Bitcoin 2025: A New Era of Strategic Moves by Nations, Corporations, and Institutions

Jackson Mikalic (00:01.292) It's live. The last trade we're recording. have five people on the show once again. We've got Brian, Michael, Tim, and Liam Nelson. Liam is joining us as the guest from Early Riders, a partner at the Bitcoin venture firm pioneering Bitcoin as a hurdle rate. And we have Tim as well. I always like to just call out Tim and his suit and his orange tie. Tim is joining us from Brian Cubellis (00:07.457) Five heads, we're back. Jackson Mikalic (00:31.31) the strip club, but I actually mean the Vegas strip for the Bitcoin 2025 conference. It's nice to see everyone. How is everyone doing this week? Liam Nelson (00:43.764) Doing wonderful, thank you for having me. Michael Tanguma (00:46.634) How many announcements? How many announcements have we had? I mean, there's gonna be no shortage of stuff to chat about. Tim Kotzman (00:46.719) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (00:46.743) exciting week. Brian Cubellis (00:54.271) A deluge of things happening, announcements, companies launching various hot takes on the internet. So yeah, lots to get into. It's hard to keep track the past few days. Jackson Mikalic (01:07.222) Yep, I actually have an announcement that I'm gonna share halfway through the episode. So people should stick around at least for the halfway mark. It's gonna be big. It's gonna be bigger than anything that was announced in Vegas. So please stay tuned. Brian Cubellis (01:18.753) Jackson's spinning out his new SPAC, too. Tim Kotzman (01:22.398) Let's go Jackson. Jackson Mikalic (01:24.344) I'm launching a token. All right, let's pull up the price chart just to kick things off here. It's kind of bearish. It's kind of a... Brian Cubellis (01:32.855) We're dipping. kind of dipping. Is this just a normal conference dip? Conference bearishness? Tim Kotzman (01:38.442) I think so. Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:40.268) I thought we were hitting 200k for the last conference and 20 last cycle rather whenever that was and here we are it's not even it's barely over 100k 105. Again, for anyone who's joining newer to the show, this is how we like to kick things off here. This is the OnRamp terminal. You can check it out if you'd like. Terminal.onrampbitcoin.com. Yeah, feel free to check it out. You got plenty of things packed in here, but I think we should talk quickly about the price. I think there's a major disconnect happening between what is actually going on behind the scenes, a lot of shifts that we've seen, particularly by the Trump administration in the past couple of months here. But there's been a lot of announcements. Michael Tanguma (02:18.282) you Jackson Mikalic (02:21.262) that are actually I think pretty fruitful from the conference this week. So we'll be talking about that, but kind of shocking and I guess maybe not shocking depending on how you look at it to see Bitcoin retracing a bit from all time highs last week. I think we hit what like 112, 113 and now we're back to about 106. Michael Tanguma (02:38.926) Yeah, let's, I mean, the price is great, but I think like Tim is coming in hot. Let's hear how Tim is feeling about what's going on. have boots on the ground reflecting. I know that there's some notable things he wants to share. What's happening to him? Brian Cubellis (02:44.758) Boots on the ground. Boots on the ground. Jackson Mikalic (02:52.29) And what's in that cup? Tim Kotzman (02:52.424) I mean, it's hot coffee. Things are hot here in Vegas. No, this is so this is my first conference that's kind of like all in. Like I joke around that last year I would have only had a general admission pass if it wasn't for a friend of mine that has a booth. Right. So I got an industry day pass and that was a big deal. And I'm looking at my emails this year and just with doing being more public facing. The emails came in. I have a speaker pass. I have a whale pass. I have a media pass. Like what, what passion? You don't even need the name tag. You just wear this and you can get in. So it's no, these guys do a great job. As you guys probably know, if you've been to any of the conferences, the kind of whale lounge deep, the deep, whatever it's called, you know, there's food like the whole time. There's a stage with other programming. There's a bunch of seating for, you know, just chatting with people, having private conversations. So that's super cool. Obviously. So I was at dinner last night. It was a Deloitte dinner. Fong was there. Renee from Semmler was there and there was a public company. I won't be super specific executive there, not a chairman, not the chief executive. And he's like, yeah, I have security with me. Brian Cubellis (03:55.543) Where's the alpha, Tim? Where's the alpha? In the deep storage lounge. Tim Kotzman (04:18.794) And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, like at this point with what's going on in France, what's what's going on in New York with kidnappings and fingers and all this stuff. He's like, it's a board decision and responsibility to protect the executives. So like I was shocked. I mean, his security was like, like he said outside the restaurant, but it was like not someone that I even I knew who he was, but not super in the public spotlight. So I thought that was interesting, you know, met, Scott Melker, he had security with them. It's like, and back in New York at that conference, one of the mining executives, it was obvious they had security with them. So, I mean, that kind of just underscores everything that we talk about all the time on here about, like, make it known that you have multi-institution custody, right? At a minimum. but that, that was just really surprising to me. The internet was... very excited about me being on the live desk and saying that you should look out for GameStop on Monday. And then Tuesday, they announced a half a billion dollar purchase. But I mean, you just OK, announcements happened this week and GameStop already said publicly they're going to buy Bitcoin. So I don't think that was like a huge guess. Brian Cubellis (05:40.223) Also somewhat, I mean, this seems to have been the reception around that, I guess, pre-recorded announcement of Ryan Cohen. It seems to be, you most people are underwhelmed by the announcement and particularly his tone and some of the phrases he used around like, if the thesis is correct, you know, we'll see how this goes type of rhetoric. And I think we talked about this, Tim, maybe a month, two months ago when. the sort of rumors around GameStop started and they did the convert. And I think we had mentioned like, you know, there needs to be some real follow through on this in the sense of like, you know, if you're running the strategy playbook and trying to copy Michael Saylor, like a lot of that strategy besides the financial engineering was like the storytelling, the narrative, the articulation of the Bitcoin thesis, why you're doing it and why you believe in it. And it seems like What we got from Ryan Cohn is pales in comparison to that type of conviction in storytelling. kind of just like, it almost felt like to me, he felt like he had to do it at this point because there was so much pressure to do it and so much rumor mill around it that he kind of felt backed into a corner that he had to do it and he doesn't really believe in it. Tim Kotzman (06:59.388) He's definitely taking he's definitely taking the other side of the coin on. mean, he literally said in that video, it's only four minutes long, as you said, Brian, that they're not going to basically give any direction or public indication as to what they're going to do. They're going to do things their way and they're going to announce stuff when they want to to the effect of like Dylan LeClair, like like clapping back on on X saying like, we will call our shots in public in advance, right? He is a shot caller. GameStop is not, which is fine, but it just it's the exact opposite as far as transparency and even if they would have said, hey, we're going to have a measured approach like just say whatever it is, it would have given the market certainty. And so I'm very confused on why you would not do that. The other theme from the conference is people coming up to myself, Ben, Jeff, Ryan and saying. What you guys did with QuantBros and TrueNorth changed my life. It created generational wealth for my family. And it has really less to do with MicroStrategy or TrueNorth. And the more I think about it and see this happening, like just dozens of people coming up to these guys, that's what Bitcoin does. Right? And so it's very funny, right? You have like the whales and the retail Bitcoiners here, and then you have the TradFi. both like legitimate TradFi and like a bunch of guys that are like either broke or just trying to scam you or whatever like a bunch of slime balls and it's a very interesting dynamic, obviously high energy and like it's a lot of like what we're seeing obviously is the retail excitement and appreciation and again like if you just boil it down to Bitcoin, that's what like Bitcoin does change lives. And I don't think you saw a lot of that. At least I didn't before right now. So this is just really cool to see. And right when you take yourself and these corporate rappers out of it, that's what Bitcoin does. It's not not necessarily. This is just the the latest iteration of it. But yeah, it. Michael Tanguma (09:11.368) What's some of the sentiment on the sovereign side? Because I think one of the things, there's a lot of stuff we'll cover, like the banks, David Marcus, Tether coming out with this interesting product with the gold backed or gold downside protection. But I think the thing that not a lot of people are talking about is the whole Pakistan strategic reserve. I think that's super fascinating and that they like, if somebody flew all the way out to talk about it on behalf of the country is pretty wild. Tim Kotzman (09:41.384) Yeah, especially when Ryan Cohen doesn't even show up. So I've been kind of walking the conference and face to face to where you guys probably have a much better handle on the actual announcements and the details of them than I do, unless it's just like literally plastered everywhere. Brian Cubellis (09:43.606) Heh. Jackson Mikalic (10:02.456) There are some, well yeah, there are some stuff with Pakistan. Tim Kotzman (10:04.01) But like, the investment banks, the venture funds, the like every capital allocator is here and they have suites with 40 chairs and they're just like, come on in. Okay, here's a term sheet. And it's like, I don't want a term sheet. What? I mean, it's like, so it's wild and everybody's here. So yeah, that's the kind of the TLDR maybe. Liam Nelson (10:27.624) Yeah, and kind of going off of that tail, it's... This may be a hot and controversial take, but at the moment, like there's not a lot of alpha in telling somebody, just buy some Bitcoin, right? Like the Bitcoin's kind of mainstream buying just like some or a little bit of Bitcoin isn't necessarily going to change your life quite as much as it would have even if, you know, 10 years ago, five years ago, you just like bought just a tiny bit of Bitcoin. think enough people kind of understand where it is at the moment. And there are more than, Brian Cubellis (10:33.558) Let's hear it. Liam Nelson (11:00.8) you As you saw with all the ICOs and now with these treasury companies, some of them are going to be legit and some just want to put their name on Bitcoin in order to get some additional interest. But you kind of need to understand either to go all in and understand how to secure this for the long term or be allocating Bitcoin in different ways that the market isn't necessarily thinking of if you're not going to be buying Bitcoin directly and have a little bit of a different lens from an institutional. allocator side of things to just kind of where the world is going and how you can either take advantage of that, whether it's from the sovereign level of using excess energy in order to mine Bitcoin and empowering your people to kind of just being a Bitcoin nominated fund, keeping your treasury in Bitcoin. There are a number of different ways you can approach this, but just kind of telling somebody to buy a little bit of Bitcoin isn't necessarily going to be what it was in the past. you Tim Kotzman (12:02.738) Yeah, I think the next iteration that has kind of come out at this conference is for a while, the talking points, at least from my seat, were kind of like, all right, you can do Bitcoin on the balance