'm talking on Twitter where I won't actually mention Bitcoin. I want them to kind of start to understand the, you know, the core mechanics of what's happening and they can, you know, they're smart enough to put two and two together on this stuff. But I do that a lot with my friends, too. It's probably with you guys. Bitcoin comes up so much in every conversation. It's like I I I kind of want to just stop using the word. But yeah, I mean for this tweet um yeah, like my beat as you guys know is what I'm so worried about is I think a lot of economists think that this productivity miracle is going to be good. And I don't understand why they think that. And I I may have told you this story, but I was in a meeting with uh the the the head of the Fed, uh one of the head economists of the Fed, and I I told her, you know, I told her, you know, she spent 45 minutes talking about the current state of everything. And then she made a comment about, you know, but we're really hoping that that the productivity miracle of AI is going to be, you know, very helpful for growth in the United States. And I'm like, you understand when that product m productivity miracle happens, that's just deflation and that's just making the real value of your debt that you carry completely unpayable. And um I'm having a hard time even like grappling with it because it was like I told her something that she'd never considered before. And it's like what? feel like you are the, you know, you're the head economist at the, you know, the Federal Reserve, you know. Um, so yeah, I'm I'm like I just continually I look at AI companies all day, every day. I'm seeing our engineers writing 95 98% of their code, you know, is is not written by a human being. you know YC just just uh surveyed their last cohort you know what percentage of the code written in your companies was written by AI 95% all right one one cohort prior to that it was like 5% maybe right and and this is this is a quarter apart and so this stuff's happening so quickly um teams are going to be able to do so much more with so much less Um, and I think we're we're right in the beginning, the first innings of of the the economy actually feeling the the uh the effects of deflation, real deflation, real like scary deflation uh for the first time, you know, ever. Yeah. Well, there's a lot there. Uh I think part of where I started off a little hot with I don't care about Moody's is because uh we had Matt Pines on the pod Friday or Wednesday and they came out Friday and I've been thinking of this I think a lot of us have there's a lot of intersections on conver or the convergence of Bitcoin AI and then energy but as you start like going more they're just starting to like and they come at different facets from like the socioeconomic perspective of like Bitcoin is just so wild to think about but like AI will help you understand it better because you'll start to see the world through like just a completely different lens. I the the deflation um but then also the energy component and just the battery nature and being able to to leverage different um sources. But then um and then also just money and so like those things are have been out there but now you start to see more of this when you see the geopolitical you know things taking form in the Middle East. Um but but taking a step back what you said about the venture capitalist friends um you can squint and see how in 24 months roughly give or take the bid for AI companies from a geopolitical and like whoever wins winner or take all potentially for ASI and AGI and all these things are going to be at the same level of fervor on the Bitcoin side right because there's the geopolitical like ramifications and because there's only 21 million of these things and and there's only so much infrastructure and you want you know whether it's custody or you want to be mining But it's the funny notion of like uh obvious is obviously wrong, right? So like VCs are always looking at the obvious thing. It's like no no like you're just missing like you're one tick away and then you can get the whole picture to your point. And so it's just a it's a super fascinating thing because to your point like if this was two years ago or four years ago, we we wouldn't we'd be too early. But what you said is happening. It's just f it's so fast that these like agents and like chiaoming mint and all these things while there's still like you can't really put it together there's going to be very savvy people that grock Bitcoin from the traditional markets like traditional Google's traditional meadows traditional open AIS and they're going to see the missing pieces that like the hardcore Bitcoiners that were here early miss and they're just going to like tile all this stuff together and they're just going to print money with these small teams and I've just been thinking about that was kind of part of what I said you yesterday is uh my mind can't like because it ties into the energy, the internet, and the way that it's routed, but then also just the societal forms. And I think that's how the Fed person backed into the right conclusion. The deflationary is right because we have a battery that's going to be able to absorb it and then you'll be able to re rebuild back up because you can't print those monetary units. If we were just going to have a CBDC and printable money, then we're kind of screwed because you end up in an Orwellian place. Um, so anyway, everyone, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. This week we had Cam Dudy on, general partner and co-founder of Brickyard. Cam is an awesome friend, Bitcoiner, and also just uh evangelist in the VC community around bringing and infusing Bitcoin into that capital market and figuring out how to um just help that community see Bitcoin. It was really exciting conversation. Cam's been a big believer in multi-institution custody. He's a client adviser to early writers and I think there's a lot of things uh he shares in the the podcast that you guys will appreciate. Quick word from On-Ramp. As you guys may know, we actually uh launched on-ramp trade about three weeks ago. That's exciting because folks can sign up um before end of June and get access to no fee trades until October. So, if you're interested in testing out our suite of services or have friends and family that want to get onboarded, uh, please feel free to let them know to check out honorbitcoin.com. Uh, only other thing worth referencing is over the weekend, uh, there was a Wall Street Journal article that came out. I'll actually share if you're watching on YouTube. Um, it was titled Severed Fingers and Wrench Attacks Rattle the Crypto Elite. I had recently done a podcast with uh Stefan Laa last week talking about um multi- institution custody our journey here but then really referencing that as Bitcoin holders um we're not prepared for what the price is going to do but also the ramifications as we think about holding a digital bearer asset next to our friends family loved ones encourage you to take a peek at the article if it's behind a payroll just reach out and um I can happily send you the article but it's just a real key moment to just rethink security in a digital uh world and what does it look like as the price appreciates and bad actors also are aware of that. Um appreciate you listening in for another week of final settlement and hope to hear from you soon. Yeah, another tweet uh from Cam I wanted to pull up that is uh related to what we what we just spoke about is um this one. Maybe you could unpack this a little bit more for us, but this is effectively, you know, a a thesis that we holded earlier on or doing more with less, like this is how you're going to have to adapt to this new world. Um, and this was in the context of of SAS founders, but maybe if you want to add some more color to this. Yeah. So I think the difficult part about investing in AI today is almost all of it is going to be super beneficial accreative valuable to the consumer. You know you take like a very simple use case like voice AI for like dentist offices. Okay. Um, you know, this is going to be better for the dental operator and it's going to be or the the the dentist that owns the practice and it's going to be better for the customer and that customer is going to be able to get all the information they need way quicker, you know, more simply. They're never never going to be on hold, etc. The dentist office is is not going to have to manage a human to sit at a front desk to to basically query, you know, handle the same questions over and over again. um there's a there's a there's a a a cost p benefit there. So for for the end user there's there's tons of value for the venture capitalist it's uninvestable because um the technology AI is you know