Risk-Off: Why Bitcoin Is a Strategic Asset for Serious Capital

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extra ever assembled in the history of [Music] dumpers. 1974 1987 92 97 2000 whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we sell. Hey, I say when we sell. Hey everyone, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of The Last Trade. This was really one of my favorites. Uh we had our special guest Josh McNeel and Greg Hoffmister uh chiming in to touch on everything global macro, what's happening in the markets, new product launches in the Bitcoin space, and then ultimately a little bit about their journey uh in Bitcoin and then finding on-ramp. Um at the end of the day, on-ramp aims to be the trusted guide uh for clients wealth. And we touched on a lot of the concepts that you guys are probably familiar with when it comes to how do you secure uh long-term wealth when it comes to Bitcoin? How do you think about passing it to your family? A lot of individuals have significant others that want nothing to do with self- custody and how do they figure it out? God forbid something happens to them. Um, so it's a really awesome show, talked about a lot. If you like the show, please like and subscribe. And then also, if you're not ready to talk with us, uh, I would really highly suggest booking or I'm sorry, uh, subscribing to our research. We're going to have some special announcements for On-Ramp U subscribers to our email list where we're going to be launching some really nice new features that I think you're going to be excited about that don't relate to exa exactly having to move your assets over today. Um again, honorbitcoin.com you can go and subscribe and then you'll be first to know about this new promotion we'll be releasing in the coming weeks. Hope you enjoy the show. All right, welcome back to the last trade. Look at this. We have five of us on the podcast today. I think we're we're on a streak right now for for five heads on the last trade, maybe three or four weeks in a row, but this one's a different one. And so really excited to get into it. Uh we have a different crew than usual. So for those who are not on YouTube or following along on video, I could call everyone out real quick. We have Michael Tanguma. We know we know uh who Michael is. We don't need to talk much about him. Cam Stroy, who's actually had the head of private wealth here at On-Ramp. Um, and then we're joined by Josh McNeel and Greg Hoffmeister. Josh, Greg, great to see you guys. Thanks for joining us. How are you two doing? Thanks for having us on the pod. Yeah, thanks for having us. It's great. Great to be a part of it. Yeah, we were just we were just talking the last time we were all together. We may not know this because I definitely uh don't know if I chatted with Greg, but we were at the rooftop in uh the Thompson in Nashville at the last uh Bitcoin uh 2024 event. So, this is us reconnecting about a year later. Yeah. With that getting together. Yeah. With clear minds today on the podcast. So, uh let's get into it. So, we're going to kind of do this in two big segments. So, before we get into more about uh Greg and Josh, they have a lot of wisdom and insights to share, uh about their personal stories venturing into this space. Before we do that though, we're going to just kind of kick things off, go around the horn. Everyone, uh was tasked to bring some sort of story, topic, theme, news. they've been thinking about and we'll just kind of go around the horn, riff on that. Um, there's no shortage of things to talk about. I was actually just on a quick trip to BA uh Boston past 24 hours and I feel like I missed a month of news. So, I'm actually relying on you guys to help catch me up a bit. And so, we'll toss it over to Michael first, the resident podcast expert. His title is CEO, but actually all he does is record podcasts. So, Michael, why don't we pull up uh your topic for this week? I can pull it up for us and you can um give us some color here or I could play the video. Well, while you're pulling it up, um I just want to say that Jackson I feel like needs to go to more events because pre- pod because the energy at this level starting this pod is what I'd love to see every week. Um I feel like you're just reeling from the energy from last night. Uh and I'm not sure how I ended up in this pod situation, but we just finished recording with one with Braum. Uh that was pretty good. So this will be another one. Yeah, I think so. I might just be overcompensating for a bit of a hangover that I'm nursing right now. So that that could be the high energy. But here we go. Let's let's play this clip real quick. Yeah. So just before you play the clip, uh, as Jackson said, we brought some, you know, topics across the board. Um, it's kind of it's kind of fun because I think some people might know other people's topics. I don't actually. So it's going to be good to riff and uh come back with just notable things referencing what's being what's discussed on this topic. Um it's effectively it says Coinbase head of institutional trading institutions and sovereign wealth funds are quietly buying Bitcoin or have been in April and u so we'll go and play the clip and then we can do some commentary on it for about 60 seconds I think to the 130. Right. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It's great to be back on. Um so when we talk about decoupling, we're really talking about uh neutral to negative correlation and uh more specifically we're talking about negative correlation when markets panicking on the downside. Nobody minds correlation when it's upside correlation. So, you know, first and foremost, got to be super careful, right? This is a relatively short-term data set. April, you don't want to assume it's going to persist. I could be making a fool of myself right now and today it could jump to a one correlation. The other thing you want to be careful about is even if we understood exactly the reasons, and I'll get into what we think they are. Just because this occurred now, it doesn't mean if that similar set of events occurred, we'd have exactly the same behavior. So, just a disclaimer, be very, very careful. Well, that applies to gold. That applies to any asset. So, the nice thing about my position is I don't have to guess as to what traders are thinking. We're kind of the center of the crypto ecosystem. So, when you called me, I made a bunch of calls and the pools of capital that have been buying during April. Sovereign wealth funds, large institutional long-term duration pools of capital. They're looking at it basically three ways. One is um All right. I don't know if we have to listen to all three unless you want to, Michael. Uh no, they were effectively where he where he finishes that sentence is the different large pools of capital are looking at gold looking at it from a uh non-s sovereign store of value. The price performance as it relates to equities and other assets the past call it 6 months let alone you know year and a half. and he's he's explaining how um that's in front of everyone's mind, the divergence from the equity markets and then ultimately that feeling of well did I miss this and what else looks like this asset this kind of like scarce divisible uh again non-s sovereign and then he references Bitcoin and I and and that's the next thing they're going to look at because when you have to go down the risk we all know that but I thought that was super interesting that this is becoming um as we have more and more of these these conversations. Historically, it's so hard to have a conversation with an institutional institution pension endowment when it comes through. Well, what is Bitcoin? What's its use case? Is it speculative? It looks like crypto. I'm okay with missing it because it's only 1% of my portfolio either way. Versus this narrative is now going into the mainstream of with high inflation, with tariffs, with you know uh a moving monetary order. Now, different institutions, different portfolio allocations are going to start looking at what does my personal account look like as it compares to equities, bonds, and then do I want some gold or Bitcoin, which is just a seismic uh change versus 6 months ago, let alone six years ago. Yeah. What what's interesting there as well is that he well, this guy um I forget his title, but he's at Coinbase, maybe head of institutional trading. um and he said that they're at the center of this industry or ecosystem. He's at the he's the center of the universe and you heard it here first that institutions are buying Bitcoin like you cannot believe. Um what I always think is interesting though I I like to parse back those headlines. Um what I was paying attention to that does tie into this is the ETF inflows have been starting to be starting to uptick after a couple of months of really muted flows. Like there wasn't a ton of inflows. There wasn't a ton of outflows into the Bitcoin ETF products. But as soon as the price starts to run up and break out of this consolidation period, I think it was just this week or it could have been the end of last week, there were really significant inflows into the Bitcoin ETF ecosystem. And so that's largely retail buying, I believe. But perhaps what uh this individual, I forget his name, said is that the institutions are actually going direct to spot Bitcoin. And so perhaps they're more sophisticated. They're actually buying Bitcoin over the counter or on exchanges, but the retail buyer, the appetite is there as well, but they're they're now gobbling up the ETFs. What do you guys think about it? I think it's retail. Uh I think it's been retail when we saw the big flows. I think uh I think we sort of hit a a boring phase there uh where there wasn't a whole lot going on, but we we knew these institutions were coming. I do believe they're going to buy it um and hold it themselves. I don't think the institutions are going to uh for instance, this 21 announcement. I think that's going to be held uh in custody uh outside of the ETFs. Um but yeah, I think that um I think a little bit of FOMO's finally kicking in here uh with that price move last week and I think it'll continue. I I think uh what we're what we're witnessing and and everybody on this call, you know, we sort of keep up with the headlines on a daily basis, but um I think what what's happening is a lot of people are sort of waiting for this big event to happen for for everything to sort of kick into gear and like I think it's like it's kicking into gear like every day like with like small slices, you know, and this is just another example of like you know sovereigns, you know, identifying sovereigns is buying Bitcoin, you know, in the month of April. It's like, well, it's not a surprise, right? Like, like the United States, you know, started a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Like, what what do you think people are going to do? And like, and a lot of people are just sort of like not, you know, outside of our our spheres like aren't paying attention. And so, like, all these balls are just sort of dropping one at a time. And it's just it's hap it is happening. You know, it's just not going to be like a one a one day event. um where like you know we'll wake up in five years or whatever. It's like how did that how did this happen? You know it's like well it just dripped every day for the last 5 years and you weren't paying attention but this is just another headline I think you know uh reinforcing