Citi, Schwab, Nubank, & Aureo: The Global Bitcoin Race for 21 Million

It all comes down to computers communicating. >> The information superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. >> Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. >> Is it still rat poison? >> Probably rat poison squared. >> We need to get into the world of okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash. Thanks everybody for joining the most recent episode of Final Settlement. It was a great talk just going over everything in the market today. Um, as well as we had a special guest, Gustavo Flores of Oreo. We discussed a number of different things including everything from Latin American Bitcoin adoption, how we think everything will play out, and then gave some updates around his business. Um, there are some really exciting new announcements coming from Early Riders this entire week. So, please stay tuned and subscribe to all of our research. We're really doing a lot there at early riders.com/ressearch. And please feel free to reach out to myself directly at liamarriters.com if any of this sounds interesting to you. Now, on to the rest of the show. Alrighty, gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, October 20th, 10:17 a.m. Eastern time. I'm joined as always by Michael Tanguma, Liam Nelson, and special guests today, Gustavo Flores, CEO of AO. Uh some exciting announcements and news uh related to Custava's business coming later in the show, but uh lots of news and and and headlines to get to. We've got a long list. Um so going to kick things off here talking a little bit about um some developments going on really in in this broader trend that we've been talking about for several weeks and months of both institutional allocators uh and also sovereigns um getting interested in sort of the broader crypto space but Bitcoin specifically um and productizing these markets. Um, so the first link I'm I'm bringing up here is um some news from the UK uh that 21 shares Bitwise and Wisdomree will open UK retail access to Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs through FCA approval. Um I forget who brought this link but um any any thoughts on this one uh gentlemen? >> Yeah, I think um it's a huge deal. I think Black Rockck is also part of that. Um I think UK obviously huge market and then there was a whole slew of news from last week we'll talk about globally that came to uh on inflows or on-ramps across the board um in the UK naturally being pretty um antagonistic to digital assets and there's there was the the notion that retail investors couldn't get exposure to spot bitcoin and that's where they ended up in DAT and all these inferior products or had to go to MSTR will increasingly uh you know month over month start to make less and less sense. The reality is these markets the local uh financial service partners that run them the local custodian requirements that the regulators will require will all be incentivized to have the assets closest to the client and um so you can expect this to transpire across the world. Uh and so I think it's just a natural evolution of where the market's going where you're going to have local financial services offering Bitcoin rails. >> Yep. And uh the banks just or all these asset managers who uh are providing the ETP saw how much money can be made in the US and what the demand looks like for them. And so, uh, even if the government isn't necessarily super open to it, they're going to spend the time, money, and resources lobbying them in order to educate them that, you know, people actually want this and they can make money off of it. Um, so it's just, you know, a no-brainer that this is going to continue, not just in the UK, but all across the world. >> Yeah, there's a capital flight component as well. When you think about in the US first mover having all this money come in to the ecosystem and we can pull that up as well where Jeff Japan um it's not fully read in that they're approving this but Japan's now discussing allowing banks to buy and sell crypto and again this just ties back to incentives. You don't want your capital whether it's your local fiat or you know hard asset like a Bitcoin or gold leaving your shores. And then ultimately um you want those within your borders and you want to be able to offer financial services and products around that. And so I just expect to see this more and more where um and this kind of makes sense when you go back to old school banking. We lost sight of it just given the way the world's been digitized. But there's a reason where every corner you generally drive down in a US city or town there's a bank at the corner because that's just how relationships and banking work. Um, and so it kind of you can see this play out over the past 15 years where you had to go, you know, 13 years ago to Mount Gauss and then Mount Gaus went to San Francisco and now you can go on each coast. Naturally, you can, you know, Texas has a few Bitcoin firms. You just start to get a more localized driven relationship with your u banking partner and so this is makes a lot of sense. >> Yep. And there was also a second headline out of Japan. Um I think more so related to stable coins. Um but this is just again part of this broader trend of um you know I think a lot of this is interesting as it relates to Japan because they've been historically sort of um cautious or even anti antagonistic against the broader crypto space. Um, but I think as people recognize, you know, I think the the signpost of Black Rockck just having such success with the Bitcoin ETF, I think did send some shock waves around the world, particularly to uh potential issuers like Tradfi incumbents around the actual opportunity around a lot of these things. And you know, as we know, they're going to take that in all different directions outside of Bitcoin, whether it's stable coins or real world assets, uh, the tokenization of of everything and anything. Um, but the broader construct is that they are they are now open and willing to engage with this stuff because they see the monetary incentive of of building products like this. That's sort of the takeaway for me is is the incentives associated with well if we can make money from this then let's let's issue everything under the sun here. Um because there's there's a real opportunity for us to to make money here. >> Yeah, I'd agree. But this uh this article in particular is talking about Mukg SNBC and Mizuo um trying to issue yen and dollar peg stable coins. I we've talked about this in the past before, but I do think this will end up more so like the bricks type currency where there are a ton of different people with different incentives who are behind the asset and they won't just having different priorities at different times will probably make the uh like yen backed or dollar backed stable coin less successful than it would have been otherwise just because people are going to um or the different banks will have disagreement ments on where they should prioritize this and essentially having a committee of experts will necessarily slow you down especially with new product launches while they have distribution it's going to be challenging in order to to scale this as much as they would like um is kind of my base case. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I Gustav, I'd be curious on your thoughts there and specifically what you've seen in Latin America because I I was initially pretty bearish on local fiat stable coins and now I'm a little less in the sense of like obviously they all um lose value and lose value relative to the dollar which loses value relative to gold or bitcoin. But the the reality is and something we've just learned, you know, from building is the things that we understand versus the market or, you know, football fieldwide when it comes to even understanding a stable coin, let alone um you know, Bitcoin. And so that reality will exist. And then what Liam was saying referencing um the amount of bureaucracy. I I believe that to be true obviously, but then the reality is all these uh banks will over time naturally need to be built out because of the way the system's set up. And so you can see how it's very similar with back during co it's like how are we going to get dollars into um you know citizens pockets and then they figured it out whether it was cash app to start and now we have stable coins and we talked about picks before we started recording. So just curious how you see that playing out. Um if you think there'll be that much bureaucracy or market forces will require them to basically uh vertically integrate or streamline that process from central banks to uh fiat stable coins for the local market. >> Yeah, totally. I mean first I there was there's been a lot of push back from governments in the region as it has been the case everywhere less so now since probably the the Trump boy house started. they just kind of have to adapt to the new reality. I think the UK and Japan's news is kind of related to that too. Uh but and