Nothing Stops This Train: Bitcoin’s New Era of Demand & Danger

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 extra 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. If you're listening to this episode, you're already ahead of the curve. We had Jerry O'Shea, head of global insights at hashtags, on to discuss institutional adoption, the success of Bitcoin ETFs, evolving US policy, and more. From 70 billion amassed in IBIT to Connecticut banning state investment in Bitcoin to a stable coin bill on the horizon, and the fallout between Trump and Musk, 2025 has been anything but quiet. And actually, we just wrapped up the first full month of Bitcoin holding above 100K. But with rising adoption and higher prices comes new challenges. Physical challenges, digital challenges, inheritance, custody. This is why we built On-Ramp for investors who take Bitcoin seriously. Securing your share of 21 million requires a robust solution designed to mitigate evolving threats with inheritance and insurance built in. Whether you're looking for institutional grade custody, seamless inheritance planning, or access to trusted financial services, On-Ramp helps you protect and grow your Bitcoin for the long term. You can sign up on minutes on our website here using code TLT for 150 off your first month of On-Ramp Standard, or you can book a consultation with me or the team to see if On-Ramp is right for you. Hope you enjoyed the episode. And we are live. It's the last trade. We're recording today with my co-hosts Brian and Michael from On-Ramp. And we have an honorable guest, Jerry O'Shea, joining us as the head of global market insights at Hashtex Asset Management. And Gary, there is Jerry, there is a lot of uh global market insights for us to discuss. There's 2025 has just been an insanely bullish year for Bitcoin, but not only the price, there's a lot of things that are actually happening behind the scenes. And I'm sure we'll touch on it quite a bit as well because you have a policy background as well. uh you were at Fidelity Investments for some time specifically working on policy and now is a particularly interesting time for Bitcoin as it relates to policy because it's really the first administration that we have seen with the Trump administration that is favorable toward Bitcoin as a form of money as an investable asset and we're starting to see a lot of momentum on policy and the regulatory front. So excited to discuss what's happening there. But before we get into that, we always like to start the show just to acknowledge where we are with the price of Bitcoin. All four of us are certainly longerterm investors here, but uh it's good just to get a little little bit of a sentiment check, pulse check. We're trading at about 110,000, just shy of it at 109.6. We are hovering around all-time highs, but it does feel like a very quiet time for Bitcoin. Any initial thoughts before we jump into some of the first charts? Uh Brian, maybe I'll throw it over to you. Just any thoughts on the price? Yeah, very quiet 109K. It's been pretty uh astounding the past like 48 hours to just observe this range between like 108 and 110. And it feels like I mean it feels like to me it wants to break out to the upside and and as you were referencing like all of the bullish tailwinds, all of the narratives um you know that we've observed over the past several months really don't feel like they're they're baked into the price just yet. um like in my mind so much good has happened, so much positive news flow has occurred um that it feels like we should be much higher than this. So it does feel like the chart wants to break out a bit. Um so yeah, kind of a kind of a surreal moment to be sort of just oscillating in a tight range right right around alltime highs. Absolutely. Yeah, Jerry, any thoughts from you? Uh we're going to pull up a chart here in a second, but you've been involved in the space personally for a long time and professionally now as well. just what do you make of where we're at currently in the cycle? Uh just thoughts on the price feels like we have a lot of upside ahead of us here, but curious what you're seeing at hashts and just conversations with institution investors how those things are going bought into the uh the kind of 100k psychological you know being such an important psychological level. I feel like now with it being at that level over a month or so at this point it feels pretty good and it's definitely affecting my psychology. So, I think um you know it's nice in some ways to have a little bit less volatility. I think you know we certainly as Brian was mentioning you know with some of the tailwinds going on right now um we're anticipating some more upside volatility for sure. Um but right now you know where we're at this sort of you know hovering around 110 or so 109 108 like I'm okay with that. Uh it it feels about right. I think there's, you know, speculation about who's selling, right? Wales are selling, but then you have the ETFs stepping in. You have some of these treasury companies, I know we'll get into that discussion a little bit more later, um, buying as well. So, it feels kind of, uh, balanced to me right now with, u,, you know, better potential to break, uh, to to the upside from my perspective. Yeah, to Brian's point and to kind of support to the upside, um the chart I'm pulling up is uh the total monthly inflows for the past roughly I want to say looks like roughly 12 months. Um and basically the USA has seen plus 60 billion in cumulative flows into crypto ETPS ETFs while the west the rest of the world has been negative uh 1.7 billion. And well I think that's kind of a important stat for the upside is like we see the US leading we see the administration we see the policy enacted we see what happened what's happening with micro strategy and now there's no shortage of not only companies adding bitcoin I think IRM just came out uh offering a $450 billion $50 million convertible note but then the public markets with um Gemini I think set to IPO bullish there's no shortage of like access to liquidity in the US markets and I think that's the leading indicator and then the bet is that the rest of the world is slowly waking up and if that's true uh then that's obviously positive for the price. The last part to call out is it came out I think yesterday about when um GameStop was buying BTC like in the total amounts and however it got reported and I think that's an important distinction because it's not like net new Bitcoin but that's what supported this price lift and we can expect there's a lot more Bitcoin being accumulated across different treasuries and ETFs in the US and abroad. Um so it's a very bullish setup but maybe And because of that, we're we're set for uh you know to go down because if we're all bullish, then probably we're probably wrong. No, we already did that. We already I already opened up the chart for two months and looked at 80K. So, I think we have that behind us. Not to say there won't be other corrections during this cycle. That's just part of how these uh Bitcoin and crypto cycles go, but I think we've already kind of gotten through the near-term correction and certainly more upside on the horizon. It's also worth calling out uh there hasn't been a lot of data to support this because Bitcoin's only been above 100K for um I guess the first time about six months ago, but we actually just had the first full month of price above 100K. And actually a week ago, we got pretty close to to cratering below 100K, but the resistance held there. And so first ever month uh 30 trading days of Bitcoin being above 100K. I feel like that's a pretty big milestone. And Jerry, one thing that you mentioned too, important to call out especially because um in traditional finance we associate volatility to be a bad thing, but you mentioned upside volatility. Bitcoin and gold, we're going to talk about gold here in a second, both have more upside volatility than downside volatility. And so typically in traditional finance, people associate volatility to be bad because equities, fixed income, traditional assets in the 60/40 portfolio tend to have more negative skew. They have more bad days than they have good days in terms of volatility. But Bitcoin is actually incredibly unique. And it's also really hard to time the market in Bitcoin, which is why, you know, we're kind of set it and forget it type investors here. It's more of a strategic asset allocation because Bitcoin does have days or weeks where it just explodes higher. And if you're out of the market because you're trying to time it, you're going to miss that upside volatility. So, one thing I did want to call out here, I think the group will have a lot of interesting takes is we uh saw a chart here from Eric Balcunis, I believe at Bloomberg, right? And so, he threw a chart up about IBIT, which is Black Rockck's ETF, the largest ETF uh surpassing 70 billion in assets under management. the fastest ETF to ever hit that mark in less than a year, 341 days to be specific, which is five times faster than the old record held by GLD, which is a gold ETF. And so that was about 1,700 days. I think this is remarkable. Um, people have talked about flows, but just the the pace at which we've seen these inflows come, and to Michael's point, specifically in the United States, is absolutely crazy. And if you just take a a look from a historical perspective, this chart's a little bit harder to see, but this is a chart of the gold price. And it has here, this arrow points to November 4th, 2004 when GLD launched. And really, that allowed for more investors to participate in gold as an asset class beyond just holding the asset directly. And so you can see here when GLD launched, it was called about $400 or so per ounce. And then in the ensuing years, called five or six years, we saw a top off close to $2,000 an ounce. And so, of course, it's not the perfect parallel, but it's just an incredible signpost. It's something worth calling out because other products need to exist for investors, both institutional and retail, to participate in Bitcoin. And we've only just seen a little over one year of data that's actually incredibly bullish. We have $70 billion of inflows into one ETF product and about double that $130 $140 billion into the ETF complex as a whole. So what do you guys make of just the fact that um you know what what has happened in this historical parallel with gold? What do we kind of think that means for Bitcoin going forward? Yeah, I think it's it's I was going just going to say it's indicative of I think just a new paradigm like a the market structure has fundamentally changed. And so when you think about, you know, the this notion of who's selling, like there are long-term Bitcoin holders who have an extremely low cost