BitGo's $2.1B IPO & Silver's Surge: The Sound Money Reset Is Just Starting

[music] It all comes down to computers communicating. >> The information [music] superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. Bitcoin is [music] worthless artificial gold. >> Is it still rat poison? >> Probably rat poison squared. >> We need to get into [music] the world of Okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet [music] of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction [music] to a giga transaction. [music] The internet is going to be one of the major forces for [music] reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable [music] ecash. >> All righty, gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, January 26th, 2026, 2:9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Boys, another week, >> more all-time highs for the precious metals, for the shiny rocks, and Bitcoin's still in the 80s. Are we Are you guys okay? Is everyone okay? >> Well, the listeners are okay. You know, we want to check on you. Want to check on the team here. It feels like it's been a crazy like 72 hours. I'm sure if you were anywhere near inclement or weird weather. You had a plan. I'm still [snorts] in the middle of it. Um there's weird stuff happening in Minnesota, there's weird stuff happening across the country. Uh but part of this show, we're going to like work to be very energetic to start so we make sure everyone sticks around. And and I was telling the guys this, but I have to prove that like I'm prepared. So I have I've never even had these before, but at this hotel I'm at there's a two Celsius. And then we're gonna get Nicknack probably to sponsor the show. So I'm prepared for the energy levels and uh I just want to make sure you guys are because you know the Bitcoin price might be a little uh little little tempered right now, but we are not. We are not. Look at this. Look at this [ __ ] I mean this is what I will say. It is just astounding. So silver has added the equivalent of one Bitcoin market cap in the last 30 days. over the last six months, it's added three Bitcoin market caps to its market cap. Um, now if you zoom out a little here, things start to get a little different. >> Um, so, you know, always always be be aware of of zooming out and not looking at any short ter short time frame um and drawing uh too many conclusions. But, uh, yeah, you said it well. There's a lot going on in the world. Um I think if I zoom out and think about what it means for precious metals to be running like this, I think it's easy to conflate and say, oh, you know, it's um reshoring uh industrial manufacturing, all these things we need, you know, we need all these precious metals and uh materials to build things domestically. Uh and so I think it's easy to miss that like what it really reflects is is the money breaking and uh a a flight to sound money effectively. Um, and I kind of perceive silver as like, you know, kind of an altcoin to gold in some sense. Um, so it kind of makes sense in that context that it's right now at least running a little bit harder than gold has been. >> Um, but what do you guys make of this? >> Look, I mean, this is easily the most exciting time probably um that's ever existed. Uh, definitely in this space. And I was just having a conversation last week was very eye opening. I was meeting with a number of banks and and just to maybe we'll tie into a little bit of what's happening on the capital market side to this, but I was also an hour ago meeting with um a prospective or investor that's coming in and um investors also left a a large he may be listening um but left a large firm and and and branched out to build a bitcoin business and I was explaining to him that you know riskadjusted right bitcoin it's great we know the price entry point but really when you look back at the past four years in this bare market we've said and when you think about business building and I pinch myself every day when when I think about a lot of the infrastructure and groundwork that is allowed in the time that's being allowed to build because ultimately when it's quiet and this is quiet time there's so much work that can be done versus when everything's getting thrown at you and so you know we're either very very right or very very wrong and I always want to be in that spot because that's where you get paid for and so when you say to your point, you know, gold adding go you go back roughly 12 months ago and effectively like I don't even know what is that like 10 to 20 Bitcoin market caps. I mean the the the the real fact is the world waking up that to the dollar's dying and that not we talked about this on the last trade doesn't have to leak into it or whatever. is just the notion that the dollar's dying and as people understand that and people look at gold you it's not a far direction elite from gold to BTC and that whole like not only narrative but market structure and infrastructure has to reassert itself to that new world and that is what's being rebuilt right now in quiet time and then when that thing runs and everyone's working on stable coins and multi-party computation wallets and and you know companies are IPOing and the people that focus just on this asset class and the best-in-class products and services. This is how I was explaining it to him. Not because I was trying to also, you know, um keep the spirits up because I fully believe it. But also for somebody that's just starting like it's a thing. If you remember jumping in the space, I was telling him, "Welcome to the trial by fire. How are you doing?" Because I've been hiring in this space for so long and and it and it's not even about that. It's about that every we're usually in downturns in Bitcoin. Like that's just a sick part of it is like you're usually involved when the price is going down, not up. And so everyone, whether it's like joining on ramp or have hired previously at other businesses, you come in or you leave a firm to start a business and the Bitcoin price just tanks and you're just like questioning your whole thing because one time once it's your money, it's one thing, but you're still getting paid fiat. But then when you're tied to the industry and everything's a little quiet and soft and it's like look, this is just part of the process. Um, but the point in all of that is you get the real multiples and infrastructure because there's only so many builders, there's only so many people been paying attention to this space, so many people taking the time. And so I just pinch myself at all this because it's not a matter of if, it's just when. And so not only do you know that it's a win, but you're also getting more time to lay the groundwork on your multiples and the valuation. And we get to look at more deals. Uh I love it. I I love it because everyone's losing their mind and people are bleeding out. People have been hanging out there in the Bitcoin space. No net new clients, all the things associated with this kind of like quasi bare market and we're just getting stronger. We're investing in better companies. We're raising capital on the on-ramp side. Um, so I think it's a it's a great time to be in the industry. >> Totally agree. Uh, I also think it's interesting, you know, if you just reflect on sort of all the times throughout Bitcoin's history that people have proclaimed it dead. It feels like, uh, we're sort of in another uh, instance of that where u people are detracting, saying, you know, it's broken. And it's really, I would say it's more so on the crypto side that people are saying like the the original ethos of of quoteunquote crypto and particularly like web three stuff uh really is dead and it's kind of become uh you know co-opted to some extent by traditional banking who are going to use these rails but to their own benefit and not necessarily um to the original uh sort of value props of the crypto communities that that sort of built a lot of those rails. Um, so that's an interesting dynamic that I think we're seeing play out in real time as these fintexs, the banks, uh, lean into stable coins, real world assets, all those kinds of things. It's kind of like, um, you know, a lot of the things that were purported to be the value props and the forms of utility of crypto kind of all just surmounted to digital dollars and uh, marginal efficiencies for uh, money movement and uh, you know, asset tokenization to some extent. Um, and Bitcoin can get kind of conflated in that, but I think the real signal is well, Bitcoin's value prop has always been sound money. Uh, and the thesis for sound money is being reflected in in gold right now um to a to a pretty massive degree on on a global scale. Um, so I think there's real credence and credibility to that value prop and and why Bitcoin exists. Um whereas for the rest of crypto, it's kind of in this interesting spot where people are recognizing that there's value there, but it's