Liquidity Flood Incoming: Bitcoin’s About to Explode

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extrem ever assembled in the history of data. 1974, 1987, '92, 97, 2000, whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. >> I say when we sell. Hey, Muhammad. I say when we sell. >> We only have one more week in October. The Bitcoin price is not looking too great. The four-year cycle is over. But the good thing is that it means your patience is going to be rewarded. We unpacked on this episode our expectations going into 2026, how ultimately the liquidity conditions are improving greatly that will be supportive of Bitcoin, gold, and scarce assets. We discussed as well how the spigots from the traditional finance system have really barely been turned on and you have now the largest players on Wall Street starting to get involved offering products and this really won't even start until 2026 in a greater scale. So while the 4-year cycle looks to be dead and I think a lot of people are disappointed, it does mean that this cycle is extended. It may mean cycles cease to exist or this asset class. We will see. But I do want to say if you view Bitcoin as a generational investment opportunity, you need to have a generational plan. You need to have an inheritance plan. And so at On-Ramp, we're one of the few places that you can have a secure, seamless plan for your family to inherit your Bitcoin wealth. Now, we never want to think about what could happen to us, but it is best to plan ahead and especially if you're taking Bitcoin seriously, and it is a material position for you. If it is something you cannot afford to lose, you need to have an inheritance plan. So, get in touch with us. We just piloted out flatbased pricing through the end of this quarter. And so, if you've spoken to us before, um, it's worth another conversation. And if you haven't spoken with us yet, get in touch. My email is jackonrampbitcoin.com and you could also book a consultation directly on our website onrampbitcoin.com. All right, we're back. I think my audio is better this week. Joined by Michael and Brian, my co-hosts, and Gustavo Flores from AO CEO. What's going on, Gustavo? How are you? >> I'm great, Jackson. Thank you for having me. How are you? >> Yeah, doing well, thank you. It's been a busy week. Nice to have you on the show. uh big news that was announced with your company this week. We'll speak to a little bit later in the episode. Um but yeah, gentlemen, Brian, Michael, how are things on your end? Everything go okay? Doing well. Doing well. Yeah, lots uh lots going on in in the markets the past few weeks. um not only in in crypto but the broader macro picture and and people coming to various realizations around uh the unsustainable debt load um and what's being called the debasement trade uh really now in vogue even though you know I think we would all say it's it's not really a trade it's a it's a structural fundamental shift in the monetary order that's occurring um but that is that is uh sort of pervading you know all aspects of financial markets in the sense that you have, you know, uh, trady incumbents and, you know, hedge fund folks who have really never thought about gold for the past, you know, call it 30 years. Um, if they did, it was a very small allocation. um to now talking about, you know, uh where gold and really sound money, so either gold or bitcoin or some combination of the two, where that fits in a portfolio in a world where people are finally coming to grips with what basically gold bugs and bitcoiners have been saying for a long time around debasement um and fiat currencies in general, um stealing purchasing power from people over time slowly but surely. And as those forces accelerate, um, more people notice, more people effectively awaken to these these realities. And I think we're just starting to see that play out. >> Gustavo, what's your favorite liquor? >> Tequila, I believe. >> Tequila. Good. I was hoping you were going to say that. I like tequila, too. So, um, I feel like what we're in is this we're we're in a we're at a party, right? And the party started, you know, let's call this is a kind of normie party. So, for adults, professionals, um, at 5:30, 66 after work and everyone's talking and hanging out and there's this punch there and the punch is like completely uh, non-alcoholic and everyone knows in some way either they know directly, a few people it's about to be spiked and then others just don't and they're just sitting there and they're just, you know, having regular conversations and there starts to be like um, friction and just natural um, tension that starts to build because it gets like real boring and it's the same for whatever reason they're locked there till like past midnight and that's where the past year has been where everyone's kind of around there's gold running there's the debasement trade there's equities running there's the debt continuing to increase there's macro forces or things around UBI people are getting checks for inflation and Bitcoin is that tequila that is just being wait is waiting from small subset of the party that it's going to get dropped in the punch and it's going to lubricate the full party in all these different directions that nobody actually knows. And that's where we've been at and where we continue to be is this weird lull. We've been kind of like um you know playing around between 90 to 110 or whatever 100 to 120 for over like roughly a year. Well, all these other things are happening in a back in the backdrop and we know that the punch is going to get spiked at some point and then the party's really going to get started. And so that that's kind of uh how I feel like we're we're at right now, especially coming off the James Check episode of last week, which was really good, but it was catching up uh everyone on their work day. We haven't gotten the like actual party started yet. >> Yeah. And some news would support your your thesis, Michael. That's that was a good one. Good work with that. I wasn't sure if you were cooking that up before the show or if that just came to you, but it's a good analogy. And uh I think this supports it because JP Morgan, one of the uh members of the Federal Reserve uh bank, expects the Federal Reserve to end quantitative tightening next week. And so in layman's terms, quantitative tightening just means letting assets roll off the balance sheet instead of expanding the Federal Reserve balance sheet. And we all know that Bitcoin tends to be very sensitive to liquidity conditions. And so two things are important to me. First is you guys might remember in 2021 probably in particular and into 22 with the Fed starting to hike rates that all these commentators were saying that Bitcoin was toast, right? Because Bitcoin had only existed in a zero interest rate environment. It only existed when the Fed was adding to the balance sheet hundreds of billions of dollars per year. and we peaked out in I think 2023 $8 trillion on the Federal Reserve balance sheet and it's been tapering off for the past 2 years and now it's six and change. But what this signals to me and I want to get the rest of the group's thoughts is that we've been in a really tough market for Bitcoin. Uh it maybe doesn't feel like that for people who are newer to the space and Bitcoin sitting above $100,000, but if you look back at the price chart, we really have not moved in almost an entire year. If you look back in December, we were sitting about 100 110 going into the new year. And that's exactly where we are today. And so despite all of the bullish news, the developments from, you know, political and regulatory perspective, all the ETF demand, all the banks that are going to be stepping into next year, we really haven't moved at all. And part of the reason is because we haven't actually seen the liquidity conditions ease up yet, which is typically one of the biggest drivers for the asset class. So the first point was Bitcoin's been incredibly resilient through interest rate hikes. It was the fastest interest rate rate hikes that ever happened. And now we're finally at a point where it's been resilient. It's held above $100,000. And I think um you know, Michael's going to be breaking off the tequila for the rest of the year and into 2026. >> Yeah, it's a it's a it's great overview of kind of where we're at. I mean, it it makes me think about, you know, and we sort of touched on this with uh James Czech last week, but like the notion of cycles in general, right? Like I think you know in Bitcoin specifically we've had these uh you know fouryear cycles that you know at least on the surface how they've been perceived is that they're driven by the having the subsidy having and now the the the natural um sort of understanding of that is that the the impact of the having ma matters less over time. Right? it it's less um newly created bitcoins that are no longer being created as as the subsidy has like that amount that magnitude of that amount you know halves over time so there's less of an impact but I think what we have seen is that even going back to Bitcoin's origins there's been these sort of a a parallel or overlapping cycle that is more related to uh macro forces and business cycles and liquidity and so if you actually go back and look at Bitcoin's uh for your cycles like yes there's obvious uh relation to the havings but there's also a a pretty clear relation to actual liquidity conditions and the business cycle and so I think what we're we're now seeing is like we're in this trans transitionary period where the havings are becoming less meaningful and maybe the business cycle are be business cycle and liquidity is actually becoming more meaningful to some extent and and being the primary driver of of Bitcoin's quote unquote cycles. Um, so I