Oil & Gas Veteran: Why Energy and Bitcoin Must Go Higher

Let's be clear, Bitcoin is an international [music] asset. >> We are spending like drunken sailors. >> Bitcoin is the only economic entity where the [music] supply is unaffected by the demand. >> If you want [music] to preserve your wealth, you have to convert that currency into an asset that's [music] scarce, desirable, portable, durable, and maintainable. [music] All right, had a great conversation this week with Matthew Montgomery of Mablo. Matthew's the founder and managing director. He brings 20 plus years of oil and gas experience and his fund strategy focuses on the mineral royalty space. Now, listeners of the show may be more familiar with Bitcoin than they are the mineral and royalty space. And don't worry, we covered both. We discussed how Matthew is pioneering Bitcoin as part of his fund investment strategy and why both energy prices and Bitcoin will go much higher. Excited for this and for Matthew and the Mavlo team because I ultimately think that Bitcoin will get in the hands of many investors through investment strategies like this. And so excited for you to check out this episode, get perspectives that maybe are different from you. I think you'll learn from it as I did as well. So enjoy this one and thanks for tuning in to Scarce Assets. Welcome back to Scarce Assets. Matthew Montgomery, it's great to have you on the show today. You're the founder and managing director of MVLO and you are an oil and gas investment professional and you're bridging the gap in a new investment strategy, oil and gas energy sector with Bitcoin. We're going to get more into that on the second half of the show. Really excited for this one. I think I'm going to learn a lot as well as the audience too here. So, Matthew, thanks for joining us. How's it going? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks for thanks for having me, Jackson. It's it's a privilege to come on your show. Um, I appreciate your willingness to to let me come on and and unpack what we're doing here at MVLO. >> Give us a sense of your background if you don't mind. Um, oil and gas energy. How did you get interested? >> Just set the stage so we get a better sense of who you are. >> Yeah, so I um I I'm I'm a land man by trade. Um, I my background really my degree is in finance and I was really focused on real estate development when I got out of school. Um, and and there's a lot of serendipity. You'll hear me say that often in this in this conversation, but um through that kind of serendipity window, the the shell revolution here in the United States, specifically the Barnett Shale, um I finished school in in in at UTA in Arlington and um that was really kind of the first shale play that took off in 03 04. Um and so it was it was a great time um to get in the business. I didn't I you know had no background in in geology or or engineering or any of the technical sciences that you would normally think of um in the oil and gas space. But yeah, so started there in in the Barnett Shell. That led to some opportunities. My wife and I moved to Louisiana, uh, where I was, um, head of a brokerage business there, and and we bought leases in in outside of Shreport, Louisiana, northwest Louisiana, parts of East Texas, and really helped bring to fruition the Hannesville Shell, which was a another shell um shell field development that took place. And then that ultimately led me to um a head hunter found me and and I took a job here in Denver where we still are at. Uh we moved our family here and and got to work in-house uh drilling drilling wells and chasing deals. It was a it was a private equity sponsored portfolio company. So, it was really cool to see um how the private equity world, at least in the oil and gas space, thinks and and underwrites deals and and builds portfolio companies and and the big dollars that that they bring from Wall Street and the even as far up as the pension funds and um some of those really really big check sizes. It was interesting to see how that all kind of came to, you know, together. um took those those sheets out of the playbook and formulated um Mavlo company and was crazy enough and had a wife that was patient enough for me to go out on my own. Um did that in 2018 and and um yeah, the rest is history. We've been kind of just going forward and just one one step in front of the in front of the next. >> So, Matthew, uh appreciate the intro. I think need to take one step back real quick because we need to define define some things before we keep moving forward. So you mentioned graduating um from UT in 2003 2004 area and seeing the opportunity. Um you mentioned the uh the Barnett Shale in particular. Can you just kind of define these these terms that are obvious to you but may maybe not obvious to the audience who doesn't have a background in oil and gas. get excited that that someone would want to have a conversation with little Mayflow. So, I apologize. Yeah. And if I go if I if I go too fast, then absolutely slow me down. So, the Barnett Shell um well, I graduated from UTA in Arlington. Uh was not in Austin. That's a big that would be a big I got to disclaim that because it'd be a huge argument in my house. We're full of Red Raiders uh at our house. So, if I if I my kids see this or in-laws, what have you. So, I need to disclaim that first. But um yeah, my background was in finance. I um was very very fortunate to um interview and land my first job with a man named Larry Dale um out of Dallas. He was a a longtime oil man, drilled wells, was an independent. Um I really kind of had aspirations or itch I think maybe to to pursue law school. Um I had, you know, taken the exam and had my application, was all ready to go to law school. Um, and he gave me an opportunity. He put me in his hip pocket and he said, 'Look, I'll if you'll just come and help me through this process. Um, I'll teach you everything I know. And what a what a gift, man. What a gift. I was in my early 20s. Um, got to sit on really big board meetings and see capital raises, see how joint operating agreements come together. Um, and you know, you know what you know and you know what you don't know kind of at that time. Um, and really could really even today. But it afforded me an opportunity to get in and I had no idea what and how big the Shell revolution would take off. Um, shale is a is a is a very um it's I could go on and on, but the shale revolution really caught on when we mixed horizontal drilling and slick water fracking together to where we could drill into what is the source rock of many conventional um oil and gas basins. And so when we think about conventional oil and gas basins, think about think about a sand formation or maybe you've been to the beach and you can walk out as you walk out into the ocean, you hit multiple sand bars. Okay? And if I take Jackson, if I take a bucket of sand and and and fill it up and then pour water on the top of it for at the shore, you can see that water permeate through that sand. That's a very conventional and I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but that's a conventional uh structure. And that's typically where you would see industry drill vertical um wells and then they would land those wells into sand formations. And then and and in those sand formations geologically you would have oil and and natural gas hydrocarbon that would leak up and permeate into those into those sand bars. And so you would take a just a vertical well almost just like a a straw. it would tap into that sandbar and you would extract that hydrocarbon out. Uh beginning in like really kind of 2000 999 2000 2001 the industry as a whole was trying to figure out how to drill into the into the source rock where the where the hydrocarbon is formulated where it compresses where it's that there's enough heat and organic content for it to make oil and natural gas and that's in the shale. problem with the shell is it's extremely dense. So, take that same analogy where we're sitting on the we're at the shoreline and we have this bucket. One buck is full of sand. Now, if I take the same um bucket and I put frankly a bowling ball or like granite and we pour that same water on top, it's just going to fall off to the sides. That That's a a very loose um comparison of shale, which is unconventional, and sand, which is conventional. in the in the geological world that we live in. What industry figured out is if we can shatter that bowling ball or maybe like the better example is if a rock flies off and hits your windshield, it begins that spiderweb of a fractured network that creates a path for the hydrocarbon to permeate through and ultimately get into the wellbor. And so it was this this serendipitous time where technology was such that we could drill down into the horizon and drill