Former Blackstone Partner: ALL-IN on Bitcoin's Monetary Revolution

Jackson Mikalic (00:01.54) Okay, we're live. It's the last trade. This week is a special one because we have co-hosts Michael Tanguma and Brian Cabellus, but the guest of honor this week, someone we're all excited about is David Thayer. David, first of all, congratulations on your official retirement from Blackstone. As we were just, before we hit record here, you're still very involved in the Bitcoin space. You're doing some things in the cloud computing space, decentralized internet tech stack. And of course you're involved with OnRamp as well. So really appreciate you joining us again. If you might recall, the last time you were on the podcast was the week after Trump won the election. And I think we were all just enamored by the price at that time, because prior to Trump winning the presidential election, the Bitcoin price was hovering in the high sixties, made a decisive move to the mid seventies after the election results. And then by the time we hit record a week later, It was ripping past 90K. We were setting new all-time highs. And so we'll pull up the price here in just a second. We're getting close to all-time highs once again. But David, really appreciate you joining. How are you doing? Nice to see you. David Thayer (01:08.795) It's great. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to here. Jackson Mikalic (01:12.548) Excellent. This will be a fun one. So let's start with the price as we do every week. Can everyone see this all right, by the way? I think we're good. All right, so we got a big green candle this morning in anticipation of this week's episode. We've been chopping around in the mid hundreds for a while now. This was just in case everyone has forgotten, you two or three months ago, we thought the sky was falling. The tariffs... Brian Cubellis (01:21.976) Yes. Jackson Mikalic (01:41.938) were announced, the Bitcoin price plummeted to the mid 70s, but here we are at about 110,000, 109 right now. And it feels like nothing actually changed. And it looks like we're pricing in maybe some bullish sentiment, some shifts within the fiscal monetary policy here in the US, among other things as well. But gentlemen, what do we think of just price action this week? Any initial thoughts? Just sentiment check here. Anything that you're paying attention to? Brian Cubellis (02:08.717) think for me, this range that we've sort of oscillated in these 105 to 110 range for what feels like over a month now is just pretty remarkable considering everything going on in the world. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, around increased turmoil in the Middle East, think in prior years, even 12 to 24 months ago, when something like that would have happened, Bitcoin would have sold off a lot harder than it did this most recent time. And so I think it's just a sign that Bitcoin is maturing as an asset. the other real thing to be cognizant of here is like, it feels like we're stuck in this range and there's so much sort of positive momentum headlines every day that speak to the broader adoption of the asset class. I think the reality to sort of like keep in mind is that there are long-term sellers continuing to sell into this range. And that's, think, why we're sort of stuck here momentarily. But inevitably those sellers will get exhausted at some point and sort of all of this momentum will pick up and be represented in the price. So it's really just a matter of time. The coiled spring continues to coil. And like I said, like literally every day, there's five to 10 new news items that speak to broader adoption, broader legitimization of the asset. And so it's hard not to be excited where we are. David Thayer (03:44.581) So Brian, you know, this gets a lot of talk, but I'm interested in what the three of you think about who's doing the selling. Like, is it OGs? Like, who else? Brian Cubellis (03:56.184) Yeah, I think it's mostly people with a very low cost basis. So in the like 100 to $1,000 range that have mostly been selling into this level over the past several months. And so I think that's just kind of to be expected. Like that is a sort of healthy market sign in my mind that early investors are continuing to distribute coins to new holders. And I think the reality is If we had that level of selling without the support of institutions and corporate buyers, I think we'd be a lot lower than we are right now. So I think there is this counterbalance playing out over the past several months where there are these long-term holders that are, you know, trimming exposure, but there is a massive bid on the other side from this brand new cohort of buyers, whether that's institutional allocators, financial advisors, the corporate bids, obviously. and even more covert sovereign bids, which I do think are beginning to happen. And so I think we're kind of just in this range because those two sides of the equation are battling it out, but the seller side will get exhausted before this bid, because the bid is likely to increase from here, right? And so at some point this flips and we start moving higher. Could be any day, genuinely. David Thayer (05:16.219) Maybe I should know the answer to this question, but is Bitcoin ownership becoming more widely distributed or less widely given, you know, have institutions and Bitcoin treasury companies who are hoovering up Bitcoin, but by the same token, you have what you just described, which is OGs who own, you know, like these whales and mega whales who are now distributing coins. So do we have any data on that? Brian Cubellis (05:42.188) Yeah, I haven't looked at the specific data in a few months, but the historical trend line is more distributed over time. And so that hasn't changed. And I think what we're seeing now is just more indication of that, that over time, the longer term holders with massive balances sell into these areas of strength. And then you have a whole new cohort of buyers coming in. So I think that has always been the trend and continues to be. And again, like that's healthy. That's what we would expect and want to see. Michael Tanguma (06:10.433) Yeah, I think. I think it recently came up, I saw it yesterday that the record for number of balances, addresses with over a million dollars was at a record high. And I think like, I haven't thought deeply about this, but I think there'd be something fundamentally wrong if it wasn't becoming more distributed over time versus less. think natural order of things goes in that direction, independent of the acquisition. You know, a certain point somebody acquires a certain amount that ultimately liquidates or gets out of the position for other things because they need real world goods and services. So it just makes functional sense that it would go from a central version and then kind of like distribute out as more and more of the eight billion people end up figuring out some form of adoption. Jackson Mikalic (07:01.266) Maybe we should talk about who the buyers are because one thing that caught the group's attention this week was the fact that iBit, which is BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, now drives more revenue than the S&P 500 fund, the ETF product of BlackRock. I think this is incredibly bullish and I also think it ties into maybe the most fundamental thing about Bitcoin. It's about incentives and I remember when Larry Fink flipped to be bullish on Bitcoin, I guess about two years ago at this point, kind of in anticipation of the ETFs coming by the start of 2024, everyone was like, well, you why did Larry Fink change his mind? He was calling it an index for money laundering in 2017 or 2018. And then in 2023, all of a sudden you have these sound bites of him going on CNBC and talking about, you know, why Bitcoin is the greatest thing. since American Pie, right? And so this is kind of why Larry Fink and others are now touting Bitcoin as an investable asset, as kind of the future for digital capital, because it is now driving more revenue for their business than the S&P 500 index fund they have there, which is remarkable. There's a couple of things I'll call out and then I want to get the group's reactions. You can see that, first of all, it's worth reiterating, iBit is the most successful ETF launch in history. Michael Tanguma (07:57.646) you Jackson Mikalic (08:22.438) has now about $75 billion in assets under management, has a 25 basis points, so 0.25 % expense ratio. So it's driving a little over $187 million of annual fees to the firm. And by contrast, the S&P 500 ETF, I believe it is IVV maybe, yeah, the ticker's there, about 9X the amount of assets at $600 billion. and it is only a three basis point expense ratio. So that's why, you know, there's that discrepancy there. But it also, the more important thing is that we're only a little over a year into the launch of iBit and other ETF products. So this is incredibly early stages and you can expect that Larry Fink and other Wall Street titans are only going to become more vocal advocates for this asset class. But what do you guys think? mean, I think this is great thing to, you know, for people to be paying attention to. Michael Tanguma (09:14.549) One thing I want to call out, because I'm curious on top of like getting the group's thoughts is just that my perception of this and curious, specifically David from your Blackstone days and understanding that market structure around pulled vehicles is that BlackRock understood that there would be Pareto distributed and would house a lot of these assets and then be able to make those fees. Because of that, they could price it in