basis who are selling into this level, but there's just this new consistent bid from these ETF products, from corporate balance sheets, from sovereigns, probably more covertly, that is sort of outweighing that that selling sell pressure from long-term holders. And so it's it's sort of uh makes sense that we're grinding sort of sideways to up over the past uh month or so. And so I think it's just it it is a it is a natural parallel to look at when that market structure for gold changed. Um you saw you know I think that showed like a basically a seven-year bull market for gold uh after those products were created. And you know I think I think we might see something similar with Bitcoin. I'm not saying like cycles are totally dead, but I do think the market structure is now just fundamentally different where if there is some sort of material selloff. Um I just think there's there's new biders, there's new market structure and there's new market participants that are ready and waiting for any dip to add to their allocation or get off zero for a lot of these a lot of these folks in these pools of capital. So I just think it's we're in a totally new paradigm now where I think the you know the volatility is down. So like if you know to to Jerry's earlier point like you know Bitcoin's volatility is has sort of compressed down to like similar to some MAG 7 stock. So it's less volatile to your point Jackson it's still positively skewed and so I would kind of expect this sideways slashupward grind just going forward um just given the new structural biders uh in this market. Yeah, I mean I support all that. think like it's super bullish for the opportunity and access to BTC that historically hadn't been there. I can't help but say when I look at those charts, I can't feel like it's very bullish for on-ramp and just multi-institution in general. And the reason why is because the parallel starts to break down when gold is super hard to take delivery and have exposure and access it. And there's a reason why the ETFs because gold was accessible pre-ETF, but it had a similar, you know, uh, point in in the culture and society. If you're going to take delivery, have it integrated in the financial system. It wasn't really available. And so the ETFs provided this exposure. And anybody that, you know, has large positions in in, you know, GLD or gold, most sovereigns are going to take delivery of that. They're going to want it on, especially in the world we're going to with volatility. Well, Bitcoin's looked in that same fashion. It's hard to hold. It's hard to deliver. It's hard to think about counterparty risk. you're offsetting that to the black rocks of the world and then the underlying custodians. But we all know anybody holding a material position that there's better ways and it just takes time in the price appreciation to learn more about the underlying and someone with multi institution and it won't just be us but you can click a button and get access to the underlying without you know a better tax uh availability when it comes to movement of the assets lending against them doing other things native to that. when the market wakes up to that it's like well why would you hold three levels of you know counterparty risk and execution risk that lives and that's kind of where the sentiment has always been around the treasury companies it's like once the market wakes up that you don't need exposure via this ticker or you know ETF I think will stand for a very long time just because it's a known quantity and at least gives the closest to direct spot exposure um so I think that's where the the the analogy kind of breaks down is that this asset is much easier to purchase and take delivery of but in the market sentiment it still resembles gold in the previous coral area where like you couldn't actually do anything other than the ETF product. Jerry would love your thoughts on this as well just because I know you've been at hashtags for uh several years now. You were there pre and now post ETF and so curious what you make of the fact that we have for the past 18 months or so ETFs trading in the US. We've had the most successful ETF launches in recorded history. And so I'd love to see kind of boots on the ground what you've seen there in terms of institutional appetite, how investors are thinking about allocating to Bitcoin. Are they looking mostly at ETF products uh financial products to get exposure? Are there looking for more direct investment as well? But yeah, I would love to hear just kind of your thoughts, your journey, how things have evolved over the past several years and what you make of the big milestones of today. Absolutely. And I think like to your point, one of the big um one of the most important things I think about seeing the steady flows into the Bitcoin ETFs is it it really does act as kind of marketing for Bitcoin, right? In that, you know, when the gold when GLD launched, everyone knew what gold was, right? You didn't really have to explain that to them. But with these steady flows coming into Bitcoin, it's opening up a lot of conversations with people, right? If they have exposure, maybe they're thinking about getting it in a different way. Um, but I do think that, you know, we had predicted kind of the end of the year that we'd see as many um, net new flows into the ETFs at the end of uh, this year, 2025. And to be quite honest, at the time it felt like a little bit of a bold prediction, but we're we're totally seeing that. We haven't seen the demand really slow down. And so I think it's a it's a it's a really strong sign that there is this demand out there um that I think will carry over to institutions like whether or not the ETF is the right vehicle for them or not um that's that's yet to be you know determined but I do think it's opening up uh a lot of conversations and you know at Hashtex so we I I don't know how familiar folks are with um our background but we have Latin American roots. We were headquartered are headquartered in in Brazil and that was a country that very early on uh adopted Bitcoin both at the individual level but also the government and financial regulators uh in particular. And so you know what we saw down there and you know when I joined in 2021 it was not that long after our Bitcoin ETF is had started to trade and and other ETFs as well. And one of the things that the financial regulators did very early on was realize that look, we need to treat this asset as any other financial asset and give investors that that type of access. And so I often say to people, it feels like to me, you know, Brazil being a country that's had, I think maybe five or so different currencies in the last 40 years, a a digital currency like this is not as crazy an idea as it might be to someone in the US um who's had access to the dollar their whole life. So they've been very early adopters uh of this this technology. And I like to say, you know, it's kind of like what's happening down there is sort of two years ahead ahead of what's happening in the US. And what we've seen is that it went from retail to intermediaries, um, wealth managers, financial advisors, and now a lot of the conversations are really around institutional access, right, to this asset class. And, you know, I think we will see that obviously in the US, we're seeing signs of it already. Uh, it will take some time. I don't think this is something that's going to happen in a matter of months. and and uh you know there there certainly will be milestones I think and catalysts that will help kind of accelerate the institutional adoption of this asset class that will continue but ultimately I think you know it's a long due diligence process for a lot of these institutions and um maybe it's helpful too because I think a lot of times when people talk about institutional investors they don't really define what they're talking about and there is some kind of um you know blurring of the line so to speak so you obviously have retail individual investors And then financial intermediaries like RAS, financial adviserss, wealth managers. Sometimes those are considered institutional investors because uh you they work for large institutions. They're big pools of capital. But what I'm talking about are really like the large pension plans, endowments, foundations, sovereigns. Um those folks that typically have a, you know, very long due diligence process in terms of understanding an asset and getting exposure to it. uh are the folks that are really kind of like the third leg of this um investor access stool that I think you know once that is kind of cemented and again we've seen signs like this we've seen the state Wisconsin um state of Wisconsin investment board get access to Bitcoin ETFs state of Michigan and some other municipalities um as well so we're seeing signs in that direction but it is something that will will take some time and the reason I think it's so important like using the um for instance is using the state of Wisconsin as an example, right? That's a retirement system that I has somewhere like 700,000 um people within that system. So, because they have exposure to Bitcoin ETFs right now, that's 700,000 people that have exposure to Bitcoin, right, within their retirement accounts. And um which is actually, you know, that's like the size of Boston, right? So, you if someone told you, hey, you know, everyone in the city of Boston is going to have exposure to Bitcoin at some point. might sound like a big thing, but the big deal with these big pension plans, right, is they're giving all these individuals exposure to this asset class. So, not only giving them the opportunity to learn about it themselves, but also giving them this, you know, what we all think is such an important store of value, um, you know, potentially digital gold type asset that they'll have in their portfolios over over the long term. I love that as well. And yeah, I mean it it it'll be a catalyst to your point, Jerry, for just further education in the space too, right? Because you could imagine if you are uh relying on a pension from your state retirement plan and Bitcoin starts as a very small percentage of that plan, but grows over time. Let's say even discounting the fact of further allocations from the pension, but just from long-term growth of the asset, it might start to cause people to think a little bit more critically about what they actually own and encourage them to look maybe more deeply into Bitcoin at an individual basis as well beyond the allocation they have through their pension plan. So, I think that's incredibly exciting. There are of course people in the space who think that Bitcoin needs to be this they have this very pure ideological stance of what Bitcoin is. They don't want any states or governments or pension plans or