that there is a quiet nature to that. I was actually just speaking with uh an individual who works for a private wealth firm. So kind of the similar on but in the traditional financial world working with families who are $100 million net worth plus and he's saying you know generally they haven't shown a whole lot of interest in Bitcoin but their ETF desk has really been receiving a lot of interest over the last he'll call it 6 to 12 months. So I think that lines up with what you're saying Josh and Greg I mean it's happening quietly. It's still not at scale where every client is is frantically calling and demanding spot exposure or demanding the sophisticated vehicles that we offer. you like I'm not seeing like a massive uptick from my desk in terms of new entrance to the market but certainly that more top offunnel ETF product is seeing a lot of inflows from high net worth ultra high for folks who realize they want exposure they're going through their traditional channels calling their guy or girl and telling them to place an order yeah and to just like distill all this I think um there's a chart that came out from bit um from big fund Eric Weiss I think it was credited to him in his newsletter But it's basically showing post like the tariff situation and the uh best performing assets and you saw Bitcoin or yeah Bitcoin sitting at the top like plus 10%. gold I think was easy man this was my topic so so but just framing it back to this conversation it's really more of the um just the the narrative shift on this is changing from a speculative asset to something different and I think that is very big because given all the macro tailwinds with the tariffs post election this thing sitting close to 100k is pretty wild um when you think about it all things considered especially how equities have been hit. So that's kind of like that idea of once this really gets into the narrative in the zeitgeist that this is a riskoff asset which we've all been talking about for years, you can see that like if you squint becoming the reality and I think that's just like pretty crazy to really think about that it might actually be happening. Yeah. What I think I I totally agree with all that. I'm just trying to parse out whether like how much of the retail buying in the ETFs actually understands Bitcoin's riskoff nature versus just chasing the price performance and seeing a couple of positive days and now you know the uh the brain is just like I need to smash buy this right now. And and the funny thing is it's not even isolated to retail investors. I remember seeing this on Wall Street firms where I would be speaking to family offices and ultra high net worth individuals and they would be looking at our all these different hedge funds that we had on platform and they would just be like put me into the fund that performed the best in 2020 whatever it was 2019 like the prior year but well maybe yeah exactly but it was like well maybe this fund is actually more aligned with what goals that you've shared on this call but they're like no no no I I want the I want the long uh long bias TMT hedge fund that performed 45% last year. Put me into that. I'm like, "All right, well, sure." What what I was just going to say like what I think is interesting is uh and it sort of is a a topic or a theme that probably will go throughout like everybody everybody's headlines here, but it's like when you're buying an ETF or you're chasing you know chasing the return um you know on a derivative like you're that's stimulating retail. But I I I I think people are missing like the the huge opportunity obviously which is like being able to hold the underlying like and there's so many people that are going to be that are going to miss that opportunity like they're going to they're going to see the returns in in the ETF in their ETF in their micro strategy whatever um and then I think sort of be happy with that in a short short play short like uh high time preference way and then realize like oh shoot I don't actually like own any of this myself, you know? Like I I don't know where that comes into it, but like I I I feel like a lot of like the new wave coming in is just like they're they're not even realizing how important that is and just going right to the derivative and saying, "Hey, I'll play this way." The beauty of like that is u we've seen this since Bitcoin's existence. Like I liken the ETFs to Cash App with just different size. When somebody first buys Bitcoin, they don't even know what they're buying. you buy a little bit and then you either, you know, start to look, you have a positive bias because you own some, so it's inherent. And then ultimately, you just start listening to pods like this and going deeper down the rabbit hole. And even if you don't, the beauty is you don't have to do anything cuz, you know, number go up technology does the rest. And then you wonder, why did this thing just quadruple and then you go down that rabbit hole and again, it's not ideologically driven. It's literally like just self-preservation. You don't want things sitting on Coinbase or on, you know, Black Rockck as your counterparty when you realize for 15 years that hasn't worked very well. Yeah. Well, I I think I agree with you and and I just wonder but I wonder like what the percentages of the of let's just say a group of hundred people that have exposure that way. How many get triggered to go down the rabbit hole to to spend the time to learn more or you know what I mean? Like I don't know. I don't it's not 100%. You know what I mean? Like but is it 50% or is it 20 or is it 10? What I'm saying is like I think it's the same as it's always been that there's always going to be a subset that will come in get burned because they'll what's going to happen and this is going to like we're going to talk in a different coin and I'm going to not try to talk about it but like people are going to come into the ETF and they're like oh I want that thing that is going to outperform Bitcoin and then they're going to go buy that other thing that's saying they're going to outperform Bitcoin and they're going to end up with no Bitcoin and then the other people are going to realize they actually want Bitcoin and they're the ones that are going to end up with the coin and there's going to be a percentage that get burned and until this all You know, this is just what monetization in real time looks like. I like to think like thousands of years ago, people were getting burned trading their like shiny rock for some other like rock that was like mud and somebody did it and then they like were left holding the bag of dirt and the other people were holding the gold. Like it's just happened over a longer time frame and we weren't there to witness it or talk about it weekly on a podcast. Well, we're in this we live in the e echo chamber. We've all done our hundreds and hundreds of hours, but um you know, it's an evolution for everyone. Um and people will get there. Uh we just you you just got to keep the guiding light once you know what we know that we are still early. We're very early and they'll all come eventually. That's I Josh, you hit it on the head. I mean, that's it's so easy to sit here and be like like how do they not how do how does everyone not know like they should have the underlying, you know, cuz we're we're already there, but like you're right. It's so that's just another underscore of like how early we are when you when you pull back and see all these headlines and everything's going crazy and then you're like, "Oh my god, we're still really early here. Everyone will find it, you know, at their their time." Yeah, totally agree. And we could tie this into um this post here. I wanted to pull up. Uh Michael stole my thunder. So, it's I'm I'm disappointed and sad and I'm not as excited as I was at the start of the podcast, but um this isn't the one I was referring to, by the way. No, I know. I know what you're But this is similar. Um and I'm just messing around, man. Don't take it personally. But, uh I don't know what to make of I know I know the aim here is to show the difference between Bitcoin and gold as well. the price performance in the past three weeks or so since the tariff announcements on April 2nd compared to the draw down that's been seen in the Magnificent 7. I hate that term, but I'll say it anyway. Um, I think that the retail So, if I flip to this other tab here real quick, this is the inflows. I was looking for this while you guys were talking about the ETFs. And so, you can see here, it's been over a quarter really. looks like early January or mid January was the last day that a billion dollars was eclipsed in terms of ETF inflows. And so we didn't quite hit that um recently, but we got close $900 million into the Bitcoin ETF complex in a single day. And then you can see certainly in Q4 last year, there were a lot of those days, especially uh around the election and people excited about what the Trump administration would mean for the Bitcoin price. And so going back to this kind of what I have a couple of different thoughts here. Um the first is I still think that most of those investors are looking at it something like this and they think of Bitcoin technology speculation risk on and that's that's explains this chart here. I don't think that the the inflows are actually representative of people understanding yet that Bitcoin is riskoff similar to gold. I think that's true at the the larger pools of capital and the institutional investors. that ties into what that guy at Coinbase said about um dd dollarization and de-risisking. We didn't get that far into the clip, but that kind of is the direction that he goes in. And so I think the really important thing to to hammer home here is that Americans in particular have a crazy amount of their wealth concentrated in the US equity markets. It's been the deacto savings account for Americans for a couple of decades now. And so when you look at something like this, and I'm not one to cherrypick or or pick on three weeks of price action and make a conclusion from it, but I would think that people are starting to uh more critically think about how they actually have themselves set up for their financial future. Because if you are in 80% 90% 75% or 6040 in equity markets and you're seeing what is predominantly these seven companies are like 25 or 30% of an index of 500 companies and they're all down about 10% in just a few weeks. I think people are starting to feel the crunch a little bit and perhaps there's going to be a recognition here soon that we are in a different environment that there's a lot of volatility um from fiscal policy and just political comments to trade uncertainty to are these companies actually overvalued? Do they trade down to lower pees at some point? Um and then you have Bitcoin and gold which are just these proxies for um sound money for a hedge against the instability of the fiat system and just the reckless fiscal spending as well as the inevitable debasement. And so I don't think many investors are here yet. I still think that people are just kind of following the the price action and the trend. But perhaps if this um persists for a while where you continue to see a bleed out from tech equities and Bitcoin and gold moving in parallel go higher, I wonder if that will start to set off some light bulbs. I'll take the opposite side of that in the sense of I do think it is people buying it for what you described. They aren't buying it in the sense