Onramp Institutional Series | James Lavish & David Foley

thanks for joining us the onramp institutional series is a monthly webinar geared towards institutional allocators looking to better understand the merits of the Bitcoin investment thesis in this inaugural session of the series onramps Jackson melik and Brian cabis host James lavish and David Foley from the Bitcoin opportunity fund the discussion delves into the macroeconomic landscape the implications of the growing debt crisis and the role of Bitcoin as a store of value the speakers highlight the increasing institutional adoption of Bitcoin the impact of regulat developments and the technological Evolution that positions Bitcoin uniquely within the digital asset landscape they also emphasize the importance of understanding bitcoin's fundamentals and its potential as a hedge against inflation and economic instability James and David also walked through the strategy of the Bitcoin opportunity fund and their efforts to capitalize on the growing interest in Bitcoin particularly among institutional investors the discussion also covers the challenges of educating Skeptics about bitcoin's value and the evolving landscape of institutional towards Bitcoin as a legitimate asset class if you'd like to attend future sessions of the onramp institutional series or access any of our research reports or educational materials please sign up for onramps Weekly Newsletter by navigating to onramp bitcoin.com clicking on the Subscribe button in the top right hand corner if you'd like to learn more about multi-institution custody or any of onr's Bitcoin Centric financial services for both private clients and institutions please schedule a consultation with our team via the link in the show notes and now time for the show hello everyone thank you for joining us for onramps inaugural institutional series we're extremely excited to host you and are honored to be joined by James lavish and David Foley of the Bitcoin opportunity fund David James you guys are are looking good in the studio you all settled in there yeah we're on the road here in New York City uh for a bunch of meetings last few days so we were lucky to have uh borrow the studio here for for this meeting and thank you all for for having us of course excited to have you so we'll go ahead and get things kicked off here for today's webinar so this will be the first installment of the on-ramp institutional series we're excited to kick this off with James lavish and David Foley of the Bitcoin opportunity fund I've enjoyed getting to know both them over the course of the past year or so and excited about the work and strategy at the Bitcoin opportunity fund and see quite a bit of overlap with the work we do here at onramp both David and James have an excellent framework and approach for viewing the broader macroeconomic forces at play and how to capitalize on the Bitcoin opportunity in both public and private markets but before we get into that I just want to do uh everyone's favor part which is disclaimers so the information discussed in this webinar is for educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as Financial legal or tax advice opinions shared by the speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of onramp nothing presented here constitutes a recommendation to buy sell or hold any security of digital asset nor is it intended to endorse any particular investment strategy any mentions of regulatory matters are provided as general discussion and should not be interpreted as personalized advice all investment involve risk and any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions which are subject to change so with that I would first like to hand it over to my colleague Brian kabellis here at onramp he's the chief strategy officer Brian if you could just share some opening remarks on the on-ramp institutional series before handing over the floor to David and James that would be greatly appreciated yeah absolutely thanks Jackson uh and welcome everyone to uh the first session of the on-ramp institutional series we're we're very excited to launch this monthly webinar series really dedicated to helping institutional allocators gain a deeper understanding of Bitcoin and its evolving role within the financial landscape and over the course of this year we'll cover a comprehensive syllabus if you will of various topics expl ing bitcoin's fundamentals the investment thesis behind it the macroeconomic challenges in traditional finance and how Bitcoin can really address those challenges and we'll also dive into some practical considerations such as strategy imp implementation and different custody Solutions uh ensuring that you have a complete toolkit for evaluating the Bitcoin opportunity and um you know here at onramp we we believe education is really a Cornerstone of any Bitcoin business and really of effective institutional adoption and that's why you know we think these monthly webinars will be uh you know not only keep you informed but also serve as sort of a a repository of high quality media content uh and and serve as a resource that you can revisit in the future and share with your your team and other stakeholders at your firms um and so this is a key aspect of sort of what we're doing on the advisory front part of our broader institutional offering uh which includes tailored guidance for uh investors seeking to integrate Bitcoin into their portfolio so I should also note if you would like a more bespoke or in-depth session uh tailored specifically for your organization our team would be happy to work with you to to structure an event that meets your specific needs um as mentioned uh today we have the pleasure of hearing from James lavish and David Foley of the Bitcoin opportunity fund they'll provide a firsthand look at how seasoned allocators with deep Bitcoin expertise are viewing the investment landscape today and um yeah we're thrilled to have you all here with us as we kick off this series and uh one final note if anyone has any questions throughout the webinar please submit them in the Q&A chat box and we will save some time at the end to cover as many questions as possible uh but without further Ado Let's uh turn it over to James and David to share their insights Bitcoin custody is evolving and as institutional allocators increasingly look to incorporate digital sound money into their portfolios risk management and operational excellence are Paramount both self- custody and single third party custody expose institutions to significant vulnerabilities that's why honor is pioneering a new standard multi-institution custody which eliminates single points of failure adding fault tolerance and redundancy to bitcoin custody with onramp Bitcoin is secured in a segregated Cold Storage multis Vault guarded by three independent institutional grade custodians none of which have unilateral control funds are fully auditable on chain cannot be rehypothecation and can only move or be withdrawn at the explicit direction of the end client multi-institution custody removes the operational and Technical burden of private Key Management providing an Institutional grade custody solution that meets the stringent demands of family offices raas endowments and Pension funds we recently launched onramp institutional a dedicated segment of the business designed to provide secure Innovative Bitcoin custody and advisory solutions for institutions worldwide providing allocators with robust security without compromising on accessibility and allowing them to tap into a comprehensive Suite of financial services from Trading to lending and more all built to institutional standards discover how onramp institutional can elevate your firm's Bitcoin strategy schedule a consultation with our team to learn more at onramp bitcoin.com thank you um thank you um both Jackson and Brian for having us and we're happy to be here for those of you who don't know us uh I'm James lavish and I've been an Institutional Investor uh in traditional institutional investment landscape for uh over 30 years now pains me to say that but um I've been in it started out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange tra anything from ADR Arbitrage uh to convertible Bond Arbitrage to distressed debt um and I've I've done deep value um micro cap and small cap investing um private Equity some Venture Capital uh personally done a lot of uh of different types of Investments as well and so I come to this space kind with that mindset and that uh kind of that experience and training and and David has uh similar background yeah for me uh same similar 25 plus years uh started out in Investment Banking down here in New York where we're doing recording this from and uh then uh the last 20 years have been in the hedge fund and and doing Venture Capital private Equity as well um and then we've kind of entered the Bitcoin space here just the last um five to six years we've started investing in the space and uh and started our Bitcoin opportunity fund uh just two years ago yeah so just from a really like high level uh you know Dave and I come like like we just said we come to to this world this space and and uh with a particular set of of experience and