institutional investors to be involved. But that's not the point of Bitcoin, right? It is for everyone to adopt. And I think ultimately it's a great sign to see just even if it's a little bit uh you know just trickling in, dipping the toe in the water in terms of an allocation. It was only a few basis points I would say with SWIB last year, but that's a starting point and they're one of the most respected and one of the largest state pension plans in the country. So I'm curious to get your thoughts, also the group's thoughts, too. Just like Jerry, you mentioned, it's a long process. It's a long process from the buying perspective for institutional allocators to do due diligence. It's also a longer process from a policy standpoint, but we're starting to see policy be more of a focal point of the administration. You have groups like the Bitcoin Policy Institute that are doing great work to really further the mission of Bitcoin within the United States. So, I'm curious like what you are paying attention to in terms of catalysts to further unlock institutional adoption. Is it more so on the policy side? Is it market structure? Is there just need to be more capital allocated to the space first? Does it need to be a bigger asset? I would love to get your thoughts on this because it's ultimately, you know, what a lot of people are paying attention to in terms of broadening exposure and adoption of Bitcoin is the institutions. Yeah, absolutely. And I think all the things you mentioned are certainly part of that. The one thing that I think with these big institutional investors that maybe people don't talk often enough about is just time, right? like they they don't want to invest in an asset that doesn't have some sort of like track record. And I think you know Bitcoin is certainly getting there. I kind of look at the um you know evidence for instance over the last 5 years that Bitcoin can act as digital gold right if you look at how it performed in the wake of COVID. If you look at how it performed after uh Russia in invaded Ukraine after the bank crisis in 2023 and even more recently like with the with the tariffs um decoupling from uh equities and and other risk assets uh for for a time. So I think you know that's call it five years of of evidence that this is an asset that can perform differently within portfolios and that's going to be very important to these institutional investors right they don't want to just put something in there that is one you know untested hasn't been through market cycles and two um doesn't do anything in terms of uh benefits to the overall diversification of their their particular um their particular plans. One one thing to call out, this is going to be a little bearish, but it's the reality is I think we naturally assume these investors are longterm oriented and they're looking at the asset as a buy and hold and that's just not the case. Um because I think they will get there in the same way we talk about, you know, custody and how people will get to realizing it. But the reality is institutions are made up of individuals and they all come down the journey in a similar fashion. And so I don't know if you guys if we're all aware like SWIB fully divested from their ETF position because they probably realized uh some you know gain and they hit whatever mandate and then we saw in 21 during the runup where there was I forget what fund and the UK that kind of like you know doubled um their investment and kind of dive invested. So the point being is I think there's a common sentiment that we're going to reduce all this volatility in the next runup and and maybe pub and based on their mandate and vibes that they're selling that they're never going to sell. But there's a reality that institutional investors and similar as individuals they naturally have certain time preferences and they may not be all long-term oriented to start because that's naturally how they think about trades. Um so it's just worth calling out. I don't know if Jared if that supports Yeah. how you think about it. It's it's a good point too, right? Because these, you know, the investment management agreements that these um, you know, with these public pensions in particular, right, they they set an allocation to a particular asset and when the the allocation grows beyond that, they have to to trim it back. And, you know, with Bitcoin, that may have the impact as more of these types of institutions get involved in in helping kind of tamp down volatility over time. But you're right, it's it's a you know, it it's an interesting position for them to be in because I think any of us that know, you know, if if we personally were only take a 2% um allocation in Bitcoin for our overall portfolios, you know, we would not like if it went up to 4% go, "Oh my gosh, I need to trim trim this back. I'm getting too much, you know, exposure." And with the growth that it's experienced, I think that's going to be something that these institutions will have to to grapple with. I do think, you know, the the Black Rockck recommendation in their model portfolio is at 2%. I think that's a big deal and everything. I tend to be and maybe this is overly bullish. I'd love your guys' thoughts on this, but I I think in a lot of ways it's kind of like at one 2% allocation, you know, why bother with something if you if you really understand kind of the power of of having a Bitcoin allocation in your portfolio. So, you know, I I actually think that these kind of target allocations for these um model portfolios in particular are going to increase over time. I don't know exactly, you know, when that might be. It's certainly going to take a lot of folks some time to kind of dip their toe in the water, but it just seems very conservative um to to me right now. And it's certainly, you know, for these, again, getting back to like the institutional investors, there's only a handful of them that have even dipped their toes in the water. and they tend to be very slow to move anyways, right? Like that a lot of these types of plans, you know, just got emerging markets exposure say 20 25 years ago or so, right? They're just very slow to move into new asset classes. Um so that's a dynamic as well. But I do think that the the allocation um kind of recommendations are we're going to start to see those tick more upwards, especially if we see, you know, these periods and have more kind of evidence of the volatility not being as as wild as it used to be and and maybe people being able to make the case that over time this is going to improve sharp ratios, right? And you can do that with a larger than 1% allocation. Yeah. Yeah. the best to to me it's a it's a it's a broader signal of a lot of these pools of capital particularly on the endowment foundation pension side that at least for the foreseeable future in my mind are going to continue to sort of cling to the vestigages of what they've known for several decades and what I mean by that is not fully giving up on the 6040 and not giving up on diversification and rebalancing all of these tropes that they've become accustomed to over the past several decades and even if they get to the point of a you know 25 basis point allocation to Bitcoin like they're not they're not doing that because they see or that they necessarily appreciate like this shift towards hard money away from inside money the shift towards you know the the 6040 being replaced by you know maybe the 40% is not bonds it's some combination of gold and Bitcoin like they're not that far down their journey yet they're still very early innings in understanding sort of the the medium to longterm trajectory here So, I think it's a great point that like, you know, they're going to cling to these old uh methodologies of like, oh, it's it's doubled. Well, we better we better cut that back to our initial target. It's like, well, if you're actually thinking deeply about the long-term investment thesis here, like one, you would expect it to double over, you know, a relatively short time frame. And two, like you, you know, this goes back to like um, you know, some of Warren Buffettisms and like value investing of like you don't uh, you know, you add to your winners. you don't trim your winners uh and add to your losers. And that's precisely what they'd be doing if they're trimming their, you know, their Bitcoin exposure and then redistributing that capital to fixed income or equities. And so I think it's there's just a lot of ingrained uh practices particularly with these pools of capital that just needs to be relearned and retrained and and frankly a lot of that has just kind of come from sort of the gener generational shift of decision makers over time and that's going to be a multi-deade process. Yeah, I think I think that's right. I think it it's what we've like talked about and maybe Larry Frink and Black Rockck are having will have the biggest impact is framing Bitcoin is just a new asset class because historically people haven't known what bucket to put it in and so it's really hard to think through a 60/40 and then how do you have a long-term view to express on Bitcoin. the heristic that I like it doesn't it's not apples to apples with institutions but it's close enough and this is definitely not financial advice but it's like well because everyone's probably got this how much Bitcoin should I buy and this wasn't my idea it's somebody I know but it's like referencing you you want to buy enough where if the price doubles you don't sell it but if it cuts in half you don't sell it right like you have enough exposure where you're not uncomfortable in either direction it's like a pretty good starting point to start thinking about the asset class and not be prepared to trade it um and probably some of these institutions will be well served by thinking about it in that way as well versus it's a trade because a lot of these people are going to be knocking themselves when it's 250k and they they sold because they had 100% gain. Totally agree. Love to shift the conversation to uh states and the federal level in the US, but also maybe just more broadly sovereigns. One thing we flagged to discuss this week was piece of news that just came out yesterday with Connecticut passing a law to ban a state investment in Bitcoin. So, this is interesting because I don't know how exactly this is measured, but Bill Miller here says that Connecticut ranks 48 out of 50 states in terms of fiscal stability for 2025 according to US News. So, not a great spot to be in or pretty close to last place in terms of fiscal stability for states and then choosing to ban state investment in Bitcoin, which the four of us in our audience would agree is probably not the best idea in terms of being a forward-thinking state, in terms of being a fiscally responsible state. So, curious to hear some initial reactions here. Uh because on the flip side there is positive stuff happening like Texas is one example and I believe New Hampshire was the first state to actually pass legislation to allow for state investment in Bitcoin but then you have a neighboring state Connecticut here banning investment in Bitcoin. Boo. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm here in New England somewhere between Connecticut and and New Hampshire. So kind of sandwiched between those those two ends of the the spectrum. But, you know, I I do think it's it's one of these things where you realize that um you know, it's we're in a high we live in a highly political world, right? And that um policy makers will oftenimes not act in the best interests of their uh constituents for a variety of reasons. But I think this sort of visceral reaction to Bitcoin, you know, which if I had to guess, I I mean, and maybe it's a I think it's a pretty educated guess, but like a lot of this I think is just in response to the embrace of the administration by by this asset and people that don't understand it think this is somehow not apolitical, right? It's like and and I know it's not a perfect analogy, but like when I see Connecticut do things like that, it's it's kind of like them, you know, banning the internet or saying like, "We're not going to allow any public employees to have access to the internet." Um, you know, because we think it's this dangerous new realm that uh that that's not worthy of uh our our citizens here. So I think you know that on one hand that's you know that's that's one side but also Jackson you mentioned like the fiscal situation there which is kind of crazy to me that you know for a uh on one hand you have federal lawmakers policy makers in the US talking about Bitcoin reserve and potent its potential to offset um or you know deal with our uh uncontrollable debt and our debt burdens. Um and then you know you have a um state like Connecticut that that just doesn't seem to see that that being an option at all. I think it's a good thing one not what Connecticut's doing specifically but I think it's good to have states with their different proposals because they can act a lot quicker right than the federal government. They don't have um each of them does not have their own central bank pushing back on these sorts of ideas. So I think it's um it's good to have call it you know these incubators um put into practice and like we'll see how it plays out over time. New Hampshire, you know, is has always been they were kind of a state that had a lot of very early on Bitcoin adopters. They're kind of known, you know, live for your die is a state mo motto. They have sort of a a very libertarian ethos. So, it it makes sense that they would pursue something like this in my opinion. But, um, at the end of the day, I think overwhelmingly Connecticut and if other states choose to do the same thing, we'll be in a very small minority. And it'll obviously play out over time. you know, the the results of of having something like that in place. And um and I think these states that are choosing to embrace it um as a long-term asset, like to improve kind of the the overall balance sheet, I think they're they're going to benefit tremendously. It's it's fascinating because this stuff is playing out in real time and and people still continue to do this. Like without getting political, we're seeing what's happening in California and like if we all had to make bets, you know, call it postcoid, but even before then I would imagine most individuals with this expressing this investment thesis would be long Florida, Tennessee, Texas. Um, a great again objective anecdote is we're all long Bitcoin and you would imagine you're long the energy markets related to it and Texas sits with I think the last time I checked is like 27% of the global hash rate because China decided to push it out. Like that's just one sector or aspect of Bitcoin that this is just going to play out the way it is. You know, we saw the Dallas, the New York Stock Exchange moving down there. So, yeah, we kind of know where this goes. Um, you can ban yourself from Bitcoin, but you can't, you know, ban Bitcoin from everyone else. Yeah, that's that's well said. Thankfully Thankfully, the individual citizens of Connecticut can still can still buy Bitcoin for themselves. And I think you nailed it, Jerry. Like I think it is a a very educated guess as to why this this specific case occurred. It's as if uh you know in the age of the internet Trump.com emerged and they said you know we're not we're not going to launch our own website basically something to that effect. Like I think it is uh pretty clearly they are being um you know sort of uh they're shielding themselves from actually understanding the thing the underlying because they're associating it with this current administration who they happen to disagree with on a variety of other things that are completely unrelated to the monetary merits of Bitcoin. Yeah, I I I completely agree. And I think there was um Ray Dalio a couple days ago had a a pretty good tweet that I think is kind of based on one of his books from a few years ago that sort of talks about how um basically linking the fiscal situation of a government to kind of the um the quality of life of the people that live in that government. And I think most people keep those things very disconnected, right? they don't think that, you know, if the government, the US government has 35 trillion in debt, that's their problem, right? And I think um he does a really nice job in uh in this particular tweet, and I haven't read the book, but from from what I can tell kind of laying out the arguments that these aren't independent variables, right? Like like it matters that the there's this debt burden at that level of government. It matters at the state level as well. And um and I think you know people are slowly recognizing that this does impact their lives in a lot of different ways. Maybe in some ways that feel intangible, right? Like you can go in and see the cost of groceries um and you know make the conclusion that there's inflation and that's bad and that sort of thing. But I think just in terms of like that sentiment that something's not working right for them and you know everything that the terrible that's going on in LA right now I think is um arguably could be you know tied back to a uh fiscal situation in the US that's been completely reckless u both at the federal level and with a lot of the the individual states right and I think in that scenario and even Dalio I think Ray Dalio has made this connection assets like like Bitcoin become very attractive And I I think hopefully over time people will kind of realize that that this is not a a political asset. You know, it doesn't Bitcoin doesn't care if you're, you know, red or blue or or, you know, whatever other uh party you choose to affiliate with. And so I think um you know, hopefully the tweet that that Dalio had sent out, I think it was a little bit of a clickbaity title is like, you know, civil war question mark. So, it's like kind of hard not to read that um when you see it. But I think, you know, the points that he raises are um are really good and really important. And I think it's something that uh that I think arguably, you know, makes a pretty strong case for for Bitcoin as being a way to kind of opt out of this fiscal madness that we're all subject to here in the US. Yeah. And by the way, on-ramp clients get uh Civil War preparedness advice from Michael Tanguma. So, another reason to sign up and and work with us. But jokes aside, I mean, yeah, I agree with you, Jerry. Everything is downstream of broken money. And the reason why in large part there's so much tension in this country is because the monetary system is so beyond uh repair. and even Elon Musk. I mean, maybe we should talk about the the fallout that happened at the tail end of last week where uh Musk and and Trump are having a feud over social media. And I just kind of thought it was I guess I thought it was inevitable like you know 6 months ago a year ago when Doge was brought to the uh public awareness and this was going to be initiative within within the government and they come out swinging oh two trillion we're going to slash we're going to balance balance the budget we're going to just repair the fiscal situation for the United States everything will be okay. I think anyone who's paying attention is understands enough to know that you can't just go into the government and uh fix a situation that is 50 years, 100 years into the making. And so this is beyond repair. The fa past 50 years, I might have mentioned the last week episode. It's worth reiterating though, and maybe it's worth reiterating until everyone knows, but 45 out of the past 50 years, the government has run a deficit. So it's not about your red team, it's not about your blue team. These are just structural issues within fiat currency and government and central bank money and there's really no fixing this. So, you know, you have this fallout last week. Would love to hear the group's thoughts, but ultimately I just thought it was a bunch of nonsense. I mean, Elon Musk, maybe he thought he was just going to go and, you know, go put a brain chip in everyone. They're going to figure out exactly how to move the needle and balance the budget. But that didn't happen. And so, here we are. Their fallout happened. They only saved bill 180 billion estimated. And that's not in one year. That's over the course of five years. And then so you compare that to a one-year goal of$2 trillion dollars. Just an epic failure. Um hopefully Elon doesn't uh find this episode and and send some people after me because I haven't taken Michael's course yet. But uh yeah, curious to hear the group's thoughts. I think the main thing is there's there's a lot of gaslighting like without calling anything out specifically, just being critically with all this stuff. Like the you feel like incepted. this happened 12 24 months ago with whatever that that movie was about the civil war and then you have Dalio with his tweet and like you know everyone anecdotally like we know that there's problems and there is um there is like natural friction but also if you go to any town it's pretty straightforward like people show each other respect it's not this divisiveness that is portrayed in the media and the other side of the gaslighting I think everyone would agree with is like the state of the economy and people's you know personal balance sheets everyone pretends when you talk to high finance and a lot of the people in our industry, they'll say everything's great and GDP is going up and all this stuff, but it's like empirically not the case for every individual. When