Tariffs, Treasuries & $100K BTC: Decoding the China-US Deal’s Ripple Effects

It all comes down to computers communicating. The information superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of Okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash. Alrighty, boys. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is May 12th, 2025. Uh tariff deal. We made a deal with China, boys. Price is uh Bitcoin hasn't really responded directly to that, but Bitcoin's kind of just been grinding up over the weekend around 105ish. Um, initial thoughts on the China US trade negotiation tariffs are being lowered back down. I'll pull up the exact details right now, but gut reactions, boys. What do we What do we think? Yeah, go ahead. You uh I'm interested to hear your your perspective, too. But uh right now, I think there are a couple things at play. one um unfortunately we didn't really get quite as much of the deregulation along with the tariffs as we were uh hoping for which means that you know bringing manufacturing back to the US still has the complexities of you know many of these manufacturing industries have unions associated with them and there are just you know extra cost time associated with that and so that's just kind of going to hamstring some manufacturing back in the US unfortunately and so despite the rising tariffs, I think that there was just a factor where not quite as many CFOs, CEOs, etc. really were eager uh to bring manufacturing back to the US or at least that was likely the feedback. And then point number two that I think the uh you know, US is paying very close attention to is the Treasury yields. uh they really spiked significantly back uh a couple about a month ago to about four and a half percent for the 10-year uh and I think that really just kind of broke the will of the president. Um and so I think he since then he's been kind of more open to negotiations. I think uh right now it's interesting that treasuries are pretty much back at that uh 4 and a.5% but it brought everybody back to the table. These are only 90 days, so we'll see how they end up playing out, but um I I think that there will be some more friendly nature to a deal getting done. So, are you are you saying that this was uh coincidentally or accidentally worked out kind of well or was this, you know, the 5D chess art of the deal all along? was just sort of the you know the thinking and the plan was to get them to the table with some aggressive initial uh actions and then you know actually have a negotiation and get somewhere like this. Ultimately I think there was always going to be you know never 125% tariffs on China but uh getting back down to like 10 or or 30% with the fentinel on top uh was probably a little bit less than he was initially anticipating. Uh but he the Treasury yields I think kind of just drove his hand to be a little bit more open to negotiations. Yeah. I mean I think that the net net on the other side of the curve is like global liquidity had to come in at a certain point before things break and so they pushed it as hard as they could before whoever got tapped and was like chill out. Uh and what was interesting or Brian had referenced Bitcoin hadn't fully moved. I thought it it moved a little bit um irregularly over the over the weekend. I don't know if it I think it was Saturday. Yeah, but it was like Saturday. I feel like you got that candle up to 104 cuz we hadn't really breached and stayed up in 104. Uh yeah, I think it was right here. Yeah. Yeah, there it is. And then um we kind of stuck around and it actually it looks like it ticked closer to 106 this in the middle of the night like 1055. Yep. Um but yeah, I mean I think like it's fascinating when you think about the the pools of capital um coming that we know whether it's the the institutional side, but also it feels like every other day there's a new corporate strategy getting stood up with pretty sizable amounts um to bid up BTC. So it's it's kind of a crazy setup that we're all looking at right now. Yeah. I mean just rapid fire around the horn. Let's take some uh little price prediction. End of week market close. Market close Friday. This Friday, where do we think the prices? Are we at new all-time highs or are we still under under 109? It's a good question. I think we're over. I'll take the over. New alltime high by weekend. I'll take the under. Uh, I think we did benefit with a big run up to this China meeting too. They leaked they I don't know if it was leaked or they just said it publicly that they were planning to meet with China. Uh, there are still a lot of people that are out of the market. I mean, Trump said buy again, didn't he say end of last week, buy stocks like Yeah. Uh, that's that's always a good indicator. So, I think that uh a lot of this is kind of getting priced in. you know, I don't think that we're going to get perfect negotiation talks uh and a deal with China without, you know, at least somebody walking back from the table and uh you know, trying to get a better deal. I don't know when exactly that's going to happen. Uh end of week Bitcoin price predictions are, you know, almost impossible for me to do. Uh so I I don't really trade that, but it's at any point this thing could rip 20% or drop 20% just based on, you know, out outside data that's not really relevant to Bitcoin directly. Yeah. And I was like, data is key for Trump tweeting, which is like the whole point of, you know, kind of this this notion of when money dies and ETFs and tickers and ICOs and meme coins, it's like there are no fundamentals anymore. So, it's just like you're just trading momentum and vibes. Um, that's that's just kind of the status of where we're at. So, you can short the market and then Trump, you know, says buy or he's kind of forward