horizontally into that shell formation. It's extremely dense. It's not doing anything. And and then industry came behind and learned if we frack that shell and bust up that rock, then you have a you're into the source rock. Um this all really transpired and really took off in 0304 in the Barnes shale. Guy named George Mitchell was a huge pioneer uh behind this process and this thesis and so the industry jumped on board very quickly. And so here I am this guy that that studied finance, right? Needs a job um and was fortunate enough to connect with an oil man that was pursuing um this Barnett shale. And at the time, um, you had Denton County, which is north, uh, north central Texas, and then you had a, um, Johnson County, and in between it was Tarant County, which is where downtown Fort Worth is at, if you're familiar with the area. And what we learned about the shale geology is it's very quiet, meaning um, it's not you're not wilding. You're not drilling a well and then scoot over a mile and you drill a dry hole. That's not Shell at all. Shell is a very quiet formation and so you it covers extreme distances as we think about it in the oil and gas world. And so what what Larry was playing is hey there's productive wells to the north up in Denton and there's productive wells down south by Johnson County. The shell is going to be in between. And so we began leasing up um mineral rights. Um, and a lease agreement is just where we approach the mineral owner and say, "Hey, we want to drill um, and extract this hydrocarbon that's underneath your property. But in order to do so, we need a contract. We need to come together and understand the rules of engagement, right? Like what what we're going to pay for, what we're going to pay you, what what we're going to do, what we're not going to do. That's all parts of the oil and gas lease." Um and so that that led me into this like career as a landman in in 0304 and and um looking back I had no I just didn't you know I didn't know that this there's and neither did any of the industry realize that what we started in the Barnett would morph into the Eagleford that's in South Texas then the Fagatville shale that's in Arkansas the Hannesville I mean the list goes on and on right I mean you have the Marcel Ellis shell, the Udica shell. It's parts of of northeast where you're at. Um, and then in the Dakotas, uh, you have the Bacan shell, a very oily formation. There's shell formation in Oklahoma, Colorado, and then ultimately the prized pig that everyone loves to talk about is the Perian Basin, um, where you have the Perian and the Delaware. And so all these shell, it just and we'll talk more about it, how the shell revolution um took our country from from a net importer to a net exporter. And um you hear that, but it's it's uh and sometimes you see early on in kind of 0 o 0708 910 there'd be an occasional article in the Wall Street Journal where you'd hear about it, but to really appreciate and see it firsthand was was an a part of my career that that was just exceptional. and and um well, it still is today, right? But it's uh it's been a fun ride. >> Yeah. Thanks for walking us through that. So, if I caught the name correctly, is it Larry Davis? >> Uh Larry Dale. Dale L. >> Larry Dale. Okay. So, you got teamed up with Larry Dale in the early 2000s and technology allowed for the shale revolution in the early stages. It almost sounds a lot like Bitcoin, which we'll get into later in the conversation where you mentioned early days in shale. People didn't fully appreciate or realize to what extent this technology would allow for um you know, more energy, more production, and what that would mean for our economy, for economies globally. And I almost think of Bitcoin just in the sense of, you know, we celebrated the the white paper day. Us Bitcoin nerds uh celebrated the white paper day on the 31st of October, just a few days ago. And at that time there wasn't really a clear uh there still isn't necessarily a clear path forward of what Bitcoin would become, right? And so it's really interesting to hear of what those early days were serendipity. You were looking for an opportunity. Larry Dale had the opportunity and it just so happened right place at the right time and you had the, you know, the professional chops, the the wits to really lean in there and make a career which is uh really fascinating because I would love to better understand because this isn't my background uh necessarily. I I'm learning in real time with the audience. though I would love to ask you just in terms of >> we touched a little bit how you got interested at that time in those early days and you could also tie it into today as well when you were speaking with the boardrooms and the investors tell us a little bit about the investment thesis what would get people excited about participating with you guys >> yeah no it's a great question it's um I come back to kind of like you know what you know you know what you don't know and and so this this um chapter of of my career at the time, I I didn't know very much, you know, little little to nothing. Um, but what was very apparent and and a common denominator was when Larry would get well results. Yeah. or when we would have communications with investors and partners in the venture that we were on, those partners were also very seasoned oil and gas guys that they had seen a lot. They'd been through booms, uh, oil oil town booms and busts, you know, the 70s, the 80s, even the the low parts of of the late 1990s. And what I began to pick up was these guys are talking about production rates. They're talking about well results that they've never seen in 20, 30, 40 years of their oil and gas career. And so I was very keen to to to pick that up and go, I don't really understand this the size and scope of what we're building and what's under the literally under the ground here. Um, but I could recognize that guys that had been in the business for a long, you know, multi-dead couldn't they they I mean like they couldn't get enough, right? So, our meetings and our capital raises were extremely fast-paced. Uh, which is, you know, there there's a lot of parallel there to the to the Bitcoin um environment. And it's such it's you feel like you kind of just get your head around the idea and then something changes or a new product comes out or there's a new a new a nuance that you didn't understand before. So that part of this whole experience for me has been very parallel to the earliest days of the shell revolution. Um, and we think about as you as you ask like what are those conversations like and what are the it was um there weren't very many in fact I can't even really think of one of our earliest partners that were not in the oil and gas space a lot of oil and gas veterans that did the the Shell Revolution starting with the Barnett was really kind of the twilight of their career. It's something they've been waiting on for goodness 20, 30, 40 years. Um, and so that that part of it was very exciting. The conversations were were very dynamic and it was it was so much about speed. How fast could we build our position? How fast could we get our well results in? um it the kind of natural evolution and the shell revolution was really kind of in my opinion there'll probably be some in my space that disagree with this but um kind of the first three innings I think I would call it was really the the heyday of the land man and the business development person. It was all about how much land you could get and and put on your balance sheet from perspective to operate on, right? That that inning four through six was really the heyday of the operational efficiencies. And so the engineer really got their day in the in the sun, right? How efficient are they? literally down to measurable distance of by the foot and great, you know, sa sand gradients and water flows and uh downhole pressures. It's still very much an important part of of what's going on just as much as the land. But that was really the engineers heyday. And now I think that I believe that we're starting to see that transition in the industry in the oil and gas industry. And and and not to say that inning nine is just going to be like this total turn off the lights, but um and that's really going to be more focused on the finance guys, the CFOs, the um big capital discipline is such a huge part in our industry now. Um you're seeing more and more of the seauite in operating companies that are um led or soon to be led by um financeers and and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I just think it's an evolution of of where it's at and where it's going. Um, but it it'll be an interesting an interesting time. Their day in the sun is certainly starting to begin. >> Here's what keeps Bitcoiners awake. You're still securing millions of