sort of on the margins and it's incremental for a lot of these uh legacy systems to basically upgrade um to these more digitally native rails. Um so yeah, that's kind of where we're at. And Michael, you mentioned um the infrastructure side and and all of that sort of progressing quietly. Uh a big headline from last week, which uh we'll we'll start here, was uh Bitco finally going public. um believe it opened at $18. I'm not exactly sure where it is right now. Uh but m Mike maybe I'll hand it to you. Uh Bitco is a a key partner of On-Ramp and uh have been great partners to us on the infrastructure side, but uh maybe just the significance of this to you. Uh what are your thoughts? >> Yeah, I mean I think this is uh I think they're they're touting it as one of the first pure play kind of digital infrastructure businesses. Bitco being you know it's they're very under widely appreciated I think because they're generally been behind the scenes Mike Belshi CEO uh inventor of multisig which is widely you know not known that architecture as well that's used across the industry for like collaborative custody was really pioneered by bitco with their open architecture holding a key and then uh creating different sandboxes for infrastructure players and then obviously it branched out. One of the other things that's very widely not [clears throat] known is um in the 23 bare market. So the market collapses in 22 23 you know a lot of firms are gone blew up got in bed with the wrong counterparties was fairly conservative. I believe their chief compliance officer was formerly ch COO I think at uh Coinbase. So very like polished business. they um aggregated and consolidated a lot in the industry around uh custody and infrastructure and then also raised a pretty significant round of that bare market to be aggressive when it came to um the amount of infrastructure and client. So I think they sit at a little over hundred billion dollars in total crypto assets under custody. It's an interesting model. I think what's most fascinating it'll if you look through the S1 and and I was playing around with our our girl Claudette which is funny because my wife says it's a it's a boy and I say it's a girl. I I don't and so I don't know if it's a they them or if there's a if we have to decide but either way um last night was referring to you know their their economics and it's an interesting uh dynamic because I think they t like 16 billion in revenue but in reality it's about 500 million because the 16 billion is because they're on a principal basis on the trading side which has very slim margins. So they're really at about 500 million in revenue and then they're right about break even if not like a million to $2 million in net profit. And so I think what's going to be very interesting to see how they scale that. Now the thing that I'll say is the infrastructure is the hardest layer um because it's it's infinitely scalable when you think about it. So a lot of the groundwork and things that people need to be laying into whether it's custody trading, they have a new stable coin issuance product. So, um I think really now is to see their stock price and what happens. Thinking about this out loud, there's probably a tale of there'll be a tail of two paths and we'll see where it plays out over the course of the next call it 12 to 16 months, one to five years. Is do they go down a path of distribution and being able to really monetize across being infrastructure and taking some margin in BIPS across these transactions or do they end up acquired by a large scale bank that needs that infrastructure? Um, so that's kind of how I'm thinking about it. But it's awesome to see in the industry and then obviously with their bank charter and being uh a custodian in our multi-institution product really levels up across the board. A great example of that is they're not only a qualified custodian but a trust charter and they hold over hundred billion dollars in assets and then they've also are now a publicly traded company because obviously it still comes up you know a lot of folks are uneducated or or need a little bit more understanding of how multi-institution works the legal frameworks the keys being segregated and it'll come up because you know we're we're all adversarial what would happen if two custodians would collude and that kind of changes a little bit when you have a publicly traded company because uh there's a lot of reasons why publicly traded company wouldn't collude to steal somebody's, you know, 10 million or even our largest clients, uh, Bitcoin. >> Yeah, >> Liam, any thoughts on this one? >> Very well said. I think um one of the interesting aspects of Bitco is as a cost of going to market and these different uh products and solutions really compress whether it's um you know existing fintexs that want to offer bitco bitcoin and digital assets in general is um their new market structure um any type of bank or fintech that needs to offer it to their clients. Bitco is um done a very nice job of offering a B2B TTOC type infrastructure. So um you know today we're seeing not just digital assets but everything apps across almost every type of app there is um and not just app but just like platforms um whether it's prediction market equities and digital assets and I think that um BO is as that continues to proliferate as there's clearer um rules of the road for market structure and um what that means for your clients BO has a nice wedge of being able to offer that B2B see play. Um, and so I think that that's an interesting proposition in a world where I think we just continue to see um very strong compression in terms of the actual like trading fees of Bitcoin and um broader digital asset uh sphere and I know those guys have been working for 13 years and have been through a lot of up and downs and uh a very uncertain and um volatile time in the industry. So, it's uh just huge congrats to the team as as they go public now, >> 100%. And um another one we had on the list, we don't have to spend a ton of time on this, but I I do think it's um relevant just given um you know, thinking about Bitco's IPO and then, you know, I think Kraken is still preparing uh its IPO. But then we had uh this news from the other day, Ledger is mulling a uh IPO at over 4 billion. Um, you know, Ledger's been in the news for uh some not so great reasons uh recently and sort of historically over the years um in terms of PII being leaked um for hardware devices uh which have have led to a lot of uh both digital and physical uh attacks on crypto holders. Um any any thoughts on this one? A $4 billion valuation for for Ledger? I think the biggest thing it's it's similar with Bitco um because the Ledger hardware device and the amount of assets that flow through it. I would say it was considerably harder to monetize is really how do you just monetize around those custody assets because if they're sitting in cold storage, it's harder to on underwrite these firms when it comes to um traditional custody in digital assets versus finance when it comes to net interest margin and what's going on with that underlying. And so that's really going to be I think the the thing to look out for is where does the value acrew in a stack which is around infrastructure or is it around like the client-f facing financial services? Is it somebody hybrid mixture of both or is it the CL client facing financial services because ultimately we understand especially in 2026 how much brand and distribution matter and I always like to point back to like Goldman Sachs versus the whatever the the bank that when you used to I haven't been in Walmart in a long time but there's like a bank in Walmart and like they basically have the same rails when you think about a checking account but the value that can be charged and and derived from them are fundamentally different and it's because of Goldman Sachs brand and the the network and the client services they've developed. And so I think that's really the hard part around infrastructure and just pure play custody and backend is can you get to a scale where the margins make sense to really build a Goliath of a business in this space or do you really have to own that full client relationship to Liam's point on the B2B TOC to extract mass value? Uh I don't think we know yet. we have our take on it on how we're building on-ramp but um I think that's just an interesting dynamic to watch out for being specifically with ledger is their hardware manufacturer sales I would imagine are a predominant version of that they have their enterprise sales um but really figuring out they're close to the asset and the pitch that they make to investors historically is if you get close to the asset we can monetize it that's still TBD um so that's just something to be aware of >> yeah I'm I'm not 100% sure but I would imagine that the vast majority majority of the enterprise value of how they're looking at