Back Above $100K: The Great Bitcoin Awakening Has Begun

Bram Kanstein (00:00.113) as DM Good. Robert (00:02.251) I'm Jackson Mikalic (00:02.759) That's on air. Welcome back to The Last Trade. Yeah, we got five guys, not burgers and fries, but it is The Last Trade. And so we got Brian Cabellus, Michael Tanguma, Bram Consine, and Robert Breedlove. So Bram and Robert are the guests of honor this week. Gentlemen, thanks for joining the show. Good to see you both. How are you guys doing? Bram Kanstein (00:04.826) shit. Brian Cubellis (00:09.551) 5 Hz. Robert (00:11.342) you Robert (00:25.848) Wonderful, thank you for having me. Bram Kanstein (00:28.057) Really good, yeah. I'm also happy to be back, guys. Jackson Mikalic (00:31.559) Yeah, great to have you guys on the show today. what we always do, Brom you know this because you're somewhat of a regular. Robert, you're not, maybe not as familiar, but we always pull up the price chart. We start very high time preference and we just work our way lower and lower throughout the show. And so just so everyone knows, the audience knows this, this was for months. I hated doing this. I didn't even want to do the podcast. I looked, I wake up 75k Bitcoin, 80k Bitcoin for months. But now we're at 99K and it feels pretty good. So gentlemen, just general thoughts, sentiment. How are you guys feeling today? Are you guys bold up? Are you excited? Pumped about the price action even though I know we are long term oriented here. This is a savings technology. It's not a short term trade but how's everyone doing? Is this a good vibe or no? Michael Tanguma (01:25.377) You know, ahead. I wasn't saying when the price is, uh, you know, close to a hundred K you can't help, but just, you know, wake up with good vibes. was music, uh, on this morning as we went into my child's room, just blasting stuff. You just start feeling, feeling good. Um, you know, in starting this pod, it was pretty exciting. We didn't get to hit record, when Breedlove and Brahm introduced themselves, it was ripping and roaring before they hit, uh, hit record and it kind of got tempered. So I think we're going to, we're going to get a little excited and probably talk about some. Robert (01:25.58) I think, yeah, go ahead. Michael Tanguma (01:54.849) some interesting stuff as this podcast goes, but no, it's incredibly exciting. know, obviously at the end of the day, price is a barometer for awareness and we're all here to spread Bitcoin awareness. And so as the price goes up, the world can't not afford to pay attention. And so just excited for, to see it continue going. think we all agree we're in for a very exciting, at least six to 18 months, if not longer. And a lot of things we've been talking about for five plus years are going to come to fruition and it's going to be good for the world. Robert (02:26.574) Yeah, I love that. you know, often don't talk about price on the show because it is such, it's the most obvious thing about Bitcoin, right? It's the first thing anyone is gonna talk about. But we also forget that it is the thing that pulled us all in, whether we want to admit it or not. The price and the volatility is the first thing that ever made you pay attention to it. I think when you get a little bit deeper into the Bitcoin rabbit hole and you get into Austrian economics, you develop this serious respect for price signals and just how important they are at commanding attention, telling us what to pay attention to. And so I like, mean, it's... It's strange because my strategy with Bitcoin, as I think most mature Bitcoiners share, is you just dollar cost average and try to hold forever, basically, and you can opportunistically buy dips. So when price is down, I don't feel anything, I don't feel bad or worried or scared. I'm actually excited a little bit because I get to hopefully opportunistically buy more. And then when number goes up, obviously you're richer, but it doesn't, doesn't feel like much, because it doesn't change your pattern of behavior. You're like, great, it's doing what I thought it would do. And so, I don't feel a lot actually, and I don't stay too glued to the price. I guess that's kind of the nature of going through two to three of these cycles now. But it is exciting. do like, another thing to reflect upon is that when that number goes up, It's also like centralized state power going down. So it's a good, as Tengu was saying, like a barometer of freedom almost. And so I am in that sense, very excited that we're pushing new all time high prices and we're only probably halfway through this bull cycle. Brian Cubellis (04:20.494) Yeah, it's really, really well said. I would just add like, it's a barometer for freedom, it's a barometer for in my mind, really the... Bram Kanstein (04:21.083) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (04:30.88) sort of the permeation of education and people waking up to this. So like when we were sitting here for the past three months and we were in the 70s and 80s, given all of the sort of hyper constructive tailwinds and bullish news headlines that were happening every day, it just felt off. you know, price should be higher than it is. And so now that we're back towards 100K and going higher, like it just feels there's some amount of validation. But I agree with you, Robert, like I'm kind of excited when the price goes down because I can acquire more sats for less dollars. But when it's on the way up, it's validating and it's also just a nice signal that, OK, the education is working, it's permeating and people are waking up to this idea and also recognizing the The issue is with the incumbent system, right? It's not only learning about Bitcoin, but it's just seeing the writing on the wall of the fiat system and realizing that there's sort of a renaissance going on in terms of hard assets, sound money. And a lot of that's being led from the United States government, which is kind of insane to think. But yeah, so it's validating and to me, it's just a signal of broader education. Bram Kanstein (05:41.433) Yeah, I have two thoughts here. think one, years ago we fantasized about the price hitting 100K, right? And I always thought like, okay, 100K is gonna melt the internet, know, people are gonna lose their mind and nothing happened. Like literally nothing happened, you know? And then it went down and I think that's kind of where the challenge is that I think Robert also alluded to a little bit. Like when the price goes up, I'm like, yeah, of course it goes up. But also, I'm right, you see, I'm right. But when the price goes down, I think that's where the actual challenge is, right? It's a continuous challenge of asking yourself, can I still trust my own judgment on this thing and the research that I did? So I think it's nice that we get a little rewarded. Everyone likes the green numbers and the pump. And so, yeah, I think it's good times all around. Maybe this is a bridge, but I don't want to hijack Jackson, but. I wanted to ask you guys a question. Where is retail? Is this the meme where everyone's in line at 200K or like, what are your thoughts? Michael Tanguma (06:49.77) They're not here. That's definitely for sure. Yeah, they're definitely not here. Bram Kanstein (06:52.057) Right? Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (06:56.435) I don't know, yeah, I guess there's a lot of demand for the Bitcoin treasury ICOs that have been popping up left and right. know, the latest one was, what was it, Strive Asset Management, they're launching the first, what they call it, first Bitcoin Asset Management company, and I'm pretty sure that ticker went up like 500 % in two days. So I'd imagine a lot of the retail buying is going into these, say, more short-term trades on let's say proxy exposure to Bitcoin and a lot of the underlying asset is being overlooked. And then of course as well the ETFs are soaking up a lot of the retail flows. I actually did see this week that the ETFs, iBit in particular, surpassed GLD in terms of 2025 inflows. So it's about seven billion into iBit, six and a half billion or so into GLD, which I just think is remarkable. These products have only existed for a little over a year now, and we know that iBit was the most successful ETF launch of all time. Fast forward to this year, price action hasn't been as exciting, but nonetheless, retail is still buying quite a bit of the ETF price exposure, which as they listen to more podcasts, they check out Bitcoin for Millennials or What is Money? They'll move away from that. They'll figure out what the purpose of actually owning Bitcoin directly is and having it in your control. But we're kind of a ways away from that happening, at least in this cycle. Brian Cubellis (08:26.414) Yeah, think the retail activity has been sort of obscured by the ETFs, as you mentioned, Jackson. Like a lot of the capital inflows into those products have just been what you would normally consider retail buying through their brokerage account. And so maybe it hasn't been the same dynamics of retail coming in, but I still think it's relatively tempered to some sort of euphoric retail mania. Like we certainly haven't seen that. Michael Tanguma (08:53.527) Yeah, I think there's an interesting confluence of things happening right now where think about like how many institutions got burned with FTX and a lot of people just got burned mentally by the industry in 22 and they just think it's all a Ponzi and I think there's still a lot of institutional capital and I think for by proxy individuals that are just like this whole thing's a game. I don't know where the where it's rigged. So I'm just going to stay away. And then also, yes, I don't know. Like it hasn't really been that mainstream. I feel like when FTX and things were running in 21 and two, you saw like the culture had Bitcoin across everything, right? The Miami heat arena, like all these things were there versus right now it's been this steady drumbeat, but only in the institutional space. So anybody paying attention to the charts or like a Bloomberg terminal has seen the price. Anybody else, if you go, like I sometimes like to ask, you know, what do you think the Bitcoin price is when you're at the grocer or getting your haircut? And they're just like, have no idea. And then they hear a hundred K they're like, that's insane. So I think that just kind of supports they're definitely not here. But there's always an inflection point where it'll happen. And I think the animal spirits tie into that when people see that they can grift and make money, then that's when retail naturally steps in, sadly. Robert (10:07.198) I think if you ask the man on the street, there's still a lot of generalized ignorance about Bitcoin. It's