BlackRock, Trump, and the Great Bitcoin Repricing

Jackson Mikalic (00:02.92) I don't know. Yeah, I won't say. Jackson Mikalic (00:11.29) All right, it's time for the last trade. We've got a five heads on the last trade. I know that that's Brian's favorite. So let me just shout it out real quick. We got Tim Konsman, also known as Rocketman. He said we are going to the moon and we have Brian Kibelis who typically brings the house view. He will be able to share some insights from OnRamp's newsletter and research about why Bitcoin's so mispriced currently and then. Brian Cubellis (00:17.909) Five heads, five head alert. Jackson Mikalic (00:40.474) Michael Tanguma, he is the proverbial old man that yells at the cloud. So Michael will probably be pretty angry about some things going on in the industry this week. And then our guest is Liam Nelson. Liam's joining from Early Riders. Liam, good to see you. Thanks for joining us this week. Liam Nelson (00:57.487) Thanks for having me, super excited. Jackson Mikalic (01:00.038) So the best place for us to start would be the, just the weekly price. So we always start the episode with this. We're at 87K. We've looked at the 80s for what feels like at least a month, probably two at this point. And then so you can see over the past seven days, we were pretty much exactly in line with where we recorded last week, but I think there's some really incredibly bullish things to talk about. and why Bitcoin is so massively mispriced. Let's talk about some of the catalysts behind that, and namely, we saw a report from BlackRock. Big Larry Fink had some interesting insights to share about the US debt and its implications for the dollar. Brian, what is the house view over there? Brian Cubellis (01:34.899) Uncle Larry. Brian Cubellis (01:44.992) Yeah, mean, house view on our side remains the same. think, you know, we're recording on Wednesday, which is, you know, in a few hours, there's going to be some announcements around the tariff deal, what that is actually going to look like. think you're seeing markets kind of just act erratically in the lead up to that because there's so much built up uncertainty. And so I think post whatever happens this afternoon. unclear which way things go. think, depending on how other countries react to what is announced will drive largely more so like what equities react. I think what's happening with Bitcoin is a little bit different because this goes back to what I've talked about a bunch on this pod is like there's this slow transition that's occurring from people lumping Bitcoin in with risk assets. to realizing what it actually is, which is this savings technology that's actually very risk off in nature. And what you alluded to around the BlackRock shareholder letter that Uncle Larry penned earlier this week, that is what he is saying. He is saying that, you know, if the U.S. doesn't get its house in order in terms of debt and deficits, and it's not even just U.S. specific, it's really around the globe, There's obviously issues in this country, but they're arguably worse everywhere else. And so what he's calling out in that letter was basically like, if we don't get our act together, there's going to be competition for reserve currency status of the globe. And he mentions Bitcoin in that respect. And so that is very different than lumping Bitcoin in with tech stocks. That is fundamentally different. from an investment perspective, if you're looking at Bitcoin akin to digital gold, safe haven, store of value, which is what the largest asset manager in the world is signaling to folks. So I think that was pretty incredible. part of it too, and like, you know, I think we like to think that that is like super bullish. I think to just take the other side of it, I still think there's this dynamic of if your entire portfolio Brian Cubellis (04:10.595) is denominated in fiat and you have zero exposure to Bitcoin, you read that from Larry Fink and maybe people on the margin dig deeper on Bitcoin and try to understand it more, but other people are gonna read that and think it's bullshit or just take the other side because they're so biased to the fiat system and that's where their entire portfolio and wealth resides. And so I don't think it's just like this overnight. snap your fingers and okay, everyone's gonna allocate to Bitcoin tomorrow. But it is an important signal from that type of institution, that type of firm, that really just to drill this home, the most important part is that they're signaling it's not a risk on asset. It is something different. It is a store of value at savings technology. Jackson Mikalic (04:58.534) Yeah, and Brian, I agree with that. The other side of that, of your other side, I like doing that now, is there was also a note from BlackRock this week where they acknowledged that iBit was the largest ETF launch in history. And so iBit accumulates $50 billion of inflows in less than a year, and it was the third largest asset gathering for ETF products in the entire United States, and I guess the world as well. outside of just the S &P 500, which is, as we all know, the kind of de facto savings technology or index of the US at the moment. So for Bitcoin to be only third to the S &P 500 is an incredible signal. And my point is that it actually doesn't even matter if... investors are viewing it as risk on or risk off just yet. And if they think of Bitcoin as another tech stock in their portfolio, so be it. And they want more dollars in the future and they think Bitcoin delivers more dollars in the future, so be it. Doesn't impair any of our abilities to own Bitcoin directly and invest in Bitcoin businesses. And ultimately, all like my left side, left bell curve side take is always it's about incentives. Right. So if Larry Fink and the BlackRock team are talking about how the Bitcoin ETF is the most successful ETF launch in history, they're going to continue to lean into that product. And so it's just a matter of time that other Wall Street firms, asset managers, we could talk about the brokerages as well. A lot of brokerages are still gatekeeping in terms of client exposure, but that was the big, I think, signal to lean into from this week in terms of news that I saw. Michael Tanguma (06:38.444) Yeah, there's a couple key themes there. Working, so just trying to retrace going back to Brian and some of the stuff you shared Jackson on the. Ultimately, like what's gonna happen with this, you know liberation day I don't like to make a lot of predictions and so I hope I'm probably wrong here But I think we end up in a dovish position I think like the market signaling because gold what's happening in the gold markets and then also Bitcoin I think we're at like what 87 3 I think we end up and then we'll talk about later with the the the doge revamp or Getting rid of it. I think we naturally are gonna see some either whether it's liquidity coming in, interest rate, there's gonna be something hinting at like we're gonna go back risk on, but to Jackson's point, I don't think that risk on or risk off because you have the largest asset manager in the world not only talking about this asset, but it goes back to something we've been talking to a while is that they've recognized that as inflation runs persistent, we're gonna naturally need, individuals are gonna need assets to hold. And so it came out this past week, I don't know if I can pull it up, The Wall Street Journal's Larry Fink says regular Americans need access to private assets too. If you're going to inflate the currency and the debt away, individuals have to be able to protect their wealth. And I believe that's part of the ETF being announced. And then obviously like between RAs and banks, everyone trying to figure out their strategy is the beauty of Bitcoin is it looks like a tech stock. It operates like real estate and it can operate like bonds from a wealth preservation perspective. And you can buy a sliver of it in your brokerage and you don't need to have a $250,000 down payment to go buy a house. And so I think that there's an underlying sentiment if we're going to figure out this whole debt issue, everyone's going to be able to hold an asset that can store their wealth. And that's been the long-term play of these ETFs being approved since back in 2023 is the writings have been on the wall. If we inflate the debt, individuals from the most micro level all the way to institutions are going to have to like hold a harder asset than the nominal increase in money supply. Liam Nelson (08:49.403) Yeah, that's just the whole case for Bitcoin that we've been harping on for decades now, which is just essentially there is a completely finite asset Bitcoin just mined the 94.5 % of all total supply. I think earlier today, there's only five and a half percent left that's going to come over the next 115 years. Meanwhile, deficits are accelerating across the world. It sounds like Doge is planning to be wound down fairly soon. It's a little bit uncertain what exactly that's gonna look like but I read earlier this week that they've or they claim to have saved 1.4 billion dollars, which is great and Definitely a step in the right direction. But with all the bureaucracy and red tape that's needed or up there that's stopping the actual cuts whether it be trying to cut a certain department specific funding, etc. It's just kind of a It's going to be very difficult to reduce spending enough to offset the problem as we've been talking about for a while. It's always going to be, you need to have the money supply inflate faster than GDP. Brian Cubellis (10:03.219) I think the on the the Doge stuff just quickly like, you know, I think it was always meant to be a temporary department or measure. I think it was like 130 days or something. So some of the reaction on X today around like, like, you know, Trump and Elon have had a falling out. Like that's completely misguided. This was always meant to be a temporary thing and Elon wasn't going to be in the government forever. So that's that's point one. Point two, I think. Jackson