Fiat Is Hopeless: Musk’s America Party Makes Its Bitcoin Pitch

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. All righty, gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, July 7th. Uh hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Uh it was July 4th on Friday and uh I believe yesterday we had an announcement from uh from our boy Elon Musk. He is officially launching a new party, a new political party in the United States. The America Party is his solution to the unsustainable debt trajectory that we are on as a nation. He tried to fix it from the inside, couldn't and is now starting the America Party. Someone replied to him on Twitter, "Will the American Party embrace Bitcoin?" And he responded, "Fiat is hopeless, so yes." So Bitcoin is the official currency of the America Party. Um, jokes aside, I do think this is somewhat interesting in the sense of I don't believe the strategy here is to run someone for president under the American party. I think um, in some of his comments around it, the idea is to try to win 3 to five Senate seats and 10 to 12 House seats and then basically have the America Party, those seats be swing votes on various pieces of legislation or anything the government might do. Um but somewhat interesting also just you know people have been wanting Elon to recognize Bitcoin as he's gone down this journey of realizing the debt is unsustainable. He obviously owns some Bitcoin um and so this is just another sort of signal of of yes he he is aware of Bitcoin likely understands it pretty deeply um and knows that it is really part of you know part of the solution. um you know he still thinks he can make inroads in the political process but uh the solution for the average person is to opt out and buy Bitcoin. Gentlemen thoughts how are your weekends? How are your holidays? Wonderful weekend. Thanks for asking. Hope uh hope yours was too. I mean, looking at this, it doesn't make any sense within the current framework of our existing two-party system because you have one side which is um looking to run massive deficits and then the other side which is looking to run massive deficits and uh his whole thesis about the existing um you know deficits being too large and not being run as efficiently as it should be. It doesn't seem like there is a legitimate grasp at doing that from either side. And so getting a few House and uh Senate seats just doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense to really change the trajectory of our whole spending and deficits path in my view. Um it could be looking for others or or maybe our current politicians just age out of um what they're focused on, but I don't see this as being something that is uh going to change significantly. Kind of just like Doge. Yeah, it's fair. I mean, you could be the swing vote, but if either side of that you're swinging is is still the same, it's kind of irrelevant. Yeah, it's it's hard for me personally to comment on anything Mus does because I just can't take We just talked about this with Braum. Um I think he's just a world class troll and and there's he anything he says means something completely different. Um, I also think he's smarter than most people give him credit for, even though everyone thinks he's a genius because traditionally most people listening here, the the slot leaders in the space will think that he doesn't understand Bitcoin. And it's like, of course, he understands Bitcoin. I mean, we've seen the Peter Seal quote quoting, you know, before Bitcoin was and he worked with him alongside for years and and they're they're good friends along with um a lot of these guys and so and then and then obviously the undertone fiat is hopeless. So yes, um is there's a that's a very nuanced response to somebody that doesn't understand money or Bitcoin. Um the thing I think in part of where I appreciate your guys's like take walking through what this could mean in the short term, the the hard part of like all of this for me in long term is because we all I think understand power structures will change ultimately when the money is kind of moved. Um and so it's just hard to like forecast how this all plays out. I think to your point, Brian, that's an interesting there's a lot of interesting takes floating around uh Twitter with with Musk and what he did to like take Twitter private and raise capital and then raise XAI. So, he he's a you know 340 chess player. So, I could see something like that taking place. Um the thing that I think is most apt for me or what what stood out uh was this guy Greg Eisenberg who I think is like a big kind of like tech, you know, vibe vibe coding guy, vibe marketing guy actually. Um, and so he I won't go through the full thing, but he basically had a tweet last night says, "Fiat is hopeless on Musk." This twe tweet captured something huge that's been building for years, especially with young people. People feel the entire system is broken. Tradfi, trad feel feels like it's failing and actively working against you. When the idea of buying a house feels impossible for most people, they rebel. So instead of trying to fix it, what the what's there? Instead of trying to fix what's there, entire generation just said, "Screw it. We'll build our own." And that's why AI 19-year-olds are building AI apps. When you don't trust the system, you build around it. Um, and so I think that's what's kind of interesting about all of this is um, and and that's like a microcosm or an example of what's ultimately I think happening with the Palmer Lockies and the Musks and the the world that in the '9s these guys realize that there's actually a a new way to govern and it's online and they've just been playing this long game and it's all coming. Uh, and so like that's this is an example of that. Um, so yeah, I think it's it's a brave new world and there's gonna be a lot more just interesting and weird things coming about. Yeah, I think that's very well said. Um, but let's get to the list. We have a big list of news items, deals uh to cover and maybe a natural segue to uh Liam, one of your links, Elon raising uh for XAI. I'll pull that up right now. Yeah. Uh I mean he's burning a billion dollars a month uh and funded this through half equity, half debt. It's um it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. To your point earlier, Michael, about um him merging Twitter with this. There's been a lot of speculation about um Tesla eventually buying this. And because of everything that he's doing with the optimist and everything like that, there's a natural segue for getting all the information that the America party would potentially need and monetizing that through um you know just having the flow of capital through it too is uh he eventually integrates payments in it which is you know what he's been very transparent about saying is what he wants to do with uh XAI or X in general. it's going to be uncertain of what the structure really looks like. But um to to Michael's point earlier, we're entering this new world in which the most important things or um you know the existing system doesn't work for many people especially young people. There is um a there needs to be a better flow of capital as well as you know savings technology too that isn't necessarily in the existing system. And finally, there there is a lot of information that could be monetized through um through the XAI and and all of these different platforms and there's a a ton of natural synergies across there. So, with all three of these, I I I just thought it was super interesting that um they're so fine with burning that much