dollars the same way you secured thousands. That hardware wallet in your drawer, your family's entire future depends on you not losing it, forgetting the PIN, or something happening to you. Onramp's multi-institution custody removes that burden. Three independent institutions hold your keys. No single point of failure. No seed phrases to protect. No explaining complex recovery processes to your spouse. And now we're offering flat tier pricing. One predictable monthly fee starting at $250 whether Bitcoin is at 100K or 500K. Plus with on-ramp IAS you get the same institutional security with tax advantaged growth. This is how smart investors protect generational wealth without the weight on their shoulders. There's strength in many. Learn more at onrampbitcoin.com. It's fascinating. You know, I'm really not trying to force the uh parallels here, but I can't help my my Bitcoin brain just being in it 247. There is so many parallels of what you just described in terms of those early days of the shale revolution. Um, initially you mentioned it was like a fast-paced opportunity. It was a a land grab game. how much land could you acquire? And then it evolved to how could you efficiently operate and then you mentioned now it's more so how can you do things in a savvy way as it relates to financing or other you know maybe interesting structures um on the investment side and a lot of that does sound like bitcoin whereas just the early days were accumulation um and now I think we're more at the you know clearly with strategy and other bitcoin treasury companies you're seeing a lot of this um you approach of leveraging capital markets, equity debt markets to try to acquire more Bitcoin. Now, we're still in the very early stages of that as it relates to Bitcoin. So, it's still remains to be seen how that'll play out exactly, but um fascinating parallel there and want to get your thoughts on just tying it together now with you gave us a background on how you got into this, where the opportunity was. You mentioned how exciting it was as well for some of the people who are at the twilight of their careers. I almost think of the folks who've been in precious metals for so long that finally embraced Bitcoin because they've been fighting the good fight and have seen all the problems with the uh the fiscal and monetary plumbing of the United States >> at the twilight of maybe 30 or 40 years being in the precious metal space now seeing a solution in Bitcoin as well. And so if you could kind of bridge the gap to where you are today with Mavello in the sense of speaking with investors um what are those conversations like? And I need to ask as well could you explain maybe before what the conversations with investors are and what are the merits of getting involved with a strategy like yours X Bitcoin. We'll get to the Bitcoin part. Could you explain the mineral royalty space and where you focus today? >> No, it's great. So, you know, I just kind of went through this whole scenario of the Shell Revolution, the Shell Revolution, and and it's um I the really I spent the first 20 years of my career in that space working for brokerages, um land service companies, operating companies, drilling wells. Um and and a large part of that with the Shell Revolution, it's been fantastic for our country as a whole. Okay. Um but with it really came the the demise that might be a little strong but the demise of the oil and gas independent. You know when you think about um the 60s the 70s the 80s there's lots of independ independence for everywhere. I would call I'd call you Jackson and say hey Jackson um I'm coming to see you get three or four of your best buddies. Let's go play golf. I've got this geology prospect and we want to go drill five wells, okay? And I'm going to operate it. I've got the geology put together, the lands put together, I'm raising some capital and we're going to drill all five wells. The whole joint venture might be half a million dollars, right? $100,000 wells. Um, and clearly that's not lost on me. That's that's still a lot of money for a lot of folks, but that was really kind of how the the space worked um up until the Shell Revolution because of the technology, because of the depth of the of these shell basins. These are not $100,000, $200,000 drill and complete wells. These are 10, 12, more often $15 million a piece. So every hole that is being poked in the ground, you're looking at 10 to 15 million of of drilling capital that's needed. And so as you can imagine, that compressed the the independent space drastically. Um, and so where I'm headed with this is that in my opinion, because it takes such an enormous amount of capital when you put a hundred a 100 wells together in one year, um, you need to have 100 mill, I mean, obviously 100, you know, a significant amount of money to go and execute this strategy. And that wasn't me. I didn't have that kind of stroke. And so um myself, many others in the space looked at it as we want I wanted to remain in the energy space. I loved the oil and gas business. Um I didn't have hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to go build my own oil company. And so I began buying the minerals and the royalties beneath the surface of where these oil companies would drill. Sometimes already had drilled. And we'd buy fractional interest in those wells. and then we'd be positioned so that when they came back to drill that second, third, fourth well, we would see upside um from that. And so it allowed me to quasi be an independent, be in the space um and and then you can flex that. You can be uh you can be in the mineral space with half a million bucks and there's publicly traded mineral and royalty vehicles that that trade on the stock exchange today and they're multi-billion dollar enterprises. Um so the sandbox is still exceptionally large from the opportunity the TAM right to opportunity that's still out there. Um but it allowed this this kind of entrepreneurial independent space. And so that's a big part of how I ended up in the royalty space. Um, royalties are, let's define that just real quick, right? Um, royalties are a a function. They're a classification of real property. When you, Jackson, and you go buy your your um your house, you're going to own a bundle of sticks attributed to that to that deed that's deeded into you. You have surface rights. you have executive rights that you you control um what can be done to the property, you can grant an easement, right? And one of those bundles or excuse me, one of those sticks in the bundle is the mineral rights. And so what people don't realize in in this country is um you could live in the Northeast where you're at. You could inherit the mineral rights to a piece of property in Oklahoma um and have a cousin that lives in Seattle. uh that also has a fractional interest to those minerals in Oklahoma. And so it's a very transferable uh real property component there. Um and so what we uh in our vehicles we solicit, negotiate, and purchase from willing sellers their mineral interest to productive horizons that we believe either already have production or will have future production on them. So, we're not in the drilling world. We don't operate wells. We don't frack wells. Um, we're just taking a real property asset and using the experience that we've had for the last 20 years, knowing these basins and opportunistically pursue um the minerals that are that are in play and and that's what we do for our investors. Um, not sure. Could I ask >> you another part to your question there though of my >> No. Um I did but I that was a good stopping point because it makes a lot of sense in terms of you mentioned initially wanting to stay in the space didn't have the capital to acquire. Found an opportunity with mineral rights. They're transferable um less capital intensive give you ownership and income stream. And so could you walk us through high level just what that looks like in terms of um a discussion between your team at MVLO and a seller of mineral rights? What's motivating them potentially? I'm sure there's many reasons, but what are some of the common motivators for selling? And could you walk us through on your side on the strategy? What are you looking for in terms of acquisition? >> Yep. Um, I get this question a lot like why if if the minerals are there and maybe someone inherited them, why would they ever sell? And there's this little game called life that we're all playing, right? Um, more often than not, we'll talk to um, heirs of usually second or third generation where it might have been a farmer that owned 800 acres in South Texas and he farmed that land. And then as as he has passed down, it's not owned by one single individual. It's not owned by the the minerals are not owned by the surface. Um, and the heirs that are, you know, there's