and background and uh and so bringing that to this world with that lens um you some of you have heard me talk about it quite a bit uh so if you just look at the macro landscape and and how we how we approach Bitcoin why we think it's so important um you you know we're we're seeing the ramifications of an endless stream of borrowing in this world and starting at The Sovereign level um we we've seen it gravitate all the way up the the debt has been pushed from uh from the individuals to the the banks and then up to the central banks and and the government and so uh we have a problem and that problem is debt and uh and that debt growing so large is requiring uh the dbas of the US dollar and so that is that is the underpinning thesis to to our belief in Bitcoin as the number one store value Asset and the way to protect yourself from from this possibly in the future catastrophic uh you know development so but if you just look at like we we just got numbers um yesterday morning or the morning before we we have been on the road so the the days are kind of blending together but we just got some numbers uh out of the government and they reviewed their first quarter 2025 fiscal year spending and at this first quarter today uh you know because remember that the United States starts it's an October fiscal so uh they they just started um and they've spent so much money this first quarter that they've run a $711 billion deficit and so if you just annualize that that's about $2.8 billion and 2.84 trillion a trillion dollars and so comparing that to last year so this is the first quarter annualized $2.8 trillion compared to last year last year they ran a deficit of $2.1 trillion so it's 35% higher run rate already this year and they have 700 billion dollar 7 trillion dollar excuse me7 trillion of debt coming due this year plus the deficit they're going to run and we know that there's only there only so many solutions that the government has in order to deal with all that debt um you know you've got basically three main Solutions you've got the and I'm I'll talk a little bit about this high level and what and why how we see this whole world and why we're doing this and then kind of turned over to David to talk about why and how we're using Bitcoin and the fund to uh to capitalize an opportunities that we believe are coming from this so but you know there's three main ways that they can deal with this you can either cut expenditures you know uh have some sort of austerity we've heard about the Doge commission um and Elon and Vic and uh under the the leadership of trump are going to try to cut expenses in the government the problem is that there's so many expenses that are mandatory that are signed into legislation that you just can't cut enough so if you just look at all of the spending that we have in the government and we look at the full year of last year let's just look at that full year um you know we we took in $4.9 trillion of taxes on a on a record year in in the stock market you know they took in 4.9 trillion doll of taxes they spent uh over $7 trillion so already you you you can see we've got a $2.1 trillion deficit so where can you cut to to balance that out and get into a Sur plus well you've got a the first line item includes all the entitlements which is these are all things that are signed into legislation they're mandatory expenses there and they all add up Social Security Medicare Medicaid they add up to $4.1 trillion so already now you only have $800 billion left to spend before you go into deficit well defense spending is $800 billion that we know of it's probably it's likely closer to a trillion but um $800 billion of defense spending and that's not mandatory but we know they're not going to cut that at least not uh significantly and those are long-term contracts they're they're committed to so they're likely going to be paid out and so now you're already you're you're at Net Zero and now you haven't even paid off any of the interest on your debt that is coming due so and that has added up to over a trillion dollars of of Interest net net net it's about $900 billion $850 to $900 billion of net interest because there's intergovernmental and you haven't there's nothing you can really cut except maybe some administrative costs out of Social Security Medicare Medicaid and it's it's doubtful you're going to get a trillion dollars out of that so um you can see that the problem is not that we need to um we need to make more money we need to somehow we need to cut expenses but there's no place to really cut okay the second thing you can do is you can raise taxes and that's not going to happen under the Trump Administration they're already fighting to keep those tax uh the tax breaks extended so they don't expire so that's not going to happen and even if it did uh for those of you who who remember back in the Reagan Era the laugher curve that you can raise taxes only up to a certain point until it crests and and you top out at the amount of Revenue that it it creates and the reason for that is that it winds up uh crimping on productivity and the you know companies they they stop spending on R&D um they don't expand on profitable business lines they don't hire people so your profitability goes down your tax receipts start going down so at some point it doesn't even work um even if you were going to raise taxes so that's the second the third thing you can do which is the obvious thing which we keep doing that everybody knows about and this is why we have over $36 trillion of debt now is you just issue more debt and you borrow more money and that's what we've been doing the problem with that is that we have so much debt that we have to we have to borrow more because you just heard all the expenses we have to borrow more this year just to pay the maturing debt just to just to make sure you pay off that maturing debt and the interest on that debt so if the United States was a and some of you have heard me say this before and describe it this way before but if the United States was a company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange we would call it a zombie company and the reason for that is that they have to borrow they have to they have to issue debt and they have to borrow money just to pay interest on the old debt it's basically dead man walking and that's the situation we're in in America and so all of that gets to the whole point which is the only way that they can deal with this debt is to allow for high Perpetual structural inflation and that will cause GDP to go up nominally that'll create more dollars in the economy but those dollars will be worth less to Consumers however they'll help pay down the old debt that is based in those old dollars and so you have these new dollars that are worth less there's a whole lot more of them they print money they uh they they just create liquidity uh they expand uh the the balance sheet of the fed by printing money with the treasury and they use those dollars to create more GDP nominally and pay down the debt and we all know that the main driver of inflation is basically the expansion of the money supply and that is how we come to bitcoin and why we think it is so important in an Investor's playbook in the future yeah I mean I don't have a lot to add I think you captured it I mean other than you know this is just it's a global problem as well it's just not just the United States it's it's it's you know China even that has had such a great growth run over the last 20 years since they joined the WTO and um this is a real issue and this is why it's going to probably be a lot of friction I don't think we'll be able to develop Kumbaya in the world because everyone's going to be fighting tariffs beg get more tariffs back against the US and currency Wars and and those type of things play out um and I think that as James said I mean ultimately deflation is the devil right I mean if you have a debt-based system deflation will crush you that's why you see China quickly stimulating um I think that that's why the US has always had to go bail out whether it was 08 bailing out the banks whether it was quickly you know going to zero you know low rate Levels by Greenspan after uh 20 1's recession in 911 um I think as Jeff Booth points out in a debt based system and you have this technology that is deflationary and this price at tomorrow book um you know you cannot have that you have to offset that by money printing you know and and the money supply has grown at 7% almost 6.8% a year for the last 5 four years since we went off the gold stand 71 in the US and it really jacked out in 2020 at over 20% per year we think again those things are coming whether there's a crisis or not but certainly in any crisis you will see those repeats of the 20120 print um in the next one uh like that whether it's repeat of 08 we think that those money printers will go so berserk and that everyone in the world is more aware now that it will no longer be the flight to safety into us treasuries it will be into neutral Reserve currencies which are really gold silver Bitcoin uh gold and silver in the 70s were big beneficiaries our view is that Bitcoin is going to be um the soundest form of money digital