sheet or you can do the leverage play where you're really utilizing the capital markets. But Probably like the easiest example of this next iteration is what Matt Cole said in his speech where he's like, we have alpha and we have beta. So like we're doing all the capital markets activity. That's maybe like the micro strategy playbook, but we're also going after other strategies for, for how we can from almost from a hedge fund sort of lens, like how can we acquire Bitcoin at less than market rate? And so instead of just saying like, I'm a healthcare company. and we're number two and we're doing the MicroStrategy playbook. think whether it's stuff that Matt was talking about or it's companies that we're going to see launching in other international markets where they're part of their service or operational aspect of their business is going to be potentially launching Bitcoin products, right? If you're in a market where you can only go to Binance or some startup to buy Bitcoin in that jurisdiction. if you can do the Bitcoin strategy, but also launch OTC or launch structured products or some other Bitcoin product or service, maybe that makes a lot of sense. So it's all kind of branded and aligned to Bitcoin. So that's what I'm. Michael Tanguma (13:35.785) Yeah, I think that makes sense. think there's a fascinating aspect of like structured products and what we're talking about from investment perspective. And then the other thing that's just like caught my eye is the notion of like, I think it came out today, David Marcus was on CNBC talking about like all the banks that are kind of there looking at rolling out stables and cross border payments. There's a lot of discussion on stable coins, obviously Tether being there. There was Eric Adams and the BitBonds aspect. And then there was Lightning or I think Lightning Labs discussing the yield on the routing from payments, which tied into what I was the initial core anchor to all of this was Cash App revealing for their whatever 4 million plus merchants the ability to accept Bitcoin. It's like this notion, it's coming at it from all different angles, right? So there's a point of structured and institutional finance and asset management, but a lot of people feel outside of the scope of there, but then to the point of just the everyday user and how it's starting to get embedded into the day-to-day workflows of buying a cup of coffee or just their bank accounts being able to get access to digital currencies, whether it's stable coins or Bitcoin, it's just really wild to see because it's, that's just the over 10 window moving and realizing what like there's a different form of money and then naturally price is a, you know, the lagging indicator because it takes time for people to realize that other things have money outside of greenbacks. Jackson Mikalic (15:03.662) I think that's also something we forget. We're doing the show on a weekly basis and it is in fact quite early. It was remarkable that this week, so Vice President JD Vance spoke at the conference and he cited a statistic about 50 million Americans having, I guess, Bitcoin or crypto exposure. And he said before too long, it'll be 100 million. Right. But if you actually parse that back a bit, the conference has about 30,000 or 30,000 35,000 attendees out of a country of called 350 million people. Those 35,000 people are probably for the most part individuals that have some material allocation. And then there's, course, a lot of other people that didn't go to the conference and still have a material allocation of Bitcoin within the United States. But if I had to wager, it's not it's obviously not anywhere close to 50 million people. It's probably like one to two to three million people in the United States alone. So while I think there is this broadening awareness happening, it's evident it is happening. It's not. think it is happening. There's still a huge disconnect between let me dip my toe in or let me open a Coinbase account or a Cash App account and buy $20 of Bitcoin to actually understanding the merits of Bitcoin very deeply and Tim tying it into your point at the beginning actually how Bitcoin could change the trajectory of your life, your family's life, your business, etc. And that requires a long term view. But most people are not anywhere close to that at the moment. Michael Tanguma (16:38.627) The analogy. Tim Kotzman (16:38.664) Well, sorry, quick, quick shout out. You don't need Cash App or Coinbase. You can sign up with OnRamp and buy Bitcoin immediately. Over to you, Mike. Yeah, code KTC. Michael Tanguma (16:46.915) Use Kotzman. The funny part about all this is the exact, not exact, but closest analogy is literally the internet because it's this whole sentiment of when's the best time to adopt the internet? was like today and if it was yesterday and the day before, the same way as like when's the best time to adopt Bitcoin? It's like now and then tomorrow and the day after. But to your point, the analogy I think of is It's like email or whatever came out first. Somebody used it maybe to see the weather and then somebody looked at email and there was like little small incremental steps before the internet just permeated all your life. That's basically what's happening here with Bitcoin because you reference some small cohort has a material balance, but that's only going to just grow over time until it's just like, that's just how you store and save your wealth. So it's just a fascinating thing, because every other market has a total addressable market and it's like a small cohort and then they'll adopt it and then you're done. It's like, this is gonna be everything and every one and it's gonna come at it from all different angles. Jackson Mikalic (17:45.518) Totally is. Yeah. And then going back on some of the things that we just kind of discussed in briefing. So in passing was so Eric Adams, mayor of New York, Pete Covin, when I was living in New York, there was Bill de Blasio telling you to get the shots and he was eating Shake Shack or Five Guys or something. And Eric Adams. And I was like, all right, I have to leave New York now. So I left New York at the start of twenty twenty two. But I was. Brian Cubellis (18:09.982) You went to Philly. I mean, you didn't go that far, Jackson. Jackson Mikalic (18:12.822) no, we can talk about where I went before I was in Philadelphia if we, if we have to, but, that's part of the announcement. anyways, but anyways, I think this is more so a recognition that, New York has been pretty antagonistic to Bitcoin and crypto businesses. Pubkey is an example of a very successful business that has seen Brian Cubellis (18:20.758) You Jackson Mikalic (18:38.284) brand awareness, not only in the country, but globally at this point by just being a Bitcoin forward business and adopting Bitcoin payments and kind of entrenching itself into the Bitcoin ecosystem. And so I think Eric Adams. I mean, I don't think I'm a fan of him, but I think he at least is smart enough to recognize that there is an opportunity for municipalities, for states to still be early to this thing, right? It's the same exact idea where it's still early for the individual. It's still early for smaller jurisdictions, whether it's states or municipalities, to lead the charge as it relates to adopting Bitcoin and also bringing in more capital. It's ultimately a business play at the end of the day. New York's fiscal situation is probably a mess, particularly in the city. And so if they can have more of a pro Bitcoin stance, which is now in vogue, and bring in more individuals that may have left before, haven't lived there before, bring in more businesses that maybe were going offshore to come back, there's a lot of tax revenue to be had there as well, and a lot of innovation and jobs. So it's like, it's just better for the economy. And so maybe people are starting to realize that. Brian Cubellis (19:44.438) Yeah, and it's hard. Michael Tanguma (19:44.593) Is Eric Adams the guy that gave P. Diddy the key to the city? Is that the same guy? I just want to make sure. I was just curious. I don't remember if that was him or if it was a different mayor. Liam Nelson (19:49.097) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (19:55.745) I don't know. I will abstain from commenting on that. But I think what I was going to say was like, you got to take all this stuff with a grain of salt. think Mayor Adams has spoken positively about quote unquote crypto and Bitcoin probably in the past, in the past couple of years. And it sounds like David Bailey and some other folks got in his ear prior to the conference about Bitbond specifically and you know, got him to come make some comments at the conference. So I think, you know, it's hard to look too hard into it and, you know, think that he fully understands what he's talking about, what a bit bond represents, what Bitcoin really means, how it's different than crypto. Like I'm not I'm going to refrain from giving too much credit to people that make these types of announcements. But it is surprising. Like, you know, I would not have guessed that the first state level bit bond would be pushed forth by New York. That part is surprising. But there was a lot of bit bon talk in general at the conference. I watched a few panels from yesterday that were talking through it. And it seems like it's an idea that's catching on. going back to Vance's speech, I just think it is remarkable to just think about where we were 24 months ago in terms of, again, back to the Overton window shifting around. this asset, basically removing the veil of toxicity that had existed, going back before even the prior administration, which was obviously very antagonistic towards the industry. But even before that, it was just like this toxic thing that it was very hard for not only TradFi folks, but in particular, people in the government, policymakers to get their arms around. And a big shout out to folks like Bitcoin Policy Institute who have been on the ground doing a ton of work to educate these folks over the past few years. So I think this conference, everything that's happening right now is a culmination of years of work in terms of education and, again, broadening that overton window. And it's just it is kind of wild to sit here and just see the vice president, sitting vice president of the United States at a Bitcoin conference, along with plenty of other people in government. And it seems like Brian Cubellis (22:18.57) to Tim's point, like all of TradFi is now fully there, at least doing cursory research, trying to understand, like, you know, the institutions are coming was a meme for what feels like the past five years, but now it actually, really does feel like they're coming and they're here and they're serious about it. So, wild times. Liam Nelson (22:36.7) Yeah. One thing that's worth saying too is the Comptroller of the New York says like New York City will not be issuing any Bitcoin backfiring on my watch. So, you know, just because there's one person that goes out and says, we're going to be... Brian Cubellis (22:45.046) Yeah, there you go. Jackson Mikalic (22:46.86) I love it. Brian Cubellis (22:50.622) You can just say things. Liam Nelson (22:51.69) But yeah, there's there's not necessarily buy-in for everybody else He's you know running for a reelection or like I don't need to necessarily follow exactly what it is But you know, he's not extremely popular right now And this is kind of just one easy way to get buy-in from younger voters without any real downside that you know He has to potentially back up especially, you know, we kind of saw this and with you know Doge and saying that there's going to be a ton of different savings across Michael Tanguma (23:17.065) See you. Liam Nelson (23:21.644) a number of different product lines because all the Republicans are going to be so fiscally responsible and we're going to cut the deficit and debt. now the White House is different articles out there that the new spending cuts from Congress would only codify 9 billion out of 175 billion that Doge claimed have saved. so while there are definitely people that are out there and really trying to push forward Bitcoin and fiscal response, Michael Tanguma (23:28.361) Thanks. Michael Tanguma (23:48.233) you Liam Nelson (23:51.516) responsibility, I think it's just going to take a larger group and buy in from many different cohorts in order to turn the ship around as it comes to the government and Bitcoin adoption as well. Jackson Mikalic (24:04.802) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (24:04.873) Yeah, the nice