Mikalic (10:03.793) Yeah, that's. Brian Cubellis (10:31.581) The other component of what Lutnik had been signaling for months around trying to cut one to two trillion of spending, that was always a pipe dream. That was never going to be a reality. But I think the entire ordeal is sort of just an effort to step in the right direction, which I do think is valuable, even if you were never going to reach those goals of cutting that much spending. But I do think that they have pivoted and made some effective measures that are again a step in the right direction. But the reality is we know where all this goes as Michael and Liam were just alluding to like they have to print their way out. They have to debase the currency more and ultimately lower rates. And that's what the admin wants as well. Michael Tanguma (11:13.998) Thank Michael Tanguma (11:19.426) Yep. Jackson Mikalic (11:19.656) Yeah, think another big part of this as well, Brian, is to your point, sure, even if the US government was able to slash a trillion or two or cut the deficit by one to two trillion this year, it's just a drop in the bucket and you can't reverse decades of irresponsible fiscal policy and deficit spending in one year. It's going to take far more intentionality behind spending, but then also generating revenue from... taxes is typically how those are the revenues are generated but through other methods as well. You the external revenue service or through sovereign wealth fund all these other ideas that have been floated around. I do think just going back to the debt discussion real quick and specifically with BlackRock I want to pull this up just for anyone who hasn't seen it already is that these are the types of charts that were published like five or ten years ago by what were considered to be fringe gold bugs, right, and the Fed type of people. And so now you have in the BlackRock annual shareholder letter these charts where it's the US federal debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP. And you can see it specifically here called out. Of course, this highlight isn't from the original report, but it was from someone on Twitter. But the point being is the national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since the Times Square debt clock started ticking in 1989. So this is decades ago, right? And it was just a fraction of what it was today. And people were worried about it a bit at the time, but clearly not so much. And they had this debt clock. I've seen it before. I thought the debt clock was actually in Union Square, but maybe there's two. But anyways, this year, interest payments will surpass 952 billion, exceeding defense spending. And then by 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. And so... The call out here as it relates to Bitcoin is if the US doesn't get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin. And again, the main thing to call out here is like these are themes that have been talked about really since like GFC and the quantitative easing that followed the great financial crisis. But that was by like typically more fringe commentators or market participants. Michael Tanguma (13:34.507) Thanks. Jackson Mikalic (13:37.884) And now you have the world's largest asset manager specifically calling out these issues. And it goes back to incentives. Like they have Bitcoin products now. It's also a real problem, of course, but now they can make money from the problem by having products that solve for it. Michael Tanguma (13:50.86) Yeah, I mean, the thing to support all of that is ultimately you can make money from it, but you have to support the individual. when it comes to inflating away that debt, everyone knows it's the only way out. Somebody has to hold a harder asset to protect their wealth and it came out today, I think like an hour before this, about Fidelity letting investors hold Bitcoin and crypto through their IRA plans. It ties into this other piece that I was referencing, I couldn't pull up earlier, which is Larry Fink says regular Americans need private assets too. And so it's just this natural notion that... This fringe idea of sound money as a way out of this whole mess is becoming more more mainstream. And now all the big financial players are integrating it into their flows and their financial structures, which is very bullish because nobody's really talking about this. think people are just adding it as a speculative ticker, which some firms may be doing it. But very sophisticated individuals know this train only goes one way from a liquidity perspective. Jackson Mikalic (14:50.364) Yeah, what do you guys think? Should we talk a bit about the Bitcoin Policy Institute white paper that was published on Monday? So is the Bitcoin Enhanced Treasury Bonds an idea whose time has come? Which was co-authored by Andrew Hans at Battery and New Market Capital and then Matthew Pines at Bitcoin Policy Institute. What are your thoughts there? I think it ties into the conversation we're having currently about the clear debt deficit problem that the United States government has. And now there's more widespread recognition in Bitcoin's role to to strengthen not only the US dollar but also the US government's fiscal position. Did you guys have a chance to check the report out? What are your general thoughts there? Brian Cubellis (15:30.696) I went through it briefly. It looked like, you know, effectively a longer form version of the presentation that Andrew gave a few weeks ago in DC. And, you know, I think it's a, it's a cool, interesting idea. think the palatability of something like that is probably still years away. But what I did appreciate about it was the call out towards the end in terms of like execution and implementation of something like that. And they specifically call out custodial arrangements and like, are you going to secure the Bitcoin into the future? And they specifically call out multi-institution, multi-SIG custody structures in there, which is, I think, slowly but surely becoming a standard for if you are a long-term allocator or even just an individual saving for your retirement and wanting to pass on your Bitcoin wealth to future generations, you can't trust a single entity because there's an option not to. There's an option to use multi-sig and distribute counterparty risk. And so there's no valid argument to say I'm going to trust single institution A, B or C to secure these assets for the next 50 to 100 years. If you can distribute that counterparty risk, you should. It's your fiduciary obligation to do so. And so I really appreciated that call out in the report because obviously if the US government is securing Bitcoin, whether it's in these bond structures or just in the reserve, they're thinking about it very long term. And so they need to think about custody long term and ultimately distribute that counterparty risk. that's the main piece that I took from it. Interesting idea. I think it's probably not coming anytime soon, but I'm glad that sort of this long term orientation around implementation and execution. is sort of manifesting in the marketplace. Michael Tanguma (17:33.41) Yeah, I think Bitcoin Policy Institute is a really interesting organization in the blending of, remind me a little bit of ourselves on the on-ramp side, specifically on the policy side that they blend in deep understanding of Bitcoin, but also in the regulatory policy space and are able to really affect change. And you've seen a lot of the stuff with Matt Pines and the groups there around just like the allocation and budget neutral and a lot of that language that's, know, Senator Lummis has been involved and Connor Brown and a lot of those guys I believe lean on BPI. And so it's ultra positive to see that they're recognizing ultimately what Brian just shared is that from a sovereign nation perspective, you can't get knocked out of the game because you messed up on who your underlying custodian is. It doesn't make any sense to throw it all at Coinbase in the same way it doesn't make sense if you're not experts to figure out how to like spin up a self custody multi-sig. So that was really exciting to see. And obviously we see the traction on our side and it's just becoming a notion that at the highest levels, whether it's the pensions we work with to the sovereign level and how you custody it all the way to the individual. Over time, I think this meme of like gold and Bitcoin become more more understood of like gold's a bearer asset in the same way Bitcoin's a bearer asset. And while it's a little bit more burdensome to secure, you don't walk around with a duffel bag full of all your dollars or gold in the same way that you're probably not gonna wanna walk around the duffel bag or with a backpack with a ledger with $10 million in it because it's just a recipe for a disaster. And so to see that end up in there is exciting because it makes sense for everyone. That's the beauty of technology. It democratizes from the individual all way to the sovereign level, can have access to the best in class custody. Liam Nelson (19:15.759) I agree. And one other thing that's worth mentioning too, especially as you brought up gold in there, is just the ability to see segregated wallets with on-train addresses too. So rather than going into Fort Knox and melting down all the gold and making sure it's actual gold and nothing else in there, it's going to be audited every 10 minutes, what people can actually, you know, confirm that all the Bitcoin is there. Michael Tanguma (19:38.638) Can we double click, like can we talk about that Tim? Because I feel like you're closest to this in the sense we all know this. Maybe listeners would be good to share. it's like, this whole idea of proof of reserves is like, it's kind of like almost like a... It's almost like insurance on custodial relationships. Like it sounds good, but in reality is it doesn't. mean, it's a little, it's nice, but it isn't a solution because you can do proof of reserves one day and then the next day get wiped out and sure you could prove