the way that they did because they're playing at a scale game where everyone else ultimately is like losing money. And so they have these ETFs as loss leaders to get you into the other baskets of cryptocurrencies. Like I think a bitwise is a good example of this. And so what that tells me is almost like an inorganic market structure because we all know like 25 bits. if you, it's the notion of if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. Like it's something there that there's risk associated with it. And why I call it out mainly is because a lot of individuals just look at that as like market rate of like, that's what it costs to get exposure to Bitcoin. It's just fundamentally not. And there's risk associated with it. And then obviously it's BlackRock. So they can offset some of that. And just curious if you have any thoughts on that David specifically, because I don't think most people are going to understand that. And most people that hold material amounts of Bitcoin and that know that like you need to kind of have it outside of there would. default, but I don't think new net new entrants come in thinking anything like about that kind of part of the market structure. David Thayer (10:43.995) You're right. Also, it's reflected in the rates that are charged by other custodians. So, IBIT's materially cheaper. so, yeah, I think there's some cross-substitization that's taking place. Having said that, my own experience is actually in privately offered funds. So, I can't speak to a publicly offered product. But I think what you're saying is right now, having said that, there are other large institutions like Vanguard, which to my knowledge, actually correct me if I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong about this, but at least they initially did not want any BTC related product on their platform. I think that's still the case and there are others too, to my knowledge. So even if it's cross-subsidized, it's still attracting attention from other big players, which in addition to what you were saying earlier, only speaks to Metcalfe's law, right? So like not only are the coins getting more widely distributed, which will make theoretically the value of the coin higher or more valuable. But the more outlets there are to acquire, which I think is ultimately going to be the case, because everyone's looking at BlackRock right now, then that reinforces that exact same trend. But I offer that up for everyone's thoughts. Brian Cubellis (12:07.319) Yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense. think to me this is it's it is remarkable. I mean, when you break down just contrasting, they're making more money from this brand new Bitcoin product than they are with the most like vanilla down the fairway equity exposure that they offer. Now, obviously, the fee differential is driving that. But it's it's just something that when I think this headline comes across the desk of the average TradFi individual business professional. You know, they've probably heard about Bitcoin at this point, but this is just another signpost that drives home. Maybe I should rethink this thing because there's clearly a massive wall of demand that is coming into these products into this firm that I'm very familiar with. BlackRock, Reputable, all this stuff. It's just another sort of line in the sand saying this is real, this is legitimate, and it's a profitable business line for BlackRock. more profitable than their S&P product. That is, I think, just a pretty remarkable headline that will have people turning their heads. ultimately, that's what Bitcoin adoption and education, that's what this entire journey is about, is having these signposts where people question their priors, rethink what their previous stance was as they see new information come to the market, and see the real outsized demand reflected in these new types of products that offer people exposure. think it's super important just for continuing to allow this idea to permeate through the zeitgeist. It's just another massive signpost for folks. Jackson Mikalic (13:48.656) I think one of you mentioned it as well, the fact that there's still not a lot of participation from traditional finance in these products. everyone loves to talk about, you know, the institutions are coming, right? Everyone wants to be excited about institutional capital and it is happening, but it's only happening at the margins. Still, if you look at the 13F filings, most of the ownership of ETFs is retail. it's over about 75 % or so. It started with the first filing back in Q1 of 2024, it was above 80%. So you're actually starting to see more institutional capital take up those ETF products, but still it is a retail phenomenon similar to the Bitcoin treasury companies, which we might want to touch on as well at some point. But the other thing that I want to mention here as well, and it can be briefly, but I did want to just mention Rick Edelman's take on just portfolio allocation to, he says crypto. We of course know that means Bitcoin for anyone who does enough due diligence here. But regardless of opinions on him as an individual, he has built the largest RIA in the United States. They manage $300 billion. He's consistently ranked as like one of the most high profile, know, whatever accolades barons and others provide to advisors and RIAs. So for him to come out and say, If you have a conservative allocation to the crypto space, it's 10%. And if you have a more moderate, it's 25%. And if you're an aggressive investor, you might want to consider a 40 % allocation. Now, again, it is crypto. I think he advocates for broad-based exposure to different index products, which that point aside, the amount of capital that hasn't actually allocated to Bitcoin is considerably higher than the amount of capital that has allocated to Bitcoin. I believe RIAs either in the United States or globally, I'd have to fact check myself, but the number is $144 trillion of assets under management. A lot of them haven't participated. Even some wirehouses, large brokerage firms have a lot of stipulations and red tape about who can buy Bitcoin. It's if you have a certain asset threshold or if you have an aggressive risk tolerance. So the point being here is we haven't actually seen any sort of material adoption, yet Bitcoin is hovering around $110,000. Jackson Mikalic (16:11.09) It's a $2 trillion asset class, but the best is really yet to come. mean, if you look at the numbers, it's somewhere between 1 to 3 % in terms of adoption rates, and you have hundreds of trillions of dollars that just haven't even touched the asset class. So I think this is important just to call out. Curious David, if you have any thoughts there, and then maybe we can round it out to the group. David Thayer (16:30.971) Well, I think it speaks to, I think it was Brian who mentioned that, you know, incrementally you just get ever more sort of adopted. Maybe it you, Jackson, but I mean, like, yes, the institutions haven't yet kind of come in in scale, but by the same token, I'd say maybe two things. One is that interestingly within Bitcoin, like retail has been ahead of the institutions as we know, and oftentimes it works in reverse and the rest of TradFi. And then secondly, This is just another data point. think a lot of institutional allocators in particular are looking to not embarrass themselves, not necessarily maximizing returns. think the four of us may have talked about it during our last conversation, but a lot of it's about CYA. And so the more Bitcoin ownership can become mainstreamed, the more I think we will see institutional adoption. And so Rick Adelman, whether it's an entirely valid indicator or not, coming out and saying, like, these wild allocating, like, not wild to us, but to a normie, like 10 to 40 % would be a pretty wild allocation. Just normalizing that kind of dialogue, I think, doesn't wonders for the space over time. Brian Cubellis (17:54.092) Yeah, I would agree with that. The biggest sort of component from this to me is not who Edelman is or the firm, but it's the shifting of the goalposts you know, talking about two to 3 % allocations. And now he's saying the conservative allocation is 10%. Like that is completely, like radically different than what a lot of folks of his kind have been talking about with respect to Bitcoin and crypto. The sort of Um, you know, the cover your ass allocation has been like, all right, we'll think about it like one to 3%. And he's saying, no, the conservative, like at a minimum, you need 10 % in this stuff. Um, so I think that is, that is pretty important. It's again, moving that over to the window, shifting these goalposts to make it more normal to where, you know, if he's saying it should be 10 to 40, then 2 % sounds like a no brainer to someone. And it continues to add fuel to that air cover that you're referencing David of like. Well, if some people are doing 50%, like we could at least do 2%. Right. So as you continue to shift out, what is normal and accepted, think that that just adds fuel to the fire of adoption. Generally speaking. Michael Tanguma (19:06.731) Yeah, I'll take the other side. I'll just say I'll kind of take the other side of like, I don't want to this is bearish, in my opinion, but I think this is a nothing burger in the sense of like, Rick Edelman did what he wanted to and get us to talk about it. Like he understands Bitcoin's becoming in crypto or becoming mainstream. So what better way than you have to move yourself out into like I'm the Bitcoin crypto RA. David Thayer (19:06.797) And you guys see. Yeah, Michael. Michael Tanguma (19:28.691) And I would say it's