part about, sorry, Jax, I know you want to transition, but just to reference the notion of the authenticity and energy that comes from the space, like we can't discount that the P Diddy Key provider did say it out loud because moving that over 10 window is the important part where the notion of the means and the engagement that these people get from this asset, they just like relish in. And so you see like, didn't even realize, guess Tesla's talking about bringing in another three billion or adding another $3 billion of Bitcoin to its balance sheet. I think I went on a multiple, there's a couple other, was looking it up. looks like it's potentially, I mean, maybe we could check it, independent of them, there was Trump that came out, Trump Media for 2.5 billion. Point being is like these people are getting the engagement, they're getting the, Brian Cubellis (24:41.302) I think that was fake. saw that tweet. I think it was fake. Brian Cubellis (24:52.864) this. Michael Tanguma (25:03.271) like recognition and so they're just like leaning into it, which is has the natural knock on effects of like turning into reality. saw this pre, you know, getting back to Bukele and every US politician afterwards. So there is something to bringing it out into the zeitgeist and then naturally it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jackson Mikalic (25:23.126) Yeah, I totally agree. I think there is a lot of you can just say things. Eric Adams is one example of that. But I think also to Michael's point that is opening up the Overton window, there's a shift happening in the country, in the world. And so Bitcoin is becoming far more favorable and people are starting to understand like everyone is screwed. There's this... graphic that was published or updated from 2022 just all the sovereign countries and their debt to GDP levels. I could pull it up, but quite frankly, I just don't feel like finding it. But everyone has a huge mess on their hands, right? And so there needs to be some sort of solution. The solution is obviously printing money. It ties back to GameStop. And so Ryan Cohen's like, if the thesis is right, I mean, what do you mean if the thesis is right? It's so straightforward. It's so simple. I mean, It doesn't, get a five year old could understand the problem with the Fiat system if you explain it to them simply. So I, you know, I'm bearish on GameStop right now. I always, guess, I mean. Brian Cubellis (26:25.502) Not to harp on GameStop, but the other wild part about just the sort of lack of conviction in how he's gone about this is like, well, now you have a laundry list of other competitors. So like, if you're playing this Bitcoin treasury game of all these different tickers and people, you know, trying to differentiate themselves, this is differentiating yourself in a negative way of being like, I don't even really have that strong of conviction. It's like, well, if people want proxy Bitcoin exposure, they're not not going to GameStop now. They're going to the myriad of other options they have. Liam Nelson (26:59.548) And it doesn't need to be Bitcoin in general. It's just like, you don't want to be allocating capital to somebody who doesn't have a firm grip on their strategy, whether it's, you know, buying Bitcoin or whatever they're going to do with turning around their company. And so you're going to be wanting to give your capital to somebody who knows how to spend it in the right way and isn't just going to kind of like lose your your money on something. It's like if the thesis is correct. Brian Cubellis (27:25.91) We'll see how goes. We will see how it goes, Ryan. Jackson Mikalic (27:27.288) thesis. We'll see. Tim Kotzman (27:29.418) Super quick on games, both GameStop and Shake Shack. I've had conversations with employees and executives at both companies, and the theme is neither of them have a ready to go game plan from a media standpoint or a messaging standpoint. I mean, like the Shake Shack guys were like, yeah. All right, sorry, sorry. Brian Cubellis (27:55.478) Steak and Shake, you mean? Tim Kotzman (27:59.388) Shout out Shake Shack, New York City, but no, Steak and Shake rather, right? Like their executive team met and they're like, all right, we need a plan, but they're still formulating it, right? GameStop, their media guy, right? I exchanged information. Whoever he was, said, hey, I'll forge your information to our media arm. We're still trying to figure out kind of what's going on. And like the Steak and Shake guy said, yeah, we didn't realize you were going to be like, Brian Cubellis (28:00.726) You Tim Kotzman (28:26.026) 10,000 podcasts and like which ones are good and which ones have 34 viewers and the guy next to me goes Tim's a real deal. So like we're so early that I think it's again it's the the fiat world and the Bitcoin world like the corporate world and the Bitcoin world just crossing over because if you're not into Bitcoin you probably didn't know that you're going to have such a warm and strong and reaction and all these loyal 30,000 loyal people. Brian Cubellis (28:33.238) haha Tim Kotzman (28:54.858) walking up to the Steak and Shake booth at the conference. like the executive I talked to there is like, it's been everything we always hear from every executive. It's been such an overwhelming amount of support. It's awesome. We got to figure out what to do. So it's a good problem to have, but that's where we are. Liam Nelson (29:13.832) Yeah, that's great to hear. What is the boots on the ground reaction like to the cache app square terminals? Tim Kotzman (29:21.672) I haven't heard a single person talk about it, but I might just not be in those circles. Brian Cubellis (29:26.774) Have you made any Bitcoin transactions this week, Tim? Have you spent any of your Bitcoin? Tim Kotzman (29:30.026) Well, I have not spent any of my Bitcoin. I'm not a spender and I'm not a gambler unless it's on Bitcoin and Bitcoin treasury companies. But yeah, I won't dox them. But one of the guys in True North was talking to Larry Lippard and Larry's like, all right, here's the book. It's 20 bucks. And he's like, I only have $17 on me. He's like, oh, I take sats. Right. So he got out one of his apps and sent him some sats. So thought that was pretty just kind of funny. So sometimes you got to spend them, right? You got to make the trade with what you have. you know, yeah, yeah, the last trade. This should be the last trade. Brian Cubellis (30:08.15) Spend and replace, I think is a good mantra. Jackson Mikalic (30:15.094) One other thing I wanted to talk about on the, big bike. Let's big Mike run with it. Michael Tanguma (30:15.287) One thing to call out is, Brian Cubellis (30:20.182) You What do got, Mike? Michael Tanguma (30:24.122) I was just going to call out what Tim was referencing around these players coming in and not really knowing what they were doing, what happened is ultimately like, yeah, so they're just figuring out Bitcoin. Are they figuring out custody? Are they figuring out financial services? Like, you know, we all know when you came into this space, everyone, there was natural learning curve. So they're aping in hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. I'll probably just leave it at that. But you know, the reality is Well, this is accelerated from adoption. Education doesn't just accelerate an understanding of like where the market has gone. This is a digital bearer asset. And so it's just recipe for sure. A lot of great things, but also, you know, you got to be careful. And I don't think a lot of people are necessarily, you know, very careful. Brian Cubellis (31:15.347) said. Jackson Mikalic (31:17.11) One other thing I thought was cool to see was PSG, the soccer club or the football club, depending on where you live. Someone from their team spoke. It was either today or yesterday at the conference, but they're one of the largest soccer clubs in the world. And so a couple of things to call out there that I think are particularly fascinating because we have seen some adoption within sports. Of course, Peter McCormack and Real Bedford, but You have these large organizations that are now, see Bitcoin as a value proposition, not only for the balance sheet of the businesses, but also from, let's say a community or, almost like a brand perspective. this this individual, I don't know his name, but cites that they have over half a billion of fans globally. So again, one of the biggest clubs in the world. And he mentioned specifically 80 percent of the fan base being under the age of 34. And so this naturally ties into, Michael, your points around the Internet. At some point, Bitcoin just becomes big enough because the people who adopt it, there's just a growing population of Bitcoin and I guess crypto users that are millennials, Gen Z, they're just Bitcoin native people at this point. And so he acknowledged that the fan base is really ripe for Bitcoin and digital assets. And so I think he mentioned last year that they took some of the reserves that they had from cash flowing business of the club, put it into Bitcoin, haven't sold any. And then they're also launching something I thought was interesting, but PSG Labs, where they're essentially launching like an incubator or some sort of ecosystem within the Bitcoin native space to start funding business opportunities. So I think it'll just be exciting to see more of this. Again, it's like these are just fringe announcements. We probably won't be talking about these types of announcements a year from now because it'll just be at such a larger scale. But it's, I think, cool to see where adoption is happening at the fringes. I'm not sure if you guys have any thoughts or caught that one this week. Michael Tanguma (33:11.417) Yep. No, it's a great call out because we talked to somebody, don't know if it was necessarily an investable opportunity, but it was in like health and medicine and they recognize, you know, being a cohort or contingent of one of the first in the Bitcoin space to adopt it for the private treasury and a private equity firm. And you saw this with Peter McCormick is one of the first because, you know, Peter, consider a friend. He'd probably say this. He's probably not the best. podcasters, not Joe Rogan or whatever. But the point being is that he was one of the first podcasters and he was able to build an audience and meet the market where they were. And then he recognized that. And then that's where he spun that out into Real Bedford. And what that's turned into is mobilizing a global audience in that in Bedford. And so I think to your point, There's all these little pockets across the world that are going to do the same and they're going to be able to be first. And this is how we talk with banks and specifically RAs because the first banks and RAs that are going to be Bitcoin friendly are going to reap outsized returns by, in a world where everyone treated as radioactive signaling, hey, we're open for business. Right before we started this pod, Cayman based bank or state run bank, they're just announced that they're going to open up. their bank accounts for like either Bitcoin custody and bank. didn't see it fully, but it was just that same notion of these pockets are going to start to say yes. And it's usually emergent players, challenger players at start because the incumbents don't really have, you know, it's an innovator's dilemma. But yeah, it's exciting because that's how markets form is Netflix was small until they were the standard. Liam Nelson (34:47.73) Yeah, and one thing worth noting too is. PSG launched a PSG fan token back in 2020. And so they have kind of been around the space for a little bit. And it looks like they launched their token. It's gone to zero in Bitcoin terms, pretty much. I was just pulling up the chart and they've ultimately come to realize that there's value in having a Bitcoin treasury. I think a lot of people who have been watching from the sidelines either closely or not too closely have realized, OK, NFT maybe not quite exactly what they were hyped up to be, different tokens, maybe, maybe not. But one thing that really is continuing to stick around is Bitcoin. And so I think that there will be a lot of learnings that have to still happen from people that are net green into this space, but there also will be. And and just we're going to see a lot of noise from newer folks that are coming in But there are still a lot of learnings from others that have have come Into the space that are just kind of coming to to be Bitcoin first or Bitcoin only Michael Tanguma (35:56.959) Timbo what's going on