still looked at as just a speculative investment. None of the terminology is being used correctly yet. I think people too are also in general desperate under the pressure of inflation. I just pulled up household debt and credit. It's up. Household debt, what's up from... Total debt, this is consumer debt, up from 14 to 18 trillion since 2020. So we've been putting on a trillion a year. I'm sure people are feeling all the pressure of that. Probably generally focused on cashflow producing assets. people are trying to stack flats or Airbnbs and do that strategy. I think that is just a symptom of not understanding the nature of money and or the financial system. So. How are people gonna wake up to that? I would assume through a lot of pain, but who knows what form that pain will come in. Presumably continued inflation, possibly global liquidity crisis, and possibly something like a Bretton Woods 2.0. pain is coming, that's for sure. Michael Tanguma (11:18.431) It's such a good It's such a good point. think the thing we really forget about how how preposterous a notion Bitcoin's value prop really is. Like, you know, like once you see it, it's very hyperintuitive. But until you see it, like what Breedlove just mentioned about cashflow positive real estate, it's like that's what people know is things that are physical that produce other things that you can buy with those paper pieces of money to feed your family to just say that well, there's this thing that solves all your problems or you can buy. This is where the speculative vet comes in because at best initially people see the price and are just playing. It's like GME or any other ticker. They're just buying the ticker until they like, you know, go down the rabbit hole. But that ultimately is a different journey for everyone. And sometimes it takes 10 years after the first purchase. So again, that's the angle of this is just going to take so much longer than we all expect because it just takes time. Robert (12:12.748) Yeah, it's the frame of reference, using the dollar as a frame of reference, that actually takes a long time to decondition yourself from. And we all still do it, right? The first thing we talked about was the dollar price of Bitcoin. So you gotta think about where we are in the Overton window and where everyone else is. It's quite the journey. Jackson Mikalic (12:12.808) Yeah, well. Bram Kanstein (12:25.371) Yeah. Bram Kanstein (12:29.425) Yeah, yesterday I had a podcast recording with someone and we talked about how, yeah, if you would ask someone on the street, you know, would you rather have a Bitcoin or dollars, they would say like dollars because I can touch them. Right. And then we talked about like how, how that is like the one of the biggest psy ops around money is the fact that the money is only real if you can touch it. But when you touch the note and you read what it says, you know, it actually tells you that it's worth nothing. It says that it's legal tender for all public and private debt. It's so interesting that it's going to take a long time and I think that's also what is kind of the challenge in Bitcoin, right? Like just keeping our patience. And I wanted to add to, I think what Rob said, because I just saw a tweet that said, Almost exactly one year ago, Jay Powell said, I don't see the stag nor deflation. And today, the Fed's projections anticipate both. This is a timely reminder that we're still grappling with a rare trifecta of macro imbalances. Inflation like the 1970s, government debt levels resembling the 1940s, and equity valuations as stretched as in the late 1920s. None of us own enough hard assets. So yeah, I think this is where we're at. And there's not that many. people that see it, think, you know, that's also the opportunity that we have here. Michael Tanguma (13:51.863) It's wild he just brought that up because we had Larry Lepard and Dave Foley on this week and they brought up that exact scenario where there was a study, I don't know if it was the 90s or maybe recently where they gave a kid the option on like San Francisco street, do you want a Hershey's bar or like 10 ounces of silver? And like everyone took the Hershey bar because he could eat it. It's like, what are you gonna do with the silver? know, it's a, yeah. Jackson Mikalic (14:18.867) Brom, I thought the central planners had it all under control though. You're telling me they actually don't have the answers for us? They don't know how to fix this issue? Brian Cubellis (14:25.868) No, they're major losers who are always late and always wrong, Jackson. Jackson Mikalic (14:31.547) Right, fool, yeah, I think the most recent comment was that Jerome Powell was a fool. You know, one thing on the price, or one other thing on the awareness side, ties into the price, but I like to check this periodically just to get a, look, it's doing me dirty, the Zin, the Zin advertisement's popping up. But, I do knick-knacks, by the way, healthier nicotine alternative, but anyways, I look at this and I see yesterday, Alphabet, Brian Cubellis (14:48.172) You Brian Cubellis (14:53.676) No free ads, Jackson, come on. Michael Tanguma (14:57.974) could be. Jackson Mikalic (15:00.593) So Google had a 8 % or so plummet on some, I think it was the first time maybe ever or in a while that Google search volume was down year over year because people are starting to use AI instead of just traditional search engines. And not only that, I believe Apple made some announcement about doing some AI enhanced search capabilities here pretty soon. So. See, Bitcoin flipped Google in terms of its market capitalization. We're almost at two trillion again. We'll be there quite soon. But I almost think this is the 100K thing is one psychological barrier that's been overcome. But the other piece here as well is, Bitcoin is the sixth largest asset in the world. What do you make of that? mean, that's just insane to me that we're still kind of in this place of very, very low general awareness about what Bitcoin actually is. It's starting to be talked. more and more in terms of government, Wall Street, and let's say the people who actually have a closer relationship to the money spigot and those incentives are going to be in line in favor of Bitcoin, but the general population is totally unaware that Bitcoin is the sixth largest asset in the world, which I don't know what it takes. Does it need to be number two behind gold? Does it need to flip the rest of these equities? I don't know what needs to happen. Bram Kanstein (16:19.525) Yeah, yeah, I use this a lot actually when I talk to people that are perhaps a bit older, but I think also our generation, right? When we grew up, it was like, okay, what are like metals that you should have, right? That keep their value. Like we always heard gold and silver. I don't know how you, if you heard that in your youth, but I did, especially people that are older, right? Like that retains its value. But if you look at this chart, you now really have to say it's gold, Bitcoin, and then it's silver, you know? And I love that shift in just the fact that it is like this. It's kind of, I have to think about, for example, if I ask you guys, like, how do you display, how do you show when you are on the phone? Right? Like, how would you enact that? Like, you would do this, right? And if you ask that to a small child, they actually do this. So that is something that I'm thinking about is kind of like similar, like that has just changed. And so I think that narrative around gold and silver is also changing. It's very, very slowly, right? But all the young children, maybe teenagers that are growing up right now, like they will become adults in a world where this is the case. And that narrative around like how do you store value will shift eventually. Brian Cubellis (17:34.863) I love that chart. It's just a nice, clean, almost a meme of it flipping these massive companies in market cap. it's, to be fair, it's slightly an incomplete table. it should probably also include currencies themselves, which I think Bitcoin is in the range of like five to 10th largest currency in the world. So if you added those in there, it be a little bit more of a complete picture. But yeah, Jackson's your point. Like I think... as it continues to just tick up closer and closer to gold and become number two, it sort of, I think, will be this meme-oriented gravity around this idea that, like, OK, these Bitcoiners have been calling this thing digital gold for a while now. I never really believed it. But OK, now it's actually jockeying for gold to place on this chart. And it's surpassed all these other massive companies that historically sort of brought to your point, like, whether it was older generations telling us about precious metals or in my mind, was sort of like the natural store of value over the past two decades were equities, US public equities. And so it's like, once it starts to pass all these massive corporations that we've had in our head as the best performing assets outside of Bitcoin, I think that could flip in some people's brains of like, OK, now this thing is This thing is real. This is all accelerating. Maybe I need to reassess my priors on this. Michael Tanguma (19:08.852) Yeah, Breedlove, curious on your side of the world when I think about like, you've taken an interesting angle as it relates to Bitcoin, but then the adjacent areas that are starting to bleed into it, like holistic medicine, food, which are kind of converging already in the tailwinds of like, there's just a grand awakening that feels like post COVID, post this new election, and we see it, know, we're advertisers. On your pod and we get clients that come over and they're interesting individuals that are regenerative farmers or holistic kind of medicine individuals that are just starting to rethink money and what that is. Like how do you see that aspect playing into this whole thing? Cause it feels like there's this Renaissance happening. Still at the fringes, but it's starting to come into the mainstream that people understand something's not right. Michael Tanguma (19:56.544) Think you're on mute. Brian Cubellis (19:56.622) You're meat. Robert (20:00.14) Yes, there's a lot of people calling this like the great awakening. And I would say that's probably a, I think it's largely driven by this shift in media paradigm, right? We've gone from like a top-down broadcast media paradigm to a peer-to-peer internet media paradigm. You we're doing it right now. This changes the whole nature of the way we consume information in terms of both quantity and quality. I think, you know, distributed cognition starts to change as a result. So like it was already kind of happening because of