you look at, we bring up charts every week looking at homes, um the ownership, the um not even mortality, but like uh individuals getting married, having kids, like there's all these things that like the media will portray versus like what's actually happening. And so I think that's just like a very good like mental model of whatever you see, you're probably seeing it for a reason and you should just try to peel back second and third layers to think a little more critically across the board. I think I think that's a great point and and you know the one I was going to add kind of an anecdote. So Jackson mentioned you know my background in policy after uh college I worked for about five years on Capitol Hill. I worked for um Senate Banking Committee, then the House Financial Services Committee. And that was after we actually the last bud balanced budget we had um was the the like late 90s Clinton era with the House Budget Committee chairman who was a Republican. They balanced the budget and um I came in and and I you know I worked in the Senate and then I worked for a freshman member of Congress um right after that. This would have been 2002. And his first order of business was to create a group that would eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in in the government. And it was um at at the time, you know, it was him and two other freshman congressmen. And it was kind of this thing where, you know, the senior leaders in in the Congress, both Republican and Democrat, kind of looked at it like, well, this is cute. You know, we've got these new members of Congress that think they're going to eliminate all this waste, fraud, and and abuse. And um so I kind of saw firsthand back then uh how difficult it is to even get rid of like the most egregious types of um spending right because you know the world works off incentives politicians maybe more so than than the normal average person and most of them don't have an incentive right to kill these programs that are potentially benefiting some constituents and voters in their district. So, um, it's a very difficult thing to do. And so, I was pretty optimistic actually when when Elon said he was going to champion this and thought to myself, well, you know, Elon, if there's anyone that can do it, uh, it would be him, right? Just because of his ability to actually deliver results. And, um, and so I was pretty optimistic for a while. And then of course, you know, as we all kind of saw, the reality set in about the, you know, minuscule discretionary spending versus the mandatory spending programs and trying to make cuts in those is just, you know, almost impossible. Maybe arguably impossible now if Elon Musk can't do it with the um folks in government that he was he was working with. But, you know, ultimately, I think this all kind of sets up a really good narrative for for Bitcoin, right? And and um I'm not telling you all anything you don't know, but I I think when you see like such a monumental failure at that level to really pull back and and cut some, you know, a lot of obviously there were things that were cut that were controversial, but a lot of it is really just waste, right? Like it's a big huge government, very bureaucratic, and there's a lot of um efforts that both parties over the decades have tried to to eliminate um spending. But when you see it kind of fail like that, you realize that the incentives from these policy makers aren't really necessarily in line with your your own incentives, right? Which kind of Michael, to your point, it it makes you kind of think, okay, maybe I need to be doing a little bit more thinking, you know, about my myself, my personal situation, what I'm seeing around me, what I'm seeing when I'm going to the grocery store or hearing, you know, from people trying to to buy a house or anything else like that. So, um, as kind of, you know, unfortunate is that the the Doge cuts didn't really come to f fruition. I do think, um, maybe it's a little bit of an awakening for folks that this is a real problem that's not going away anytime soon. And, um, to think about kind of your long-term uh, savings, your long-term uh, ability to provide for your family. like you you you really need to think outside of the traditional means of whether it's investing like a 60/40 portfolio or you know where you choose to save and and what you use as a as a store of value. Yeah, I think that's that's very well said and and to me I think that's spot on of like if there's any s silver lining from all of this um you know despite you know sort of the the inability of Doge to make meaningful spending cuts the silver lining is is that it brought the inability to to stop the train to to quote Lyn Alden like nothing stops this train of debt deficits fiscal spending it brought the reality of realities of that more to before. I mean, Elon Musk has, you know, the most Twitter followers on Earth and he is spouting constantly now over the past couple weeks about the inability for for anything to change on that front and how it's like a very dire situation. Now, he won't specifically call out Bitcoin as the solution, but if you go into the replies, that's that's most people's uh solution that are are seeing him having this um sort of realization that even he wasn't able to uh stop the train in any meaningful way. And and I think that that will continue to catalyze uh education about the potential solution of Bitcoin at least for your personal balance sheet and to to Michael's point to try to you know move past the gaslighting of the government. Like the government's not going to save you. You have to save yourself and in order to do that you're going to need to opt out and save in a form of money that they can't control or print. Jerry maybe um going deeper I think it's that makes complete sense. I think going deeper on the policy stuff, you're you have a unique background that you've worked in policy, deeply understand Bitcoin, work in the industry. What's your take been on kind of the new administration the past like six months? The the amount of leaning in I think it's caught everyone by surprise, but then also the influence of um should probably give a shout out to the Bitcoin policy institute and the summit that they're ho hosting because I think everyone here, majority of people on this panel or this conversation will be there. um just like how do you see that intertwining like the the the state of how fast that's moved and then the interesting dynamic of Bitcoin and just the incentives and how they're just like integrating into uh policy in in our favor really. Yeah. So also I agree like the Bitcoin Policy Institute I think has done a a tremendous job and and one of the the reasons why I think they've they've done such a good job is you know they're not a trade association right representing a bunch of different companies with commercial interests and I think you know in addition to having some tremendous thought leaders there I think a lot of congressional staff and regulatory staff and stuff can really rely on them for very high quality research and a you know objective view for why we think this this asset is so important. Um, I was surprised like I didn't think that the the Bitcoin strategic reserve would come that that quickly. I was a little bit more skeptical about it. Um, I think, you know, generally speaking, it's it's a good thing. I I think the the challenge now is figuring out how to potentially fund it. Um, I haven't really seen any like great um ideas that I think would be easily easy to do, right? I think in the legislation um that Senator Lumis has, you know, potentially repricing gold or or something like that could could work or, you know, maybe even using other crypto assets that are confiscated to buy Bitcoin. Those those are things that that could potentially work. But I do think it's going to be difficult to kind of do this in a budgetneutral way that is not going to cause a lot of political strife. And um and that's still very much kind of getting back to the the Connecticut activity. I mean the you know Congress and the Senate in particular, there's still a tremendous lot amount of very important uh very powerful people who you know hate this this industry and don't want to see it succeed. And um with the president going kind of deeper into this space, I think they're they're going to be digging their heels in more. It sounds like, you know, I think the stable coin legislation will be approved and potentially even this week. Um, but even that, you know, was a lot more difficult than I think most observers, certainly crypto Twitter thought it was going to be, right? Because I think maybe people underestimated um the degree to which politics drives policy in DC. And if you have the the sitting president um you know very actively supporting this new emerging asset like there's going to be a lot of people that just have this visceral reaction to it and want to push back for the sake of pushing back and because they they think it's uh some sort of um political thing. So um for for Bitcoin specifically like I think the you know it's a little bit different than say other crypto assets in that it has regulatory clarity or at least more rel on a relative basis relative to other um types of of crypto assets. So, um, it would certainly benefit from I know there's new efforts now to put together a market structure bill and I think Bitcoin I if the the folks that are the businesses that are providing the infrastructure for people to, you know, hold Bitcoin, um, trade it, you use wallets, all that stuff. Um, if market structure legislation can give them a much better sense of the rules of the road and and help them operate in a more kind of friendly environment, I think that that'll be a big deal. But I, you know, my perspective is that it'll probably be more of a boon to like other assets outside of of Bitcoin if market structure legislation is actually approved. And I think that's going to be a much more difficult complex um uh bill to pass because it's not as the interests, you know, the stable coin legislation is very different because it it aligns very well with policy makers who are interested in finding new people to buy debt for the for the US, finding new ways to for that debt to be purchased for strengthening the dollar. So there's a lot of, you know, getting back to the world, working off incentives, particularly um politicians. They have a lot of very strong incentives to see uh a stable coin bill pass. I think it just gets much more complex and complicated with market structure legislation. And so that one I think is I don't know if I'd call it like a 50-50 shot of that that happening um at least this year. And um but but we'll see. I mean, I think the the big things to watch for obviously