there might be 15 to 20 heirs. Well, you know, if you owned 800 acres of minerals, that's pretty pretty valuable, right? That's that's a strong position to be in. But as it comes down, now you're talking to, you know, 120th interest in 800 acres. And they've never been to the property. They live in Florida. Um, they don't, you know, they don't have any any ambition to be a farmer in South Texas. Um, and maybe it has a little bit of income stream off of it. Maybe there's five or six wells. Maybe there's 10 wells across it and they've been drilled over the course of of say the last five, six, seven years. So they're they're receiving u revenue stream already and they and they have this life event, right? They're their kids going to college or they they have a death in the family or they um want to consolidate debt. So there's there's opportunity. There's liquidity there and say, "Hey, look, I have this income stream. I'm never going to go back out and be a farmer. Um, could I sell half of my 120th interest? Yeah, sure. We'll we'll make that trade. We'll underwrite that deal. Um, oftent times that turns in six months later they call us back and say, "Hey, like I'm ready to sell the the remaining half of what I sold you previously." That's a lot of the types of conversations that we have. Um, and it ranges. Sometimes we talk to like we've got a deal right now we're working on in West Texas. um that was a carveout from an estate. Um it's always easier to split cash than it is to split uh real property, right? If you inherited several million dollars of raw land, it's like, well, great. That that's that's amazing. That feels great. Um but it's always easier for you to split the cash than it would be that that that land. And so that's where we can step in and provide some liquidity to that to that environment. Um that's really kind of the the 101 um of what we look for and what we're you know we we we view it as we're providing a service. I mean, these folks don't have liquidity otherwise. Um, and we give them I think minerals are are one of the greatest option value propositions that exist. And when you're in the oil and gas mineral business, you can develop your you can drill that next well. If you own the minerals, you can lease them to an operating company to uh drill that well for you. You can bequef those in your estate. You can hand them down. Um you can and look the one of the decisions is you can do nothing. That's also a variable in the equation. It it's there's extreme optionality in the mineral space. Um and we just we we're one of those rungs in the will and and have been and will continue to be. >> Yeah. Fascinating. Appreciate the context there. I actually worked in the uh agricultural space prior to on-ramp. Um and we don't need to get into the details, but a lot of times I wasn't on the deal side. that was on the sales side of the business. Um, so working with investors who were allocating capital to agriculture and specifically US farmland for a number of reasons, you know, income, inflation protection, capital appreciation, etc. But a lot of the deal sourcing was similar where it was multigenerational land. Yeah, >> it was inherited by the grand, you know, the grand uh children or great grandchildren. There's a lot of them uh it's illquid. They don't visit the property. they don't want to deal with tenants and a lot of them, you know, just want the cash, right? So, it's similar to a dynamic that you just described there and I guess probably fairly fairly common across kind of the real asset landscape. Now, um, one of the focal points of the conversation is obviously some of the things we'll get to in terms of how Bitcoin fits into the investment strategy, which I think is fascinating and an area that you're really pioneering. But I think in order to get there, we need to address a couple of things first. And so, first and foremost, on the investor side, so when you're working with investors and they're coming to you or you're pitching them um on the merits of a strategy like yours at MVLO, I'm curious what the motivations are typically for investing. Is it income generation? Is it inflation protection? Is it a mix of both? Is it another thing I'm not thinking of, diversification? What are the common themes you see there? And then I have a second part of the question, but let's let's start there. >> Yeah. So, themewise, I I think that it's it's uh it's best culminated from our LPs on on income stream and diversification. In each of our we're in the we're in the midst of of closing our fourth fund, the first three funds that we've raised and deployed, um we've we've doubled our LP count. We've doubled our capital that we've brought in. Um, and the the common denominator there is looking for an income stream. Um, I have a lot of guys that are that are real estate developers or and or I have a lot of LPs that are um business owner operators and they have a real estate portfolio and they go, "Hey, look, like I love the passive income stream here, but I'm not real keen on getting another roof. I got a, you know, leaky roof, tenant, leaky toilet, like all those kind of things. I just want to see the income stream. And so that's that's kind of the first layer uh of how it begins. Um then they then they recognize that the diversification that's associated with it. Um we're we're unlevered and as well as unhedged. And so we ride the ups and we ride the downs on the commodity structure, good and bad. Um, and so that can bode for colorful conversations on both on both ends, trust me. Um, but the themes from our LPs, um, have have predominantly been, um, hey, I've got this wedge of capital. Um, I want to be in in an alternative space. My my thesis here, this is the LP, is I want to see income generation. Um, I want to see diversification. And I've always heard, now I get this often, I've always heard that oil and gas is a great influ inflation hatch. Um, which it is, and we can we can unpack that as much as you'd like, but it's um that those are the really the um starting conversations that we typically have with all of our LPs for reasons that they want to get into the energy space. >> Here's the conversation no one wants to have. If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin? Really think about it. 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Uh people are looking for other sources of income. What I saw um in a previous life was especially in the zero interest rate days. I mean, we're we're well above that right now, but historically speaking, rates are still fairly low, >> but you know, um people are starved for yield. And I I bet you saw that as well, right? Where cap rates were so low, um you know, fixed income instruments, US government was paying close to zero, you know, 1% 2%. And so I could imagine that there was a lot of appetite from investors seeking first and foremost income generation. But the interesting well there's multiple interesting angles but one of the interesting angles as well is that this income generation seems to be um tied to well it is tied to the prices of energy. So naturally it is an inflation hedge as well which you can't say the same with fixed income securities as an example. So yeah what what makes oil and gas a great inflation hedge? Um >> yeah how do you think about that? Yeah, it's on the inflation hedge side. It's it's um I think the I'm painting with a broad brush here a bit, Jax, but it's it's largely in we want to get out of cash and get into an asset. And you know, I might have an LP that's got relative exposure to real estate, maybe a little bit of gold, um and has a bit of land. And so they look at those items and go, "Hey, like u the only one that really kind of does anything for me from a yield perspective is real estate." Um, but oftent times they've either levered up on it or had some relative experience with it. Um, you're taxed every year on your real estate holdings, at least in Texas. Um and so they'd look at hey can I shift or allocate you know shift out of and or allocate new capital into uh an environment that will still give me that inflation hedge but answer rings the bell from the yield perspective. Um, energy energy is this inflationary hedge because as a mineral owner, well, not because of, but a a nuance of the of the mineral owner is that we're owning the hydrocarbon in the ground. So, all of our funds, we we do year-end reserve reports. Our investors get a a a very clear line of sight of what their allocated percentage of the actual hydrocarbon, the oil, the gas, the natural gas liquids that we own on the balance sheet and hold that as a as frankly a a preservation in some instances. And here we are again, this parallel to Bitcoin, right? um the preservation of of of value and preservation of capital that's sunk into the ground