there's been definitely this year has been the year of the of the local stable coin narrative in Latin America. A lot of projects in Mexico are doing that for for multiple reasons, right? One is to be able to some some have ideas to just move the economy towards a stable coin economy in order to to bypass uh some financial regulations. You know, let's say you pay your your c your your employees in stable coins. Uh then you can bypass uh many many regulations in Mexico. Uh but but it's it's still an ongoing uh dance where like they they pull and they push on this direction, you know. It's still it still hasn't fully settled at least in Mexico and Colombia. Uh I know Brazil is definitely way ahead everyone else. So I I think the the first developments we're going to see in on this topic are going to come from Brazil specifically. Uh and Mexico and Colombia will just have no choice but to adapt to this new reality in in in maybe some a couple extra months or a couple extra years. >> Yeah. I mean, we've seen uh was it last week all the the uh inflows from Argentina and US dollars um that you can see over time you just create the spigot where there's like swap lines that existed where it becomes the incentive to streamline that and those flows will naturally turn into stable coins for treasury demand. So yeah, it feels like there's a lot of market forces that will be independent of like the demand. Um but it'll be interesting to watch. >> Yeah, it's interesting. uh you brought up uh Brazil Gustavo because another uh link that you had shared uh related to Brazil was and and I didn't even realize this but I guess that there was um some efforts around a Bitcoin reserve project in Brazil that now I guess apparently has been scrapped um any other color on on on this one just in the sense of you know all of these countries now thinking about stable coins are they being distracted by the stable coin narratives and should they really just be focusing on on Bitcoin I would be >> they're definitely distracted by the they're definitely excuse me they're definitely distracted by the stable coin narrative. Uh I I think the Brazil case is particularly interesting because they've been quite bullish on Bitcoin so far. Uh and that's surprising for particularly like a leftwing regime as as we have in in Brazil. Uh but yeah, the stable coin it's it's it's part of a bigger push from the fintech ecosystem too, you know, like everybody wants to issue their their stable coin. all these big billion dollar fintex wants want to get on board on that, right? So to allow themselves I I think the the the fintex and the you have you have in incentives from the fintech ecosystem, from the crypto ecosystem and from the government to push the stable coin narrative and to slow down the the Bitcoin one. Uh but it's it's simply temporary, right? You you know that once the the Chrohen horse has entered uh there's there's no going back. So, I think we'll just see more and more of this pull and push uh type of uh flow, you know, mechanism. And uh but ultimately, we we're just going in the in the good direction here. >> Yeah. Um there was a few other uh headlines I wanted to go to. Uh there was the Coinbase news uh making investment in Coin DCX. Um Liam, you had thoughts on this one? Well, this one's interesting for a number of different reasons. Um, CoinDCX is an Indian/Master easternbased exchange. They're actually um a little bit larger than I thought. They have almost 150 million in revenue and uh over a billion dollars on their platform. Um they I think that Coinbase just wants access to growing markets and that's why they made investments in the firm. I think that the they didn't actually specify what the investment is. Um but yeah, it's just uh Bitcoin's going to proliferate everywhere and so uh it's only natural that you want to have your brand and access to financial services to proliferate everywhere as well. And um offering a partnership with local based exchanges is an interesting way to do that. Um, I think that they probably did this because I would assume they got a deal and there was um because coin uh DCX I think they lost $44 million earlier this year they had uh the famous proof of reserves and then um you know the next day they lost $44 million because there was a hack of a hot wallet on the exchange and so they probably are looking for somebody who can come in and make an investment in the firm because they probably had some uh holes. They said that they were able to um close it by their balance sheet, but that doesn't necessarily mean like they could have taken on an additional loan in order to be able to close it with their own balance sheet. Um so I think that uh this is just interesting to see. I don't necessarily know know quite as much to know exactly why they did this other than just the fact that they probably were able to to get a really good deal and um it's a growing market and eventually just as we talked about earlier like Bitcoin is just a better form of money and so it's going to proliferate into all of these different corners of the world and even though India has been a little bit more um you know uh combative against digital assets and bitcoin in particular it seems like they're shifting that narrative a little bit uh like we talked about in the past and so it just makes sense from both the timing uh and probably valuation perspective from Coinbase. >> Yeah, this one's super curious based on everything you said. Um but does add to the color around the losses, especially with a firm that you would imagine if they have a proof of reserves. It ties back to another notion of proof of reserves or a fallacy inherently because just because you can prove the reserves If a single custodian is doing that, the next day they're lost. What was the point? Um, but the notion of if they're conservative by showing that they weren't rehypothecating or do anything else, they don't necessarily have the same type of revenue um profile of other companies like a Binance or, you know, different kind of trading platforms where they can't make up that hole. And so, to Liam's point, they could have been really uh impaired. And there's a number of other angles. probably one of the most interesting outside of a deal is the Indian markets my understanding um while they're very uh you know antagonistic or have put certain I think I don't know if it was India last week it was the UK for sure was going after 50,000 I think it was the UK and India in the past two weeks have said they're going after um like tax evasion for cryptocurrencies point being is it's very um insular in who's running these markets and then the regulators that are deeming them Okay. And so if Coinbase is able to effectively buy their way into that market, it is the second, I believe, largest, you know, continent in the world, 1.2 billion uh people. Um and so, and then obviously the gold profile makes it a lot of sense that those citizens, they're one step removed from understanding Bitcoin, but it's still interesting Coinbase to get exposure into Asia-Pacific effectively. And what does that look like? and does coin DCX run uh independent with their realm brand or do they take on the Coinbase brand TBD? But yeah, I think it's it's a super interesting deal. Um it's one that I didn't expect to see in the markets. >> Do you already own Bitcoin on the balance sheet of your company or are you looking to get buy in to adopt Bitcoin on the balance sheet? Get in touch with us here at On-Ramp. You can see here we just published a case study. You can find it on our website onrampbitcoin.com/proucts linked below. We helped AAM's advisory go from no Bitcoin strategy to board approval and a live treasury in 30 days. So if you are a business and you are looking to either secure your existing Bitcoin held on balance sheet or you want to adopt a strategy net new, we're here to help. We can help with multi-institution custody, Lloyds of London insurance, role-based access controls, and making sure that you have a secure plan for your Bitcoin. now and into the future. So again, get in touch with us. On-ramp business just launched. We'd love to speak with you. Book a consultation on our website. >> Yeah. Um few other to just run through here. I think we alluded to this one, but uh another Black Rockck headline to launch. Genius compliant money market fund tailored for stable coin issuers. Um and then there was another stable coin related headline. Stripe stable coin unit bridge which they acquired months ago uh applies for a national bank trust charter. Um any thoughts on on either of these stable coin announcements? the money market one just calling out uh I think it's it's fascinating because we're just going to see the blending of stables and money markets and the movement and it's all going to get obiscated in the background whether it's the rewards that people talk about to get more competitive on launching stable coins or um the money market funds where you can deposit and effectively deposit stable coins in there to