Ledger is Ledger Live and them offering uh the ability to buy, sell, swap between different uh crypto assets directly in the app. And that's likely where a large percentage of their gross profit actually comes from and they can take a premium spread on that versus a Coinbase because there are some types of people who will um you know pay for that just to make sure that it's in cold storage as they do that. And so, um, I'm I'm interested to see how this one plays out. Um, what type of institutional investors there are and, uh, any kind of disclosures that they have in the S1. Um, but yeah, TPD on where this ends up falling out, um, as they go public. >> Yeah. The only thing I would say is like, and and I'm not positioning this as like necessarily a good or a bad thing. I just think it's a reality of the um different variety increasing variety of access points that people have to crypto assets at this point. So I I would say onboarding folks to hardware devices um has probably plateaued to some extent um just given the uh you know the emergence of ETF products uh other easier ways um that are more familiar with less friction uh for people to get exposure to these assets. And so I think you're right, Liam, that a lot of what this uh enterprise value is probably stemming from is is stuff outside of just pure hardware device sales. Um basically everything else that the company does with Electric Live, etc. More on the software side as opposed to the hardware side. Um so that part I guess makes sense to me, but yeah. Go ahead, Mike. That's a it's a great point to bring up as far as um the parallels remind me of in order to talk about like Brex and some of the anecdotes on why they sold like there's still asymmetric information and understanding of like what you just referenced because there's a story around 4 billion valuation. I think they also tout 100 billion in bitcoin. I think it's 100 billion in bitcoin um in there. It's not, you know, however you want to phrase the custody, but if you have like certain metrics and you're underwriting what a what a user is worth from the amount of assets into your point, Liam, if they're monetizing via Ledger Live, I don't you can't make the case, and I think it's what Brian's alluding to, that you can extrapolate that into the future because what somebody onboarded 10 Bitcoin or 100 Bitcoin or a,000 Bitcoin with a ledger is a fundamentally does is not true moving forward. So that's like something that I don't think investors fully account for is that person putting 10 million bucks or whatever the number is on a on a single ledger. And then the other side of that is that those individuals are increasingly feeling the pain in moving those assets to other third party platforms. And that could be because of the physical attacks that could be digital attacks and that can also just simply be because they want better financial services. Allah ETFs, banks, every Bitcoin data firms our platform. And so I I think this also goes into maybe why IPO, but really the asymmetry and not fully understanding this landscape. I can guarantee you a lot of things we just talked about are foreign to all these firms and ledger can say they have, you know, reasons why that's not going to happen. But when you work with day-to-day, they've onboarded billions of dollars off of ledger devices. They are fundamentally like the worst device ever, at least the early ones uh to to manage assets on specifically Bitcoin. So, it's really like ledgers are a have been a nice stop gap in this industry, but another great anecdote is when we talk with, you know, very wealthy investors that have assets on Coinbase and then they buy the ledger, but they never unwrap it. Like, they know they should take it off the the the platform and then they get kind of crushed twice because they bought this device they're never going to use. Uh, and then their PI is hacked, so now they're at risk because people think their assets are there. So, um, yeah, I I'd be much more bullish on, uh, Bitco than than Ledger, actually. >> 100% agreed. Um, the last thing that is worth at least touching on very high level is I wonder what their enterprise uh, offering looks like because I know IBEC through um, having ledgers uh, across a number of different um, types of people within the entity resulted in that hack uh, that happened. I think it was early la around this time last year. Um, so I wonder if they offer something different to enterprise um for their security. >> Well, they do. I mean, so Ledger does have a very sophisticated enterprise offering. It's pretty expensive. It's actually kind of like the standard for a lot of firms in this space. It's fundamentally different in my understanding than what they were what Bybit was using. I think Vive bit at least for um the smart contract that they that they created for the multi-IG on Ethereum I'm pretty sure they used it because this was in the writings um that there was anecdotes they were using like the Ledger ones or the nanos and there's a lot of problems when you run that because of the scripting language. So generally like in Bitcoin multi-IG when you're doing the transaction you're going to get the change addresses and you're going to get all the information but I believe that they had put this together and so on the the the ledger ones or nanos you only got like a hash and so unless you were going to verify the hash was the place it was going to that was what was manipulated. So um I don't necessarily know if Viva was using their enterprise offering and I think they duct taped uh their basically solution together because they were using like what's the thing Brian? It's um >> uh there's a Nosis Nosis safe. >> So like that's the thing that most people don't know is like there's multisig that's native to the Bitcoin protocol. It's the only crypto asset and then others can t multisig but the reality is they're building a proprietary um uh smart contract on top of the single uh uh address or private key >> and trouble. Yeah, typically closed source proprietary stuff and so Nosis uh GN OIS is I think is uh what was actually where that that vulnerability was. But um yeah, all said um I did want to go maybe zooming out a little bit uh just in terms of uh broader fundraising. Uh Michael, you'd shared this uh pretty thorough report on the year that was 2025 in terms of crypto fundraising. Uh 50.6 6 billion raised uh across 1,400 rounds. Um there's an an interesting sort of takeaway here for me was that you know a lot of this was M&A activity. So roughly half uh of this deal volume was across only 21 transactions. So pretty massive M&A deals um going on. Uh maybe Michael, I'll just hand it to you. What what what uh stuck out to you in this in this report? Yeah. So, if anybody's interested in like capital formation allocation in this industry, I would highly suggest looking through it. I fully I wasn't able it's very long and and looks well done. Um, but to your point, the things that stood out really was the M&A because this was kind of a quotequote record year, but also about half of that was via M&A. Um, and then if you scroll down, I think it's probably like halfway, maybe a little less than halfway, is the complete list of 2025 M&A transactions. >> When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, peace of mind starts with architecture. On-ramp's multi-institution custody distributes control across three independent regulated keyholders in a two of three quarum. No single point of failure, no pulled or omnibus exposure, segregated client titled vaults. You retain full legal ownership while on-ramp coordinates security, compliance, and operational workflows behind the scenes. It strength of many delivered through the simplicity of one. Multi-institution custody is the foundation for everything we build. Sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional controls. And now on-ramp is piloting flat, predictable pricing, making best-in-class Bitcoin custody and financial services more accessible now than ever. On-ramp strength and many simplicity and one to learn more, check out onrampbitcoin.com. >> I think that was interesting uh because it ultimately it's a little bit further down. It shows the uh acquisitions that took place. Yeah. And so Dunamu I think that's the South Korean um it was I think a large like trad but when you look at uh Darabit Ninja Trader Hidden Road a lot of this obviously financial services and then get and being purchased by incumbents I think this trend is something we've been talking about we're going to see more and more of it I was meeting with a lot of banks last uh week and it's just incredible I mean the the desperate kind of uh conver the the the the segmented areas of like understanding of like money movement being digital native versus the legacy firms even if they have the full mental models to be able to incorporate that and build like tasteful