money digital gold uh digital monetary property uh that's what will be the offramp that will be the flight to safety it's a u non-c counterparty money it's a non- debt money I'd encourage people to read Ray Doo's LinkedIn post that he's had this week on that as he lays out um in this world it's gold and Bitcoin that are likely going to be those off-ramps that people or those safe harbors rather that people have run to in that event I'll pause there but that's at a high level that's good level and and so now you we talk about Bitcoin we've got a new Administration that's coming in and we've got a lot of Tailwinds that are uh that are pushing Bitcoin and um and they started almost two years ago um when you had fby um they adjusted accounting rule so this is kind of the first thing that kicked everything off was uh and there's there's a bunch of Tailwinds so let's just kind of walk through them but the first one was was fby they adjusted this accounting rule the accounting rule was if your company and you bought Bitcoin and you held it on your balance sheet you had to either hold it at Cost or the lowest it got to in value in the market and so if you bought it at $50,000 and it traded down to $22,000 like Michael sailor did then you have to hold it on your balance sheet at $22,000 until you sold it and there was no way to mark it up so they just they just adjusted that and said the new rule and they they called it an impaired asset like you had to hold it as an impaired asset on your balance sheet now the new rule for a company to buy Bitcoin is if you buy Bitcoin you mark it to Market just like any other asset so that's a really big deal and that's going to open the door for these companies who've been fishing around looking at trying to figure it out and now they can buy it and not worry about it being impaired on their balance sheets that's a that's a big and that just went into effect this past December and so we're going to start seen companies hold Bitcoin and we have seen companies start holding Bitcoin because of this that's big deal the second thing was as we all know the ETFs launched last year in uh last January so one year ago and they were by far the most successful launch of of ETFs in the history of ETFs and the the one you can point to that the the metrics are so far over the top it's just it's almost mindblowing but the ibit uh ibit ETF the spot Bitcoin ETF from from Black Rock raised $50 billion of of a in less than a year and it it blew away records of anything anything uh that has been launched in the last 10 years it's not even close so that's a really big deal now why is that so important for institutions for those of you who have not heard me describe this before it is and for regular bitcoiners it's a difficult thing to get your head around because you think well I just take cash out of my bank account I can go buy Bitcoin I put it you know use the signing device the wallet I put it in Cold Storage I'm good to go now imagine an institution an endowment you know um a um a foundation pension fund yeah that would that wants to buy Bitcoin so you have this portfolio manager who's super excited about he's orange buil he understands it he's got an analyst a young analyst and they're all gung-ho let's go we're going to buy buy some Bitcoin we're going to put it on our balance sheet we're going to put it we're going to put it in our portfolio the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the the CIO and uh and say this is what I want to do the CIO is going to go hold on wait a minute we got to go talk to the general counsel you know our compliance officer and see how are we going to do this because who's going to hold the keys is that going to be you holding the keys are we going to hold it multisig solution are we all going to hold Keys what's the hierarchy there then what's the fiduciary risk what's the personal risk of doing that that's first a huge hurdle to get over right so that's just number one then secondly who's going to custody it you know who's GNA actually custody that Bitcoin we're not going to just put it in cold storage and who so how is that key you know multisig solution going to work are we going to have a third party custodian as well because our Prime broker doesn't do that you know JP Morgan's not going to hold it for us who's going to hold it that's the second thing the third thing is you know where you going to trade it are you going to trade it on on coinbase or Kraken or you know binance like how is that is are they regulated like how is this going to work and then where are you going to mark it are you going to mark it to Market on the close of the New York Stock is change because the thing doesn't close ever like these are all operational headaches that you've got to get over and so but when the ETFs were launched in one Fell Swoop you could buy it with the same broker trade it on the same exchange settle it with the same same uh Prime broker custody it with your Prime broker and Market to Market on the New York Stock Exchange Clos in one Fell Swoop they took care of everything and simplified it down to the being able to buy Bitcoin a spot ETF Bitcoin just like you would any other stock there a really really big deal and that's why we've seen this adoption kind of accelerate over the last year I was gonna say I mean I I think that there's no doubt like we're seeing more and more institutions or particularly family offices like when we were raising our fund with the Bitcoin opportunity fund uh when we were raising our fund one a couple years ago you couldn't get institutions Bitcoin was at 19 20,000 you could barely get family offices to warm up uh whereas right now we're out raising our fund two and you're seeing the family offices engage more the institutions are slowly coming around for sure but it it's it's the family offices that are more engaged I think is what we're seeing this yeah definitely they're asking more questions they're they're asking for you know they're are asking for capacity because we uh you know our first fund is closed and so uh they're they're asking how they can get exposure to this rather than just buying ETF or rather than just buying Bitcoin like how can they get exposure to the space and so and I think those ETFs were kind of that blocking fullback to open that up and obviously you know the Trump Administration Victory laying out regulatory Clarity and um that's coming and and and possibly strategic stockpile and strategic Bitcoin reserves uh those things are kind of waking people's eyes up that this is a real asset class and U you know we we've seen that and we' believed it and um and we think it's starting to become more widely understood yeah those are huge Tailwinds the the the Trump Administration winning not just because of uh you know their favorable stance on it but we're we're we're getting uh Pro crypto Pro Bitcoin uh SEC chair uh cftc chair like we're getting um some regulatory Clarity this this year is my is my thinking and that that's going to be another Tailwind not just the pro Bitcoin tweets that we get from Trump and and Eric and you know like this this is real then you've got the just the discussion of having Bitcoin as a a strategic Reserve asset like that this is it may it has to run a gauntlet to get through legislation and get there but between Senator lumus out of Wyoming uh and her bill the Bitcoin act and Trump talking about an executive order just to get Bitcoin on the balance sheet these are really big deals and it gets the conversation going and it and it continues to validate Bitcoin as that uh that pristine store value Asset that's another thing uh and then also the the repeal which we believe is going to happen of Sab uh 121 which will allow Banks to hold Bitcoin on on their balance sheets instead of having to hold as a liability which will open up a whole new uh set of of uh of of avenues for commercial use and for for uh for the banks to offer products to their customers for customer use that aren't available right now so that's a really big deal also you you you'll start seeing in the next few years you know Chase and and City Bank and Wells Fargo and and Bank of America they'll have the ability for you to take your Bitcoin and either uh buy it through your bank C at your bank they'll they'll come up with lending products against it you know uh possibly Insurance products against it like these are really like this is a big development and we think that's going to happen this year so these are all these are all Tailwinds that are happening in the Bitcoin space that we believe severely undervalues Bitcoin here in the market yeah so people are talking about the macro landscape and worries about the macro landscape we have so many Tailwinds for Bitcoin that we think they far outweigh the uh any macro headwinds that we may be seeing yeah and I just one other quick thought that comes to my mind is you know if anyone's out there that's kind of thinking about the space you know I feel like all of us that are in the Bitcoin space we you know for me it was probably back in 2015 16 where you're like I don't get it I I understand gold I don't understand Bitcoin I I think a few things key Glo geopolitical events