get around it. Um I think we see portfolio companies as well as external companies start to integrate. Uh the the one that was interesting, we didn't talk much about it. It's actually a really interesting value prop minus uh who the CEO is of Galaxy 1. um really interesting value prop around integration of equities next to crypto or bitcoin but then uh two different style uh cash or checking and savings account. So the checking account does a 4% uh interest rate pass through and it's using something similar to this and then they have like the 8 to 9% which is for accredit investors that go into the Bitcoin back lending product that they offer. And so point being is I think you're just going to see more and more of this in Tradfi launching cryptoreated services along with uh more incentives to pass capital or yield back to the user and then digital asset firms also integrating more of the trady um setup and and I think at the end of the day it really all comes back down to Bitcoin though and who offers the best Bitcoin financial services meaning from custody to execution to client services and understanding because if we believe that whether it's stable coins, private equity, public equities um in any other investment class all are going to net settle and be denominated but also benchmarked against Bitcoin. Well, then that's a logical progression. And it's fascinating because we'll talk about this with Gustavo, but that's the exact opposite everyone that we talk about here is focused on. They're all talking about the old world and how do they digitize it versus like what's this new base currency, Bitcoin and potentially gold. Um so yeah. >> Yeah. I'd add that it seems like everybody from the Bill Guries of the world uh we can talk about the tempo raise uh in a little bit too of just $500 million before they have a product on mainet which is uh seems pretty high um for their new blockchain in order for uh people to issue stable coins. But it's just everybody um in the you know traditional venture world and uh is looking at this asset class as a way to um kind of graft on what they've been looking for in the past which is massive amounts of network effects as well as reduced fees and um I think that they've just been really turned off by the amount of scams in you know the broader crypto space and just the volatility of the tokens which don't necessarily have uh sound fundamentals of uh underlying price to earnings ratios and everything that we see with ETH and they can't quite wrap their head around Bitcoin yet just for whatever reason. Um, so it's interesting to see that they're going to come into assets like this and they're going to try to professionalize them as much as possible. Um and there just to to your point Michael earlier too, they're going to uh proliferate this around the world because all other countries uh outside of the US really need um you know better forms of money as well is uh and the fact that the US needs all of them to um you know have the dollar as well because the stable coin issuers are going to be the one to actually buy the treasury as we get more and more um you know down the rabbit hole of debt and deficits. Um, but I think that this is just a a a good way to see more people come into the space because they're not necessarily trying to scam people and pump their own uh tokens. It's it probably comes from a place of actually trying to understand, you know, why what's wrong with the payment networks today and how can we reduce those costs? But naturally, they're just going to all understand that, you know, Bitcoin can do many of what these things do um at a better way of just securing your value and um as well as just the different layers will be able to uh share this value just as quickly as any of these other uh stable coins and and blockchains that they're trying to develop. >> Yeah, the there's two aspects. Um I don't think I think the strategic people know this. the amount of disintermediation this is going to do to local fiat currencies. Uh I'll come back to that because Guso, I'm curious on your thoughts there. The other one though is um good money uh throwing away good money for bad or bad money for good. I know River was the one that I believe first did this where you could park your checking account via Lead Bank and then sweep those um excess yield into um Bitcoin. That's part of Galaxy 1's deal is you can basically autocon convert that yield into Bitcoin or that additional dollars which I think is interesting for people that first want their exposure or if they're going to you know naturally have dollar liabilities you have a cash account so I think these things will naturally proliferate which is just a better experience but going back to the first point Gustavo I'm curious like how do you see that with stable coins and bitcoin just disin intermediating a lot of like local sovereign structures because I've talked to uh individuals in Latin America where certain countries have like 24% uh interest rates just to get dollars, working capital for just a regular business. And so a lot of entrepreneurs that understand Bitcoin are starting to look at like how do you bring Bitcoin into there? Whether it's lending their own Bitcoin capital to get dollars to lend back to businesses, which obviously has execution risk, or eventually when businesses hold some form of Bitcoin in their corporate treasury, that's a lot easier way to effectively get, you know, even if it's 8 to 12%, it's still much better than 24%. you don't need local rails, especially as the world becomes dollarized. Um, just curious if you have any thoughts there what you're seeing. >> Yeah. No, you you couldn't be more right on this, Mike. Like I think in in Mexico alone, the just the central bank rate is is about 9%. Uh so business loans start at 20 minimum and and Mexico is is is a stable country in comparison of like Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia where where government rates has started at 80%. You know so so yeah for sure the the the credit market is is is definitely having a big impact here and it's going to have more and more. I think uh MIC multi institutional multi institutional custody is is required to have a a secure way to to offer these credit build these credit marks on top of Bitcoin and uh but but yeah definitely I think the most interesting case has been probably Bolivia where in the past year uh stable coins and bitcoins have completely replaced the the country's financial system like uh even in the uh airport of the main city in Bolivia of the capital prices are now in USDT, you know, so it's just been a complete replacement of their uh financial system with with stable coins and Bitcoin. Uh which what what had been seen previously in Venezuela and Argentina has now taken full shape in in Bolivia. So yeah, definitely something uh with big interest here, a big narrative that's boiling up. We're going to hear a lot of that more soon. >> Yeah. And um continuing along the the path of of Latin America and and adoption there, there was another uh headline around New Bank. New bank applies for US national bank charter. Um Gustavo, any any thoughts on this one? Maybe you know uh provide some context around New Bank and and what this means. Yeah, New Bank is uh Brazil's biggest fintech uh application and at this point I think just biggest financial platform in in Brazil. Uh it's also extremely popular in Mexico and in Colombia. I think at least uh 10% of Mexicans, Colombians, Argentinians have new bank. If Brazil it has to be more than than 25 uh so it's it's also a publicly traded company and it's been on the space for for a while, right? So, it's it's jumping on on on crypto. It it jumped on on on crypto a couple years ago. Now, they they seem to have a more Bitcoin focused strategy with their latest hire. Uh which may maybe Michael you can you can add more context on that. But this just natural evol evolution for them. And I think this was also this I'm speculating here, but I believe the Trump's White House has has invited New Bank and other Latin American companies to come to the US. You know, we're now open for business, come build here, too. I know that the CEO of Bitso, which is the the big like the Coinbase of Latin America, he was invited to the White House. So, obviously, uh new bank would would have been too, right? So, uh, this doesn't surprise me much and I think we'll see a lot more of this. >> Michael, anything on this one? >> Yeah, Newink is incredibly fascinating. I think um they're the largest uh like fintech out after like any one that would be in China. They've succeeded on a number of things. One is in Latin America, I think there's close to 650 million users um or potential users. I think they have roughly 90 million of them which is already crazy. Uh but there is an aspect that doesn't really get discussed and and um Gustavo referenced it. So, it's my understanding that from a leadership perspective, specifically the CEO, he's a he gets Bitcoin very deeply. And there's a lot of