if there's news around how the the strategic reserve could be funded. Uh, obviously from a price perspective, that could be very um a huge tailwind. But, um, in the interim, I think we're going to still see a trickle of these states. Um, I think so we have New Hampshire, Arizona, Texas, you said, Michael, I think they're like they're close, right, to maybe having a a reserve. So this it's happening at the the state level and I think that'll continue and that'll continue to put pressure on Congress to uh at least consider legislation around this and get it out of the kind of administrative executive order form which over the long term isn't as sustainable as having it put in in legislation. I'm curious um Jerry any thoughts on sort of you sort of alluded to this but the order of operation. So, I think Senator Lumis has sort of laid this out as, you know, the Genius Act, stable coins, that's coming first, then it's market structure, then it's turning to how do we accumulate more Bitcoin. And I agree with you that that middle piece is probably the most precarious. There's probably the most debate around what that market structure bill actually looks like. It seems like there's line of sight to getting the stable coin bill through. in your mind, is the market structure bill a prerequisite to figuring out ways to buy Bitcoin, or do you think that they could just skip that step if it's too contentious? Yeah, it's a good point, a good question. I think um I think it's certainly possible that if it does become too contentious that they, you know, might say this is not um something that is like in anyone's interest to pursue like, you know, you have like the you basically have two years, right, to legislate before everything starts to focus around the election. So, if it doesn't happen right the end of 2026, it's probably not going to happen anytime soon. And if you know, policy makers make that determination, I could certainly see them maybe refocusing on um you know, Bitcoin reserve legislation or other um you know, kind of similar initiatives. But the important thing to remember too here is right, it's this is political influence, right? And one of the reasons why we saw Trump come out in s such support is because the the crypto industry broadly, you know, with with several folks um you know, several leaders within the the Bitcoin community did a tremendous job of making him realize that this is an important issue for you know 50 plus million Americans that are going to vote on this issue and all that good stuff. So there are the sort of political considerations um in in all this as well and and that could certainly inform the the you know what ends up being prioritized from a legislative perspective. I think generally speaking, I think the policy makers want to show that they've done something for this industry, right? So, they'll probably get the stable coin bill. Um, but then the market structure bill is a lot more important to uh a lot of other different aspects of the industry. So, I do think they're going to want to show some progress there. Um, whether they can get it across the finish line with bipartisan support, I I I don't know. Um, I don't I don't I don't I'm a little like pessimistic on that one. It's kind of this is going to be a cinn cynical take, but I'm curious Jerry like where you see I think the market structure I mean it hasn't been the best but I think in in the from a Bitcoin lens it's probably been as a creative or advantageous because Bitcoin's been the only thing deemed a commodity CFTC um what I look at the market structure bill is who gets to govern the grift right like like it's just like who gets to whether it's stable coins and is it banks is it yield to issue it on it. Who's the custodian? Who's going to issue security tokens? Who's going to determine if it's a security or not? When we kind of recognize that, I think we'd all agree on this podcast that Bitcoin is a commodity and most if not everything else would be deemed a security because their central issuer issu issuer and how we law and all of that or how we test. Um, and so independent of it getting approved or not, like I think that there's some notion that there's actually been less there's a lot of grift, but it would it would amplify and I think it actually gets passed because I think there's enough capital to be made and that's part of where like personally I think the next 5 to 10 years are going to be well bullish for Bitcoin. A lot of people are going to lose their shirts because they're going to get, you know, caught chasing shiny objects. Um curious if you see it that way or if you see it differently that just because people start to figure out the lines of who's governing what that's just going to open the door for much more proliferation of you know digital assets uh that historically haven't really been a recipe for success when it comes to preserving individuals wealth. Yeah. So, I I think to me it kind of comes down to um the almost more of like a political decision by the the Democrats to decide how much they want to fight the progress that this industry has has had with this current administration, right? Especially as we get to the midterm elections, right? And there are um a number of very um you know pro- Bitcoin, pro- digital asset uh members of Congress that are that are Democrats and um their voices I think have been been drowned out more recently. But I think if if there is kind of a decision made that politically they can't afford to uh to to kind of fight the this this industry and again using the internet analogy like I always just think it's like these are essentially like being you know anti- internet politicians or something from the early 90s right or if there was ever such a thing. It's just like the the realities of the technology. I'm optimistic that the, you know, leaders within the Democratic party will kind of realize what that means. Um, both from like what their constituents care about, but then also just from like a political perspective that this is going to be a losing battle. Like, you know, if you're, you know, again, like like the Connecticut example, like that's just something that like you're going to sit here and watch New Hampshire and all these other states benefit from making a strategic allocation to Bitcoin. Um, while you're basically just saying that you don't want your retirees to have any access to this, you know, the best performing asset in the last 10 years. So, it's um I I think that's what it comes down to. It's basically just a political question from the the Democrats and on how much they want to continue to fight this. you know, I had kind of thought with the election outcome that the um you know, Elizabeth Warren's anti-crypto army was, you know, officially dead, but I do think that there still seems to be some energy behind um them wanting to push back against this stuff. And a lot of it's politically charged. So, I think it'll come down to political decision um whether or not they want to continue this like through the next election cycle. At least Trump and Warren can agree to get rid of the debt ceiling. That's true. There's some middle ground there at least. That is that is true. It doesn't happen often, but you know, when it when it does, I guess we it's either like this. Well, it is scary actually when you see the two of them agree on something that that's a little bit of a red flag. So, without even knowing, you know, what the particular issue might be. Hey, real quick. Hope you're enjoying the episode. If you are, would love to see some likes and comments, subscribes on the episode. put a lot of time into producing the show each week, preparing for it, scheduling guests, and then of course having the conversations as well, as well as editing and getting it out onto platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple, etc. So, if you could just show a token of appreciation, leave us a like, a comment, really goes a long way and uh knows that we're doing something right. And if you have any feedback on how to improve the show, certainly welcome a comment on YouTube or you could also reach out to me directly onramp uh or sorry Jackson onrampbitcoin.com. Would love to hear from some listeners. So yeah, hope you enjoy the rest of the episode and really appreciate you listening. I don't know Michael or Brian did you have anything else you wanted to chat on about uh policy or just anything else related? If not, uh there is something I wanted to talk about with uh something that Galaxy shared about just physical attacks in this space. But before transitioning there, I want to make sure we covered our bases. Yeah, I think maybe I'm curious Jerry on your side um the sentiment how you feel about like stable coins and the you know what's happening right now whether it's the market expressing its view via circle but then also I think it came out before this launched Bank of America is in the works and it got leaked you know three two or three months ago about Fidelity uh testing out like how you see this kind of you know from a integration into the traditional financial system I think last week tech companies the Uber Google I forget who Airbnb and one others just like Yeah. Apple, how do you see that playing out and positive negative for just like everything else we've been talking about um today? Yeah, absolutely. So, like assuming that the the legislation does get approved, I mean, I think it'll be a bit of a horse race, right? Because um I don't know how much room there is for like, you know, tens or hundreds of different stable coins. they they that there might be some valuable use cases there but you know generally speaking I think um I think it's a it's a good thing right especially you know working for a uh a firm that's based in the emerging markets where people can now access the US dollar on their their phone right through a wallet um the emerging markets use case for stable coins I think is is important and um you know the ability for them to have access to the dollar is I think something that is absolutely fair. Um it'll be interesting like getting back to your point about the lobbying um aspect of all this. It'll be interesting where the incentives align for these different firms whether it's a consortium of uh I forget all the banks that were involved JP Morgan and a few others were talking about doing their own stable coin. If they can come to some type of agreement on like this, you know, big bank stable coin, it'll be interesting to see how something like that plays out. the, you know, Fidelity or other asset managers are going to take a different perspective, I think, than a lot of the banks. Um, and and you know, so they may choose to compete uh with a with a, you know, a different type of of