quite literally from the acquisitions that we make to the hydrocarbon that they own in the ground. Um and and that's been usually that's a that's kind of a round two conversation particularly when they kind of go through that first launch of of the fund that they're in recognize that there's there's um yield that comes with it. um we're in a depleting resource environment. So unlike real estate where you can you see that appreciation, there are tax advantages that we that we take it, you know, that we step into because of the depletion of the resource. And so there's some nuances there that are that are quite um compelling, right, to the typical LP that comes into a fund with us. Um, but as we continue the conversations with them, they look at it and go, gosh, you know, I invested into a mineral fund with you, Matthew, and our reserves. We've got a 20, 30, 40 year reserve life. We can see income stream and passive flows for multiple decades out. Do we know what the price of oil and gas is going to be? Of course not, right? like we all kind of have a general um leading price deck that we work with, but they look at it and go, "Man, I put some capital over here. I'm getting this yield. It's protected, and I can see that the visibility to the resource in the ground is locked in." And that that is a part that rings a bell. Um, with even in LPs that I have that have never been in the oil and gas business, um, maybe they're longtime real estate investors, they they appreciate that lock in of value very quickly. Makes a lot of sense, right? Because people for a number of reasons are looking for assets that can provide a reliable cash, you know, reliable um, stream of income. And one of the things that you said that stuck out to me early in that answer was people want to get out of cash and into an asset. Now this is something that anyone that has, you know, some amount of wealth understands this innately because they are actively allocating capital out of a checking account, out of a savings account. But I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate why they're doing that or they don't necessarily understand the root cause of why they're doing that. So, if we could try to bridge the gap now and bring some Bitcoin into the conversation, help me understand when Bitcoin got on your radar >> and how did the professional background that you have influence your understanding of it >> and get you to a point where you're so convicted in it that you wanted to incorporate it into the investment strategy, which we'll unpack more, but Yeah. [laughter] Start there. >> There's a lot. There's a lot there. So, >> yeah. >> Um, maybe some of your listeners know Tim Cottsman, maybe not. Um, Tim is a is a or was, I should say, a land man himself. Um, and so Tim and I, we traded, we were on opposite sides of the table from a couple of different trades from just pure oil and gas trades. Um, I can't quite remember if he was selling, I was buying, or I was selling, he was buy. I can't I can't tell you. is years ago, but I've I've just always stayed in touch with him. Um, I reached out to him, gosh, I guess it was last September. I was in New York for a natural gas or sorry, a natural resources convention. It was a bunch of um, like really big think tanks around the commodity complex and where prices are going and supply demand, all this kind of stuff. And I said, "Hey, Tim, like let's go get dinner." Uh we met for for dinner and drinks and all he could talk about literally was Bitcoin and Micro Strategy and Bitcoin and Bitcoin and Bitcoin and I thought he's lost his mind. You know, I came away from dinner going, "What in the world?" Um but then on the flight back to Denver, I began to he sent me a handful, well I say handful, maybe three or four different podcasts, on-ramp being one of them. Okay. Um, so I started watching the videos and and so much of what they were talking about was this concept of sound money, of hard assets, right? Like, and it resonated so quickly. And then what layered on top of it was the the electricity of these guys that had been in Bitcoin, yourself, Michael, guys over at um at True North and their podcast. I was just just trying to get my head around, but the electricity and the energy reminded me those early shale days. I said, "Okay, so I can I'm starting to see why he's so electric about this and the opportunity set, the scale and size and what's happening." Um, and that was the end of last year. That's what led me down this really deep dive of sell money um and and hard assets. And the more I kind of would I would do enough research, come back up the rabbit hole, reflect on Mavel's track record, what do we own, what's been working, what do we what do we have expertise in, right? Well, turns out it's hard assets. It's this uh scarce asset in oil and gas. Um it's this like uh proofof work concept that it that's inside of Bitcoin. uh that resonated with me really hard of, you know, this isn't just like uh hey, you can get Bitcoin and someone pushes a button on a keyboard and then w bam there's just more of it out there. There's this process of of the proof of the work that continues to get more and more difficult. Um and I thought this is like drilling a oil well. You know, people think, oh yeah, well, you're in the oil business, right? Like you just uh you just ride around in West Texas and you drill these wells. It's like, man, it's so hard, right? Um and and so the proof of work part was kind of my aha moment to go I've really got to understand as much of this as fast as I possibly can. Um because of the because of the nature of the of largely how the shell revolution took off. It was like every quarter we saw a new company, a new private equity shop, a new finance, a new play would emerge and it was like oh my gosh this changes everything. Wait 90 days. Oh my gosh, this changes everything. And so, um, that excitement, that, uh, that energy in and around what's happening in the bit Bitcoin ecosystem, um, I was like, hey, like I've I've hit this point in my career, like I remember this. I remember when this happened and it small plays became bigger. There was this kind of adage in the shell play is small plays get bigger and big plays get biggest. And at the time I was 20some. I was like, what what you like what does that mean? Um, and I think that's where we're at in Bitcoin is is small incremental moves get bigger. Um, we've seen it politically at the federal level, at the state level. Um, even on the even on the company level, right now you have so many different Bitcoin treasury um [snorts] ways that they're getting involved. So small plays become big and then bigger, you know, those big plays get enormous. And I think that's where we're at. Um, what's the time horizon on that? I don't know yet. But um right, how long is a piece of string? We'll we'll soon see. Um so through that all through this process, I'm looking at going, "Oh my gosh, okay, here's a here's a hard asset has this proofof work concept. Um it it's a store of value, right? It's digital gold." I started to really kind of resonate around those things and saying, "Well, wait a minute. This is what Mavel does. We're in this in and you to pull a phrase from Michael. So, we're in this analog world almost, right? Like I if if you want to get into the oil and gas space, like there's a process, right? It's um hey Jackson, we're going to stand up this fund, make a contribution into the fund, we'll execute the strategy, we'll buy those minerals, we'll we'll steward that capital and and we're going to send you distribution from that. to have a claim to those minerals. But man, that takes takes a lot of time and a lot of brain power and a lot of uh a lot of elbow grease, right? Whereas you come to this digital this digital aha moment of oh my gosh, like I can store value um it's it's um decentralized, which is a massive part, right? um massively scarce asset, the most scarce asset we've ever seen. So that resonated with me from an oil and gas perspective. We're in this depleting world of oil and gas assets. And so I started lining up all the check boxes and going, golly, like we need to do a better job communicating to our partners that there is this thing that is extremely parallel to what you're already investing in, but it's in a digital environment. can literally swipe a phone and position capital into Bitcoin and put it in multi-institution custody. Thank thank goodness for you guys, which we I'm sure we'll talk about, but we use on-ramp um inside of our fourth fund. I have it on my corporate balance sheet as well, but um that's that's really kind of my aha moment with Bitcoin. Started with Tim Cod, so shout out to him, Codsman. Um, and then just doing the work, right? I don't I I I told some investors the other day, Jackson, like um I had