of u like so gold being up 5% and whatever it is up the past six months. I forgot the exact number, but I think it's like $175 to $300 in gold moves is equivalent of a total Bitcoin market cap. So when you see those gold moves and that flow, a small subset of that that it's either taking two sides of the position, some gold, some BTC, or is like, hey, gold, as to the point of that uh institutional guy from Coinbase is aligning with that thesis of inflation, debasement, hard asset is taking that uh ETF inflow. It's just not in a way that you know the way that they're used to buying assets v ETFs. And the main reason I say that is to what Cam said and it's how I felt for the past 12 to 18 months. While the price has risen, we haven't seen a lot of retail buyers step in. And I'm not convinced they're buying through their brokerage. I know that's like not that's a generalization, but I think this is majority hedge fund driven. We know we had um whatever X or whatever the new things launching, buying Bitcoin. We know MSTR stacking. GameStop's rumored to be purchasing right now or previously already has. I think that's some of the positions uh movement or like positioning that has caused this movement. It's not necessarily like retail chasing price. Um I I mean obviously that's a part of it, but I think the thesis is in and that's where it's called. That's what has caused the divergence from equities and then gold and Bitcoin. I think that's right because we'll joke internally that oh we not joke but we'll just comment internally that in a large part on a day-to-day basis it seems like we're still in a bare market where you know Josh Greg you guys have all been around the block now in Bitcoin for a number of years and so are all of my clients and people that we speak with that are prospective clients they're all very savvy Bitcoin investors by this point so that leads me to believe too it's either you know some small subset of ultra high net worth individuals access through ETFs but largely institutions that are now coming in in size. Yeah. And I I think if you I think if you think of the nature of gold um obviously we know nation states were were moving a lot of physical gold around um and that price action has been phenomenal. uh unlike you know we've seen uh in in that equity or in that asset and I you know as we've seen this week it's cooled off quite a bit uh it's cooled off this week uh as go as Bitcoin uh took a run I wouldn't be surprised to see some of that um of course a lot of gold has held long long term but that price move brought a lot of money in and I think that was a a pretty profound move and I think some of that that money might be migrating our way now as at 3,400. Uh there are going to be some natural sellers in that market. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Let's um let's pivot to one of the bigger news items of this week. Greg, it was uh I believe your topic that you flagged here. So, if you want to give some opening remarks as I pull it up. Wanted to talk about 21. I saw this yesterday. I was like, "What the hell, man?" Uh, yeah. I didn't even have time to process it in my travels. So, Greg, can you could you give give us like a highlevel recap about what's going on here? Yeah. So, I mean, I I felt the same. I sort of I flipped up my Twitter feed and saw saw this headline and and I took it took me a minute to like process it as actually being real. But uh so what's what what I gather is that uh there's a new company being formed um by a few different players and Caner Fitzgerald being one. Uh SoftBank uh Michael you can talk about them. I I'm sure you're familiar with them through your uh we work days. uh Tether and Bitfinex are coming together to form a company called 21 basically to be a Bitcoin treasury company to compete with Micro Strategy and and to you know execute a strategy of their own. Um you know big money, big players and and then the the icing on the on the cake is that uh they've tapped Jack Mers to be the CEO of this this new company. Um, and I think the hope is that they're going to, you know, throw a spa uh trade publicly and I don't know all the details about that, but uh I mean this is big news with big big dollars being thrown around, big players, global players. Uh, a lot of lot of things to talk about here. 42,000 42,000 Bitcoin day one. Uh, it it immediately makes them the the number two uh corporate holder. Two or three. Yeah. Josh and Greg, are either one of you guys um strategy enthusiasts? MSD a small portion of it. I have a small position in it. Uh basically because some of my investment vehicles uh IAS, etc. I I really didn't have direct access. So, it's only where I can't do Bitcoin direct. Um I understand the benefits. Uh I believe in I I like Michael Sailor a lot. Uh he's been a big part of my education. Uh and I think he's running a hell of a strategy. It's just not uh going to be my primary vehicle. Totally exactly the same, Josh. You know, uh I have a little bit of exposure um but would would never venture there, you know, without having uh you know, a core Bitcoin stack before before entering that space. That's a prudent strategy and I think it's one that many people have forgotten this cycle. The reason why I asked so was because Greg, you had pointed out that uh 21 made it clear that they want to compete directly with strategy on this corporate treasury bitcoin playbook. So I was curious if either one of you f how closely you follow strategy and what are your thoughts just on this new firm that's being stood up and perhaps what differentiates them compared to strategy. Um, well, I I think they I think they intend to to compete head-to-head in certain ways uh with strategy um in in terms of tapping the financial markets to, you know, to to raise money and buy Bitcoin, but I think that what I've read in ter I think I just skimmed through the deck that was was on Twitter. Um, I think they're going to try to infuse a little bit more, uh, like maybe technology, maybe some some core Bitcoin, um, you know, uh, based businesses to generate bit generate Bitcoin. Um, and this is this is sort of like near and dear to to On-Ramp's heart and uh, you know, using Bitcoin as the measuring stick of of earnings and and then actually having businesses that are earning Bitcoin that that can apply to the share to the uh, you know, Bitcoin per share. Um, so I mean Mer's kind of went off on that multiple times about that being the uh sort of the benchmark, you know, Bitcoin per share and and using that to to uh measure the success of the company. But I so I think that's kind of where the differentiation is is they're going to try to tap into, you know, business strategies, business business models that I think, you know, try to uh generate Bitcoin. Whereas whereas micro right micro strategy is just sort of like borrow fiat you know buy bitcoin you know do different tanches you know uh play to different risk tolerances and just keep raising raising fiat by bitcoin but and and so I I'd be curious what you think what everyone else thinks about you know this I just look at nav I' I' I'll take either one of them uh my strategy certainly has an underlying operating unit that throws cash uh this unit does not out of the gate. I think it's going to be difficult for Mers to lead a company that is sort of onboarding uh companies within that to throw cash that then is part of the the I think you're going to see 21 be more of a financial strategy. Uh they're going to be they're going to be doing much of what Michael Sailor's doing um in the in the markets and the converts, etc. Um, and I think they'll have a very hard time having operating units underneath throwing cash. But still, for me, it would just be uh, you know, how much Bitcoin do they hold? And I'll I'll buy that one this day. And if the Navs deviate, I would take either. I think they're going to do a great job. I think it's a smart move. It's a smart move. It's all vibe, man. It's all vibes. So, you got to get the vibes right. So like you mentioned the strategy of like there's no Bitcoin company really producing like outsiz returns to affect the strategy at this scale. Same way like Micro Strategy try to become you know strategy and they have the dashboard like I think you'll see more and more of these do the vibes play in the sense of like its names right like tether soft bank but it's all the same it's arbitrageing low interest rates to buy Bitcoin. Um, what's interesting to me is I'll go to the positive because there's a lot of negatives, but I'm going to save them for another day. Uh, the positive is I think this accelerates and standardizes the fact that we've all known this like every company's going to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet. They're going to need to because of deflationary environment, but also at a self-preservation, margin compression, just every macro talent we can talk about in the same way an individual is going to hold Bitcoin. And so there's only there's going to be this tipping point where public companies look at this and they're like, well, they're actually start getting penalized um for not having some type of position once it becomes recognized and more companies standardizing it. It's why Sailor open sources this playbook. It's the same reason where like we're waiting for people to launch multi institution. We know they're working on it, but like when there's this open standard, more people are using it using it, it becomes uniform. The market recognizes and that's the beauty of Bitcoin. And the incentive is the competition actually strengthens the whole network uh relative like to the rest of markets are generally pretty zero sum. So I think that's the positive is that more companies are going to come in. They're going to get access uh to cheap debt. There's going to be more people try to set this up. But I will like look through their deck. They got a UBS banker from Russia. Like this is all vibes. It's like we got some names. We put it on there. There's nothing different through that deck that is going to be to Josh's point going to be able to go look at it and be like oh the these guys. At the end of the day, it's a trade because you still have to get out of it. And that's the negative. It's like you got to still get Bitcoin and most people don't know how to leave the casino uh at the top. And so other than, you know, the best, they're just drafting off micro they're drafting off Micro Strategy. Do you think Michael Sailor when this was announced goes, "Oh, hell, I've got a new competitor." No, he celebrates this. Um he's I think uh the Caner Caner in particular u if this thesis that Micro Strategy could become the Bitcoin bank someday uh it's prudent for Caner to be here. U but I I assure you Michael Sailor is not concerned. He's probably celebrating this along with them. Well uh Michael I'm interested. What do you think about Soft Bank being involved and their sort of history, you know, funding funding startup companies, you know, with large sums of money? I mean, and that that's the only aspect that I think could be interesting like if they're in there, you know, could they could this be like a ultimately like a rollup strategy, you know, like start doing their playbook, but then but then they start to like pick off, you know, Bitcoin uh native companies that have grown into something. Yeah. I mean like Tether I I have a lot of respect for Tether uh and Caner not knowing as deep of their model but