the internet. But then COVID is an accelerant to that, right? The state applies pressure. Everyone's stuck at home, everyone's on the internet, everyone's putting on their tinfoil hat and going down YouTube rabbit holes. And if you do enough of that, like you often end up at the money, right, or central banking, and then Bitcoin being a solution to that. So there seems to be kind of this natural affinity between these two changes that are going on, right? You have this shift to kind of decentralize media, and then Bitcoin, while it's decentralizing the medium of exchange. right money itself. so I don't, you know, I don't want to say that Bitcoin is driving the great awakening, but like COVID, maybe it's also an accelerant. Like it's not necessarily the pain is what drove people to look at things differently through COVID, but Bitcoin is like this, this black hole of curiosity, as we all know, like once you start looking into it. Robert (21:34.444) You you might initially be reading the Bitcoin standard and some books about money and economics, but before you know it, that again, that sort of unplugs you from the matrix. I mean, I'm reading books now on like, and I know Bram as well, like the nature of consciousness and all, it just gets you into the rabbit hole. And so the rough analogy is like, know, Neo getting unplugged from the matrix and he wakes up and he sees the reality, right? It's not him walking through a city, it's him wired into this. system that is basically harvesting his energy. And when you see that, you start figuring out how to put yourself back together. I don't know, you take responsibility for life in a really radical way, right? You stop depending on a nanny state or, you know, other institutions that are just gonna be there for you and take care of you, you know? And it percolates all the way down, right? Like I think Bitcoin has become distrustful of like, a lot of legacy financial institutions as part of this journey. So I think that's got something to do with it. There's also, and you guys already talked about the narrative change. so there is something about, Bitcoin's going through this evolutionary process, And we go back to say, how did gold become money? and there's an economist named Jevons that said it was a collectible and a store value, medium of exchange and a unit of account. And I think we're just going through that same process that took millennia for gold in hyperdrive for Bitcoin because we're this global interconnected society. so you're gonna see, think Bitcoin is deep and complex, but then it's also radically simple in a way. It's like once you basically get to the conclusion that money printing is bad, well then you realize that money that nobody can print is good. And so I think that idea, like if I can crystallize it in that few words, I don't see how you could keep that idea restrained or keep it from not propagating through the minds of people over the next 10 to 20 years. And now a lot of people that are skeptical would be like, no, everyone's stupid, no one gets it, like that's not, you know, it's never gonna happen. Every time I hear that, I go back to a quote from some scientist. Robert (23:54.508) And he says, science advances from funeral to funeral. So there's this like very serious Darwinian thing going on from a narrative standpoint. it's, know, those who pick the wrong savings technology will be eliminated over time, right? It's just, you're either gonna die or gonna go out of business basically, or you die poor. And then those who pick the right savings will be imitated over time, right? Those who are financially successful by adopting. Bitcoin will be imitated by others. And frankly, I'm a little surprised, know, like, Sailor and Strategy kind of leading the charge on that enterprise front of adopting the Bitcoin standard. I'm surprised we haven't seen more imitation yet. We're starting to see it. But if this bull cycle takes Bitcoin, you know, you guys showed the chart earlier, gold's at 22 trillion, Bitcoin's at two trillion. So Bitcoin's roughly 9 % of gold, it needs to do an 11X. to match gold, that's roughly 1.1 million per Bitcoin. I mean, that's a very reasonable number to see this cycle, frankly. I know that sounds crazy where we are now, but if you look at prior cycles. Michael Tanguma (24:54.102) you Robert (25:04.086) You know the 2017 cycle it did a 20x off its prior all-time high of a thousand dollars And so if our prior all-time high this cycle is around 70,000 that if we had the same Magnitude it'd be a 1.4 million dollar Bitcoin by the end of the year So I know those numbers sound like absurd to people but just know that we've been here before And so I'm really that's what I think the mania is really gonna kick in when Bitcoin supplants gold and Peter Schiff has to retire and like, you all of this stuff. I think people are really gonna get crazy about Bitcoin and hopefully that will help accelerate the Great Awakening further. Bram Kanstein (25:42.743) that. What I love is that in what you said, like Bitcoin in essence is extremely simple. It's so simple, it's so opposed to the, how do you say, like conjecture, obfuscation, vagueness, abstraction of the fiat money world, right, that once you get it you would still think like, hmm, this sounds too good to be true. But it is true, you know, and once you just accept that, I think that's what actually opens your mind to just be like, huh, what else is obfuscated, abstracted, know, intentionally kept vague, you know, and that for some people is a trigger to go further down this rabbit hole, right? But yeah, once it clicks and you just realize. Robert (26:12.3) Mm-hmm. Robert (26:18.626) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bram Kanstein (26:33.485) Man, this is very simple. This is very, very simple, right? The only promise of Bitcoin is that it stays the same and everything else emanates from that. Yeah, I love that. I love that it's staring you in the face, but you have to do the work. Robert (26:36.493) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (26:48.896) Yeah. One thing to just to call out and it kind of helps simplify to everyone's point of like Bitcoin's not really an IQ test is the common sense test of like if there's a fixed supply, wouldn't you want that? If you ask a five year old, they pick that versus an infinite or infinite money. But I think it's the notion of yes, it's happening in real time where money took thousands of years, but also you have these two tailwinds that are converging. from the top down, We owned, we're already going in this direction from like three media channels to five to 10 to the internet. And so that notion of why everyone's a conspiracy theorist now is because now we just have access to the information. So we're not getting fed the actual narrative. We're not getting fed a propaganda, a propagandized narrative. But then the other side from the ground up, if the money's been messed up forever, and that's a substrate of all economic and socioeconomic or coordination. that's being figured out what that ultimately is. Once you see the money, you get to first principles layers of everything. So then you're starting to like, it's just collapsing on itself in two different directions. And that's where you see this like accelerated awakening. Robert (27:54.306) Yeah, I love that. Bitcoin is too good to be true, but somehow it's also the most truthful thing we've ever had, which is strange. Maybe that's why it's hard to accept initially, but then again, you go down the rabbit hole and you realize, man, this is the most honest construct. The only social institution humanity has ever created that apparently we ourselves cannot corrupt. And that's a really, really, really big deal. Michael Tanguma (28:21.782) It's amazing you say that because that's actually, I think, what keeps everyone away is that we've all been taught if it's too good to be true to stay away from it. And Bitcoin's a get rich slow scheme dressed up as a get rich quick scheme. And people think it's get rich quick scheme, get rich quick scheme. And so then they just stay away when in reality, it's just like a paradox built into the underlying that keeps people away. Robert (28:40.995) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it's another one of these cases where Bitcoin is like the unity of opposites in so many different ways. I think it also like I've said it radically changes the world simply by being unchangeable. Like we finally have this sort of immovable point. You know, I've analogized it to the number zero, like what zero did to mathematics, think Bitcoin, you know, 0 % inflation money can do for economics broadly. And then the question really comes to like, well, how... much does that change us? Our paths of moral and character development, how much are we just responding to the incentives of our time? And I think Bitcoiners broadly would agree that it's significant, but it definitely remains to be seen. We may be a little bit cultish about this and maybe some of the implications aren't so radical, but even in just like a purely rational financial sense, it's still the most significant innovation, I think, in history, basically. Michael Tanguma (29:42.102) So I'll be hedging that because I don't think there's a person who's called that would say that we actually probably aren't bullish enough on how much things change because of Bitcoin. Like we just can't even fathom the reality that will exist in 10 years. Bram Kanstein (29:42.385) I mean, Robert (29:47.758) No. Robert (29:53.686) Yeah, exactly. Michael Tanguma (30:02.039) we I think we blew Jackson's brain. He was just there's too much there. There was too much happening there. It was the what happened was what happened was Jackson, Robert and I don't know from you know, this but a couple episodes ago was positing what if we did Bitcoin UBI. And and we had to quickly explain how that would not work. But I think that part of his brain was being triggered by the the knowledge of what we're what we're talking about here. And it was just too much to to Bram Kanstein (30:04.581) Yeah, I'm looking at Jackson. Brian Cubellis (30:07.543) You Jackson Mikalic (30:09.678) malfunctioning. Brian Cubellis (30:21.198) You Jackson Mikalic (30:31.143) That's actually a great segue though. Ironically, because one thing I did want to talk about was state adoption. And so the context of my UBI comment was maybe less about the idea, but more so about the principles of states using Bitcoin to enhance and improve the lives of their constituents. And so that's ultimately the direction I hope it goes in. Brian Cubellis (30:33.592) You Michael Tanguma (30:34.006) No! Jackson Mikalic (31:00.699) necessarily think that the federal government or state governments, they haven't had a great track record of doing the right thing for their constituents. But that said, Bitcoin does present an opportunity if used properly by the states, i.e. having a strategic Bitcoin reserve to potentially improve the financial situation of the constituents. Maybe it means less taxes that they have to impose on the people within their jurisdiction. I think that this is incredibly exciting. I know there's a camp within the community or the ecosystem of Bitcoin that doesn't want the state to be involved at all, but I think reality is Bitcoin is for everyone. And so what we're seeing now is there are nations stepping in, the U.S. being one of them really leading the charge. And then within the U.S. you have states. And so just this week there's some news that might be worth discussing or just getting thoughts in terms of state adoption. So New Hampshire was the first state to actually pass a strategic Bitcoin reserve bill, which I think is interesting because Bretton Woods happened there 80 years ago. And so I wonder if this is kind of history rhyming in the sense of New Hampshire is not, it's not a big state. It doesn't have a massive economy, but that really isn't the point of Bitcoin. Anyone can adopt Bitcoin and can use it to improve the lives of their constituents. And so I'm excited about this. It actually does allow for potential other digital assets, which is not surprising. think people are still trying to come up the curve on where the signal is versus the noise, but it allows for allocation of public funds into precious metals as well. And then also digital assets with a market cap greater than 500 billion. So that's only Bitcoin. I think it allows for up to 10 % allocation of the state's general fund. And then we saw a couple, a couple of other things as well. I'll rattle them off and then want to get the group's thoughts. So Arizona. Was first vetoed at the governor actually first vetoed the bill, but then I think yesterday Allowed for or actually passed a bill to allow for unclaimed property of Bitcoin and shit coins. It's all air drops in there It's like yeah, we we have these suey air drops. What are we gonna do with this for? Brian Cubellis (33:14.018) They're required to stake the assets just in case anyone was wondering. Jackson Mikalic (33:18.267) Yeah, and so that was one of the other ones. Florida this week, think, withdrew the Strategic Biquin Reserve. Unfortunately, I think it's indefinitely postponed was the language that was used. And then I believe just this morning, Texas, the bill there cleared the House committee and is heading to a final vote. So pretty exciting news. We've been talking about state Strategic Biquin Reserves for on and off throughout the year. But it's nice to see that the first one has actually been passed and enacted, and I think it'll ultimately be a catalyst for more game theory. Brian Cubellis (33:57.155) Yeah, it's all very interesting to me. think, you know, when we got sort of the federal government establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve, you know, while they still haven't fully followed through on that, we still haven't gotten the audit of how much Bitcoin we hold, which is kind of strange. I think what that did is it really provided air cover to all the state legislatures. And really, this has only been happening in earnest for a few months. And I think given what you would normally think of sort of a government-led, very bureaucratic process, I think what we've seen is actually pretty incredible in terms of the speed of some of these processes. If you look at that map on BitcoinLaws.com, like There's a lot of stuff happening across the country, all at different stages. And, you know, it's not to say that these are all going to get passed, but it is pretty remarkable to me that, you know, these things are advancing forward and we're really only a few months into this being an acceptable thing to even think about. And so, yeah, it's very fascinating to me. And it's also makes sense that, you know, maybe the states would sort of, you know, get ahead of the federal government and move a little bit faster. Like that part also is logical to me. But it's a good point in terms of, you know, looking at the fine print of a lot of these bills and how they're structured, whether they have a sort of a deep understanding of Bitcoin versus the rest of digital assets for one. how they're going to actually execute and implement these reserves. think there's a lot of work that still needs to be done in terms of, well, how are they going to custody the assets is just one element. So there's a lot of work to be done. But as I reflect on it and the span of time that this has happened, it is actually pretty remarkable given what we know about governments. Bram Kanstein (35:56.849) I think the irony that we can find is that, like Robert said in the beginning, we all came for the money, right? We came for the profits. And I think the use case is articulated when people do these testimonials for boards or local. government but eventually the use case of not getting poor and hopefully getting a bit richer is the prime use case for now I'd say right and so what I like is that governments are interested in it and then adopting it and you know we can have a whole discussion about you know should we have centralized government etc but Eventually, this is a Trojan horse, I'd say, because once Bitcoin has established itself, you cannot argue against the principles and values that emanate from it. So once you've profited from it, as a local or maybe a local government or a country, changing course and totally abandoning it at one point because you are from some sort of political background or philosophy that... thinks Bitcoin is stupid, people have already seen what it brought your local government or your country. And so that's kind of how I view it as this Trojan horse. It's like, yeah, once it's in there, it's going to be hard to turn around, especially when there's also competition between countries and states in the US, right? It's going to be harder to argue to drop Bitcoin after you've adopted it. Of course, governments argue and we see many examples. Also this week, know, in England, they dismissed Bitcoin. And so we'll see. But I think Robert and I talked about this before. Like Bitcoin is a mirror in that sense. know, like once you adopt it, it gives you a happier life and a freer mind. And that is what eventually everyone wants, you know, including prosperity for country or local government. So. Bram Kanstein (38:10.449) I think it's fascinating to follow the game theory right now and interesting. Brian Cubellis (38:14.35) I wouldn't rule it out though, Brom, because it's not out of the realm of possibility that a state takes a while, they top tick the market, and then Bitcoin's going down. And then going back to what I just said, that's why I'm emphasizing, do they actually understand what's going on? Because if they don't, then maybe they sell because it's down 50 % and their constituents are angry because why do you guys do this? This is stupid. Bram Kanstein (38:30.177) No, they don't, no. Bram Kanstein (38:37.744) I agree. I agree, but that would be like a mass awakening over time, right? Because if eventually Bitcoin does go up again, you know, I mean, already it shows like if the head of the Treasury of the UK and even in Sweden, like two weeks ago, no Bitcoin is too volatile. Like, if that is your single argument as the leader of a country's Treasury, you have no clue what you are doing. And I'm saying that as a random pleb without any economic or finance background, like I even understand that that is a dumb Brian Cubellis (38:48.962) Yeah. Bram Kanstein (39:09.615) argument right and I don't know from overtime people will understand that you know these people that are ruling you they have no many have no clue Michael Tanguma (39:22.004) Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Brahmin. The thing that we're under bullish on is just effectively our ability to impact the world as the price of Bitcoin goes up. We're seeing this today. Think about like what Dave Bailey and other folks are doing in inserting the Trojan horse into the capital markets around Bitcoin treasury. as we get wealthier, not everyone, but a lot of people end up you know, being able to leverage the principled nature that they kind of found Bitcoin on. then they want that money is their optionality to affect that into the, into the world. And it lets them have a larger and larger fulcrum. And I think that happens at the individual basis all the way to the nation state basis. And then we talked to them all day long, they're fighting the good fight at these large organizations. Eventually they're able to either succinctly articulate why they would want to hold it and not sell, or eventually like to Brillo's point, they kind of die off and then. they're just gone, right? Via like age and actual death or just their term. And then they leave and then the next cohort comes in. And it's funny because I don't, I'm not overly religious, but like there's stories about this from the beginning of times when you think about like Moses taking people out of, what is it, Egypt. And then they had to go through the desert for like 40 years before they were allowed to go into Israel. And then only the people that understood what was happening were allowed to go in. Like this stuff has just been written over and over. that you have to kind of burn off some of people that are just never going to get this. But ultimately it will transition to everyone understanding the implications of not holding a harder form of money. Robert (40:53.29) Yeah, yeah, I think that's a brilliant rephrasing of the pain in a way, right? You gotta have the occasional forest fire to clear the underbrush and let the new growth come up. I think there's another thing, just to make a distinction between a government and a state, and I know we often use these terms as if they're interchangeable, but I like to try and separate them because I do think Bitcoin brings us into a world with more government and less, and hopefully no, statism. But just a very simple idea of opt in, opt out, that you can opt in, opt out of a government, but a state is something that doesn't allow that or either penalizes you if you opt out, for instance. So if you leave the US today with above a $2 million net worth, which... in nominal terms is like nothing now. You get hit with an exit tax, right? That doesn't make any sense. That's like if you tried to cancel your, I don't know, home security system