that you had them yesterday, but not the next day. And there's a notion of what multi-institution is, is embedded proof of reserves. It's on chain segregated. Like it's just implied in there. Maybe we need to do better at explaining like you don't need proof of reserves because it is proof of reserves. Tim, I feel like you shared a little. I won't dox like the conversation exactly but just your understanding of the market sentiment around proof reserves versus just Multi-institution and the fact that each wallet is on chain verifiable with independent third parties not having full control But at least one piece of that is just something that doesn't get discussed most people are like proof reserve so third party custody or self custody It's still not in the zeitgeist of like what's actually happening here, which is very bullish Tim Kotzman (20:47.779) Yeah, when you first started going, Michael, I thought you were implying that I was physically the closest to Fort Knox. So I don't know if that's true, but, yeah, I just don't think people have an appreciation for how all of this works and what it means in reality, because I mean, literally two days ago had Sam Abbasi in the studio and he does the, has the company Hoseki that Brian Cubellis (20:53.862) Hahaha Tim Kotzman (21:17.465) like MetaPlanet and Bitwise and some of these names, like they use the service so people can see on chain. I even, mean, I'm not the brightest crayon, but I was asking them questions. I ask people questions all the time because I legitimately don't know what the answer is. And I'm like, well, could you set it up where if it's no longer there, it sends you an email? And he's like, yeah, no, it's monitoring it 24 hours a day. That's actually literally how it works. So like, if I don't know, how would anyone else know if they're just trying to live their lives? I don't know if that's what you were really trying to hit on, but, then you just zoom out to even just the multi-institutional part of it. I just think a lot of people are like, well, when the banks get involved and they're big banks and they have that name recognition that leads to this trust, whether it should be there or not, like that's what I'd rather have. but they're not really taking time to think through what multiple institutions taking that risk away really means. Liam Nelson (22:25.541) Yeah, there's a big concern when you go on Twitter, talk to these high net worths of like, is my money actually at Coinbase or is it in the ETF just because, you know, a lot of this is settled off chain and then just like at the end of the day, like they'll true up however much trading they were supposed to do. And you, you know, you can't actually, when you have most custodians, you can't see your own on-chain Bitcoin address. But the cool thing that is underappreciated about OnRamp is you actually know your Bitcoin is there because if you have however many Satoshis down to the 0.00080s of Bitcoin, if you have like 1. whatever, you can see, okay, this is my Bitcoin address that OnRamp shows and this is the exact amount of Bitcoin unless there is somebody else out there who is also an OnRamp client that has the same amount of Bitcoin. There is pretty much no way that you can fake that because you can go in any blockchain explorer and verify that as well as anytime you either buy more, take some out of the wallet, etc. You can all verify that on chain that on ramp is actually doing those transactions and that it's your Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (23:40.652) Yeah, I mean this is kind of bullish on how underexposed people are because there's a notion of I ended up in a room talking to somebody very senior at Coinbase and explaining what we do and they're like, well why can't I do it or we do it and it like we're explaining the scalability of like segregated wallets as one component and then there's the aspect of the segregation of keys. and really took the time to walk through because he earnestly was interested. And he's like, why is nobody talking about this? And I was explaining that even his clients, they're severely underexposed because even though they have all this capital, their clients are holding 0.01 to 1 % of their total net worth. And when somebody is looking at this asset as a speculative asset, they don't care how it's custodyed. But once that grows, anybody listening here on this pod realizes, wait, I wanna know where it sits. wanna know that. The other thing that's super fascinating that like there's some product or something to be developed here is, I've shared with a few people on this call is, we've never had verifiable addresses before until multi-institution. We don't like talk about it, but it's interesting because think about it. When you're building a multi-institution wallet, you're getting onboarded with multiple institutions and they have, you have title to the address, but then each of those institutions are developing that wallet. They can all. objectively and from a legal perspective tell you that that address is your wallet with redundancy. So that address is tied to you no matter what, like that's yours. We've never had that because an exchange can say that's your wallet, but you can actually verify with a third party. You can have your own multi-sig setup and you can't even verify that because if you have two of those keys you don't know where they're sitting or who has them. And so there's just unique ramifications of this moving forward. It kind of ties into very familiar with Hoseki and like you still trust in a third party. Michael Tanguma (25:21.288) where at the end of the day, one party can lie, but the other two have auditable records on you onboarded, that's your address, that's your bitcoin sitting there. That's never been done before, because every person that's built a wallet has always been a single custodian, which is just kind of interesting. Brian Cubellis (25:36.736) Yeah, the key, the key with everything we're talking about is what I, and this is a part of, of multi-institution and everything we're doing at OnRamp that I think is becoming more well understood, but still there's a sort of a massive learning curve here in terms of understanding that the key to all of this is taking away the unilateral control from any custodian. So with this structure, each, each entity has one out of the three keys in a two of three quorum. That that seeds control from any of those entities. They can't move your funds, they can't freeze your funds. They have to coordinate on your behalf at your direction in order to move funds. So what that in effect does is while the end user, the end client is not controlling key material themselves or protecting key material themselves, they are controlling it in the sense that none of their counterparties can control the asset. And that's like the big unlock that I think people are still trying to grasp is like, Yes, this is a form of third party custody, but it's fundamentally different because none of these parties involved can control your assets. Michael Tanguma (26:45.506) Yeah, I mean, Jackson, maybe share like your thoughts on this, because I know you're a very, you're not excited about having, you know, the market have to onboard to these little plastic devices, which by the way, I know this is going to sound like it's funny, but 70 % of the assets roughly in Bitcoin sit offline on these plastic devices and majority is with ledger. So that's, $1.4 trillion. You don't have to use honor, you don't have to care about it. But the reality is, Jackson talks about this really nicely is by being a proponent of only self custody works, you're ultimately telling the person. and either not to buy Bitcoin or you have to go into an ETF because reality is most people don't want 12 words and a plastic device to secure all their wealth because this just makes less and less sense as the price goes up. Is there Jackson Kirst on any of that? Because we just had a really good call with somebody and if any of, between what I just asked and then that call comes to mind. Jackson Mikalic (27:37.245) Yeah, well think there is a portion of the market that... the proverbial plastic device makes a lot of sense for, but it's a very small portion of the market. And so there are people out there that maybe the best solution for them is to self-custody all their Bitcoin. If they're extremely technically savvy and have great OPSEC, it's a fine solution for now if you're geographically distributed. There's of course trade-offs with that in terms of access and the big gap would be if you're geographically distributed and have your seed phrase and cryptographic material in multiple different locations, then you have kind of eliminated some of the risks, but then you open up complexity in other areas, namely inheritance, because now... your family, if anything were to happen to you, has to travel to multiple places and try to piece together something that they probably have never used or use very infrequently. So my point being is like, there's a place for self custody. I think all five of us would agree with that, but a lot of people have been forced into solutions where they're not actually, it's actually not best for them because they're not diligent. They're not actually performing key checks. They're not routinely using devices. And so when they go back every six months or year or two or three or five, years to go check on these things, that's where mistakes happen. And so what a lot of people are speaking to us about is they're coming up the curve on our value proposition and they want to start working with us. And then they're like, well, by the way, you know, my parents or my brother or my uncle, Jackson Mikalic (29:10.44) I'm like the Bitcoin guy, right, for all of my family members and my friends. And if anything were to happen to me, I may not only be putting my own family in a really tough position, but I may be putting like friends and other family members in the similar situation. So now there's all this complexity. And