this I had this punch list. I should have printed it off, but it was like oftent times people start with Bitcoin as a speculation, right? They kind of like in and out. Can I time this right? In and out. and they the more they kind of hold on to it or toy with it, they re they then kind of move or graduate into okay like this is an investment, right? Like I'm I'm I could see where this could go on a on a scenario of a bull run. They treat it more as an investment. That quickly morphs into my opinion u hey um hedge against in debasement right like allocate 1% of your portfolio or 2%. And the more you do that, the more time you spend on it, which is what I've done, um, you land on what where I'm at is we look at at it as operational infrastructure. Now we are stacking coin um on our fourth fund balance sheet through the multi-deade cash flows of the oil and gas revenues that come in and it's an operational component of our fund and we we give that that operational upside um and and all the value creation that occurs with it back to our partners through that process. >> Yeah. So we should talk about that and appreciate you appreciate you uh running through that. What my mind goes to is that you are positioning the fund to take advantage of the fact that both of these assets have increasing scarcity, right? So at some point um you had mentioned that well first of all the oil wells themselves over time they're kind of a diminishing asset in terms of their production and there's also I don't I don't have the background and I don't have the knowledge but my perception of it and you can correct me if I'm wrong is that at some point we're we're going to hit uh peak production of these assets as well and gas and that energy is going to become more scarce as well. that is going to drive up prices of energy higher and meanwhile you have Bitcoin which continues to become more scarce over time because there's 21 million and every four years there's the having. So is that a accurate characterization of how you think about it or is there a lot more? >> Yeah, I' I've got a PowerPoint that if you'll if you'll afford me maybe 10 minutes I'd love to just paint a picture for you for the oil and gas side of things. I'm gonna pull that up. >> Pull it up right now. >> Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Okay, here we go. Yeah. All right. So, you're hitting on all the right themes and thesis here. Um, when we think about economics, and I'm not an economics guru, but it's very it's it's very um I want to say simple, but it's historic, right? We have this equilibrium of supply and demand. As as supply runs up, demand comes down. We find this equilibrium of price. Well, and gas works a little bit a little bit kind of on its head here because where we're at in the country is we have increasing demand, which we'll talk through here in just a second, and to your point, a very finite supply. And one of the key pieces here in the in our space is this Hubert curve. and and and there'll be people in my industry like oh my gosh Montgomery like what are you doing Hubert was a geoysicist um that work for Shale Sh l a Texas twain coming out there um and what he put together what his his whole kind of thought process was that oil and gas reservoirs there's their production curve is is a bell curve and it doesn't really matter how big or small those reser reservoirs are they are going to op function as a as a natural bell curve. And so that was what was the root behind people saying this is peak oil because he would he would look at production. You kind of see it here. He'd lay production out and then he would put his perfectly shaped bell curve on there and then say aha like here's where you know the end of the world. There's peak oil. We're not it's all it's all doom and gloom from this point forward. That's not my point. I I'm not here to predict, hey, oil peaks here, gas peaks here. What I want my LPs and your audience to understand is that is that shale plays, oil and gas, particularly in the shell plays vastly immense. Okay, we went from net importer to net exporter. We are we the United States are the 800 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to natural gas. uh which we'll we'll touch on in a little bit, but they're immense, but they are not infinite. At some point, we will roll over on the production side. Okay? And so, hold that thought. Um and then let's scroll down to this to this next slide. And so, we got two two really key variables here, supply and demand. What I want to talk about right now is this demand picture and especially as it pertains to the headline news. And this is where I think so much of the headlines and the news media talk about um the AI data center demand that's forthcoming. Um what's what is out there but not talked about is the exceptional growth in what's called the liquid natural gas market. So as I said, we're net exporter of natural gas. And so this graph on the left, you can see kind of where we're at. Our base load, let's frame this up a little bit here, Jackson. Our our base level production right now is about a 100 BCF, billion cubic feet of gas every day. And so now we have all this gas that we've brought online. And so naturally, the markets have found an a place to take this gas and ship it across the world. goes to parts of Europe, parts of Australia, and that market has only just begun. Right now, we we ship about um 10 to 12 BCF. So, 10 to 12% of our total in uh the liquid gas market. That's estimated to go upwards of 25 to 30 BCF a day by 2030. So, now we're seeing, oh my gosh. Okay, so we have this pie. It's a 100 BCF a day of supply. About 10% of that goes to LNG. That number is going to triple in the next five years. Okay? So, hold that thought. Then we think about um the AI data center revolution. I don't understand the the AI and the computer complexity of what that is. But what I do know is that in order for all of that to work, you've got to have a ton of electricity. And what we're seeing is that the the electricity demand is is flowing directly to the natural gas demand. We project that there's going to be an at least an another eight possibly 10 Bcf of gas that's demanded for electricity generation just for AI uh data center buildout. And so where where's Matthew going with all this? Um you you can pull down to that next slide. Um where Matthew's going with this is when we stack up LNG exports of 10 to 15 BCF a day. We have data centers at 8. We as a country we are retiring coal generation power plants. Our demand is continuing to grow. So there's the better part of 20 what I think will be 25 potentially 30 BCF of gas that we have never accounted for in the past. And so now you're getting into this man almost 25 to 35% of our country's supply goes off the market just in those two categories alone. Okay. Well, Matthew, you say we've got all this supply. That that answers the question. Something that's very important here is these these shale wells, regardless of what formation, are hyperbolic. They start high and they fall drastically. Um when we when the industry drills a new well, it recovers almost 80% of that entire well's productive life in the first two years. So year three to year 40 is is kind of the tail. It is the tail. It's the it's the last bit of that well. And so if you think about supply side and how much gas we need to produce in order to meet this growing demand, you go, well, okay, so like just drill the next well. Drill the next well. The problem with that is our industry has drilled out in the last 15 years. You can scroll to the next slide. Um, in the last 15 years, we have already drilled out the best parts of of all of the shell plays. And so, this is this is kind of that hopefully that aha slide. Um, it's it's a little small and that's my fault, but on the far left there, look at the graph that's on the bottom half. That's your that's your production supply. Um, all gas across the entire nation starting in 2010. And you can really see the ramp up from from becoming a net importer of gas, a next exporter of gas and what is really beginning to occur. So ramped up from 2010 to it's very clear 2019 really kind of 2020 2021 we have incremental year-over-year production growth and beginning in in really kind of 2122 that rate of that growth regardless of how many wells we've put on begins to plateau. Now you can say well okay Matthew like we'll find the next field we'll find the next basin that's behind us we have found all the basins in our country this is the part that I think is being missed generally speaking because the demand side is one thing we can look at we can look at AI and the data centers and uh the LG facilities but this supply side we've drilled our best wells so um the the components of how we view uh this scarce asset is is becoming a a real a real issue I think will be in the next five years ahead because we're going to see this scarce asset in hydrocarbon that has this insatiable demand that's needed and and we as a industry we as a company we're doing every as as a as a nation doing everything we can to meet that demand But I don't think that we're going to have the supply in line today. Now, I want to caution. This isn't Matthew saying we go to zero. This isn't um Matthew saying we have no more oil, we have no more gas. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that in the last 15 to 17 years, our country has has witnessed and all of us have participated in some of the most abundant and cheap energy time that we may ever see in our lives. As we think about it at Mayo, we look at it and say we have a skill set and a team where we go out and buy that hydrocarbon in the ground as cheaply as we can in a fair transaction because we believe that the next three, five, seven years out, there will be an enormous amount of demand for this scare more and more scarce asset that we own on our balance sheet in the oil and gas rides. Those two equations compute out to higher prices. I think that we see much higher energy prices in the go forward. Now, tie it down to Bitcoin. How does how does that work? Um, thank you for letting me go through that. the the way that we tie this into Bitcoin is there's a there's so much parallel in the asset class that we talked about previously, but because we see this revenue generator out of the oil and gas hydrocarbon um in fund 4 is we've given the option back to our partners and we say hey we believe that Bitcoin is the scarcest um hard asset that we know of. We're giving you the option when you invest in fund four to have some portion of your PR-rated cash flows that come in from those oil and gas wells and be applied or acquired um Bitcoin that's held on the balance sheet while the fund continues its oil and gas prodivity. And so it's a great way for an investor um that's never been in Bitcoin. I have a lot of LPs that say like I don't I don't really want to do all the work, but I understand inflation and I understand debasement and currency, monetary currency uh regime change and and what you're talking about makes total sense. I want to invest in oil and gas, but allow my revenues to drip into Bitcoin for me and help me do that. And it's with you guys, right? I I've I've called your your team over at On-Ramp and said, "Hey, I've got a bunch of LPs. They all need multi-institution custody. They understand custody is a huge issue to get comfortable with and you guys have knocked it out of the park and and helping them understand that. Um, and so yeah, that's that's the little nuance piece there. It's it's uh we're not trying to, you know, buy low and sell high. We're not trying to buy assets and lever our balance sheet to do something special. Um, we're not interested in in raising capital to deploy it and sell the business in two years. Um, our middle of the fairway like free drop is we bring good partners with a long horizon. We raise capital, we buy good assets, those assets perform and we stack value at their discretion. Um, so every LP, I didn't hit on that. Every LP has a discretion of how much they want to allocate. Some LPs are allocating 50/50. You know, they're kind of in the later seasons of life and they say, "Hey, like I I really kind of need that income, right? Okay, that's great. Um, but I also want some of this income to go into Bitcoin storage for my grandkids." Great. Let's do that. Um, I've got a handful of LPs that say, "Hey, like I buy the thesis. I want to deploy this capital, get it moving into cash flow and roll that cash flow, all of it, 100% into Bitcoin. So, we take the allocation partner by partner. Um, probably one of the most surprising pieces through this, Jackson, is um, I wasn't really sure what kind of reception we'd get, but I can tell I can tell you every single one of our LPs in our fourth fund has taken a Bitcoin allocation. Totally surprised me. Um, all of those, sorry, all but three have never bought a coin. They don't have a wallet. They don't know anything about it. So, we're bringing um in a very small way, we're bringing more investors uh or we're putting Bitcoin in front of the noses of of more and more investors um just just one one fund at a time. [snorts] >> It's a brilliant strategy. It's it's almost scarcity compounded, right? in the sense that you have the presentation he walked us through in the past 10 minutes or so in terms of the supply and demand dynamics and how they're both leading to increasing scarcity of oil and gas particularly in gas as you were discussing and then over time you're funneling those cash flows that are diminishing that are uh becoming more scarce to find into Bitcoin which is becoming more scarce and so you have this compounding effect that is incredibly unique and I'm excited for what you're doing. Not only because we have partnered, but of course because I think that this is really the way that many people are going to get their first exposure to Bitcoin. Like I think about how challenging it has been historically, not necessarily to buy Bitcoin. I mean, to be fair, a lot of people don't want to open up a brokerage account with Coinbase or River or On-Ramp. They would rather just buy the ETF, but even the people who don't want to buy the ETF and have to look at the daily volatility of the price right now, we're we're not looking too hot on the price. Um, and so if you want to just kind of forget about all that and have exposure to Bitcoin in a strategy that you're familiar with in an asset class that you understand is really going to be such an incredible opportunity for your peers in the oil and gas space, but also for people in other asset classes to find unique ways to get people allocated to Bitcoin because it is going to become an imperative at some point or another. Another thing that you said that concerns me is the fact that we're we've had such an abundant energy environment and yet prices and cost of living in this country is still incredibly high, right? And so that just goes to show how much monetary inflation there's been, how much currency dilute uh dilution there has been to the fact that energy prices >> have a whole podcast just on that topic alone. [laughter] you know, it's uh in the conversations I've had, it's been it's been fun because it's um to your point, you know, they they we talk about the oil and gas and the strategy and they kind of get get comfortable with our track record and and our team and that sort of thing. Okay, great. Um and then they go, "Okay, now unpack this Bitcoin thing, right?" And so we go down this rabbit hole and we touch on the pieces that you just did, right? Cost of living, groceries going up, inflation, like where did inflation come from? Why is it even a thing? Right? And you ask them kind of those things and you ask it's very simple broad brush questions like how much of the dollar has been debased in 2025? And these are very sophisticated, very welloff folks. They go, you know, it's kind of it's just the way it's always been. And then they when I paint that picture from it doesn't always have to be that way. And there's there's this tool that is changing this. And I put that out there. it quickly, I mean, man, quickly gets to, well, I don't want to I don't want to be on Robin Hood or or one of these other pieces. I don't want to do that. And so, we get into the custody conversation very very quickly. Um, one piece I didn't hit on is in in our fourth fund, as we execute this strategy, uh, we actually bought the fund bought its its first uh, Bitcoin allocation last month. We're getting ready to to do that again here probably the next two weeks. But we also a function or feature inside the fund is we only hold the Bitcoin no longer than four years, right? And so if we go on a bull run and Bitcoin performs as we believe that it will over multiple years, um we call our investors back, those that are allocated into the strategy, and we say, "Hey, Jackson, um we're going to make a distribution out of class B. Do you want your distribution to be in cash or do you want it to be in coin?" Um, which I think that's going to be like the the like stamp on the on the whole strategy is when we get all of our, you know, however many LPS and we line them up and we make that transfer of their allocated. So then they can do with it however they wish. Um, I haven't I haven't talked to an LP. We're not there yet. We've just started. We won't be there for a while. We're going to let Bitcoin perform and do its thing. Um, but it's it's also a fun avenue because it it it gets that brain thinking of, hey, there's an exit ramp here to this alternative investment. There's lots of alternative investments