like obviously they've been around for a long time. Like the SoftBank setup with crypto in Bitcoin is in my opinion like a huge uh flag more than anything. If you look at their history in the space you there's the tweet of Myoshi son buying 200 million back in 17 and referencing how he couldn't not look at the chart every second. It was distracting and it was only 1% of his portfolio. And then you look at their history of investments and FTX and being behind it. It's actually like Mos's known as like being insane. It's like it's a it's maybe a feature for him, not a bug. But you put when him like here's a good thing and I was thinking of this out loud. You put him Adam Newman and there was always the quote where they're like who wins in a fight? Uh who's smarter who's crazier? And Masa was like it's who's crazier. Think about it like this. You put somebody crazy with a crazy volatile asset and you say, "Here, go create some financial instruments in a fiat world with excess liquidity and let's all hope it all it ends up okay." It's like, yeah, I'm probably not going to take a bet on that. See, and this is why like when I saw this come out, I thought, okay, it's great that we have more than just Michael Sailor is the one large champion for corporate adoption of Bitcoin because I he's doing it in such a scale that I don't think it helps other be curious hear like help them to it doesn't help him to take Bitcoin seriously because he's doing it to such an extent. He's an outlier. I don't think other executives know what to make of it. And then the same way here with 21, it's great that you have another voice that's going to be leading at a huge scale. So it's not just sailor but when you combine you know some of the previous investments of uh of um soft bank or just the uh reputation of tether which like tether has been used as kind of the punching bag for bitcoin for years as fud. So I think even generally that has permeated outside of Bitcoin of people knowing ah where does this company sit? What do they do? You do have cancer in the mix which seems to have a a much better and more traditional reputation. But I think that could be another instance where other executives are not exactly spurred on to bring Bitcoin to the balance sheet because they don't know what to make of like kind of the collective reputations and the scale at which they're coming out. It's so outlandish like 42,000 Bitcoin. As much as we may have our reasons for celebrating that. Yeah. And one aspect that um that I see happening is in the adoption phase as it relates to the internet. a pre200 bubble and what we're setting ourselves up for is the 2000 bubble with the amount of liquidity and commercialization of digital assets and Bitcoin and this is effectively the the early stages of that because as whether it's l lending and getting more competitive and compressing that loan to value rate and effectively the volatility blowing people out because it's a 247 network that literally liquidates people on Thanksgiving nights and weekends. Uh we've been there on the uh lending desk side that you were just setting up for the competition to get more esoteric, more complex. Uh I'm sure you saw on Twitter the beautiful uh you know chart on the org structure once things get outside of a few boxes in a LLC agreement. You kind of start to you know kind of just go like this on if I don't know if you've seen the FTX one, but the FTX one, you know. Yeah. So, um I think that's the big the bigger play here is the amount of liquidity. We're going to like really be happy when we see where the price goes. I think everyone here agrees we're probably going to go higher than we expect, but we're also with that as high as fast as it goes, as fast as it falls. And we'll see a deleveraging uh and Amazon came out of that and fundamental businesses came out. But there's no such thing as a free lunch. And if you can access cheap debt for free to buy Bitcoin and enrich yourselves, ultimately it's just not rooted in like practicality. And that and gravity is gravity. It has to come down at some point. Yeah. I don't have a whole lot to add to the conversation here. I was uh too busy working yesterday. He's hung over. Say one other thing. I mean, you know, with Jack being uh tapped as the CEO, he's he's also come out today with a video saying he's, you know, absolutely staying as CEO of Strike. So, you know, that's that's a tough challenge to uh to be running, you know, running two two companies like that. So, I don't know what what he's really tasked with with this 21 company. Maybe he's just the front man, you know, go talk, go do the interviews, go go evangelize, do what you do, basically. and now you now you have wear another hat as well. Uh I think it'll just be a challenge. It's it's it's hard enough to to be the CEO of a small you know small little company and you know let alone two two pretty significant ones. Yeah. So I wish him luck. My initial reaction when I saw the news was now this is some bull market news. I've just been looking at the price chart for months on end of just 80,000. And we actually didn't even bring up the price chart, which is my fault. We've been doing this at the start of every 80s. We got 80. It's I almost feel like a brat for not pulling it up because I've been complaining week after week about being in the 80s and then I didn't even pull up the price when we got to the 90s. So anyways, that yeah, when I saw that news yesterday, I was like, "All right, maybe we are in a bull market. This this isn't going to happen in a bare market." So, um I'm encouraged. What do you guys think? Like, um one thing I did want to touch on was Josh, you made a comment about hash rate before we hit record. So, I want to get to that soon, but just any thoughts about uh this that we didn't cover already just in terms of the past week finally breaking through the the mid to low 80s. We've been there for two months. I think the Salana stuff is bull market news as well. It's related to price and what you referenced about publicly traded companies. I don't know if that's where partially wanted to go, but Salana, what do they do? Like uh they're raising five, is it 500 million for the the public? Yeah. Public publicly traded company. I think uh this kind of underpins what we're talking about. It's like bull market's going to come and there's just going to be so much noise. You're going to hold on to your seat. Leave it to Michael to be our resident crypto expert. Yeah, Brian left, so I Brian's out this week, so I had to uh, you know, step step in. Brian was former head of institutional research at Coinbase, and he was tasked uh, begrudgingly to write about uh, gosh, I can't even remember the tokens. I think Filecoin and some other stuff. We always like to give them crap. Yeah, Michael, it's it is it's like what you it just adds to what you were saying earlier, you know, this sort of pre if you're comparing us this to the internet uh you know, pre2000 runup, you know, another that's another headline that sort of starts pumping that that bubble up a little bit. Yeah, I think um the beauty and sometimes it's it's against the grain and it's not fun to hear, but I enjoy this because I just think, you know, we'll we'll see where it all shakes out, is there's pattern recognition in the past 15 years, every couple years and every cycle, there's always something that takes people's Bitcoin. And at the time, nobody ever realizes that it's taking their Bitcoin until after. Then everyone's like, "Oh we should have like known." And uh you know we have friends that have been you know we Cam and I have worked with and they're very principled and they call it out and that's kind of how we've you know been taught right it's like if you see something that doesn't make sense and you're trying to help your client and like just help them preserve their wealth. If it kind of like doesn't smell right you should call it out. If they still do it at least you can like go to sleep at night saying you brought it up. Michael, you you hit the um the altcoin uh by talking Salana. Uh I I found it quite fascinating that as we made this big move, Bitcoin's dominance is really growing against the altcoins and and sort of traditionally and if you look at the the cycles, people people face those altcoins to try to get outsized returns and many of them intend to move that to Bitcoin. They're trying to get an outsized return over there either on Micro Strategy or altcoins with the ultimate intention of landing at Bitcoin. But to your point, it it rares your Bitcoin. It's a good way to to miss u because Bitcoin does its what is it? Bitcoin uh has most of its gains in 10 days of the year and the rest of the time it's rather uh it's a normal asset. It's like going to the casino and being up on craps or whatever and being like, "Yeah, I'm going to take it off and roll it into, you know, cash." And then you leave and you just have a hangover and you're like, "What happened?" Like all of a sudden, where' it go? I used to. Yeah, that's one of been one of the most disappointing aspects of seeing people sell their Bitcoin for strategy products for equities. Like I really can't believe that I've been surv like the altcoin thing, Josh. Exactly. People have been chasing those games and trying to catch up forever. And there's an element of humility of uh understanding Bitcoin at the time you did and then going straight to it and not trying to play games around it. But people I'll I'll come to it eventually. But man, trying to like having the thing, you have the end goal here. You've got the gold at the end of the rainbow, and then you sell it to go back and try to take the securities route back to Bitcoin to me is just been very surprising and disappointing. And you don't want to disappoint Cam. Really? Look at this guy. You don't want to let him down. Don't sell your Bitcoin. Don't make me sad. Yeah. Josh, what do you want to talk about on the uh on the hash rate side? Was there anything in particular you wanted to cover there? Well, I just I I sort of have two things that aren't as headlineish um that I've I think the correlation gap uh which was mentioned in the the Coinbase video you played earlier that I find the correlation uh separation to the QQQ's here since um you know for the past 14 15 days you know we had Independence Day and then shortly thereafter there started to be a divergence between the equ the equities markets and Bitcoin. And I find that fascinating. I think since you know August of 2024ish, there's been a really high correlation between uh the QQQ's and equities and Bitcoin and um you know the question is why or or how. And if you look at the long-term term chart, Bitcoin often correlates to the markets. Um but then when it breaks, it it separates in a big way. And I think we're at the beginning of that separation. We're only a couple weeks in. We'll see if it holds. Um but I find that interesting. the um the altcoin season the difference this cycle uh I find the gap in in in correlation um I think the QQQ the last 30 days is down uh 5 points and Bitcoin's up over 7%. Uh that's a pretty big divergence um after it had followed it they had followed each other for six or eight months um Bitcoin sort of bucking the tariff news I think we all know the money printer is going to go burr. I think that's becoming a more known thing. You know, the macro folks and us Bitcoiners know that's coming, but I don't think the the everyday American understands that. I