actually not prudent in what he's advising because anybody's first exposure to this space should probably not be 10 to 40 % because if it cuts in half, they're going to be like, what the hell happened? And then he's going to get like from the SEC, SEC also called. And if he was saying only Bitcoin, I would say like, okay, maybe this is fundamentally different, but he's going to push a bunch of crypto. And so somebody putting 40 % in aggressive stance in Solana or whatever is like, it's actually a big problem for a lot of people. And so I think like he had, you know, he showed a lot of stuff and I think that there's an aspect of this stuff is becoming normalized. And so he wants to be out there and all of his advisors as the people that are now going to be pushing crypto and now we're all talking about it. And so he kind of got what he wanted to achieve, but I don't think they're probably pushing most of their clients to 40 % crypto that want to be quote unquote aggressive. They probably highly advise against that. Jackson Mikalic (20:20.027) Rick, if you're listening, we did what you wanted to do. We talked about, we talked about your recommendation on the last trade. I will, I want to move on, but I will just take the other side of that from a business lens. Put him aside for a second. RIAs do need to become smart on this because what ultimately will drive adoption even further, one of the biggest catalysts for adoption in the next several decades is the transfer of wealth from baby boomers to David Thayer (20:24.837) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (20:47.911) Millennials and Gen Z in particular and I guess Gen Alpha if that's the right terminology these days But anyways seven true seventy trillion dollars of wealth is held by the baby boomers just one generation and so naturally then if The next generation wants to keep advisor relationships and maybe they don't see how that plays out in terms of robo advisors and just the future of financial planning but point being is Advisors need to be smart about what the next generation wants to own and so I do think that there is at least some signal here in the sense that there needs to be air cover. Like we talk about this in our business as well. Like when we speak with institutional investors or RIAs, they may have a Bitcoin or within the organization, but they need like air cover from an external organization to actually speak to the merits of it. How do you think about it in a portfolio context? And so this headline aside, I think it's good to see that there is more air cover for the wealth management industry to start thinking a little bit deeper about this space. David Thayer (21:45.209) We know too that Paul Tudor Jones for quite some time has been talking about Bitcoin and you know, he recently, as you may have seen, reiterated his support for the space. But what I was surprised personally to see was you may have seen, I think his name's Philippe Laffont at CO2, which is a little bit more below the radar screen, but certainly a well-known personality and firm within the hedge fund space and the institutional space. It came out, again, I'm probably telling you something you already know, but he came out in this interview, think, with CNBC saying, every night I toss and turn, like wondering why I don't already own Bitcoin. And it's another voice joining this chorus and having come from the institutional space myself. I just think it's really helpful for Bitcoin, within, we'll say since the founding of OnRamp. Like we've seen how much more normalized Bitcoin dialogue becomes. Here's another example of what we're talking about. Again, you may know Grant's, Grant's Interest Trade Observer, which has been around since like the 70s or early 80s. And Jim Grant's is like total legend on Wall Street. And so every day they pump out this little daily update as to what happened in the markets. And every day they quote Bitcoin's price. I'm like, you know, that's something you would not have seen, you know. several years ago. so they quote what stocks did, what treasuries did, what gold did, what oil did and what Bitcoin did. And so I just feel like it's becoming mainstreamed and every voice really helps the cause. Brian Cubellis (23:29.709) 100%. I'm glad you referenced Lafont because that was an interesting one to me. So actually in my private banking days, one of the first funds that we were invested in was CO2. So some of my first diligence calls in my private banking days were with Philippe and just picking his brain on his investment strategy. Brilliant guy. And it falls right in line with You know, all these guys really who have their moment where they check their priors and they reconsider what they previously thought about the asset. And it's really just been a steady drumbeat of these folks over the past five years or so who say, you know, it was not in the CNBC interview, but he did another podcast within the past couple of weeks where he was talking about, basically the most important attribute a great investor could have is mental flexibility. And that's really what like understanding Bitcoin is because almost everyone with very few exceptions initially dismisses the idea. Feels too good to be true. You haven't dug into it. So you just dismiss it and hope it goes away. And then it keeps outperforming everything else you invest in. And so as someone who's investing professionally, like that keeps nagging in the back of your brain. Like what happened? Why did I miss it the first time? And so there's a lot of psychological friction in that process of humbling yourself and saying, maybe I was wrong. And so that's also how he's framed this pivot over the past few weeks is saying like, I needed to humble myself and realize there's things I didn't know about this and reconsider it from sort of first principles. And so I think we're just going to continue to see that type of transition from a lot of these very sharp minds in the traditional space who are still just beginning to dip their toes in the water. David Thayer (25:27.225) I think we Bitcoiners too have an obligation to assure everyone to whom we speak that we too felt like we relate to the game. Like I've never met a Bitcoiners. like, you know, I got into just the right time. So we all have that regret. And so even at hundred thousand dollars, we're still early. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. So Maybe Brian, you can pick up the phone again and call Philippe. That's so cool that you got to talk to him. Jackson Mikalic (25:58.523) Yeah, maybe what Philippe was, maybe what Philippe actually meant on that interview was he was waking up at three o'clock in the morning thinking about those diligence calls. Brian probably slipped in a few anecdotes about Bitcoin back then. Brian Cubellis (26:08.022) You Brian Cubellis (26:12.205) This was so long ago that I didn't know anything about Bitcoin. This was over 10 years ago. Jackson Mikalic (26:15.781) wow. Okay, then. Well, I would love to zoom out. So, David, you brought out or you brought up Jim Grant and just his notes that he sends out on a daily basis on the bond market. Brian, one thing you had flagged for today's conversation as well was concentration within the equity market in the United States, valuations in the equity market. I would love just to, David and Brian, if I could hand it over to one of you, just... Give us an update on what's happening in the markets because we've seen Bitcoin all-time highs, gold all-time highs, NASDAQ, S&P 500. Everything is hitting new all-time highs. Some indicators show slowing economy. You have the battle over interest rate policy here in the United States. So we'd love to just get maybe David, your thoughts first just in terms of on a macro scale, what's going on? What are you paying attention to these days? David Thayer (27:10.139) Well, I guess my personal view is that Bitcoin is the preeminent liquidity sniffer outer. But there are other markets that are also flashing green. And they're all saying either the current global liquidity situation is favorable to hard assets like Bitcoin. And I think global is an important adjective because we tend to think only of what's happening in the U.S. But especially when comes to Bitcoin and gold, these are global markets. So it's both where global liquidity is now, but also the anticipation of where it's going. But then the other thing, too, which I think we all know on this call is that markets hate uncertainty. So you have the uncertainty around tariffs, which I think were utterly stupid. And then the administration seems to backed off that. If at least a freer trade, great. either way, that picture seems to have been clarified. then secondly, some of the other doubts around either war in the Middle East or even this bill that's getting passed in Congress right now, some of those doubts are sort of dissipating. And therefore, I think the markets are viewing that as positive. Having said that I think there's a long way to go. Like if you look at Trump administration version one You know, they came charging out of the gate with lower taxes deregulation and The market says you'll remember really received that favorably. I think that's one of the reasons 2017 was a banner year for Bitcoin too And Here too, I think we have low inflation to the patient lower rates, but there's a lot of room for deregulation some of the Trump version one policies that could get us even further than where we are now. So I guess that's it in a nutshell, but Brian, what are your thoughts? Brian Cubellis (29:16.702) Yeah, I've been thinking particularly about the equities markets