I think, Michael, what you're driving toward is that if you are someone who is only a proponent for self custody, what you're ultimately doing, if you have the blinders on and that's like the only way you think that people should own the asset, you're actually an ETF maxi because if you tell 99 or you tell 100 people to self custody their assets, 99 of them are going to buy the ETF and one of them will actually manage it themselves and take the time to figure it out to do it the right way. And so I've actually spoken to people before and I've seen anecdotes online about people who have like pretty material positions in Bitcoin. Well, they'll actually consider selling or for future purchases, they don't actually buy more Bitcoin directly. They just start buying ETF shares. because they're actually not comfortable with the amount of responsibility and the risk of, more importantly, the risk of permanent loss of managing all their assets. So there needs to just be more solutions that sit in the middle between IOU to Uncle Larry at BlackRock, and then I geographically distribute seed phrases all over the world, and that's the only way to do it. There just needs to be solutions that sit in between there. Michael Tanguma (30:18.99) you Michael Tanguma (30:34.806) Yeah, and not to make this just about multi-institution on-ramp. But I would make the case what Jackson said is you can be the hardest core person, but even five to 10 % should be in something like this because if you're hardcore, that means there's complexity to your setup. And then that ultimately means if you can mess it up or get hit by a bus, you want your family to get something. And the second part is I'm only bringing this up because there's a little transition maybe to the circle IPO news, but this ties into it is the thing that I don't know if we've talked about on this podcast, but I've shared it privately and I didn't share publicly because I didn't have like hard proof was that ultimately all this data is out there on what somebody's Bitcoin holdings are. I'm fairly confident you can back into 90 to 100 % of the markets Bitcoin holdings as matter how secure you are unless you're like GPU mining and never put them anywhere with an exchange via your IP simply because everyone's CRM in this industry has been hacked or you can count on it being hacked because it's data and then all these credentials are being sold to the dark web from third parties. And so you take that information coupled with chain analysis and you throw it into models, you can start to back into the amount of holdings everyone has. And so if you double the price of Bitcoin, you think about your holdings at 150 to $250,000, the digital bad actors are all day long trying to take it from you. What happens when the physical bad actors realize millions of dollars sent people's houses? Nobody talks about this because nobody has a solution. Either people are selling plastic devices or they're selling third party custody. And to like reinforce this with like, quote-unquote receipts, this is the note. I don't have a Coinbase account, so I think... Michael Tanguma (32:14.606) Somebody posted this on Twitter, but I think it was down so that's why I'm showing it in Slack By law because this happened previously at my previous firm that there was a CRM Infiltration or whatever this happened with everyone back in the day by the way 21 you can Google like HubSpot everyone got their their database leaked and so part of that from a legal perspective is you have to notify the individuals that lost the data and so this is an email that came out yesterday from Coinbase and The main clip that we're showing is we're writing let you know that we detected activity suggesting a Coinbase employee may have reviewed a small number of Coinbase customer accounts records, including yours, in a way that did not align with our internal policies. So somebody's pulling CSVs of customer data, sending that out, and it's just something that nobody talks about to the point of nobody wants to die for a trade, nobody wants their family members kidnapped for their Bitcoin, and that's where this all goes because that's what happened with gold, and that's why banks existed but nobody seems to want to talk about that there just needs to be better market structure because nobody kidnaps people's homes for their equity portfolio or selling their real estate because there's natural financial controls that exist in the financial markets but with Bitcoin you can do that and get access very quickly. I ledger co-founder in his fingers. Brian Cubellis (33:30.668) And I'll also just add, totally agree with everything you just said, but one thing I like to drive home with folks is like Bitcoin custody is not, you know, one size fits all. It's not all or nothing. You don't have to choose one strategy and be dogmatic about it. You can have different sort of piles of your stack across different custodial models. And we actually just put out a report this week on this. And it's something we internally for a while have called like the barbell approach. where you keep some amount in purely self-sovereign self-custody. And that's sort of like your proverbial go bag, your bar of gold under your mattress that only you control. And then also, there's merit to that in just the sense of it's core to Bitcoin's value prop. The ability to do that is super important to the asset in the network. And so it's completely valid to want some portion of your stack in that type of setup. But the other side of that barbell is ultimately, you know, in our view, multi-institution custody, because it's better than trusting a single entity, but you're still outsourcing the actual key management to professional institutional grade enterprises. Again, none of which have unilateral control. So it's a basically a better form of third party custody that lives on the other side of that barbell. And you can, and basically the percentage split between those two strategies depends on your risk tolerance, depend on, it depends on how you perceive Michael Tanguma (34:45.87) you Brian Cubellis (34:59.723) potential threat vectors, whether that's the proverbial wrench attack or getting social engineered or on the other side of that, you think the government's going to take your Bitcoin and they're going to call all these custodians and say, freeze all this Bitcoin and give it to us. Then maybe you have a less percentage in something like M.I.C. and more in your purely self-sovereign setup. So it depends again on individuals and how they perceive these different risk factors. But again, it's just it's not all or nothing. You can do multiple different formats. Michael Tanguma (35:26.914) And the funny part is there's precedent for this because we don't carry all of our money in a duffel bag or our gold, but it's just accepted that we should do that with Bitcoin. And they're all the same thing. One's digital, you can carry more of it without somebody knowing, but at the end of the day, if you get access to that, and nobody manages their wealth, and so I think it's good point, Brian. Jackson Mikalic (35:48.615) Alright, gold member. Should we talk about gold? You love those yellow rocks. I did want to talk about some things gold related, so I'm glad we're talking about it. Michael Tanguma (35:53.76) I mean Michael Tanguma (35:58.914) I just was waiting for you to pull it up or to bring it up. Jackson Mikalic (36:03.496) I actually have the gold member JPEG ready to go, so we could take a look at that as well. But yeah, I wanted to call a couple things out on the gold front, so anyone who's on video could see a picture of Michael here. He just loves his gold so much. had its largest quarterly gain since 1986, nearly 20 % return in Q1 of 2025. Brian Cubellis (36:15.929) You Jackson Mikalic (36:30.064) And a couple other things I thought were interesting and worth calling out, because we know gold and Bitcoin are a similar thesis as part of an investment strategy. So something to call out is, CME, there's a $14 billion buy of four and a half million ounces of gold for immediate delivery. And so what are you guys' thoughts on the gold market? And gold tends to lead Bitcoin in terms of price appreciation. So it's been the most bullish quarter for the Rock, Michael's favorite asset class, in 30 years. So what is that telling us? Brian Cubellis (37:07.371) Yeah, I think there's a few things, but what stands out to me is like, it's not just that gold's price is going up and people are viewing it as a trade or a safe haven in times of uncertainty as we mentioning before. It's the outsized demand for physical delivery that's interesting to me because it's a signal of effectively people calling bluffs on their counterparties. And so that's what's Actually interesting about this to me. It's not just that gold price is going up and it's performing well It's like no people want the gold they want to see it. They want to feel it They want the delivery of it and so that's I think what's a little bit different about this this moment in time as opposed to You know other gold rallies in the past one It's you know, obviously its magnitude as you just described Jackson But it's it's the physical delivery component that I think is worth high Jackson Mikalic (38:05.958) Yeah. No, it's a good point. The physical delivery is kind of akin to having Bitcoin on chain that you can audit 24-7. So that ties back into the conversation we just had. And then the other thing worth calling out just on the macro front is Joe Consorti in particular, I think has done a great job. I know there's a few other people who track it as well, but just highlighting the 10-week correlation between Bitcoin and liquidity. So liquidity has been trending up over the past two months or so. And I think we're finally at a point now. We'll see what happens. with the tariff announcements in a couple hours here. But I think we're at a point now where Bitcoin is ready to take off. Tim said before we recorded that he's on the rocket ship already. So