don't think they understand they're going to get 10 to 12% of their wealth destroyed uh per year in printing over the of the over the next 5 years. Um, and then I also think there's this this um this gold move and uh some level of knowledge uh in our community and and it's becoming more well known that this is a a store of value sort of a it can be a riskoff. A friend of ours uh Michael, a friend of ours, Chris uh over at Fidelity sent me a note today very interesting that the Bitcoin ball is 10. is the first time that it's been a lower V than the QQQ. So, are we really this wild and crazy thing? Are we really the same as it? No. Uh, Bitcoin is showing its own traits here in front of us in this micro two to 3 week window. I find it fascinating. I can touch on, we can talk about hash rate too, Jackson, but I think you know the story. It's weird. No matter what's happening with price, hash rate used to follow Bitcoin price. people invested in mining Bitcoin when Bitcoin was going up. It doesn't matter what Bitcoin does. It can trade sideways. It can go down. Um this is a parabolic move. Uh from 2021, you see that dip there is where China banned it. And it's just up and to the right, far beyond the price of Bitcoin. This to me, uh we're covering multiple subjects here. U this this is nation states. This is not um marathon riot um poor scientific. This is not those guys. This is much bigger than that. And I don't know uh where it's coming from. Obviously Pakistan Pakistan announces they're going to use their excess energy to mine Bitcoin. I think there's a lot of mining going on at the nation state level that we cannot and have not quantified. Yeah, it's very uh astute in the sense of um that we've talked about this before like there's some point of deviation and that chart where uh like we've heard rumored you know certain countries are mining with nuclear energy but then also this ties into the other point you made of um the retrace has been pretty muted or dampened in what we have naturally seen in in what's happened in a global macro scale and it's because this new monetary reordering is already like baked in or it's it's being baked behind the scenes, meaning people are stacking they brought the gold home, right? And then they're stacking the BTC and a form of that is sovereigns using their energy for to take Bitcoin home and this has been happening for the past two years. That's why I like this if it almost feels inorganic in that like uh parabolic move with uh the hash rate. And so yeah, I think it's it's it kind of makes sense the the divergence simply because it goes back to uh it all of this kind of brought up inspired this uh suit. I don't know if I have Yeah, I do. uh was this because this ties into like almost everything uh with the equities whether it's QQQs or X or MSTR or whatever else you're buying. It's like at the end of the day where this is all heading and they just haven't sold everyone yet. That's why the price is only 100K is gold and Bitcoin or money and everything else is credit. And unless you figure out how to hold those things in a way that reduces your counterparty risk, you have counterparty risk uh by the way of insolvenies given the overlevered market. And once that is like known cuz the emperor has no clothing starting to be seen. volatility. You said there was a a brief period we talked about like three weeks ago where Trump said a couple tweets and literally it shows uh 20% of US GDP in 24 was wiped off and then brought back in a in a day. Like imagine, you know, you're retired and you're sitting there looking at your portfolio and you see, you know, a third of or half of your retirement go away because of some tweets. Like you have to start questioning like the fundamental value of what you're holding. Um, and I think that it's all happening behind the scenes and it's just starting to become like mainstream reality over time. And that's why we're in Bitcoin because people have been forced into that position as well in the sense that they have their money that they earn from whatever they do and then they can't just leave it there. They have to do something with it. So then most people put it into equities or real estate, but then you have all this crazy going on in the world and next thing you know it's a month later and your net worth is down 10 20%. And you're what isn't what's perceived to be the standard for preserving wealth, right? So you kind of think that, you know, this is the prudent thing to do. I put my money into the S&P 500. I DCA. I open up these different retirement accounts. But it's really that's not the way it should be, right? we should be able to just save in a better form of money. And so that's why, just to anchor back to the first principles of this conversation, that's why we're all excited about Bitcoin is because it doesn't require us to become professional investors. I don't want to have to look at all these different Bitcoin products. It's not something I'm interested in. I'd rather just save in a better form of money and, you know, do my work, hang out with my family. And so that's the challenging thing that uh people find themselves in this these days is they're forced into a corner. They have to do something with their money, but they don't yet know what actually what money is, right? So they're hopefully part of what we do here is education. So I hope that we're at least making moving the needle a little bit there. Jackson, I think you you hit it on the head. I mean it's sort of the lack of financial literacy in just in general or and the lack of uh monetary like literacy if you will like what is money you know that like people really need to start getting their head wrapped around that you know and and the these are all examples of like you know that that sort of slowly happening hopefully you know more than than we've seen in the past but I mean I I just think that whether it's the hash rate the nation states mining Um, this is glo this is a global phenomenon like whether it's Brazil or Pakistan or Russia or China. I think I heard China and Russia settling some energy trades potentially in Bitcoin. Um, I mean, I'm sort of fast forwarding, but like th this is this is like this is going to be, you know, Bitcoin is going to be something that you're going to want to like settle with. You know, if you're providing value for something or someone like ultimately, and I don't know the timeline on this, but like you're going to want that underlying like as compensation, you're going to want to be paid, you know, in that, not in credit, but in in the underlying. Um and and you just sort of again another little like slice of something happening whether that's you know a true headline China and Russia settling in Bitcoin but that's proof right there like they're willing to exchange you know commodity for Bitcoin and happy with it settle done you know party to party peerto-peer whatever you want but I mean that's sort of where it's headed you know it's it's such a great point because Jackson and I were on a call about two weeks ago with a family office and he we met him in New York the last time we were there for the the Bitcoin investor week and he followed up and he had a sizable position uh uh he had spread around but it was Black Rockck and the ETF and to make this like short he basically couldn't wrap his head around why you would want the underlying and it's this notion of like what you mentioned Greg like you may not need it today but you may want to live in a world where you just can't get turned off when you log in your Black Rockck account or Coinbase goes down and you lose it like it's just unfathomable but this is the reality of like where certain individuals are um because of you know the the standards that have been built around you know accessibility. Nobody's really been we've seen some debanking but not at like levels that we've seen in other countries. We haven't seen that inflation like all these things that are prevalent in other countries. So it's unfathomable for most of the market to recognize why they wouldn't want equity exposure into the underlying asset. But it goes back to your point once it becomes material. It's just innate to learn what you're actually holding that's material portion of your wealth and that's how you end up learning all these concepts. U that's part of the podcast is just to help accelerate that if possible. And I think another like an example and who knows when this will happen but you know I think it was Jackson or someone just mentioned you know can you imagine sitting there you know you're in you're in retirement you're looking at your portfolio like going down you know 200 whatever like 20% you've lost 200 $200,000 of value let's say and uh well like if you if you someday you know you're going to be sitting there and just like holding the underlying Bitcoin and being Like who cares what's happening really? Like I have the Bitcoin and it's the unit of account. So like I can just go out and continue to live my life. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it's like you're not going to be like measuring it in dollars like eventually. And and but if you if you're just if it's if you have a derivative and it's just sort of like representative and and it's everything's being still looked at as dollar value, then then yeah, you have angst over, you know, the market going down 20%. Everyone, hope you're enjoying the show and thanks again for uh tuning in to the latest episode of the last trade. As a quick reminder, Onramp offers multi-institution custody. Um, the best of both worlds when it comes to not having to leave your assets on a third-party exchange, but also not having to go through the friction and lack of peace of mind when having to manage self custody and think about, god forbid, what happens if something happens to your home as in the sense of the West Coast wildfires or southeastern floods or ultimately just god forbid life thing things happen in life and what happens if um you're no longer around. How does your family actually uh preserve and protect their wealth and and recover it ultimately? On top of that, we offer financial services across the board from trading, lending, IRA, Lloyds of London backed insurance up to $100 million on accounts. And then we obviously have the new launch of the guild for our private clients that want exposure to um the Bitcoin network that we've accumulated over the past half decade and also private equity investments in the space. If you want to learn more, please book a consultation or reach out to me directly at michael@honoritbitcoin.com. I hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. This is a great segue because one thing we touched on at the top at the top of the show was we were going to get right into the action and then on the back half um which I guess we we did a little more than half, but that's okay. There's a lot of talk there's a lot of things to talk about, but the back half we wanted to talk more about um like how did you actually come to all these conclusions Josh and Greg? So you guys are are the guests of the hour for the last trade this week. And so there's a lot of things embedded in what both of you have shared in the past hour on this show, but it's obvious that that's not just something that was learned in a matter of months or probably even a year. It was a far longer process as it is for most people. So, I'm curious and either one of you, um, whoever wants to