moves that they've done to signal that from being very early and getting involved with digital assets and Bitcoin to uh most recently, I think it was last week or the week before, they brought on Michael Riani who was formerly at uh Cash App and Square and then was leading Coinbase. I think his title was like head of Bitcoin or something related directly to Bitcoin. um and he joined and that bank charter is fascinating to see the examples of whether it's we talked a little bit about this um in Brazil they pioneered something called the pit pix network which was just better integrations with the central bank to be able to deliver uh payment rails and capital flows and so whether it's how they u leverage that in the US given their scale and best practices all the way to when you think about remittances from the US to Latin America America and vertically integrating that uh leveraging crypto to do it. I think that's a a huge thing that gets underdised because we'll talk a little bit about um the uh all the names are kind of start to merge together, but it's uh Spark launched. I forgot what I we'll reference the exact name of it, but the point being is that for years there's been a lot of cryptonatives talking about payments in Rails, but it's not necessarily that the the tech isn't there. it's that the distribution and uh consumer commercial behavior isn't there or hasn't been there. And so when you get somebody like New Bank with their total addressable market and then also in a crypto friendly environment where they can get a a license like Airbank got it in like 6 weeks or whatever the time was, it starts to get really interesting on what is a digital application look like to manage uh one's wealth. So I think this is something very fascinating to pay attention to and obviously New Bank is a huge giant um after the major Visas MXs of the world um I think their valuation is closer to like $40 billion. Yeah, I would also add um the one other thing too is just with them trying to get the OC charter and we've seen a ton of different uh crypto firms now also try to branch out and try to get national bank charters here in the US and uh I think Bridge just filed for that as well. We're just seeing a a professionalization and a checking of the boxes of what all of the traditional financial players really want, right? And um we've also seen on the other side a you know more Bitcoin NATO side of what really Bitcoiners want especially in the early days. Um, but I think that there is still a gap out there of kind of bridging those two of deep Bitcoin understanding and offering the best products and services like a multi-institution custody globally to um, you know, not just adding on um, you know, OCC charter on top of proof of reserves or something like that and then saying okay, we we did it and satisfied all of the um, you know, requirements and and this is um, you know, mission success. Um, so I I would say like that's still a big opportunity out there, but it just signals that uh because they're doing all of this with national bank charters and OC requirements, they are seeing a lot of interest for customers or at least try uh institutional customers or at least like trying to court them pretty heavily. >> Yeah, that's well said. Um all right we um maybe just one more headline as it relates to sort of what we've been talking about here and you know we've been focused sort of internationally but back domestically in the US uh city targets 2026 launch for crypto custody service there was another headline also related to Charles Schwab very similar that they're going to launch um you know the ability to trade and and custody digital assets in 2026 which I think that's actually the most interesting part about these couple headlines is just the the longer sort of cycle for these things to play out. Um, which may elongate the proverbial Bitcoin cycle if you know a lot of these things are getting turned on, the plumbing, the access uh in 2026. That sort of uh flies in the face of what you know people historically think about uh Bitcoin cycles and you know the timing of such. Um, so it's just interesting to see this play out because I think um, there will be all of this latent demand that continues to get unlocked whether it's through ETFs, ETPs, all these different products that are, you know, set to be launched next year. I I think that's just an interesting dynamic uh, sort of juxtapose against historical cycle timing. Um, yeah. Well, maybe this will go to the transition. I think um it's a great point, something we've been talking about. You know, whether it's public news or private news, everyone in this industry talks with individuals that are turning things on for mass market adoption. And so that effectively doesn't get priced in. And then this cycle regardless, there's no shortage of ways to look at it from the price and the unlock from people selling to the demand that's come from these other pockets specifically like ETFs. Um, City and Schwab as an example are huge players to get in. You came out the week before Vanguard, you know, naturally looking at letting their clients get exposure. Um, I think this ties into what we brought Gustavo on to talk about. Um, and but before that, I think, um, this will tie into it. There's an I don't I haven't fully figured out how to express this. We talk about it a lot where the market is still so early. There's only so many sophisticated players in it. And when I mean players, I mean individuals. And the reason why is because very few people on the planet earth treat Bitcoin as money. Like treat it as money, treat it as a savings technology. And because of that, we still uh and there's there's a chicken or egg problem of like how can you treat it as money or savings technology if you don't have a good form of custody and good partners and financial services. And this is fundamentally the reason why u majority of Bitcoin sits in self-custody on effectively ledgers. And I know that sounds crazy, but it's just empirically true. ledgers. The vast majority of market share from hardware wallets and the vast majority of Bitcoin sits in those hardware wallets because you had to sever the internet connection if you didn't want to get rugged by Celsius, block by Genesis, FTX, blah blah blah. So if you go down that progression, there's still such a small cohort that have exposure. And so whether it's New Bank, uh Charles Schwab, City, or whoever else, the first step like everyone is not to go 10, 25, 50, 100% as a savings technology. It's just dabbling. and it's dabbling either in crypto or in Bitcoin. And um and so that leaves a huge opportunity because today on our portfolio companies, we treat the most sophisticated investors because they've naturally had to go through what we've learned and then they come out the other side realizing, oh god, like I value onchain. I value segregation of custody and cold storage, but I also value my life and I value the fact that I need access to financial services and I need my wife um to be able to inherit this if I get hit by a bus. And so that's what we build for and invest in. And so maybe that's kind of like a dubtale to explaining why, you know, we're really excited about this opportunity. And um I don't know, Brian, do you want me to share or do you should we like Gustavo? How do how do you want to run the announcement? Maybe uh maybe you tee it up, Michael, and then hand it to Gustavo to give more on his background and how it came to be. >> Okay. So, um super excited about this. Gustavo and I have known each other for a few years now since he had been running uh Verify, which was acquired by Bull Bitcoin. And then for the past couple years, he's been working on Swapo, which is a Latin American on-ramp for Bitcoin. And Swapo was gaining traction, looking for u you know, investment to really start to scale that business. and we started discussing maybe close to a year ago, a little less about an opportunity to participate. Um, but part of our mandate and really what we look at our thesis is the best-in-class businesses in the future state, whether it's two to five to 10 years will be built on multi-institution custody for a number of reasons from better business economics, unit economics, all the way to better uh client experience so that they can buy larger amounts and hold it. and then just ultimately a better um lifetime value with the client being able to custody those assets and then as the market grows and Bitcoin financializes to be able to offer financial services and not have that leakage. It's not to say that clients can't take self- custody in the same way with on-ramp. Um, and so when we met with Gustavo, we had brought up, you know, we'd love to invest and get involved, but multi-institution we feel like would have to play a huge part if we were going to invest because we thought Latin American best-in-class business would be built on it. And it was us being transparent and but I and so we end up investing. But maybe Gustavo, after you tell your story, I'd