capital each month in order to play the long game of uh you know, trying to monetize all of this information and and capital for um his different, you know, everything else that he has his his arms in. Th this game's super interesting and I don't know if many know what's happening. Maybe if anybody does. um in the sense of like when you bring this up, I think about obviously like you know there's been this game that's been played long term for the the Whimo and self-driving and that Musk um and Tesla was going to be like at at the forefront of this because of all of the data that they had from their the existing cars on the streets and there was like this video going viral around the guy taking the ride uh one of the first rides and it looked like exactly like a regular Tesla versus like what a Whimo looks like. But if you take a step back and understand or like the value of the data, um there's this stuff with Twitter and then XAI. Um you look back at where it's going to get a little dark and this is where like it gets it gets really hard to comprehend because there's all these you know what's the Stargate program like trillions of dollars. Uh I think like close to trillions. Um you think about what's happening here and then open AI and this this tune to hundreds of billions of dollars and like how do you ever recoup that? I don't think the plan is actually recruit that or they don't have a visibility and it's like how do we win this because it's for all the marbles and it gets a little dark because there's a lot of like crazy stuff that's happened around that's just in the public eye let alone if you probably dig into it the one that comes to mind is um uh the open AI engineer that was found um you know supposedly trading uh uh passing trade secrets uh to China I think he was from China and then the other one that comes to mind is uh Reddit because Reddit has so much information and data and if you go back into the founding story of like who actually founded that he committed suicide there's like there's just so much at stake when it comes to the amount of data amount of information amount of capital being thrown around and I think this kind of is interesting to tie into Bitcoin simply because over a long enough time horizon you know we see inflation running rampant we understand that um you so the value of the dollar goes down and that the native token online especially for AI will Bitcoin and you can see the end state is the the the games for all the marbles, right? To win in whatever like sector you're in, but also you're going to be being passed through those Bitcoin to be able to recoup that. And I think that's going to happen sooner than later. They're not, you know, I don't think they're thinking like this, but the way that it ends up, I think we'd all agree, is that the way you win is by uh receiving the most amount of Bitcoin in in store in that. And um it's just a fascinating thing to see play out in real time because these dollar amounts keep getting thrown around and I can't help but think they're just like monopoly money. Yeah. And we sort of talked about this last week uh with Clay on the show of the amount of money being thrown at these things and and some of Andre's comments around like that's just the how you have to play the game at this point. Um Michael, maybe this relates to the the first link that you brought that I'll pull up. Um presentation from Benedict Evans. I actually used to follow this guy like religiously in my private banking days. I haven't uh caugh c caught up with him in recent years, but um is there a particular page you wanted to go to on this or Yeah, thanks for I uh I did this this yesterday and then um you get in a frame of reference and then you kind of forget the frame of reference you were in, but I I know exactly. There was two slides in this. Um so the Benedict Evans I think it was former like A16Z. Um, I'm just going to pull up or if you can pull up my Twitter because there was the two I I made a tweet of them just to to do it. I probably should have linked to it. Sorry. Um, but we will share this in the show notes because it's called um I believe AI is eating the the world. And if you don't have it, Brian, I'll pull it up right here. I got it. Okay, cool. Um, so there was really two and then they're super profound in my opinion um because they apply effectively to everything in life but specifically company building. And the first title is the future always takes time. Cloud is old and boring but still um is only 30% of work uh enterprise workflows. And so what this is showing is um today where we are at with enterprise workflows adopting effectively SAS or cloud infrastructure. It's only 30% of total enterprise globally. And I think that's profound one because AI and just kind of nature of technology is going to take a long time, but also it's been a a core part of this like thesis around rebuilding the world is a lot of these companies are just going to leaprog these firms that haven't even adopt these these tools because you still have to go and like gut the firm, gut the people, re-educate them, insert the software to get the efficiencies versus people are just going to leave and and compound all these additional tools and and just rebuild the company at onetenth to 1/100th of the total cost in human capital and then um and do a 10 to 100x faster. And so that's the whole thesis around like what we're doing early writers. And so I thought that was really profound. And then the other slide um was was interesting because I still don't know what I I to think of it, but it shows like disruption redefining the market can mean different things. That's kind of the title. Uh and it's like what is disruption? And it shows Uber um versus taxi, you know, how taxis had in the in 2015 were much higher or greater than the number of rides per day versus Uber. And then Uber basically, you know, goes 3 to 5x that in today's terms. But then when it shows US hotels versus Airbnb, uh you know, it hotels have been about 5x roughly. I'm just looking at this and without the numbers on a chart, but have been 5x over Airbnbs forever. and Airbnb just has a slowy slow and steady growth even though it's a I think 50 to$100 billion business and so I think the main point in this is that like disruption and innovation looks fundamentally different for everything because in Uber's sense like only so many people took a cab but once you like layer in technology you can open up the ability for many more people to um order get a ride yeah this is super interesting yeah I love it it's it's essentially just um for those who are listening. Um the Uber versus taxi chart, it's uh essentially almost double the uh entire number of trips per day that are taken in New York because the technology is just better and it makes it more accessible for anybody to um you know get a a ride, which is like just a fundamental change versus Airbnb versus hotels. it's uh Airbnb is is kind of more convenient and um easier and gives people more flexibility, but it's not completely uh changed in terms of um like doubled the entire market. Um it's just kind of fascinating to see. Yeah. I would say the the other difference between these two is like the the actual product itself um on the like Uber taxi side like it is fundamentally the same thing whether you're getting in a taxi or an Uber. Like you're going from A to B. Um whereas like the hotel and Airbnb distinction, like there are trade-offs associated with like booking an Airbnb versus booking a hotel, right? Like there's things that are inherent to a hotel that