just continuing to make new all-time highs and to me it's less about the fundamentals of all these companies because I think, Jackson, if you pull up the second chart that I shared in our doc, it shows that this most recent all-time high is the narrowest breadth of companies within the S&P that actually made all-time highs. the number of stocks that themselves made all-time highs within the S&P making an all-time high, the lowest ever. And so that indicates that there's extreme levels of concentration at the top with the MAG-7 and a few other names that are driving this. And so this notion of equities continuing to make all-time highs is sort of a facade in my mind because it's it's sort of more indicative, it's less indicative of things inherent to equities, it's more indicative of, where else does the money go? Because to your point, David, liquidity seems to be pivoting back upwards. I think there's probably built in or priced in anticipation of rates coming down. And so in this world where there's more recognition around the unsustainability of the debt loads, think less people want to own fixed income. I think the housing market's also in an interesting spot where there's sort of this supply demand imbalance. And so you haven't seen a lot of activity there and there's probably room for prices to come down there. So I don't know if people want to be allocating to real estate right now. And so it's like, where's the money go? It goes to equities and it goes to gold and Bitcoin. And so I think it's less about like the fundamentals of these companies because, know, PEs are at all time highs. Valuations are stretched on any traditional metric, like farther than GFC, farther than the dot com bubble. And so it's really like, it's partly this psychology and mentality that the average investor and institutional investor have become accustomed with, which is like, just buy equities. You buy any dip because they're going to keep going up because they're going to keep printing money. And so I think it's more reflective of sort of the global environment of like, where do you allocate capital in this environment? And it's to heart assets to your point, David. Brian Cubellis (31:38.414) And it's the normal thing, which is equities, which is what people are most familiar with in terms of allocating capital. And so I think that's more what we're seeing here with these stretch valuations. It's not really about the equities themselves or the profitability revenue of the companies. It's just where else does the money go? And I think that's the valve that we're seeing expressed here. David Thayer (32:01.279) Yeah, I hadn't thought about the market bread thing. I'm sorry, Michael, let me just say this before I forget, but I hadn't thought about the market bread thing. And you're absolutely right. But you touched on something which is interesting because we were early talking about Paul Tudor Jones. And that's exactly what he was just saying. I don't know if you saw the interview, but it's just some clip I saw where he essentially said, you know, gold, Bitcoin commodities and high tech equities. And so Michael Tanguma (32:01.649) Yeah, I think. David Thayer (32:30.639) You know, it only stands to reason this is a liquidity answer. And by the way, I think this also may explain why people keep predicting that the market's going to go down because P E multiples are so chronically high. But I think they're chronically high because we're sort of in this new post 2008 regime of liquidity sloshing all over the place and the Fed's balance sheet. And we're looking at this chart right now, which explains some of this, maybe all of it. And And so as you were saying, like money is just like for a home, know, money, money in quotes. It's just currency units that purport to be money. It's like, you know, somebody has to store those Federal Reserve notes somewhere. Michael Tanguma (33:11.302) Yeah, it's That's the thing like we had who are great friends, Larry and Dave Foley, and they were calling for, you know, because like a natural crash because of the over, you know, or the overinflated the multiples and a lot of just other structural problems. But I would just anchor back to this. We're looking at the national debt by year independent of who's in office. And there's just a structural problem because more debt begets more debt because you have to service that because it's not all productive. Either you let it deleverage or you have to insert more units to keep it sustained. And there's also the natural flows from like money market funds and somebody in a 60 40 that are taking those interest that interest and it's going back into the equity market. So it's just naturally up into the right into your point. It makes complete sense. Somebody sophisticated like Paul Teter Jones is saying gold Bitcoin and then some aspect of scarcity with the Magnificent Seven are capturing a lot of that premium. But At the end of the day, it's unsustainable if you have the debt increasing. In real terms, it's not going, we're seeing this play out. think that's the, we'll talk about it later, but I think that's the big, I don't want to say insidious, but dangerous part in all this is everyone gets richer in nominal terms and feels richer in nominal terms. But in real terms, whether it's price against Bitcoin or hard assets, like a ribeye or gold, you're losing. And that's kind of like the big disconnect between like Wall Street and Main Street. Brian Cubellis (34:41.878) Yeah, people are going to get lulled to sleep by seeing the equities continue to go up, but in real terms, you're exactly right. Their dollars are buying them less over time. so that's sort of what I allude to when I say this is kind of a facade. Like it's not real. These are not real returns. It's just a function of the liquidity situation that we're in. David Thayer (34:41.915) That's it, that's it exactly. David Thayer (35:02.171) In fact, Brian, what proves that you may have seen it always depends on like where you begin the graph. But in general, in recent years, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say like post 1971, although I'm making an educated guess, gold and equities have over time on an annualized basis returned the same except for dividends. So total return S&P graph will actually be higher than gold. But that's just the human ingenuity premium, right? That's what companies are actually doing and they're returning and adding value to their shareholders. The rest of it is just nominal inflation. Nominal prices going up as a result of inflation, monetary inflation. And we all know that inflation is always and everywhere in monetary phenomenon. So, It's a fascinating chart to look at and I'm pretty confident that, you know, there are lots of swings where it doesn't exactly correlate, but the annualized return over time is very similar. And I think that's the ultimate indictment of, you know, this policy that we've been experiencing since August 15th of 1971. Brian Cubellis (35:56.856) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (36:14.382) 100%. I've seen that chart and I've seen other ones too. And this is kind of cherry picking. But like if you just look over like more more so like the past five years, gold is actually outperforming the S&P by a pretty wide margin. And so to me, that speaks to what we were just talking about around the concentration, because you probably could have kept up with gold if you owned like the top three or four stocks in the S&P. But if you're just owning the S&P, you're getting dragged down by the bottom three quarters of that index, which might be down. And so I think that's even more reflective of sort of the situation we're in today where a few companies are driving the broader market return. And even that is not keeping up with gold over the past five years. David Thayer (36:58.031) Yeah, well, okay, so this is interesting because first of all, what you just described is probably the result I would guess of this massive liquidity infusion since March of 2020. But furthermore, it reminds me that your average company, which otherwise would be doing reasonably well, is getting jostled about by... this kooky monetary policy because it introduces such uncertainty. So they're struggling to survive. This is like the rest of the market. And the ones that are succeeding are the ones that are actually engaging in real innovation and are involved in some recent sort of technological developments and even revolutions. So like one would expect that they would do much better than everybody else. But I think everybody else is actually suffering on a real basis. even if on a nominal basis they're doing okay, but that may be why you have this handful of stocks that's outpacing everybody else who's actually kind of just struggling to get by from the policy uncertainty. Brian Cubellis (38:03.438) Yeah, I just pulled up some numbers. So since the beginning of 2020, this is cumulative gold is up over 120 % versus the S&P up about 90%. David Thayer (38:19.045) That's amazing. Jackson Mikalic (38:20.98) It's everything just about to rip higher. I got called out on the last week episode because I complained that we were trading in the mid hundreds for a while and Rich Byworth, who was our guest, just said, be grateful for the opportunity that we have. And you know what, I am grateful, but I also think like, David, one of the points you brought up before we hit record was this cycle is not really. tracking to previous cycles, right? And we've talked a little bit on previous episodes, some ideas, but we've kind of been consolidating. Bitcoin's shown a ton of