commercial products is not there. Um and then if you scroll down the other thing that was that I wanted to call out was right there. Yeah. So VC investment by project category and um when you look at the deal count you know you might as well put them together but it was really far almost like 100% more uh deal count was in finance and banking and infrastructure and then when you look at the total capital raised uh finance and banking was about at least 50% from prediction markets um but then double almost anything else from payment and infrastructure and I thought that made a lot of sense because And the whole world when it comes to finance and the movement of money is fundamentally changing. Uh it's really crazy. We see it behind you know the scenes when you look at all these different um you know what is it called like tiny window accounts that are kind of almost already being established. I know there's like more formal process with the Treasury, but in reality, when you think about a lot of these stable coin issuers and they're effectively bypassing uh what banks have been able to do and offer virtual accounts and then the yield uh or passing that through. It's going to just be a fascinating uh game to watch play out where the incumbents are scrambling. They're going to be making acquisitions. They're also going to be developing products and then at the same time and those firms are going to there's two places they're going to go. So the the incumbents are going to be building infrastructure for other incumbents to help them get up to speed, but then at the same time, you're going to have the digital natives. Uh so you're going to have other incumbents that are building solutions like Lee Bank for for the digital natives to go. And I think like what's happening is a concerted bet that the digital natives like if they provide the plumbing there, they will be able to outpace in that new adoption because I do think like independent of incumbents in what they do, there is a reality that Wells Fargo is Wells Fargo. Like I don't know anybody under the age of like 30 or 40 years old that would go and like start a deen to know like net new bank account relationship with them if they're thinking about like Bitcoin ownership lending against it needing a a card to spend dollars like things like that. And so it makes a lot of sense where you see infrastructure and finance and banking because you have these new rails and you get a net new company find a niche or segment of the market that they can start from and then grow. Uh again it's just a fascinating time. Yeah, I mean it reminds me of kind of what I I was saying at the start of the pod, which is like this bifurcation between crypto, which is sort of just morphed to effectively like upgrading the legacy rails versus like Bitcoin, new form of money sort of separate. And I think this data uh around the category um the category volume like kind of backs that up, right? Finance, banking, payments, infrastructure, asset management at the top of the list. I think prediction markets was sort of just a hype wave around that specifically that doesn't necessarily need a blockchain like you know Kalry doesn't use uh blockchain native rails poly market does um but you know four out of the top five are basically like upgrading legacy tech with with um you know marginally faster cheaper rails um and so this is kind of uh indicative of of I think where we are in terms of what the broader crypto space has become uh particularly as it relates to like where fundraising is is headed towards and what what things are being built and allocated towards. Um you know it's it's you know if you look at the bottom of this list it's like web 3 interoperability social networks a lot of the things that were highly touted in sort of 17 18 19 from the cryptosphere as like the revolutionary aspects of crypto um those are getting less love and and what is getting love is effectively like upgrading tradi in my mind. Liam, any thoughts? >> No, I would completely agree with that and I know it's on the list too, but essentially crypto almost doesn't even really exist anymore. It's uh it's becoming merged exactly with the traditional finance and banking system in general. Um, and you know, you can see it through the new articles of, uh, Galaxy Digital starting a, you know, $100 million hedge fund in order to put in 30% into tokens and then 70% into um, alternative um, publicly traded equities that can understand uh, or to have thesis around how digital assets will um, create different winners and losers within the system. And it just makes so much sense because um there are going to be firms that adopt this faster and are going to be net new winners and can understand what like the taste of what the consumers actually want and uh both have the distribution for it. And then there are going to be others who either don't have the distribution and just get um you know squeezed out or they don't uh take too long in order to actually you know either partner or launch their own products or buy their uh the relevant businesses and then they just continue to be squeezed out or lose market share. So um I think that you know it's in maybe even next year it's going to you know not necessarily make a ton of sense to call something a crypto company. it's uh or a banking company like they're just going to be merged into one. >> Yeah. And we had a couple couple things on the list that that sort of speak directly to that um in terms of basically, you know, these TRFI incumbents that are in the process of making that convergence happen. And so this was one uh from last week, EBS plans to offer crypto trading for some wealthy clients. We've seen a number of these types of announcements from, you know, the Wells Fargo, the city banks, um, basically, you know, positioning themselves, putting themselves out there as, uh, we are thinking about this. We're thinking critically about it, how we're going to go about, uh, offering these things to our clients, integrating them into our existing systems. Um, and so this says the Swiss banking giant, which oversaw 4. Wealth assets as of September 30th, is in the process of selecting partners for their crypto offering. So again, this is still early stages. remains to be seen who they end up partnering with. If I had to guess, probably Coinbase as as that's sort of been the uh what we've seen with a lot of these folks um is just doing subcustodian relationships or partnerships uh with the Coinbases of the world to offer these things. And that makes sense from the perspective of you know what we do know about building out a lot of these things from scratch is it takes a long time. And so these guys don't really have that lead time to be competitive uh in this world. And so that's why you've seen so much M&A last year and that's why I think you're going to continue continue to see that uh ramp up this year is because these guys have to get something done uh as soon as possible in order to be competitive with their peers which are all doing the same thing. Um and so uh there was one other on the list, but Mike, do you have any thoughts on this one? >> No, not necessarily on that, but it it ties into maybe the other on the list. It's worth it's it's unrelated, but I can't help but see like how they end up meeting is um uh Ford and GM got approved for banking charters as well, >> cuz I think that when you just tie into the notion of anybody that has like a consumer relationship and then requires some form of credit, you're just going to be able to create better rails, especially at this scale when you think about credit lending, generation, creation of dollars. if you it's it's I don't know if it's exactly analogous, but like when you go into uh Amazon or you need to go into a big box store and you'd set up a credit card to get you have your affinity or affiliation there and then it's just like another logical step if you get the benefits and that's your primary dealer or whatever you're going to park your dollars next to it. Uh I think it's just a fascinating time and we saw Sony come out with this um about six months ago as well getting a banking license I believe in the United States. Um, so this just ties more into money movement, lending, uh, and capital flows that we'll see more firms start to get formal or informal banking, uh, relationships or charters based on, you know, partnerships. >> Yeah. Uh, this was a deal, just a deal we had on the list. Um, I don't know who brought it, but uh, Vera, I had never heard of Vera. Uh, Singapore crypto startup raises 10 million. What do these guys do? >> Yeah, it's worth actually going to their site because it's pretty clean. It's really the same uh concept we just talked about, right? So you you ultimately have it says global neo bank built on chain. Um so you have the right side which is the incumbents. You can consider Ford and GM an incumbent. They've had