love to hear if you can hear the the anecdote because I share it a lot where you went to your brain trust to present the idea because I think you thought it was interesting, but you still needed to validate it. And I think that really speaks to the the opportunity set that the folks you talked to had a certain insider lens into what we're building here. >> Certainly. Thank you so much, Michael, for for that introduction. So, well, I I've been uh in the Bitcoin space now for for seven years. I I'm Peruvian, but I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and I've been living in Mexico now for the past four years. Uh audio is my well swapo and now name as audio is my third company. Uh I had a first uh mining project that didn't go so well was very inexperienced. Uh then did verify that was more successful. We we had platform where you could buy sell uh bitcoin in Canada and uh then uh it was acqu we got acqui hired by bull bitcoin. So we all went to work there. I've worked at uh Wasabi uh and now I'm also a writer at Bitcoin Optek which is a technical newsletter and uh I launched Schwapido over the past year as a solution that I needed for myself. Uh I live on the Bitcoin standard for multiple years. Maybe that's a bit unusual but for me it's it's it's been a great experience. And uh so I built Swapido as a ways that I could just live on Bitcoin easily in Mexico and I could pay people with like bank transfers but I only had my lightning wallet. Um but it it had obviously a certain limit right in in terms of of uh of adoption because uh like in Mexico the first step is to actually get people to buy Bitcoin which just hasn't been uh been the case in anywhere but here even less. So yeah, I think it audio was born from that uh reception from the market, but it was then uh also it also came to life uh with conversations from all with all of you guys. Uh I think multi-institution custody is is the only acceptable form of custody for for self-custody maximalists as I am. You know, I've been I've been advising and helping people with with self- custody for for for almost a decade now. And and I knew that the the there's been a lot of friction on the self-custody experience. And I wanted to provide a custodial experience although I didn't feel extremely comfortable with with the traditional custodial exchange single point of failure uh infrastructures, right? But I think multi-institution custody resonated with me for for that reason. Uh but also as you mentioned Michael when I brought this idea to friends clients in the region in Mexico specifically uh there's been great reception you know because first of all because the region has like specific security issues that are just not part of an Americans or an European's lifestyle. you know here people get kidnapped, extorted uh very often uh you know and everybody's always very concerned about security. So uh as as soon as I mentioned this to to many Mexican friends uh that both Bitcoiners and and non- Bitcoiners uh this immediately resonated. So so I guess I was looking for for for differentiator. I was looking for a custody model that made a self-custody uh proponent like myself comfortable and be able to sleep uh at night. Uh so it just makes total sense to to do this, right? So, thank you, Michael, Liam, and Brian. I'm very excited to to start this new journey. Uh I think we're going to be very successful in our market. Uh we have everything we need to succeed. I've uh reunited the old verified team under audio too. Nate kits is joining us as a fractional CTO. He works at Zaprite. Tristan Bourkees is joining us from Bitcoin well where he was head of design. He's joining us as CPO. And finally, Matic Septnik who was head of social media at Bit Refill is joining us as CMO. So, I'm very excited to to follow the next steps and thank you so much for for bringing me on on the show. >> Yeah, we're we're incredibly excited. I think um as we talked about, I think it gets widely misunderstood and emphasized that um Bitcoin is money and money requires financial services, but those are ultimately localized. And so, you will not only need um local presences, but then local custody in that market. And so this plays a huge part into the long-term vision of building out on-ramps and keys in different markets across the world, but then also a testament to you guys um really being um veterans in the Bitcoin space, but then also in the business building space because something that we really tout and where the venture fund comes from and why we get early stage and also early writers in the name is that really the understanding of unit economics and building the right business from the ground up at the earliest stage is paramount because if you go too far without that, you kind of lose the the right foundation from business building. And this is something that you guys really um talked about and embodied where just the understanding of trying to build the best company, the best economics to build a sustainable business uh with being very conservative and lean is something that really excited to see. I think we're getting more and more of that as people realize that all these deflationary uh um tools and like we usually talk about SAS and AI but the thing that doesn't even get discussed a lot and maybe we could talk about later and you can share Gustavo is think about the amount of rails that come in from a liquidity perspective from local fiats whether it's Latin America or US into BTC and the infrastructure was just not there before. So if you wanted to go get those licenses you wanted to get onboarded would cost millions of dollars in time and then even building out your own custody would have to cost millions of dollars in time and it ultimately all looks the same versus being able to plug into something like multi-institution offer a differentiated service. So really excited about it and I'm sure Liam and Brian also have some thoughts to share. >> No, I think that's very well said. I think it's also really exciting. um you know the team is is great and have uh enjoyed working with you guys thus far and uh love your background of you know both being very technically um technically strong across you know everything that you're doing on on the um Bitcoin opt side and and Nate's great as well u as well as the rest of your team and and just uh would also mention it's it's an exciting time for distributed keys as well just having them globally across the world um in um in areas where you know people have um concerns about, you know, local confiscation risk uh such as areas in Latin America and and others. Um they you just want the fact that while while you can have localized uh you know key signers and uh custodians in in different jurisdictions, it's also uh interesting in a really big value proposition to have um you know the actual the rest of the custodians distributed across the world in order to mitigate against um local risks as well. Um but yeah, couldn't be more excited to uh announce this and and Tavio as part of the team, Gustavo. >> Yeah, echo all that. Super exciting. And um you know you can start to see you know if you squint the the sort of what Liam was alluding to around this network of keys uh around the world and the adoption of this standard I think is super critical and something that Gustavo picked up on super early in our discussions of you know uh effectively at the end of the day like more custodians uh is better than one in some sense of if you can eliminate that single point of failure and distribute that counterparty risk risk um that's naturally advantageous to long-term security. Um, and you know, uh, part of the story here too is, you know, a buy and sell exchange is interesting, but again, I think, you know, what is often lost is the core value prop of Bitcoin today as we sit here, um, is is value preservation and storage. And so the ability to actually have a venue where not only can you buy and sell, but you can actually store those assets for the long term and access financial services um is going to be really critical over this next, you know, call it decade to two decade decade period where people are saving in in uh hard money bitcoin predominantly and spending their dollars uh whether it's stable coins or or other forms of fiat. um that is is is sort of going to be the um the main method uh of you know financial services going forward and and the ability to have that distribution of risk while still having localized services is really what this is getting at. Um and so super excited to have this uh announced and out there. Um go ahead Mike. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think um it's a great recap and I think something that is a a very large blind spot in this ecosystem specifically Bitcoin only um businesses building the best example it's not apples to apples but is uh when I think about Uber and when they were out raising a lot of VCs or people involved really passed because they looked at the total adjustable market for cabs and they either saw that as a total addressable market or only Uber as a very um highprofile, high netw worth product. And the thing that they discounted was the gaps in the market around just transportation in general. When you can offer a better experience, well, that looks like 10 to 100x uh market adoption or need. And I think of Bitcoin and Bitcoin custody as a very similar example where it's a blind spot in these Bitcoin only firms that just tell like everyone they have to sell custody and they don't offer either any custody offering or any differentiated because that will always exist if you're building the right business. Everyone should have the option. But the thing that they discount is when a net new person buys Bitcoin and experienced this whether building previously or also just seeing it firsthand. somebody that you know, let's call uh an investor in a Bitcoin only company, you know, tells a friend, you should go buy some Bitcoin. And they go and buy anywhere between 100K to a million dollars. And they take it and they put it in a ledger or hard or or hardware device. That's historically how it's worked. And most people say, "Well, that sounds great. I made some money." But the reality is that person if they're worth a hundred, they're generally worth about $100 million because nobody parks a million dollars in BTC on their first clip based on somebody saying unless they have a lot of extra capital. And what you're ultimately saying is a you don't have any exposure to that underlying, b you probably could have over time, if not there, gotten larger uh clip of revenue fees and trading if you would have had a better experience. And then C ultimately there's only 21 million of these Bitcoin and so you naturally want to uh be as close and provide as much value because that will ultimately be the leaders in the world. That's our thesis is that if you can provide services around that as Bitcoin monetizer, you have no shortage of ways to be able to generate revenue because it'll be a capital base for the new world. And so these are things that we've just seen as gaps. And while we still work with partners and are integrating other custodians, we also think groundup businesses will ultimately be able to leaprog a lot of companies. And that's probably the most exciting thing for me because I don't think of audio as having a competitor in Latin America. In the same way, I don't think we really have any competitors in the US. And if we do, it's Black Rockck and Fidelity because they have these hundred year old or Fidelity has a 100-y old brand that you have to compete with. But nobody else does multi-institution custody. Everyone else tells you you have to go park in a ledger device. You have to go create a wallet config file and separate across the world or across your state and you have to bury it and you have to worry about inheritance. You have to worry about title versus possession. Oh, and by the way, if the asset appreciates, you have to worry about somebody kidnapping your family. And then, oh, by the way, you also have to worry about if you need to sell it or take a loan out. You have to go to these secret places you secured it. And now we have a solution for that. And so, it's just an incredible uh and what is that opportunity? Well, it's everyone because if all the money is going to come into Bitcoin on a long enough time horizon, well, in that same analogy with Uber, you have to be able to offer the goods and services that meet the demand of a market that people can't see uh because they just they think in these either ideological terms or whatever it is around either self custody or Coinbase will be the only um uh ways to to interact with this new financial asset. And it's just fundamentally not true. >> Couldn't agree more with everything you all of you said. Uh I think the to to Liam's point about the risks uh of that that we see a jurisd jurisdictional risk and just security risk we've been talking about these just couldn't be more important to the average Latin American investor than almost anywhere else in the world, right? like jurisdictional risk is is becoming has has been part of of of the Latin American experience and is becoming a trending topic now again with all this political consolidation we're seeing and and and new regimes. Uh so everyone is very concerned about that. this this provides a solution for that. And so so I think it just makes total sense and to the to the non-custody to the self-custody experience like I I'm a big uh proponent of that. But just this week, I had a call with with a lady that came uh to the meetups I organized back uh in 2019 and she's been in the Bitcoin in like a Bitcoiner for years and she lost all her Bitcoin because she didn't understand that creating a new address like she backed up a new seed and she just thought she had to create a get a new address from their wallet. You know, like in Ethereum, they have like one one wallet equals one address. So, she thought it was the same. Uh, and she just thought by switching addresses, she was using a new wallet, but she was still on the old wallet. So, she just lost all her her savings like that. So, you you hear these stories and you're like, uh, no. So, people some some people just don't need uh this this complication. Even if they've been in it for years, it still doesn't work. I think this provides a a wellbalanced uh risk uh approach. MIC is is is that so uh I I couldn't believe in this more and um oh to the to the other point about being a lean startup I think with AI in place today we're we're able to do 10 times the work we were able to do in our in our previous startup right so it's not just the experience that we've gained since then but also the the tools that are at our our disposal to be able to be lean uh I think that's more relevant than ever particularly when you consider Bitcoin as the hurdle rate uh within this framework, right? Then then you just understand that only startups that are able to scale with and to remain lean and scale with AI tools are going to be the ones that are able to to to fit within the Bitcoin hurdle rate narrative. Right? So all of this combined just makes it clear that uh uh that this is the the approach to take and uh I think already being Bitcoin only differentiates us in our markets where uh the the Shincoin narratives have been way more present uh than almost anywhere else have been. Um, and adding multi-institution custody and a white glove uh best-in-class brand to this just makes it so that I I really don't I I see it the same way. I don't I don't think uh I think we're in a league apart. I think customers are going to are going to see it that way. That's the reception I've been getting so far yet. So, this is all very exciting. Yeah, that's a great point too on um just the fact that everybody knows that there's jurisdictional risk too. And so um while it's not necessarily, you know, immediate or actionable, there's a really nice opportunity here too that we also saw for um AO to be uh infrastructure partner to other local uh fintex banks and financial institutions who want to partner with multi-institution custody. The reality is um just like how money goes from softer money to harder money over a long enough time horizon, so does custody too go from um the worst custody to the better custody. And so uh accordingly those customers will be the ones on the edges who will uh seek out better custody, but uh there will inevitably be internal champions of your product or service within the largest local players. And then there's a a nice opportunity for you to offer an ability for them to plug in and offer all the legal and um you know operational constructs around being key holders down in uh Latin America. So couldn't be more excited about this opportunity and and there's just so much here. >> Yeah, it's a huge um validation on our part Gustavo for you the team. Think about Nate as an example who was at Unchained seen firsthand. We just seen this whether it's investors and early writers or clients of um on-ramp and also now portfolio companies we've invested in. They just frankly are and it sounds like we're talking our book but the most sophisticated people in the market because they've had to go through and build and see the gaps of the market to come out the other side and realize what we're talking about here. And this is kind of the definition of alpha because the rest of the market is still saying a different thing. And we can see it's really just price. Frankly, as the price appreciates, all of these things become incredibly paramount. I experienced this back in 2020 building on chain in 2021. As the price rose, everyone seeks better fault tolerant redundant solutions because that's just rational sense. If you're storing your economic value in a digital currency, you cannot get knocked out of the game because your seed phrase messed up or somebody kidnapped you or took your family. Um, the other thing that's super fascinating that maybe we can spend a quick second on is really the notion