indicating it's all lights go. Um, so you know, short it at your own risk or short PTC as well at your own risk. Yeah. And I think as you would expect, equities most, you know, most predominantly are reacting to this. Um, you've got Amazon up 8% this morning. Uh, Apple around six, ABA 6 and a half. Gold, as you would also expect, is is down on this, which to me signals like this interesting dynamic around Bitcoin specifically where like, you know, I I often talk about it as the ultimate riskoff asset, but it also has risk on qualities, you know, not only on one hand of just being lumped in with risk assets by broader market participants, but also, you know, it is uh emerging tech benefits from liquidity in the same way that uh equities do. So it is kind of benefits on both both ends like risk off risk on like Bitcoin should be going up in kind of either scenario in my mind and and that's kind of what you're seeing here with gold reacting downwards but Bitcoin not reacting downwards. So I think that's that's one thing to just call out there and then uh we sort of referenced it but uh everybody gets a spa everybody gets a Bitcoin treasury company. The latest uh news was I'll pull up the um the actual announcement tweet, but uh any thoughts on Nakamoto, the the newest Bitcoin treasury company from um David Bailey I think will be the CEO. I think they're raising about uh I forget the numbers. I'll I'll try to find them. But any thoughts on on the latest the latest I think a ticker as you said, Michael. I think it's 700 million 750. It's kind of um interesting on uh if it's raised or not because it was tweeted it was out and then somebody said nothing burger under under Bailey's deal and uh and he said you're calling like 750 the largest raise and nothing burger. So I don't I don't know if it's fully been raised. Um, but either way, one thing that's kind of interesting about it I'm going to pull up on on this slide is um I'm so conflicted with these treasury things, man. Um, but it's right here uh who invested and uh gosh, it's everybody under the sun. Oh yeah, here we go. So we have uh Actai Ventures I don't know but Arrington Capital uh which is XR XRP Capital Kingsway which is the largest leader of Ton uh Parafi uh Van Yorkville Bellagi former CTO of Coinbase um anyway so yeah I mean it it goes back to conflicted in the sense like everything's good for Bitcoin. Um, I think the sad part is I was thinking about it this morning is um, Bitcoin's hard. Like it really is hard to wrap your head around and uh, like it's hard to think about even if you wrap your head around it, how do you take, you know, actually material allocation and then custody in a good way that you don't end up on that screen I always talk about. And so it makes complete the screen I'm referencing as the losses. So it makes complete sense where there is a uh vehicle for people to get exposure directional directionals exposure to Bitcoin and the ecosystem via these things. It makes sense um and potentially is good for awareness. The other side of it I guess my conflict is that um it just kind of praising the naive and the uneducated because you could just spend the time to focus on something more uh like more uh valuable. Now, the counter counter to that could be like, well, I need that money to go educate the market. Um, but the reality is most people will hide under, well, somebody's going to do it. And that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do because that's what people say about casinos and gambling and people lose their shirts on it. And the last thing is that like when you really look at this, these assets are going to be insanely volatile and people can barely find conviction and the hardest money on earth to hold it long term. That's where the huddle term comes in. And so, you can make a bet. We should figure out what that market looks like. most of these people are not going to hold this these assets these tickers through the volatility that they're going to deal with and so they're just going to lose their money. Um so yeah I mean in that sort of perspective I I I would agree and and thinking most people participating in these types of things these proxy exposures which you know we have Tad Smith on on a different podcast a couple weeks ago and he had a great point around like if there's nothing differentiated about all these businesses then the only way that they end up differentiating is by effectively taking more risk being more leveraged um and you know over enough time of that sort of manifesting is potentially not a great thing um if there's just more and more leverage built up in the system um all these companies doing the exact same thing with not a ton of differentiation um that being said I I also think you know there's this dynamic of you know even just looking at that cap table that we just had pulled up like it does feel in my mind like somewhat of a paradigm shift around like you know these are we've kind of been saying this for a couple weeks but like these are the ICOs like these these treasury companies are kind of the new altcoins and you even see that in some of the participation being from what you would think of as like more crypto aligned people and maybe they're also internally recognizing like no this is the new sort of like leveraged greed higher beta area of this uh market cycle is just these Bitcoin treasury companies. It's not you know the altcoins or the alt uh layer ones. It's the same it's the same scam because at the end of the day it's just like to your point higher liquidity flows because the most sophisticated investors five years ago today and 10 years ago were trying to make more Bitcoin. That's the whole point of like everyone's a scammer. So they just it's they're still trying to like make