resilience and strength, but I think we might finally start to see the catalyst that is going to really juice this thing higher through the second half of this year and into 2026, because you have like Trump and others. It's not even just Trump now. You have plenty of people that surround Trump. Michael Tanguma (38:46.385) Thank Jackson Mikalic (39:13.428) calling for far lower interest rates than we're currently at today. You have the big beautiful bill which is currently underway. was signed off by Senate. It's with the House now. Tax cuts made permanent. I think three and a half trillion or so is estimated to add to the deficit. So just more deficit spending, just what we've seen for the past 50 or 100 years. I feel like are we finally starting to see the confluence of macro tailwinds that are just going to just juice up not only Bitcoin gold, but also to your point, the equities that continue to set new all-time highs despite really any sort of fundamentals. David Thayer (39:54.063) By the way, one sidebar, given what you just described, is that I would argue that given what the Laffer curve indicates, for those who aren't familiar with the Laffer curve, it was invented, it was coined by Arthur Laffer as this economist at UCLA, and the idea is that lower tax rates actually up to a point result in higher tax revenues. vice versa, it's sort of a parabolic curve. If taxes are zero, there's zero revenue. If tax is 100%, there's also zero revenue because nobody's going to pay them. And so somewhere in between is this optimal tax rate. We're well past that. So tax rate reductions actually result in tax revenue increases, which is counterintuitive. But that's why I think the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, often gets us wrong because they're like, hey, You're cutting taxes that results in a greater deficit. Now, having said that, the problem is that Congress takes that money, that windfall, and we saw this in the first Trump administration too, like tax revenues actually went up after the tax rate decreases, and then they waste it. So we're still back at the same place. And so Jackson, what you just said, I think still holds true. It's just that we're going to go through it via this circuitous route. where revenues are actually going to go up, I think, but they're still going to blow all that money and then some, and we're still going to be in the red and the debt will continue to go up. So the thesis remains intact. Jackson Mikalic (41:35.12) Absolutely. Yeah, Michael, you want to pivot over to one of your topics for this week? We want to pull up. I know you had some thoughts on stable coins, some stuff with Robinhood as well. But where do you want to go? Michael Tanguma (41:47.943) Yeah, I think let's open up the Robinhood link. think this one's really fascinating. I haven't had a chance to express this to you guys and specifically also David. So I'd be curious his thoughts on, to pull up the Robinhood link. then I think there's this realization. So Robinhood came out, right? They're gonna be tokenizing assets. There's a natural Wall Street, real world assets aspect of people getting interested in. part of the announcement was letting you get access to pre IPO, so private markets. And they're just, really, it's not on this page, but they're also bringing like perpetual swaps. So the ability to kind of like something that was innovated on the crypto side is effectively gambling on the direction of an asset to Wall Street. And what this really indicated to me is, how much further we're gonna kick this whole can of all this we've been describing around the markets and specifically real versus nominal. And, you know, I haven't read this book, but it's my understanding of when money dies, everyone feels like they're getting richer until kind of like, until they realize they're not. And it reminds me a little bit of the treasury stuff that I know we'll talk about is like, at least so, taking a step back like private markets or the notion of alts, right? Alts I feel like are the past 10 years, you know, version of alternative assets because the 60-40 wasn't performing. And so people had to go further out on the risk curve. Venture capital is another great example. If you look from 71 till today, just the amount of dollars that have gone in, even though the returns haven't been there. And private credit is a form of alts. And then this notion now of giving retail and international retail exposure to all these is this version of just opening up the ability to effectively dump these assets on others. And so it's no coincidence that the two ones that they threw out as examples was OpenAI and what was the other one? SpaceX, right? The hot apps. And I liken back to my days that we work when we were the hot thing and they were gonna get a $40 billion IPO and then actually fell apart because people start to look into these vehicles and realize that they're not productive. Brian Cubellis (43:53.464) SpaceX. Michael Tanguma (44:11.258) businesses and then also you just have to really like show up to get that launched. And so what better way to get, you know, liquidity without having to actually go through the traditional IPO process. And so that's just one part. But then when you just, feels like a recursive loop that's going to come in where Like in traditional crypto, the asset was Bitcoin, right? And then that flew and then the gain started to fall into digital assets. That was just the way that the market moved. And this feels very similar into capitals coming into ETFs, treasury companies, those are gonna get tokenized. You're gonna have the ability to trade into them. Bitcoin's gonna be rising, so people are gonna be holding. Bitcoin via digital forum, whether it's ETF tokenized shares, and that's going to naturally get people out further in the risk curve into these other assets. And everyone is going to look for the next Bitcoin in the same way everyone's looking for the next crypto in traditional crypto cycles. Now we're in this world where Wall Street and crypto are kind of blending together. And it all comes back to the conversation Brian and David were having around gold versus the S&P. The thing that you guys didn't mention, and I think it's probably the most important is one's money and one is an investment. And we all forgot that you doing our work, like going out and building a business, going to work is your investment. And then you store the money and then you just sit on it and you're good. And the market doesn't know that because if they knew that they would just buy gold, especially because you don't have the execution and counterparty risk that you have with equities and all the things associated with. That's the thing that everyone's been lulled to sleep is counterparty risk. It doesn't exist when it does exist. And so that's the whole view of Bitcoin. It's like, you don't have to play all these games. You can park it, figure out the underlying custody, and then you can just like sidestep all of this. But most people aren't because they're going to get really attracted by the shiny objects. And so all of this is kind of just dawn on me listening to all this stuff. And it feels like obviously there's a lot of opportunity. It's not to say people aren't going to make money in the same way people make money at a casino or people make money trading crypto or equities, but those are specialized people. Those are experts. Those aren't the doctor and the day to day person that just needs to save and preserve their wealth. David Thayer (46:24.283) I don't necessarily have a problem, I guess, I'm thinking out of the cuff here with tokenization in that, if you think about our markets right now, they're just so adequate at the fact that like they're open 930 to four only on weekdays and so forth. So being able to engage in price discovery, whatever the asset class all day, every day, I think makes markets more efficient and ultimately resources more efficiently allocated. Having said that, Michael, think you're 100 % right that this is a way to create exit liquidity for current owners who may be looking for ways to dump this on less sophisticated buyers. Now, I did have another thought while you were talking about that, though, which I think bears mentioning, which is kind of a more sort of broader view of things, which is that the problem with easy money and some of the things that Brian and I were just discussing is that people seek out things like commodities and gold and even Bitcoin because they're looking for a place to store their what I call work units, Like their labor units. That's exactly what you were describing, Michael. Like we're trying to sock away our labor somewhere in a safe place. However, if it then doesn't go into productive businesses, that hampers the economy. So that's one of the reasons that having such an unpredictable and profligate monetary policy in order to fund these government boondoggles is so harmful to the private economy because ordinarily we'd say, hey, you know what? I'm just going to put this stable money into a growth opportunity without having to factor in what exactly is going to happen to value of my dollar over time. And so, you know, having all this stuff go into these sinks, whether it's gold or Bitcoin or whatever, is really ultimately harmful to the economy. I would only add that if Bitcoin is the base layer, then that argument disappears. It's only when you have sort of the fiat regime taking place and the value of money is unpredictable that it can be damaging to the private economy. David Thayer (48:48.473) While we have the fiat regime, that's why Bitcoin is