and they come and put a gun to your head and said, no, you gotta pay us a few thousand bucks for us to take the security system out. Like it's nonsense. And so this idea of, know, as you, as, I forgot who was saying it now, but like the idea that in the US, we still have these vestiges of decentralization from the US Constitution that we're supposed to have local government power, like, you know, being superordinate to centralized federal state power. That balance has really gotten out of balance with the inception of the Fed, right? Like federal government has grown a lot because, well, they've been able to print money. and grow unchecked for, well, since 1913, right? We're over a century. And so I think Bitcoin kind of restores that balance. Like we get back to what the spirit of the US Constitution was, which is that we are a constitutional republic. You could say that Bitcoin is making America great again by making government local again. You know, we're actually dealing with people on a face-to-face basis and... Robert (42:50.632) real political process versus this kind of like row on a spreadsheet mentality you have when you're managed by a centralized government that's, you know, one city, basically DC, ruling 330 million people across an entire continent that just mathematically, the math doesn't math, basically. And so Bitcoin hopefully pushes us back that way, right? By taking away money printing as a revenue option. it basically will defund and shrink and hopefully eliminate the centralized state and then we'll be left with local governments, right? And the ability to opt in and opt out of those governance structures. And then you get more of this free market dynamic among governance structures. And I think that's what we ultimately need. I don't think anyone in the world knows what the right or best or optimal governance structure is, but what we do need is lot of experimentation, trial and error. and freedom basically, right? Letting people go to where they are treated best and it's through that discovery process we'll figure out what the right way to organize ourselves is. And that's why I think the United States is kind of leading the charge in some ways, at least at the local level, because we do have this decentralization we've inherited from the US Constitution that a lot of other countries just don't have. Michael Tanguma (44:08.11) That's a great, great point. And I'm glad we're having this discussion because that's ultimately what this business and this media that we're building at Honoramp is meant to meet the market where they are and try to distill these concepts that are nuanced because historically in Bitcoin, we've conflated what it is to what we perceive the future is going to be, i.e. like no state government. When in reality, it's a check and balance on the state government. think we all agree democracy is great. It's when the money is tied to democracy. And I had just had this conversation with somebody in the middle East about, it's not the nature of church and state are bad. when the church and the money got bad together and then that influenced the state. And so it's just this reality of when you have a check on the money, then the power structure changes between democracy and the, and the end users, the citizens. And it goes back to the self custody thing that everyone says, well, because you can self custody Bitcoin, that's the way it all is always going to go. And it's like, well, that we've had self custody gold. didn't work that way because we still want to work with, we live in a society like you needed trusted entities. Sounds funny, but like we don't want to live in a world where we have to test our food every time we eat. Like there's still going to be trust in this new world. It's just leveraging the properties of Bitcoin and how you can. affect that in the future that is like trust minimized. And so like, there's a lot of concepts here that we have to bake out. And I think it's important to talk about because the net new insurance coming in, if we don't do it the right way, we'll just get either funneled into the like, bird trap of like an ETF, right? Because if we make it impossible where they have to put their $10 million on a little hardware device, like they either may not adopt it because they rather take their, you know, real estate they can touch or just go in an ETF that BlackRock uses. In the same way, if we talk about the government's just all going to end, it's like, man, I don't really like that version of the world. Maybe this I'm not really buying into it versus there's nuance to all of this and we're going to watch it play out. It's not going to be as drastic as everyone assumes or thinks it will be. Jackson Mikalic (46:07.73) Yeah. No, I agree with that. Maybe it's controversial to say, but I've always kind of had the thought that self custody maximalism is really ETF maximalism in the sense that there will always be a sub segment of individuals that are technically savvy, have great OPSAC, and the best solution for them is to manage it all within their physical control. But if you prescribe that to the entire market of new entrants, like if I were to tell that to friends and family, which I have over the years, most of them either A, don't take action, they just never start buying Bitcoin because this responsibility seems far too great to them at least to start. And so B, now there are these financial products which a lot of people have Schwab accounts or Fidelity accounts and you can place a trade for zero fees and you can buy a few shares of whatever ETF. And so ultimately that's why, I mean I'm particularly excited about our business, not to show ourselves, but just a recognition that if you give two Michael Tanguma (46:55.446) So. Jackson Mikalic (47:08.309) people an option of you gotta manage this all yourself, you have nothing to fall back on, or you just buy something, it's exposure, at least maybe you can protect your wealth and escape the basement. but you might not actually have control of it, you might have some counter-party risk, well in fact you definitely have counter-party risk, then people will still go for that option. So I just think it is about building out the market structure, helping Bitcoin to continue to grow and be adopted at the rate that we want it to. And so that's ultimately what I'm excited about. Robert (47:45.986) Yeah, I could jump in with one of the, this kind of ties back to something Tanguma was saying earlier, just, we were talking about it being kind of like bottom up and top down at the same time and that, you know, Bitcoin is again, by let's say broadly defunding the centralized state, you could be more specific and say defunding the central bank, right? Just eclipsing money printing as a revenue option for the central. centralized state, which is basically a mechanism of unlimited growth, right? There is no check or balance on that ever. There's been a lot of examples about this, you know, I think safety inside of the example of in Lebanon there was still... know, a train authority or something like that, and there hadn't been any tracks of train in decades. You there's like, you get weird, there's no selection pressures being applied in some of these government agencies that can just print money because they literally incur no losses, right? There's no accountability to a P &L. So you get this just like endlessly growing central government. And so if Bitcoin's defunding that, you're defunding the propaganda apparatus of the centralized state, but it's also... in a bottom-up way, it's the Bitcoin curious or the people going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. You also sort of start to inoculate yourself against propaganda and PSYOPs. You start to see it for what it is. like not only is it getting defunded, but people are also waking up to the earlier point of the great awakening. so, Nietzsche said that everything the state has is stolen, everything it says is a lie. It's like Bitcoin starts to basically put light on that. And I think... You know, there were 10, I think it was 10, 1 million man protests going on worldwide right before March 12th, 2020 global COVID lockdown started. Right, there's already awakening and movement to the tune of 10 million plus people in the streets. Now, you know, is that causative? I'd, you know, go down that rabbit hole separately, but like there's already this momentum, basically people saying this system doesn't, these systems don't work. Robert (49:55.34) broadly and so now you couple that with this free flowing of information and I think the truth is really hard to hide ultimately in this day and age. And so, know, as people figure this stuff out and then people start to dip their toe into Bitcoin, they start to figure out the value prop like, hey, I actually do need to custody this in a... risk-minimized way, right? Wherever you wanna fall on that spectrum, whether you're the radical anarcho-capitalist, doing it all yourself, or you're doing collaborative institutional custody, as you guys do, I'm not sure if I'm using the exact right terminology that you guys prefer, but breaking the key amongst a few different institutions, you're inducing this sort of transition for people to take on more radical responsibility for their purchasing power, and... less abdication of that responsibility to custodians, to nanny states, whatever. So like this is the transformation, right? It starts to empower people to take charge of their lives, I think. you know, again, when people are in desperate situations or they're being oppressed or they're in a lot of economic or socioeconomic pain, this ability to take radical responsibility for yourself is... like one of the most incredible benefits you can possibly have. So I do see it as the state, and this is kind of ironic, right? But I think the centralized state ends up orange pilling more people than anyone by like orders of magnitude. They're just gonna do what they do. They're gonna oppress and steal and lie. And people are gonna keep, as they squeeze, people keep sliding between their fingers. And those people that slide between their fingers into the bright orange future, Michael Tanguma (51:42.95) So. Robert (51:48.94) will succeed financially and whatnot. And then those that are still in the grip of the state are gonna start to imitate those that are not. And over time, this thing just dissolves and you get, again, more localized governance and hopefully a lot more human freedom. Michael Tanguma (52:03.535) Yeah, know before we jumped on, as Will said, Brom, know, Parker and I used to work together and we'd go out to meetings and you have no shortage of folks that would