think that's just a very interesting uh sort of dynamic to see play out because again, you know, people think, you know, we're at the end of this proverbial four-year cycle, but like we're just at the beginning of a liquidity cycle. And so that is very different than past uh quote unquote tops for Bitcoin where the liquidity conditions are actually turning in the opposite direction. And so we're just in a very different place in terms of, you know, what people have perceived these cycles to be and what the what the actual macro backdrop is. >> Yeah, it's a good it's a good summary recap because um there's two things that I think we're tying in here that don't often get discussed and specifically together. One is the liquidity cycle and Bitcoin doing whatever a 5x uh with the highest tightening or highest level of going from you know whatever two to five 6% interest rates. So that's already kind of incredible in itself. Um but then the other side of it is the supply overhang which we've seen with that like um 100k mark with a lot of OGs and people selling and that that ties back to the retail market coming in because retail has been basically tapped out for a number of reasons and as that liquidity cycle loosens then money flows across um the markets and then they naturally come in and that's really where we were chatting last week with James Czech and I wasn't able to like communicate it effectively But the way I think about Bitcoin cycles is really uh built on reflexivity because the having mattered um because you had this supply shock and then as more demand increased the price can't absorb it. It can't create more. So you have the price move which brings more people in which creates those kind of like fervor you know um the um the blowoff tops. And so maybe they're tempered in the future, but we just haven't seen that yet because that reflexivity hasn't been there. And there could be a subset of retail tapped out. It could be a subset of liquidity not coming in interest rates. Um, but you start to move back into where we're talking about and Brian just alluded to and now you can start to see that trend and then that trend will just bring what a lot of the communications got on Twitter about gold and Bitcoin and all this stuff. It's like people look at these charts because once you get to that cycle and the reflexivity, that's when you get gold, Bitcoin outperforming gold, but you need the right macro conditions. Um, and they're still just not in place yet. And that doesn't even tie into like all the stuff we'll talk about today when it comes to trad turning on the SPITS into this asset class. They're barely even getting started. >> Yeah, 100%. Um, Michael said before before we hit record that don't talk about the debt because the debt's always going up, but I think it's important to call out when we have some nice new round numbers that are introduced. And I just also want people to be aware of just the magnitude and how silly these numbers have gotten because the US debt just crossed $ 38 trillion for the first time in history, which marks a $500 billion jump in this month alone, which means $23 billion of debt that's added per day. And so I always just want to contextualize in the long term because it took 200 years for the United States to accumulate the first trillion dollars of debt and now we're adding a half a trillion dollars in a month. And so I think for a lot of listeners of the show, this is old news. But for people that haven't fully contextualized just how you how much scale there is here and the magnitude of what's happening and ultimately it's why this podcast is called the last trade because everything is going to be absorbed. Everything is going higher as the the debt the money just continues to flush out asset prices. And I think that's what people don't fully comprehend because you know a decade two three there's even the debt clock Brian right in New York I think it's like near Union um Union Square Park that was probably introduced like 20 or 30 years ago. So people are concerned about this a long time ago and it's persisted much longer than people expected. But we're at the point now we're just like none of the numbers make sense. I think Luke Gman's like one of the best analysts in the space and sort of pointed this out probably a decade ago. when you look at the true interest expense. So, not just the interest on the debt, but also all the entitlements that the government just cannot default on. It literally just there's no other way out of this. And that's why $100,000 Bitcoin might feel expensive to people who are newer in the space, but in reality, it's incredibly cheap. Yeah. I mean, it's also, you know, the writing is on the wall in some sense. Like I think, you know, I I take everything from the government or the administration with a grain of salt, but I do think that Scott Bent uh has been some real signal in the past several months. Um probably even longer than that. You know, before Trump even won the election, Bessent was on TV talking about his days as a gold bug and his reverence for sound money. Um, and now just this week, like you you you have him making comments to the effect of like gold price going up is very good for the United States. Like he literally said that. Um, and so that is indicative and relates to some of his prior comments around we're just going to let this thing run hot. We really have no other option and we're going to continue to debase the currency, but hopefully it's all good. We'll still have reserve status because we're going to spread stable coins all around the world. Like that is the playbook. They're they're pretty much saying it out loud. Um, and the extension of that is like, okay, if gold going up is good for the United States, digital gold going up for the United States is also very good and beneficial to us as a country and our national security interests. And so I think we just basically doubled uh the US government's holdings of Bitcoin through that seizure from last week. Um, so you know, it all comes back to Jackson, you like to talk about the incentives. Like they're being very upfront with their incentives around gold. like they are enjoying this rip in gold and they want it even higher realistically. Um and the same thing is going to come for Bitcoin at some point. >> Yeah, for sure. Uh and there's a couple pieces of news as well that I wanted to call out quickly. Um the first being and supports just what you said there, Brian. The first being that JP Morgan released a report uh where they said that gold the gold price could exceed $8,000 per ounce by 2028. And so this is an asset class. I want people to remember that this is an asset class that has largely been ignored by traditional finance. Um like this is stuff that we've seen firsthand 5 years ago. Nobody was talking about gold. Nobody was talking about, you know, forget about silver, other precious metals, but these asset classes have been ignored. They've been underowned. And these firms historically haven't made a lot of money. Uh well, maybe JP Morgan has. They've done some shy things uh in the gold markets, the precious metals markets, but they haven't made a lot of money. And their clients have been underexposed. And now it's certainly a shift from the highest levels like to Brian's point with the US Treasury Secretary being a large advocate for gold um all the way down to people starting to own it in a retail manner. We could talk more about that um with early riders a little bit later today. And then the other thing I wanted to call out too back to incentives is I did see this uh piece of news here from the Kobe letter. The Trump administration is outperforming almost all hedge funds. Every investment is up at least 80% with two investments nearing 150%. And this does not include soon to come quantum computing stocks. So at the end of the day, like these people, it goes back to Nancy Pelosi, right? Everyone, you know, over the past couple years loved to track Nancy Pelosy's portfolio and she was out competing every money manager on Wall Street. And now you have the Trump administration doing the same. And these people are not in the business of losing money. And they also have access to way more information that any of us do or the listeners of the show do. And so you can always just look at what they're doing with their money. And if you have the children of the president that are involved in Bitcoin mining, um, you know, taking board seats at Bitcoin treasury companies, like I think that's an indication of just how the incentives have aligned for this asset class to be really be entrenched into the financial system and go much much higher than where we are today. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's a good point in that like this lull you feel some of the friction and spice that exists in the community or whatever and and Twitter it ends up because a lot of people a are short Bitcoin. This lull that has existed has shaken a lot of people out because people just inherently are looking for action especially in a market where you're looking for volatility and a lot of this capital that's being absorbed whether it's ETFs Trump uh SBR accumulation that's Bitcoin going into stronger hands and when that's complete that's when this price will start to move along with the liquidity cycle and a lot of people are just going to be very short Bitcoin That's where a lot of the salt comes from. Uh I don't even know if it's Crypto Kobe or whatever, but like you know, longtime crypto Twitter poster, he was breaking down how a lot of people that you think were early to Bitcoin or crypto have very little Bitcoin, especially like your local again favorite Bitcoin podcaster. Like individuals just get shaken out. It's very hard to have a long time low time preference and just go back and using this as a better savings technology and then go back to delivering value to the world. Most people are glued to this screen, try to trade around it, try to get into DATs, try to do all these weird things. And that's really the sad part of what we're seeing here. And there's some other tweets we'll bring up later about, you know, balcunas and capital going into ETFs. There's just a lot of money that is going to move from like less uh even people that think they have strong hands to weaker or weaker hands to strong hands and then that market's going to take off and it's going to be very hated for a lot of people because they're not going to be holding as much Bitcoin as they were holding in 21 or 17 specifically even when this market started because they've just been basically lulled asleep. Uh or maybe they took some leverage out in like two weeks ago and that micro that crash wiped them out. Um, and there's a lot of good anecdotes with this where we've seen like the 2020 crash and something like here where the market takes off within 3 months. And it's always the way Bitcoin works is it's just the path of most resistance. Um, so the net is don't sell Trump your coins. Uh, just hold on a little longer. Just play with your Bitcoin while you have them still. Uh, Michael, one thing you brought up that was interesting was um the chain analysis report and I think it just ties back into what we've been speaking to the past 10 minutes because the United States is really leading and interestingly enough India as well. I didn't expect that uh just given we've had some conversations with some family offices, some high net worths based in India and I know it's very restrictive there or at least is my perception in terms of accessing Bitcoin and just kind of capital controls more broadly. So I was surprised to see that United States and India are leading per chain analysis report. Um Michael, this is something that you flagged. So I was curious like what stuck out to you, why you wanted to cover it on today's show. Yeah, I think it was mainly just a flag that this study just came out today. Um, actually, no, that shows September. I don't know why it was referenced today. Um, but the core concept was to your point adoption the US and then specifically uh Asia Pac spec Pacific and then India. Even though they've had these draconian controls, I think a symptom of that growth has been the notion and understanding of like hard money and gold and then because they have such a large um you know demographic. I think it's like 1.2 billion people that you're inherently going to see that uh come out whether it's via VPNs and then even recently um I I think it's coin DCX or coin DX. It was a company that Coinbase just acquired. It's one of the only brokerages in India. So you can see how that's starting to become a strategic um positioning. But Gustavo, I'm curious on your side because specifically with you know India global adoption within Latin America, how you think about like just different pockets and in that report it talks about whether it's higher net worth but then also um demographics but then also stable coin proliferation USDT. Just how do you think about like that report and just what you see in uh Mexico and El Salvador? >> Yeah, for sure. So I mean I think the the biggest takeaway it's really Brazil Brazil has been an example in in Latin America in in all fronts uh whether it's from the government or or banks there's even banks that have adopted uh like the ETL bank one of the biggest banks in Brazil uh already custodies and sells Bitcoin so a lot of developments there on in Mexico uh you have seen a lot of crypto retail adoption mostly because Mexico and a lot these countries, not only this is a moment where they're adopting Bitcoin, but also this is a moment where they're finally adopting just financial technology as a whole, right? So, how many people um have gotten a debit card or the bank account or or a credit account in the past couple years? It's it's kind of lapped at the same time as as Bitcoin adoption. So, all this fintech growth is strictly related to just uh financial and and bitcoin adoption. it all comes together. Uh so I think that's an interesting way to to perceive at least Mexico and Colombia and and Peru uh the the stable uh mid to large country sizes Brazil as well just Brazil just had an extra leap and then you have the category of uh Argentina, Bolivia and that that are not as marked in this report because I believe that this is more like street level adoption you're seeing in these countries where they just trade USD the cash for for stable coins or bitcoin. Uh so it's not as easy to to portray in a report. Uh but then you have that other category which is also accelerating particularly this year. uh but has has and and more countries are also joining that category, right? Because you see less um stability in in monetary and financial markets in in this region and you just see uh Venezuela and Argentina with the leaders but now Bolivia is joining the rank and there's speculation that others will too. So that's that's the model of how I perceive it in in Latin America. >> So that's super interesting. Gustavo, I'm curious like going back to what I was saying around Bess and the US government's plan around stable coins like do you see I guess is your perception that that plan can and will work in the sense that people are just going to adopt US dollar stable coins all around the world because I think in the past few weeks or months we've seen other reports from certain countries that um kind of see that playbook and they're like well we don't really like that if you know all of our citizenry are just using US dollar stable coins like that kind of threatens our own fiat currency and and how we want to go about things and so I would imagine there's going to be some uh push back to a lot of this stuff but like I'm curious your view because I I also have heard like anecdotally that you know in a lot of these uh countries really outside the United States that the sort of first intuition or gut for most people is just to like access stable coins like predominantly tether and haven't really gone down the path of bitcoin China as savings and dollars for spending. Um I guess where are we on that continuum and like do you see the the US government's playbook working out for them? >> Honestly, I do see it working out. Uh obviously you'll see way more exaggeration on Twitter. It's not true that every corner shop in Bolivia accepts Tedar, but it is true that uh in the main airport prices are are shown in in USDT. So there there is definitely an exaggeration but there's truth to it as well. So I think um that yeah you don't you don't see people rushing towards Bitcoin when they they have capital controls or hyperinflation in their country but of course they're aware of it right because the second the the first question you ask yourself is how can I get my hand on these digital dollars uh because there's a scarcity of dollars but the second question you ask yourself is what is this this Bitcoin thing right so in in Bolivia in Argentina and Venezuela these countries there's no doubt that at this point everybody body's familiar with Bitcoin. Um they they just have to out of necessity to be familiar with with digital dollars and Bitcoin is just a follow-up question. So I do see it play out. Um there was like believe is a I think the most interesting case because uh 18 months ago all cryptos were completely illegal. uh and they had been illegal for multiple years and now uh they were not only legalized but are now there's now a lot of political parties in Congress pushing for El Salvador type law in Bolivia and now there was an election passed last week where the right-wing parties got in power after 20 years and now they're going to push this narrative even further. So yes, they can try to resist it. Uh but at the end they they just I think they understood they understand like El Salvador understood uh that given their small position it's they're just incentivized to to play in favor of this instead of trying to resist it. >> Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know the dynamics down there um in Bolivia Gustavo. So, thank you for sharing more about that. And yeah, I mean at the end of the day, I guess like it's all relative, right? So USDT solves a problem relative to local currencies in many of uh South American countries just like Bitcoin solves a problem relative to everyone in the world. But like in the United States for example, we have a little bit more of a stable currency to the extent that people don't even realize like most people still don't even realize that the dollar is actually being devalued. Um they certainly do more so than 10 years ago as true inflation or you know inflation's really creeped its way into the real economy rather than just in financial assets. But still, we're at a point where it's like people are just trying to figure out, well, why is this even happening? And if I check one news channel, they're telling me it's because corporations are greedy and they're price gouging. And then if I check another news channel, they're telling me it's because, you know, the administration is doing X, Y, and Z. And so, it's just interesting to hear that um, you know, how quickly things have changed as well. I think you mentioned 18 months. It went from just being like outright banned uh and very aggressive aggressively negative toward the industry and then within less than two years actually starting to embrace it um is is pretty impressive. Yeah, exactly. um you know and for them some sometimes in these countries you know we we tend to think in like in the United States or or Canada where where I grew up that uh like reality