before he wraps Timbo? MSTR proof of reserves What's happening? Where's the Bitcoin? Brian Cubellis (35:57.207) Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I was just gonna say I- Tim Kotzman (36:04.894) We don't even have enough time to cover that. think my personal opinion, not financial advice, is that either side of, like, Saylor is gonna come down hard and passionately with every single thing he says. So whether he came down with, we're gonna do proof of reserves, similar to MetaPlanet and Bitwise, or whether we're not. I mean, he gave a nuanced answer that was 10 or 15 minutes long that included that he was open to the possibility of whatever it's called non-zero proof, something right where you don't actually see the addresses. He's open to that. yeah, mean, that's so like the meta right then. So they're not going to do proof of reserves right now, but meta planet is and like that those are, I guess, not nuanced. There are major ways that these things are different items that are differentiated. But yeah, that definitely a hot topic this week. And, you know, some of the, some of the executives I talked to were like, you know, if Saylor says one thing and people just start turning on him, I said, no, he's on X so much. Like when he said the thing about custody and everybody went wild within a few days, he put out a statement and kind of walked it back. Like, Hey, we believe in self sovereignty and self custody and blah, blah, blah. So, I think we're in an, we are in an attention economy period. So. It's all good to kind of create that conversation and we could go on for an hour about it. Jackson Mikalic (37:34.006) And Tim, while you have everyone's attention, could you please do a tie reveal before you leave the podcast? Tim Kotzman (37:39.934) The price is not as high as it could be, so the tie is actually not as long as usual. So that's the tie reveal. Jackson Mikalic (37:48.782) All right, well, I appreciate you joining. I know you have plenty to do while you're in Vegas. Yeah, make it back to New York, I hope, safely. Don't do anything too stupid out there, Timbo. Brian Cubellis (37:53.59) Stay safe out there, Timbo. Tim Kotzman (38:00.266) Except for the true North meetup last night, I literally have not left the Venetian. you know, it's all kind of, it's nice that it's kind of self-contained. I don't enjoy walking through the casino. There's some interesting people there, but yeah, they announced that the conference next April or whenever it's going to be is also going to be in Vegas. So I guess Vegas 2.0. Jackson Mikalic (38:25.174) All right, Tim. Well, thanks for joining. Yeah, last time I was in Vegas was with the team in the fall of 2023. And it was two weeks before my wedding. And I came back probably the sickest I ever had been because like Tim, I never left the Venetian. So I was just inhaling cigarette smoke and looking at blue light machines and just drinking disgusting amount of alcohol. And yeah, it was it was not a good situation. So I chose to admit it this year and I feel pretty good about that decision. So now that just the four of us, we can actually get to the juicy stuff. Michael Tanguma (38:56.334) Jackson, do you want to give us the history of Las Vegas and how that's worked out from, is it Dr. Jack Cruz? I'm just joking. It's a joke about the blue light machine. Jackson Mikalic (39:12.366) Yeah, well, we'll save that for next episode when Tim's back on. But yeah, so we got the four of us. We're about 40 minutes in. There's a lot we could continue to talk about here. I want to go back. I think you guys might have covered it on another podcast, but I do want to talk about the Trump media just quickly. Because we talked a lot, think one of the core themes of the show so far is just there's a lot of grassroots adoption that's happened in Bitcoin over its history. That will continue to be the case. We'll see fringe examples like PSG and, you know, Steak and Shake. Not to be confused with Shake Shack. I don't like Shake Shack. I have personal reasons for that, which we could get into on another episode. But... Anyways, the Trump media thing, think is a big signpost. they've obviously politicians are always self-serving. So it's like. It doesn't really matter if it's Trump or not, but at end of day, everyone has their own self-interest. And I think why this is so obvious right now is because you have not only the vice president, not only Trump family members at the conference, not only a ton of people within the White House and representatives from all different states. So you have all these things happening, literally telling you the direction of all this is going in terms of the Genius Act with stable coins, all this regulatory framework they want to put in place this year, all these financial interests that are now vested in Bitcoin and unfortunately some shit coins as well. And so it's extremely clear. That's why it's so frustrating to hear people like Ryan Cohen who say, you know, well, if the thesis is right, I mean, the thesis is very straightforward. It's the dollar goes down and Bitcoin goes up because of that. And a byproduct of that is, well, the dollar is going down indefinitely. And we as a Jackson Mikalic (41:00.022) country need to do something about that. So now there's a widespread recognition. It wasn't just campaign promises last year. You have all this money that's now vested interest. You have all this political interest as well. And so I think it's just really important to highlight that because while sometimes it may not feel obvious to, it still doesn't feel obvious to most people. If you really just take a little bit of time each week to just kind of piece together all the information out there, like Brahm with Bitcoin for Millennials, he has, at least to my knowledge, described this as an asymmetric opportunity of publicly available information, right? Like there's all these things that are just staring you right in the face. And that's why I'm incredibly excited. And it's... It's really just getting started. mean, like this is what are we like five months into the year? So I'm incredibly excited about what the next four years will look like and beyond, too, because I think over the next four years, this will become Bitcoin will be supported by both sides of the aisle. think there's it's pretty much survival at this point. Right. Like, I don't know if you guys agree with that, but we're going to get to a point now where it's so entrenched in the political economy like you have Eric Adams, even if he's just going up there and saying things like he's. Michael Tanguma (42:04.255) you Jackson Mikalic (42:13.012) One example. Brian Cubellis (42:16.406) I think that's right, Jackson. I forget who said it on one of the panels yesterday, but he was basically saying, let's not talk about this issue as if it's bipartisan. It's actually nonpartisan. It has nothing to do with your political side of the aisle. And it's actually just something we should all be on board with as Americans and people that care about country and care about our well-being and care about citizens' ability to save and store their value. Jackson Mikalic (42:16.759) Damn it. Liam Nelson (42:41.706) you Brian Cubellis (42:45.008) One fascinating part about all of this is like, as I reflect on from sort of like pre-election or leading up to the election to now, it's like, you there were a lot of campaign promises and like the funny part is like the stuff that's actually stuck and like the promises that were kept, a lot of them were like Bitcoin related, like freeing Ross is a small thing in a lot of people's minds, but I think that was important that he sort of followed through on that promise. setting up the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Obviously, there's still more follow through that needs to happen there. But I know BPI and others are sort of hand holding that effort in a real material way, which is great to see. And then you have other things like we're going to balance the budget and we're going to cut all this spending with Doge, which is now just kind of being thrown out the window. And you've got Besson saying we're just going to grow our way out of it. There's sort of a tacit and middle of defeat in some sense on a lot of those other promises that were made in terms of getting back to some sort of fiscal responsibility, which now it just seems like, we tried, we put our best foot forward and turns out it's not realistic. Turns out nothing stops this train and we're going to have to print more money to nominally grow out of this. And so it's just it's interesting to reflect and think like, if you had asked me prior to the election, like which promises are going to come true? I probably wouldn't have said it's like all the Bitcoin stuff and none of the rest of the stuff. Liam Nelson (44:14.12) And the real thing that people should be doing is not, it's important to watch what. Trump and DeSantis and the rest of or Vance and the rest of them say, but it's also more important to watch what the people around Trump do, including Eric Trump being on the board of MetaPlanet and American Bitcoin. They're saying, you know, we want to make all of the Bitcoin in the USA and everything like that. And all of his close confidants from, you know, Vivek being involved with Strive and, know, really, you know, leaning into the narrative that early writers pioneered that Bitcoin's a hurdle. rate and just RFK, all of the people around Trump continue to beat the drum, especially his kids about Bitcoin. And that's kind of just telling you that they are serious about this. Brian Cubellis (45:02.804) And back to back to this one more thing to Jackson's question around like, well, when does when does it become truly nonpartisan? I think part of the hang up, at least in the near term, is that you have irrational people that just despise Trump and will say and is there actually look at this like they'll look at Trump media doing the Bitcoin Treasury strategy as a bad thing. And then they'll just say like, Bitcoin bad because Trump did it. And so I think Michael Tanguma (45:02.937) Yeah, that's, Brian Cubellis (45:29.374) Yes, it will eventually become truly nonpartisan, but it probably is with someone outside of the Trump family where less people can be irrationally mad about it. Michael Tanguma (45:36.335) No, I think it's, it's a mixture of both in the sense of like the whole notion of the future is here. It's not evenly distributed. It's like that future that Jackson's saying is here. They just don't know it yet. Meaning where this is going, they're just hanging themselves by treating it as a partisan issue because it's going to end there. But to go back to what Jackson and Liam were keen in on, like I've been saying that the banks is, you what's happening there is the most bullish. Brian Cubellis (45:53.493) Right. Michael Tanguma (46:02.171) That might be wrong. think the most bullish is what we just talked about with his close network and Trump actively placing bets because we've been talking about this and like, that's kind of weird. And we don't have a lot of historical precedent on like politicians in the U S and how deeply they've been tied into, you know, like capital markets based on it's just like 2025. You have the internet, you have this new asset. So we've seen, you know, uh, Lutnik, we've seen his kids running the show and what they're doing now with Tether and all these other things that Liam shared. But I think what's happening is it's again, goes back to the internet. It's like, wait, this is just the future. Like they already know that this is going to be made into a real material asset entrenched into the financial system globally. And so like, fuck it. Like it doesn't even matter. Obviously there's probably more tact in that, but it's like, we're just going to go and place our bets and get our money in where it matters if we get some slack or whatever, like we're one arm removed. that this is it. so that's because if you think about if it's a fad or something that's just a small fraction of gold or whatever a lot of people will say, you're not going to risk that political and optics to go and like do all the things that they're doing. I.e. buying three billion dollars or Lutnik setting up or Cantor setting up the vehicle with MASSA and everything else that's happening right now. Like they're actively telling you what's going to happen. And then to the point of what we just talked about, it's just like you can act on it or not. But either way, you're gonna have to act on it at a certain