in the last few years have impacted it that one you know when the when the US and and NATO I would arue took the Russian reserves and and kind of their cash and gold that kind of woke everyone up to okay if I'm China Russia India you know all these places that we in the United States import from and and send our dollars to to get plastic widgets back of whatever Walmart good it is and they're forced to take those dollars and that they you know that they get for their oil in Saudi Arabia or or Russia and and they have to plow that back into usually US Treasury bonds I think they've woken up over the last few here is to hey this is a real problem this debt culde act that James laid out of this debt Doom Loop that the US and every government's in and I think zolon posar um really good strategist out there has written a lot about this that you know that U you know things like gold and and and again in our words Bitcoin is now being more understood as that digital gold these are those safe harbors again that people are running to um you've seen a natural biding gold since that time you've seen it in Bitcoin as well and uh and I think that that's just going to continue so those for anyone that thinks like wow this is temporary maybe the Trump Administration will fix it look improvements can be made we're all rooting for them I think that the thing that's probably misunderstood is that the debt Genie out of the bottle is hard to solve it just as James laid out in the math up front that this is going to be a challenge no matter what you will break the economy if you try and do A2 trillion dollar cut in spending like Doge had once time talked about I feel like Scott bent through his 333 plan is laid out more like round numbers roughly 400 billion a year of cuts um he testified today I saw on the headlines and was talking about these challenges fiscally that we face um but you can't kill the patient other words this is brain surgery this is not resetting a broken bone here to fix this fiscal problem this is brain surgery you got to be really careful trying to remove the cancerous tumor and I don't mean to be U you know cavaliere about that by the way it's sensitive is but but it's an analogy U you got to be careful the patient and I think that uh this one's really hard and it it I think that again non-bt money as di calls it or poser talks about too it's gold and Bitcoin they're going to have these macro bids so I think that that one Tailwind the macro Tailwind for Bitcoin where it's a two trillion dollar asset class in a world of 900 trillion of assets um and again in 1979 80 the sound money assets were about 8 to 10% of Global Financial assets at the end of the period um we are you know well less than 1% of of Bitcoin as a and gold collectively of Global Financial assets right I mean our our view is when you count just the tradable gold they've got Jesse Meers chart here and um on the screen hopefully you can see that you know that that you know our our view is that tradeable gold actually might even be lower it's more like you know if you take away the Antiquities and things on women's NE and what's in the Vatican assume that's not for sale it's less than10 trillion of gold gold value Val so collectively you're you're just around one or just below 1% of Global Financial assets if we get some period like the 70s or something worse you know we think this can be back to 8 to 10% over the next five seven years that's that's a massive wall of money of over 90 trillion in today's dollars chasing this $2 trillion asset class Bitcoin that's why on a Macer we're very bullish the the second thing is technology side blockchain growth you know more and more AI is coming at us fast right we're we're at conferences this week talking all about um agent AI right where you're going to call a brokerage firm uh plug in your information that you're willing to share uh and have them be able to replicate a portfolio for you in a matter of seconds as opposed to days uh based on your what you've identified as your key menu items that you want as an investor 60 40 Bond stocks whatever it might be ESG focused whatever it might be and I think that that that as an example is key now importantly in an AI world the large language models need data and we the consumers have that data and we can get monetized and paid for that data but you're going to need blockchains to securely send and share that data as one example of AI uh and so we think again as this chart shows on the far right we were well in the past look we've gone from um you know the cipher Punk era where it was an electronic cach system to now where it's the the store of value at 100,000 Bitcoin it is the dominant store value I feel like even the crypto folks that you'll talk to will admit that uh we think this next phase though over the next five years is where web 3 integration the AI economy drives then this as the uh digital monetary settlement layer um I think that you know people will say well wait what about crypto and and I think the challenge I think crypto's got some really interesting Technologies but I think the challenge is there's no sound money there and that you're going to have to see things like zero knowledge rollups that uh come on to the Bitcoin space to get validated uh and so that's that Michael saor analogy that if you own the scarce asset Bitcoin it's like owning Central Park West real estate 1900 and what are you going to do with your land there are you going to build an apartment building in your with your Bitcoin or this land you have on on Central Park West that's scarce are and you're going to get streams of cash flow if you need to open Lightning channels perhaps you need to do that with Bitcoin you'll get paid rent for that Bitcoin that you own this is your Central Park West Department building through the Bitcoin you own and I think that this AI as James said this this macroeconomic Catalyst that will catalyze the space but we also think it's the AI convergence and this is what can really catalyze this the way in the early 2000s finally the internet and e-commerce began to kick in and you started to see real interesting businesses like the Googles the salesforce.com's the Amazon um that's our hope that at the Bitcoin opportunity fund we're trying to um you know again raise our fund to to take advantage of those opport unities both from a store of value standpoint of Bitcoin and the technology side and uh we're very excited about it yeah gentlemen if I could just uh jump in here real quick I really appreciate all of what you've laid out so far you've you've made a really compelling case in the context of the macroeconomic and fiscal situation you've made a strong case for several of the drivers of 2025 as it relates to bitcoin's adoption and price appreciation for the year and I'm excited to talk about the Bitcoin opportunity fund and before we do so I I think for people because I don't want to assume that everyone listening has the same level of understanding of the Bitcoin fundamentals and its merits as an investable asset that we do so if maybe we could just take a step back because I'm sure a lot of folks listening this may be redundant to them but we also want to recognize that for family offices Pension funds endowments foundations that are just starting to come up the curve and maybe have questions about what makes Bitcoin unique within this digital asset landscape uh why is this a neutral or apolitical asset that benefits from the fiscal situation not only in the US but globally could we speak to a little bit more about how you think about Bitcoin within a broader portfolio context yeah no absolutely I mean so Bitcoin is the original crypto and it's the only one that is a decentralized protocol right sitting on top of you know original successful dick the original successful one right in other words ethereum and salana and all these things there were a few that came before Bitcoin that just were not successful but this is the one that really that took off and grew organically properly and so with proper decentralized decentralized proper protocols set in place and it sits on top of the internet layers it's the internet money and what's important is it would take 51% of the you know 19,000 plus global nodes to change the protocol um and and it's not in their in the key thing that Nakamoto and them created is it's not in anyone's incentives or interests to want to change it because you're economically hurting yourself if you own Bitcoin and want to suddenly vote down and dilute the asset um and so between nodes and miners that secure the network and codify and manage the block process um this has become a a network and and probably in the early years there were challenges in 2010 for instance there was uh once a huge Bitcoin bug print where I think it was like 180 billion Bitcoin was printed and it took Nakamoto about 5 hours to patch it um there were risk of the government there was risk of you know all the Silk Road stuff but ultimately the network effects have carried through and here we are 15 plus years later um and and this network effect now has grown and and and we we've it's been battle tested there's been soft Forks there's been um um Ico