or the perception of of markets is is or they just go through similar cycles than than we do but uh sometimes they're just in in their own cycle right so you could have a slow adoption like this maybe has been a slow year in the United States while in Bolivia it's been the most important Bitcoin adoption year for them in history So they they just go through a different pace uh because they have their own uh financial and and and monetary cycles. But uh yeah, definitely an interesting thing to watch and something that new new developments happen every every month basically. Yeah, it's a great point as well like you know adoption happens at different rates in different places and it also happens in different um let's say like different avenues or different products because there actually is still a lot of adoption happening in the United States this year and last year but it's not the same adoption that we saw four or five years ago right a lot of the adoption that's happened in the US has been through the ETFs and through financial products and it was actually something that we wanted to discuss today where um a lot of the largest financial institutions are starting to have are starting to roll out product but it's still going to take them probably 6 to 12 months if not longer to even get like some of the the barebones set up here. Uh there was this Baron's article, Michael, I think that you flagged and um you know, at the end of the day, the adoption is happening, but people are just like, you know, they they see the tickers and they have a Charles Schwab account or they have a brokerage account or they have a financial advisor and they say, "Oh yeah, put me in, you know, put me in $10,000 of buy or, you know, I'll have a I'll buy a small position there." But in terms of like real adoption into Bitcoin and at scale, it hasn't happened yet because most of the people are not like us. They actually don't venture out into Bitcoin native companies and they don't, you know, figure out how to use a hardware wallet. They're waiting for like their relationship they've had with their financial adviser for two decades to be knowledgeable on it and to have a product that they can offer. Yeah, this is going to be an interesting um thing to follow because ultimately the the thing that Jackson pulled up was City Bank last week came out that they're going to uh turn on custody for clients in crypto. Morgan Stanley um allowing all clients now to get exposure. Um there was a few other moves with banks, fintech stepping into the space. And then there was another tweet if you can maybe pull up because it ties into this overarching theme of products um that Eric Balcunis had which was ultimately that um he heard that there are certain large whales or holders of Bitcoin being able to uh create inind uh or be able to park their Bitcoin to get exposure into the traditional um you know markets when it comes to like margin accounts. The tweet is some Bitcoin wells are doing custom creations of IBIT um for a var variety of benefits after discovering Trifi has its perks. I think that this goes back to um it's not good or bad. It just is in the sense that there are incentives that allow for what Jackson said of like going with the familiar uh brokerage bank account. also going into IBIT getting margin that you know exists at a 4% interest rate versus 11 or 12% and lending against the existing kind of capital markets on Bitcoin backed loans but the core concept here is that the vast majority of people look at Bitcoin as an investment not as a savings vehicle savings technology and hold a vast proportion or material amount of Bitcoin for themselves and um I think that's important to talk about and maybe it talks if we go to um what Gustav was working on. But the core idea is the winners in the future will be the companies that treat Bitcoin as money because ultimately that's what the most sophisticated Bitcoin investors have done. Meaning that they want it cold storage generally. They take it offline um via hardware device. That's where still about half of the Bitcoin sits because they it's not because they're crazy and ideological. because they understood that it's the most prudent pragmatic thing to do is not trust a single entity because historically they failed. And so I think over a long enough time horizon we will see these products and services not fulfill the needs for these investors because somebody that did what that person just did that Balkcunis referenced either they only had a small percentage of their total net worth so it's play money and something happens to the ETF it's like no sweat or um or generally that's the case and what will happen is as that price appreciates it'll just naturally grow into a larger percentage of their net worth or their and their understanding will increase and they'll realize, oh god, what did I just do because if this thing is money, I may need it outside of this rapper for a whole slew of reasons we can talk about. And so I look at all this stuff as gravity that these companies are adopt like we're so early in this process that the companies the ETFs they're absorbing the mental models of how people traditionally work with these assets but on a long enough time horizon all the things that happen with Mount Gaus and the ICO boom and FTX are going to repeat because the they're just like fractalss and we've had such small percentages of adoption when you think of the grand scheme of Bitcoin that the market doesn't understand these concepts that we talked about here in the last trade and why we build the products. the way we do. And so it's bullish in the sense that it's increasing adoption awareness of Bitcoin. It's a little bearish and that probably people are going to lose their money in certain products because that's just how this works. Bitcoin private keys are just data data on a long enough time horizon ends up getting leaked. You can look at any PII that ends up hacked on any account. Your favorite brokerage has probably lost your information. And so once people recognize that, then it makes zero sense to leave it with a third party custodian. But then the other side of that obviously is as the asset goes to hundreds of thousands of dollars it gets really untenable to keep millions of dollars underneath your mattress. Um so we're just very early and with early opportunity or with being early comes a whole slew of opportunities as well. >> Yeah, there's a few other things embedded in that as well. Um, I remember Eric Beltrunis also tweeted something probably over the summer at some point before we had spoken with him to the extent of Wales moving into ETFs to an extent because of the physical risk that they bear by managing a significant portion of Bitcoin in their direct custody. And I wanted to call that out because yes, there's an aspect of people may want to move it into the financial rail so they can borrow against it, but we all know that you can borrow against spot bitcoin as well. And so I think there's also an implication here that wasn't mentioned in this tweet, but had been mentioned before that a lot of the existing solutions put people in a situation that quite frankly they just don't want to be in. Uh, and they don't want their families to be in. Um, and so this is like a reality that the industry doesn't talk a lot about because both of the prevailing ways to manage the asset have just a lot of discomfort. Like for example, I am now getting probably like 30 spam calls a day. It's get it's gotten to the point where just like I can't even have my phone next to me because it's just buzzing buzzing non-stop. And if I'm someone who was a little bit less aware of uh Bitcoin and you know the the types of attacks that people um you know try to perpetrate I would and I was a little bit more naive and maybe I had less wits. I was older then maybe I would fall prey to some of these scams because I have answered the phone a couple of times before because I'm just curious who's on the other end of it and it's like 50% of the time it's someone claiming to be from Coinbase or another exchange. And so my point is that on one side of the spectrum, if you've had if you have a current exchange account or you've had one in the past, your information's been leaked and now you're just constantly being called or getting emails. I get emails, too. I get texts, I get all sorts of stuff non-stop. The flip side is if you're managing the asset in your direct possession, well, then you have other set of problems as well because if your Bitcoin's material or it's material 5 years from now, well, then you have to start worrying about, well, what if someone comes after, you know, my wife or my children? or maybe it's just like I don't actually feel comfortable managing $10 million in my possession. I think maybe I it's just time for me to put that into an ETF because I don't know what other options are out there. And so I think this speaks actually more to just broken market structure and a lack of solutions that have existed natively. And ultimately it's uh ties into what we do at our firm and and maybe Gustavo as well. curious to hear your thoughts just on the risks that I described and the work that you're doing at a rail. Yes, Jackson. Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, I mean, I think u not only is Latin America a step behind, so not only you you have to tell people about Bitcoin more than than you do in the United States, but security is even more a concern, right? Because it's not just about laws. It's not just about scams which which are very prevalent, but it's also about physical physical dangers, right? Such as extortion, kidnapping, like just in the city where I live in, Mexico City, you have about uh two wealthy uh families getting kidnapped every day. Um and and which often just resolves within 48 hours. Um or what you see a lot is people getting like brought at gunpoint on on on the highway and immediately the first thing they tell him is like get out your your bank app, you know, like the equivalent of like JP Morgan Chase in Mexico because they know that's where you have your money. Uh how long is it going to take until the the guys on the street that that are doing that know about uh Coinbase as a brand, right? or all these other interchangeable exchange brands or even uh if you have like a big wallet uh that everybody knows of uh uh you have a treasure app in your phone uh that's that's an easy to know right so so it's it's it's only the next step uh for for for people to get targeted for for bitcoin holdings so I think it's it's more relevant than ever for us to arrive in this region that has only have been exposed to like crypto casino type of offerings things with a with a different approach. And that approach is an multi-institution custody vision where people can have a actually a secure experience, something that the that they they've been looking for and also access all these new financial services that come with it, right? Insurance related to that, credit related to that, where where the credit perspective is also very interesting one. I think we were talking about this in in the the final settlement podcast we did uh earlier this week, but interest rates, if you want to get a business loan in Mexico, you're looking at at least 20% annual interest rate. And Mexico is one of the good ones in Latin America. We're not even talking about Argentina or countries like that where where we're it's actually near 100%. Um and and then you tell people no with with Bitcoin and collateral you can actually get a lower rate uh without any credit score history than you can in in in Mexico as one of the wealthiest families. So then that that's another very big point of interest. So so I think it's the moment is right and the and the region is is is the right market for for such a solution. So what we want to build at audio is is is a more serious offer where not only we we solve the security first challenges that exist in the region but also we provide an alternative to the casino altcoin vision that that is so prelevant. Uh and and I I couldn't be prouder to to partnering with you guys to to be able to do that and and uh I'm very excited about what's coming next. >> Yeah, it's really well said Gustavo and maybe to um take a step back. So Jackson set up really nicely. Gustavo colored um that uh earlier this week we announced our venture arm um early riders to date still the only Bitcoin denominated venture we could probably talk about when we get to some of the gold and debasement denominator being you know broken thesis um started a relationship with Gustavo actually known Gustavo for a few years now since the days of verify and then bull bitcoin and and now with audio previously swapo was building best-in-class u bitcoin on-ramps in Latin America and was looking to grow and scale that and we started discussing well we're very interested because we recognize Bitcoin as money requires localized financial services so we expect it to get more and more specific over time because it's just how banking works but then ultimately what we view as a category or category winners will be built on multi-institution custody because a lot of the listeners we hear from they're increasingly interested in what we do um we've been working on even reducing our cost even more to flat rate structures I call that out because a lot of people have reached out about interest and continue to because uh you're getting opted into the the that pricing before we make it public. But the point being is that the most sophisticated people have had to go through everything we're talking about, right? Like I got into a brokerage and then I my phone got hacked and then I got a hardware device and now my wife doesn't know how to deal with this and so now let me figure out multi- institution custody. This is kind of like the end state, not the beginning or some like niche aspect of it. And so when we look at category winners, it's like well if we're investing and have to return capital to ourselves investors, we need to make sure that they are the winners in that market. in our view was that they would be built on multi-institution custody because it's just a more sound infrastructure for business building when you can have reoccurring revenue by way of custody, offer more value by way of security so people can buy actually more Bitcoin which is this inherent uh thing that precludes people from buying as much as they want because they don't actually know if it'll be there tomorrow and then ultimately just gives a competitive advantage because as we talked about it's like well you have no competitor if you have multi-institution light America because your client will want that and then what Who's Bitso going to do it? Is the Latin American firm is Coinbase that offers it? Not. So you you basically get to stand in a league of your own. And credit to Gustavo because he was working with a group and deciding like the different directions and went back to his brain trust and they were really positive and thought that it was a great idea because of all the different things that we've talked about, but then also that are inherent to the climate of Latin America and Europe. We see this a lot with our clients already where in the US outside of certain cities, it's relatively pretty safe. But as you start getting to international markets, um the themes of kidnappings, hacks, uh you know, breakins, home invasions increasingly are occurring and they will occur on every uh in every place. I think that's the thing that we like to think that we're insulated in the states. It's the same thing with like the uh local fiat and that we think the dollar is different. It's like on the same curve. It's just a it's a longer time horizon, but that volatility is coming whether it's dollar debasement or just the notion of um crime increases as kind of the dollar and in capital controls or capital kind of you know debasement increases because you know people get more desperate and so yeah that you know that kind of presents this opportunity to partner and where audio is looking to really build best-in-class infrastructure. um and couldn't be more excited uh to partner with you guys and also really looking at winning that market and the opportunity to expand our key network as we go for kind of global adoption with keys in every continent in in a lot of different countries and then you guys being based in Mexico City and El Salvador opens up a lot of opportunities as well. >> Totally. And uh I would just like to add to that point of like things uh always looking at things from like a relativism perspective like you you're saying the US was coming for you. Well, people in Mexico also think that way in some sense, you know, it's like, uh, in Mexico, we're not we're not Venezuela. We're not Argentina. Uh, we're we're very close to the US. We're in a different category. Uh, but over the past year, um, there's there's been new talks in in mainstream media in Mexico about uh just the monetary growth like uh like the monetary mass growth like why is the government spending so much money? Why why is the the monetary mass growing at at this rate? Um, and so so you start to see a a narrative change in in mainstream media and in just regular conversations around where where the next logical step is is Bitcoin, right? and and so so I'm expecting that to happen uh more and more as we get closer to to the next couple years. But also and then the next question after you you've completely you understood the the risk of your country and of of global markets is not only Bitcoin but how do I hold Bitcoin securely and how do I face these challenges uh in in the proper way. So yeah, definitely the the right moment and the right place to to be in. Uh and uh I think uh well we're going to start solidly with Mexico uh being the largest Spanish speaking country in the world. I think that that that's the the ground works our ground zero but we'll we'll go down south as soon as we we have a I mean we're going to be open for for all the region uh from day one and we can already talk to customers everywhere. Our license in El Salvador, which we announced today, allows us to um bring in customers from anywhere in the world, but we're we're very focused in Mexico. That's the the main market and and we'll be opening local branches in other countries after that. >> Yeah, congrats Gustavo to you and the team. It's really exciting news. So, sneak peek for listeners of the last trade. We're going to be launching on-ramp IAS very shortly, but you have a first look here. multi-institution custody, long-term tax advantaged access to Bitcoin, something that has not been done in the market before. So, if you're looking for a solution for your IRA, your 401k, if you want to roll over, you want to own Bitcoin or you own Bitcoin already, but you're looking for a better solution, get in touch with us. You can reach out to me directly Jacksononrampbitcoin.com or you can book a consultation on our website onrampbitcoin.com. We are piloting out flatbased pricing which means your fees will not increase with the price of Bitcoin. So if you haven't heard about that yet, you haven't spoken to us yet about that, reach out to us. Happy to have a conversation whether it's about the pricing, IAS, inheritance, loans, custody, you name it, we can help. So looking forward to speaking with you. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show. One other thing that I wanted to make sure we covered as well was another announcement uh from the Early Riders Group and on Michael's on the topic of Michael's favorite shiny yellow rock. Michael, could you speak to um the Sound Money Index and some of the work that you guys have been doing at Early Riders as it relates to getting gold um you know, best-in-class gold exposure and providing investors with vehicles to securely own it, own physical, very similar to the work that's being done here at On-Ramp, but uh in an asset class that we spoke to earlier has been historically underowned and typically just owned in portfolios with kind of paper, you know, paper exposure. Yeah, I think as with a lot of the different themes and products and research we talk about, there's a a number of um angles to come from, but one of the main metas is the inertia that exists whether in gold or Bitcoin is counter to the value prop. Meaning that specifically with Bitcoin, it's been looked at um you know, even this past week with Tucker saying Tucker Carlson coming out and saying it's made by the CIA and you know, don't buy it. that there's always somebody out there describing it as rat poison and doesn't make sense because it's counter to the structural market of the 6040 and people needing to hold negative yielding bonds so we don't kind of blow up the system in the same way that gold has been looked at as a taboo uh asset and it's for gold bugs and nobody's really holding it when in reality for the past 30 to 50 years it's basically kept uh pace with you know the S&P 500 specifically the past 5 years gold and bitcoin have been the best performing assets and then also obviously this here. But the problem is that individuals still there's so much inertia built into, okay, I get it. There's only 21 million, but it ties back to why custody is so important. It's not widely understood. It really is the substrate of why people look at this as speculative at best and a Ponzi at worst is because all they hear is people keep losing the money. Uh, and so they don't even know how to really treat it as anything over as speculative investment. And that's why multi institution is so important. And also just from a strategic perspective of building a business is you can offer a credible way for them to buy more and more Bitcoin without having to park it on 12 words. The same thing kind of exists with gold, right? The inertia and the research doesn't exist for anybody to tell the story about that the denominator is broken and sound money is the solution to base any kind of returns Bitcoin or gold because you can't make more of them. But then as you get to that it's becoming more and more apparent the narrative with debasement trade. The numbers are the numbers, right? Like you cannot refute how gold and bitcoin have performed and will continue to perform in a era of monetary debasement. But then now once you get that it's like well now what? And that's kind of embedded why a lot of people don't even want to see it because I like to joke it's like well then now you have a problem. It's like okay now I get that bitcoins to trade but what do I do? Like now I got to do it a ledger. Now I got to go to ETF. They get rugged. I heard last trade said that's not the best vehicle. It's like what do I do? And so that will continue to persist with gold because gold has historically been for sovereigns with the site a slight caveat that GLD has been the product. You go into an ETF and GLD has no sl short shortage of issues. You can go to more sophisticated gold individuals to recognize why all the way to you can't take delivery. So you're buying paper exposure. You're not getting the full benefits of the monetary asset. And so we started looking at this trend for a few years now. And from a selfish perspective, I think it's a huge opportunity for Bitcoin companies and specifically on-ramp to look and get closer and more favorable and friendly to gold because they're the same trade just expressed a little bit differently and one has a higher upside in our view, but it completely takes the position out of it looking as speculative and looking like crypto, especially as we go more and more into the awareness that gold and Bitcoin are money and everything else is effectively credit. And so we met the Argo team, world-class guys. They built out of the SPOT family, which is a worldrenowned um, you know, family building investment products in the gold space. And they're building these SMA styled insured products for spot gold where you can take delivery for individuals all the way to institutions. And um, that same world is going to exist as debasement happens. People are going to be still missing how the hell do I get this without getting rugged? Because it doesn't even mean just individuals. Think about all the fintexs. All the fintexs have no plumbing into how do you get best-in-class gold and bitcoin exposure and they're all kind of tapped out because they're all competing uh over the, you know, basically casino that is Robin Hood and how do I get as much margin and per trading and all the craziness that exists there. And so there's just a huge opportunity to build timeless wisdom sound products for the market. And so that's uh ties into the um Argo investment, the partnership with them, taking a board seat, and it really just goes back to how do you return more Bitcoin to investors? That's our goal as a Bitcoin denominated fund is you have to deliver value to the market like full stop. And the way you deliver value to the market is basically there's probably in my mind there's no way to deliver more value than helping people retain their purchasing power because if they can do that, they can do everything else after that. That's like the first principles basis and the rest of the market doesn't really see that. So they offer these casino type products. Um so yeah, really excited about that. I'm sure Brian has some thoughts to share, but uh that's going to be a huge opportunity for us as we grow and just create more institutional research to tell this story. >> Yeah, really great overview. I think um one thing to pull out or reiterate there um is that you know historically there's been um you know really since Ethereum launched so I guess you know 2016 2017 as altcoins and other crypto assets have proliferated there's a natural inclination um to group Bitcoin in with cryptocurrencies obviously there's a a technological similarity there right like and we can debate the credibility of all these other assets But that is why it's been historically lumped in with broader crypto. And so you still see this today. It persists in the sense of look at all these tradants that you know the vast majority are not focusing solely on Bitcoin. They're focusing on the entire digital asset landscape. They're super excited about stable coins etc. And really what a lot of this comes down to is that's just the incorrect frame. That is the incorrect uh compartmentalization of what Bitcoin is. um it's not venture tech. It's not um you know a bet on some competitive dynamic who's going to be the world computer who's going to decentralize XYZ. No, it's just money. It's sound money. It's digital sound money. And so the correct classification, the corre correct grouping is with gold. Um and you know also historically like there's been you know and part of this is just like um behavioral and human psychology of you know Bitcoiners can be very dogmatic about things, right? like we talk about it all the time on the custody side of people being very dogmatic about not your keys, not your coins. It's a very similar dynamic um where, you know, even just this past week, you see a lot of Bitcoiners, you know, basically on gold, like dis discrediting gold in some way. And I think that's just like a natural aversion uh for for some folks to be like anti- anything that's not Bitcoin, right? Like there's no second best, but like there is a second best sound money. Like it is gold. Like yes, we can we can um caveat all of this by saying that Bitcoin clearly does improve upon gold's monetary properties. Um it's a better version of gold, but it only has a 16-year track record. And you can't discount the multi,000-year track record of gold. And the idea that Bitcoin is just going to demonetize gold in some short time frame, even short to medium-term time frame, is just nonsensical. one, the liquidity dynamics of the two assets are just very different. So, central banks can't just like flip overnight 100% into Bitcoin and just ditch gold. Like, it's just not realistic. So, there's going to be this interim period, call it 10 years, call it 30 years, where this sound money trade, uh, again, call it a trade. If it's 30 years, it's not really a trade. That's a structural shift, but that's going to persist and it's going to be gold and Bitcoin. And so I think what's really exciting about this to me is like there really hasn't been a firm that has gone after this this sound money sleeve and providing you know uh best-in-class products and services because it's one thing to just have proxy exposure but it's another thing specifically when we're talking about outside money reserve assets like counterparty risk is part of the value prop of the thing. So if you reinsert counterparty risk into the asset you're you're doing yourself a disservice. So, you really do need best-in-class access to these things, and there really hasn't been a firm that's that's gone after this. Um, and there's going to be an interplay between these assets over this transitionary period, whether it's 10 or 30 years, there's going to be an interplay between these two assets. And those rails really don't exist today. And so, that's what we're also really excited about because, you know, people also take for granted uh age and demographics when thinking about these things. People like to say, you know, uh volatility is so high for Bitcoin when, you