of Bitcoin as a hurdle rate. This is something that, you know, we really kind of pioneered, we put out our white paper two years ago. The denomination was really important because it was the right thing to do. Now, it's obviously playing on hard mode because you have to return Bitcoin, which they don't make more of or they make very little annually for a while, um, specific to dollars. But the point being is I was listening recently to Luke Groman who is just one of the greatest minds in not only understanding where we're going but really the understanding of when you think about AI and um there was like this stat that came that he was referencing that by 2032 like the average worker from like a a human um like manual production will be roughly $5 uh per hour meaning that we will have robots being able to do so we have like six years roughly um where human robots will be able to do a lot of this work. just insane deflationary forces which will naturally put a huge strain on the global debt markets business building and so investors are increasingly going to wake up with this new kind of narrative around debasement trade and what what has happened with Bitcoin and gold that they're just going to naturally start denominating or requiring the denomination of their investments to be in hard assets because that's basically will be the um heristic if a company has the right long-term uh opportunity because if you do how many dollars you're ultimately in building a business like a traditional dollar VCbacked firm, you're going to get out competed by the com the companies that build and start from the ground up. And I think that's still widely misunderstood and mispriced. It's just rational in the same way we talk about Bitcoin's rational, multi- institutions rational. Building with Bitcoin or gold is your hurdle rate is really simple. It just increases your cost of capital which increases the discernment and efficiency of the entrepreneur. And that's the name of the game in business. People don't like talk about it. cuz this is ultimately war. Like you're competing with somebody else and they're trying to become more efficient than you. And the person that has the right incentive model is ultimately going to out compete the others if they have the right entrepreneurs, the right founders, but then the right underlying denominator. And so I appreciate you bringing up the hurl rate because it sounds like a novelty, but it's frankly the only way once you understand all this stuff to invest and build a business. Uh if you're going to if you want to have a fighting chance to out compete the next company that comes with that same lens. Today we're kind of running circles because we're just already understand it. But the you know information leaks, people will do this and then naturally we'll have competitors and you want to already have all of that market knowledge, tribal knowledge to be already building and then it compound while other people are just starting. >> Are you a Bitcoin treasury company? Are you a private company, a public company? Do you have Bitcoin on the balance sheet or do you want to acquire Bitcoin for your balance sheet? Well, we just launched on ramp business this week. The future of corporate treasury is here. You can see on the screen here a little bit more about it, but at the end of the day, we're solving for the biggest pain point in corporate adoption, which is custody. So, you can use multi-institution custody to secure the Bitcoin on your balance sheet. In addition to that, you have Lloyds of London insurance. You have role-based access controls to build governance into your organization. You also have real-time proof of reserves, 247 cryptographic proof of reserves for your own dedicated wallet. And really this is solving for at the end of the day security of your Bitcoin for your business continuity which has often fallen short for many organizations whether it's just managing keys internally or relying on a single institution and maybe perhaps most importantly eliminating single points of failure. If you are a business and you're relying on a single custodian, that is a significant amount of counterparty risk. And likewise, if you're managing keys internally, then there is a lot of room for error. So, get in touch with us here at On-Ramp. We just launched our business solution and we'd love to speak with you. So, head to our website onrampbitcoin.com and book a consultation to learn more. >> That's exactly right. And uh really liked your comment too, Gustavo on already living on a Bitcoin standard too because it's uh important to actually you know be living it and see how it impacts your you from a personal perspective and then that it's just natural for um your business to use the same type of hurdle rate and living uh live that business on a Bitcoin standard as well just because you can understand you know this I've benefited from it at a personal level. let me apply this to other businesses. And you know, we've all tried to do that with our former businesses in the past to uh mixed degrees of success just because there there will be um some businesses that you know are are naturally a little bit more uh understanding and open to new suggestions and better opportunities. But uh there's just so much bureaucracy, compliance, and stagnation in the current current um way of doing things that it's it's very few companies at the beginning. But it's only going to be uh catch on more and more. >> Yeah, I'm brought I'm glad you brought up the hurdle rate concept because it is fundamental to everything we do and it's it's just such a fascinating time right now with gold doing what it's doing and this idea of debasement being um much more in the zeicist and less taboo than I think historically it was. you know, gold bugs for decades have effectively been telling this story around fiat debasement and basically, you know, yelling into the clouds. No one was really listening to them. Um, and I think this most recent gold move is is opening a lot of people's eyes. And so, you've seen, you know, what you would consider more incumbent type type folks talking about this concept of debasement. you know, tweeting out charts that show equity returns denominated in gold or Bitcoin is just a a a pretty large pivot from where we've been historically in terms of people talking about these concepts because, you know, we've also talked at length about this, you know, the notion of nominal versus real returns. It's all related to this debasement trade, right? that when people uh historically think about nominal and real, they're doing some adjustment for you know governmentissued CPI and so that's how they're getting from nominal to real. I think the the actual takeaway from what's happening is that we're going beyond just that just looking at CPI as nominal versus real and actually going to well what's the real real uh you know level of inflation level of debasement that's occurring and for that you you're you know you're better off looking at actual monetary units uh M2 uh creation of new money and that rate starts to look a little bit uh more dramatic than the 2 3% CPI uh and so the the extension of that is okay if you're looking at debasement in terms of new monetary units, then you know, you should look at actual hard assets, hard money, gold or Bitcoin as what is quote unquote real. And so that denominator shift from saying, "Okay, we're going to price these things in dollars, just, you know, the easiest example of looking at the S&P or the NASDAQ over the past 5 to 20 years and instead pricing that in gold or or Bitcoin." Like that is the new version of quote unquote real relative to to nominal. And that is like a pretty fundamental and and radical shift. And just in terms of the discussion and the discourse around fiat debasement, even the word fiat, right, like for a long time was very taboo. and just these concepts being out there I think um is is a really positive proof statement for everything that we've put forth on the early rider side because again this is fundamental to our thesis of you know people have been operating with the wrong denominator and not only is that um you know an issue for them in terms of how they're calculating their success but it also leads to to worse outcomes which we've talked a lot about like if you don't have these constraints of real money as your denominator um you are more prone to capital destruction you're prone to wasteful spending, wasteful hiring um because you don't have that that sound money anchor. Um so all of this is related and and I think just generally super exciting time um where these concepts are are being um more you know digested more broadly and actually sort of palable and okay to talk about >> agree more that um yeah I just want to say that like my personal experience has been exactly that you know just living on the Bitcoin standard makes you more frugal makes you more cautious about about your spending. Uh so it's it it obviously applies at a company level too. Um and and