more Bitcoin. A lot of people weren't you know even Joe Luben I think was selling like a lot of people weren't trying to make more Ethereum. They were making more Bitcoin. Um so it's kind of the same it's the same play for those guys. Yeah. This one is interesting, too, because they're I haven't fully dug into everything yet. It just came out like a couple maybe an hour ago, but they're going to be investing in all the other Bitcoin treasury companies, too. And so, it's going to be uh leverage on leverage, which will be which will be very interesting, which uh you know, for people who think Bitcoin isn't volatile enough, maybe that's that's an interesting play. But, you know, to kind of take the other side of this, like everybody once they understand Bitcoin, they want Bitcoin in their company. And you know, we kind of live in a copycat economy where uh you know, early riders kind of did this. We we all wanted Bitcoin ourselves. And so, uh we denominated all of our personal hurdle rates in Bitcoin. And so, we just said, "Okay, we'll do this for the company as well." Um but they see, you know, Michael Sailor and strategy being successful. And so there will just inevitably be everybody trying to copy that under the sun until there is, you know, no more demand for, you know, leverage Bitcoin type plays. Uh I think it's just kind of the inevitable thing that happens this cycle. Yeah. I mean, I think the other aspect um I think like so part I'm just so conflicted because I hate like we talk about it every week, but it's just the thing that people bring up is um the so this is going to sound crazy except for to us and then some people listening is that the correct move for the past 10 years, for better or worse, even though people will disagree, has been to hold all your wealth in Bitcoin. Everyone's life's gotten easier objectively and they've been able to buy have mer more purchasing power. Their lives have gotten easier whether it's a corporate or an individual. The problem with that is you're taking something that has never existed in somebody's mind. They don't know where to bucket in their personal portfolio or their, you know, their um professional portfolio if they're managing money. And then you're telling them to park anything more than 1 to 3%. It just hasn't been done outside of a few convicted investors. So the idea is you're taking advantage of the notion of like equities make up a large percentage of everyone's portfolio. So this idea that people are going to go put outsiz position sizing into these equities because that's how they their mental model when in reality they should have been holding spot bitcoin but they couldn't wrap their heads around a the asset the concentration perceived risk how to custody it. So, it's just this like it makes complete sense why it's happening and what they all picked up on, but it also makes complete sense that these people are not going to hold it long term and they're going to end up with less Bitcoin and the people setting it up are going to end up with more. And the thing is nobody's going to say this story because like nobody's going to be incentivized because they're going to everybody's going to launch one of these things. Um, and so anyway, did that make sense, Brian? Like in the like articulation like it does. I mean, I think the the the sort of perfect path in someone's mind for investing in these things is like you top ticket, you sell it, and then you buy Bitcoin. But like most people are not going to pull that off and they're going to end up bag holding these things when then they trade at a massive discount. Um, you know, if and when the Bitcoin price has a material draw down, all these things are going to underperform Bitcoin. um most and there's a nav and there's a nav component as well because that's part that was part of the dig and the start the pot about everything's vibes and momentum or it's not based on fundamentals. So every treasury company has like five bullet points when they launch that all these perceived things or things that they're going to do with the market. this one is fund of funds or whatever they're going to invest and so then the sell is well which one is going to trade at a higher uh multiple to nav and that's what you're trading and then like you're going to the momentum is going to move away from it and they're going to just be left holding it. um you have to just like go further out on the risk curve. And most of those like you know those bullets or whatever people are putting in these um uh marketing decks or perspectuses it's like mostly marketing like the the real differentiation going back to the leverage point is like they're just going to take more risk. Like that's how you're actually going to differentiate from any of the other players doing this. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. And I wonder like if we should have somebody that manages an actual corporate treasury on in like in a in a public like a listed company and ask how this helps or hurts framing internally because like the initial thought would be like it kind of hurts you know like in like if you're actually a cash flow producing business and you want to put this on your balance sheet and it's like well what's wrong with your business because everybody doing it today are like zombie companies or these companies that you know so it's just like yeah it's it's certainly I think in most scenarios a tacid admission of a a broken business at at you know whatever the core business is. Um I don't know a ton about this this I never heard of this kindly MD company prior to a few hours ago. Um but I would imagine that you know that core business is probably not doing great and they that's that's how they were able to wrap their arms around