share first, could you just kind of like walk us through, I guess, how how did you even end up in this position to have a conversation like this today? How did this get on your radar? And, um, you know, at what point did you start to take Bitcoin more seriously from just maybe being like something to trade or or speculate on or not really understand? Josh, go ahead. Well, yeah, I I I'm I ran a company for a long time. Um, so I was busy and I did what everybody else does. All my buddies did and I got a financial adviser and and so very traditional path. Um, when I was younger, I gambled and uh bet on horses and and then I graduated buying equities and then I um was playing around with penny stocks trying to catch a big runner and then eventually had enough wealth that I had a got a wealth advisor and and got my 6040 portfolio and hell yeah I was an adult. Uh but ultimately that's doesn't work. Uh it it didn't perform for me. Um, and so I've sort of I've been searching and and have been fortunate over the past six years or so to invest in private entities. Um, which a lot of people don't have access to. Um, but I sort of found that world and and was fairly happy with it. But essentially, you're locking up your capital um, and it's gone and you don't know when when it's coming back. Uh, many of them fail. Uh, so I've been fortunate to catch a couple good uh, private investments, but when I found Bitcoin, it it came out of a private investment into a Bitcoin miner uh, as a private entity uh, that we were just buying. We were putting the capital up front and then dispersing uh, Bitcoin uh, out the back as we mined it. Um, and I got to looking at this investment and thinking, well, you know, Bitcoin's got to get to like 120K for me to get my return out of this thing. Um, and so this is three over three years ago that I made this investment, four years ago. Um, and then I got to thinking why wouldn't I just own the underlying the same discussion we had with with Micro Strategy altcoins. And so in in late 20 in middle to late 21, I started buying and then I rode that horrible dip down uh into the 17s uh 20s. But I had done my work and through that period I did a lot more work and it was obvious to me that we it was a once in a-lifetime buying opportunity. Um and so yeah I I I slowly over the past starting then uh to now I've migrated out of most all investments that I have I'm basically all in Bitcoin except where I can't access the money. Um, so you know, from a traditional business background to finally accumulating some wealth to then realizing I've got to preserve this wealth. 90 90% of everyone's life is focused on their P&L. I think Sailor says this, but people don't spend enough time on their balance sheet. Uh, we really as an individual and as a as a leader of your family, you really got to focus on your balance sheet. And um, once I started focusing on my balance sheet, I was able to curate my family's uh, situation much better. And then I um so that was the journey of how did I find Bitcoin and then and then oh hell that was just the beginning of uh hell I had more stress when I started owning Bitcoin, how to accumulate it. A lot of sleepless nights when I was buying it at the lows. Am I being irresponsible for my family? And that is how I found you guys um over the past couple years realizing, okay, I did find the right asset, but how the hell do I store this thing? I don't want it in my gun safe on this little device made in China. Um, and that's where I had it. Um, and so, you know, the anxiety and the ups and downs of Bitcoin, they continue, but I've I've sort of found myself in a all these gyrations that are happening in the world, I don't really worry that much about them. They don't bother me that much. I've got my corn and I've got it held in in the best place in the world. And we could talk about uh my journey to sort of find multi-institution custody. Uh, but it's obviously the best solution in the world to to have your Bitcoin, to have it passed down generations. If you don't intend to sell it and flip it every day, of course, you can do that within the on-ramp family. Uh, but I just want you guys to keep my stuff safe and I can sleep at night uh not worrying about somebody breaking into my home um and taking it or me forgetting it or having to teach my wife or my children how to do this process of finding the the seed trays um the plastic device. So, it's just been a it's been a journey that I've finally found a really peaceful place here in the past six six eight months. Thanks for for sharing that, Josh. And uh just for disclaimer, we did not pay Josh to say that. He pays us. So, uh, just an email. I don't get a fee. I don't get my fees reduced. Before we wrap, I will, uh, reference, uh, our first conversation about the fee payment because you you told me something that I've never really shared. I'm going to share it on the show about, uh, the the the cost around custody. We'll we'll save that for the end. Uh, I I guess I'll I'll jump in here. tell you um for those who don't know I was uh I was in the commercial real estate business for 25 years as a commercial real estate broker and entrepreneur because I started my uh my own company with three other partners and you know we worked with companies we represented them we helped them negotiate their office leases and buildouts and things of that nature. Um, I retired from that in 2020. Um, and decided I was going to sort of pursue a passion of mine, which was, uh, craft brewing, home brewing, and turn that into a little commercial operation. So, for the past two years, uh, I've been running, uh, a company my wife and I started called Doctor's Island Brewing Company. It's what's that's where I am at the brewery right now. Um and so you know providing uh providing value to the to the small community that we live in here south of Boston Hall Massachusetts. Um great gathering place bring a community together and enjoying you know craft beer that we're they're brewing right here on site. Um the way I I found Bitcoin was during uh during our my real estate career. We had an office in PaloAlto and we had overspent on on real estate for ourselves. We had much bigger space than we needed. So, we had extra desks and Michael will know this game because he was at Weiwork, but this is sort of before Weiwork took off. We used to uh desk share and and we would bring in small startup companies that we thought had potential to be our clients someday. When they raised more capital and started hiring hundreds of people, we would help them find their office space. But in the meantime, we would have a few desks for them. And this one company came in in 2014 uh called Buttercoin and they were four guys. They were they had seed funding and they were like on their way to a series A and they said, "Hey, can we can we uh pay pay you in Bitcoin for these desks while we sit here?" And uh my my partners like and I looked at each other were like, "What is that? What what is he talking about?" And and it was just the fact that they were they were a potential client of ours. We didn't want to like alienate them. We thought they had a lot of potential to grow. And so we said, "Sure, pay us in Bitcoin for the for the for the desks, you know, we we'll get our fiat from the other empty seats in the in the office." So for about I think it was like six or nine months, uh we opened up a Coinbase wallet and they just kept putting in the equivalent rent in Bitcoin into our in a Coinbase wallet. And uh and we kind of forgot about it because we were busy running our business, you know, taking care of our clients, doing our traditional stuff. So never even thought about about what they were doing and eventually they didn't raise their series A and they went away and we filled the we filled the desks and filled the seats with somebody else who was paying us in fiat. Fast forward about two and a half years like to or maybe three years 17 Q3 of 17 when the the Bitcoin price started to run up to like 5,000. We were in a we were in a partner meeting one day and someone said like, "Hey, wait a minute. Like, didn't we accept some of that like for for rent couple a few years ago and like we had this like mad scramble to see if like we still had the Coinbase, you know, wallet and my partner in in on the West Coast, you know, took half a day to try to figure out like how to get into the Coinbase account and everything." And sure enough, you know, there was Bitcoin in our Coinbase account. And uh and then we just sort of watched it go up to 20,000 a coin. And you know, we're all freaking out and uh and going like, "Oh, we got to diversify. We got to diversify." So, we had another client who uh who was running a a crypto like a a basket of crypto uh sort of like mutual fund or hedge whatever. And uh and so like here's our here's our you know my my part of my story where I like got involved in other cryptocurrencies. I took half of my Bitcoin from that from that rental excursion and put it into this uh flip side fund and eventually pretty much lost all that. Um but thankfully held on to like the other portion of my uh my Bitcoin and that's sort of my start to my journey that 17 18 and really started to be like what what am I holding here? Um started listening to podcasts, getting educated, reading books. um had a had a a real friend and partner of mine in the real estate business who was also sort of going down the rabbit hole with me and that was very helpful to to bounce ideas off each other and like we would get in conference rooms and just literally for like two hours like talk about where this is headed and where what starting to play out like game theory and stuff like that and and this is where kind of the the switch went off in my head. One day I was sitting in my office. I'm looking out and I'm talking to this young guy who's who's uh who's working for us and I was trying to describe like Bitcoin to him and and I just was looking at this huge skyscraper out my window and I was just like and it just hit me like I was like someday like like there's like like half a like half a billion dollars of like value in this like huge tower and I and I was just like oh my god like if this thing plays out and like someday like Bitcoin's used as the unit of account like it's going to have to be so much so valuable like to to sort of suck in like the value of everything that exists in the world like and and I just like my head blew off, you know, and I was just like, "Oh my god." And and that was sort of like the the tipping point where I was just like, "I got to accumulate, you know, as much as I can." Um, but, you know, so to Josh's point, like in the in the early days there, I had like I got the Bitcoin from Coinbase and it went into like a soft wallet like and like I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what I was doing or like how it worked. And then through some education realized that that wasn't like the right thing to be be holding it on. And so I kind of went to a hard wallet like I think it was a ledger was the my first uh my first hardware device and and again learned through learned more and then I think I went pretty quickly over to like a Casa solution where there was like multi key solution. So I was kind of learning about that. Um in fact Casa was like how I sort of started running my own node. Uh at one point their product had it incorporated a node which was kind of cool and I started learning about that. Um but then from there