will never be in your Airbnb. Um and so I think that's probably also part of the discrepancy here in terms of like the extent of the disruption. Um yeah, you know what? This is just as a cor like parallel could be like um you know amount of like capital moved over 10 years on the left side. So it' be like stable coins versus traditional banking because it's just so much easier to do and then the other side is the amount of people that have moved away from banks because like most people will stay at a bank and then some people will prefer a different kind of experience. Like it's just different innovation in different areas it touches. Anyway, yeah. Um maybe nice transition to we have multiple multiple links and items around stable coins but I'll bring up this first one. Um so bank announced I won't play this video but basically they've announced um the launch of a remittance program international remittance payments. Um, and it's using, you know, I don't know the the nitty-gritty details of this, but it seems like it's similar to sort of what Strike pioneered in terms of using Bitcoin, um, as sort of the middle layer from going from, you know, any various fiat through Bitcoin. That's, you know, send it across the world and then convert back to whatever local um, fiat or stable coin someone would want. Um, so interesting to see this. I think just given everything happening around the stable coin space right now, I think there's somewhat just like a level of uncertainty around like okay well where what rails are going to be used most predominantly for this you know as the market stands today it's Tron, it's Ethereum. Um another link that I'll I'll share after this is Tether actually is launching its own blockchain uh called stable chain. Um and then you also have these more Bitcoin native approaches. Um, so curious what you guys thought of this, if you think it's relevant or not. I I I do think it is just because I think over the medium to long term, I think most people will want stable coins to be leveraging some part of the Bitcoin ecosystem or chain. Um, just given its credible neutrality and advantages in terms of like actually being decentralized relative to all these centralized chains. I don't personally I wonder I haven't looked into this but my instincts tell me this was more for marketing than anything simply because I don't believe it's a it's it's kind of like nonsensical to use Bitcoin for crossborder for two reasons. One is especially at SoFi level because if you're moving real slow flow any volatility you're not in the game of price appreciation. So you just don't want any slippage in the volatility of movement of capital even if it's instantly you still are there's some time and then you still have to swap for fiat like there's some change somebody's not doing that for free to go from Bitcoin to the stable coin. And so if you're doing international, this is like where the big use case for stable coins has been found is in um you know traditional or like larger markets into emerging markets and that flow and you're already in dollars. So I wonder what the full angle of using Bitcoin. Um I think over time this will change, right? Like as we get just different layers and and stable coins on different layers, but I don't think there's enough liquidity even for somebody at like SoFi's scale and level. So that's my initial thought for them using Bitcoin or why. Yeah, I think Bitcoin is better as savings technology, but it's volatile in the short term. And so if you don't want to use it for a savings technology, it's just like nonsensical to use it for, you know, saving for an hour or a day or whatever it takes in order to um, you know, move the flow of funds cross border. Um but see that kind of over the longer term um people that want to use Bitcoin just as their savings technology would be the uh rational thing where they uh will send the Bitcoin along uh overseas in order for international payments as long as both parties are interested in using Bitcoin as their store of value. It's kind of like stable coins where um today there's just more liquidity around dollars and stable coins in general, but uh as more liquidity comes to Bitcoin and uh there's more adoption as is a savings technology, it will eventually move over there. Yeah, all valid points. I think I think the idea is that the the interchange moment of it being in in Bitcoin is probably, you know, as short a time as possible. And so I I worry less about that. I think Michael, you're right to point out the exchange fee on either side, but maybe if it's stables to BTC to stables, then, you know, it's it's perhaps more efficient. Um, I'll pull up this uh just to knock this one out that I had on the list of uh Tether's announcement around stable chain. This is interesting to me just because they are the largest stable coin and now they're going to launch their own chain. So um somewhat noteworthy in that respect if they no longer want um you know Tether to be predominantly on Tron or Ethereum. Now they have their own uh blockchain which will be uh in theory optimized specifically for stable coin interchange. Um I thought that was worth worth bringing up. Uh Nick, go ahead. I was just say one thing as it relates to the SoFi stuff, I think we're going to probably have to be careful um in seeing these big incumbents and then just maybe being okay or realizing they actually may have no idea what they're doing. Uh, and why I bring that up is because there's a there's a guy Rob Hadock. I don't know if you if you're familiar with him. He's a general partner at Dragonfly. He was previously at I forget some other large bank created or like hedge uh big investment bank had created a digital currency group. I think they wound it down and had a conversation like three years, four years ago and we're talking about like Bitcoin only VC and he's like that's cute. Nobody's like brought up Bitcoin, you know, or like Bitcoin's still interesting. Now he's at Dragonfly and he's coming back around. He has a pod. um forget which one it was, but he's basically talking about he's going into these rooms with all these banks and now everyone's excited about stable coins, but they're like starting at like ground zero and they're trying to figure out like what's the use case and all these just different like things from from the bottoms up they have to figure out because they historically haven't thought this infrastructure made sense or the regulatory regime wouldn't allow it. So I think there's just going to be a lot of like unless somebody's been working on this for a number of years and has like been waiting for clarity there's probably going to be a lot of learnings and not you know great products built. So we should just like with uh you know newer larger firms launching things really hold some skepticism versus like when you know David Marcus rolls something out you can imagine the guy's been working on this stuff for close to 10 years and has scale there's probably something there. Um but anyway yeah that's totally fair. Um imagine half of them don't even come to market too if they're just kind of uh you know doing it for marketing purposes rather than if they've actually been working on it and thinking about it deeply for a long period of time. Yeah, we've seen this in the past in prior cycles, right? Like a lot of announcements less things actually shipped than were announced. Um then they bear. Next on the list, uh Liam, you brought this one. This is a report from JP Morgan. Um I think midyear outlook you said we go to page 18. Yeah it was essentially uh there