this. Yeah. Yeah. There's a cool business idea baked in here though is if you did go public and then you allowed your you educated your investors and you allowed them to convert uh you figured out the conversion. You know, obviously there's a taxable event, but then you help them get into spot BTC and custody it. Yeah. Bitcoin in kind uh as like a dividend or whenever they sell their company. Yeah. Like that's an interesting pitch. like somebody's going to do that and like that's a good that's at least somewhere model because you're giving them a path to get to the underlying while getting their equity exposure like that's interesting but that's not what these people are doing. There's just a lot more Bitcoin in All right, where do we go from here? Liam, I know you had a list. Where do you want to go? Uh, one thing that I thought was interesting too, you kind of mentioned it uh, and we won't belabor this point too long, but um, every company should have a Bitcoin treasury, but it it is kind of a tacit admission for some that, you know, their operating business isn't going well, but it doesn't necessarily mean to do that. Like, Right. Everybody has Yeah, everybody has a treasury regardless. It's just if you put like the entire market cap of your company or like 50% of it into Bitcoin, then that's more of a tacit admission. Um, on that Coinbase uh recently, you know, uh, Brian Armstrong said that we were considering putting our treasury, at least 80% of it into Bitcoin at one point. Uh, specifically right now they have Bitcoin, Ethereum, and, uh, some other coins. uh they they did stack a little bit more Bitcoin over the most recent quarterly uh earnings report. Bitcoin is the only coin that they have that with um you know their cost base is lower than the fair market value. Um the other coins underperformed which is interesting if you're trying to trade altcoins uh you know if you think you can outperform Coinbase who literally knows how has all of the inside information. Yeah, exactly. And you're probably gonna have a bad time. Um but it it's there's a way in which companies can benefit from Bitcoin without you know necessarily doing the Bitcoin leverage strategy while they still have their core operating business because you know they will necessarily need more optionality in the future and holding dollars rather than Bitcoin will give them less. Um, I don't know if there's any other comments on that, too. Otherwise, we can touch on the the Darabit deal, too. Yeah, we can, uh, let me pull that up. Unless Michael, you had anything else. No, no, no. I was just going to say that yeah the dare I think the dare stuff is super fascinating and there's just no we talked about it on I think we did a few pods last week but uh it's just exciting for the M&A space and there's just going to be no shortage of up deals that are happening whether exchanges consolidating or trad uh coming in to to make acquisitions 100%. Um, this was Brian, can you scroll up a little bit? I forgot exactly how large the the deal was, but um 2 it was 2.5 billion. I think 700 million in cash. Um, one the thing that I thought was fascinating that I kind of like felt dumb that I didn't think about think about. 2.9 billion was 700 million in cash. The thing um I was kind of disappointed I didn't think about it was like there's probably been firms with the explicit like strategic vision of setting up offshore for this time to come so they can sell their firms onshore because like you think about the IP the liquidity and all the things that Darbit was able to you know gather the past five plus years operating um you can in if instead of having to build that liquidity profile or whatever the product is back on shore starting from zero you can just go acquire ire that firm once like they knew the administration was going to be friendly. So there's probably going to be a lot more of this coming which is um this is an interesting dynamic. A lot sadly a lot of the stuff was speculative like gambling stuff. So it's probably not good for um you know the consumer but either way uh it's a good sign of capital markets and this liquidity will end up going back to Bitcoin in some respects whether there's Bitcoin companies being built or into spot bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. a lot of um there's a lot of regulatory arbitrage that's to be had uh over different jurisdictions. Uh I'm surprised that we haven't necessarily seen Binance coming back into the US and just continue uh and take you know some of their massive liquidity and uh you know strong user base and you know product built out and just take some of Coinbase's market share. Um but yeah, that's that's something that still has a lot of time to go uh and run too, especially as you know there a lot of Europe is extremely unfriendly to to Bitcoin at the moment. Um but but to to the Darabet deal, I think honestly those are going to like you know options and arbitrage type deals, they're only going to become more valuable as these Bitcoin treasury companies gain additional uh liquidity and just everybody wants to kind of hedge out of them to uh that doesn't necessarily have a strong view on uh owning the underlying asset. Uh and so those those should only become more of all uh you know valuable as the underlying spot bitcoin becomes larger as well as just other structured bitcoin type securities come out in the market as well. Yeah I I mean I I agree with all that. I think like broadly zooming out on something like this in particular it's just like this is a natural maturation of the market. like it was kind of insane that like perpetual swaps, this like sort of cryptonative um type of derivative were basically just not you know available in the United States for the you know past however many