as this becomes commoditized all that means is there's just going to be more players that are spinning up voice AI agents um to uh and and going and selling to dentist offices and and you know they're all going to claim they have better product But they're all going to be like within like a one or two percent band of like, you know, how good is this product? Um and uh and and so the only benefit or or the only um differentiation on on go to market for these teams is going to be price. And so, you know, it's just going to be a race to the bottom on price over and over and over again. And and so that's uninvestable for for for us because you know venture capital has to build you know back companies that have the potential for 100 200 500x outcomes. Um and and so you have to look for signals on like okay the core technology is going to be commoditized and everybody's going to have the ability to do these things. Um the the signal that you're looking for as an investor is um like how do you create that kind of stickiness uh that that that allows you to to just get out of the race to the bottom on price? And usually that has to do with like some kind of like strange insight on who the the the the customer is. Um it's it can do with a lot of times with um you know like higher regulatory uh categories where there's there's some kind of like very difficult obstacle that you have to overcome that's going to scare away competition. Um there's a number of ways that that you can kind of find an answer to this question, but but the key is is is you know how do you get out of the rat race to the bottom on price? And if you don't have a good answer for that, like there's there's no way to even take a second meeting with a team. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. That's a great point. A lot of these are the products are not differentiated at all. And so I think what you're trying to or what you're saying is the real differentiation is the distribution in order to get in front of the most amount of customers. That kind of goes away over time. um as well as the access to um there there's something in there with with getting all of their data and kind of selling it on the secondary market that you know it gets pretty insidious pretty quickly. Um and then the the last aspect too is just like the ability to there is something there with uh you know managing the the capital and and being able to sweep that into Bitcoin if you are profitable early on and and entering other markets um later and being first. But in the long term you you need a product that's completely differentiated from what the the market is offering and and that's just not there in in AI today. Yeah. you you either need a product that's differentiated or you need a customer that is overlooked and uh or or you need some kind of hard hurdle that is going to you know and and usually that has to do with the customer. It's like um you know the the what we hear a ton talking to to you know whenever asked this question with founders about 80% of the time it always comes down to well we're just going to grow faster than everybody else right we're going to raise more money and we're just going to grow faster and it's going to be a land grab and then you know we're going to have you know we're going to win and I'm like no you can't think it like that because you know you can go and get all of these customers and onboard them onto your product and you're like the the team that goes through the brick wall. Well, because somebody else with like three people um and uh that can understand, you know, what you've built because they can come and and rebuild what you've built um to like close to par. They're just going to go and go to all your customers and they're going to say, "Hey, you're spending, you know, 50k a year on this. Come to us for 30k and uh and you'll be happy." and then somebody's going to come behind them do it for 25 and then 20 and then 15 and then it basically just falls to the you know the cost of compute over time and so there has to be something more than just product differentiation and and there has to be something more than than just um speed to market. There has to be some kind of like, you know, structural stickiness that's allowing you, you know, to pro provide value to to customers uh in a way that that they aren't going to be willing to to rip out whatever your product is for somebody else that that offers it for less. And I think that's where the capital stack where Liam's kind of referring to is it's part of like what how we set this up is coming to the conclusion that the person that's going to always be undercutting or do it with less people or less overhead in capex is going to be the Bitcoiner because they want more Bitcoin. So they want to dilute themselves and raise the least amount of money and then have the least amount of capital outlay. Yep. And then and then to your point, this is where it's always been interesting on the brickyard and just like notion of investing is you can do two things. You can either hold the money in something that's going to outpace the market or the founder can just spin his wheels and try to outpace the market on this other side. And the kicker is that it's a real moat. It's not forever but it'll be for the next call it two to 10 years because when you're having inflation because inflation touches everything, you have to raise your prices and so your margins are compressing. You can actually lower prices, increase client services. So that will like it's being its own inherent mode in a lot of this stuff. Um, but real quick, one thing to call out. I didn't know if I was going to bring it up, but I thought about it this morning. Curious to get your guys' thoughts because there's something here is uh I think what we're talking about is like eerie cousin of real estate in the sense that we know real estate has these uh monetary premiums that are over inflated because of the amount of, you know, monetary units. And then there's the notion that when people wake up, the natural price will start to delever and then only so many people can fit through the door and then, you know, whoever has the Bitcoin will be able to go buy the real estate. Something like that. Well, think about that in the uh SAS world where what if you know I I think there's like a structured product, but independent of being a structured product, you just go take and just because I kind of know this guy is Owen Owen from um uh Intercom, right? you're at intercom, you have this X valuation, you go look at the market and you say, can I sell it at 20% discount whenever can I apen to BTC and then depending on your clauses, you know, you go rebuild or you start a fund or maybe the fund does something where you go invest in something a couple, you know, founders, you pull from the team that you can go rebuild it with maybe two other trinkets so you don't get sued uh because you're integrating all these other aspects of it. like this is effectively what's going to happen and you can just like spin out all this crap because the all these PE people and fiat people and all the people that are in your circles that we talk to if you told them hey you can go buy this at a 30% discount and then you just put that all in BTC you don't have to work and you can let the market do what it's going to do like this will eventually happen uh a little bit more friction than real estate but still um it's still the same principle yeah and and on that same vein it's the same thing with you know if you have two uh SAS startup founders. One seems sees the writing on the wall that its value is going to decline in Bitcoin terms over the next 10 years or so. The other one does not and they're at a fundamental disagreement. One is likely just going to say, you know what, that's fine. I'm just going to um you know, you can take my shares in the uh in the company. I'll take that money, buy Bitcoin, and then potentially start the company and and end up going uh and trying to run circles around you because I know, you know, kind of how the the company is working as well as, you know, the gaps that we can rebuild this moving forward and so they can just use a harder form of money and and out uh outperform their, you know, former, you know, team. Yeah. Yeah. I will say there's something that like this is going to be polarizing but I'm fairly confident right is um there's a plane of consciousness that we're talking about like will not go down you'll only go up. So, like if you think about, and I've been telling Brian about this a little bit, um, when you think about like Snapchat as an example, when you used to, you know, you used it, if you handed it to a boomer or somebody over the age of 45, it's just like they're it's not