point. Jackson Mikalic (47:33.838) They're probably pissed off too, to talk about, you know, the Trump family talks about how the media was weaponized against them. The financial system was weaponized against them. And whether or not those are just talking points or not, I think there is some truth to them saying that because Donald Trump Jr. brings it up all the time. So like, I think they're actually just pissed off as well. And so sometimes you got to get pissed off to understand a better alternative. So Liam Nelson (47:33.959) and Jackson Mikalic (47:57.078) I think everyone is self-interested. It's really like the left barbell. So politicians are interested in this because they have a vested interest. I also think that there are politicians that want the best for their country or their state. And so they understand that Bitcoin is the best for them. And then there's the other side too, or just like, well, I want censorship resistant money and I want censorship resistant communication channels because my family has been personally attacked and these have been weaponized against me on the campaign trail. Michael Tanguma (48:23.017) Yeah, and that's a key point, like Tim wasn't able to speak to it, but we should talk about the square merch. Well, there's a bunch of square stuff. We don't have to go into the seedless stuff unless we want to, because that's funny in itself. But just the fact that like you can transact like over lightning and it operates very similar to if I was going to give. Brian or anybody here, $100 in cash. Nobody really knows, right? There's some trail potentially with like serial numbers, but there's no real like trail of direct unit to unit. And that exists today. It came out that I think it was Lightning Labs that yielded. don't even know exactly. It was like a 10%. Brian Cubellis (49:02.394) I think that's Bloch's subsidiary, if I'm not mistaken, C equals. Michael Tanguma (49:08.199) okay. it's not lighting labs. Okay. So blocks of city. makes sense because it's via cash app because cash apps running a lot of these nodes from the, from, routing. But the point being is that this is actually starting to manifest in different respects. We talk a lot here from the institutional kind of like asset management and larger allocations. But the reality is this thing's permeating from what it was meant to be in a digital, peer to peer cash payment system. that you can transact, it's growing, it's becoming ubiquitous in the system. And it's not like necessarily in the highest surveilled where people still treat it as everything's on chain. And that's like very like low key powerful because you can't really stop that, especially once you set up, you know, different payment layers, which is just ultra bullish for the reality of like, you know, sovereignty and what this ultimately is like check on a lot of the power structures that historically had been like, it's, kind of all coming together. Liam Nelson (50:04.01) Yeah, and one thing that's important to mention too is ever since VEMO incorporated like their 3 % fees, it's just cheaper to transact in Bitcoin, even on chain versus, you know, lightning in a significant degree. Like we'll send my friends just Bitcoin transactions rather than VEMO's nowadays because they kind of get it. Every merchant incorporates lower costs from allowing Bitcoin transactions versus the typical credit card merchant fees. Now with the square terminals, it's easy to set up. My understanding is that it just auto converts to cash so they don't even have to be Bitcoiners. They just get reduced costs. Some will turn it on, some won't. And then, you know, these the nation states are benefiting from, you know, going and running towards using excess energy in order to mine Bitcoin. And all these corporates are benefiting from putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet and into their treasury. And I think what everybody's trying to figure out now is just how to run towards the next stage. fast as they can because they're seeing benefits without blowing themselves up. But we're still very early in all of this. Brian Cubellis (51:11.734) we could drill down for one second on the routing node data, Jackson, if you can pull up that chart from, I think, Gentry on Twitter, I would agree with his tweet in that this is the most bullish thing to come out of conference week in my mind, put aside all the announcements around adoption, et cetera. And I'll explain why in that, I think... For the past few years, there's been a lot of discourse and discussion around what does Bitcoin scaling look like? Do you need other layers outside of just lightning? Is lightning really working? Is it progressing too slowly? And I think that this is a real signpost of like, no, lightning, lightning fucking works. And it was always sort of a chicken or egg thing in terms of usage and then having large providers of liquidity on the network. There's always sort of like, which one which one manifests first? And I think this is one of the first real large scale instantiations of like you can earn Bitcoin native yield by providing liquidity to the Lightning Network. So that's what this is showing. It's showing a nine point seven percent APR on just providing liquidity to the Lightning Network and operating as a routing node. And if you drill down into what is on, I know it's hard to see there, but on that on that chart, it's showing. The 9.7 yield is outpacing all of these other forms of yield. So on there is like a sky savings rate. So I'm sure that's just like a high yield savings account at 8.7 percent. USDC on Aave, which is a DeFi protocol, 4.2 percent. Federal funds rate at 5.3 and ETH staking at 3.4. Like this is yield being generated from the Lightning Network protocol with no leverage involved, like no rehab application, no lending involved. Like this is just native yield from providing a service to the network. And so I think this is like wildly bullish, wildly important to Michael, to your point of like, you know, it's more than a store value. It is a payments network and it is working at scale. So I thought it was just worth drilling down on that for a second. Michael Tanguma (53:20.379) Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting because we've talked about this for years being in the like asset management space of there is ways that you're going to reduce custody costs and also offer additional financial services out of the traditional way people think about risk. And you think about who's best set up to create these channels. It's going to be firms like OnRamp and others that have access to their clients base that would like to opt in or like firms like a micro strategy that would want to also provide some additional incremental yield at a lower risk because nothing's risk free. These channels are still stood up and they are custodial. Even though they're non-custodial, somebody has to route and manage the different channels or the nodes. what I was going to share is this is also low-key bullish in the sense of there probably will be as Bitcoin monetizes and it affects local currencies, banning or even seething the assets. But what this all comes down to is you really can't stop something when somebody else values it. Meaning if somebody wants to accept Bitcoin for payment, it's impossible to stop. And so as you start getting, whether it's on chain or off chain or second layer, people will just demand as they understand Bitcoin. Maybe it's similar to like Pakistan and these other countries that are probably stacking via mining. People are just gonna stack via their natural goods and services they offer to the market. And that's how you really like. manifest this thing truly is because individuals just want more Bitcoin. And so they'll accept it. And Zapparite was one of the first to really kind of do this or do this at scale from a commercial perspective, which was just figuring out what's the consumer behavior that you want to incentivize, where you could, and like, maybe it wasn't, this isn't commercial, but Josh and beefsteaks where he would naturally say, hey, look, if you want to buy a beefsteak, let's call it, it's 300,000 sats, but if you want, and that was 300 bucks or whatever. Michael Tanguma (55:10.203) but if you wanted to pay in fiat, you had to pay $350. Like you can play with the way you have that interface and then naturally when you come up to a terminal, especially if somebody really has cash out but doesn't understand Bitcoin, they can just be able to open cash out, pay via what they think is dollars, but you're actually paying over lightning. You're gonna just start to see it, but it really starts at the actual merchant side, not the... the, you can't change consumer behavior via like tallying them or having the car because people love their Apple pay. You have to do it on the flip side, which is who you work with. And then they have to incentivize you to get you to do it. And that's what like, think Pierre and Flash really keyed in on is can't really prescribe to the market. You just have to take the tools to them and then they'll ultimately bring the rest of the market to it. Brian Cubellis (55:55.893) Well said. The only other thing I would add is it's something we've talked about in the past in terms of everything we do at OnRamp and just this notion of, you you want to own the underlying in the sense that, you know, you're not going to be able to provide liquidity on the Lightning Network in the future if you have shares of an ETF or if you have shares of MSTR. Like that is part of one of the many reasons that you would actually want to own the underlying for its full, the full breadth of its utility. And those those sort of more fringe areas of utility are still obviously just very nascent. But as we think five, 10, 50 years into the future, it's like that's why you want the underlying, you don't want a claim. Michael Tanguma (56:38.747) Yeah. I mean, that kind of ties in. don't know if we want to talk about the fallacy embedded in all this proof of reserve stuff, but it's just like, you don't own the asset. No, there's no, there's no going off. It's just more of like, you don't own the asset. You have like a hun- 10 to a hundred different parts of execution risk on whatever you buy with public equity. So whether they provide you proof of reserves or not really doesn't matter. Like they can show it as at Coinbase, not at Coinbase. It's not your money. You don't have direct, you have no rights to vote on it. You have- Brian Cubellis (56:46.314) Go off. Go off. Michael Tanguma (57:07.899) execution risk on the leverage being taken out. And then if Coinbase or whoever's hacked the next day, it's still all gone. So like these are like things that are just patterned because people say I want proof of reserves and everyone's like they need to do proof of reserves, but nobody's like talking or fundamentally thinking deeply about what does it even mean and what is even coherent. So anyway, like I think it makes sense on an ETF perspective that you want proof that the assets sit there. But then that still isn't enough because you can have proof of reserves on any custodial situation, but it's still single counterparty risk. And that's where like the whole multi-institution comes in is it embedded into that is that it's proof of reserves because it's audible and on chain and there's no single counterparty. So God forbid if exchange or custodian goes down, that's holding these ETF assets in the future and multi-institution, your assets are still secure versus anybody that talks about doing proof of reserves a day. If something happens tomorrow, it's gone. Well, what was the point in the proof of reserves? Like it just. And nobody's incentivized to talk about this or say it. And like, we're just gonna keep doing it until it becomes a standard because it will become the standard if this asset's gonna grow to what we all think it's gonna be. Liam Nelson (58:10.93) And people have talked about, you know, the negative downsides of putting your address on chain, which I can kind of see both sides of, but Tether has done this. You can see Tether's address on mempool.space and their three to five multi-sig. They have not been hacked and nothing negative has happened thus far from them. And so. I think that that will be something that's demanded by the market moving forward too. Just because there's an address that people can see doesn't necessarily mean that anybody can kind of hack it. Brian Cubellis (58:47.178) That's true. But to Michael's point, it's like it's basically irrelevant because