know, in reality it's kind of similar to mag seven stocks at this point. But even if you want to take that view, um it is true for older individuals. you know, if you're in your 70s, 80s, maybe you don't want the volatility of Bitcoin, um because you're doing some planning for the rest of your life and and your children's life and um you want to have some allocation to uh you know, an analog form of sound money, which would be gold, and some percentage Bitcoin for that larger upside, that asymmetric upside that you mentioned, Michael. Um but there needs to be the rails to have that interplay, and and they don't really exist today. And you know, I think um just in the news like you're starting to see some of this get picked up. Like you know, if you just look at Tether's balance sheet, right? You know, they've held gold for a long time. You see Caner Fitzgerald coming out with Bitcoin Gold products. So, you're seeing it at the edges. Um but no one's really owned this space and certainly no one's owned it with best-in-class products and access. >> Yeah, it's a great point. I I definitely see the alignment there. I think they're complimentary for a number of reasons you guys both spoke to. I also always thought that the whole demonetization thing was just kind of like nonsense. You know, like for three or four years ago, there was this meme that would go around of you just like take everything and divide it by 21 million. It's just like you can't, Brian, like to quote Tim Robinson, you can't do that. Um, but yeah, I mean, like it doesn't make a ton of sense. And unless there's some big technological breakthrough, I don't see gold um I don't see gold like going back to like lows that we saw decades ago. Um I understand that its commercial use is quite limited, but it is a form of money. It has great store of value properties. It has thousands of years of track record. And I always thought it was very naive for this industry to say that, oh well, Bitcoin just has perfected monetary properties. So, you know, gold's going to go to zero or it's just going to be used for like watches and that's it. Um, so I'm excited about this. I I think you know, Michael, you in particular have been excited about ways to have these assets sit alongside each other, how to find a way to, you know, advocate for ownership of Bitcoin and gold and portfolios, especially given everything that we see from the the macro picture. And so, I think you guys did a really nice job. The Argo team, um, you know, is is impressive. The Sprat family is obviously one of the most respected families in the precious metals industry. So really excited about that partnership. >> Yeah, thanks Jackson. And Jackson's a supporter adviser to the fund and and saw the the vision early. Um I think one of the key concepts here and hopefully that listeners find value is um we're actively building in this space and that was part of like the show is to show not only what's happening behind closed doors but actively as we're learning and getting feedback from the market because a lot of these concepts are revealed as you're building where I was naive and thought gold you know wanted you know 21 million whatever but as you start learning you just realize market forces market structure just preclude for something like that happening. And it's the running joke. Do you want to make money or do you want to be right? Because like being right, maybe gold demonetizes uh Bitcoin demonetizes gold tomorrow and everyone's hold the hardware wallet. But that's just not practical. It's not realistic. And in the same way that the traditional market won't tell the story of gold and Bitcoin and they're not incentivized. It's the same reason why the Bitcoiners are like can't tell the story of like not self-custody and then can't tell the story of gold. it just doesn't fit within a mental model of either a how they they understand the world or b if there's incentives and now obviously we have incentives like we see the market going this way but it doesn't prevent it from being right that's obviously for the market to determine and people do their research but um you know Luke Groman he's just created some really fantastic recent podcasts and he's talked about them with us too about this notion of like structurally gold has to lift it has to lift from the way that trading uh pairs are working and having being priced in um oil, it has to lift from the way the Treasury account will be monetized and managed. And so these are structural things that have a liquidity profile. Like gold, it's insane that gold's a $30 trillion uh asset. And most of our family members would have, including us, would have no way to understand how to get it in a material way that you don't get killed in fees. And you know, you'll be able to take delivery. And so that's really where I think the line of demarcation, Brian, happens when it goes from a trade to uh savings is when people are actually concerned with their counterparty because people when it comes to trades are just how do I get in and out of my brokerage? How do I get the best margin access? And they're not thinking about volatility that Gustavo and in Latin America knows when the bank just says, "Hey, sorry, your money's not your money." Or in Cyprus and all these other countries. And that is coming like full stop. that is coming because there's too much debt and there's not enough dollars and there's air pockets within the whole global financial system and slowly people will wake up that their money is not theirs and then what's the decision we'll hold a bunch of Bitcoin and deal with it and and learn everything we had to take 10 years to learn or what if that person understands gold and says okay I want best-in-class exposure to maybe gold maybe some local currency and then a little bit Bitcoin and then it can naturally uh pre uh uh protect themselves from what we're talking about here and then they can go down the rabbit hole and increase their position in BTC or still be shielded from debasement with gold. Like that's just rational, pragmatic uh solutions to market forces versus just telling somebody like it's easy, put 100% in a hardware device and go back to your life. Like that is just an insane proposition for like 99% of people. Uh that this is just kind of the the value of when you're in the day-to-day, you get to see it. And if you're if you iterate and are um you know um just open-minded, I I always go back to the quote and it's actually not the great the greatest person that quoted it. So I like to say the person he got it from because it's John Maynard Kanes which doesn't have the best reputation. But it's like when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do? You know, like most people just get so they have the confirmation bias. They get the mental model of how the world has to exist. They're local again podcaster told them it has to be this way. gold's a shitcoin and it's just like good luck if that's the way you're going to like build your framing of where we're heading because where we're going is going to be a completely different world. Look, I have to do it. I have to ask you please if you're enjoying this show, please leave a like, comment, share the video, subscribe, rate five stars. You know the spiel. I ask every single week and I'm grateful every single week for those who support the show. If you want us to continue to do the show, if you want me to show up next week, all you have to do is leave a like, a comment is excellent as well, and we'll continue to do the show. So, thank you for being here. Really appreciate your support, and hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Well, look, we're we're coming up on an hour here. I think we got through a lot of the topics that we wanted to discuss, but I always like to make sure that we cover everything that we absolutely must. So curious. I'll give it to any one of you guys. If there's anything you really want to discuss, we could talk about um >> I got one. >> Okay, >> you got a good one. Is uh can we please pull up the video um of the Paxos prints 300 trillion because I think >> I think this is important because this ties into something I don't know if we got a chance to to touch on or how much with the uh deleveraging flash crash that happened because it's all the same side. It's like the the casino has no circuit breakers when it comes to crypto or just tradi and it feels like these suits well is pulling it up. Um it's effectively like a hearing around I think the market structure bill and so these gentlemen look very dapper and handsome uh in the sense that like they look like they could be fed governors or chairs but they're actually you know crypto um you know managers. It's Kyle Sanmani from Multicoin and then um Charles Casarila from Paxos and the ideas they're getting I guess questioned about um a week ago there was 300 trillion minted in Paxos dollars and this is their response to that. >> Yeah. And just go on the record that Michael thinks Fed chairman are are very handsome >> week uh what what went wrong with the minting process? Did the blockchain work as expected? And I guess for context for those that don't know, I think last week PayPal for 24 minutes or thereabouts printed 300 trillion US dollars and and then unprinted them. >> Uh we printed it actually. Uh don't cast dispersions here. Uh the mistake was entirely ours. Uh certainly we didn't operate at the standards that we expect of ourselves. Um you know there's an interesting uh situation where you try to determine where does it make sense to uh be fully automated? where what does it make sense to have manual interventions in order to be able to create uh additional levels of security? And uh in this case, our operational uh uh manual processes were put into place for a