was JP Morgan and it was either it was city as well. Um both of them put out their midyear outlooks and they essentially put out the entire thesis behind Bitcoin and then said we're just going to invest in gold instead. And that's because um you know they understand that the dollar is going to continue to lose value and that persistent larger growing deficits will cause long-term treasuries to decline in value over time. But both of them um I think JP Morgan in particular um was said that you know Bitcoin is too volatile uh not knowing that you know Bitcoin itself isn't volatile but it's just the people interacting with Bitcoin is is being volatile um and there is massive geopolitical impacts to you know just holding gold as you know we see more fractured political parties as well as uh global tensions across the world there's a a massive amount of central banks that are not yet allocated to gold in any substantial way versus just uh you know but they've essentially come to the entire Bitcoiner thesis but just uh kind of said it was too volatile. Uh it's really interesting to see too because I think it's tougher for banks to really monetize um these you know gold and bitcoin because people can just buy it themselves as well. uh which I think is uh one reason that gold hasn't performed quite as well as a lot of the gold bugs had really anticipated over time. Um so interesting to see. We'll see if they change their tune when the banks inevitably do offer Bitcoin custody to their clients as well to see if they can actually make money off of that. Um I wanted to get your guys thoughts as well. Yeah, I mean they can definitely make money off of it. They can definitely make money off of it. big uh headline that we didn't have on the list from last week was that IBIT's uh Black Rockck spot bitcoin ETF uh revenue from that now outpaces the revenue they make from the S&P 500 index. Um so you can definitely make money from these things. What stands out to me about this is just the notion of volatility being a bad thing, right? Like I think that in traditional markets there's historically um sort of the line of thinking that volatility is inherently bad. Um what most people don't real realize about Bitcoin's volatility uh uniquely is that it's positively skewed, meaning it is more volatile upwards than it is downwards uh sort of on net over time. And that is very different than pretty much every other asset which has a negative uh volatility skew. And so that negative volatility skew of traditional assets I think has perpetuated the idea obviously that uh all volatility is bad. Um and so you know the other thing that is you know doesn't make sense to me about this rationale from their end is like well if you're talking if you're comparing these things to treasuries like you're these are sort of necessarily long-term allocations. So if you know if you're worried about volatility over 10 year frame like Bitcoin's volatility over 10-year time frame like actually is irrelevant. It's volatile upwards um over that time period. And so um all that to say is I mean step step in the right direction of understanding that you know you probably want hard assets over uh continually debasing uh treasuries. Um but thoughts Michael? So, I absolutely love this. Uh, I love it for a few reasons. Like, one is um this is going to be one of our biggest edges is ultimately realizing understanding Bitcoin deeply, offering financial products, but also really recognizing and we'll work with the group here on how Bitcoin gold's going to stay for a very long time. And there's a there's a few main reasons. One is like the volatility. Yes, it's positively skewed, but ultimately like the people that have all this wealth are very old and they're not used to volatility. And so if their uh partner or client or private banker puts them in this asset in a material position and it goes down 30%, they might have a heart attack or they might fire the banker like it just it so so that's one component. I think um there's a there's a bigger one that honestly if anybody's curious about this and wants a real good lens on the world encourage you to you guys I haven't shared it with you is go watch Cinderella man uh randomly watched it the other day and if you want to really like see a like losing everything because it was it's it's a story about the guy I forgot what his name is that had like was a world-class boxer lost everything in the great depression because they put everybody and there's actually now I started looking at documentaries of great depression and It literally resembles exactly what we're going through now from buy now pay later to like everyone being a trader to getting like the ticker like rolling. And so point in sharing that is you watch a movie like that and it really like humbles you and because the guy lost everything like kids were getting sick had no they they turned off the uh electric um so they were cold and and people were dying and the point is is like it kind of is nonsensical to think they're going to park like 100% of their wealth in this thing that could like just evaporate. They have no feeling for it. like they know hard assets, they know real estate, they know uh gold. And so um it was just a real eye openener in kind of like having empathy for this situation and that maybe on a long enough time horizon. we probably get rid of like 80 to 90% of the monetary premium but there's just this reality of the physical nature of of assets specifically gold that are going to persist much longer and um I think that's going to be our ultimate edge because you can build to Liam's point they haven't been able to make money because everyone doesn't understand a what money is so they don't even know why they want gold or bitcoin and then b because of that they've been buying immaterial exposure so there's no way to like make money and then integrate it into the financial system via leverage products uh lending against it, trading against it, crossc collateralization, but as people start to go into gold and bitcoin into material size balances, they're naturally going to have to build newer products. And we're all, you know, it's not public yet, but we're investing in these kind of products that are going to integrate gold and bitcoin into the traditional financial system. So, uh, I love it. I think this is just like the kind of over to window moving of like, oh, go Bitcoin. Obviously, they're going to look dumb because Bitcoin's a faster horse, but um, I think people are just going to get educated on what money is. And that's part of like it's also where I've had this disdain for the corp treasury stuff because it's like they lost everything in the stock market because everything was speculative and it like hollowed out what the real thing was. And that's effectively what's happening here today is everyone thinks they're getting rich on paper. That can go away the next day. It's like what else what what do you own because you're not eating Nakamoto shares or whatever else people convince you to buy. Yeah, 100%. I think um people in the Bitcoin echo chamber bubble I think are too uh fast to assume that that gold goes away. I think you're totally right that the the sort of hard asset asset class if you will. So gold and Bitcoin will persist and grow for multiple decades into the future. and partly because of what you described around the volatility of someone older in age and in demographic like they don't want 100% Bitcoin, but they want some of that upside. So there's there's a huge space in the market right now for both products and just services