so powerful because we can store our work units in a stable, predictable, reliable place so that we can draw upon them later. And it keeps up with, if not outpaces inflation and will for years to come. Brian Cubellis (49:07.788) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (49:07.941) It will say, I think you're saying the same thing, but. The storing of value in Bitcoin or gold is actually the most productive thing that can happen to the economy. And the reason why is because if those units are out sending a false pricing signal to the market, meaning like if the restaurant stays open longer because they were purchasing, see where I'm going with this, when they go out of business, that individual has to go find work and then they go have to go be productive at the most base level of productive goods to the economy. David Thayer (49:34.747) Yep. Michael Tanguma (49:44.964) which reduces the cost for everything. And then that natural money that comes out of, because people don't, they still spend their gold and silver or Bitcoin. It's just that they're going to spend it on the most, the thing that accretes value for themselves. They're going to spend it. And so the, there was a really good acknowledgement or, cause we have the firm early writers and this is the whole thesis of like, it's not to say you don't invest, it's you invest in things that accrete more of the underlying and safe had a a podcast that was, we're kind of doing this in practice. He was theoretically explaining, well, what happens in a Bitcoin world? Do people still invest? And he was thinking through this because he's just insanely like prescient with how he can theoretically, I could never do it that way. We had to do this in practice building on ramp on this standard. But he broke down that that's how economy actually flourishes as the capital dries up. It's not to say it doesn't get spent, but people get to the most productive outcome, which drives down the cost for everyone. And so that's how we fix this whole thing, because the whole thing we're not David Thayer (50:26.599) I'm out. David Thayer (50:38.651) Exactly. That's it. Michael Tanguma (50:43.297) referencing is that all these companies that people are investing in are completely overinflated, lack fundamentals. And so it just kicks the can down the road of everyone's playing the game versus can step back and not play the same game. And then those companies naturally go under or they hold Bitcoin. Right. And then, and then now they have to make it when you see a whole Bitcoin, it doesn't just keep you alive forever. You have to think now critically from first principles. How do I deliver value or it's the hurdle rate and I just buy more Bitcoin. And that's how we get out of this, this whole mess. but it's gonna be a long time. David Thayer (51:04.687) Yeah. Yeah, cost a couple. That's right, exactly. David Thayer (51:16.047) Well, this is like so hypothetical, but it's a fascinating thought experiment, right? Like if we had a Bitcoin standard, I think the ultimate outcome, and it sounds like this is what you discussed with SAFE, is that there would be fewer viable business opportunities because all the other nonsense would kind of fall to the wayside because he wouldn't be attracted by these artificial sort of nominal returns and liquidity wouldn't be sloshing around. But then also, The returns on whatever businesses in which you'd invest would probably be lower in a sense because we don't have these outrageous sort of nominal returns fooling us into thinking that certain projects are viable. So that gets us back to what you were just saying, Michael. Like if Bitcoin is your hurdle rate, your weighted average cost of capital, then you'll be much more discriminating about the business in which you invest. And you see that in Silicon Valley, like all these failures. It's all because they're trying to like, it's not just that they're discerning which are the viable projects, which is hard enough in itself, but they also have to discern what the heck is happening with the base layer of money. I don't think they're thinking about it explicitly, but that's, you know, it leads to a bunch of failed projects and misallocated resources. Brian Cubellis (52:32.11) Yeah, no, that's that's super well said. The only other thing I would add is I think philosophically, I totally agree with everything you both just said in this. And part of what I'm going back to is the notion around, you know, the average person shouldn't have to be an investor, right? Like they should just be able to store their value. The other side of that, though, is that there's a whole generation of people who are struggling to even store value in dollars. And so there's this notion of like Jackson Mikalic (52:32.202) Yeah. David Thayer (52:49.317) Totally. Brian Cubellis (53:01.71) extreme financial nihilism that is pervasive right now. And so to your point, like this stuff is going to happen and people are going to feel forced out the risk curve because you know, Bitcoin's keger just isn't enough for them to keep up. Right. And maybe that's a, you know, a false line of thinking. But there's always going to be people that are pushing farther and farther out the risk curve. And just to tie a knot on the Robin Hood stuff, I think, you know, it's great to democratize access to all these things, whatever. think like, you know, people abroad accessing U.S. stocks, like there are ways that that can be done. So I think there are marginal improvements in terms of access there. think what's going to have the most product market fit and Michael, you sort of alluded to this, is the perpetuals on stocks. Like that's what people are going to gravitate towards. The gamblers, the people that want to move out the risk curve, is they're going to be able to, you know, effectively gamble on perpetual futures on US stocks. think that's what's going to, for Robinhood and a lot of these other players that are going to come into this, that's where the most product market fit is going to be. And to your point, it's not a great thing, but it's just kind of the reality of where this is all headed. Jackson Mikalic (54:15.87) So. David Thayer (54:16.077) Yeah, I think that's an excellent point because I hadn't actually fully recognized or remembered that phenomenon when we were talking about it because I definitely have had that experience. Maybe the three of you had to when I'm talking to others about Bitcoin and they misinterpret what I'm saying. They think we're talking about crypto and younger people, especially, know, view crypto as like their way out. You know, it's this nihilistic way of the world where like the only way they can keep up is to swing for the fences with these lottery tickets and and so yeah I can see how maybe the market would gravitate toward it becoming like the proverbial shitcoin casino instead of hey isn't this a way to sort of you know modernize the capital markets Jackson Mikalic (55:09.065) Yeah. On the spectrum of nihilism, have, this will tie into our next topic, you have two sides of the spectrum in my opinion. You have elect a communist and make Brian move out of New York City, or you have like buy my next pump fund token and you'll be very rich. And some people are saying that... Bitcoin treasuries are similar to ICOs. Now I do want to talk about this. in more detail to the last week, but David, I want to really welcome your thoughts on this topic as well, given your background. And I think there's just a lot of nuance to the sense of like strategy has obviously done something very remarkable. My opinion with financial engineering. also think that Sailor is a very net positive for Bitcoin. I don't think we would have seen adoption to the rates we have in the past four years if it wasn't for without him being an advocate. But then you do have these other copycats and you have some shady things kind of happening in terms of funding and private rounds, taking things public, getting retail to buy things. So it's like some of it does feel scammy, but then on the other side of the barbell, there, do think that there's a lot of legitimate. financial engineering and also interesting things happening in the space. I want to open up the discussion. David, what are your general thoughts on kind of what we've seen this year with the Bitcoin treasury space? And then I know Michael and Brian probably have some prepared comments as well or just general thoughts based on where you want to take it. David Thayer (56:39.351) Well, I personally think it's fairly promising. Now, having said that, I would acknowledge that, you know, we're broadly speaking in sort of another sort of price discovery moment here in that, you know, lot of firms are launching and adopting this approach. And we're talking about, by the way, people who not just putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets. We're talking about people, as I understand it, Jackson, who are. out there actually issuing securities to acquire Bitcoin. And so I think it's a really interesting approach. You know, you've seen proof of concept when it comes to micro strategy, meta planet in particular. Having said that, you know, I think you can also explain why each individual firm has done well. So, you know, the Japanese market has these quirks that have favored meta planet. MicroStrategy was first to the game. They did it very intelligently, so I think they deserve their success. So the copycats are going to be challenged to do things that are also unique and not just sort of drafting off of others and replicating this sort of generic strategy. Michael and I actually talked