bring up, well, the state's gonna stop it, right? And it's like, well, you know, Prohibition lasted forever long it did and they couldn't stop the flood of, know, or the flow of booze and Bitcoin is infinitely more valuable to the individual than booze will ever be. So what would you expect? I mean, it's not as tangible, right? It flows over the cyberspace. So to read those points like, yeah, this thing just goes down like water or gravity. It's just a matter of time as it, you know, and it's just accelerating basically. Robert (52:37.057) Mm-hmm. Robert (52:41.774) Yeah, and we already saw that China could not stop Bitcoin mining. It puts a blip in the hashrate and then you see this kind of amorphous, nebulous nature of the Bitcoin mining network. It's like, okay, well, we can't mine here anymore. Put these little things in a box and ship them somewhere where we can mine, plug them back in. And that's literally what happened, right? Blip in the hashrate and then it rebounded strong. And so if China, which is the most brutal authoritarian regime in history, so far as I can tell, can't stop the most physical aspect of Bitcoin, which is Bitcoin mining, then what government or state, more specifically, is gonna do anything to stop this? It just doesn't seem possible. Jackson Mikalic (53:19.143) Yeah, what? On that note as well though, 100 years ago with 6102, was estimated to be about 25 % of private gold that was actually seized by the government, right? So then now you have a digital asset that lives everywhere and nowhere at the same time that you can get on a plane train, get in your car, be in a different jurisdiction in a very quick time relative to 100 years ago. So imagine just like the success rate of a government trying to, to your point Robert, couldn't even do it with China and mining with physical hardware, but how about the digital asset itself? It's like virtually impossible. Michael Tanguma (53:56.311) And the wild part about all this is like, have you guys ever seen something where the incentive alignment happens at the most micro and macro level at the same level of game theory, where to the point of like, can't ban Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining, you can only ban your country from participating. that, you know, when we've seen this play out, you know, I believe it was India and China that went. when the world went to a gold standard, went to a silver standard and their countries paid the cost for that for 50 to 100 years. And so that's what everyone's gonna have to make the decision on from a micro level and how you feed your family all the way to a macro level and how you protect your citizens. And there's precedent for that. And so people are gonna make certain decisions but there's gonna be like ramifications for the wrong one. Robert (54:43.182) Mm-hmm. Yeah, a number of things there. Executive Order 6102, most of that was seized from centralized custodians. They didn't go door to door, right? When the cost of enforcement gets so high, you gotta remember that the state is too a business, right? They're in the business of killing, stealing, and destroying. So if they can steal, they can get a lot more juice for the squeeze and just steal several depositors' gold from one institution. That's the... know, one throat to choke kind of thing, whereas going door to door actually increases their cost of enforcing that executive order. So in 1933, that's what you saw. They basically went to Central Custodians and seized some of this gold. They did not go door to door. You know, not to mention all of the political revolt you would likely see in a scenario like that, especially in a country where gun ownership is so high, especially in red states. and yeah, I actually didn't know that number, 25 % of gold was seized, but I do think it's interesting that that is the same amount roughly that central banks hold today. They hold about 25 % of the global gold supply. Not that it was all seized in that way, but just an interesting number. Seems like maybe that's kind of the sweet spot they needed to corner the market, so to speak. And then to Tanguma's question, I think the only similar... game theoretic alignment between the individual and collective like that is something like that, you know, I think the Hindu Arabic numeral system is a good example of that, where merchants that used zero-based numerals could out-compete those that did not. So they're basically running a better accounting software, if you will. And so obviously individual merchants are forced to adopt that if they want to out-compete others, but then it becomes... Robert (56:32.426) a matter of collective interest as well because if your country is not using the right mathematics, then you can't even have import-export relationships with other countries and whatnot. can't even, actually, you would not be able to wage war against them as effectively either, right? All of these ballistics, mathematics, and all these other things, these require Hindu-Arabic numerals, zero-based numerals to be more specific. And so... it's very much a do or die. And I think that's such an important point. People often describe money as a belief system or like, it's all subjective and we can just choose whatever we want. I mean, there's some truth to it and that it is selected subjectively, but the consequences are objective, right? Like you choose the wrong thing, you get out-competed, you go out of existence. And so there's this game theoretic process that leads to... a definitive conclusion. I don't like to use the word inevitable because that's very strong of a word, but if Bitcoin continues to exist, I have yet to hear any intelligent counterargument as to why it would not become the world's money. It's offering, it's affording individuals and collectives, the most optimal properties of money. it's very much like that zero-based numeral system. It's like you either adopt this thing and enjoy the efficiency gains from it, or you will go out of existence in X number of generations. So, just something to reiterate. Bram Kanstein (58:09.307) I mean, this is what's, yeah, sorry Rob. I think this is what SaveD talks about with the gunpowder. If someone shows up with gunpowder, you're like, is that environmentally friendly? Like, how is that, boom, you're dead. There's no space for discussion. yeah, that's what I said before, is like Bitcoin is a mirror. Some people will adopt it and some people won't, and you will see a difference. Robert (58:14.38) No, that was it. Robert (58:18.669) Yes. Robert (58:24.494) Yeah. Bram Kanstein (58:39.617) in what it brings these people and you can keep ignoring the change that's literally happening right in front of you. And I'm thinking about something that Michael said, I think it was Michael who said that before, but I really think this is, well Rob didn't want to say Bitcoin is inevitable, but I'm thinking like there is a... There's a reason why Bitcoin exists right now, right? Like there's a parallel with AI, for example, and they are converging. Actually, the third road, I would say, is the more like global awakening, people waking up more into consciousness. Like all these things are like converging into a single point. And so I'd even say that Bitcoin is necessary to profit from, you know, the technological advancements that are coming at us in a faster and faster. Michael Tanguma (59:06.912) Thanks. Bram Kanstein (59:32.561) way, like how else, know, this is what Jeff Booth, I think, told me, how are you going to measure the extreme deflationary effects of AI with money, by pricing it with money that's inflationary, like you're just, you're betting against yourself or shooting yourself in the foot or however you want to say it, right? Like the technology is here, but you cannot profit from it because you're dumb enough to still price it in the money that's dying, you know, like it's... And I think eventually it's human nature. People will gravitate towards this because we all want to have an improved life, better productivity. I think that in general is the whole purpose of what the humans are doing. And so if you are short yourself by not being able to adopt, I think, the most mind blowing technology that's going to be introduced in humanity, then There's no logical conclusion or argumentation that would substantiate that choice, I think. Michael Tanguma (01:00:33.973) And what's, what's fun about this timeline is that, because I think Briella, you've probably been doing this the longest from, um, don't know if pontificating is the right word, but educating, I guess, on the, the, the way that this works and we're living in the timeline in real time. I don't know if Jackson, you want to, it's a good transition to like the strategy world and all this stuff happening there. Like I'm not the biggest bull on corporate, you know, running SPACs to buy Bitcoin, but, There's still something there that ties into all of this and the objective reality that what we're talking about here is starting to integrate into the S &P 500 integrated in public companies. And they're starting to slowly, it's still early, but not only are they realizing they can add Bitcoin and increase the amount of access to capital, but you can start to squint and see how they'll be penalized if they don't hold Bitcoin in their treasury, especially as the price appreciates. And this game theory is starting to insert itself into publicly traded companies that they're going to have to figure out their Bitcoin strategy or they're going to get penalized from their stock price, which is just insane to think about because a year ago, it would have been crazy to say definitely five years ago, that would have been just complete taboo to reference. Brian Cubellis (01:01:42.382) think another component though is like... Am I? Can you hear me? Michael Tanguma (01:01:44.074) You're on mute, Brian. Robert (01:01:49.134) can hear you. Jackson Mikalic (01:01:49.213) Gotcha. Brian Cubellis (01:01:50.107) I was gonna say another component kind of like zooming back to where we started the conversation around like why number go up is actually very important is because Everything we just talked about like this, you know radical awakening realizing it's it's do or die Like it takes time to get to that point like that is a process Whereas, you know, if you look at the corporate adoption is one element or like, you know There was a news item this week of Brown University Allocating to Bitcoin very small and it was point zero seven percent of their portfolio, about $5 million US, they're not viewing this as dismantling the state. They are probably still viewing it largely as a trade. And I think the reason they're