uh that's I think you know years are going by now and and then I learned about Unchained uh sort of uh you know multi-IG uh solution and sort of incorporating a a key holder if you will into the mix. And so then you have multiple keys you're managing. And so I I did the same thing like like I sort of like couldn't sleep at night, you know? I'm like what if something happens to these things and like I feel a little bit better that I have this other key, you know, key holder, but I'm still, you know, trying to describe this to my wife if something ever happened to me. And then I I had to do the old like she's like you have to write everything down, you know, like and uh don't want to do that. So then I'm like I have this like three pages of like every little like thing then click here and like you know all this stupid like like treasure map of like god forbid something happened to me. Um, and so, you know, you kind of go through this process of learning and and feeling anxiety as like the value of what you're holding gets bigger and bigger and you realize just like, you know, you wouldn't walk around town with like a million dollars in your back pocket in your wallet, you know, like you might walk around with a hundred. um you just need you need a partner at some point to sort of help manage, you know, certain certain tiers of value. And and that's sort of like where I'm at today is like I realize like it's not one sizefits-all for for me. Um it's sort of like, you know, you want access at different times and different places and control in different ways um for different amounts of value that you're that you're managing or that you're in under sort of control of. And um I mean I found when I found onramp um uh I just I just knew because I already knew like multi-IG was like the way to go and then like infusing it into like multi-institutions where different institutions are holding and you're the quarterback and you have a trusted partner like helping you through you know all kinds of things whether it's inheritance or you know other financial you know products that you you know you may need to tap into and through the course of your life and um as you get older and you you know you you start thinking about your your kids and your grandkids and all the things that you sort of want to you dream about doing. Um you know I love being sovereign like I love being like my own person but like I also am a tr I also like relationships and like trusting people and like finding the right partner whe you know just like finding your wife or whatever. I mean, and finding your best friends, like you you trust people like and you have a you sort of have a core group, and that's kind of how I feel right now with you with with On-Ramp. I mean, I um I I love being a part of it. I love the the way it makes me feel um in terms of security and like fall tolerance and everything like that goes along with it. And and I know we're like you guys are on the like an early, you know, I I I grew up my whole business was working with like younger companies and like you guys are sort of like this this startup like financial powerhouse that I can just see um like heading in the right direction. I want to be a part of it. I want to help see you guys like be successful and and I because I know it's like going to provide incredible value to not only individuals but you know institutions and hopefully you know maybe even beyond. So, uh that's kind of my journey and I just wake up wake up every day like just pinching myself that like uh you know we have the chance to be this early that we have someone someone knocked us in the middle you know somewhat knocked us on the head and we realize like where where this is going and we got ahead of it. Um and I and I don't know I mean every it's not it's I'm not like knocking anybody like life moves fast like there's a lot going on. You're trying to do your job. you're trying to you're trying to like do whatever and like you just and you're trying to build a family, you're trying to have relationships, like there's a lot of noise and you don't have like not not everybody has like time to sit around and like dive deep on all these topics and like they just kind of you know go headline to headline and whether it's politics or sports games or you know it's just life is like filled with all kinds of stuff that distracts you and so it's really hard to um spend the time and carve it out of like your busy life to learn. And we talk about like all the education. It's like it's it's out there, but like what's really like hard is like people like opening up enough time in their life and their day to actually like absorb it at a at a deep level. So that's the challenge. Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Greg. I think uh there was a lot that went into this. Cam and I personally have v onboarded thousands of people, billions of dollars, and like you said, there's not a one-sizefits-all, but we realized if we're going to get as many people into this asset and protect them, you have to like lower the barrier. So, lower the friction from that learning because some people just will leave it on the exchange because they don't feel comfortable like being self- sovereign. And then we saw people lose assets on BlockFi or ultimately um there's no like understanding of like what rockolid custody bulletproof financial services in Bitcoin. So they always are speculating. They're never thinking of this as a cornerstone of their portfolio or like most people on this call where you're preserving the rest of your wealth. The sad part is we've all our lives have gotten so much easier by holding a better form of money and we can do more and it gives more optionality and we can't really fix the world until people have that access that doesn't require a lot of the friction. And I liken uh what we're doing here to like the best analogy I've come up with is almost like mosaic and the browser and how that democratized the ability for everyone to get access to the worldwide web and how much value does that deliver when you can just have all the information in the world at your fingertips. This is very similar in my mind that somebody can now spin up an account and we'll be louder about this but Cam and I used to have to ship the devices, do the onboarding. It would take anywhere between two to eight weeks if not longer and that's just to get somebody set up. Now you have to instill the confidence to move the assets over because to be honest, most people don't know how to reconstitute wallets, back up the seed phrase, tell their family member. You can write it down like you were going to, but then god forbid somebody finds what you wrote down. How do you reconstitute if the third party goes away? Um, and this past week has been really we've been talking more clients about the guild and I was shocked like you know how not at how amazing a job Cam and the team have done, but the level of what this sentiment has been where we talked to a guy saying and I was like this sounds so fluffy that it's a lie, but it's not. The guy said, "My wife has physically felt uh my presence be more calm because he was previously using a collaborative custody solution and he just didn't understand it." And she was like, "How am I supposed to get this?" And now he's able to just like be normal with all of his wealth and uh it was like really kind of rewarding u anecdote that we got shared and then obviously you guys anecdotes as well are really impactful. I I just want I want to share one other thing which was my experience with with On-Ramp and and I think it sort of goes back to that like that relationship and the trust and everything and uh and I had like built up a nice feeling with like with with On-ramp and particularly Cam and and I was going through the onboarding I remember and it was like and and you guys weren't quite there yet with like the whole integration or whatever and and I'm going through the on-ramp part and I'm like putting in all my stuff. I'm like, "Okay, this is good. This is good. I trust these guys, you know. And then then it got to a point where like one of the other instit I was sort of needed to like put some information in relative to like the other institution that was going to hold the key and it kind of just like went out of like your world and into their world and I and I just and I kind of froze because I was like wait a second like I don't I don't I don't have like I don't know these people like and I've never talked to them and and I remember talking to Cam about it. He's like, "Oh, no, that's cool. Like, we're working on it." You know, d and like you got it very quickly to a point where where you know it was sort of a seamless onboarding for me at that point like where it was like I stayed with on ramp that, you know, it was right through your portal, you know, onboarded all the other institutions, but I felt like you guys were like technically and and sort of like with me the whole way, you know, and that was like huge for me. that was like I I put up like a stop sign like right away when when it was like oh we're going outside of like on-ramp you got to do this over here. Um and I and I realized obviously they're a valued partner in the whole multi-institutional framework but from an individual like there's still humanto human like contact that's important. So you guys have done a good job you know maintaining your sort of like sphere of influence around the process. So hopefully uh other people will have a much smoother uh onboarding process then going forward. Yeah, thanks for hanging with us through that, Greg. Like now it's to the point where our client can on board in less than 10 minutes themselves, which is pretty phenomenal. So credit to the the team that's built that. But I really appreciate you bringing up the points around some of the the bigger themes around like trust and relationship aspect because it what you guys both shared is such an interesting journey where you find this great asset, you develop the thesis and conviction around it. Then you learn that there's this strange aspect of it of custody which sends you down this really weird trajectory. And I I'd love to hear if you guys have any anecdotes from your wives or family when they see you pulling out something out of the gun safe that's not a gun. Like what is that? They're like this is our wealth or this is a growing part of it. this is where it' all be stored, you know, or you're in your office and you're like, I can't I'm sorry. Please take the kids out. Like, I'm concentrating on something right now. And you're like writing down words. Um these these moments of of uh clairvoyance. Uh but like also like what Michael's talked about this for years too, like you get to that point where you've got the ledger of the cold card and only you know where it is, but you do you feel that power and that sovereignty and it it's incredible because now you can send the equivalent of a wire any time of day or night. That is always powerful to maintain if you know how to use it. But you you do feel that isolation aspect too and you realize like how much most people value community and value having trusted partners and you miss that relational aspect like finance, you know, money is a tool that brings people together, right? It's all about trade and commerce in a peaceful way. So I think there's a lot of big themes that you you're kind of describing an emotional journey of of like going off being by