that allow that interplay between gold and Bitcoin to exist because it doesn't really exist in a super efficient way today. Um, and so I think there's a massive opportunity there. And and to your point, like hard assets in general persist and grow from here, and we're not just going to give up on gold, which has, you know, a thou multi multi,000-year track record. And and why this is an exciting conversation and and thought experiment or thesis is because the reason why most people you haven't heard this is a because everyone's been in two camps, either gold or bitcoin. And then um it's not until you're actively like building. It's this notion of like as you get older we all realize, oh I didn't know anything, right? Because the world expands. And then you start to realize you're like, man, there's so many unknown unknowns. And it's very similar in this conversation is when you're a quote unquote Bitcoiner, you read your first, you know, you know, book and listen to your first 10 podcasts or whatever. It seems so simple. You go from A to Z. But as you start building and interacting with these different areas of the market and the different levels, there's all these different preferences and time lengths and incentive models that you have to accompany and that's how you end up with like it's just going to be a lot uh more nuanced than what everyone expects. And um that's also part of like the reason for this show. I I think you know we do it is not only for awareness of the business but ultimately like there isn't that many people with these thoughts because most people haven't come from this like frame of reference of understanding Bitcoin but also existing in the traditional markets. Um, and then also being building in real time bring in the insights and over time that's also part of the investment thesis is like individuals recognize that we have a uh maybe they don't agree with the thesis and then they probably wouldn't want to be a part of the fund but some may actually be like holy like these guys know something the rest of the market doesn't know and they come in. So, um, yeah, I I'm starting to enjoy really like expressing, you know, we're doing a little work pre to get these, um, themes ahead of time because it lets you kind of like pull out some of the key thoughts that we're like working through weekly. Hey everyone, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. It was a pretty uh, spicy pod covering all things related to Elon Musk, his new party, and uh, interest in Bitcoin and saying fiat is hopeless uh, and worthless. I can't remember what he tweeted out last night. Um, but before then, quick word and excitement around on-ramp. We've seen an incredible amount of self onboardings come in, especially this past weekend. I think um, as the business starts to grow and and the price of Bitcoin grows with it. Um, the notion of what we're doing really speaks to certain individuals. I did want to call out there's a lot of questions that naturally come up that I think would be helpful to just share here. um if you're thinking about leveraging our services or if you just want to learn more, I'd encourage you to book a consultation. But a few of the key things that have come up is um asking about is the Bitcoin onchain and verifiable and of course it is and it's also segregated, right? So it sits in your own wallet and that's also what underpins a lot of what we do with Lloyds on the insurance uh balances that every client has its own segregated wallet onchain. And then the other notion is that you don't actually need on-ramp to move funds. So we use native multisig. So, in a world where honor goes away, is unresponsive. That's the beauty of multi-institution custody, you're not relying on one single counterparty. Um, if you want to learn more, please shoot me a personal note, Michael Bitcoin.com, or just book a consultation. We'd love to chat with you and see if we're the right fit for you now or in the future as Bitcoin's price appreciates. Now, I hope you enjoy the show. Let's let it rip it. 100%. Um, switching gears a little bit, uh, Michael, this is one of yours. AI powered startup uh studio plans to launch a hundred,000 companies a year. Yeah, we don't I guess you pull it up. Uh yeah, so Techrunch um I think the the link below this um and these guys actually came I think from pretty large uh companies and like I think this one built big brands like Bark Box um and there was another link below this. We don't have to pull it up, but it was Oh, yeah. He pulled it. So, it's uh from Crane about family offices quietly using venture studios to build companies. And I think the theme here is ultimately that company building is fundamentally shifting and changing. And um the alpha is in asymmetric or uh learn secrets. And so this example of family office is using venture studios. It's like the family office made their money in a certain domain or multiple disciplines. And you're able to take those insights along with your journey and start to create businesses. you get better value. It's something that we do at Early Writers, right? Like you have domain expertise in the digital asset space. You know where the gaps are until you know all the different parts of the network and people that can and they're ready to leave companies are all the all day long looking to join Acropolis on ramp. So maybe there's room for them or maybe there's room for them to start uh a different, you know, company that we're thinking about. And so we've kind of known this, right? you get outside equity positions, you can derisk it by putting somebody on the board or as a junior co-founder to participate. And so I think that with the uh notion of AI and the tools that you can do so much more with less, it makes a lot of sense that rather than have to go and take on the execution risk and wait for the company and go see all these different people raising rounds at, you know, one at 10 or whatever it is, two at five, like all these different people going across Silicon Valley, you can actually have a hand in getting the company stood up, especially if you have a um uh insight that the market fully hasn't been able to express yet from an investment perspective. 100%. This is something we've we've thought for a long time as you mentioned um in terms of how we think about capital deployment and just sort of the different areas of our fund. Like this was very early on something we latched on to of if you have the unique insight, you have the lens for where the gaps are in the market, then you should actually be incubating and standing up the company yourself. Um as opposed to just waiting waiting around for it to exist. Um so this is super interesting. Liam, do you have anything on this or you want to move to your next? No, I love it. Um, and to your my next point is he's going off of this too, which was uh, you know, only 27% of white collar workers are frequently using AI in their business. It's kind of back to your point earlier, Michael, about um, like the cloud integration only being 30%. And it's essentially just like imagine not using the internet every day in your day-to-day workflows. It's just like, you know, completely nonsensical. And the fact that there is and you know so many white collar people who haven't adopted this technology is um really telling about how the existing world like really hasn't caught up to the entire thesis of um you know doing more with less getting more efficient over time especially you know white collar workers there's there's something to you know blue collar workers maybe not needing it and