stable coin. But at the end of the day, I I think it's a huge um on-ramp to to Bitcoin, right? Because I think once these stable coins become, and I think they already are to an extent, people are starting to become more familiar with it. But once they become kind of a a household term, people are immediately going to start kind of asking more about this asset class, you know, broadly, what how does this different from Bitcoin and that type of thing. And um and so I think it's uh it's certainly like a positive for the the industry. like who knows what ends up getting included in that bill and what interests get, you know, um benefits over over the others, but generally speaking, I think it's going to be a a very important development for um for Bitcoin adoption in particular. Yeah, I tend to agree. I think the notion of Bitcoin and stable coins will be ubiquitous because the dollar is ubiquitous. It's just digital version of that with you being online and specifically the I don't even want to call it a use case but the user behavior of if your checking account is digitized via this interoperable token this dollar that can go anywhere. Think about you know folks listening probably are very heavily overweighted BTC and maybe you want to be more in the market in Bitcoin and less dollars but you naturally need to go spend those dollars. um well maybe those conversions from your bank account can go from you know BTC to stable coins in your checking to to pay like it just starts to tighten that connectivity and there's like a hundred different use cases or examples how you can by that doing that opens up capital flows or flows into BTC and the earliest example which is probably the most predominant is Tether Bitcoin and the trading pair and kind of where even circles origins came about when it came into um settling trades because you can only wire money from 9 to5 uh and if you're execute and run a you know a trading shop and FX and all those things. So I think it's really um positive for for BTC and then obviously we've talked about it here from just like the um the longevity of the dollar for you know demand for treasuries is I think that's going to be a big part of the whole story here. Absolutely. And I think like the, you know, the the the politicians um have really, you know, latched on to that and appreciated the fact that this could be, you know, an easy way to kind of cover up the mess they created, right? In some ways, someone needs to buy the debt. Someone's going to have to do it. It's going to be the stable coins. I mean, Tether is already in the top 10. I would say top five, but I'm not confident. But certainly top 10 largest buyers of US treasuries. And as traditional financial institutions in the United States get into the stable coin game, they're just going to be acquiring acquiring more treasuries through that and they're going to be exerting dollar influence throughout the world. And so I don't think the end of the dollar is anywhere close. It it's going to likely be extended. And this is really a strategic play. I think this is why it's particularly so frustrating to hear politicians bicker about Bitcoin is because uh it might have been Alex Thorne who said it last week is that the stable coin bill is not a crypto bill. It's really just a dollar bill. It's best for the American people. You could argue it's a grift like we're exporting inflation to the rest of the world, but it is better for us. I mean, it's it's kind of a selfish thing to say, but having a stronger dollar and stronger treasury market by having stable coins be issued around the world and have buyers for the debt, especially when adversarial nations are divesting of US treasuries. There just needs to be, you know, kind of a backs stop there and that's ultimately what stable coins uh the role that they'll play. And then, of course, Bitcoin fits very nicely into that as well. The great thing is Bitcoin is available to everyone. So I mean um for countries that are looking for a way to have you know de-risk themselves from dollar debasement confiscation seizure of assets I mean bitcoin exists is a better way to do so than gold and so it'll be interesting just to see how everything plays out and probably take longer than this cycle but over the call it next half decade or so where things land in terms of sovereign accumulation because we're still awaiting the audit from the US government but there are reports that estimate about 200,000 Bitcoin is held by the US government, but then there's a lot of evidence that would show that maybe it's about half of that give or take. So hopefully we'll see that in the next month or two. It will give us a better sense as well. And Jerry, to an earlier point you made, hopefully more clarity as well from the US government in terms of what their uh sexy phrase of budget neutral means for accumulation of more Bitcoin. Um but Michael, did you have something? Two things. Um, yeah, I think the optimistic take to your point is it kind of goes back to everything's good for Bitcoin is if you export the dollar, it actually helps the US, but it's generally better currency than where it's getting exported to. And then it gives people access because if they get access to that, then they're one step away from BTC. I think historically with inflation being sub 5%, you can make the case why you'd want to hold more stable coins if you're subject to volatility of Bitcoin. But as Bitcoin naturally dampens and and then inflation uh heightens, more people are going to make that decision, right? It all just comes down to the economic rationality of the individual. It's like, well, why wouldn't I hold more of the thing that goes up to to the right versus down and buys me less. Um, one thing before transitioning to the um, the report you want to pull up is you you pulled up something before the call about uh, it's a little bit unrelated but still like pretty big is the Sailor tweet about uh, if they close what was it like if they close if Bitcoin closes at 119,000. Yeah. So, I can pull it up here. It's if Bitcoin closes at 119K for the end of Q2, Strategy will post the largest quarterly earnings in human history as far as we know. I mean, maybe maybe a long time ago there was bigger uh quarterly earnings, but this is pretty crazy. Um, you know, outside of any opinions, good or bad, on the Bitcoin Treasury fiasco, I mean, strategy is certainly the front runner here. Sailor has done a lot of good things for the space. And so this is a really I mean aside from the extremely retail uh branding of this tweet here, it's an interesting data point. I mean I don't know what you guys think about this, but um I caught it right before we hit record. It is a w it is a wild stat um and seems pretty pretty damn feasible with the way the price is headed right now. And uh I think it's also just it's it makes it easier to understand why the Bitcoin treasury company trade is quickly becoming overcrowded and saturated because people that are paying attention to what Sailor's been doing for the past few years um have seen the writing on the wall of like this was inevitable. like it was inevitable that they would once the gap accounting was fixed that any sort of uh material up move in Bitcoin given their massive balance sheet of BTC that like this stat would be inevitable. And so I think for the folks that are paying attention and and have sort of latched on to this strategy like it it just speaks to why uh you've seen so many copycats trying to do the exact same thing. Yeah. And to to use um his analogy to to fire, right, with these treasure treasury companies, it's like, you know, you can obviously use fire to heat your house or send a rocket into space, but you can also, you know, fire can burn your house or the neighborhood down, right? So, it kind of the the the devil's in the details with these treasury companies. And um there's a big difference between a solid business deciding that they want to uh you know strengthen their balance sheet over the long term versus someone trying to you know think that they're going to be Michael Sailor 2.0 and have the capacity to you know carry out a lot of these much more complicated derivative based leveragebased strategies. So, um, you know, that's that's something I to be determined, right, what how this all plays out, but I think it's it's certainly and I was at the the Bitcoin conference a couple weeks ago and, you know, outside of uh maybe stable coins, I think the the treasuries was the dominant theme, right? everyone talking about the companies getting exposure and uh so I think it's just going to be a matter of how these companies actually do it and and people are going to have to do their due diligence on investing in these these stocks and and understanding why this company has a you know quote unquote Bitcoin strategy or or just buy Bitcoin or just buy Bitcoin which is save yourself the hassle you don't need to be an equity analyst we have we have better money just just buy Bitcoin that's a great point some people are scared to buy Bitcoin though, and I'll tell you why. It's I'm smiling, but it's actually not. It's a more serious topic, but some people are scared to buy Bitcoin because pulling up another tweet from Eric here, he mentions he read a piece about a whole family that has to go off the grid about their crypto and Bitcoin exposure. And he says, "Should not have to watch your back just because you made a smart investment." I wonder if these highly publicized cases will drive more use to ETFs versus self-custody. I mean, this is um so Brian, you could just buy Bitcoin, but some people are scared to do it because it's like you could pull up this chart here as well from Alex Thorne, which is what you reference what's happening. Yeah. Break down what's happening in the chart just for anybody that's not watching. Yeah. And so this is a chart here from Alex Thorne at Galaxy, who we had on the podcast last week. and he says 2025 is on track to be the most dangerous year ever for crypto owners. More than 25 documented physical attacks against crypto owners this year and the year isn't even halfway done. And mind you as well, this stat is like criminally under reportported as well. Um there's a lot of things that are just never reported. And so the chart he has is just breaking down by country and also by year. It's a bar chart by year and then different colors for different countries where these incidents are occurring. And to tie it all back, it does actually like these statistics ultimately do drive more demand to financial products like Bitcoin treasury companies or ETFs because people don't want to have to die for a trade. I think Michael said that before on the show and then it ultimately ties back to what we do here at OnRamp. But I'm curious