years they've existed. Um, and I, you know, I remember from my my brief stint at Coinbase, like that was a thing that, you know, the the business was trying to figure out like how do we how do we onshore the these um type of instruments in a way that doesn't get our, you know, our hands slapped basically. And so now that that um, you know, regulatory overhang has obviously shifted materially, um, this deal makes a ton of sense in my mind. Um, I did want to brief aside uh, just give Michael a little bit of flowers. If you've been following our pods uh over the past several weeks, you know that he and I have talked about Bitcoin dominance and uh you know where that's headed. There was a um a brief downturn in dominance over the past week or so. Ethereum itself drove most of this. Ethereum was up like 45% in like 3 days or something which drove uh you know this this decline in in dominance. You know still up there, still above 60. Um, I think I've been quoted as saying I don't think it's going back below 50%. This uh this market cycle or ever really in my mind, but uh Michael, just wanted to, you know, just give you a little bit of flowers yet. You you're right for at least a few days here. I appreciate that. I think um you know I hate like you we've done been doing this for a few years now working together like you know we talk and sounding cynical on things and then they kind of like I don't know like there's this I want you to be right and I just don't think it's going to be right in the same way like the corporate treasury I would love for us all to just like accumulate Bitcoin by I just don't think it it it happens and it's just a reality of calling it out because obviously not only can you save money but you can fake money if you if you do things the right way. Um, this kind of ties into what Liam was talking about on the um uh well I guess on this note like I was pinging you guys this morning about like we're probably going to see structured ETF products around you know dividend structures and other crypto products like that'll be the driving demand for crypto this cycle. It's the notion that you can wrap an equity wrapper around crypto and then you can give everyone else exposure because nobody else wants to download a wallet and figure this stuff out. And I think that was probably a big blind spot for everyone. Uh and so that is where I see supporting the my thesis that dominance will wayne for a while is because ultimately more crypto will come in, more products, more to flow will come into that and it's easier. That's like the the angle that it was talked about this morning was like you can map out dividends and structures of like some of these tokens and then you can give people exposure that where um via the via you know equities like an ETF rapper or even if like the Salana I think that thing I don't know what it what it looked like but it started trading on the Canadian stock exchange last week. Um so I think you're just going to see more of it like an XRP one's coming. um in so anyway uh yeah I will I will admit I think that was a blind spot for me and like yeah there's going to be basically copycats of the copycats so people copycatting the MSTR playbook are then you know that's going to be copycatted by the crypto people saying let's securitize you know these assets in different ways that reduces the friction of of people getting exposure the one counter I would provide to that is like the Ethereum ETF exists and like the inflows to that were dimminimous relative to the Bitcoin ETFs Um, so I think that is a reasonable data point to look at that like would say there isn't actually a ton of demand from what you would consider like the traditional equity investor wanting to get exposure to these things. Ethereum's dead though. They they got uh Hey everyone, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. We had a lively conversation uh this morning discussing all things Bitcoin corporate treasury strategies with another one launching this morning as well as just topical things happening in the markets. uh from the tariff deals by Trump to the strategies across different corporates and finances bringing in uh financial institutions bringing in Bitcoin and digital assets into the frey. Quick word from uh on-ramp. We last week, if you were paying attention, launched on-ramp trade, which is the on-ramp to on-ramp. It's the ability for listeners that may not be ready to start leveraging multi-institution, but want access to our best-in-class research, financial services, and team. they can now sign up for on-ramp trade and get no cost trading all the way until October. 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We have an updated FAQ page, but you can also just reach out to hello@ honorbitcoin.com or michael@honorantbitcoin.com and we'll get you in touch with the right individual. Hope you enjoy the show and uh please if you don't forget to like and subscribe, it goes a long way in helping uh to get this content in front of more individuals. Talk to you later. We're up 50% in three days. Yeah, I don't I think the problem I think I think the thing that we're missing here is the time frame like in the sense that we all agree that retail really isn't here yet and I'm not saying retail and institutions are different but it's the notion once the animal spirits come back that flow starts to move into other assets and larger pools start to come in and not everyone's going to be sophisticated even at the institutional level that will come into other products. So, I think like we should have this conversation and see when the price is 150 just how market sentiment and what people are doing into the Ethereum ETF and others cuz I think it's just going to be drastically different because we just don't have