by phone maybe a couple of weeks ago, and he may have a different view on this, but I'm excited. I think it's another... evolutionary moment, but what as with all other technological innovations, well, you know, the internet being one example, when a lot of companies like, you know, whatever Netscape or AOL came online, you know, they all went under eventually, but it's not to say the internet wasn't a successful sort of innovation. And I think we may see the same thing here that we'll see some stuff that kind of falls to the wayside and maybe gets scooped up by other more. Michael Tanguma (58:07.267) Thanks David Thayer (58:33.283) successful and intelligent enterprises. But the fact that there's this proliferation of new such entities, I don't think is necessarily a bad thing, especially if they're bringing something unique to the market, whether it's like a new geography or a new approach. So I guess that's kind of where I stand, but I definitely would love to get everyone else's view on this because I've only really kind of been looking at this carefully since about March. Brian Cubellis (59:02.998) Yeah, I have a bunch of thoughts. I'll start with I think everything is good for Bitcoin and this is no exception. To your point, David, this is a new adoption mechanism. And while it's not necessarily fully aligned with the Bitcoin purists view of how someone should be adopting Bitcoin, it is a vector of adoption. Full stop. Now where I'll go beyond that is I totally agree with you that certain entities have distinct advantages and will probably be successful over the long term. think there is certain, there's a certain level of euphoria around all of these new copycats that just assumes they're going to be able to replicate what these larger players have done in perpetuity with no issues at all. And I think that that is a little disingenuous. And I think that What I always come back to is it's kind of what we were just talking about with moving out the risk curve. Like if you're going to be investing in these things, you need to do diligence on the equity, on the management team, on whether they're going to be able to execute on their vision. And so it sort of is antithetical to like the principles of just owning Bitcoin, saving in Bitcoin. And if this is our new adoption mechanism, like I guess it's better than altcoins. as an adoption mechanism, but people are still gonna get burned, retail's still gonna come in late on these things. The people that are benefiting most from this are insiders. And that's where the real parallel to the altcoin space is, is because the people that are talking about this stuff the most and making the most money from it are the ones who are propping up these vehicles, getting in early, and then basically marketing and persuading retail to come in. And I think... There's also been this line of dialogue around like, okay, it's about these trapped pools of capital that need Bitcoin exposure. And I see that to a certain extent, and I think it's true for a micro strategy. think that that has been a company that institutional allocators have increasingly allocated to both the equity and the debt over the past few years. But for these penny stocks, they are explicitly marketing these things to retail. Brian Cubellis (01:01:25.17) And I don't think the institutions are buying the latest penny stock to spin up a Bitcoin treasury strategy. so that sort of line of thinking around all these trap pools of capital need Bitcoin exposure. And that's why this is all all gravy. I don't think that's actually true. Like, I think a lot of these things are being sold to retail and not all of them will succeed. I think that's just a fundamental truth. And so I think that's where the parallels to the altcoin space arise, because you just get this uneasy feeling about, well, There's all these equity related risks with these investments. You're turning people back into investors as opposed to savers. Like it is just a very different methodology. And I think it's fine. Like to your point, like people, people can gamble. People can go out the risk curve, but I think there needs to be a little bit more honesty about what these things are because there's people calling these like better Bitcoin and that's, and there's people selling their Bitcoin to buy these things. And so it's like, let's just be honest about what these are, what the risks are and how to think about it. Michael Tanguma (01:01:59.076) you Brian Cubellis (01:02:25.192) And being an investor versus just saving your money in Bitcoin are two very different things. Michael Tanguma (01:02:30.123) Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like, it's nuanced. And because it's nuanced, that's where, like the scammers, or what Brian's saying the disingenuous like is able to fall in. Because if somebody is just net new and figuring out, okay, I proxy exposure, what's this Bitcoin thing? What's the strategy? But the makings of a good scam is you ultimately get the people that already have reputations and know better because the reason why Bitcoin has value. It's decentralized, it's immutable, it's resistant, it has a fixed supply. And because of that, those properties make it a good form of money. And what we've been talking about is there's effectively like, kind of a reformation that will happen over the next, it's probably gonna take 50 years, but this reality of you're not a sucker if you just hold on to your money. Because that's what it's that's what everything we're talking about comes down to that, that it's in the water we all swim in is that you if you just hold your asset and you don't go try to make more of it, then you're just like a sucker. You're losing out. This is why people look out, you know, and try to get over the fed funds rate, or they try to get over the equity and beat that hurdle in the same way where Bitcoin yield for 15 years has been a prominent thing because people just want to make more Bitcoin versus its CAGR should take care of the rest. And so the disingenuous nature comes from like long-term hold, I'm never going to sell it. Like, let's see the real personal balance sheet and how much is actually allocated out of Bitcoin into that. And let's see how long they're going to hold versus let's get in. Let's get the people that are effectively familiar with that community. And that's why these communities are all such a big deal because you get them in it. And it's a real insidious play because a lot of really great educators haven't been able to monetize their following. So it's an easy way to like come up and scoop in and like to manage all this. And so yeah, like it's, it's just, is what it is, but nobody is incentivized to go talk about this because ultimately the people making money are going to keep further perpetuating like this cycle by getting more and more of the people influencing policy, influencing what we've seen with crypto 101. And it's a great playbook. But to Brian's point, like people will wake up and then they'll realize, Michael Tanguma (01:04:41.602) I just want to hold spot, but the sad part is people are going to end up with less Bitcoin or just get rugged completely. And it just again plays off the 60 40 because it's an equity. So it's very easy for somebody's mental model to get Bitcoin exposure via their regular 60 40 versus this is just a new paradigm. It's a new thing. And so it plays into that. So yeah, it's unfortunate. But like the beauty of life is you can find alpha and counter positioning. And so we're just going to be loud. I'm specifically going be loud and building a business around how do you protect the asset? How do you offer goods and services? How do you educate? Because on a long enough time horizon, if you're right, the market recognizes this. And I experienced this during 21 and 22 with BlockFi and all that stuff. And then it's like the whole Satoshi quote, if you just wait long enough by the river for the bodies of your enemies to flow by, it's like the markets would be like, shit, they just told me to like buy this thing. to my buddy, Good, because I've been pinging with him about this and I we feel the same way. Matt, it's like you just stay humble and stack sets. Like you literally just go and do your God given ability and create more value in the world, generate more Bitcoin, store it offline and forget about all this noise because there's gonna be, if we're at 109K and this is the amount of fervor that's being discussed and talked about, imagine 200K and 250, there was two Binance coin treasury companies launched in the past week. So we're just getting started and I think like it is important and we'll continue to call it out because if we're wrong, then the market will remember and they'll never trust us. And if we're right, and I believe we're right simply because if this is money, you don't want three different levels of execution and counterparty risk associated with, you just want it stored. Even if you get a nominal less return. You can't actually quantify what it means to hold it versus have it sit on a third party and not know what they're doing with it. And that's the whole idea between gold and the equities that we didn't go deep on is there's still this value you're losing and not having eyes on the underlying. That is really nice. Me and Marty used to talk about, would you rather have 500k and BTC and a Harbor wallet or a million dollars on Silicon Valley Bank in Silicon Valley Bank? Now, obviously we live in the West, so we've been okay with that. But you asked somebody in Venezuela, Michael Tanguma (01:06:55.894) or somewhere in the Middle East that's having