coherent to them because they're just they're they're not used to like the framing. And this will get a lot of but when I hear thought leaders that are over a certain age, I won't use the age so I can't get too much for it, and talk about Bitcoin, they're just like see like a small component, but they can't see the 360. And I when I think about this, it's like you can talk about deflationary tools and AI, but the speed of its movement takes a certain mindset and understanding of adaptability and growth. And you know this because you see this all day long, Cam, where others just drown. They drown at our company, they drown just in the world. And I see this with companies in the way like the the ratings agency is a good example or when you go on CNN or whatever the you know dure like uh CNBC talking heads it's like they can't actually gro what's happening here and they look at this like old world and so it's only going to accelerate and then that plane of consciousness is only going upwards and it doesn't you can't like you can't move from a certain level all the way up it you just have to like be growing. I don't know. It's a hard thing to explain, but this won't be available for everyone. Go into that. What do you mean it won't be available for everybody? So, like basically think about how you got into Bitcoin, whatever the year was, and the amount of compounding information because you effectively like we all know where we were pre- Bitcoin and the amount of information we were probably all curious individuals, but the level of curiosity and rabbit hole chasing and truth seeeking fundamentally changed with that. and you look at it and it's not linear. It's or whatever the term like it's it goes like parabolic because it continues to compound and then you layer in AI and the adaptability and the use of that you're always trying to get to like the most efficient you're being constrained. I mean to tell all these conversations why this podcast is starting to get more and more success like you can't you just you could taste it's a taste thing and when you hand somebody a tool now uh and the reason why I'm I'm bringing this up is like when you think about the IBMs are great to pick on but just any publicly traded company and any company in general go back five years and think about how much fat is built into that organization let alone 10 to 15 because they're just using like archaic systems they're probably just I remember when I was at Weiwork and we were doing a deal with McKenzie And we went into Mackenzie's office and we showed them Google Slides. This is 2018. And we show them slides and that you can in real time edit and not have to download and send it. This is 2018 and they're losing their minds. These people are the ones educating the rest of the world on consulting, business consulting. So that's like a frame of like all these companies have no idea what's happening. And so now you're going to give the people that little like battery which is Bitcoin to seek out the truth and then leverage all these tools. Uh it's just a different world we're all heading to and not everyone's going to make it basically. They said they won't make it. They'll still exist eventually by necessity. It they won't be they won't be early to it. They won't you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's a cur it's it's interesting to think about like in my in my journey I I started buying ETH first like back in 2015 and just cuz a buddy was like hey you should buy some of this and I was like all right and and then that kind of got me on the on the thought of like what decentralization could be you know e time was proof of work um started to understand some things but But I was I was busy building my company and I didn't really have the time to um to spend with it. And then it wasn't until we sold our company and I, you know, was waking up at like 9:00 a.m. on like a Tuesday and being like, I don't know what my life is. Like I've been so used to going so fast for so long and I'm like because I'm going to yoga class on, you know, this morning. Um, I had all this time and uh it was around, you know, the time where I I went heavier into Bitcoin, right, when uh when COVID happened and it it was it went from like, you know, that year went from like 10% to like 50 or 60% of, you know, you know, my net worth and like I didn't have anything to do. I was like flying around the country talking to Bitcoiners. Like I was just like getting meetings, going places, talking to people, listening to every podcast, reading every book. Like I was on this like neurotic quest to like defeat this thing. And no, yeah, people are not going to have the opportunity to do that, right? And I think the materials today are way better. you know, it's it's way easier to get spun up on, you know, technicals of of Bitcoin, but um it is. But but at the same time, I think like this is uh indicative of sort of the plight of the average person in the sense that yes, the information is available. It's more easily accessible than ever. But you also have sort of propagandized narratives around, you know, the average person still thinks Bitcoin's Ponzi. Like they literally still think it's a scam. and they've been told it's died 430 times. Um, you know, if they had just not listened to that advice and bought Bitcoin instead, it would have would have worked out pretty well for them. Um, but this is just this is just the reality and I think it's, you know, it's sometimes hard for us to grasp because we're so inside it. Um, but you know, I was at a wedding this past weekend and you know, occasionally someone will ask you what you do and uh, you bring up Bitcoin and and the look in their eye is still like, what the hell? like you work in Bitcoin, like I thought that was a Ponzi. I thought that was a scam. Their mind goes to SPF. Their mind goes to all the the blowups that are unrelated but adjacent to to Bitcoin. And so there's still just a massive massive education gap. And you know, I would I would think though that the tendency for someone to actually dig in and start to understand like there's probably a greater propensity for, you know, someone who is an entrepreneur, who is a founder, who's probably naturally more curious. So I would say like you know hopefully you know optimistically people that are actually building businesses probably have a greater propensity than just the average person um to start to understand this. I'm curious Cam like you know as you're talking to to founders and people like is would you agree with that? Like is there is there naturally more curiosity to understand something like this or is it still you know they're just so caught up in their own you know business whatever it is. Yeah. I mean, I think that the entrepreneur is like uh a perfect person to rock Bitcoin. Um, the problem is is if you're if you're building a company, you don't have any time to figure out something else, especially, you know, something that just you have to like grind on, you know, something you have to battle through to answer all your questions and and and it just takes time, you know, and so I I think it's it's difficult for founders because they don't have the time. It's difficult for venture investors because they're not, you know, financially incentivized by it. Um, they it it's difficult for, you know, you're you're you're guy that's, you know, running a a a route for Fredo Lays and, you know, and he's trying to put, you know, food on the table for his family because he's just have, you know, spending all of his time actually, you know, trying to make a living. It it's it's it's hard all around. Um, you know, I I think I've had a number of conversations with folks that are really smart and very successful people that have bought bit Bitcoin in the past and uh I had a conversation two nights ago with with a guy very successful um entrepreneur has sold a couple companies and he's like, "Man, I feel like I just always miss Bitcoin. like I I bought it like really early and then it like went up like crazy and I sold some of it and then it like tanked and I got rid of all the rest of it and like you know it came back a few years later and like I kind of did it again and but then kind of the same thing happened and like I just never really you know and I'm like yeah you you you have to understand the asset before you can hold it. It's like it doesn't matter when you bought Bitcoin. It's it's when did you when when did you go through the rabbit hole? Like um when when when did you when did you answer that that final question when you realized that that this thing's going to be very difficult to impossible to to kill? And um like this is I guess a long way of saying I I want to think that we are going to see a a massive