traditional relationships with banks and how they set up loans, set up bank accounts and so they're looking to bring that into their platform. And then you have the other side which is uh digital native firms. This firm happens to be kind of a crypto bitcoin native firm. They offer like USDC cards against it, custody. Um, they just raised $10 million. I think it's still towards more of a vent on the crypto side, but the reality is that this is a three to4 trillion dollar industry that has been severely underserved. and these individuals like there's a nice overlap when you think about a lot of the stuff that's happening in AI, the cloud stuff, crypto, like it's people that are on the bleeding edges of consumer um technology adoption and those individuals want best-in-class experiences and it doesn't matter how hard the Wells Fargos or some of these other banks that are looking to be digitally native, they're never going to build the APIs. They're never going to bu think from first principles. Like think about like Stripe buying bridge. I'm fairly confident if it wasn't the Collison brothers that it disrupted a whole market the bridge founders wouldn't have sold to a I mean I could be wrong here but my thesis is like the Goldman's or another firm because ultimately there's too much it goes back to the whole bureaucracy and all the things associated. So I it's something to look out for when you see these net new firms come because if they have the right taste if they have the right product um and really the right area of the market because that's how you start in any of these businesses. You got to have like an earned secret for a segment of the market that's been underserved. And if you can start there, then the whole game in entrepreneurship is just iterating long enough to stay alive. Whether it's somebody's going to acquire you, you're going to build enough of a base. And so I'm just keeping an eye on uh more native companies building with this new kind of like uh ultimately design surface for financial services that hadn't occurred where ultimately anybody can be a bank today. Anybody can move capital flows, anybody can custody assets. and how you tie that all together and serve a certain segment of the market is going to really be uh rewarded with acquisitions, deal flow, and other opportunities. >> Interesting. Um Liam, any thoughts on that one or? >> No, nothing to add there. >> So, we have a few uh links on the AI front. Should we do a little AI AI corner? Uh and Mike, maybe I'll start with with your tweet from this morning. Uh I'll just pull that up here. as a percentage of GDP spending on AI is expected to make all other technology cycles look small. Um, where did you grab this one from? This looks like it's from ARC. >> I think it is from ARC. Yeah, I um there was a couple in there. I I think the main one to call this out is just to contextualize the amount of spend across the board because this ties into we don't even necessarily have to pull it up but it was um it was kind of under reportported but uh Sam Alman's looking to raise $50 billion uh to continue on the streak um in the Middle East and it's just I don't really have the best taker lens outside of um you know there will be a lot of capital destroyed there'll be a lot of businesses that are built from it but it's just a fascinating a fascinating thing to watch play out before our eyes. The amount of capital being deployed across um this ecosystem and then also the ferociousness of net new people uh coming in and utilizing these tools. I think that's really the bullish case for for AI and the proliferation and value to be accured is we talk a lot about you know the Bitcoin and building Bitcoin space and building infrastructure and how there's still I see so much upside because while there's some signal in crypto and stable coins and the rails that are being built they're kind of misconstrued or or not with the perfect lens because they ultimately don't understand that Bitcoin is superior money and the difference between crypto and Bitcoin and dollars in Bitcoin. And as evidences, if you if anybody's watched the Cheeky Pits podcast with the bridge and uh Stripe co-founders, like brilliant guys, but they have no idea or care about Bitcoin. They think it's probably like legacy tech. Well, the point being is as more people in this next bull run come from these large uh traditional incumbents or stripes and bridges that get Bitcoin, they're going to build worldclass businesses. Point in sharing that is I think in the AI space, those people are here. So the AI people, it's the thing that's in vogue. So you have the people working at OpenAI and Anthropic and Google and all these large companies and they're working on these tools while they're playing with them. And so you've seen this already with the just latest model of uh claude and co-work. There's all this crazy stuff that's coming out. And I think that is really where the probably a lot of the uh value is going to acrue is net new folks standing up businesses, leveraging them. Um, and then obviously once they get the lens of you want to acrew the BTC, it just gets even more interesting. So that's at least I think a bull case for where value will eventually come, but right now I mean I think there's going to be a lot of people holding bags of kind of uh dog crap when it comes to these large investments. >> Yeah, I mean this this raised news, you're right, did kind of go under the radar. Um but it was sort of uh foreshadowed in some sense that you know if you if you remember a few months ago uh Open AI declared a a code red uh a companywide code red and so and then you had you know increased competition from anthropic you know a lot of hype and and um people using claude cla code co-work uh so maybe they kind of saw that coming um and that was part of the the code red but I really think the the crux of the code red was uh you know effectively they were running out of runway um unless something changed materially to uh their offering and and basically you know usage of of their products. Um I I believe it was quoted that they were going to run out of money within like the next 12 months or something and so it was highly anticipated that they would need to raise again and so um it seems like they uh are going to the Middle East to try to do that and secure that. Uh the other interesting sort of side note of this was that there was also rumors that they were thinking about turning on ads which sort of aligns with this idea of a code red and and not uh reaching levels of uh profitability soon enough where you would actually have to turn on ads which I think at this point of the game like that would hurt that would hurt their products pretty materially in my mind if they started uh really pushing advertisements uh in their responses. Um because if if not everybody is doing that, then I think it's a pretty easy um sort of reason to cancel your your OpenAI subscription and and just use one of the other ones that doesn't serve you ads. Um any other thoughts on that? >> I don't know about the ads in particular. I think they're a startup and it's a new technology and so you can try things. They can fail. If uh if they fail, you can just fail quickly and just turn them off. And uh if there is a real consumer um hatred of ads then just whatever try it. I think the the more uh bigger thing is they just haven't necessarily kept up with uh you know the new newest latest from Claude and and the models seem to be slowing behind as well as just Gemini seems to be out there doing extremely well too and you know how uh it's so difficult for people to change their consumer behavior from going to a Google to uh something new and then just the fact that honestly people are really slow to adopt new technologies most people um still don't even they've never tried out chat GPT2 or any net new AI model and so they're um going to just do it directly from Google. Um and so yeah, I mean this this makes a ton of sense. Um the first people through the door usually are the ones that um pave pave the way for uh the next folks to like come in and understand what they actually did well and then what that actually needs to be improved upon. So, uh, definitely great for the consumer, but not sure it's going to be quite as good for the investors in these companies. >> Yeah, >> this is Go ahead. >> Go ahead. >> I was just going to say um I would speak sort of personally myself like I had been using Chat GPT for for a couple years now and one of the main reasons I was continuing to use it and and be sort of locked in was that it was one of the first to have like basically memory. So, it could uh recall your past conversations with it and really form a mosaic of who you are and what you're trying to accomplish. Now, uh Claude Anthropics model recently added that capability. So now I've been sort of using them in parallel and building up a similar