able to do it now is going back to the air cover, the narrative changing, the Overton window shifting to where they are very aware of the fact that Bitcoin is the best performing asset of the past 16 years. But it's had this of shroud of toxicity around it and they haven't been able to allocate to it as part of a broader portfolio. think now that that shroud is sort of lifted and the Overton window has materially shifted to where the United States government is calling it a strategic reserve asset, I think that really opens the window to people being able to interact with Bitcoin as, first and foremost, like number go up technology. And I think that's just sort of the first stage, as we all know. And then you go deeper and deeper and understand the longer term implications for society and everything else. But I think it's just worth pointing out that we're still very early in the broader public getting to where we are and everything we just talked about for the past 15 minutes. For the foreseeable future, it's going to be number go up that get people excited about this. And really the large coffers, the large swaths of capital around the world that are still on zero. the way they're going to get off zero is not by thinking the state is going to be dismantled. It's going to be, okay, now I can allocate to this thing that's outperformed everything else in my portfolio. It probably makes sense for me to have at least some allocation. And this it's interesting that the Brown allocation was interesting timing. Cause last week I caught up with an old colleague from my private banking days, who's now works on the investment team at a college in Boston. And Brian Cubellis (01:04:14.134) You know, she's she was always very skeptical about Bitcoin. But, you know, I think I made more headway with her this time than I ever had before, one because I had five more years of sort of evidence on my side. But the other component was I just kind of left her with, you know, if you guys as an endowment have zero exposure, you're effectively short. Like if you take two trillion out of the 900 trillion, you know, point two percent you have zero, you're short. And so, you know, if you look at look at what Brown just did, point zero seven. They're still kind of short, but if Bitcoin appreciates and they don't rebalance, they're going to be right at the global aggregate exposure. And so I think it's just worth pulling back and realizing we're much farther down this rabbit hole than the vast majority of people on Earth. And number go up is going to be a big component of why people adopt over the near term. Jackson Mikalic (01:05:06.641) Yeah. The Brown investment team hasn't spoken to Michael Seller yet because they'd be like, how much Bitcoin do I buy? And he says, well, all of it. Right. I think that's what he said in one of his presentations this week. know we're. Robert (01:05:10.616) Thank Brian Cubellis (01:05:13.614) You Jackson Mikalic (01:05:20.167) coming up on time, one thing I just wanted to touch on very quickly was some of the bullet points here in one of Sailor's presentations this week. I think this applies, it applies to companies as well, it applies to endowments and foundations, but ultimately the most important thing I take away from this is for the individual, because the individual at the end of the day is looking to preserve their wealth for the long term, and at least here in the United States, the mechanism for doing that, for certainly the top 10%, but even like the top 50 % that might have some 401k exposure is through equities. I think this is just a staggering number where over the past decade only 15 % of companies actually beat the S &P 500, but more importantly, 96 % of underperformed T-bills. And so in Sailor's presentation he talks about the wealth being generated by only 4 % of the companies in the index. And so, My concern is people... have become investors out of necessity to preserve their capital. It's not that they want to be thinking about portfolio allocation and having to do this. And a lot of times they'll outsource it right to a financial advisor to help with this. But Bitcoin at the end of the day is just for us, it's a savings technology. It's allowing us to focus on whatever else that may be, whether it's spending time with family, focusing on improving your health, whether it's building a business. And you're able to just save for the long term without having to be, you know, professional for your own finances. And so this has been an issue for a while, concentration, but I think it's particularly a good time to revisit and call it out because tech stocks in the U.S. have... Jackson Mikalic (01:07:05.939) been quite volatile. mean, even just yesterday we talked about how Google was down 8 % in a day, right? So people always love to talk about and try to discredit Bitcoin because of its volatility. Well, A, it has more good days and bad days in terms of volatility, but B, even people who are parking all of their wealth or much of their wealth in an S &P 500 have like typically 30 % or so of that index is in seven companies that are really driving the performance of the total index. So at end of the day, this is a problem because I think investors don't fully appreciate or savers, let's call them savers, don't fully appreciate just how much of their retirement and their family's livelihood is riding on the success of about five companies, a half dozen companies. That's very problematic. This is ultimately a big piece of why Bitcoin is so important for the individual is because you don't need to worry about Google searches going down year over year and how that might impact your retirement. You're able to preserve your wealth out of dollars, out of euros, a harder form of money that cannot be debased, confiscated from you, and you don't rely on the earnings or the revenue growth or the search volume of any one company, you just rely on math, effectively, of just a better form of money out competing all other forms of money. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that or if there are anything from the strategy conference this week that you wanted to talk about, but this is just something I think is always important for individuals to pay attention to. Michael Tanguma (01:08:36.852) It's a little out of left field, I didn't get to see it fully, but I guess Saylor had a discussion point about how he used AI to figure out his new strategy around like he was inputting. I don't know if anybody saw that where he was just like putting, was explaining the prompt he put in about like, I don't even know, like capital markets accessing some of the like debt and the different covenants. And he was just, he said he got it 85 % of the way there and enough to like provide the construct to take to the humans on his team to develop it, which was just like a fascinating, you know, intertwining of all these different concepts we're talking about. You think about like, would it cost a team to put that together previously where he was able to do that by spending an hour in front of an AI tool. Robert (01:09:12.205) That's it. Robert (01:09:19.628) I saw that clip yesterday and then the other thing I took away, there's obviously high leverage in terms of getting it done faster, better. But he was also saying he thought he probably couldn't get it done without the AI tool because there was so much career risk. They wanted to do so many different new things that if you take that to some of these legal and financial professionals, they'd just be like, it's too much. But if you have the AI, kind of do all of the prep. that you can present it in a much more palatable way. yeah, that's fascinating to me, right? Like we're already kind of cognitively outsourcing even our most sophisticated business activities. And so how far does that go? It's interesting to think about. Bram Kanstein (01:09:59.673) I do think it also ties into what you said before, Robert, about the, let's call it democratization of media, right? Like people can find more information online, but also with AI, I think it's democratization of the application of. information or knowledge, right? Like I've had conversations with AI where I say like, okay, some, some people call Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, but isn't fiat money actually a Ponzi scheme? And then it, you know, it starts innocent. says like, yeah, that's an interesting thought, et cetera. No, because blah, blah, blah. You know, it's just a standard programming, but then you're like, okay, but if you print more money to pay the previous debt, you know, like, and eventually, you know, a government doesn't create produce anything and it gets money from the citizens, right? Doesn't that sound like a Ponzi scheme? Yeah, that's great. You you go deeper and deeper and deeper and then eventually, you know, you put it all together and then you say like, okay, you know, compare Bitcoin with these characteristics and fiat money system with these characteristics, like which is the Ponzi scheme? And then the AI says, you know, the fiat money is the Ponzi scheme. And I think over time, and this is a general team here, think people will figure out how to get to that information and people will share this information, you know, in a way more free way. And so I've had an idea for a long time to make a video about this. Michael Tanguma (01:11:01.502) Thank you. Bram Kanstein (01:11:18.405) then actually share it right but I think it's what we're talking about in this in this conversations like it takes some time but it's happening and like all the tools are there all the information is there you know and yeah we'll just have to sit it out guys but I think the price going up helps right Robert (01:11:35.683) Mm-hmm. Michael Tanguma (01:11:36.024) Yeah, I think one thing just to call out because this happened while we were recording is it was the largest acquisition in the industry to date. So Coinbase bought, this had been rumored, but bought Daribit for $2.5 billion and Vijay Boipati had a really great quote on it saying, this is a huge development for the options market. Deribit was one of the largest, most liquid options markets on the earth, on earth, but was unavailable to us customers, mostly due to the prior admin, a sea of changes coming to Bitcoin options. And why I mainly call that out is because, you know, there's been this blessing, I think it dates back to the ETF and the integration into the US and just capital markets in general. And so all the things we're talking about here are actually beneath, you know, below the scenes or. behind the curtain are effectively like transpiring. They're happening. The banks are starting