adoption over the next year, two years because I think Bitcoin is going to grow at the pace that AI grows and nothing stops that train like um you know but it does just still it it feels like we're so far away from from even converting like really smart people to understanding what it is. I I think um I think the two the two anchor points are um the the benefit for us is they won't have to like and this kind of ties into not leaving behind. left behind sounds like morbid or like they won't make it. It's like they just it's similar to um having built in the space you get to see like data profiles of the US in particular and the amount of Bitcoin sitting and like I would say over 50% of all the Bitcoin sit in in California and that kind of supports this notion of you're kind of grafting on you get the internet you get topography and then you kind of you're ready for the next thing because you you understood that but most people don't know how the internet works right they just use the internet and they weren't going to get on unless you know you handed them a browser and you handed them wireless internet and then they just use it and they don't care and their lives got incrementally better but not to the notion of building a Google better. Those are fundamentally different things. And so I think that's what we're talking about here is you actually don't really have to understand Bitcoin at a certain point. You're just going to use it because everyone's doing it and you just buy it in your ETF and then you eventually learn that they like those units. It'll like be an obiscate and it'll be like oh I own this but it owns more dollars and it keeps going up so I just keep putting more there. And you won't have any idea about monetary theory or anything. it'll just make sense and then your your life will be better and you'll incrementally get better because your money can't be debased and you're not on the rat race versus what we're talking about here on like seeking truth and how the integration of all these things go together. Um, but the other aspect that you hit that I don't think we talk about enough and I feel really naive and and I talked about this on that SLP pot is uh it's just this notion of beginner's mindset when you think about building in this space because it's just kind of wild or insane to think about putting all of our money like on one side I can completely I feel kind of crazy that anybody doesn't have all their money in Bitcoin because we all understand the properties but then on the other side I can see how people would think it's insane to put any material amount of money in this asset versus everything they've ever known which is like a 6040 maybe on real estate because they're all tangible things. And so to your point, nobody has the time. And that's why co again having for five years having thousands of discussions at this point with like client and the 2020 point was by far over 50 to 75% of the time they got it. But they always reference it was amount of monetary units printed and it really wasn't that. It was the fact that everybody got locked in a box and they just had a ton of time to just look at the problem and that's what allowed their mind to open. And nobody has that. Even if they're billionaire, they're just busy by life, right? Yeah. I agree. I I think that's, you know, you know what the the the most impactful thing that I can ever tell somebody to get them to actually take Bitcoin seriously is I tell them that I don't own USD. And and almost every every single time it it it sort of like shocks them awake and they're like, "Wait, what? like what do you you don't hold USD like you're like yeah I I all of my liquid net worth is in Bitcoin and they're like okay what was that book that you told me that I needed to read you know I like that no that's a great framing because what I was going to say when you were speaking earlier is like the the precondition or the bias is that like this thing is a trade and until the person opens their mind to like no it's just better money then like they're not going to understand they're going to think they missed it. They're going to sell at the bottom. All these things because they're viewing it as a trade to get more dollars. And so that that's perfect framing of like, no, I don't I don't want more dollars is the is the actual framing because this is just better money. And and Michael, to what you were saying is like, you know, as the banks, other financial institutions get more integrated into the system. Like we've talked about this a bunch of like once you have your your dollars right next to your Bitcoin in the same account, whatever it is. That's going to be a a huge learning moment for folks as they just see like, oh, like this this other form of money is just going up in dollar terms. Maybe I should just put all of my savings in that one and only spend the dollars as I need to. And so that sort of just juxosition and like again just like better UI, ease of use, not having not having to figure out hardware devices, all these things as it just gets easier and easier. To your point, Michael, like you don't have to, you know, go fully down the rabbit hole to understand that Bitcoin is going to buy you more eggs than the dollars into the future. I mean, I want to talk about something. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Like my view on on And I may be like throwing you off on on what you want to talk about, but the the I feel like what's happening with the terrorists right now is the White House actually understands that we've offshored all of the production of real things to the rest of the world. We've become a service economy. um you know, accounting, financial services, legal, consulting, like those are the businesses that mainstream America works in. And um I think that they are realizing that AI is about to demonetize all services. And it's like, okay, yeah, it's probably also going to demonetize the production of of goods and manufacturing eventually as well. um you know maybe to a lesser degree but at least at least that's not here yet and we may have some juice left to squeeze in the thing but like if if we don't get some industry back we we don't have an industry of the future in the in the US today because all of these companies that are built on commanding a price of services provided this is about to fall to the floor faster than you can possibly imagine. Um, you know, I like I am it is such a weird place for me to be thinking like, okay, you know, I heard Bology or somebody say a year ago, you know, AI is going to kill SAS. And I was like, come on, that's ridiculous. And it's now like, oh yeah, okay, it's aenic AI is like totally going to kill SAS. like unless you have some super sticky mechanic to your business, um you know, you're going to have a million competitors coming and and throwing a similar product at your customers for less money or your customers are just going to be able to speak into a box and say, "Hey, I want this." And then they're going to have a, you know, five hour conversation with a machine and the machine's going to kick out exactly what they need, you know, and so I I the all of that is I I'm just it's just such a weird place to be to be a to be thinking about technology what technology is about to do and then Bitcoin is like clearly is this battery that's going to absorb all of this excess buying power that's created by more efficiencies in the market. Um, and yeah, like I'm now starting to think more like, you know, the conversation about how is this transition actually going to look? Like is this going to be super rapid and is it going to be carnage or is it going to hopefully take a little bit longer? But like I I'm kind of like my mind is now like Bitcoin is going to grow at the pace that AI grows. And AI is just absolutely going to rip. And I don't know how I don't know what slows that down other than energy. Yeah. I think which you hit on something that we haven't really talked about a lot, but I don't think there's any singular reason, but the three like things that it feels like are converging are to your point deflationary um like technology as it relates to services in the US. But then there's the natural like defense perspective of like you have to reshore and build things here because you can't rely on your you know counterparties to to deliver. And then the last one is um just the natural debt the like the market structure around the debt that you have to inflate it away. And if you're doing all of those things um it's naturally inflationary. So you need your individuals the citizens to be able to hold assets to outpace inflation. And this is something we've been talking about. This is where the ETFs come in and the normalization