Wars yeah the the the network has operated in settled transactions continuously without a hiccup since 20 is the last minor Hiccup and so it's it has operated continuously without a hiccup since then it's easily the strongest cryptocurrency Network out there it's not even close and so just to get an idea of how how much energy is securing this network there's 175 terawatt hours of power that every every year that that is securing the network which is the equivalent of 20 nucle reactors running at Full Tilt all year so it it is it is literally nation state level resistant to tampering or manipulation and so that's why it it is an absolute trustless Network that you do not have to worry about your counterparty it's not like back in you know Dave and I traded back in 2008 and the housing crisis and you know um Brothers we were concerned I mean I had I was at a big hedge fund uh you know at um um and we we were concerned that our isas were not going to hold up our counterparty was not going to to uh to hold up the the bargain the the their deal that our agreement which was just a piece of paper is what you know that that is the agreement is just a piece of paper it's a derivative and a legal agreement to pay you know the other side well we had to trust that the counterparty was going to be there if the trade went against them well in this situation you don't have to trust the counterparty there's no counterparty risk it's riskless because it's settled on this immutable blockchain that cannot be changed and so that's what's so important about Bitcoin as a standalone store value Asset and that's what sets it apart from all of the other cryptocurrencies which are nowhere near as decentralized as Bitcoin this is the only truly decentralized asset out there that's secured by all of that energy now some of the crypto uh rails can be faster than the Bitcoin rails although the lightning layer 2 network is trying to grow to solve that and it is growing we can get into that I the only other thing i' add is that but Bitcoin is more secure than any of them and decentralized more than any of them and I think that um the other thing is scarcity obviously right the fact that there's only going to be 21 million coins the fact that the having cycle happens every four years meaning the US money supply as we said grows at 6.8% on average over the last 50 plus years um and gold roughly Supply grows around 1.8% to 2% per year um which is that's why Gold Head value for 5,000 years it's a scarce asset well in a world where they're printing that much US dollar money and globally money supply growing fast um Bitcoin now at less than 1% a year growth um and going down every four years it will be less than a half% uh year growth in in the next having cycle in 2028 um it is the scarcest asset we could even get in more scarcity the fact that most of Bitcoin 63% of all Bitcoin um was huddled last year meaning it uh was held longer than six months uh people who are in Bitcoin in this space some people joke it's a cult it's more just that people understand the store of value the nature of what we're talking about here right now and so very few of is on Exchange there might only be as little as of the 19.8 million or so coin that have been mined to date out of the 21 total um approximately you'll hear estimates 3 to four million of those maybe more Bitcoin have been lost back when no one paid attention to this asset class in 2020 2011 you know it was maybe trading for you know 50 bucks no one cared um so many of it has been lost on Exchange Bitcoin is really probably call it 3 million four million coins obviously at higher prices hodlers begin to sell you're seeing that recently the last few weeks a little bit of trimming but in general it is a scarce asset for the cap the having cycle and just what's on Exchange because most people are dug in here and so I think that that's what sets up for you know whenever this big print happens um you know in the next Crisis uh as Larry Leppard's book talks about the big print we we think that uh this is a a massive opportunity from the macro side and and this is as James said the most secure decentralized network out there um I think other cryptos again like for instance in ethereum's case the top five guys own 63% of the money supply at ethereum um it's not sound and and and again I think that that's an important caveat that while certain cryptos um and anyone out there's a big crypto person out there I'm not trying to denigrate it but it I think it's got those challenges from just a store of value sound money principle uh and I think these are the things that are most important to bitcoin and and in our view at the end of the day the sound money is where the people run when theu hitting the fan and that's what continues to grow this network and will continue to and those Network effects are going to be massive and continue to be at massive so I don't know if that answer question Jackson but that that's kind of how we think about it yeah that that's fantastic context and and appreciate you guys walking through that um you know I want to get to sort of some more information on the fund and the things you guys are seeing in the market today but maybe before that I just wanted to pull back to um that Global asset landscape that we had up on the screen earlier question for both of you I'm curious where you think from which buckets is capital most likely to flow towards Bitcoin in the coming 5 to 10 years um I think some people would say you know they like to to play that Narrative of you know Bitcoin is demonetizing gold but if you go back to what and I'm glad you brought up zultan posar you know he was very formative in sort of getting loud about uh a lot of these concepts for five years ago um but you know there's an argument that you know Gold's probably going to go up in this environment too so maybe the capital isn't coming from gold in your view which of these buckets is is most likely to seed Capital towards Bitcoin yeah I mean when you talk about the um the problem that this that the sovereigns are facing uh with just the sheer amount of debt that they have and the need to debase those currencies in order to pay down that debt or just keep up with this charade of issuing more and more debt borrowing borrowing borrowing more money the problem is that you that Bond holders are starting to wake up to the fact that they're getting a negative real rate of return when you're seeing it right now you're seeing that the FED has lowered rates from five and a half the FED funds rate has been lowered from five and a half to four and a half at that same time that they were lowering the rates from five and a half to four and a half and that's the that's the the uh the underpinning of the whole yield curve is where the FED funds rate is well at the same they were lowering rates by a full percent the 10year treasury The Benchmark treasury of the entire world the 10year US Treasury the yield Rose by over a full percent so it went from like 3.6 to 4.7% in the same period and why is that well there's some concern over inflation in the future because oh now that the FED is lowering rates that means that there's going to be more inflation there's going to be more consumer inflation I need to be protected by that that's part of it the other part of it is just the in bond investors are realizing that there's a massive amount of debt that's going to that is going to be dumped on investors we just talked about how the the deficit is running at 2.8 trillion 35% more than last year already this year and so that they understand inherently that there's going to be a lot more debt that's coming to the market which means that there's going to be more debasement which means that my negative real rate of return is going like it's getting bigger which means that I need to get what's called term premium which means that the further I go out on this yield curve and and the the longer dated my bonds are the more interest I need to be paid on those Bonds in order to get in order to protect myself so that all means that all gets down to the point that it's not going to happen today but you're seeing it happen slowly you're seeing you are seeing big coin uh not demonetize but take some market share from gold it is it is uh it's seen as a younger for the younger generation as a superior form of gold and for a number of reasons you know it's it's portable it's uh it it it's very easily verifiable you know it's hard to counter you can't counterfeit Bitcoin like you can gold and that's not that's not a joke I mean even JP Morgan had $50 million of gold bars sitting in a in a vault that were actually just goldplated nickel you know like it's like these things happen it can't happen with Bitcoin so um that's that's the obvious one as you pointed out um that demonetizing gold or just taking market share from it but they will both grow in this environment we believe the second thing is obviously risk assets and Bitcoin will take market share from risk assets it's as as institutions adopt this and they do understand it fully and they do start using it as a store of value they put it on their balance sheet they put it in their treasuries they're not