you still have a single point of failure. Like you still have single entity risk and that's that's the actual existential risk. existential risk is not that doxing the public address is some, you know, super valid security concern. It's that like, well, if it's a single entity, then to Michael's point, you have proof of reserves today, tomorrow they get hacked. and your proof of reserves was irrelevant from yesterday. Like, it doesn't matter. Michael Tanguma (59:17.371) And the thing that matters more and maybe, Liam, if you want to, because I don't know the mechanics of this. I just know that it's a downward spiral, but we need to produce like a report on ultimately, like everyone believes that they're not going to get kidnapped. They're not going to get held ransom. Their ETF is not going to get hacked. Their MSTR proxy or whatever it's called. Their ticker is not going to be the one that gets over levered. gets too risky or gets hacked or sitting in Hong Kong and the Chinese, like all this is never going to happen to the person buying those shares. They're just going to get the upside in ownmobiquin. That's what people believe. Let's say that's true, but we'd also all probably agree somebody goes down, like something gets hacked, something goes wrong. Well, the second that happens, everyone's going to be like, wait, that can happen. And then they're going to naturally start to sell those shares or call claims on the bonds, whatever the downward pressure starts to be self-fulfilling or perpetuating into like, It turns into more because if one goes down, let's say it's not micro strategy, but if it wasn't, that's really bad. But let's say it's another canter or whatever it is that has a, a pubco that that shareholder value just gets to de depleted, wiped out because the assets are stolen. Well, then everyone else that all these other firms is going to wonder what the hell are they holding? And then that's going to manifest into a bunch of liquidity being taken out of the system and nobody is thinking about it. so it's just worth if you're thinking about putting, know, everything like speculate, if you like to play poker, you like to gamble, sure, you just don't put all your wealth into publicly traded companies that are holding Bitcoin that have no kind of obligation to make sure that it's held properly and that you're going to be made whole. Jackson Mikalic (01:01:00.204) You guys want to talk about some market stuff real quick? wanted to just get caught up with the group here. A few things. So we already touched on Doge. Epic failure, I would say. It was ambitious though, I would say, to try to get in there and... Brian Cubellis (01:01:17.522) RIP, RIP Doge. Brian Cubellis (01:01:22.778) Yeah, if I'm being honest about it, I think it was still a net positive in the sense of like turning the cruise ship slightly, like even just a few degrees in the other direction of like austerity and prudence. Obviously, it wasn't sustainable. Obviously, there was a lot of headwinds from Congress and just people unwilling, you know, not having the political wherewithal to actually cut spending in a material way. which I think if we were being realistic about, you know, back in, you know, six months ago, that was probably always going to be the case. Um, but I do think it's still a net positive that it even existed. think some of these programs and efforts will probably persist in some format, some shape or format. Um, so it's not to say it was all, um, you know, all useless. Um, but yeah, nothing stops us trying. Jackson Mikalic (01:02:17.804) Yeah. And, um, well, I agree with that. And then, there's been a little bit of a shaking up happening with the tariffs as well. So this week, a, uh, US federal court, it wasn't all of them, but I think it was a very large percentage of them, uh, blocked some of these tariffs. So now it's kind of, I guess it's a twofold thing for some people that may be perceived as just more uncertainty, right? How do you invest in an environment where, maybe the tariffs happen, maybe they don't, but it needs to go Brian Cubellis (01:02:29.12) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:02:49.456) through a court of appeals process. For others, it may just be perceived to be bullish because that has been a lingering concern for a lot of investors. So that has happened. And then think it was last week, another downgrade on the U.S. government debt, just worth calling out no longer AAA. AA is very generous as well, but that's where we stand today. And then the U.S. Treasury 30-year yield hit 5.1 % this week. And I think that was after the some of this news that we just discussed. And that is the highest it's been since 2007. So that was before a lot of this debt and liquidity, which I guess is one of the same, entered the financial system. So now you have the pressure of much higher interest rates. There's about 10 trillion dollars of debt that needs to be refinanced this year. And so that's why I think it is becoming quite obvious to... people in power that we need to do something about this. We're not going to be able to cut the deficit materially. Looks like we're not going to be able to grow out of this because a lot of it's unproductive debt. So you print the money and then you also start acquiring hard assets as well because naturally those hard assets appreciate as you create more fiat currency. So the fiscal house is just not in good order. We knew that but I think it's worth reiterating. There's a couple of things that had happened in the past week or two worth calling out. And then in line with that as well, you have the stock market just continuing to be at crazy valuations compared to historical periods. Jackson Mikalic (01:04:34.196) I think that's kind of a nothing burger. know people for a while have been saying, you know, the sky's falling, US equity values are going to crater, P ratios are going to come back to where they've been historically. I don't know. mean, I, I care because it does have an impact for the economy, but I don't care personally because I'm not that allocated to equities at all. But why I don't think it matters that much is because ultimately people are just using equities and real estate and Bitcoin, right? Well, Bitcoin is a money, but equities, real estate, fine art, whatever it be, farmland, they're using these as monetary substitutes because the fiscal situation is such a mess. So it's like, can't hold dollars. I don't want to hold debt and be debased in real terms. So that's why I don't know what you guys thoughts just on anything I just shared on the fiscal side or equity valuations. But I mean, I just think. that things will continue to be inflated, right? It's kind of a melt up in asset prices when you inflate all the debt away. Michael Tanguma (01:05:33.399) Yeah, I I love our friends Larry and Dave personally and having them on the pod, but that was the one thing I kind of pushed back on Jackson where we did the scarce assets because I think that they were fundamentally feel a crash is coming and probably still believe a crash is coming. But it's just structurally, there can't be a crash because as you have like equities, compress or any kind of assets that make a large percentage. of people's wealth, then that naturally lowers their spending, tax receipts, and you just ultimately end up in this downward spiral, let alone like the debt that they may have from a corporate side. So to your point, it's just like up into the right no matter what. I think the one thing I'll share that we didn't touch on, but it kind of supports what you're saying is, I guess with the Biden administration was super obviously antagonistic to the digital asset space, but specifically around there was some kind of like guidance around 401k plans and banning the ability for companies to be able to offer the ability for Bitcoin exposure via your 401k. And I think this supports stuff we've been talking about, about like people just aren't going to be able to afford, you know, retirement, living day to day. And so it's all about how do you build structured products to give people slivers of Bitcoin and assets that they can't buy a house, but you can buy, you know, 10 bucks worth of Bitcoin or $10,000 worth of Bitcoin via an ETF or even your tax advantage, retirement accounts. Jackson Mikalic (01:06:57.634) Yeah, just quickly on that too. The housing situation is such a disaster. So I think we probably all knew this, but there was something that caught my attention with just the median age of home buyers. Who didn't see this and has a guess what the median age of home buyers is. Liam, Michael. Brian Cubellis (01:07:13.738) I saw it. Michael Tanguma (01:07:16.443) I didn't see it, but I would imagine the median age is like 45 maybe. Liam Nelson (01:07:17.938) I saw it. Jackson Mikalic (01:07:21.037) And Liam? Liam Nelson (01:07:22.634) I'm pretty sure it's 56, isn't it? Jackson Mikalic (01:07:24.63) Yeah, so Liam saw it. 56 years old. Like that is absolutely insane. Brian Cubellis (01:07:29.526) But no, the wild part about the status, like 17 years ago, the age was what, 40 or 39, I think was the age 17 years ago. Jackson Mikalic (01:07:38.686) I have it here. So in 1981, 31 years old, and then 2021 it was 45, and then just three years later in 2024, it goes up 11 years to 56. I know Brian doesn't want me to buy a house. I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I don't want to live in Philly for much longer. I to have a little bit more space. So I have gone to see like a couple of weekends ago, went to a few open houses, everything. No, I didn't buy a house. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but it's crazy because we go to these open houses and in the Philadelphia area, anything that's like somewhat desirable is probably. Brian Cubellis (01:08:06.806) Is this the announcement? Did you buy a house? Jackson Mikalic (01:08:19.968) like six, seven, eight, nine hundred thousand dollars. And when I go into the open house with my wife, pretty much everyone, everyone else in there is like 50 or 60 years old. I'm just like, what the fuck? This is like this is just nonsense. So I think I'll probably just end up buying more Bitcoin and I'll probably just find a new place to rent. But. Michael Tanguma (01:08:39.131) It's, if you listen to the broadcast every two weeks, this was the guidance was to rent and, you know, save yourself for a number of reasons. dude, that is really sad. Like we joke, but when you look at, I've shared this anecdote before, my wife worked for a big tech company or whatever, and they make decent money or really good money, not decent. But she was on a call with like 19 other people and it somehow came up because she was telling me this anecdotally, like they asked if you could win the lotto. what would be the thing you would get? Like some directionally there. And 18 out of 19, or 17 out of 19, because her and her boss sort of own a house, wanted a house. Like if they won the lotto, that was the thing. And she was just like, she didn't pay attention to any of stuff. So she was like, just, that's kind of weird. But the thing that's not funny is when you look at that track of 81, 2020, 24, and then you can just overlay like people's marriage or kids that they're having, they're all. downstream effects of bad money, meaning bad quality of life, not feeling comfortable or secure so then people don't have kids and everything else that stems from that. It's really kind of like messed up and sad because if people can't afford to feel secure and how they like go to bed at night, like that has insane downstream knock on effects that don't get talked about enough. And so it's kind of just really, it's pretty perverse and messed up that we got to a place in like the United States where people can't afford to just like, you know, buy a house. Jackson Mikalic (01:10:00.246) Yeah, but maybe. I mean, it's yeah, it's a really big uphill battle. I feel fortunate and blessed to have figured this out earlier than most of my peers on the Bitcoin side. But maybe, Michael, the thing you just brought up was with the 401Ks and that those the red tape and guardrails being lifted there. I mean, there's a ton of money. I think the number is eight trillion dollars that's trapped in 401K plans. And most people, I mean, I haven't had a 401K since I left Stiefel, like whatever that was four years ago. But most people usually have an important employer match with 401k and they probably contribute more to because they view that as their long term retirement. so hopefully just more guardrails