even uh the white collar workers are probably just kind of like throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks rather than having a cohesive plan and uh you know strategy regarding AI which is you know fair that's you know what the early internet days was it's just kind of trying things some uh some shifted over time some got right um but it's really super early into um everything that we're talking about about you know being more efficient over time by leveraging better tools and the existing infrastructure around all of this will change significantly over the coming weeks and you know in weeks, days, months, years that will allow uh us to solve problems that we didn't even know we could really be able to to solve using this technology. Yeah, these are pretty pretty wild numbers. No, you can go ahead. I was I was just surprised to see this. Like I would have expected these numbers to already be higher, but I guess it kind of makes sense if you think um you know some of these people are probably the most likely to be replaced at some point and so they're not latching on to the tools. Yeah, there's like five levels of sadness to all this because I think most people don't really work. Um so the reality is like it's just like trying to teach an old dog new tricks that doesn't work. You're just like layering on levels. But the thing that's actually the saddest and I don't know if you guys have thought about because it's been popping up more is so these people are like they're behind and then once they catch up they're actually going to go further behind because the way to use AI I'm convinced is not the way we use it today because if we use it the way we're using it today we're going to rot our brains. Um, like it's the same thing if if you ever use Grammarly and eventually just caught you stopped remembering how to or like a type like writing in general when you think about like actual legibility or actually, you know, spelling. And um it hasn't been created yet, but I'm I'm convinced there's going to be some I don't it's probably like a mix between reading physical books and then looking at AI and having some there's going to be some methodology on really keeping your brain without like just completely being lost because I haven't I haven't looked deep into this, but you see this with like the MIT study that was um uh people just like lowering their amount of like cognitive ability and there's like this probably on the fringes, but like schizophrenia with people just like going all day long with this stuff. There's just this and then also the models are generally um you know what 80% true when it comes to there's certain models that'll tell you a man can have a kid like how much of the data like you start to throw all these things together and then you start you literally become the droid because you can't think critically from first principles and so that's the sad part is like they're so behind to get up to the up to speed and then even when they get up to speed they're going to like naturally go back because they're not actually going to have the wherewithal to think well critically like oh maybe this thing's kind of dangerous. Maybe that's actually taboo and you guys have a different thought, but I just don't see like how you outsource all cognitive ability even just from a taking a step back independent of anything that's been reported and everybody just ends up fine because now they have a droid at their fingertips. I kind of think the closest analogy that I can really think of is um someone who is a senior software engineer that ends up becoming a manager and overseeing a bunch of different uh software engineers who are coding. Um right like you in this future state the best people are going to be the ones that who can manage the AI integrated into the workflows in order to create the best outcomes for their firms and their companies. Um, but you still need to understand how to do the work from a day-to-day basis and be an expert in your field and uh in order to actively be able to give the best instructions to you know your existing team of uh software developers or to the AI in order to create the best outcomes for your business. Um so and I also do think that you know the internet was supposed to give a lot of people the ability to be more efficient and they could go do whatever else they want. I think uh you know the efficiency of using all these different tools will just create more work because there will be more opportunities that is created through all these outcomes too. Um, so I'm not necessarily as as doom and gloom, uh, maybe as you, Michael, but, um, I think that that's kind of where where we go with all of this. Yeah. I mean, very early on when all this stuff started to really um, sort of traject up towards probably, you know, close to two years ago now, that was one of my initial thoughts or concerns was like, okay, well, if you just play this out forward, like eventually no one is actually has any unique thoughts. they're just leveraging the the tools and then there's like a recursive element of that where then the AIs themselves are being trained on their own information and no actually like net new human created information and that is sort of a scary thought I don't know if it ends up getting there because Michael to your point like there is there needs to be a happy medium of balancing leveraging the tools while still having you know human generated thought accompanying the the use of those tools um and so I'm not sure how it plays out, but like you know there was that MIT report that came out a few weeks ago that was basically saying like yeah, we're all getting dumber using these tools. We're just using less of our brains. Yeah, I don't really agree with that though because you know we've had calculators on our phones and spreadsheets that can do all the math we need to do and uh and it's still just and then there's AI learning that can you know uh help create the best outcomes whether it's you know high algorithmic trading or or all of that and there's still a human element that's needed in all of that and maybe we're not as great as we were in terms of you know doing arithmetic on uh on a you know piece of paper but we've been able to use these different tools in order to get smarter to create better outcomes for you know uh all ourselves and firms too that leverage this technology. Yeah, it's um that that's a great point. It's a slippery like you can go on both sides of like exposure to technology can do both either thing. It can make you smarter and amplify if you can um like uh triangulate the right information, right? you have to be able to synthesize it and then come to the source of truth. There's the alternative where you can just like look at it and verbatim and then just believe it. Um it reminds me of uh I forgot where I was going to go with this. It's um I think ultimately the the theme that I think that I haven't expressed here is that we're going to go back to like old school stuff. And here's an example. So like Travis, I don't know if we talked about it, but like Travis in cloud um the cloud kitchens is trying to work with like Uber to go and buy like this pony whatever AI company that has like self-driving tech, right? And I have this conversation a lot where like most people our age don't cook, especially like guys, like we just don't cook, right? So you go out, nobody even knows how to like make an egg. There's all this just like weird that like we people have done forever that people have forgotten to do because of technology. And these are like