I'm just excited about maybe next week we won't be tuning in to 80K Bitcoin anymore and perhaps we'll be starting to trend a bit higher. But yeah, what do you guys think about that? mean, are we finally ready for liftoff here? Liam Nelson (39:03.567) think that the gold price is pretty indicative of gold price is the OG speculative attack before Bitcoin, is selling your poor currency, which is dollars, in order to acquire a harder currency that's fairly limited in supply of gold. central bankers have been doing this for centuries. so seeing the price of gold really rip is indicative of just the current demand and the macro factors and consumer concerns behind the scenes of they're needing to be some sort of more liquidity here moving forward and that's also going to be another reason to acquire Bitcoin in a time of where there's really limited supply and just infinite dollars where the M2 money supply is continuing to go up. So I think we're in a fairly good position but would love to hear your opinion Tim and Mike. Michael Tanguma (39:55.522) Yeah, I mean that's where like I know Jackson a little bit jokes and maybe even the audience like we get excited about Bitcoin but the reality is again history doesn't repeat but it rhymes and gold is the closest proxy and it's much closer than people align to what Bitcoin is and so to Liam's point not only does it lead in periods of like distress or whatever's happening but also it's something we've talked about and Brian you probably remember this better than anybody since we've been recording this pod when we started this business was with the honor of Bitcoin trust it was created because Bitcoin has this accelerated business cycles and de-leveraging events and people understand counterparty risk which is not necessarily understood or appreciated in the traditional financial system so people have mispriced risk in delivery and so there's only like one or two ETFs like the Sprott that allowed for this delivery but it's the understanding that not possessions nine-tenths of the law and that when not only debt levels are unsustainable but also insolvencies are on the horizon you're just it's a it's this of the COMEX that we pulled up, but also the gold is a notion of a global monetary order being restructured and people recognizing that possession is nine tenths of. the law and so Bitcoin is the next order after people realize gold. It's like, well, shit, like I got to take delivery of this. I got to assay it. Like I can just buy the Bitcoin and then take it. And so that's the beauty of the leading indicator. It's showing the market starting to appreciate all the concepts we've been talking to for years and individuals that have invested in Bitcoin for 15 years are all that it's the canary in the coal mine effectively. Jackson Mikalic (41:30.908) Well said. Michael, do you want to talk about the Circle news? I know you'd mentioned it maybe 10 minutes ago or so. You want to just walk us through what was interesting to you there? Michael Tanguma (41:40.846) Stables. Are you a stables bull? Jackson Mikalic (41:44.432) Yeah, I guess. It doesn't fire me up much, but we could talk about it. Brian Cubellis (41:45.748) You Michael Tanguma (41:48.928) Nah, yeah, was just joking. We did a segment on Final Settlement talking about stables. So just referencing, I mean, I'll let Liam maybe kick it off and then I can add some color, because maybe that ties into the fintech piece you put together. yeah, maybe Liam, if you want to start on the circle news and just some of the, there's some interesting anecdotes I think we put in the chat if you want to pull any of those up or we can pull them up for you. Michael Tanguma (42:16.841) have a, I think we have a separate one you're not in. Liam Nelson (42:23.035) I think I had some sound going on on my side, but yeah, I thought the circle news is really interesting. guess one thing that I wanted to touch on was their balance sheet too, which I thought was, before we get to the actual like company itself, it's just really indicative of the three experiences that people have in digital assets. So when you look at their balance sheet, it's they have SUI, which is some coin that I'd never heard of. They got Michael Tanguma (42:33.39) you Liam Nelson (42:52.989) a cost and I looked it up because I was interested in their balance sheet. Their cost basis is about 2.3 billion and Circle runs on SUI, which is like some other token and they bought over 50 % of the supply and then there was an announcement that Circle was going to run on top of it and that was their largest holding as of the end of 2024 when the financials were finalized for the IPO. last available financials at the moment. So they had over 50 % of the supply and that was the single asset on their balance sheet that had actually outperformed Bitcoin. By now it's underperforming Bitcoin and they have over 50 % of the supply. They're not going to be able to get out of that trade without moving the market super significantly. And then outside of that, their second biggest holding is Bitcoin making up about of their overall balance sheet and then a number of other coins that, you know, while they've gone up a little bit, they've all underperformed Bitcoin. It's just going back to the proverbial statement that we, you know, continue to kind of hammer home, which is Bitcoin is a hurdle rate. And if you allocate into to other cryptos, there's a way to outperform if you have inside knowledge that other people know about. But for the most part, you're just going to underperform Bitcoin and even would argue that, you know, they're like, going to underperform had they not sold their suey and you know end up trying to get out of it now with over half of the market share. Michael Tanguma (44:28.524) Yeah, maybe this ties into that exact notion and then going back to the stables is... You know, they're really impressive, obviously like Tether and Palo and you go listen to a lot of their strategy and one of them ties back into what's backing it. So like the interesting part about Coinbase and Circle is these people have not had like long-term Bitcoin exposure and so the viability of their business, right, if you built on a casino, well that casino, people aren't going to be trading suey forever. But then there's the other part of that is the integrity going back to again history and free banking. You can see these stables starting to be created and issued by different Reputations in the traditional financial system will they're going to start to compete in a free market. I as a Bitcoin Investor was like never really interested in stables until really just thinking about well It's the number like tether in the trading pair with Bitcoin. It's what's allowed for a lot of the liquidity to come in. And then ultimately around credem, redemptions and creations from a like fidelity, which is rumored to be issuing one along with, you know, the circle IPO is that there's actually a lot of a market share and entrenchment. If you can be the issuer to bring in the dollars in and then issue against them, maybe generate some capital or return it as it gets more competitive from a stable coin holder. But then you're just bringing that capital in. into your ecosystem, to the regular, you know, your stocks, bonds, anything else from a capital of movement. So it kind of makes sense, right? You have a digital asset store value of Bitcoin and the closer you can get to the trading pair, which is dollars and moving around those funds. Michael Tanguma (45:59.414) along with banks, banks are gonna be custodying this asset and allow for trading. Well, they can't actually allow for custody and trading and have a competitive advantage if they're not able to swing around the dollars from a net settlement perspective unless they have a digital unit. so that's where like this kind of interest has been like, okay, I can see where this goes. And Alex Thorne had a really good tweet this past week and it was breaking down market structure bills versus the stablecoin bills. And I think that's important because it talked about the market structure bill has been less, has gotten less traction from a bipartisan perspective because of SEC and CFTC purview and whoever sees this, but the one that has gotten a lot of traction because it's kind of thought as less of a big deal is around the stable coin legislation. But he makes the case and I would make the case as well. It has actually the broader geopolitical ramifications because of all the things we know about dollar dominance. And I'll just pull up the one like key part that he referenced at the end. is he basically says, but stable coin legislation is likely to be much more impactful long term than market structure. A USD stable coin explosion could solidify growing dollar dominance, create new demand for treasuries. This has massive implications for American power, global banking, and geopolitics. And so again, it's something that seems innocent as a dollar kind of know, claim really has a flow of funds implications that I think are gonna be like really widely felt for the next 10 years. Jackson Mikalic (47:29.008) Yeah, I agree. mean, like I said, I don't think it's incredibly interesting in terms of technology, but I think the interesting part is, Michael, what you kind of tied up there in the past minute or two, because the U.S. government has taken a keen interest in stable coins as part of the pro-dollar agenda and U.S. hegemony. So I think that'll be the more important thing to watch is just stable coin legislation and the role that they'll play as Tether was the seventh largest buyer of U.S. treasuries in twenty So this is just out of nowhere, seemingly. And then you have this company now that just operates with a dozen people or so, and they're the seventh largest buyer of U.S. Treasuries last year. Michael Tanguma (48:10.348) Yeah, and that's where Tim, I think he goes back to the strategy whenever you and Sailor, you guys have been getting a little chummy on Twitter and you're doing