like that being lifted will allow for easier exposure. And while it's likely not going to be direct exposure to Bitcoin, it's likely ETFs. I still better than nothing because I can't imagine, you know, like being in your 20s or 30s, not having any exposure to Bitcoin at this point. It's still there's still a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of runway ahead of us, but it's like You kind of have to start figuring this out sooner than later because everything is so damn expensive, whether it's the house or it's the food or it's like every other asset that you might want to buy to preserve your wealth. It's just like it's a shit show. Michael Tanguma (01:11:13.381) Yeah, I've wanted a propolis to do this forever. So I'm going to try to push this out into ether. Cause if they don't, somebody else is going to do it. And if you do it, reach out to us. Cause we'd love to invest is this like naturally needs to be a product for private firms, newly founded or invested venture capital firms and public firms where all this like illiquidity and private placements, when you get into a company and you get equity, or you can even be like a mom and pop shop. doesn't matter where you sit in the stack. If you just lock up a certain percentage of Bitcoin for that individual and like have it vest for whether it's on a four year basis and you roll off after the first year, someone investing every month, you start to get slivers of that and the longer you stay, you get added every year. Like that is outside of the system. You can launch the 401k and you can do whatever, but it's just a notion of you hire somebody, you already have that capital, maybe you take a percentage of that, you could even match them. But then you can keep it where, in business it's all about continuity, right? Like you want the people to stay with you, you them to be incentivized. And if they're happy, then your company's gonna be happy. And this is just naturally gonna play into companies thriving. And somebody needs to do this for businesses because HR, you think about all the things that come into play when you want to build a brand that people wanna work for. This will exist, it's gonna happen sooner than later because now Bitcoin's becoming more more mainstream. And it just makes too much sense, because everyone wins. Like, especially the person that is, literally not being forced, but having their like some of their value tied to their compensation into an asset that's growing at whatever compounded, compounded, compounding annual growth rate. Like that's, and then you get known for that. It's too good of an idea. Jackson Mikalic (01:12:53.302) 100%. The other, and then we can pivot to some of the stuff we're seeing at the company and whatnot. I think that's a good place to transition. One other stat that I just wanted to throw out there. We don't necessarily need a riff on it, but I just want it out there. For people's awareness, ties in everything we just talked about the last 10 minutes is, so equities are at all time high valuations, right? We talked about that and I guess close to all time high, just in terms of the nominal index price. And the concentration is crazy, like not only in the Mag-7, but the concentration of U.S. wealth and equities is at all time highs. And so... In 2000, at the dot com peak, number of the amount of wealth tied to U.S. equities was 38.4 percent, and now it's 43.4 percent. So you can imagine now, like, I think that's just a subconscious recognition because most people don't haven't fully figured out the problem yet. But people are like, I need to just be further and further out on the risk curve. I need to have more and more of my money in these things that will hopefully grow at a faster rate. And people think like, seven, eight, nine percent nominal. That's great. But then when you actually like parse it back, you're getting maybe a 2 to 3 % real return, especially in the past five years where we're in this fiscal dominance debasement. And that's going to continue for all the reasons we discuss every week. But just it really is a mess. Hopefully by just doing this podcast on a weekly basis, it's helping people that not only on the same pages as us already, but maybe coming up the curve or maybe it could be valuable to friends and family that need maybe a new need to hear from someone else. It's not you, right? Michael Tanguma (01:14:09.531) you Jackson Mikalic (01:14:30.082) have told him about Bitcoin and why you need to own it and how it can help you but sometimes it needs to be someone who's not you so hopefully this is just value add I hope every week or else I don't I won't show up anymore so if you can let us know in the comments if it's adding value I would appreciate that makes a makes this job a little bit easier Michael Tanguma (01:14:50.745) Yeah, if you like it, subscribe. So I guess it just came out a few minutes ago. Leading UK prime minister candidate pledges to launch a strategic Bitcoin reserve, Nigel Farage at the Bitcoin conference. So we'll see. We'll see what that looks like. But I think it goes back to just the Overton window. The second that the US, you know, said something, you have these other countries that are starting to look at it. Pakistan, the UK. The game's on. Brian Cubellis (01:14:51.318) Who is this guy? Brian Cubellis (01:15:17.238) Get on board. Get on board. Liam Nelson (01:15:18.299) What do you think the last time is that a major G7 country has an elected, you know, either prime minister or president that is not actively a Bitcoiner? Brian Cubellis (01:15:33.59) So like, what's the timeline for everyone adopting Bitcoin? Is that what you're asking? All the G7s? Liam Nelson (01:15:38.41) pretty, when is the timeline that yeah, all the G7 countries have like somebody that isn't actively advocating for Bitcoin as like their top official in the country. Jackson Mikalic (01:15:48.396) I think probably sooner than later. I think there were things that were said this week. It might have been Vance. It could have been others, but it's pretty much like. We're leading the way here and we want our allies to do the same with Bitcoin and know, with stable coin. Obviously stable coin set ties into US Treasury demand, but they're at least posturing that they want their allies to do it. And maybe there's a little bit of coercion that happens like, hey, you better you better adopt some Bitcoin. You better buy some US stable coins as well. But I don't know. I feel like it happened sooner than later because what's the alternative? You just like destroy your economy and you hyperinflate everything into oblivion. Michael Tanguma (01:16:23.931) I think that's what's happening. I'm a little like bearish because like these these countries seem like they're a glutton for punishment. Like the you know, I think about the UK and like, you know, having to defend yourself with a spoon or whatever. It's like, you know, I could see them in Australia, Europe as well, thinking that, you know, the CVDC is the is the savior and it's going to make everything democratized value and streaming. So I don't know, like I think that there's a Brian Cubellis (01:16:36.598) You Michael Tanguma (01:16:51.451) probably take for granted the freedom orientation that some of these countries have, specifically the US, and why people understand that they don't want their money debased or messed with, and others don't. And we see this in the energy policy in some of these countries, so I don't know why it would change with the money. But I could be wrong. It just feels like, you you see what happens up in Canada. Liam Nelson (01:17:09.499) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:17:09.686) I'd say within the next decade, and if they don't move within the next decade, their country may cease to exist beyond that. Liam Nelson (01:17:19.721) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (01:17:19.948) They could adopt Solana or something, you know, you could see like someone or two, there's gonna, it's gonna happen. Somebody's gonna adopt the theory of like, they're just gonna do it. Liam Nelson (01:17:25.354) I mean, there was that central African country that like, you know, said that they were going to adopt Bitcoin and then somebody went over there and affinity scanned them until like launching their own coin. And then they like, stop. I forgot what exactly happened there. Too many things going on. But yeah, I mean, I think like people forget that countries have FOMO just like me and you do. And you know, when the price goes up, if you're not all in, you're going to be like, fuck, I gotta get some, this thing's really catching on here. I'm missing out. Jackson Mikalic (01:17:56.15) Yeah, so got a couple things. We can go around the horn. I actually do feel bad. I said I had an announcement. I didn't have one, so we could count that as an announcement of an announcement at some point in the future. I know a lot of people on Bitcoin Twitter love to announce that they're going to have an announcement, so we'll do a rain check on that one. In the meantime though, wanted to test out some new segments for the show. How about that? So one thing maybe we could talk about around the Horn is just kind of what you guys are seeing, building the business or investing in the space in the past week or so. We are recording on a weekly basis, so some things don't change on a weekly basis, but then again, things do change as well because been having a lot of conversations with clients and some themes that I think were less Relevant or less likely to be brought up in previous conversations more clients or prospective clients are bringing it up But I'll throw it over to you guys first Who wants to maybe take a crack at it first just like sharing some insights? What are you guys paying attention to? What are you hearing this week? Michael Tanguma (01:19:05.211) I think the biggest one for me, a little, mean, it obviously is like talking our book, but it's this reality that we talked about a little bit on this week on final settlement, but there's no shortage. It's finally becoming real mainstream about the physical risk, the physical risk, forget about social engineering and all the other things associated with losses. And I think there's a notion of either people in self custody felt like multi institution wasn't for them or they need to do all of their assets or it's like it's not one or the other. It's just a it can be a creative and complimentary. But then really the Coinbase one is the one that shook a lot of people that we've talked to that have been listening and especially because I think it's less of people's personal security. I think we kind of like are OK with something happens to us. We can deal with it. It's like friends and family. And a gentleman I talked with today, you know, saw that Wall Street Journal, not today, but this past week, the Wall Street Journal piece. And I had brought it up or something because he was feeling, you know, concerned with all the calls he's getting from Coinbase. And then he referenced, he's like, yeah, I'm freaking out if my wife sees it. Right. Because his wife sees it now, it's his problem. Like, why did you buy this thing that's going to potentially harm our family? So I think this is only going to pick up. And yeah, it's sad. I mean, it just comes out every week. I think there was something that came out today about the Harris or some police, somewhere in Europe, they like thwarted an attack of 20 people that were going to like execute, I guess, some crime or some ransom set up. So it's just be vigilant and yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:20:41.11) Yeah, it's really accelerated. Like we've been talking about this for a while, obviously. But I, you know, if I try to remember back even to six, nine months ago, maybe it was like, you know, one of these attack headlines, like once a month, maybe twice a month. Now it feels like literally every day there's a headline of some kidnapping, torture, physical attack vector. And then, yeah, the other big one has been the Coinbase Liam Nelson (01:20:41.737) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:21:10.678) vulnerability in terms of leaking data and then just, you know, the social engineering side of once that data is out on the dark web that it's going to be utilized and, you know, unsuspecting folks, mostly older folks are preyed upon with that data to social engineer the matter of their coins. And just like anecdotally over the past couple of weeks since that happened, like, I don't know about you guys, but