getting they're not going to have to use it as an they're not going to mark it down as an impaired asset anymore the volatility will start coming down as more and more institutions buy this and and the price goes up and there's just more money in the in the Bitcoin Network that that will dampen volatility just naturally you'll be able to move in and out of the protocol without as much trading friction so that's another thing but as that happens and it becomes a true store of value and institutions are adopting it well when they want to come out of risk assets they typically would go into gold and go into bonds well now they'll go to gold and Bitcoin and bonds however the problem with the bonds is that eventually these investors are waking up to the fact that I'm I'm losing money like in real terms I'm losing real return inflation is greater than the Y because the inflation is greater than the yield so they will start to take money out of that bucket and then an obvious bucket that it'll start taking money out of is real estate as an investment you know if you're a real estate investor you've got to you've got to deal with tenants you've got to deal with taxes you've got to deal with upkeep and maintenance and you know you may have a like no joke and it's been an awful awful thing to watch out in California and to know people who have lost their homes that couldn't even get insurance on them and so you know now you've got You've Lost That asset you've got the land but you can't build on it you've got regulations from California it's just a nightmare so it's a whole lot easier to just buy and hold Bitcoin than having to deal with that if you want to have a store of value and so we believe that it's going to not just take from one bucket it's going to basically take from all the buckets as the number one store of value Asset in the world I think the only I'd add to that is Brian I think it's bonds right that's definitely at a massive risk and I'd say there's two examples in US history that come to mind on that one is the 1970s right yes you know kind of Burns and vulker were trying to do what they could with the yield curve ultimately everyone knows the story vulker and early 1980 had to uh take interest rates up to 20% on the federal funds rate to really break the back of inflation some of that though was not just vulker right if you look at the market curves the market itself was saying I sell sell bonds I need a much higher yield given this massive inflation of the 70s and that's when gold went on its run in the 1970s um you know making a massive run because the Bond vigilantes yeah because of the Bond vigilantes 208 20x return in cold during that decade and and that's that's one number two is 1945 post World War II the United States had the same debt to GDP that we have now because we had to borrow up the Gazoo to to fund the war after borrowing up to help fund England during World War I and they had to do yield curve control the same thing that the bank of Japan is having to do right now in Japan of print money to keep yields pegged on the Yen and the reason why the US would need to do that or or on on the U yeah on on the Japanese bonds the the the reason why the us would have to do that is because as James talked about at the beginning this interest burden on the overall deficit is massive and the debt is growing and growing they cannot afford to let rates go up to 10% in the United States to fight inflation or to let get to a market clearing price where people will buy the bonds um this becomes a real challenge that yield curve control is very likely um just like we had to do in 1945 so I think you know this isn't just crazy talk there's plenty of examples in just the US History um in the last 80 years that that show you that excellent appreciate that so how how is the Bitcoin opportunity fund capitalizing on the Bitcoin opportunity so we talked about today $2 trillion asset exists within a 900 trillion asset landscape talked about things for investors to think about for 2025 as it relates to Catalyst for appreciation and adoption so what should investors know about your strategy what makes you unique look um first and just to understand uh the Bitcoin opportunity fund um Dave and I when we when we started this uh it was in it was a real rough period in in the in the market in the Bitcoin and crypto market and so um we saw the landscape and how difficult it was for uh investors to to kind of navigate that landscape and we realized that one of the things that we didn't see out there we saw hedge funds doing some things here and there we saw a couple of funds just kind of dabbling in in in the whole landscape but we realized that there was a there was um there's a need in the market for a vehicle for people to inv invest in that could take advantage of anything in the in the Bitcoin landscape not just Venture Capital not just early stage uh private deals but some of that but also some of the public deals some of the public opportunities possibly some of the distressed uh asset opportunities uh we so we decided that we wanted to create a vehicle that would allow us to invest anywhere in the landscape and it could be early stage late stage we could do public we could do private we could do any in the capital structure from common Equity to Preferred Equity to convertible bonds to unsecured debt to secured debt and we've done pretty much all of that along the way in just the first year and a half save for convertible bonds we have not done any of those however we you know we've been we've been able to um also on top of that we could use derivatives we could use options and and hedging strategies in order to kind of um manage the risk around the portfolio as well and so that's how we that's that's our philosophy and how we invest and personally and so we decided to create a vehicle that would allow other people to come in and join us and invest the same way so yeah I guess just to add on to that I mean as James said we're traditional Finance guys value equity and growth Equity backgrounds and and private and public uh distressed debt backgrounds as well and our view is look how do we bring that experience to this great growth space uh and try and have kind of a value mindset here trying to create good risk adjusted returns in this Bitcoin space uh and so what we've done is um a lot of the public companies obviously on our in our hybrid fund hedge fund and Venture fund um we are roughly about 8020 uh invested on the public side 20% on the private side as the portfolio matures and we look for private deals and and we'd expect over time that we do but but our view is that will grow rather the privates but what we're doing is trying to find opportunity that's asymmetric in the short run and what we do is we live in a Bitcoin standard and and we are benefiting our LPS that say gez well why wouldn't I just hold Bitcoin well we we can hold that for you and then as we find interesting opportunities we can deploy to those so if you know micro strategy uh you know has been cheap and over the last year and a half and so we built positions there um there have been other public companies that have adopted a uh Bitcoin um treasury strategy play that the Bitcoin mining space um we've tried to focus in on the ones that have optionality to being just data center future data center Empower owners of power that's going to be so in demand from the AI trends that are coming um where these companies are trading at you know 13 times uh cash flow and and ultimately will probably become um data center REITs that trade it over 20 times cash flow and so those type of opportunities that we feel like we can unlock in the public side we go after and on the private side trying to be picky because there's um we're trying to find businesses that can generate cash flow sooner than later so for instance um you know uh anchor watch for instance is a Property and Casualty um uh Bitcoin uh Property and Casualty Insurance business that will ensure your Bitcoin through Lloyds of London they're a cover holder for Lloyds of London uh protects you against everything including a wrench attack or kidnapping and um that our view is gez that sounds like a Warren Buffett Geico Insurance model if they can get the flywheel growing and get adoption of customers uh you're going to have massive profits there I think Lloyds of London saw that the loss rates are likely low in the Bitcoin space given the public nature and the transparent nature of The Ledger and the security of it um you saw for instance in the colonial pipeline hacking a few years ago the vast majority of that Bitcoin was recovered because of the nature of the public uh uh Ledger of Bitcoin and so I think a lot of criminals realize that Bitcoin is actually a terrible asset to try and hijack that uh you know they're bound to lose it in that case so I think that um you know that that type of stuff where we can find private businesses that can generate cash flow quickly U we were finding Bitcoin miners that um there's a company corint in West Texas that mines Bitcoin it's one of our first Investments they mine Bitcoin using excess solar and wind Renewables in West Texas out near the peran and they um are