a lot of like liquidity outside of Bitcoin demand coming in right now. And I also think like there they need to come up with new ways in order to kind of scam, right? Like Ethereum has been around for a long time. like those people who have owned it forever aren't necessarily quite as excited about it as they once were. Um yeah, it rallied a crazy amount over three days, but it's always been a little bit nutty with, you know, how much leverage goes into that and insiders buying it. Um plus like it's still significantly down from its all-time high. Uh, I think that there just those crypto type investors have moved on to the Salanas or I don't keep up with it incredibly well, but there's probably a new one other than Salana or Trumpcoin that most people actually care about the most now. Yeah. And the other thing worth calling out because again I know sometimes it sounds cynical but for every person that comes in via the ETF or or less ETF but the the treasury company rappers that make some money and finds Bitcoin there's going to be many more that lose their shirts. Um and maybe they don't even lose their shirts but they sell at a loss and then they get burned and think it was Bitcoin in the same way for the past five plus years with FTX and others that just like haven't come back in cuz they think it's Bitcoin is the problem. Like that's the reality when you um capitalize on the naive of the individual because they don't understand the underlying you're just setting them up for like a recipe for you know failure and um yeah and the just to call out like from a productive standpoint this is kind of the reason for this pod and early riders existing think about like what we're saying here in the asymmetry and understanding just holding spot bitcoin and most people don't have any more than you know 1 to 2% let let alone anything. Well, the derivative of that asymmetry that's even further down is just like infrastructure that needs to be built because we talked about Darabid and other things. Like the thing that I think is completely mispriced is only 21 million Bitcoin. And so the different financial service firms, consumer applications, all these different products are going to want more of that uh sitting within their walls, whether it's their balance sheet or within their application, their product and service because it's going to give them a competitive edge. And that's just mispriced because there's not enough people building on Bitcoin singular products and building the right way for and then you're going to have to acquire these companies because nobody wants to go work at the legacy company. So like that's an insane opportunity through all this. Um it won't look like it in the short order, but if you're playing a long game, a low time preference, it's going to be an amazing like trade of your time and also investment capital. Yeah, a lot of people are really uh long Bitcoin treasury companies, short uh you know, new users interacting with financial services. Uh the way that the market is set up at the moment and it uh it shows. Yeah. Yeah. The only the only other thing I'll bring up related to to what we've just been discussing around Bitcoin dominance and the rest of this stuff is um the both the crypto market structure bill and also it sounds like the stable coin bill are sort of hitting more road bubs than you know potentially was anticipated even a month two months ago. And uh Matt Hogan from Bitwise had a tweet I think last week saying like if this continues, if these two bills struggle to get over the line, um that would potentially, you know, hurt the rest of the cryp crypto ecosystem relative to Bitcoin. And you could see uh that be a benefit to Bitcoin dominance just in the sense that if there's less um you know I think there's there's probably a good amount that was already priced in thinking that these things were uh certainly going to get over the line and if that's not the case then you know maybe there's less excitement around stable coins all these other crypto protocols etc. um at least in sort of like the next 12 months or so because I think eventually these bills, you know, certainly pass in some uh shape or form, but if if it takes longer than anticipated, potentially some of that was already priced in a little too early that these would pass. Yeah, I I I haven't followed this too closely, but it's my understanding that it's just like, you know, the Democrats and their unease with Trump and his I don't even know if it's just everything else or his actual maybe they cite his, you know, personal involvement um for sure in the in the space, but yeah. So yeah, that I think that's just a a potential headwind to, you know, cryptox Bitcoin if if this stuff goes slower than initially anticipated a couple months ago. Did you guys catch I think there was something that they either added that had reference to like um if Tether was or was Tether going to Tether was going to come under US jurisdiction. I'm not sure the details of that. I think it was required. Um there's a a couple key points. I'll see if I can find it when we're going through stuff. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they're in the process of standing up some US entity or subsidiary at the moment. Um, but not exactly sure where that that is. Yeah, it says new news stable coin bill genius requires Tether to accept US jurisdiction regardless of registration location, which I don't know how they would. I mean, I guess that's the thing. It's like independent of US jurisdiction. I guess we have jurisdiction globally uh the way it looks. But um if Tether's going to get exposure to the US via the equity markets and all the other things we talked about like it's going to have to comply with whatever the Genius Bill stays says no matter where they sit. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a safe assumption. Um Liam, another thing you add on the list was this uh BIS report. I haven't had a chance to look into it, but do you have any thoughts on that? I'll pull it up. Yeah, it's dense. So, uh would recommend other people read it at their own leisure too. But it it essentially is uh really telling that this came out uh this month and the Bank of International Settlements just understands that you know uh Bitcoin and and broader crypto especially stablecoin uh adoption correlation is tightly tied to both uh liquidity standards and monetary supply. the capital controls in the specific countries as well as remittance costs and you know obviously Bitcoin is uh immune uh and censorship persistent to any sort of capital controls if you are holding your or managing your private key material in the right way. Uh other banks are extremely unfriendly in terms of remittance costs. they're they're kind of just understanding all of the thesis around Bitcoin and it's just another data point that uh everybody's kind of paying attention at the moment and some people are understanding you know how to create a more friendly environment to Bitcoin and and others are you know still trying to hold on to what the old world is going to uh or what the old world has looked like but it's it's changing drastically pretty quickly Yeah, I think that's a great one to pull up because um I'll show something that's not as dense, but it kind of picks up on that is is uh this that came out last week. You know, we talked with clients globally and hadn't really heard much about Spain, but we've been talking with Australian clients where the capital controls have increased, but the thing that I pulled up for for listeners is new rules in Spain, cash withdrawals over 3,000 £3,000 under strict control. Um and even a fining for individuals that try to take out more without giving the proper notice. Um and this ties to your point Liam on you know jurisdictions kind of banning themselves from Bitcoin but then also ultimately uh the market understanding inside versus outside money like that was this is the core tenant of gold and bitcoin that they don't sit within any jurisdiction. they don't sit within any rapper within a traditional brokerage that you can be turned off. And this again goes back to what are you actually buying and what's the counterparty risk risk weighted because that's the big aspect of like would you rather have 1.5 or $1 million in MSTR or would you rather have 500k in spot BTC like because you have to account for the fact that one day they may not give you that MSTR and you have the taxable event. just all these things that just are not embedded or understood widely and we're in a market increasingly more and more people are understanding that and so that's the the the long term the market will will price and understand all this because information flows um so anyway it's just a a key point everyone hope you're enjoying the show it was a great discussion touching on all things that happened over the weekend and coming up this week in the Bitcoin digital asset space just wanted to quickly remind everyone that on-ramp while we have multi-institution custody which brings peace of mind to Bitcoin holders uh from you know early adopters that have built a material stack and are looking for peace of mind for their existing solution. How do they plan for inheritance and all things related to financial services all the way to new net new entrance that are looking to build a material position but don't want to deal with cryptographic material plastic devices how do they secure it on a third party exchange we support them in different formats whether it's on-ramp standard where they can onboard as low as $150 a month to our private uh product offering that comes with a whole slew of benefits and one of them is the guild and our private investment network. We've seen a lot of demand for that recently. We talk with individuals across the world frankly and there's a common theme uh coming across that there's business professionals that have either built a position or starting to a material one and they ultimately want to get access to private equity in the space. They want access to the best minds in the space and they're they're trying to figure out what's their next move whether co-founding, operating a business or just getting a seat at the table from an advisory perspective. If you're interested in any of those things, I would encourage you to reach out, michael@onretbitcoin.com. And again, if you may not necessarily want to talk to anybody, but you feel comfortable with our solution, you're ready to go, you can go to honorbitcoin.com and go through our self-service process. I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. Know where things are headed. No, that's a it's a fantastic point just in the sense that, you know, it ties into everything we've talked about today, but like, you know, all these proxy exposures, these treasury companies cropping up they are still inside money. And so like if you're thinking about the core value proposition of Bitcoin, a massive part of that is that it's outside money. It's outside the system. You can only underlying um and so I think there's, you know, a bit of cognitive dissonance on the part of people getting excited about this stuff that um sort of flies in the face of the core value proposition of the asset underlying. um if you own a proxy exposure as you know a form of inside money it's you're not getting the same benefits as you would as you know owning the underlying of course. Um yeah, it's it's actually funny because you just made me think of um everyone's talking about this thesis of like Bitcoin