of Bitcoin. I think this has been like pre kind of set up for years of like because you can't really not everyone can buy a house, not everyone can buy hard assets, but you can buy a sliver of BTC and and outpace that. But the thing that you hit on is that like there's a pretty good framing on a lot of this. I think we probably have our hands around where you can at least like go through the night like with a walking stick and trying to get home. The thing that I think we all don't get and I don't know if anybody does is what does the UBI like whole aspect of just like completely wiping out somebody's wealth. Um because that's what's going to happen here is like people are just going to get the you know this repricing is going to happen from a micro example all the way to like funds that have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into all these different things that are just going to compress to zero and a lot of people are going to get left holding the bags and then when it comes to pensions endowments they're not going to be able to make fulfill their obligations. So that's the thing that's gonna that it gets a little dicey and how does it actually play out um in that world. Yeah. Yeah. One of the other things too that I think a lot of people have been skeptical to reinvest in the US manufacturing just because of a couple factors. one, the volatility around potential tariffs and what they ended up looking like and, you know, do are do do these end up being, you know, forever or are they going to change what the actual tariffs are next week and make it, you know, non-economical to invest in the US? But like from another perspective as well, um, one, we we don't necessarily have the skilled labor in in some of these industries, but two, um, it doesn't really make a ton of sense to invest if you're, uh, if we're talking through all these different deflationary technologies, whether it's, you know, holding Bitcoin and, uh, seeing the cost of manufacturing and and deploying all this capex decline significantly over time in Bitcoin terms, or it's, uh, actually, you know, just seeing that potentially the world may not get as fractured as we actually think and the um you know potential of you know still getting all of your widgets from overseas doesn't actually uh that that still ends up being okay. Um it's uh it's a really uncertain time and that's why I see not quite as much of the you know announcements of uh US infrastructure that we were all expecting. Maybe maybe it's a little bit different around some of the data center stuff and and uh chip manufacturing, but other than that there hasn't really been anything that's kind of come back in terms of announcements. Yeah, I think there's there's almost two sides to it. It's like, well, do we really go full steam in ter in terms of like restoring manufacturing or do we just try to secure all the energy infrastructure that we need to hopefully win on AI basically? And I think that's what you saw last week with um Trump in the Middle East making a lot of deals. Um I think the the imperative there is that we're probably if we're being realistic about it like behind China in terms of AI development. And so we need to sort of um you know make the right partnerships, make the right deals, even have a chance to to ultimately compete there. Um but yeah, it's uh I also I think it's you know underappreciated that uh Scott Ascent is a literal former former gold bug from his Wall Street days and talking about Bitcoin in the same breath as gold. Um, so I think there is this this tacit understanding from at least him and others around him that we do need to not only restore manufacturing but just like have a greater emphasis on hard assets again because Michael to your point like they're going to continue to base the dollar like that is inevitable. They're going to have to print and debase the currency. So you need to give your citizens an out effectively and you know for most people like they're not going to be you know hoarding bars of gold. So the the very easy answer is like you just you know you own Bitcoin whether through an ETF or other uh type of product that's just easily accessible in your brokerage account. You know ultimately it'll be you know far easier to own the underlying as well. You might you might not even need to use an ETF. Um but I think that is that is certainly the trajectory here where it's um there's a there's an understanding that we're going to have to continue to print. We need to allow our citizens the out to save in a harder money and you know the dollar is probably gonna be you know okay in terms of dominance going forward because we're going to lean into stable coins. Hopefully we're going to get this stable coin bill passed and that's actually been interesting. I don't know if we want to go there. And just in terms of the sort of the regulatory conversation there's been some um I guess you could call it headwinds to both the uh the Genius Act which is the stable coin bill and then the market structure bill. Um but you know I think that is that is certainly part of the plan is like you know how do you how do you plug the hole for uh demand for for um US government's debt is you have these stable coin issuers that are you know going to buy it and then proliferate the dollar into into all markets around the world. Um you know whether you have a bank account or not you're going to be able to access the dollar uh through these stable coins. So, it does seem um like they have some sort of plan around, you know, we're going to hang on to dominance by spreading stable coins. We're going to allow the average citizen to save in a harder money. And ultimately, like we were saying before, like these things are just going to converge. And like ultimately, it's going to be very, you know, far easier than it is today for someone to understand that landscape of you can't save in dollars and it's, you know, the monetary premiums associated with all these other asset classes are likely to erode. Um, and so you just need a better form of money. Um, but yeah, it's uh it'll be interesting. Boys, where do we want something? Well, Cam didn't have any. Okay, so um I was thinking about you were mentioning Liam investments and um and and you know, naturally you have to build things, you need capital uh allocation. I think something that I'm I'm particularly excited about taking a step back like from a meta angle is now that you don't have the centralization of money as a monetary units naturally expand you're going to have just these different pockets that are going to be thriving right and you're going to see this in all different segments whether it's an individual corporate treasury states right we see like Texas these other states and like Texas as an example just because I'm familiar with it you have you know not only energy um But, you know, there's a technological component. There's Austin, there's Dallas, it's bringing Wall Street, but then you have like the the meat, you have food. Like, you start to like build these different like singular uh I don't want to say feoms, but you're building like resilience and redundancy. And then another angle of this is like in Saudi Arabia that the the deal that happened last week where you know there's this notion of where if you're going to build AGI you naturally need a lot of power you need a lot of compute a lot of energy but also if you're going to deal with policy makers and regulation well it's like why don't you put it somewhere else there's nobody can touch it and so there's a lot happening over there um but you start to see this view of you're going to start to host models uh locally you're going to you know you think about like lightning and routing like all these things are going naturally just start to what was very centralized is going to now start to become very decentralized because the money is decentralized and then those pockets are going to organically start to produce value because you have to return that capital. And so one of the interesting angles that it's still early, but it's it's kind of the notion of why I don't like the public traded companies setup because it reminds me of um like if you're a a crypto trader and you're trying to make more Bitcoin and you're trading crypto like uh you you don't have um you don't have a fighting ch I'm sorry if you're a crypto trader trying to make dollars or like anything you don't really have a fighting chance to do it because you're you're you just have the wrong monetary units. you're always going to be thinking about the wrong way. Where at least if you're a crypto trader or a Bitcoin trader and you're trying to make more Bitcoin, you have a fighting chance. In the same way that if you are a Bitcoin