sort of repository of memory information about myself on on that side. And then similarly with Gemini, I don't know if they have as pure of a memory recall uh in the model currently. Um, but you can give it access to basically your uh Google Drive or your Google Docs and then it can create a similar mosaic of of what you are and who you are what you're trying to accomplish. Um, sorry, Mike. Go ahead. >> Yeah. No, all I was going to say is um I do think there's something there's a few things happening or it feels like they're happening. one is like open I becoming too big to fail with the amount of capital from sovereigns across the board and then also large multinationals that that's almost like the scale they're going for. Um the other aspect is that I think we can't discount first mover advantages in specifically in a large market like this because think about how many people still use AOL or Yahoo emails that like most people aren't looking at the bleeding edges to get the like the ultimate edge. They get locked into a certain service as long as it's okay. Okay. And so I can see how chat GBT would could be could land there. The other thing is randomly with all this like I haven't fully formulated this, but you see what's going on with all this like um uh what is it called? The claude bot or whatever the >> uh is like there's something there about unifying somebody's full experience to tie into this because the data adds more value and then also you make it seamless. And there reported like with Johnny IV supposedly gonna have this like little pin that's coming out and I think that might actually be the first like wearable that people actually gravitate towards. Not saying I would use it but there's something to if you have an elegant solution that can aggregate via video audio and then all the information depending on like how else they sync up via like Bluetooth to your phone and other things that are able to open up those capabilities. If you've seen this like weekend fervor around the the cloudbot and then you take that extrapolate to mass market, there's something there and if they go out and do that, that could really be an interesting probably maybe even their plan. Again, anybody listening, we are not AI experts. We're just like market participants and utilizing these tools and looking at it from the outside. But, uh, it's just such an hot topic right now, we felt like it'd be good. And also, we were gonna have a guest that was going to be very interested in AI, but he is a little under the weather, but we'll get him on soon and then we'll we will have a little bit more AI. Yeah, I I you just made me think of um you know in the context of sort of what you Liam you alluded to around like you know we are kind of in a a bubble particularly on Twitter like you know if you're following accounts that are involved in the AI space you're getting fed a lot of uh this stuff but like the average normie person uh is pretty much barely interacting with these tools in a real way outside of like basically using it as a new form of Google. And a a funny example is like uh over Christmas recently, I was with my father and he um he likes to talk into his phone. He likes to just like audio uh uh transcribe questions into his phone and I was like, "Oh, like what uh what models have you been using?" He was like, "Oh, I'm just using Google." I'm like, "No, you're using Gemini." Like he didn't even realize that he was using an AI chatbot. He just thought he was just googling faster. Um and so I think that's that's indicative of I think the broader landscape of users. And so I think in that context, you know, Gemini does have this massive distribution edge to a lot of these players in the sense that they're going to get the normie people who don't even know what they're using. Uh and then they end up being Gemini users. Um and you know, maybe they don't even need a wearable because their phone just becomes, you know, a wearable of sorts and then eventually you just get brain chipped and then you don't need a wearable either. But we're probably a little ways away from that. Yeah, I haven't done a lot of digging, but there's a there's great anecdotes around how all Google was is like the last 20 years we're setting up for this. So, you needed to be able to index the internet to build the AI uh deals. And so, like there's just a lot there. Um, but one thing maybe to pull up is that JP Morgan link because that also is under the the radar. And uh and I think it's just fascinating because a lot of people will say, well, what are people you utilizing this stuff for? And um there was a Wall Street Journal article that came out that I don't know the number. It's like 1,000 to 10,000 proxy adviserss that JP Morgan um uh did employ to uh look at the different portfolios that sit within their index funds and then proxy vote on their behalf and they effectively got rid of all of them and they're using an AI powered uh platform today to cast shareholder votes. It's an industry first. I don't necessarily that, you know, you you guys probably have better lend into the dynamics there um and how that works and and the potential second and third order effects, but I just thought it was fascinating for a company the size of JP Morgan scale to effectively come out and this is public. Um, this actually was reported like earlier this month, January 7th. Um, but anyway, any thoughts on that? This is this is an interesting line. JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Diamond has been one of the most outspoken critics telling an industry gathering last spring that proxy advisers are incompetent and should be gone and dead done with. Um, I guess it's not surprising to me because I think this is like on the nose like a microcosm of what the early disruption is going to look like in terms of back office sort of menial tasks of information gathering aggregation and then like you know spitting out a result which like isn't too difficult to get to basically and so I think it's kind of a perfect example of like this uh initial phase of displacement and disruption. Um but yeah, so not not super surprising to me. I guess >> what was much more interesting to me um I don't know if you guys saw the links about the uh cloud co-work in integrating an Excel and just essentially being able to clean up everything and like create pivot tables etc. It's uh that honestly um is just going to save like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of uh very low-level financial work. Um it's going to be interesting one how they develop talent in that industry too. Um but then also like I think that a lot of people really say like it's just going to put everybody out of jobs. But I also and while jobs are going to shift a lot. It's uh an interesting stat that I just saw recently is like 15% of jobs are destroyed and created each year. And so people are constantly shifting around um like what they're doing based on new needs. And so I do think um that there will be a lot more that's going to be created with this too. you can be so much faster and analyze so much more. You can really understand like if you have any ideas uh and like think about the road maps that we have about you know different things that we want to launch and how um how accelerated those timelines are going to be and then the marginal cost of actually deploying or or uh getting any of those to market is going down so significantly that people are going to be able to do so much more with this technology. not unless you're like a large public company middle manager and you don't necessarily have any ideas. You just want to you know cut a few uh people from headcount that's also going to happen. Um but it's just such an in a fascinating time that we're in right now. >> Yeah. It just made me think you guys you guys must be pinching yourselves like to get out of the positions that you were because like a lot of it is going to be like survival of the fittest meaning that what needed five researchers, analysts, somebody to do it. you're like a lot of people, especially if you have autonomy and you're a manager, like it's [snorts] much easier to be able to prompt and hold the the memory like Brian was associate saying earlier versus just the work to go and like relay that to somebody, have them do it and come back. You could just do it faster yourself and get the the output. But the other thing that I've been looking or not really looking at, but it kind of ties into all this that this stuff's moving so fast, and I know it sounds so crazy, but I don't think we're that far from like effectively having these like robots in our houses cleaning our house and like even potentially for some people looking after their kids. Because when you you think about the cost of an individual, whether it's a nanny, house cleaner, um assistant changing things and you see how fast that they're able to um you had the