out there that lock your money up. They'll lock you up for a decade. And this gives us, hey, we can get you your capital back and then some in years to come as this performs without having to sell any of the oil and gas assets. They'll keep doing what they're doing. It's a great point and it's also the lockup in from a fund perspective as well, but also the fact that you're locked up in dollars, right? If you take dispersement in dollars, you're locked up in your bank account, which >> there's pros and cons to of course having dollars in a bank account, but it's there's a there's another level to that lock up period in the sense if you take a Bitcoin distribution, well then you have money that is sitting outside of the traditional banking system as well. And that's like a whole another rabbit hole that people your LPs will explore. Uh maybe some have already but some will explore as uh that as those distributions become available to them. When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, peace of mind starts with architecture. On-ramp's multi-institution custody distributes control across three independent regulated key holders in a two of three quarum. No single point of failure, no pulled or omnibus exposure, segregated client titled vaults. You retain full legal ownership while on-ramp coordinates security, compliance, and operational workflows behind the scenes. It strength of many delivered through the simplicity of one. Multi-institution custody is the foundation for everything we build. Sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional controls. And now on-ramp is piloting flat, predictable pricing, making best-in-class Bitcoin custody and financial services more accessible now than ever. On-ramp strength and many simplicity in one. To learn more, check out onrampbitcoin.com. Before we wrap up here, we need uh some positive sentiment, Matthew, because the Bitcoin price has been tanking. Um the entire month of October we're sitting at about 100,000 101,000 as we record record here on Tuesday November 4th. This will be released tomorrow. Um when you have conversations with your LPs and you're still having to get them to understand the merits and convince you some of them they they understand more quickly than others as relates to just the inflation and the the problem side. But as you look to explain the merits of Bitcoin and how it solves that problem. Um, and on top of that, what's most exciting to you as you look to like 2026 when you communicate the investment thesis, what are you actually bullish about for Bitcoin? Yep. >> No, it's uh that's good. I think uh so what I started I started kind of down this rabbit hole and the more conversations I've had with LPs and potential LPs um that have asked the same like where's Bitcoin going to go? What's the price going to be? And I think it's a dangerous and slippery slope. Um, and I've I've fallen subject to it. Uh, but in this process, it's made me pivot away from number go up or the Y the Y axis. And I've started to tell LPS more and more that this is a this is a tool and a method to preserve and almost freeze frame the X- axis and freeze frame time. And they start going, well, like that's really heady. like what are you even talking about? And I say, well, look, I don't know a lot of things definitely, like I don't know what the price of oil and gas and Bitcoin are going to do. Um, but I am very confident that M2 is going to go up. Money print is going to go up. Like we're going to talk about number go up. Let's talk about money print go up. Dollar debasement is going to happen. Destruction of the value of the dollar has only been on a 100 plus year tear, right? that there's nothing in remote sight that that's going to change. And so, um, I'm very very excited by the by the opportunity that we're in this chapter of whatever you want to call it, life, chapter of time, where we have we have this instrument that we can grasp and hold on to and store value. We say it at at Mabel a lot as part of our mantra. were family life investing and um look Jackson we all work really hard right in all of our respective disciplines and careers and jobs and it's a it is such a dis disheartening feeling heartening feeling when you get to the end of the rainbow or you retire or you're on fixed income right and you're on a pension and you see the value of that destroyed by the time you get there and what we were trying to do is provide a vehicle that allows our our team and our partners to do family and do life and do investing in any any way that they see fit. I mean, what is all this for? Right? If you talk to anybody, they say, "Well, I'm trying to trying to do this." You want to spend more time with your kiddos, more time with your grandkids, more time with your family. Um, or you want to do life, right? you want to take a trip or you want to go do a a college tour or you want to you want to do do life itself. And our view on this is that the oil and gas career part of it is a function. Um Bitcoin is the operator operational infrastructure for us that allows us to do life, do family and do investing. Um we we view you know it will go up, it will go down. I think that we end the year higher um than where we currently sit. Um it it is a it is a a volatile thing to look at daily, but you're talking to somebody that's been in the oil and gas business saw oil going negative in 2020. And the worst thing you can do um is spend time looking at it, right? like just figure out your path of how do you how do you stack more of this product, more of this tool that can freeze frame value so that you can do life and do family and do investing. >> That was brilliantly said, Matthew. >> It was a great place to wrap up though. Um, it certainly was. I I uh you know, as much as we like to look at the Bitcoin price, your points are incredibly true and they're important for those who are newer to the asset or the technology, however you like to think about it, and they're also important for those who've been around a while because >> yeah, >> uh the price can be a big distraction. And to your point, the other side of the story, we know for sure, I mean, Bitcoin, you know, for sure in the sense of how the blockchain works. We don't know for sure how the project of Bitcoin will end up 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. But we do know is the other side of the story that we're $ 38 trillion in federal debt. That number continues. It doesn't matter who's in uh who's in office. um the Federal Reserve manipulates the the interest rates, the money supply. These things are not going to change. There's all the incentive for them not to change. And so, >> yeah, I I I think you really put it well when you just said that it's a way to kind of operate. >> Forget exactly how you framed it, but it's a way to operate so you can focus on everything else in your life that's important. That's ultimately what Bitcoin's allow. >> Yeah. If you want to look at the chart, look at the X. Don't look at the Y. Right? Like measure on time. measure and build a strategy of how you can implement ownership into the scarcest asset that we've ever seen and hold on to it as long as you can and and lose regard for what's on the Y axis, right? and have have greater regard for what's on the X and and and then turn off the price points and don't look at it and go back to finding a way to to get more on your balance sheet for you and your family and your friends who you talk to. Um, that's probably the coolest thing is like in oil and gas, we we find a good little development field or we find a good discovery and you don't want to tell anybody about it, right? You just want it right there and you want to go drill your well. Um, that's been a really kind of change of of mindset for me is like, no, you want you want everybody to get in. You need everybody to get get off of zero. A tenth of a coin, a half of a coin, doesn't matter. Just get off of zero. >> It's a strong message. Well, Matthew, thank you so much for your time today. For those who want to get in touch with you, learn more about Mavel, >> how should they find you? >> Uh, no, thank you so much for that. I think the best and the easiest way is on our website uh mavenlow mvl.com. You can start there. We have uh lots of information about our previous funds. You can there's fun there's a form to fill out if you're interested in our fourth fund of what we're doing with Bitcoin. Um has some more insight to our partners and some of our blogs and postings that we've put there. Um great starting point and we'll we'll love to hear from anybody that wants more information and take another step together. >> Excellent. Well, thank you, Matthew. It was a pleasure. >> Awesome. Thanks for having me. >> 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.