treasury company or a company or a fund that deeply understands what we're talking about here and is playing the game to get more Bitcoin to go and exercise that strategy and use the underlying, you have a fighting chance to allocate in the right way. But if you're just a guy that like found an edge in around arbitrage on the capital markets, you're probably going to lose that Bitcoin at a certain component because you don't even understand the underlying. And so I see that as going to be a very interesting edge when we think about well if you're a fund or you're a PE firm or you're a company, sure maybe you play the fiat markets and you go raise a bunch of capital, you go hold that BTC and while everything we're talking about is happening, the deleveraging is happening. You're going to be picking up all these different assets and just building businesses. Like that's going to get super exciting. are still early, but that will come. Yeah. Also, the um just a note on the the Bitcoin Treasury stuff, like I think there was a you know, there was a thinking when Sailor first started doing this strategy that it would be widely adopted by every corporate, every public company. And we haven't really seen that. And even now, as we sit here today, it feels like every week there's a new uh Bitcoin treasury company, but it doesn't feel necessarily organic. And what I mean by that is like it's not the, you know, the companies that you would think it is. It's almost these like contrived forced like just copying the strategy, spinning up a spa, and yeah, we're just going to buy Bitcoin, hold Bitcoin. And it's not as organic as like, you know, some successful company saying like, "Oh, no, we see the light of Bitcoin as best form of money, and we're going to, you know, do this strategy." The the problem, and Taylor said this a ton. I've seen it personally. The problem is is you have to make these decisions at the board level and it's, you know, how many boards out there are h how many boards do you have a uh, you know, a majority of of Bitcoiners on that really understand it, you know, and and not only that, but it's like is is it the right people on the board that understand it, you know, because even if you have um, you know, enough board members that are that are interested in doing it. It's it's like if if you have the one bit or the the one board member that's most relevant to, you know, the treasury or or whatever, they don't get it. um their job is to make the right decisions and and and you you force these like really contentious discussions with with these boards and um and so we're just not there yet around on the on the consensus with the mainstream and I think that's why it's so difficult to to get companies to to actually make the decision to um to move forward with this like even even if if they know it's the right thing to do, it's so difficult um for them to actually pull it off still. And it's it all goes back to that education front that we were talking about earlier. Uh they these board members and CFOs of Microsoft and etc. They just don't have the time like they're running their own uh billion dollar companies or trillion dollar companies and just like don't have the ability to sit down with it. Uh I was actually talking to my friend over the weekend about you know uh what has the government done to our money? He's like a hardcore Austrian economics guy. Uh read a bunch of M uh Mises and Rothbard, you know, back when when he was in high school and college and uh was talking to him about Bitcoin and he's I'm like, "Hey, you you read all the, you know, prequels to the Bitcoin standard. Like you should go and and read this thing." He's like, "Yeah, maybe I will after I get job from get home from being my uh being a lawyer." And it's like, "All right." Like he doesn't really have time for it. like uh nobody nobody really does until they just like understand that this is something important and uh you know these these people have uh who just don't hold USD do end up outperforming to a very significant degree and this is something that you know they should end up uh finding some time to to really learn about and that's why we've put so much focus on the education here with everything from research to these podcasts uh just trying to inform all the the potential readers and listeners I I have a I have like a an idea of I think actually the way Bitcoin has grown in the past with these cycles is everyone has that conversation with the Bitcoiner uh with somebody that like really piques your interest where it's like okay I know this is a smart person they are clearly you know convicted like they've got all their money in it or whatever and and you don't ever pull the trigger or or you or you pull it late in the cycle when the price is running and you're like, "God, I could have, you know, put I put it I could have put it in at, you know, a a tenth of, you know, where I put it in at." And then the cycle ends and then it tanks and then they sell and then it evens out higher and it's like this. People don't forgive themselves for opportunities that were so clear that they understood that they passed on. Like that's so difficult to stomach looking forward. And so it almost takes that exact thing happening with everyone. Um, and so I think this bear there's been a ton of these like seeds planted. Okay. And it's a bunch of people that had that that that conversation with a Bitcoiner that that was very well read and very educated and very informative and could answer all the questions, but they just couldn't get them to conviction in one conversation because who can, right? Um, I think it's just another one of these cases where the price is going to have to run up and we're just going to go through this over and over again. As much as I want to say that, you know, cycles are over now that institutional buyers are here, like I don't think that's how this is going to work, I think it's you have to understand the underlying and you have to eventually get to your entry point and make those those hard decisions to not sell when it's, you know, in in a bull or a bear. I don't know. Everyone, hope you're enjoying the podcast with Cam Duty. Just wanted to chime in and let you all know that along with on-ramp trade, we also have the ability to self onboard now. So, there's a lot of clients we've talked to in the past that maybe necessarily weren't ready or um you know just didn't know that they could go through online and uh you know fill out their documentation and then get a multi-institution custody account you know equipped with um trade insurance lending IAS and all the things that onramp provides to the market today. You can do that in a about takes anywhere between two to four minutes just depending on how fast uh you can upload your driver's license and get onboarded. Uh, as a quick reminder, we also have our private client tier for folks that want to get more involved in the community that we're building. Uh, private access to investment opportunities via early writers in the guild network. Um, you know, we really appreciate all the feedback, the likes, the subscribes, and the comments. Please feel free to leave some um today as well as reach out to me. Always open. I get emails. Happy to make introductions, put you in touch with our team if you're looking for a role in the space. michaelvbitcoin.com. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show. Yeah, I mean I think I think that's directionally right in the sense that if the mental model I've been thinking about and using is we're pre200 bubble like we're on the we're coming up on it. So we're like 1998 whatever and in this cycle we'll see that pets.com you know the we'll see everything kind of blow up and everyone will think it was all a scam. They'll blame Bitcoin again but then to your point that's when everything came out. on Amazon had already existed and then the company started to form and it was just understood that the internet was here to stay and I think that's where we're at where we get like a longer more prolonged you know blowoff top but then ultimately we're going to realize like this is where the multi-institution stuff comes in because I think most people we you know we talked about it before the pod like I just forgot like you know people just are used to the 6040 they buy their equity in the deal so it makes complete sense where the ETF is going to be perfect for them or they're going to buy proxy exposure like they still don't fully wrap their head around that to Brian's point, it's money and that you need to secure it because embedded in all of that like apprehension. We don't discuss at least for 50% of these individuals is this is all a Ponzi because everything they see is related to FTX or it