like before going on my own tangent if any of you guys have an initial reaction to this data. I mean the one thing I want to call out somebody should you know if you're listening pull it up because if you look at the trend it basically directly is correlated to the price of Bitcoin. So you can see it in 14 lower and then you see the run up in 17 and then 18 and then it drops down during the bare and then similarly um you can kind of see it in the runup of 21 and then it kind of like dissipitates into the the bear and then it picks back up in 24 and then 25 is almost uh you know close to the 24 high and a little bit less than the 21 high but basically saying we're going to be much higher. And this is something we've been talking about behind the scenes and naturally have been more louder about it because it makes complete sense as the price appreciates if people are holding this stuff on their in on their person they're naturally exposed. And that's one of the big things we talk with clients about. It's like, you know, we can talk about differentiation on all these different aspects of custody and financial services, but we're the only people really have been saying this for a while and have an an a viable alternative if you're going to get spot exposure, reduce counterparty risk while also reducing your family from being um put into put at risk. And everyone else will position in a different way of do X, Y, or Z. And they're ultimately putting their clients at risk. And eventually their clients are going to wake up when something bad happens down the street because I hope it doesn't happen to them and then say, "Well, why didn't you tell me this?" And then that's when like people are just going to flee to better products. Um, so it's really unfortunate and it's really unfortunate that like people don't talk or have the foresight because I think a lot of people know this but they don't have a solution. So they rather talk the book of like their existing product. It's the rational thing that was always going to happen because this is why gold was sitting at banks. This is why custodians and banks have existed for thousands of years is because ultimately if you hold all your wealth on your person, bad things happen because pe bad people exist and they want it. Yeah. I think I would just say like I think it's great that you guys um talk about this a lot because I think it's a a hugely important part of this um investing in this asset class to kind of understand what it is, how it's different and um and I think you know there's a lot of like there's a lot of folks out there that I think you know think of self- sovereignty as being like the most important thing and it obviously is incredibly important. Um however like you also have to kind of think about who you are like individually as a person like are you a technical person that can manage all this stuff by yourself. um are you someone that is wants to, you know, s sec secure your physical home with fences and security systems and right and and so I think a lot of times like gets lost in like the debate um particularly among kind of like the Bitcoin community on Twitter is that like that's that's the ideal outcome for everyone and it's just not the case. The majority of people don't want to invest in something if they have to somehow become technical experts in in managing it. if they have to now, you know, figure out a way to defend their home from potential attacks and all this stuff, which is why, you know, I think it's it's so important what that you guys are are, you know, have the product that you do, but also that you're you're talking about this stuff because it's kind of like the the family's dirty secret that no one wants to to really talk about because I think it's like an uncomfortable conversation, but it's it's so important. And I think the the less we talk about it, the more risk there is of it happening to to people. Yeah, I mean I totally agree and it's not even about the physical risks only. I mean, these are obviously ever more present and unfortunately are only going going to grow over time because to Michael's point, if you look at the bar chart, it's correlated with the price of Bitcoin, and it makes sense, right? Because the price appreciates, people are securing more amount of wealth in their home or nearby. And then there's also more awareness around the asset class as well. And so, you can imagine how many people still don't even really understand or know anything about Bitcoin and how it's secured in 2025. and this is already a problem. Well, what does that look like in 2030 when Bitcoin is a half a million, a million or more? Maybe I'm being bearish and people are still using the same solutions to secure their asset. I mean, it's so there's obviously a huge problem with that. And then the digital side of it as well is becoming even more sophisticated, too. People are getting duped by social engineering attacks to give up access to an account or give up access to a wallet or seed phrase. Um, so there's really not many viable solutions in the market and of course we're talking our book, but it's also because it's true. I mean, I use on-ramp and team uses on-ramp for our own Bitcoin because it protects against these threats that are going to become more and more present. And so this is a serious conversation that people need to just think through for their business, for their family, because unfortunately it's just a one-way street. I mean, it's great that Bitcoin appreciates over time, but then there's also just need to be real about, okay, well, how do I actually secure this for the long term? Yeah. I'd like to like try to look at it all objectively in the sense of pretend on doesn't exist. It's really about like I just think of it as a bro broken side of market structure that that's possible because when you look at across asset classes people don't generally of course there's always edge cases because there's always desperate people and there's always things that happen bad in the world but you don't see this level of occurrence where people are robbed um for their equity or bond portfolio because you think about all the controls and things in place but in Bitcoin and digital assets and the problem is like most bad actors in the physical world don't even know about Bitcoin yet or that it's sitting on these devices in people's homes and all the things so that naturally is going to converge. And somebody can make the case, well, if we went into like a utopia and everyone had money and we're fine and the world's in a good place, but the reality is the world, we're long volatility, I think we'd agree, and we're going to be long kind of disruption just because of when you're changing a monetary order and you have inflation that's running rampant. You're going to have people that are not only desperate, but feel like maybe they didn't get their fair shake and a lot of people are going to be exposed. And so the alternative shouldn't be an ETF or a public treasury company because you're still having a bunch of risk if that's your trade-off that's fair for for now if you're going to hold a hardware device, but that's where products and services as the market grows starts to um you know grow around it that gives you the natural exposure you would want without all of the counterparty risk of somebody being robbing you. So I think it's just a logical progression where this is really the key thing I've always keyed in on here is that it's this is how early we are. We hadn't figured out custody like this is how early like maybe we're pre you know 1995 to 2000 in the internet bubble where we're just trying to figure out like these primitives and how do you make them kind of dynamic and and all the things related but we haven't even got to that 2000 crescendo and I think that's what's going to happen with these pub codes is eventually like we're going to have this blowoff top and then kind of go into a like deeper bear that we went into from 2000 to 20058 once you know iPhone and things like that Uber Airbnb came about. You didn't hear Michael Michael Sailor said there's no more crypto winner, Michael. No more winners. I think it's all relative is the big problem, right? Because we could go to a million over and then drop to 200k and people will just be like, "Oh, this thing was always a grift and a Ponzi and associated with Bitcoin when it was like people, you know, running up shell companies. That's the funniest part about the shell company stuff is like it's this is a crazy this is a this is a product of how crazy the world is in and generally you know when you have money dislocated from real value is that it is turned around as a positive that you don't have any economic advantage outside of being an acquisition vehicle right like Jerry you keyed on it's like you got to have some productive utility if you're going to use debt and leverage not the underlying because that's the equivalent of like somebody taking out a credit card and say they're just going to keep buying more credit cards to buy more Bitcoin and not have a plan if it delevers like that's ly or somebody calls the capital 100%. Yeah. Well, we're coming up on time here. Any final thoughts? Anything we didn't cover that we want to get into real quick? Or did we uh do a good job this week? Also, if we did a good job this week, please let us know in the comments section or tell us what we didn't do and we'll maybe try to improve. Sound off in the comments. Like and subscribe. All right. I'm I'm not hearing anything. So, uh Jerry, want to thank you for coming on the show today. Um yeah, if people want to get in touch with you to discuss, you know, anything we chatted about, where should they find you? Yeah. Oh, so uh Twitter, OSHA GT is my handle. Um hashtags, you can find our research and ways to contact me there as well. But really appreciate you guys having me on. I think you all know I'm a big consumer of your content. So appreciate uh having the opportunity to speak with you. Easter egg if you made it this far. We've talked about this a long time about the last trade dinner series and I know you guys are going to be in DC at the Bitcoin Policy Institute. Maybe that's when it gets kicked off. So, if anybody wants to attend, they should shoot us an email. Yeah, reach out. Let us know why uh you'd be a good guest and we'll set up a maybe I got to talk to Jackson Brian first. But I would imagine Jared would enjoy seeing everyone in person. But yeah, uh BP BP last trade dinner series. Yeah, I love it. Well, Jerry, thank you. Really appreciate the time. Good to connect. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, guys. Take care. 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 in 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.