deliberate reason in terms of being able to create uh very secure cold minting uh processes. Uh but it's something that we rarely use. Uh and so uh that led to an error in how much was minted. We knew within, you know, a minute or two it all was contained on our system. that never left our system, which by the way should never diminish uh how seriously we take this. Uh but it did of course lead to there being an overmint of a fantastically large number. Um and um and of course the unwind of it. Um I think that um you know uh the importance of this to me is it underscores the value of the blockchain. Uh it actually shows the transparency that you can immediately have into what's going on. And so in this case uh an operational error um that was entirely internal to our systems uh is now immediately visible to everybody. Uh so I'm sitting here of course talking about this um and making it really clear about what we could do better. But that's important because that means you can have this level of transparency throughout the entire financial system over time. Uh that's a really positive thing. uh you know it's of course um uh painful to go through but I think you could just imagine having a world where you would be able to see exactly what's happening in real time and being able to have that level of transparency to understand how uh firms are functioning and that can create um confidence in the financial system in a way that the opacity that exists today um has really limited and that's why you get accelerator effects and that's why you get run on banks is because you don't know what you don't know um and so you're never going to have a perfect world where everything is completely transparent, but the more transparency they have you have, I think the better the fin the financial system will be over time. >> Okay. The power of the blockchain, ladies and gentlemen. >> So, I'm curious your guys' take from this. the the biggest things that stood out was a how there wasn't any canned response or policy like PR that was like hey maybe just like be a little self-deprecating you know don't try to acknow like the the there was a part in there where he referenced that it was very clear what he was explaining which none of it was clear by way of seeing the lady turning like what was he saying he like printed three trillion but the other side of it which is more practical is that Um, a those people in there are running the economy that are listening to him. And then those are the future people that will, for better or worse. There's a reason why Trump's long all this stuff is this is where we're going. We're going to digitize, stabilize, tokenize the world. And um the flash crash from two weeks ago that wiped out a lot of people is not prevented. He's talking about, you know, bank runs being prevented. This is only going to increase as you can move capital. Well, you could print 300 trillion with a click of a button like and give it to everyone because you said it said contained. Well, what happened if it did? It wasn't contained. I still don't understand that. >> And it just ties into again counterparty risk and where your assets sit in the notion of outside money versus inside money. If you want your money inside because you don't understand this stuff, you're afraid of self custody or you have a small percentage, like that's your choice. But the rational decision as people adopt material uh positions in gold or bitcoin, they're just not going to want to be participate in this because this is where it's going if these are the people running the setup. Uh and there's historical context to this. We've had 1929. We have all these different deleveraging points and we're setting up with all of this capital interest rates going, liquidity cycle coming. This is going to come and it's going to be more pronounced now that we have everything tokenized. Um and so yeah, it was just fascinating to see it and like and it just seemed like nobody really recognized the the how preposterous uh the whole setup was. >> Yeah, just a um a shocking word salad uh from him on on that response to your point. Like you got to imagine this question is coming and just just have a better response than that. Um because the and you sort of alluded to this Michael, but the most disingenuous part of the whole answer to me is like referring to it as an internal issue when the reality of the situation is like those tokens were minted. They subsequently burned them, but they were on chain. And the only reason it was quote unquote internal is because they obviously control those wallets. They control the minting wallet and wherever it was deposited after after the minting. And so yeah, it was quote unquote contained in that respect, but there's nothing to say that it, you know, it it for say for example there was a bad actor involved with what occurred. Well, maybe it wasn't, you know, wouldn't have been contained necessarily. Uh maybe they don't burn all all 300 trillion of it. Um and some of that leaks out. So I the the broader takeaway to me is like this is the this is a sort of a peak behind the curtain moment of all this crypto and real world assets and uh you know the power of the blockchain as he says like the reality on the ground is like the fact that this even has the ability to occur tells you a lot about what crypto and what the broader digital asset space actually is underneath the surface. because at the end of the day, you know, uh there is a point of centralization and that centralization will be manipulated. And so, you know, even though this was a quote unquote, you know, inadvertent mistake, um the fact that it could happen points to the flawed nature of proof ofstake networks and really everything outside of Bitcoin, obviously, um you know, that's not proof of work. Uh you can't just spin up new bitcoins. uh you have to provably exert energy in the real world in order to do so. And so I think it's just sort of a mask off moment and and it's it's funny because like they don't even realize it like they're laughing to each other about this when it's like no you are you're you're telling on yourself here that this is all >> I would just like to add that you know and what if those coins got out in the wild? Well they could have just froze them right but that just adds to that to that narrative that actually Yeah. Well, like yeah, you can freeze them, but that's that's that's our point. You can just print them and freeze them and and and what's the difference with with the fiat system anyways, right? So, this just means that yeah, there there's stable coin adoption happening, but you you in the end you you haven't solved the the initial issue, which is why Bitcoin will ultimately win. Gustavo, on that note, just curious how you see um your business and just like Bitcoin only businesses and the um related to like what's happening in Latin America like as an example, the Middle East and specifically the UAE is like ultra sophisticated in a funny in a kind of ironic way on on crypto, right? They have really great regulations and they love kind of everything from real world assets to just everything that exists in that system, but they have no uh fundamental understanding of Bitcoin and it's been this haven for people to go out there specifically when the um US markets were antagonistic and obviously there's a huge opportunity there because a large percentage of the world's wealth sits there and then they understand commodities and oil and they're doing mining. But how do you think about Latin America and the proliferation of like crypto and all of that as it relates to individuals and just trying to preserve their wealth? Um just any color you can do because in Latin America I'm less familiar with how you know the markets work when it comes to like crypto and the different people that are down there. >> It's the same story. Um people don't don't have haven't actually yet made the difference between crypto and Bitcoin. Um in except in El Salvador you you from the government. Uh but everywhere else it's it's the same story. We're still in that. I I think we I I really see it like that you have a difference of view of of those in in the US, maybe in Canada, but everywhere else in the world I kind of put it in the same boat. Um however, I do think uh like that there's more uh awareness of uh hyperinflation risks of bankrun risks probably in Latin America than than in UAE just because it's a less stable region. Um, so there there's definitely pockets of people that that understand uh the value of Bitcoin in in that perspective, right? But most uh but we always say that like memory like collective memory is is isn't that long. So you you I would coming I grew up in Canada although I I was born in Peru but coming to Mexico I was expecting more people to be aware of of of these risks and I have a longer time horizon like you guys went through hyperinflation in the 80s and the '90s. you should remember it more. But then you're like, "No, only a few buckets of people do. Most most collective memory is very short in the end, right?" So, um, so I I think it's in the same boat as the UAE, although there's there are a few people that that remember their history better. It it is it is there that shift hasn't happened yet. >> Well, gentlemen, it's been a good episode. I have to run for another call, but uh I enjoyed the conversation. >> One last question for you, Jackson. It's a big one. >> Do you like tequila? >> I do. >> Okay. Just making sure. >> All right. Well, thanks. >> Watch out. Watch out for the punch ball. Thanks, boys. >> I've had my fair share. I'm not worried about it. All right. >> Jackson's prepared for the spiking. >> We'll see you >> later, guys. >> Thanks, guys. >> Thanks, Gustavo. 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.