these, Lebanon is a great example. They'll take 10 days out of 10 or 10 times out of 10, they'll take their BTC and that hardware wallet versus getting bailed in and never having access to their money. We're just doing a little slower in real versus nominal terms. And that's why I went in that whole STO or security tokenization rant was because they're just gonna like obfuscate it all. And everyone's gonna feel like they're getting richer with their net new. penny stock when in reality they're just gonna be losing in Bitcoin terms and then definitely in terms when it comes to buying goods and services day to day. Jackson Mikalic (01:07:28.95) I David Thayer (01:07:29.369) Well, what also scared me is, Brian, what you say, I had not actually heard that term better Bitcoin. And that is scary because we don't want people thinking that. And I think to the extent anyone takes a position on some Bitcoin adjacent firm or Bitcoin derivative, there really should be, at least for me, sort of over and above my already sort of decided upon Bitcoin allocation. Stack Hodler writes about what you just mentioned, Michael, because he's just like, no, man, like, this could be interesting, could be really interesting innovation. Maybe it's good for the space. David Thayer thinks it may be good for the space. But nonetheless, whether you do or don't, certainly the simpler approach is just to stack Bitcoin. And a totally reasonable portfolio, in my view, would be Bitcoin and cash. Cash for everyday needs and Bitcoin for... for saving but having said that too, it's unfortunate we live in a world where Gresham's law is kind of playing up for our eyes, right? Because the idea that Sailor and others are propagating here and I totally understand it is, hey, we will lever your worthless fiat and we will invest it in Bitcoin and we'll do it in a way that you as an individual may not be able to do because we have scale or we have sophisticated finance department or corporate finance department, whatever. So I kind of get the thesis, but it brings us right back to what we were discussing earlier, which one hears a lot on Bitcoin podcasts, but nonetheless, it's like the money's broken. So we're forced into these other, not forced, but we find these other avenues attractive and it really would be an issue if we didn't have this ridiculous system. Michael Tanguma (01:09:19.169) And one thing just real quick, because we never get to talk about this, it's so nuanced is because even the Bitcoiners that have oversized positions in Bitcoin kind of like it because if you come in through the lens, it's perfectly rational to have 90 % or whatever, as much as your money saved in Bitcoin cash and then go speculate because you're kind of an insider because we live in a bubble to get into these deals, but they forget to remember. there's still 99 % of the world that isn't exposed. And imagine if that was your first vehicle to come in and they get completely rugged or think that this is Bitcoin. And so that's the kind of bad part of this is that they forget what that was like. And so everyone's okay to just play the game when they don't realize that. You see this, you see it on Twitter, the communities, and then you have houses with parents and grandparents learning about better Bitcoin. And it's just, it's not right. David Thayer (01:09:51.451) Yeah. David Thayer (01:10:13.965) Yeah, no, I would agree with that. Jackson Mikalic (01:10:15.701) Gentlemen, I know we have to wrap here in just a few minutes. I think it would be disrespectful though, and we'd be remiss not to acknowledge Independence Day. So we'd just love to do a quick roundtable here. General thoughts on July 4th. I'll share mine just very quickly. So this country is born out of a revolution. Outside of all the financial jargon that we talked about today, it is a monetary revolution. And I want to give just a quick historical context. It'll be very quick because I know we have to run, but the Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States, actually in Philadelphia, and allowed for gold and silver to be money, official money, legal tender within the United States and actually embedded in the Coinage Act. and this is not a public endorsement, but rather an acknowledgement, debasement of currency was punishable by death. Now, I just want to call that out because we have a massive problem on our hands with the erosion of the trust in institutions, the erosion of the American dream, the erosion of the dollar because of debasement of destroying the value of the dollar of continuing to run structural deficits in this country. And Bitcoin offers an alternative as everyone on this call had articulated where you can just simply work hard, provide value in the world and save your money in a better form of money. And Bitcoin is a blessing. So grateful to have shared this call today with you gentlemen. And just before we wrap, I'd love to hear any reflections on July 4th. Brian Cubellis (01:12:01.804) That was great, Jackson. That was beautiful. We need to do Jackson's history corner. I think every show from now on. Maybe one thing to add is, agree with everything you said. And I think, you know, it's been fascinating to watch Elon's journey over the past several years and more recent months in terms of his inclination to get involved with the government, try to stop the proverbial train in terms of debt and deficit spending and kind of David Thayer (01:12:06.331) Yeah Brian Cubellis (01:12:30.99) you know, having a moment of realization of, no one can stop this. This is not necessarily a party line divide. And there's no political will on either side of the aisle to rein in spending in any material way. And now his idea is to start a third party. And it's just like, I mean, that's a, it's a cute idea. But I think to your point, Jackson, like the actionable idea today. for every individual on earth, particularly in the United States, is to buy Bitcoin, to opt out and save in Bitcoin. That is the third party, the single issue voters, which had a material impact on this most recent election. That's how you can make change today, is you store your value in Bitcoin and you sort of ignore the noise of the two party system or the uni party system as Elon has discovered. You don't try to start a new party, you just opt out and save in a better form of money. David Thayer (01:13:34.395) Yes, Marty Bent says there's no use in voting harder. And, you know, Brian, like, I think Elon and others now are beginning to feel some sense of frustration. There was all this hope around the time we last talked, actually, around Trump's election and, you know, Doge and we're going to chip away at the edifice of Leviathan. And now it's sort of like coming to naught, right? I mean, like, Congress passed, like, virtually none of these cuts and there's still like all this waste fraud and abuse. And I don't want people to get discouraged. think you put it so well, know, the third party is Bitcoin. But Jackson, speaking of blessings, you may all of us recall that the Liberty Bell, which is housed in Philadelphia, where Jackson and I happen to hail from, has inscribed on it, proclaim liberty throughout all the land, until all the inhabitants thereof. And the reason I wanted to mention that is that It's also in Leviticus from which that's drawn that we learn in the Bible about honest weights and measures. And so it's interesting that that book of the Bible really touches on two of the most important things. They're really both to the country, to freedom, but also to honest weights and measures. And Jackson, if you'd like to go out and murder somebody who's not engaging in that, that's fine. You have my permission. Jerome Powell may want to be on the lookout. But yeah, it's a shame that we don't still enact such draconian penalties for monkeying with the honesty of our weights and measures. But as it is, we don't. And so we can opt into our third party. Michael Tanguma (01:15:21.312) Yeah, I think that's very well said. I think, you know, it's very apt on July 4th, like Bitcoin is the ultimate declaration of independence. You don't have any reliance once you, you know, then this kind of ties into everything we've been talking about, where there's that, I don't want to say disdain, maybe that's rough, but like, there's this notion of this, this asset sits there. And if we, can either embrace it and educate, or we can start to, to your point, monkeying around with what it is and why you want it. And that ultimately makes it harder for individuals, because we never go into this. Again, you mentioned, you know, the biblical texts, like I do see this as a reformation of like, you're going to take, it's going to, you have to burn out some of the older people, the boomers and some of these folks that are just never going to see this notion. You know them in your life. They're just, they rather just, you know, live with their stocks and bonds and they'll go off. They're perfectly fine as long as they don't go away tomorrow. And so that notion of realizing there's a better form of money and you can kind of opt out and declare your independence, I think is a. is an amazing thing that we get to live through. And I think we know on the other side of it, we're all going to be better, but it's just going to take some time. Jackson Mikalic (01:16:26.495) I love it. Well, happy Independence Day, fellas. Enjoy the holidays and thanks everyone for tuning in. David Thayer (01:16:27.054) Amen. Brian Cubellis (01:16:34.041) Likewise. Thanks, boys. Michael Tanguma (01:16:34.069) Yep. Thanks guys. Thanks David for joining. David Thayer (01:16:34.959) Thanks, guys.