able to um mined at about 2.1 cents a kilowatt hour which is about 45% cheaper than the industry average U they're one of the best unit economics in the space we were able to buy Bitcoin at around $226,000 lend it to them on a fully secure basis threeyear secured loan covered by all their Assets in our estimation if the company had gone bankruptcy the next day we'd been three and a quarter times covered by their asset value so a real safe secure Loan in Bitcoin where we're able to buy it cheap and we were getting 10 10% Bitcoin yield back on those bonds and then we got equity in the business and the warrant value of the business that their series a round um happy to say that we're beginning to get paid back on our Bitcoin loan early um it's probably generated 159% irr on just the debt alone on the Bitcoin alone the Bitcoin debt alone keeping our Equity value market at basically cost at zero because it was an equity warrant we don't mark it up uh at all on the equity side so we're excited about those type of things that we can take advantage of public and private opportunities in the space where it makes sense to kind of take those shots on goal to hopefully outperform uh you know in this space over the course of the cycle to fund so right and and so just structurally um we we we draw the capital up front like a typical hedge fund and we can get the money to work pretty quickly in that in the um public market and just want to interject importantly we can take Bitcoin US dollars or stable coins into our fund too and we can take Ira capital or regular Capital right right and and and so it really important for it to be really easy for people to uh to subscribe so but we can get the money to work quickly in the public markets and uh especially in the second fund we can allocate the same way we have in the first fund uh just to get you it would be it'll be allocated prata just like any opportunity that we find will be allocated prata but um what what's important about that is that we don't feel pressure to just take shots on goal on V on Venture deals or private deals or just get the money to work and call Capital to get money to work because because we don't we don't feel the pressure to get the capital in the door to get the management fees to get the cap like that's not something we have to deal with and we don't have to worry about because of the Bitcoin standard because we're on the Bitcoin standard and we can get the capital to work in the in the uh public markets without having to you know drive those quick shots on goal and so we can be like David said super picky super choosy on those private Investments and really get to the point where we can trust the the management team understand what the the company and their and their business understand the road map and and and their their map toward uh Revenue generating earning uh you know and creating earnings and bottom line um we can we can be super choosy on those and so in our funnel um you know me being out there all the time uh and our other uh advisory Partners between uh Mark moss and Larry Le part and Greg fos we get a lot of deals that come to us so we can be super choosy on what we actually allocate to and it's an important distinction to make I think just one thing out there is I think all of us being in this space for over six to seven years being investors in this space you know collectively on the team um not only has it led to that deal flow like James is talking about from the network effect uh these you know all of us being out there in pods like this or what have you um or Twitter followers in James's case and others I I think that it's importantly built relationships with important diligence providers where we can make the phone call to people in the space that are smarter than we are to cover our blind spots um to me that's a superpower knowing what you don't know and knowing how to go figure out to get the answer um we're pretty humble that way we don't we don't have all the answers this is a fast moving space developing and I think a lot of our family office LP clients have trusted us to say let us go out into the field and hunt for you to find the good value in this great grow space excellent well gentlemen thank you so much it's been an hour um if you have 10 more minutes we can do some Q&A before we wrap up here so for anyone who does have questions feel free to submit them in the meantime have a couple to work through maybe the first one we could we could discuss is from an education within an institution what has been your most effective tool or method for overcoming skepticism for from cios and CFOs and moving them toward allocating to bitcoin so I guess how have your you mentioned when you started the first fund it was a tougher Market environment there was more skepticism around institutional investors and family offices how have you seen that change and what do you think that you've done in those conversations to help affect that change I'm sure some of it is due just to the more regulatory Clarity more support within the uh within Wall Street and within the US government but what do you think like you guys have done at the Bitcoin opportunity fund to help demonstrate The credibility and the institutional nature of Bitcoin as an asset class yeah I mean getting people to understand why the money is broken is Paramount just I don't when I talk to people and try to explain to them why I am so confident and I believe in Bitcoin I don't really even talk about Bitcoin I don't talk about imut the imut ability of I don't talk about the uh you know the scarcity I I I first talk about the money and the first thing you ask people is and it's a simp pretty simple question is what should the inflation rate be and why and nobody has a good answer not even Powell you know um I he was on 60 Minutes last year and he was asked this exact question why why 2% what's the magic number of 2% like why do you have and he gave a word solid answer that had to do with r squ r the r star and neutral rate and it just had made no sense and uh but the answer is there is no reason I mean it was just it was uh it was adopted by uh the Bank of New Zealand back in the 80s and it just became the standard for the rest of the world then that answer is why 2% it's because they can get away with it and so once people understand they can get their head around wait a minute yeah why is there inflation and you start talking through the reality of the deflationary forces of technological advances you know being able to have uh tens of tens of millions of songs available to me on my phone for $9.99 or 13.99 whatever it is now with uh Spotify rather than just one album of songs for 1399 when I was a kid you know that's a deflation Force the same thing with with photos I mean I have tens of thousands of photos on my phone and that would have cost you know many thousands of dollars uh to just have the film for that so when I was a kid now I'm showing showing how old I am that I had bought Kodak film when I was a kid but you know those are deflationary forces and so when you start to beg the question which is the whole premise of Jeff Booth's um book of the price of tomorrow you have these forces that that are battling each other why is inflation winning out it's because of the manipulation of the money supply and once you understand the manipulation of the money supply and how that's not really benefiting the consumer that their house isn't going up in value that the stocks aren't going up in value that it's just the dollar that's going down in value then they start to wrap their head around it and they understand oh sound money sound money okay gold but then you can go through all the limitation and and and um and the uh challenges of gold and that's when they start getting to the okay the digital age and you just walk them down that path and ultimately the ones who have who I have successfully orange pilled they get to the answer themselves I don't even have to give it to them they say oh okay now I understand now I get it but the hard part is to look at a system while you're inside that system and try to figure out what's wrong with it it's almost like you have to pull yourself out of the system and look at it to understand what's going on and if you can help them along that path and get them away from the money to look at it really objectively look at it and critically think around why the money is is is acting the way it is and how it's being manipulated then they get to the answer by themselves yeah I think the only to add to that is just you know like I think there's been a lot of great Educators as we talked about whether it's the ETF themselves the black rocks of of the world Larry think talking it up obviously Michael sailor um you know this this has gotten more well known it's not just simply price went up in the last two years um but family offices for sure we're seeing it now in our fund two fund raise that again these family offices are dialed in here and wanting to talk so it's it's it's a different environment totally awesome could you speak it all to the return profile of the first vintage and how do you typically position the fund to investors like how should