like I I on my previous startup I've you you know you always want to maybe when you're in experience you have this idea that to to grow you got to like hire people you know it's like h no now we're reaching a new step we got to hire people I got to be more like a a manager role but then you're like is is this really capital efficient? Is this really the the way to do it? So, but once you have the the Bitcoin as hurdle rate mindset, then then then then you can just every every decision you make always brings back to this point, right? And and you can and you just make more rational decisions. Um, but I I really think AI also plays a very important role here and and and I want to reemphasize that just because it has completely scaled my productivity and I'm sure of of others too and uh and even like the publicization of of all these concepts. Uh sometimes I wonder how uh if you use AI properly, you can arrive at rational answers. Uh and like like an exercise I did a couple days ago was like what does it look like? what does Bitcoin custody landscape look like in in 2035, right? If Bitcoin is successful. Uh it immediately mentioned, okay, well the the Federal Reserve of the US is held in multi-institution custody by by several players, right? So, and this aligns with with the uh Bitcoin policy institute report that recommends uh multi-institution custody as as the preferred way for for strategic Bitcoin reserves by uh by state treasuries. though uh this I think we're just seeing an evolution uh of the landscape and and the way people approach all these things and and and it feels like like uh it's it's it's late but it's still extremely early right and particularly in Mexico and particularly in Latin America it's just way more it's way earlier than in the United States so it it makes a lot of sense for us to to start building now and later be able to not just provide it to uh like services to investors but infrastructure to other companies. >> Yeah, it's a it's a great point. And the beauty of all this, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. How um Brian was referencing the negative outcomes incentivized. Um if you raise a a dollar VC firm, you're you almost have a hammer and everything has to look like a nail because you need to deploy those dollars because you're sitting on them and they're losing purchasing power. um the incentives but then to your point around AI AI also in adoption doesn't happen in a vacuum where you see these large companies in the bureaucracy that exist and why they can't uh do them or they they don't have the best incentive to go and adopt the most efficient outcome versus if you're going to have to spend the bitcoin to go you know hire somebody or leverage a tool but then you realize you know going down b route is much more efficient you get to retain more bitcoin it's purchasing power um yeah it's it's an awesome spot to be And we're still very early. The reason why you don't hear a lot about it about this and again is the opportunity is they're very uh destructive to current narratives, current status quos ultimately current capital markets because whether it's um building like this, if you've raised in traditional dollar terms for Bitcoin for a VC fund or you've already started that process, well that's very hard to disrupt. It's very hard to allocate that capital. But then also if you're a legacy company, you've already built a certain narrative around custody, it gets very hard to adopt things like this. And that's really where the opportunity is building from the ground up. Um I know we have a little bit of time left. I wanted to do a quick quick announcement of u because we didn't get to cover it last week. We had the and Gustavo, this will tie into some of the stuff you guys are looking to do is uh we had the on-ramp business launch last week and that ties directly into all the value prop for multi-institution custody. But the reality is we've had all this at Bitcoin and corporate adoption. I think 1.2 million coins the past year in ETFs and in public traded companies, but all that capital's ultimately gone to like Coinbase majority and obviously there uh is there's a number of issues with that, but the reality is very few companies um not only have multi-institution which is again just share protecting shareholder capital, right? the fact that one custodian for whatever reason can't lose move those assets. But then you still need additional tooling, right? Technology on top of that to create the same experience that exists in the traditional markets around financial controls, meaning make check or multiple users, the ability to have read only access, pulling reports. Um, so we're really excited about this because we've seen an inbound increase in pubos coming to use our services in companies and we released a case study with this, but it's still just kind of crazy. We're that early in Bitcoin that these controls don't naturally exist at best exist proof of reserves of the single custodian. Um, so wanted to give a plug to that and anybody that's interested in learning more, please reach out. >> Yep, very well said. Um, you can go to onrampbitcoin.com/prouct/business uh to learn more. Um, anything else, gentlemen? I know we're a little over an hour. Um, any other things you wanted to highlight? Uh, just wanted to mention that we're going to be uh, you know, pushing this announcement live today as well as investment memo. So check that out if you're interested in learning more and I can uh hand it to Gustavo to um you know point people in the right direction in case they are based in Latin America and want to learn more about everything that you're doing personally and then and then the business with Rao as well. Thank you Liam. So uh you can go on our website aobbitcoin.com to learn more about everything we're doing. So, first of all, we still have our existing Swapito service to sell Bitcoin in Mexico that remains live. Very soon, we're going to be adding the ability to buy Bitcoin in Mexico and our platform all automated and and very secure. Uh we have as of today uh private client services. So, if you want to buy more than uh really if you want to buy more than $10,000 in in Bitcoin in Mexico, you should just reach out to me. You can go on our website and uh immediately book a call with me to talk about not only order execution and buying large sums of Bitcoin, but also how we can on board you to multi-institution custody or uh advice for your for your self-custody stash so that you can have both and and every other type of uh u white glove service that you that an investor requires in Mexico for for Bitcoin. We we can provide that. Uh, and finally, I just want to mention um, yeah, that I mean you can sign up to our newsletter to to stay updated with everything we're doing. And, uh, I'm based in Mexico City. I'm part of a community called Laasa Satoshi. So, if anybody listening is in Mexico and wants to join us at our physical community space, uh, it's it's a very professional and secure and open space. Uh you can reach out to me or you can go directly on uh like I said Satoshi's uh social media to to find our our latest updates. >> Awesome. Sounds great. Um all right, gentlemen. Thanks for joining us, Gustavo. This is awesome. And uh if you want to learn more, check out those links in the show notes. >> Appreciate it, Gustavo. Excited for everything to come and got a lot of announcements uh in the coming months and next year. Um, so looking forward and also looking forward to getting down to Mexico City to visit. >> Yeah, big week the rest of the week this week, too. So, uh, stay tuned for everything and and sign up, uh, for the Early Riders newsletter if you haven't already. >> All right, boys. Thanks. >> Thanks everybody for tuning in this week. It was great to discuss all that's happened over the past week as it relates to business formation, every new development that's happening in the digital asset space, as well as the opportunity for early riders to partner with Oo. There's a really big opportunity for everything that they're doing down in Latin America and the opportunity to offer infrastructure for other businesses as well. I'd highly encourage anybody who found the conversation interesting to reach out to uh us directly at contactriders.com and check out everything that's going out at our website. Um there's a ton of research that we're putting out and would encourage you all to follow along or reach out to me directly at liamarriters.com. Uh there's a lot more that we're going to be publishing this week and really anybody who's looking at the Bitcoin space and trying to understand how they can fit in either as a founder, operator, uh entrepreneur or allocator would enjoy any conversations with uh those who are looking at the space in a serious way or connected with how we um discuss and and put out research and talk about deals that we discussed this week. Um so thanks again for tuning in and talk to you next week. >> 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.