I've been getting constant. spam calls and spam texts. And part of that might be because I worked at Coinbase for a year. So my data was probably already leaked multiple times over. But yeah, it seems to be accelerating, unfortunately. And so, yeah, I think on us to keep talking about it, despite it being sort of a hairy, unfortunate topic and, you know, may feel like we're talking our book, but this is genuinely something to think critically about. as you think about your long-term exposure to this asset. Liam Nelson (01:22:07.336) And on the early rider side too, it's interesting because there are other companies now that are starting to understand the value of what you guys are doing now and are interested in kind of replicating or doing something collaborative in terms of a model and some interesting deals that are kind of coming out from the Latin American side of things, potentially on the loan servicer side that would like to kind of replicate the model, understanding the risks out there. know everything from seeing some other opportunities whether it's you know the the gold and Bitcoin collaboration side that you canter is kind of touching on their number of other opportunities there plus you know then on the other side of things there are other privately held companies that are trying to do the same micro strategy type play but in different markets of investors that can't attract or invest in publicly available or publicly traded markets as well as some different routing companies as well just trying to you know service different clients and potentially even like the strategies and other Bitcoin treasury companies of the world of getting additional routing fees through lightning. So, you know, honestly really really no shortage of things going on at the moment so if any of that's interesting to you feel free to reach out. Jackson Mikalic (01:23:29.442) Yeah, on my side, don't need to spend too much time. It's similar to what Michael and Brian brought up. The physical security thing was something that... I'd say it wasn't brought up too frequently on conversations and what didn't seem to be a concern of people's like six to 12 months ago, but with more data leaks happening, people know that their information is out there. They know that they have to KYC on platforms and there's records of how much Bitcoin they've purchased and moved to self custody. So certainly an increase in concern for themselves or families as it relates to just managing this asset long term. And one of the questions that typically comes up was how does OnRamp protect their clients against it? You can always reach out and we could talk about it in more detail, but just in case someone might not be ready to have a conversation, just the short of it is with self-custody, you typically have immediate access or close to immediate access to your funds, which can be a good thing, but it's also, if you're storing a significant amount of Bitcoin there, you probably don't want to have immediate access to all of your wealth. Michael Tanguma (01:24:26.171) Thank you. Jackson Mikalic (01:24:34.126) because then you can be coerced to move it and you're never going to get it back. So there's a lot of stop gaps in place to prevent that happening to our clients. There's signing delays, there's video verifications with independent businesses. So we actually have to speak to our clients as part of this withdrawal process. You can add additional controls. You could choose to meet with someone in person. So there's just a ton of different layers of verification in place intentionally because our clients are working with us for a significant amount of their net worth. And it doesn't mean every client that we work with has 100 or 1000 Bitcoin. We work with clients that have far more reasonable amounts of Bitcoin that probably a lot of our listeners have. But for them, it's like, this is a lot of my net worth. This might be 25, 50, 90 percent of my net worth. And I don't want to be in a position where someone can put a gun to my head or kidnap my child and pretty much drain me for all that I'm worth. So this is just market structure that needs to be in place, regardless of not of on-ramp. We build our business for long term resiliency and eliminating single points of failure. I know for a fact there's going to be more models like this in the future because there needs to be for Bitcoin to actually be adopted at the scale that we want to because the alternative is everyone will just buy ETFs because they don't want it to be their problem and then self custody will still exist. But there's going to be more and more attack vectors on people that store significant amounts. So not to say that you shouldn't use self custody, but people are starting to reconsider. Do I want to have 100 % or do I even want to have 50 % of my Bitcoin accessible immediately or within, you know, a close drive, whatever it may be. Michael Tanguma (01:26:12.758) Yeah, I think the fun part of what we're doing here is there's a big opportunity ahead of us for everyone listening and us in general, like working within the portfolio companies and we're building it on ramp. And the opportunity I see is because the rest of the market doesn't appreciate it. And so why I would hope folks listen to us and are clients of us and invest in early writers and, and is there ultimately see a vision of the future that we're making a very large bet on before everyone else does? Because we've been talking about this for years now and they may be a little unpopular. It goes back to the Bitcoin treasury stuff, but we're saying we're putting our neck out specifically myself in that. been around long enough. We've seen this and also understand that yes, you can make some money and other things, but long term, if you're looking to preserve wealth, there's a very, time, timeless way to do it. And it's really low time preference and really conducive to just like being patient, being prudent and, and prudence ties into like, not getting knocked out of the game because God forbid one bad thing happens when somebody attacks you or attacks a family member all the way to just thinking about the other stuff we talk about. So I look at that as fun because I've talked about it before, but it's like I liken it always to like music. It's like when you find music that nobody knows about, it's always really fun and enjoyable because you kind of get this like secret in the world. And then once everyone knows that it's like, all right, kind of there. I think like, this is the fun part for me is where you get to talk about these concepts that people kind of look at it like that doesn't make sense or somebody has selling hardware devices or insurance or, you know, single custody and they do proof of reserves and everyone has these notions because they built all their business around it. So they have to back into that and we built our business around it. So we're backing into it, but we just believe that this will be in a future state, the standard from a lot of experience. And so, you know, we'd hope eventually whether it's today or in the future, you kind of come to that realization as well. And then that's going to provide a lot of value. Michael Tanguma (01:28:14.565) for us and you because you're going to remember that it's like we're the firm and the people that we're seeing around the corners and helping to protect. So I get a lot of enjoyment. know everyone else here does as well. So we'd encourage you guys to reach out or share feedback if we need to do something better to explain these concepts. Cause a lot of people still think they hold a key in the quorum and have to figure that out or like on ramp, you know, hold this, I don't know where it is. I'm holding a ledger for anybody listening in me and like Mike Belshe, whoever the other key holder just like, you know, can sign assets and We still have a lot of educating to do, but again, that's the fun part because we see the amount of interest and demand coming. And so it's just really about distilling these concepts till they're kind of widely known and become a standard. Jackson Mikalic (01:28:59.606) Sweet. Yeah, I mean, for anyone who's made it this far, please throw a like, please leave a comment. My life depends on you doing this. My life depends on you doing this or Michael's going to fire me. So you have to leave a like on the podcast. Michael Tanguma (01:29:05.819) Jackson Jackson's fatigued. I don't Brian Cubellis (01:29:06.71) Sound off. Sound off in the comments. Michael Tanguma (01:29:14.715) I don't know if his life depends on it, but I will say that we're discussing a raise. Jackson's was docked that he's looking at close to a million dollar houses. I don't necessarily know if that raise is in order. think he's probably pretty good for another year. Brian Cubellis (01:29:25.696) Ha Jackson Mikalic (01:29:33.528) Damn. Brian Cubellis (01:29:34.41) He's getting outbid by the boomers, dude. He's not landing a bid at 600K. Jackson Mikalic (01:29:40.204) Wave the inspection, wave the inspection, all cash. Michael's going to have me sell all of my Bitcoin so I can put an all cash offer in, wave the inspection. My wife's going to get like some disease from the mold in the house and it's all going to be your fault. Michael Tanguma (01:29:40.206) If you think it's bad. Brian Cubellis (01:29:43.904) You Michael Tanguma (01:29:53.371) The ultimate fiat peak when it came to like probably financialization was 2021 when you remember all the money that was getting thrown around specifically around houses. was like, you know, sight unseen for people out of state. There was people there, you know, call it 10 to 35 to 40 % offers cash above asking price. And I was looking around and then it was the last one. I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. It's like, this is just, this is almost like a mini humiliation ritual. And the last one we got, and it was just by luck because the guy messed up on the listing. There wasn't that much demand, but point being is, yeah, whatever you're feeling right now is like insane in 21 and nobody, and like a lot of people are completely underwater because of it's just, yeah, it's not a good place to be. Jackson Mikalic (01:30:42.35) Well, no, is. It's a total mess. It still is. Like the housing market is just all cash offers, no inspection. When I said earlier in the show, we went to a few open houses. I go, yeah, There's already five offers on this house. If you want to buy it, you have to have an offer in by eight o'clock. So, yeah, great. I'm going to make a decision for like the next 10 years of my life based on the two hours of thinking about it and looking at it for 10 minutes. It's just like, it's just nonsense. So maybe Brian, I'll maybe I'll rent because Brian told me in Nashville, it was in Dallas in November. I was like, yeah, maybe we'll buy a house. then Brian's like, looked at me like. Michael Tanguma (01:31:11.653) We need to put make a... Brian Cubellis (01:31:14.634) Keep rentin' man. Brian Cubellis (01:31:20.874) wait for the monetary premium to continue to erode from the real estate market and buy a house when it's actually worth its utility value. Michael Tanguma (01:31:29.551) and the opportunity cost of the down payment and don't discount what your wife is gonna wanna do in upgrading and how much Bitcoin is gonna cost you to upgrade. You're literally gonna be able to buy a house with what you would have spent in the liquid cash to do or sell your Bitcoins. Just don't do it. Liam Nelson (01:31:30.1) Try it. Jackson Mikalic (01:31:42.776) I'll send her this episode to listen to. Brian Cubellis (01:31:44.244) Not financial advice, of course. Michael Tanguma (01:31:45.723) Real quick, if this was like a sitcom, the way that this would happen is like Jackson would buy the house side on scene because he really needed it. And he'd go down to the basement and the guy from the New York dude that was pissing at the hotel would just be down there like living in his basement. If anybody hasn't listened, you should listen to the Tim Cotsman New York live podcast to understand what we're referring to. Brian Cubellis (01:32:09.674) and all-timer. Jackson Mikalic (01:32:11.765) Yeah, that's why I didn't go to Vegas. It was between our last trip out there and my last hotel experience in New York. I just couldn't do it. Well, all right. It was fun. We'll see you next week. Brian Cubellis (01:32:23.04) Fun one, boys. Appreciate it. Thanks for joining us, Liam. We'll have to have you back soon. Liam Nelson (01:32:27.518) Thanks for having me, guys.