investors think think about allocating to the Bitcoin opportunity fund versus deploying a Buy and Hold strategy with Bitcoin I know we spoke in depth about the strategy and there's a lot you know there's quite a distinction between what you're doing versus buying Bitcoin but I guess how do you typically communicate that to an Institutional allocator so I mean the first thing we say is you need to have your believe in Bitcoin or understand enough that you'll trust that we'll we'll make those Investments for you but most importantly to have your core uh allocation of Bitcoin for yourself first and you have your cor allocation of Bitcoin and you want more exposure you want more exposure more exposure to the the space to the ecosystem to bitcoin itself that's where we can come in and help and so and our objective is you know we don't explicitly say oh we're gonna we're going to go out and beat Bitcoin that's not the objective the objective is to deliver strong risk adjusted returns for investors to make money for them in this space and have exposure to the space which we believe can be uh extremely beneficial to anybody's portfolio yeah I think just to answer question two and build on what James is saying you know we since our Inception we're up about 65% net of all expenses that's an estimate through 1231 not been audited yet it's in the process of being audited um we uh you know that's net of all expenses and and again keep in mind that our private um deal are marked at cost right so it's the public side that's been generating it also what generates it too is we portfolio hedge right from time to time um we've hedged with put spreads for instance on market indices that correlate with Bitcoin or Bitcoin itself um we're able to do certain uh call option strategies where we're able to write calls up at prices where we would maybe trim some of our positions and some of the public names to generate yield and income for the portfolio on that um so that that's something that uh we've been able to do and uh and our view then is that these privates over time if we um do our jobs well and and and get you know have some good success with some of those privates then over the life of the fund you're going to start to see those paying returns into the pool if you will um in the next three four years time frame so um we're we're again we're excited about it um and we think the space is just going to keep growing appreciate it you have time for one more please yeah we got time sure so how quickly do you think the perceived career risk has changed with institutional allocators has has changed or is going to change has changed so far and I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts would be for for this year as well I mean it's slowly changing it has not changed fully yet we at the institutional level yeah at the institutional level it's slowly changing um their career risk has been up to this point it has been if you own Bitcoin you're way way out there on the risk curve uh but with all the Tailwinds that I just described and especially with the ETFs I mean it's all been taken there's so much of that's been taken away so now you're kind of on that edge of if you don't own it then my portfolio is very likely going to underperform in the future to anybody who does own it and so now that it it's getting to be career risk as an allocator you have to look at this and say oh okay wait a minute if I have a traditional 6040 Port 6040 Port portfolio getting tired at the end of the day here if I have a a traditional portfolio like that then if I allocate 1% 5% 10% Bitcoin to that portfolio and you know reallocate from both those buckets I suddenly realized looking back 10 years that not only are my returns greatly augmented but also my draw down isn't that big it is it is it doesn't create a much larger draw down in those uh Market shock periods number one number two because of those returns and with that limited draw down um that's that's created from adding Bitcoin to your portfolio it actually raises your sharp ratio your risk adjusted return by adding Bitcoin to your portf and that that's what's blowing people's minds that they add Bitcoin to the portfolio and my risk adjusted return goes up I'd say yeah and there's a lot of resources out there including stuff that you guys onramp have put out there that explain an educate I I'll I won't name the university but it's a very good Academic School in New England liberal arts school with a billion dollar plus endowment that I recently had a conversation with one of their folks that reached out and we had the conversation he said look I I see it I've been trying to educate our CIO on this um and you know he played around with some of the things on the website and saw what James is talking about around the web that s James talking about about the better risk adjust returns by even having a 2 to 5% allocation to the space but he was very honest he said look you know but but there's a little bit of career risk like we're going to look like an idiot and I said well hold on what if we're right if you had a 2% position and if you thought that you know we're idiots and wrong and that this 15-year Network effect growth suddenly just ended tomorrow even though that probability feels incredibly small you'll never miss this 2% position if we're right and this takes off given the asymmetry of this asset class you will far outperform every other Benchmark university endowment that you're talking about and so who will be the first to take that chance and so I think what we're seeing is in my opinion very few institutions are ready to do it but they're warming up in the bullpen if we use a baseball analogy or they're on the on Deck Circle they're they're they're getting ready what we are seeing again is family office inbound calls to us as we're out there raising fund two here at Bitcoin opportunity fund and and that that has definitely a dramatically change and I think the difference is the family offices are in more control there's not that career risk it's it's the directive of the wealthy family or this that that that are saying hey we want some of this asset class let's start looking at ways and I think our traditional Finance background is what brings them to us saying look you guys know to how to handle playing and and and doing portfolio hedging and trying to do risk management as I enter this Frontier can you shepher me through and so that that's what we're seeing out there yeah it's exciting I think part of that too with the career risk inversion will be with companies like micro strategy just being one working their way into the NASDAQ 100 right and you have then Bitcoin companies or Tre at least companies that are deploying Bitcoin treasury strategies in indexes so then if you're an active manager and you're benchmarking against an index and you continue to be underweight those companies and it's showing up as negative attribution on your quarterly performance report then you're going to get some calls from your investors so that's kind of a nice positive flywheel effect too I think we'll yeah and it's a little like to your point Jackson it's almost like what happened with Nidia right once that thing got bigger and its assets are growing if Bitcoin takes off and micro strategy now is growing massively weighted wise in that index well then it's a flywheel again because indices need to step index funds rather need to step in and keep buying it and buying it and and you know it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that way and uh and rebalancing so excellent well I know we're up on time James I know you said you're tired as well so good place to close we've been going for days I know I get it so um well thank you both for the time what would be the best handoff for folks who are interested in the strategy yeah so if if you're uh interested in the fund then in fund two then just go to uh www uh. Bitcoin opportunity. fund and you can just put in your your name your details and uh check off your credited investor and you can and we'll send you information we could set up a call or whatever you know whatever is best to to communicate the answers that you need excellent and for those who are interested in joining future on-ramp institutional series you can find more information on our website on ramp bitcoin.com if you subscribe to the research newsletter we'll be publishing those on a go forward basis I think today was a great inaugural session to really understand what's at play here uh as it relates to the fiscal situation economics what are some of the key drivers for Bitcoin in 2025 and so James and David really grateful for your time today thank you for bringing such a clear and concise and compelling strategy forward uh and pushing forward Bitcoin adoption within both the institutional family office and high netw worth segments thank you Jackson Brian appreciate it and thank you onramp thank you guys thanks gentlemen appreciate it thank you thanks 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 onr media is for informational 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 onramp bitcoin.com cont to schedule a consultation with one of our Private Client advisers