very fundamental things that like if everything goes to like you need to be able to do. It's it's just you need to know and you need to be able to reason for first principles. So this is kind of the notion against like what L was saying. You got like if you forget if you're if you are the computer, you trust the computer. It's like everyone if you're in a if you're driving your car and you have the Whimo on and it tells you to go into the water, like what do you do? It's like you obviously don't go in the water. It's like some people go into the water. Like I know it's hard to believe, but they do. And so point being is if you have all these cars and everyone thinks we're just going to get because it's it is more efficient to get the robots to make the pizza to get delivered to your house to order it like that will drive down. Well, all of that fees and all those margins are going to compress across the board. So, the the way you're going to end up skewing the other way is you're going to end up like delivering homegrown like grass-fed organic and then it's going to be a company with some like video or human that's telling you how to cook it and like that's where the money is going to be made. Now, obviously, this is like very on the other side of a barbell, but that's how I think about like the way people are going to actually use AI where their brains are going to remain sane and they're not going to get plugged into this thing is there's going to naturally be a pushpull because that's how all like kind of life is. And so that's the angle of like anyway I don't even know if there's a like actual monetizable like opportunity in that but I do see like there's or a real scalable monetizable opportunity but I do think the pendulum will swing in that way because people they're already kind of doing it. You see this already. Yeah. Rather than just outsourcing all of your thinking to it once you can use the AI to teach you or teach you how to think. That's uh that's a great way that it becomes an asset to you. But that's kind of something that everybody's got to determine if they want to do themselves or not. Yeah. One other thing is um I think the the core component of all of this where Lim what you're saying really resonates is at the end of the day this all comes down to action because everyone can have ideas. Everyone can go and look at the stuff. It's it's ubiquitous and will be available for everyone. But the thing that people don't have is a the bias to action and then ultimately the bias to action is only the first step because the market starts to like punch you and then you get feedback and then you start to iterate on that and that'll always be the difference between like actually learning something that that the AI doesn't know is because you're just going to be taking the the real like human feedback of like what you're trying to do. And I think that's the core component that will just be like the differentiation is like the people that actually do stuff with it. Yeah. The only distinction I would make in terms of like the calculator analogy is like the it is fundamentally different like if you're using a calculator for some equation or math like you are still generating whatever the inputs were and you're thinking through what you needed to accomplish with the calculator. I think the concern on the AI side would be like, well, if you're outsourcing the actual reasoning and thinking and creative thought around what the problem is and how to solve it, then that's that is a a magnitude difference than just like using a calculator. And and it's a great point because there's plenty of people that outsource the thinking to the calculator. I remember like a mentor back in the day told me this because I looked at the calculator, I was wrong, and I put the numbers in and he was like, "Well, it's not the calculator's fault." But like right like that's a logical thing to do. It's like the calculator up. It's like no you actually you know and so like that's the point is you take that notion plus you leverage that this this thing and it's be it's going to become people's friends. People are already lonely. This is a different we got to do an AI show with some AI people because uh it's fun because nobody knows how it's going to play out. And um yeah. Do we have anything else? Uh couple more. This one I don't know why you put this on the list. I thought it was somewhat counterintuitive, but any any thoughts on this California share of startup funding is on the rise. Yeah, I think um so there's just a notion across the board whether it's the amount of capital u that being raised in the startup community, exits, valuations is in is in California. And I think um this is like a counter trend. That notion of u everything we're talking about is kind of like taboo and it kind of like runs into Texas and and the amount of um Bitcoin capital is like you know companies and and things that have been formed there. I think that there's just a reality that the market hasn't woken up to everything related to remote work to the best entrepreneurs don't want to move to like one random place. It doesn't even have to be California. It could be Texas. Um, and so I just thought it was interesting that the rest of the market still uh as it as AI, Bitcoin proliferate, these companies are going to be everywhere and they're not going to sit like, you know, and have to go and run down Sand Hill Road to get money. Yeah, it is interesting. You see the little dip here, 21 22 and then it it starts increasing again. Um, but this is this kind of does run counter to the narrative that like everyone was fleeing California. Well, but see that's the point is that that's been a narrative, but the reality is it's it's not true. Like, yeah, SpaceX, Open, uh, Open AI, Data Bricks, like all these companies are still there. They go to YC. It's still like if you want to start a company, you go there. Um, but we see this kind of already with counter trends. Like, uh, Brickyard's a good example. Like, if you really want to raise, uh, or build a company, CAM requires you to go to Chattanooga. And part of that was he understood that there was this allure of I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. And half of the entrepreneurs that go to Silicon Valley want to live the life of an entrepreneur. They want to do all the other things that they it's like the Silicon Valley show and like real life. And it's kind of like that like you just you know went to school. There's not there was um I haven't fully listened to it but it's uh Toby uh was it Toby Toby from uh Shopify? What's his last name? Anyway, Toby and and uh and uh Chimoth and they did this fireside and and the the beginning started with like it was like most companies um have a uh solution looking for a problem, right? And you have to have like a deep problem that you're trying to fix and then look for the solutions because it's always going to weave throughout. And that's what it reminds me of a lot of like the startup culture of people went to school and they want like they're they're just like looking at AI right like all these solutions but there's no real deep problem that it's fixing and very similar with these companies. Um so yeah I don't think I and like you think about California policy. Um yeah thanks again for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. It was a pretty uh spicy pod covering all things related to Elon Musk. his new party and uh interest in Bitcoin and saying fiat is hopeless uh and worthless. I can't remember what he tweeted out last night. Um but before