report a couple weeks ago about gaining some level of consciousness, but ultimately like the feedback loop and learning and you see Musk talking about this and and driving that cost down uh because it start I don't know what sparked me thinking about like you know would I ever do that because you end up with thing, but also like it's going to be made of steel and and indestructible and if it ever decides to go rogue, you're kind of like, you know, you let this thing in your house. So, it's just a fascinating thing. Like, I know this all sounds crazy, but I don't think I think within 24 months it'll probably be like VR where, you know, the first headset was 3500, the first, you know, robot will be like 15 or, you know, 35,000, $50,000. um but they'll just continue to continue to bring that cost down and then the ROI will be there versus um having to employ others and the convenience and yeah I mean it's just going to be fascinating. Well, yeah. I mean, it's also not um you know, that future world. It's it's not like those uh are onetoone. And what I mean by is like you don't you don't need a bot that's specifically for being a nanny. Like your bot can be a nanny and then it's also an expert on like fixing your plumbing, right? Like it's an expert on all it's is a generalist expert on basically anything you would tell it to do. So, um, yeah, fascinating to think about how that how that plays out. I would probably take the over on 24 months in terms of like people really adopting it, but maybe on the on the margins, on the edges, people testing it out, similar to VR how you described. Um, anything else on the the AI front? There was a couple other uh sort of more Bitcoin related links I wanted to get to, but uh, anything else there? >> Yeah, let's let's rip those real quick. Well, I just wanted to share uh the most successful Bitcoin treasury company might just be stake a shake, boys. They added another 10 million to their their treasury uh about 8 months after rolling out uh their lightning integration. Um you know, this is what we like to see a bitcoin treasury company that is a company first uh and is is stacking bitcoin producing real world value whether you know whether you think fast food is is valuable or not. Uh you know they are using tallow in their fries. So maybe it's a little bit more uh uh better for you than than the McDonald's of the world, but just thought this was worth worth highlighting uh in the context of everything we saw last year around Bitcoin Treasury companies and and sort of a lot of those crashing back down to earth. This is sort of a different example. Um you know, similar to the squares of the world or the Figma of the world who have Bitcoin as part of their strategy, but you know, it's not their core business. Uh isn't just stacking Bitcoin. Yeah, this might be um the most Bitcoin native company on the planet earth because not only do they have a fundamental business, you know, selling feeding individuals, um but when you go and tie into it's not just adding the $10 million, they're accepting Bitcoin. They're paying employees back Bitcoin rewards. So, you you look in Squint and see about employee retention and savings. Obviously, it's early. Um, so you stack the Bitcoin, you can pay in it, bypass the interchange, you're employing your or um employee continuity and then ultimately again it all goes down to inflation and as your competitors are feeling it and as they have to degradate the service uh the quality and also increase prices, you give yourself more optionality. This is just how it's going to play out. And so it's cool to see. Yeah, we got to get in touch with these guys. Um, they're down in San Antonio where I grew up. uh they need better custody. We need to work with them. So, yeah, but it's very cool to see. >> Yeah. Thanks for for highlighting the uh the employee benefits thing, too. That was I think last week they announced that that uh they're going to be paying employees like 21 cents an hour in BTC terms or something to that effect. William, sorry I cut you off. No, I was just going to say it's uh it's fascinating too that it seems like it's one guy who uh pretty I mean through a holding company but seems to be owning all of Steak and Shake and so um I think that they do have a um franchise model but in theory I mean like just uh that's always what we kind of see is the orange dictator is the one who can actually like push forward the strategy. Um although we have seen Mastercard try to acquire um Zero Hash. That's pretty much one of the few outliers of uh examples of companies that actually try to get into the Bitcoin and digital asset space more broadly. It's usually just consensus of one who can actually go and change um policy in order to adopt things like new technologies on the edges um unless they're especially non- consensus new technologies. And so makes total sense. um would imagine that we see more like this um headed into next year, too. >> Here's what keeps Bitcoiners awake. You're still securing millions of dollars the same way you secured thousands. That hardware wallet in your drawer, your family's entire future depends on you not losing it, forgetting the PIN, or something happening to you. Onramp's multi-institution custody removes that burden. Three independent institutions hold your keys. No single point of failure, no seed phrases to protect, no explaining complex recovery processes to your spouse. And now we're offering flat tier pricing. One predictable monthly fee starting at $250 whether Bitcoin is at 100K or 500K. Plus, with On-Ramp IAS, you get the same institutional security with tax advantaged growth. This is how smart investors protect generational wealth without the weight on their shoulders. There's strength in many. Learn more at onrampbitcoin.com. >> Agreed. Uh I wanted to pull up this tweet uh from Jameson Lop. Um he is retweeting Michael Sailor who last week said the greatest risk to Bitcoin is ambitious opportunists advancing protocol changes. Now he's sort of referring to I believe like the whether it's the quantum discussion or the op return stuff like sailor has sort of positioned himself as a an oification maximalist like don't mess with the protocol etc. let's not fund devs because we don't want to shift their incentives. Lap is saying uh the greatest risk to bitcoin is that ownership of keys is centralizing to fewer hands. It's not surprising that a guy who stores 700,000 bitcoin with trusted third parties can't see that. And you know, it stuck out to me obviously as um you know, working in the the Bitcoin custody space. This is frankly why multi-institution custody exists. Um it's to prevent uh frankly what you know, part of the reason that gold failed us money uh in terms of it centralizing in bank vaults. Um, and you can see sort of the writing on the wall of of something similar that could happen if we just allow basically a lot of the the Bitcoin to centralize at at a few uh custodians uh namely like Coinbase who's the you know custodian for most of the ETFs which are seeing massive inflows over the past 2 years uh since their launch. And so you know if you can distribute that control and access you you aim to avoid that that ownership centralization that he's referring to here. Um, Mike, any thoughts on this? >> No, I think I mean I think it's um it's spot on. I think we're just going to have to wait as the price rises. It's all the things we've been talking about and building for. The reality is what makes Bitcoin different is you can insert governance at the asset layer. So you can bypass even the notion or or idea of risk from any third party um to try to have more claims than on the underlying if we enter this world where there's Bitcoin backed banks or there's um sovereign entities that want to seize the Bitcoin. Uh the reality is we're just so early that folks aren't too concerned with it. They're on the there's two it's a barbell. You have the larger holdings and nobody's ever gotten fired for going to Coinbase. you go there and then you have the individual which historically had no third party options that they could trust and plan on because historically you couldn't trust a third party because they held unilateral control of those assets. That's really where we get excited whether it's you know building this business or investing in businesses that are building with that framework because on a long enough time horizon if you're right the market the beauty of the market when it comes with money they just seek out better products. It doesn't even matter uh the the name of the firm or even the lendy because yes financial services lendy those things matter uh and and will help but when you create a better product in the sense that no entity can unilaterally move or lose your assets people will look for that because when they're holding material amounts of wealth they the alternatives will be even worse than going with a