yourself and then coming back and saying you know what I do want to extend some trust and even during that onboarding process you're working with on-ramp you're working with me but the moment that you had to kind of veer out of that sphere of influence and trust with you know different partner like wait well I haven't quite given you know it's like you're kind of trying to figure out where that trust lies and where you want that relationship to be. Yeah, and this is just rooted in pragmatism. You know, again, this pod sometimes it gets uh you know, if we we truly have the most sophisticated clients and um they get what we're saying, but reality is the common narrative is we're all going to like hold our keys and sing kumbaya and like that makes zero sense because we had gold and gold we could have held it all in our cave. Uh you can it's a bare asset. Uh and you can hold it in your citadel but a bigger militia comes to your citadel. it's just not rooted in practicality of coordinating economic activity. Um Josh, I know you thought deeply about this. So curious kind of adding to any of that. Yeah. Um Cam said, you know, it's this you get you get the this freedom and power and this this autonomy that I've got it and I can fire it anywhere in the world at any time. Cool. Okay, that wears off real quick. Uh that part wears off quick. What doesn't wear off is am I going to lose this thing? And what if I have a fire? What if somebody breaks in? What if my kids are around town talking about my dad having Bitcoin? And then anyone could Everyone's going to want this this thing and hell, how many people know that I've got it right here in my gun safe. Like that to me is just not something I can sleep on. Um then I had uh so I tried to get my wife to come in. Cam, this to your point of your family experiences. I tried to get my wife to sit down and I mean I was like I barely showed her the device and she's like, "No, I'm out. I'm out. Call one of your buddies, you know." But what what my wife wanted what she wants and what she's always had her whole life fair in fairness to her is she wanted somebody to call. If something happens to you, I want somebody to call. I don't want to talk about you dying. I don't want to talk about any of this stuff. Like no. And so I had to get my daughter who's I have one one daughter who's a really social mind and one who's a very analytical mind. So I had to sit my daughter down at 20 years old and go okay if something happens to dad here's what you do. And it was just a horrible experience. Um and frankly I I you guys Michael you know this I uh when you and I first talked it took me six months to find on-ramp. I looked at every vehicle out there. Um and and um I ultimately obviously believe that this is the best solution for me and my family. And now Cam Straw is my wife. She has Cam's number and that's all she's got to do. I love it. the uh the thing that like you know I'm I'm pretty uh I don't like I've always been like this where I don't like celebrate a lot of successes because I think like you have to hold yourself to high standards and and us as a team is very similar. So I want I'm saying that to like put gravity behind um what you're saying Greg and why it was a little like clunkier or the onboarding uh initially back in the day is when you when I first did a transaction for my own vault and went to a different third party that has no is completely independent and goes and has to go offline to a key ceremony. It was like magic for me and I still think about that because I will hold to you know to the end of my times the difference between gold and bitcoin is literally that you can embed governance into the underlying custody setup because that's where gold failed and when you can custody an asset and it can scale appropriately with five institutions if you need it. They have legal frameworks because we still live in a rule of law and you have to verify with an independent third party or they will never sign those keys and their whole business is dedicated to that. So the first time they don't sign for Josh, Greg, Cam, or anybody of our clients, their business is done. So why would they ever not sign that? And if they do, they still don't they can't halt your assets for moving or relend them out. You just go to the other two. There is like a real powerful moment there because the assets they're secured, auditable, onchain, segregated, and then you have independent institutions that are cryptographically sharding and doing everything under the sun that again for individuals, no problem holding 10, 30%. Whatever you're willing to lose, that's fine. But for all your wealth, it's just not rooted in practicality. That was behind where it's a technical feat to do this. This is why nobody's actually done this. Everybody wants to. Everybody's working on it. But the problem is to actually go and get the key partners and have enough confidence and conviction and getting them to participate is one feat. Then to build it in a way that somebody can onboard within minutes. And then that's not even the hard part. The hard part is communicating it effectively like this versus the existing solutions. This was never theoretical. It was all built in practicality because Cam went and I went through those trenches of shipping these little plastic hardware devices and onboarding individuals and every person had these anecdotes of so in their life firmware update red screen and they're like not moving it over $10 million you know on Naidig not moving it over uh something else FTX goes out not moving it over and then finally BlockFi blows up and they're like screw it send it into the ether we're not leaving it on 90 and that's what the pain it took to get them into collaborative custody and then they're still uncomfortable with it we're like we got to build something better and also something for when the assets 350,000 or 500k everyone that we're talking about they just don't have the exposure you guys do because that pain will become so acute that you know we're like I joke and say everyone's just safeguarding the client's assets until they're ready for armor. I had a different experience than than Greg. Uh Cam, I I think you would you would agree that uh I probably on boarded uh after Greg because for me it was quite simple. Um I was shocked at how easy it was frankly. Um every time you touch your Bitcoin, it scares the out of you and you have massive anxiety. And this was way less anxiety than setting up my plastic device. My plastic device literally had me in hot having hives. Uh, but Cam, we just couple couple phone calls, couple loginins, and it was done. Favorite part about Josh's story is Josh has guns and will shoot someone whether he admits it or not. But he doesn't want to have to. The people that say it's always the opposite. It's like similar like Texas, they joke and like everyone waves, you know, when you're driving. It's because everyone's packing. We're all friendly. But, you know, when the time comes, you just don't want to, you know, people in the south are a little different. And it's very similar to like everyone like likes to lar, you know, they're going to be self-s sovereign, all it's like nobody actually really wants to die for a trade or wants their family to die for a trade. And the ones willing to do it, don't actually talk about it. And it's just been sad because it has kept people's assets safe to take them off exchanges. But the reality is like what's the whole notion of when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do? It's like the facts are changing. Like the price is going to be is six figures. There's different solutions now. It's not an ETF or a hardware device. Now, what are you going to do is like where we're at. And we just think about the practicality. It's a price does its thing. Everyone else will realize it. Man, one of our clients is a Marine that experienced he was injured during combat in war and he was like, I don't want to have to shoot somebody. I don't want to have to deal with this. I've got a family. So, and I look at him, you know, musly. He could not be more of a picture as G.I. Joe. Like, if he is feeling that way, uh, a lot of other people are going to realize this pretty soon. I mean, you s you s you you still want to um again for certain pieces of your wealth or whatever, you want to be able to control it and be able to move it and like and and do things with it like at your own at your own instruction, your own pace. Like I I just I just went through this. I had to move some some money from a from another investment account into like a into a bank checking account and it took a week and this was like about taxes and you know like and it's like starting to get like kind of like hey we u we we need to write the check you know what I mean like and uh it took no no lie like it was six days it like to get it from like me telling someone hey I want to move this into and seeing it in the account it was six days so And one thing to pull up because I know we're coming up on time, but we also got to keep our boomers safe. You know, we do our central point of failure of the week and this came up um this past week that the FBI says the Americans over 60 lost nearly three billion of crypto in 2024. Everything we're talking about they want nothing to do with and so they're going to get forced to go in to the ETFs and we all know, you know, how bad of a product those that is. And so like you can see this chart um where it shows the numbers based on age over 50 over 60 and I reference uh I talked about this on Brahms's plot uh like Snapchat for anybody over a certain age if they picked up Snapchat 5 years ago like the way the screen is oriented they don't even know how to use it. you got a flick and different numbers. It's very similar with like Bitcoin. Once you get to a certain age, like individuals want nothing to do with this and they're also predisposed to social engineering, clicking the buttons, doing all these things, and these are the things that we're working to protect against. So, there's a component of self- sovereign, but there's a component of the amount of sophisticated actors that are going to come into this space for our friends and family. Even if somebody's listening or we want to hold all of our Bitcoin on the hardware device, you want to protect your friends and family and give them a better vehicle than leaving it on an ETF or Coinbase. I don't know if you saw Scott Melker, uh, someone did a very sophisticated attack on he and his family. Um, and one of, uh, someone lost $4 million. Actually, someone imitated Scott Melker, was able to use his fake ID. I mean, this is getting really real sophisticated. And Michael, to your point, we're so early. Like, this is a 85 90,000 95 $100,000 asset that it's not going to be that in two years. you know, you've got $50,000 of it or $100,000 of it. What how are you going to behave when that's uh 15 million u you're not going to want $15 million of gold or cash or Bitcoin on a plastic device made in China? End of story. What if it was made in Russia? Yeah, that's fine. Guys, this was this is amazing. We're going to have to uh do maybe a quarterly or some kind of series. This was fun to to chat through and there's going to be no shortage of uh stuff coming down the pike. We'll have to have you back on again. Thanks for having us. So fun. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. 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.