then, quick word and excitement around on-ramp. We've seen an incredible amount of self onboarding come in, especially this past weekend. I think um as the business starts to grow and and the price of Bitcoin grows with it, um the notion of what we're doing really speaks to certain individuals. I did want to call out there's a lot of questions that naturally come up that I think would be helpful to just share here. Um if you're thinking about leveraging our services or if you just want to learn more, I would encourage you to book a consultation. But a few of the key things that have come up is um asking about is the Bitcoin onchain and verifiable and of course it is and it's also segregated, right? So it sits in your own wallet and that's also what underpins a lot of what we do with Lloyds on the insurance uh balances that every client has its own segregated wallet onchain. And then the other notion is that you don't actually need on-ramp to move funds. So we use native multisig. So in a world where on goes away is unresponsive. That's the beauty of multi-institution custody. You're not relying on one single counterparty. Um if you want to learn more please shoot me a personal note michael@onbitcoin.com or just book a consultation. and we'd love to chat with you and see if we're the right fit for you now or in the future as Bitcoin's price appreciates. Now, I hope you enjoy the show. Let's let it rip it. Um, one other headline, this one, Palmer Lucky and Teal launching a cryptofocus bank. Um, any thoughts on this one? Teal's kind of looking like a baddier at at this point. I don't know if you guys saw yesterday. Insane these days in all these interviews. just being like a baddie like Yeah, he's looking a little rough. Um, it's funny. I thought it was funny. What's the the company called? Aridor. Arabore, which is a Lord of the Rings reference. Arabore is the Lonely Mountain, a fortress whose treasures are reclaimed from the dragons. I thought it was funny that the in reverse it's robber. Um, uh, you know, and like Sam Bankman Freed, uh, I don't know. I I think there's a lot here. I think the core the my biggest takeaway is um it goes back to what we said in the beginning that these guys are smart. There's been a very long game being played and ultimately all of the plumbing and or the barriers to play in this world have been effectively collapsed when it comes to AI and Bitcoin and digital assets. And so all the different regulations and all the different banking, all these just things are just like kind of moved away at the perfect time for them all to step in. You think about your satellites, the internet. Internet's a great example of this, right? because historically it had multiple. It was AT&T and uh Spectrum. They fought over uh fiber optics. They owned it. I was at Google Fiber. We had to like combat it was half a billion dollars per market when we went into them. Um and then you have to fight with the lobbyists because they had these like rideaways on the telephone polls and if you can get it above and they would just lock you into lawsuits and you took a company like Google to really go and that's why now you can get gigabit speeds at like 80 bucks or whatever when it used to be, you know, Verizon. And anyway, um, point being is Starling changed all that. Like you just kind of played a different game by going into space. And so I think the level that these guys are playing on is fundamentally different. Um, but I do love the fact that there's only 21 million Bitcoin. And I still think that they're they don't really get Bitcoin. They get the they get the notion of Bitcoin and centralization and and like kneecap its properties and its spirit. And that's what I think the treasury companies are. they don't actually get like the way we're doing it and how how it's going to fundamentally change in the same way the internet was probably thought to be controlled. Uh but then reality is you can't really control the internet. You can cut off nodes but you can't really actually cut it off. And so I think that's the pushpull on you open up a new tech because you think you're going to be able to like control it but it's like fire. You can't control fire. You can just like try to contain it. Yeah. Bitcoin first. And so um there's going to be a massive amount of demand from you know innovative companies that need to or want to lower their costs uh have crossber payments that they need to facilitate and then um those companies just naturally will be the ones who adopt new technology first and so they're going to find Bitcoin and uh you know they're just going to have all the data as it relates to the different companies how they're using their technology and then uh how they're just using Bitcoin as their ultimate savings vehicle which uh is just going to ultimately kind of compound and on their understanding too. And uh I think that they're going to end up pivoting to more of that down the road. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I was going to reference here was that I think Palmer Lucky does deeply understand Bitcoin. He's he's mind Bitcoin since 2010. um has been did a few uh recent interviews where he he's just talking about um his knowledge and love for Bitcoin specifically and like calls out shitcoins as very different to Bitcoin. So I do think he does have have a pretty fundamental understanding. It is interesting to see this stable coin focus for whatever uh they launch here. Um, I don't know if it has plans to go public or if it'll just be private, but like I I would imagine that they have, you know, a substantial portion of the the business's treasury in Bitcoin just given um some of Ly's prior statements on on the topic. Yeah, it's a it's a good point. We should try to have um like 8VC I I was looking that they're either they led or they played a big part in the capital raise. those guys really actually get Bitcoin and do not like I don't know I hesitate to say get Bitcoin but they get Bitcoin's fundamentally different and it's kind of more in the like Joe Lonzo libertarian view of expressing it and then crypto is kind of like a griff um yeah it'd be interesting to maybe get there's a couple guys I know there that I've spoken with previously uh and it seems like they're finally making their bet because I think that's been a big component of all this right it's a regula regulatory setup for banks and other companies to get funded it's hard to park $250 $50 million at a company that you know might get squashed because of some regulation. So, um, yeah. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And I think that speaks exactly to just like thinking about everything from a higher level. Like there's announcements every day around people building in crypto or Bitcoin. And to me, that's just a reflection of the completely 180 stance from a regulatory and administrative perspective. Like I think we are living in a parallel world here where we've reshorted a lot of the innovation. people that want to launch crypto, digital assets, stable coin, Bitcoin businesses are doing so in the United States and that's why there's just been a a deluge of of announcements uh literally every day uh around all this stuff. Um we're at 55 minutes, boys. I know we want to keep these a little tighter. So, uh any final thoughts or last words before we wrap? No, this is a this is a great rip and uh yeah, I think it's going to be a spicy week, so we'll see how it goes. More announcements to come. That's for certain. All right. Thanks, boys. Later, guys. See 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.