an interview during the strategy conference, but it's the notion of Palo references. They hold 50 tons of gold and whatever they just bought. They just bought eight billion in Bitcoin, but they bought, yeah, they bought eight billion. It's crazy. So. Liam Nelson (48:32.763) Like over 88,000. Michael Tanguma (48:36.096) Yeah, so point being is like, it's the integrity of their balance sheet backing that coin. So he references if the dollar hyperinflates, they actually have the backing of these other assets on their balance sheet in the other ways. if not like they have the treasuries and the dollars. But point being is I think that's where this all goes from a competitive landscape and strategy. Obviously having so much Bitcoin, there's a lot of integrity if they launched a stablecoin because it's that underlying currency which goes back to like the bit bonds idea. It's a matter of time before you have to insert a more credible monetary unit, gold and Bitcoin, if you're gonna want somebody to buy that treasury which is effectively a dollar claim. Tim Kotzman (49:18.491) Yeah, I mean, I think it all makes sense. just, I could be totally wrong on this, but I think it's a little far fetched that you would have like Bitcoin Jesus launching a stable coin. Like I think it's more likely that someone like Cantor would launch something like that. Or just like someone else, it's like trad fi like boom, here you go. That's just my gut reaction. Michael Tanguma (49:40.11) What if I told you he's not Bitcoin? Jesus. Brian Cubellis (49:43.659) You Tim Kotzman (49:46.073) I mean, I guess I can't be on this call anymore. Michael Tanguma (49:47.438) I'm just gonna... Brian Cubellis (49:50.838) This is a bit of an aside, but I don't know if you guys like have read the stablecoin bill. I haven't read the most recent version of it, but I know that there has been some not backlash is the wrong word, but people skeptical of what's in that piece of legislation in that it potentially picks winners and losers and could even say like we don't allow offshore issuers, i.e. Tether to operate. And so I think that was some initial sort of clamorings around one of the earlier drafts of the bill. I don't know if that part has been amended or anything, but that was some sort of concerns around it was like, they're just gonna crown circle and basically USTC becomes the CBDC of Michael Tanguma (50:41.53) I I like end up with the free market side of it. think part of the notion of the tether and offshore was around the yield because when it comes to The treasury demands and where they're making their money and it's more into the financial system that I understand but ultimately that they're not passing back our dollars when we're in a bank or if you hold circle USDC where that would have a problem with the traditional plumbing where dollars would start to go offshore. So I think it's less around crowning USDC. It's more of trying to have an insular stablecoin set up but then so that's others right Avanti or not Avanti but it's a vet but it was pretty previously Avanti's custodias stablecoin just launched. There's a consortium with Anchorage. There's a number being spun up. Fidelity as well. I think the free market will just decide, right, where the credibility of that stablecoin and where they park their dollars and then they'll ultimately have to change that. And I think Tether probably like on shores as well at some point. So I think it's just more of that aspect of less of like CBD seed or welling. I mean, it is or welling. And like we talked about it previously, like it's still a welling that you can just shut it all down whenever you want. You get better insight from a centralized perspective of the flow of capital. But we're in a digital world. So it's like it has to exist. It's why Bitcoin exists as well. Jackson Mikalic (52:05.074) Yeah, on that censorship point, I saw the clip. Was it Eric Trump who was on Fox Business recently this week and he was talking about how the banks were shutting them down, the Trump family down. It was kind of like the choke point 2.0 where banks were being used by political motivations to tie or cut off access to capital. And so the Trumps were impacted by that and he went on Fox Business to talk about American Bitcoin. I think you guys might have covered it but like what's the highlight? thoughts just real quick if we could touch on it for two to three minutes. Any thoughts on American Bitcoin? The Trump family. Michael Tanguma (52:48.686) I just think it's the most bullish thing ever that all these politicians at the highest levels are just getting equity exposure to everything in the ecosystem. It only signals one thing's about to happen in my mind. Brian Cubellis (53:00.043) Yeah, I think you've got to be doing some serious mental gymnastics to think that any of that is bad. Brian Cubellis (53:08.619) regardless of whether you like the Trump family or not, it's the family and power of the nation and they're interested in Bitcoin. They're seemingly passionate about it, want to get more involved. Getting involved with mining, I think is a natural extension of that interest. You go down the rabbit hole, you get interested in mining, you want some exposure there. As we know, it's not the best business to be in. It's extremely cutthroat, it's extremely competitive. So we'll see what this American Bitcoin, what's the full name of the company? American Bitcoin something. We'll see how that ends up. But I think the stronger signal is this administration is a complete 180 from everything we've known about the US government's involvement and interest in Bitcoin. Liam Nelson (53:44.763) I think. Liam Nelson (54:01.839) Yeah, I- Jackson Mikalic (54:02.108) Yeah, Tim, what are your thoughts there? Tim Kotzman (54:06.575) This isn't my take at someone else's, but I agree that I'm surprised it took them this long to get into the infrastructure side. Jackson Mikalic (54:13.896) Yeah, I was just thinking about this why well you guys were talking about or saying that it was forecasted I believe because Trump said he wanted all the Bitcoin to be made in the United States So he they told us this six months ago that it was going to happen And so I guess I'm not that surprised the interesting anecdote whether Eric Trump is truth or not on Fox Business about why he got interested is the censorship resistant aspect of Bitcoin. So ultimately that ties into like stablecoin CBDC talk. And I just think it's interesting that people come to it in different ways. The Trump family was maybe less concerned about the debasement aspect of that draws people into Bitcoin, but it was a censorship resistance and seeing how politically motivated actors were able to cut off ties to the financial system. And they're like, yeah, well, of course Bitcoin makes sense to circumvent those restrictions. Michael Tanguma (55:02.297) Are you sure? Brian Cubellis (55:02.335) I think he likes harping on that because it's like, you know, it's kind of their their MO of being angry at the prior administration. And a lot of that stuff is true with choke point and whatnot. But I think the other interesting component about where they're coming from, and he said this as well, is like the real estate angle. Like they've been in real estate their whole lives. They understand scarcity of real estate. And so I think when you compare. owning real estate versus owning Bitcoin, you strip away a lot of the costs, the friction, the upkeep, the operational burden associated with managing real estate properties. And I think that's part of what clicked for the Trump family was like, shit, this is just a better form of property. Michael Tanguma (55:44.494) The beauty of all this stuff we're talking about is like this has been discussed for half a decade if not longer in the sense that individuals hold Bitcoin and then they get to seats of power and they want their bags to be pumped like we've seen Senator Warren and other politicians do it in backdoor deals and you find out that they had equity. We've seen all the different, you know, what is it on Twitter, the different bots that capture the trades of like, who's the one that's the Pelosi? And so it's just the idea of like, Yeah, everyone's gonna hold this and the incentive is once you hold it that you are gonna become favorable to it and then everyone benefits from that versus like asymmetric information. And then the other part is I wouldn't discount like too much of the debasement because you know, we know Donnie loves his McDonald's and you know, this stuff, this is what they took from us. We're pulling up a super size, it was 39 cents. If you wanted a double quarter pounder, what know, Trump used to buy back in the day for 3.99, you know, what does that take? Brian Cubellis (56:44.361) With fries and a drink, that's the meal. That's the meal deal too. Michael Tanguma (56:49.01) You know, two cheeseburgers meal, $2.99. So I don't know. The basement might be an issue for Trump. Jackson Mikalic (56:56.658) That's fair. Yeah, if you're crushing like 10 Diet Cokes a day and a couple of Big Macs, that actually is a problem. And so Bitcoin does solve that problem. You get more McDonald's five years from now, 10 years from now. If you could live that long. mean, Trump, he seems to be in incredible shape for his age despite his nutritional choices. But yeah, Bitcoin buys you more McDonald's. What do think, Tim? Tim Kotzman (57:20.047) Bitcoin fixes this. Bitcoin fixes this. Liam Nelson (57:20.366) So. There was also seed oil free back in the day before they took it from us. Well, one other thing that I am a little bit concerned from a narrative perspective because the Trump family will eventually be out of office. And if you think that they're not going to have their bank accounts censored again, I would take the other side of that. And so I do get. Just I can understand how from a narrative perspective, know, the Trump's getting very involved in, you know, Bitcoin and crypto at large, as well as like GameStop being the next Bitcoin treasury