gets lost in a landfill. So how can we like blame them because they're like want to stay away from it because I always joke it's like they rather have negative yielding bonds for the rest of their life than just their money go up and smoke the next day. What rational person wouldn't want that? Yeah. I mean, when I first heard about multi-institution custody, it was it was this it was a total light bulb moment for me where I realized this this is how this is going to happen. This it can't happen otherwise. The the the current means of of accessing self-custody via hardware devices is just not how the masses are going to do it. It's how we're that's how we do it, right? Because, you know, we own Bitcoin. I own Bitcoin on exchange until I figured out self-custody. And then I fig figured out self self-custody and it was not your keys, not your coins. And then, you know, I've dealt with having the the burden of that for years of like, am I, you know, am I safe against a wrench attack? Am I safe against, you know, this or that? Is my inheritance safe? Does my wife know how to access this stuff if I get hit by a bus? Um, and now that you have so many institutional players involved, like I just I totally agree. I I remember Michael you told me it's like we don't want human beings to never trust each other. Like we we don't we don't want to move into a world where where like trust is not needed because like isn't that the human experience, you know, and you know, but c can you can you create a a a trustbased system that's redundant enough to be able to accomplish all your security goals? And multi-inst institution custody is is just so clearly that. And you know, yeah, I guess I think tr trust minimized I think is probably appropriate, but also uh you referenced like this is something that we were texting around over the weekend. I pulled off on um for anybody listening, the Wall Street Journal had a piece that I think came out yesterday. It was titled Severed Fingers and Wrench Attacks Rattle the Crypto Elite as Bitcoin soarses investors and executives. I thought this oped written by Michael, by the way, when he texted are executives taking their swollen digital wallets offline for safety. criminals are coming after them violently. Um this is something that like personally why I use multi-institution custody is like I love and I also have you know we talked about the barbell approach and you know redundant seed phrases and password passphrases in your head where you can take off to Abu Dhabi if you need to with some with some coin but the point is that like you don't want and they reference it here is a lot of Bitcoin holders feel good about like defending themselves but the thing that we don't really think about I know Cam we've talked about this and others is like our friends and family around us are not like assuming they're at school kids and all these things and it's like there's this broken there's broken market structure when it's believed that bad actors can just take somebody and take and and kidnap them for all their wealth that doesn't exist in the traditional world because there's a bunch of controls from the liquidation of assets all the way to putting it in a black duffel bag like the person's caught. Yeah. And so this is something that we had been a little quieter on because it just sounds like you're self-s serving and you're futing, but the reality is it would make complete sense because Ken, what you referenced is we've already done this. Everyone in the hardcore Bitcoin camp treasure pretend like this thing is so insanely different. It's gold with wings. It's the same principles with different like aspects, but it still is base money that you can take delivery on and sever the uh counterparty risk by holding it. But that comes with extreme responsibilities and ramifications as the price appreciates because bad actors exist and that's why banks existed. Not only so you don't get hit over the head but also to coordinate economic activity. So, it was a natural like evolution that when this was going to have to go this way and everyone just kind of sings the tune of the self custody forever and it's just so shortsighted and I think what people are really missing is that they're going to put a lot of people in harm's way um because a lot of people are going to get hurt as the price is $250,000 and nobody's really talking about it. No doubt. Yeah. My mom sent me that article uh over the weekend, too. She's like, "Yeah, you should uh like watch out for this." I'm like, I understand like my my like parents and other people who are kind of just watching from the sidelines who are not, you know, spending thousands and thousands of hours of understanding every single aspect of Bitcoin and how to custody it in the most secure way. They they just want to see, you know, their financial portfolio go up in value. And so, naturally, they'll they'll buy the ETF because it's convenient, its name, they know. Uh but then if they learn a little bit more, they're just going to understand that this is, you know, naturally a better solution. Yeah. Nobody wants to die for a trade. 100%. And like for the new people, you know, the millions and billions of people that have yet to adopt Bitcoin who likely aren't going to go down the path of, you know, spending 6 months to six years understanding how to how to do self- custody. Like they are also just going to go into more centralized solutions. And Michael to your point it's like the the beautiful difference between Bitcoin and gold is that is the property of multisig. the ability to actually distribute counterparty risk doesn't exist for any other asset and that is actually going to be the differentiating factor that allows Bitcoin to not follow the same path and fate as gold which centralized became manipulated um and you know ultimately led to its failure as like you know real day-to-day money um obviously its physical nature also contributed to that like yeah custody wasn't the only factor but um Bitcoin has this unique ability to to actually distribute the the custody like literally doesn't exist for any other asset. And so if um you know I think there's probably going to be this interim period where as all these banks and financial institutions come in, they're just going to look at it in your words like the the 2D way, Michael, like they're just going to look at it in in 2D and not think of like, oh, there's actually a a native property of this thing that allows us to do this in a in a more resilient fault tolerant way. No, they're just going to do it like they've done it for every other asset and allow it to centralize in their coffers. And um that's not a great sort of future trajectory for Bitcoin if if you know I I forget what the numbers are right now in terms of like how much Bitcoin sits at Coinbase, but like that number is only going up with you know nine out of the 11 ETF issuers custodying with Coinbase. And so that is not that's not a super healthy trajectory for the asset um when we have this alternative this alternative to distribute the counterparty risk. I need to grab a paracle be right back. Okay. I mean and that's the beauty of what we talked about like anchoring back to emergent systems is whoever adopts better better products and services ultimately will win this. So whether it's the banks that just you know the first version is just let them have Bitcoin uh or sell Bitcoin but then ultimately when exchanges are going down and things are happening well then they're going to say well what's the bank that's treating this like how I want to be treated i.e. multi-institution segregated onchain insurance trade. Um, I know we had a tight rip, but Cam, want to give you maybe we'll go over for like five minutes if you have any thoughts or anything else you wanted to riff on that are top of mind. Let's do it. Um, do you have Yeah, go ahead. Free free uh all yours. No, I I mean I can cover anything you guys want to talk about. I think like one of the things I want to say it's like I it this the stuff that we're talking about is this may be for like some of your listeners that are that are are new to Bitcoin or trying to wrap your your head your your head around it. Um it it's such a simple thing that takes an enormous amount of like unlearning to to really understand. And so, you know, these podcasts that that Mike and Brian Liam do every week, um, I'm sure at some point it feels like almost repetitive because it's like you you have to just kind of talk about the the same things over and over again. And it's like Bitcoin is one of these things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. You've heard that that, you know, you've heard that over and over again. It's just so true. Um, and so your job is is maybe