to work on this. And so I think everything we're talking about, including the AI stuff is just going to accelerate the next year and beyond. Robert (01:12:31.854) I do have something on AI I'd like to get in here before we close. I think AI driving prices down is actually gonna accelerate Bitcoin adoption. Which could also increase, probably increases Bitcoin volatility, which is, again, just price discovery is the way I look at that. It's not actually, if you think volatility is a bad thing, it's a matter of portfolio, of sizing in your portfolio, all right? If it's too volatile, then reduce your exposure. So. And the thinking is this, basically if you're saving in USD, then all that purchasing power that's accreting to you through AI productivity growth is basically gonna be stolen through inflation, right? Because they're trying to keep prices rising in a world where they should be declining, a la Jeff Booth thesis. Whereas if instead you're Bitcoin, right, your purchasing power is actually going to accelerate in terms of its growth. Because Bitcoin's letting you participate not only in the the productivity boom of AI, but really all productive enterprises around the world. It's kind of like, and I've said this before, holding Bitcoin, and you could also say holding physical gold is something like this. It's like holding a non-counter-party index fund on all global wealth creation. So anyone, anywhere that increases the output of goods and services, that accretes to your purchasing power as a saver. And in a way that's non-counter-party, right? You're just holding the actual gold or the Bitcoin in this case. And so as Bitcoiners, as a result of AI causing productivity to accelerate, I think that causes Bitcoin's purchasing power Michael Tanguma (01:14:02.134) So thank Robert (01:14:08.266) accretion to accelerate and as Bitcoin holders are getting richer faster, you're gonna see more people imitating their strategies more intensely, know, again, at the individual level up to the business and probably the nation state level for that matter. And so I think it's really important for people, I don't know who listens to this pod, but if you're like, Michael Tanguma (01:14:14.295) Thank you. Robert (01:14:29.462) you think you're late to Bitcoin or whatever, just realize that everyone has had to, Bitcoin's often described as an ego test. Like if you didn't get it or you resisted it before, at some point you have to be humble enough to say, hey, I was wrong. Actually, this is a big deal. I need to have some exposure to it. And yeah, to take that back to our point earlier about kind of it's, again, I don't wanna use the word inevitability, but let's say high, high probability. You could either choose to be humble and take the orange pill voluntarily now, or you can forcibly take the orange suppository later. You really have to make the decision. yeah. Bram Kanstein (01:15:11.611) guys, we've for long enough, just long enough for Bitcoin to hit 100k while we're talking. Michael Tanguma (01:15:17.014) Did it do it? It did. There we go. Wow. We're back. Isn't it? Brian Cubellis (01:15:17.538) Let's go. Robert (01:15:18.983) you called her. Brian Cubellis (01:15:25.208) We're back, baby. We're back, baby. Bram Kanstein (01:15:25.457) Bang. Ooh, I'm happy it still shows above 100. Michael Tanguma (01:15:30.132) It's one of those, it's one of those memes where they show like, you know, when it first crosses the person's happy and then you come back to that number and everyone's disheveled and just like got hit by a car. It's like, you know, five months ago we hit it and feel good. Now we're back. We're like, shit, man, because it, you know, bottom tick the 74 or whatever, but yeah, that was really well put. think like, relive on the deflation in AI. There's the other angle. And they, they basically converge to the same point of. Robert (01:15:40.012) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (01:15:57.749) when people are investing in capital goods and deflation naturally is going to lower the cost of production, well, those capital goods or the investment is going to reduce the return profile and sometimes be zero. We've seen this, I it came out where like, was it Dollar General, one of them sold for like 18 billion previously and then like just got bought for a billion, like 17 billion goes away. Like that's just destruction. And you see the open AI and the deep seek. And so at the end of the day, it all comes back to gold and Bitcoin are going to be ultimately understood as money and everything else is credit. And that's like this emperor has no clothes moment. We're on stocks and bonds where the powers that be have been okay with propagating that. But people are waking up. And I think a function of them waking up is just the sovereigns are now saying that gold and Bitcoin are money and they're usually the tastemakers for the world. so, yeah, deflation and AI are going to just help accelerate everything we're talking. Robert (01:16:31.661) Mm-hmm. Robert (01:16:40.814) Mm-hmm. Michael Tanguma (01:16:50.474) This was a fun one guys. Bram Kanstein (01:16:53.201) This was great, thanks. Robert (01:16:53.304) read. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:55.217) Michael, did you want to chat? Michael Tanguma (01:16:55.606) And we're not going back. Well, just to, just to, for Brahms sake, like we're not going back. Okay. We're going up and we're just going to go to the right. you know, everyone on Twitter says that we're never going below the next number. hopefully this, this time's true. Jackson was going to reference. Yeah. Very quickly. super excited. We'll first to start with Brahman and breed love being believers in what we're building. They're proud sponsors of on ramp. Brian Cubellis (01:16:57.473) Right. Brian Cubellis (01:17:02.126) You Robert (01:17:03.086) Thank Robert (01:17:09.344) Ha ha ha. Michael Tanguma (01:17:24.074) was exciting to have them join because they're friends, but also to talk about this stuff. But we announced today the launch of on-ramp trade and why that we think that's important is because ultimately what's baked into all this conversation that people don't always talk about is they believe Bitcoin's a Ponzi or speculative because they hear the common trope that Bitcoin ends up in a landfill in the UK or it gets taken by North Koreans. And so they just assume that even if they figured it out and understood what we said, Now they have another problem. It's like, what do I do with it? And that's why we think multi-institution is so transformative for the industry because it democratizes the access to like material exposure without having to go through five years of figuring out self custody and collaborative custody. With all that said, most people aren't really ready even for that. As we know, they're just trying to find their first existing exposure. So we launched OnRamp Trade to let individuals and their friends and family really, and let's say everyone listening to this gets this, but their friends and family, They know that wherever they start is probably not their end journey. Cause historically in Bitcoin, like all of us have had to play hot potato with the asset. You start at X, then go to Y, then end up in collab and then end up at an ETF because you're afraid of it. We're really excited and launch a like end-to-end suite where people can get onboarded in the lowest cost way to Bitcoin and buy, you know, as much as they need, but then ultimately migrate over to financial services around multi-institution custody. So super pumped to do that. The pitch we're making is we won't be a beat on cost. So anybody gets some somewhere else that says, hey, lower fees come to us, we'll reduce it. And the reason why is because we have a business model that relies on custody. So we're not trying to, we think it's easy to buy Bitcoin. It's hard to hold it. And nobody tells this story. Everyone likes to say, like, you know, we offer the lowest trading or trading. but they don't give anybody a good solution to long-term store it. And as we all know, the easy part is actually buying it. It's the hard part of like actually custody and having conversations like this that can reinforce the conviction. So we're excited to announce it, excited to have you guys as partners and see where it goes as the funnel grows where people don't have to go through this long, arduous journey of getting into this position. Ideally, we can distill that and make that like signal tighter for somebody coming in, preserving their wealth. Michael Tanguma (01:19:39.35) passing it to generations and then just going back to their day-to-day lives. Bram Kanstein (01:19:44.919) Awesome guys, congrats. Robert (01:19:45.036) I think it's fantastic. the custody problem is the problem, right? Like you said, anyone can buy it, but then you get into the realization that you can't just leave it with a centralized custodian. You've got to do something better than that. And that's actually very complicated. So making that easy for people, that's a very important mission. Michael Tanguma (01:20:07.328) Yeah, we'll pre. Brian Cubellis (01:20:07.458) Yeah, and just to add, it's easier than ever to sign up for OnRamp. You can actually go through a self-service onboarding flow now, so you don't even need to have consultation with us. And you can have an MIC vault set up in a matter of minutes, which is pretty remarkable when you think about what's going on on the backend, the coordination of three different institutional key holders coming together to create a segregated vault for you. with full transparency and auditability. So, easier than ever to get access to really the best form of Bitcoin custody in our minds. And even if you're not ready for that, you can come into our orbit through OnRamp Trade. And really, as Michael pointed out, OnRamp Trade will be a great venue and avenue to refer friends and family to, colleagues who need to get off zero effectively, but they want to do it in a trusted place. where they actually have line of sight to long-term security without having to hop around all Michael Tanguma (01:21:04.086) And there are no coincidences. We launched it on the day Bitcoin's going past 100K again. So anybody signing up, including you guys as friends and family, zero fees until October. So which is exciting. We're just gonna say like you sign up, you get access, no trading fees. So appreciate you guys joining and excited to see what the rest of 2025 has in store forever. Robert (01:21:24.92) Thank you guys, this was fun. Jackson Mikalic (01:21:24.999) Thanks, gentlemen. Thank you. Bram Kanstein (01:21:25.915) Thanks guys. Brian Cubellis (01:21:26.766) Thanks boys.