company. It seems like, you know, we're seeing something where if I was on the sidelines and didn't know anything about Bitcoin and crypto, I could say like, OK, it's controlled by these politicians and Bitcoin on the balance sheet of companies is only for zombie companies that can do nothing else. It's not actually for a productive company. And I could see how that could make the average corporate treasurer or the average just individual who's not paying anything any attention to this a little bit turned off but Tim I would love to hear your thoughts on on the GameStop and if you think that you know large cash flowing companies are going to take a and actual interest in this anytime soon, as well as just the opinions on people getting turned off by the Trumps being overly involved if they don't know anything about it. Tim Kotzman (58:49.807) Yeah, mean, maybe the very best thing that could happen is if, you know, four, eight, 12, maybe 16 or 20 years from now when the Democrats get back in the White House, that they're also pro Bitcoin. But in the meantime, to the extent that it becomes political in anyone's eyes, it's not probably. It'll further adoption, it's maybe not where we want to be ideally at some point in the future. Brian Cubellis (59:25.043) I think the counter to that would be that the cohort of voters that arguably swung this past election that cared about Bitcoin or crypto weren't necessarily aligned with either party, but they had a single issue that they cared about. I think this is going to take time to metastasize in the political atmosphere, but I think there's going to be a recognition over the next four years that Bitcoin is not like a Trump thing. It's not a Republican thing. It's an American people thing. And there's a growing cohort of Americans who care about it, want savings technology, want to preserve their value, their hard earned value in just a better savings vehicle. And so I think that's where it would be actually surprising to me if in four years the Democratic Party took a similar negative stance on all this stuff as they had for the past four years. Because I mean, you could say what you want about them, but I think they're smart enough to realize that the people that care the most about this stuff don't care what party you're in. They just want clear regulation and want to be able to operate, want to be able to innovate, and want to be able to store their value in Bitcoin. And so I think that it's going to take time for, I mean, we're Only a few months post this election, there's still like a ton of polarization, people upset, rationalizing things in their own brains. I think four years from now, even if Republicans lose the White House, I think there's going to be a recognition that this movement is bipartisan and it doesn't really matter what side of the aisle you're on. You just want to store your value better. Tim Kotzman (01:01:13.775) Yeah, it was just interesting to me that the Democrats didn't pivot like super swiftly. I mean, maybe they thought approving an ETF would get the job done. That's a joke. But yeah, I mean, they just didn't really move at all. And on the Republican side, as not to beat a dead horse, but to the extent that it's optics, to the extent that it's a cult of personality, probably not ideal. But It is obviously from a regulatory and mainstream aspect moving it along, Liam, your points and questions around GameStop. I mean, it's all good, right? We can talk about the convertible stuff that they just raised and how that puts them at a 31 % leverage ratio. until they announce that they've bought some Bitcoin, I think that's really the next step. Brian Cubellis (01:02:12.661) What do you think about the signaling? that's one of the concerns I've heard from folks is like they, you know, put it in their filings. They did this this convertible note, but they haven't really articulated a strategy. Whereas like if you look at sailor and what he did for the past four years, like he was extremely overt and articulate about what he was doing, how he was thinking about it and how he's going to execute on it. And I think that just gives shareholders and prospective shareholders more importantly confidence and conviction in what they're doing and I don't think we've seen that from Cohen or anyone at GameStop and so I think that's part of the trepidation in the market right now for them is like well how serious are you guys about this? Clearly doing this huge debt offering is a signal that they're serious about it, but like to your point When are you gonna buy the Bitcoin and how do you think about it more importantly like? Do you view Bitcoin as the hurdle, right? Is the goal of this company going forward to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible? Like that's the part that they haven't really spoken to. Tim Kotzman (01:03:17.835) And I don't think I've missed it because you would think it'd be all over social media, but Ryan has not said anything publicly outside of filings that the company has done. So there's two things. One is when they announced their first purchase and two is, is he ever going to say anything? Is he going to become more public? Which you would think if he can do it in the right way would be very positive. like through conversations, I've picked up one that Brian Cubellis (01:03:24.498) Yeah. Tim Kotzman (01:03:47.471) I guess he doesn't do a lot of public speaking. not that he hasn't done any, but like, I think whether it's him or they bring someone else in to kind of be the public face of that would be like the number one, announce the purchases. Number two, whether it's Ryan or somebody else, like get somebody in there that can communicate to. Yeah. Yeah. Just say something. But then, yeah, I mean, Brian Cubellis (01:04:09.355) Or just like say why you're doing it. Like present your thesis on Bitcoin. Like that's the part that I think is necessary for this. Tim Kotzman (01:04:16.741) I mean, it's a big role if someone's going to sign up to, maybe they don't do a thousand podcasts like Sailor, but to be that public, I mean, it takes a lot of energy. And so I think them being thoughtful about whether that's Ryan or Ryan and somebody else, I think that would go a long way with the market. Jackson Mikalic (01:04:34.876) Find out next week on the last trade. We got like 10 more minutes or so, I do have a hard stop. I wanted to touch on two things and then if there's anything else for the group. The first would be, so there's news shared over the weekend that it's actually a Bitcoin holder since 2013, which their Bitcoin is a couple, their Bitcoin appreciated. over that time from probably 2013 was probably like 100, 200 bucks at that time. And now Bitcoin is $85,000. And the amount of Bitcoin that they had was three million pounds worth of Bitcoin. And unfortunately, the news that broke over the weekend was that the wife, was a married couple, threw away the device, the hardware wallet. And so imagine how devastating that is to be in a position where you've actually kept your Bitcoin secure for over a decade. Not many people can say that. We speak to people that have been around since 2013 and in many cases, you know, they still have most of their allocation, but they may have been snipped on Mt. Gox or they may have misplaced a seed phrase here and there. And so perhaps this person did as well, but they still had about 3 million pounds worth of Bitcoin. And imagine Imagine just getting, over the course of decade, keeping it secure just to... know that there was an accident at home and you end up throwing away the cryptographic material. And so this is unfortunately, I think a position that a lot of people are in, whether they realize it or not, I think that this device was just in a desk drawer with other probably wires, et cetera, and it was just inconspicuous looking and it was thrown out. And so this is ultimately why people, it goes back to the self-custody discussion that we had. If you're going to do that, you just need to be very... Jackson Mikalic (01:06:28.584) diligent about how you're managing your keys. And the reality is that most people don't actually have time to be thinking about this 24-7 because they have a family, they run a business, they are taking their kids to sporting events, they're doing this and that. And so if you're going to do it, that's great, but the challenge here is that most people don't have time to do it properly. So I wasn't sure if you guys had any thoughts on that, but ultimately it's a big thing we help our clients with is like taking away the burden of having to do the key management ongoing and still giving them a really secure argument more secure custody solution, but it doesn't require them or their wives or their children to be experts and have to think about where do the devices go, where do the seed phrases go. Michael Tanguma (01:07:09.132) Yeah, I think we touched on a lot of it so we don't have to hash out too in depth with like an on-ramp shill but the reality is this happens way more than people. This is just somebody public. It's the same thing with the bad actors. Like it's only the one out of a 10 or to a hundred if not greater end up coming forward. We hear stories about U-Haul transfers and somebody putting all their information right because you have like if you're a collaborative custody user you have all those the seeds and the devices you throw them in your U-Haul and it gets disconnected or lost or and losing their funds to Palisade fires and that seed being in the safety deposit box and the control being lost to safes being broken into in rings and the person missing the seed phrase taped to the top of the safe to what Jackson described is you're kind of like in a bad position because if you tell somebody about where this is secure then you kind of expose yourself if you tell nobody then a family member is just cleaning up a desk drawer or cleaning out a safe so it's just again I think the the big component is going and taking a look if any but it just wants to learn more