the highest value thing that you can do in your life is give this thing enough time to get to the point where you answer that final question that allows you to say, "Oh my god." And that's just the beginning of this thing. And so, um, anyway, I just want to encourage your listeners that are are are still trying to wrap their h hands around like, do I make this first purchase? How big is it? You know, my guidance here is like spend the time to understand what this thing is first. And don't think of this thing as like, hey, I want to appreciate, you know, I want to buy into something that's going to appreciate in price. um just spend the time to do the work because I I promise if you spend enough time in it, you'll come to understand that you've you've answered all of those questions that you had around like why is this thing you know not what what uh you know people say it is. So anyway, Cam, before we were I appreciate you sharing that. I think uh proud moment was uh I think Turner Novik was out in Chattanooga and visited and he posted on LinkedIn that he was there and I like commented. I was like uh did Cam talk to you? I forgot what it was. It was something about Bitcoin and whether it's the next fund and he like replied instantly. He was like yeah definitely didn't miss a beat. Uh so I'm glad you you were able to bring it up um because he's pretty popular in the VC community. curious either how that went and also are you seeing any kind of trends or interest um from any of the portfolio companies or anything you want to share in Brickyard around Bitcoin uh and their interests. So, every one of my friends in venture has heard me talk about Bitcoin and um yeah, I'd say it's probably like half the content I put on Twitter is like just thoughts that I have around Bitcoin and you know um every time that you know the the price jumps five or 10K, I I get two or three other you know VCs that that I either know really well or or that just follow me that reach out and say, "Hey, you know, can I spend some time to to to understand this thing. And the thing that I'm thinking about most right now on the on the venture side is going, you know, is thinking about fun fund construction. And um actually, you know, this is this is kind of wild, but I got on Gemini Deep Research and I built a a presentation um on this topic that I'm about to, you know, talk about. This probably would have taken me like two months of of like pretty committed direct work to do. And I did it in like 45 minutes on on on Gemini deep deep research and it it was one of those moments on the AI side where it's like oh my god okay like everything is different today right um and we are less than two years away from every single person on earth using this technology to do all of their knowledge work um out of necessity and and so that nothing's gonna stop that train. Um and and because nothing's going to stop that train, you you you have venture managers that don't understand, you know, Bitcoin natively, don't understand what what the asset is. Um, I think fund construction for the for the ones that do understand it, uh, if you take 10% I've talked about this with you guys before, but if you take 10% of your fund and this is just for this isn't for, you know, we first of all what early writers is doing is is it is absolutely the right idea. It is how companies will be built in the future. You will be built you you will be allocating capital against the Bitcoin standard. This is like my feeble attempt to get folks in venture to to start to understand the power. Gam wants to be the Michael Sailor of the VC community. He's he's he's he's vibe speculative attacking, you know, because Sailor was vive coding for that. He's vive speculative attacking the VC industry kind of. But like you so okay, so I built this presentation. You put 10% of your fund in Bitcoin. Okay. Um the biggest problem with venture capital for LPs is that 50% of funds don't return capital. All right. So every time an LP is making a decision on whether to fund a GP or not, it's like is this the one of two firms that is going to not return my capital, right? And then and and that's just like table stakes like, okay, it's not it's not the one. All right. Now, how good are you? Right? it it's it it's I'm not going to lose my money, but like am I actually going to outperform the S&P or ideally like am I going to 10x this thing or 20x this thing? And so a 10% allocation to to Bitcoin on a 10 to 12 year fund assuming like a 25% kagger puts you it it takes you um like let's say you have a zero bagger on the rest of your investments. You're functionally starting off as a one and a half to 2x fund. Okay. on a on a 25% Kagger assumption with Bitcoin, which right now it's it's higher than that. A lot higher, just double that. Okay. Um and and it's not really hamstringing hamstringing my ability to actually do my job as a venture investor. Like I've got 90% of the capital to go and find great companies that are going to be able to to to drive, you know, power power return potential. And so um I think the best venture managers of this ne next decade and you know and this is the path to early writers because they will all eventually end up allocating Bitcoin for Bitcoin's return. Okay. But in this sort of transient period, um, you know, funds that allocate a small amount of Bitcoin are functionally they're going to raise more capital from LPS because they're, you know, LPs are going to start to understand that, you know, Bitcoin's historical kagger is not going anywhere. Um, they are going to outperform everybody else. Like a mediocre fund, like a median fund is now going to be a top quartortile fund. And a top quartortile fund is now going to be a top, you know, 1% fund. Okay? And and and this is just because you just have this like this like super uh like this cheat code that you just, you know, put into your your fund construction that you don't have to do anything with and you open up the ability for early liquidity for your LPS, right? Um, and so anyway, that's kind of my like uh wildcard non-conensus bet on the venture side is that venture vent capitalists are going to understand Bitcoin because LPs are going to understand Bitcoin before GPS because they're more fully diversified and they're they're thinking about all kind different kinds of buckets of capital. um they're going to force GPS to start to understand this thing and then you know that's going to make GP's lives much harder because now they're going to have to outperform Bitcoin um which is way more difficult. I love it. We have to jump but uh I'm going to tease out I think I know how you do it and it has to do with playing with the management fee structure and then downside protecting them and then you get to participate in the upside. Yeah. because now you take away you like we'll talk about offline but I was just thinking about it through that it's like you can play because you know that this goes up to the right so you can either add to the management fee take it out of that buy the BTC and then ultimately you participate you like that I see where you're going with this yeah yeah let's let's have a discussion about it there's something there because if you have the conviction then you can just basically say I'll downside protect and this is just a traditional fund I'm going to park maybe a little bit additional management fees you explain how you know for whatever reason you're taking those additional management fees. You're holding Bitcoin, it goes to zero. You know, management fees, why would go to zero, but you don't get hit. But if the price appreciates, then you get the upside, whether it's ownership more in the fund and then gets a return and parks in it. It could be even like in an LLC, so it's a it's a business that you purchase into the fund. Um, there's a lot of ways to structure that. Very interesting. And then you can actually just spin that out to other like VC funds. Say you buy this like pocket and then you do it in your management fee structure if you have the confidence and then so it downsides protects the LP but it upside uh increases the return profile. Look, we just sold it. All right, let's uh this is why we needed early writers because there's too many ideas and we got to build this multi-institution company. So we had to like you know damn this was awesome. Very much appreciate uh you coming on again and yeah Brian mentioned you know you're the the highest repeat guest. It's like just flows. go from text to, you know, to to the to uh Riverside. So, it's pretty easy to transition. Well, thanks for having me, guys. And uh I love jamming with y'all. So, anytime. Good stuff. Thanks. Thanks, boys. See you in a few weeks. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.