new entrant because they ultimately have to worry about how do they legacy plan how do they think about dynasty trust just all the things that will continue to grow and become more acutely painful. And then the other side of that is that other firms and institutions will mismanage that underlying whether it's because somebody's phone gets hacked, social engineering, um seizing, loss of funds, everything that's happened for 17 years. So it's good to see like you know lop in the discourse call out u but you know and also the other thing is like treasury prices will will feel this. We talk about treasury companies all the time. Most buyers of treasury companies and their shares don't even understand that the multiple layers of execution risk and they bypass the custody risk that has historically been been a a painoint until the first time a treasury company mismanages the keys whether it's because they did a self custody or the third party custodian they used or they're um lending out the asset to generate some kind of incremental yield. A lot of treasury companies will feel that pain because ultimately they don't share how they custody. they don't provide any proof of reserves and then that's again when they'll recognize okay there's just a better product that we have to give to the market if we're going to want our share price to continue to remain. >> Um so again we're still early in all this. >> Very well said. Um maybe one other thing uh before we wrap uh we can put a nice bow on uh the beginning of the conversation around silver. I found this tweet fascinating. Uh it's this guy who is sitting on a thousand ounces of silver bars. He says he bought physical, did what everyone said to do, real assets outside the system. Uh tried to sell some last week, trying to sell it today. Refineries won't touch it. Dealers lowballing 30% under spot. Banks looking at me like I'm selling contraband. Turns out owning something and being able to exit something are two very different skills. This is the same trap I see in trading. Blah blah blah. Basically point is um you know the market structure the the fundamental market structure issues of pres precious metals that you know plagued the assets as money historically still exist and still persist. So like if you know you do what this guy did and and did it the right way, you didn't get paper exposure, you bought physical gold, it can be very difficult to get out of those positions and actually use them as money. Um, and that's where, you know, the value prop and the digital native nature of Bitcoin really starts to shine. Um, you know, being able to transact, send it anywhere, uh, digitally over the internet, uh, at any time at and, you know, not not 30% below spot like like he's articulating here. >> Yeah. I don't I don't buy this. Like, >> you think this is this is just fake news? >> Yeah. It's not that it's it's fake news. like the analogy cuz I was having this conversation with somebody else around um like we have to be intellectually honest. I'm not saying you're not but it's because we're not familiar with that side of the industry. It's the same thing when we talk about on the broadcast with Braum about gold being superior or Bitcoin being superior to gold. It's like well maybe it's not right now because of liquidity and all and the recognizability. So the angle is um most often people like well I can't verify gold. It's like, well, you actually can because there's like 99% of gold if you're buying anything that's um, you know, jewelry is usually marked exactly correct. You can you can test it actually fairly well or you can go into a local place and they'll test it for you. And then anybody that's going to a gold bar and you're talking about like anywhere between 10 to 100 ounces, you bought that from a reputable place, there's certain serial marks like it's not really once you get to a certain level, you know where you got it from. And it's it's if you're buying at that scale, the ability to assay and determine if it's fake, um you're just not at like there's a different level of that that what most people talk about. And this is a similar example is like a if you bought a,000 ounces uh of silver, where you bought it from, you could generally know and have different like it's like if you bought uh you know a thousand BTC, you follow the industry, you know the players, they exist. It's a it's a capitalistic market to take those silvers. They provide brokerage in the same way somebody would buy the Bitcoin, right? This is equivalent of like saying that it's like the OTC bid for Bitcoin doesn't exist because Bitcoin goes through the roof and nobody's buying and selling. It's just like not true. There's market makers out there. And so then you take that that person knows where to buy, sell. Um it so that that's the point is like I don't disagree that if somebody's holding like a million ounces and they have like thousand ounce bars uh and they need to move like that size but even that case I guarantee with a quick search you can find the relevant counterparties and then somebody that is doing 30% on their spot I guarantee you in that industry somebody will come in at 20 and then 10 and then eight. This is very similar to BTC. So, I think this like these narratives help in the like notion of like this thing sucks compared to crypto and Bitcoin. And I agree like it's a lot more liquid, but I don't think it's as uh pervasive as somebody that has if they have real size how they can't get out of that position. Yeah, that I mean that's all fair, but you would agree though that like >> it's still more difficult like generally speaking to like know who those correct counterparties are and and manage a you know a meaningful size of of physical metal. >> Well, it would it yes, but it's almost like a fallacy built into the question in a sense that if I was off the street and I would be hard to do it, but I also wouldn't hold a thousand ounces of silver. So if I held a thousand ounces of silver, then I'd be sure I'd know where the credible places are. So like if you hold thousand ounces of silver, shouldn't you know how to get out of the position and know where you bought it from and who's relevant in your local area, right? So like that's that's >> it's just like Bitcoin. Like imagine if you were just off the street and you were this guy and never had held Bitcoin. Well, like you can make the same case. I don't know how to buy a thousand BTC because I don't know who's going to be relevant, who's going to take the wire, who's going to quote me under spot or whatever the thing. Like you can make the same case. It's just it's a liquid market. Now, how far has the price dislocated? Because there is truth or I think perceived truth and the dislocation from spot and futures and like whatever the hell is happening. Like I think that there might be something there. Um and then the anecdote gets really great Twitter views when you're like I called the first place because that also is fair that there's fundamentally something different than a bullion dealer than a like spot gold purchaser. What that means is most people when you go and see we we buy gold and they're on every corner, what they're buying is your gold and silver jewelry or or junk um uh what's called uh uh junk silver which is pre64 90 uh pre64 gold uh dimes, quarters and half dollars or 90% silver. And so if you go to a like we buy old gold place, they will quote you that 30%. that's their margin is 30%. Because they have to test it, they have to refine it. It's never pure. But when you go to a bullion dealer, they have fundamental prices that they're quoting. There's like deal engage in these other platforms. In another life, I had actually randomly was involved in that industry. So, it's just not like it's the same thing with Bitcoin. They're just like these niche areas of the market that nobody knows how to buy it. But if you already have exposure, then you probably have a hundred places where to buy or sell it. In the same way somebody holding a million or whatever went to Galaxy, think about how many people bid on his business for a billion whatever the seven billion that was sold on the the Bitcoin price. >> Yeah, reasonable reasonable takes. Liam, anything on the metals on the rocks? >> I haven't gone through that process before and don't plan to. So, uh I don't necessarily have anything else to add, but I would add um if yeah, if you're if you're serious about it and um and serious about your allocation, you could figure out pretty quickly how to get some reasonable price. Um, I think that 30% seems a little bit far-fetched, but um, there are definitely um, you're not going to get likely quite as good as um, of prices on something that's a little bit more illquid than uh, than Bitcoin. >> All right, gents. Good place to wrap. >> Thanks, boys. See you next week. >> Thanks. >> Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.