about how we think about it via the barbell approach to custody. I think, obviously, self-custody is insanely important. It's what makes the system work. It's just the reality of, you want all your assets to be thrown away or that capabilities? And when the price 10x is, that person probably didn't care about it at 2012, 2013. You know, let's just say it was $3,000 at a time. It's like, it's not a big deal, but that $3,000 turns into $300,000 and then $3 million. And so that's the whole notion of like protecting this asset. Like it's 10x the price it will be. And that's the crazy part about all this is nobody. When it was $3,000, I could say, you know, maybe certain amount of people weren't ready for 10x because that's $30,000. And then $30,000, you could say $300k. I'm fairly confident 99 % of Bitcoin holders are not ready for 10x because that's effectively a million dollar Bitcoin. And you probably want some portion of that, not in your setup, because if you get knocked out of the game, you want your family to get it. And so, yeah, it's just, it's something that we'll keep talking about. Brian Cubellis (01:09:13.119) Yeah, we'll put a link to this barbell report in the show notes. And you said it very well, Michael, like we're not personally dogmatic about this. Self custody is great. There's a place for it. But there's also a place for something like multi-institution where you can reduce the burden on yourself, reduce the burden on your family and just make sure that like you're able to pass on all of this wealth that you've accumulated in Bitcoin. and not get knocked out of the game. And so that's ultimately what we're trying to strive towards at OnRamp is providing options. And the beauty of multi-institution is you always have that optionality. Like you can always withdraw it to yourself custody. And so, you know, again, that transparency, that clarity of on-chain segregated addresses where, you know, you can very easily withdraw that to your own custody is unique to our model. Can't do that with the ETFs. Michael Tanguma (01:09:50.562) Thank Brian Cubellis (01:10:10.795) And there's just a lot more trust if you're, again, giving unilateral control to a single entity. Go ahead. Michael Tanguma (01:10:16.438) And it's worth calling out just like, because I do think it adds to an error of the credibility of that. We're not just saying this. to say it like there's very few people because we're so early that have onboarded thousands of dollars, thousands of people and billions of dollars to self custody. I came over from Unchained, Cam Kim has come over, there's been others. Like we've gone through the wringer and how to do this and realize there was a ceiling when it comes to this ability for individuals but then ultimately enterprises and institutions that cannot manage cryptographic material including the US government. And so if we want this system to be successful you naturally have to decentralize the risk with institutional grade experts that manage that. So it comes from a place of like going through the hard work and realizing over half a decade that there just needs to be more robust, resilient architecture for the system. And that's where we're excited about being able to democratize access while also not having people left alone with Coinbase and them selling your data, but also your wife or loved one throwing away your wealth that you've been store in since 2013. Jackson Mikalic (01:11:27.772) We almost forgot the, arguably the most critical aspect of the show. Tim, you gotta do your tie reveal. You have a seed phrase stitched on the back of that tie, Tim? Can I take a picture of it? Tim Kotzman (01:11:41.805) It's right here. Jackson Mikalic (01:11:45.128) Okay, yeah, that looks right. But Tim, that's a nice looking tie. Tim Kotzman (01:11:47.515) But it's, yeah, I think we'll be in the 90,000s next week. Brian Cubellis (01:11:50.059) It's pretty long. It's pretty damn long. Jackson Mikalic (01:11:52.508) barely fits in the frame. Jackson Mikalic (01:11:57.351) Yeah, let's wrap up here real quick. Let's do a quick round of some bullish, embarrassed takes. Anyone got some exciting takes for the audience who decided to stick around this long? Brian Cubellis (01:11:58.262) Timbo Prediction. Brian Cubellis (01:12:09.483) uh... global quiddity is going back up guys gold is is the canary in the coal mine it's ripping it'll hand the baton to bitcoin at some point don't overthink the timing of it it's gonna happen Tim Kotzman (01:12:22.875) Yeah, I've been surprised that gold has really ripped ahead of Bitcoin right now. I haven't seen that or in my recent memory. My memory is not always that great. But the other thing that we're probably going to see in 35 minutes in the Rose Garden is, and you guys were my inspiration for this tweet. about an hour ago, if we can't cut enough of the irresponsible government spending, then the only other move is to be irresponsibly long Bitcoin. I mean, you know, hopefully it's catchy, but I think that's where this is going. Is there like, hey, we're cutting what we can, we're terrifying what we can, but we just, there's only one thing left to send this thing on the rocket ship. And which like as a country we need to do, and then you're just going to see Brian Cubellis (01:12:55.466) I love that. Tim Kotzman (01:13:15.141) things that you, I don't think that bonds are years away. That's my bullish prediction. I think they're happening this year. Jackson Mikalic (01:13:24.902) I got a bearish take for everyone while Michael's thinking of his. Bearish take is Michael told me in secret that he actually sold all of his Bitcoin for gold. And that's why he's been so excited about gold on this show the past several weeks. Brian Cubellis (01:13:33.643) He likes his rocks. Jackson Mikalic (01:13:41.618) They're minerals. Michael Tanguma (01:13:41.71) It was just a trade. Now we can cycle back into Bitcoin. Jackson Mikalic (01:13:50.269) Well Tim, I like that take you just had. think that's a good place to wrap. Bitbond's this year. That would be quite bullish. So Tim Cotsman, he's a man of few words sometimes on this show, but he actually delivers the most alpha. For the... Brian Cubellis (01:14:05.355) He also hosts 17 podcasts, so. Jackson Mikalic (01:14:09.799) Yeah. Liam Nelson (01:14:09.957) The strategy is right. Sell dollars, buy Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (01:14:13.826) He hosts a number of podcasts, but this is the real hurdle rate podcast. can't take that from us. Liam, before we have, you have to have, you gotta show something bullish or bearish, but ideally it's bullish. Liam Nelson (01:14:27.3) Hahaha Yeah, I'm never bearish. Yeah, I mean the strategy of you know selling dollars to acquire hard assets is one that's continue to work well whether that it's Gold or Bitcoin I'm sticking with Bitcoin not just trade for me, but I'm gonna continue to do that and I think There's could be a lot of other people that are doing it too I mean we're seeing the speculative attack ramp up with the strategy or meta planet or or whoever else but I mean everybody realizes that they want the finite asset with only 5.5 % supply left coming over the next 115 years. While I think the dollar supply, the deficit last year was like two trillion, it's going to continue to ramp up and that's just the US. Many other countries are way worse. So everybody's going to find Bitcoin, whether it's individuals, governments, and corporations. I'm sticking with Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (01:15:26.446) Yeah, just to be clear, nobody's trading Bitcoin around here, at least on this side of the fence. So don't have any gold. I have a little gold, but not like really from an investment perspective. And also I was so short needing more Bitcoin, we had to start businesses to start accumulating Bitcoin. I'm as all in as you can get, contrary to what Jackson may believe. Liam Nelson (01:15:29.697) You Jackson Mikalic (01:15:48.988) Hey man, you can be truthful with the audience. We all know you have a lot of gold tucked underneath the mattress. Michael Tanguma (01:15:52.93) Jackson, do have a big, I have one big question before we wrap is what do you need from the audience to show up next week? Because you know, it was a few weeks ago you really got them out in the comments and liking and subscribing and we appreciated it and you showed up. But curious if there's anything that's gonna help you come back next week. Because we like having you around. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:13.352) Well thanks, you know, I wasn't sure if you actually did, so I appreciate that. No, I think anyone who's made it this far, thank, anyone who's made it this far on the show, thank you for being, thank you for being here, yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:16:14.443) You Brian Cubellis (01:16:22.26) You Brian Cubellis (01:16:26.357) Hopefully you've already liked and subscribed, but send this to a friend, a coworker, someone who you've been trying to teach about Bitcoin, but they won't listen to you because they know you and they're sick of hearing from you. Send them a. Michael Tanguma (01:16:38.804) or they're gonna buy GME and not Bitcoin, you should send them here because they're gonna hear the thing that they won't hear from Tim. Tim's gonna put everyone in GME. Brian Cubellis (01:16:45.397) But yeah, share it with friends, tell them to like and subscribe, assuming you've already liked and subscribed. Create a fake account, like and subscribe from that one as well. Look at that. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:50.802) Tim's going to take your family's Wow. Michael Tanguma (01:16:56.002) Tim, how does it go, the lower it dips? Tim Kotzman (01:17:00.687) The Hyret Rips. Brian Cubellis (01:17:02.251) Let's go. 90s, 90s next week, boys. Jackson Mikalic (01:17:03.228) Yeah, you don't, all right, that's what it is. That's what it is. If you don't like the podcast and rate it five stars, Tim is going to steal your family's Bitcoin.