treasuries globally, but we can probably all agree our you know rule of law capital markets is the most robust and would be the probably last, you know, seize assets. But if you're doing this strategy and messing with the money in Europe, I think a UK one just launched an Australia one, Japan, wherever it is, and starts to threaten the sovereign uh currency, like well, what's the first place that they're going to go? You know, maybe seize that BTC and or give you your dollar equivalent um you know, compress the price back to NAV and now you're just sitting around wondering like what just happened. It's just like nobody's explaining these things. Um there's real risk baked in. It's the reason that uh MSTR's MNAV like exploded after President uh Trump got elected and now we've seen you know I don't know how many it is but it's probably at least a hundred that are you know either have adopted Bitcoin publicly uh or are in the process of going public and it's all just because of the regulatory arbitrage and change that's that uh Trump is has brought in. Uh it doesn't necessarily always stick though. I mean, given the the Democrats are against this genius bill, it could flip. But, uh, I think that would be an absolute death blow to, you know, their popularity among young people. But, it's it's something that you need to consider, especially as, uh, there will be politicians kind of blaming Bitcoin for, you know, the rise in inflation and nobody buying their treasury bonds. Yes, there will be those those screams. Um, sort of an aside, but curious, you know, we we sort of referenced earlier like, uh, retail isn't really here yet. I don't know about you guys, but like anecdotally over the past week, um, since we, you know, again broached 100K, I actually had a couple friends who I've been, you know, telling about Bitcoin for years reach out and be like, "Hey, like that Bitcoin thing, like you still you still doing that Bitcoin thing?" So I I do think the second breach of 100k was more psychologically important to the normie brain than the first. Um like curious if you guys had have experienced any of that in terms of just anecdotal friends and family networks uh reaching out around Bitcoin. No, I I I can go first. I think that you guys have been publicly involved in Bitcoin for longer so people can just you know you were initially crazy when it came out. Uh I haven't been. My friends are they're they were extremely interested when 21 launched too and you know why it's a premium to the underlying and you know I kind of walked them through the mechanics of it of from a financial standpoint and they were all like wow that's cool. I don't really understand Bitcoin but I'm super happy for you. Uh, and that's kind of the same feedback from, you know, my uh all my family, the extended family, uh, other friends like that are older. They're like, "Wow, this this thing is really cool. It sounds awesome. Like, I'm really happy for you." but they just like honestly most of them aren't going to buy it on Coinbase even though it's like respected and uh or like even an on-ramp just because they they don't necessarily it's not something that they've used before and they're super comfortable with. Maybe some will will buy the ETF, but not even that I think is is super palatable for them because they still have questions like what if the government steals my my Bitcoin or you know what if the the code stops working or what if Satashi comes back and you know like takes all of his Bitcoin. There there's like a lot of education to be done. Yeah, I think the biggest asymmetry for like building or making a bunch of money in this space is to just try to go back to remembering all the what Liam and Brian just shared, specifically Liam, and then being like, well, what would they want or how they perceive in a in a way that's like conducive to their long-term success and understanding this, it's like we forget um how just much learning and things go into just like forming a thesis around this asset, let alone getting to why you should store the majority of your wealth uh in it. But that what you were you just said or you guys were talking about reminding me of reminding me of this of like you know like uh I'm happy for you or sorry it happened. I don't really know like what do you want me you know like somebody in your friend group seen some news about Bitcoin. Yeah. It's the same it's the same uh line of thinking as like you catch the game last night like great game. Like there's just like they just move on. They're like oh yeah know that that's interesting but like can't comprehend the the gravity of it. Yeah 100%. And uh it's it's all kind of about just, you know, getting a small amount at first. Nobody's going to read the Bitcoin standard or listen to an hourong podcast on Bitcoin if they're not necessarily super excited about it. Um but it is there needs to be more easy ways to get into it. Bitcoin's brand definitely took a big hit with FTX, but more people are just understanding that it's not going away because I think everybody's seen it at least between 2017, 2021 and then now and understand that at the minimum it's not going to die or could it go away. Yeah, I think um this is where another interesting opportunity and it'll be fun as the best builders start to realize Bitcoin about on our own consumer applications. I hadn't really thought about it through this direction, but the more you can get it native into existing applications and then people wonder because I remember going back to 17 that was kind of my intro was like I needed to I was trying to bet on football and it's easy to you buy Bitcoin you can get on and off ramps um anywhere, right? Um and so but the kicker was the price kept going up on the underlying that I was using. I was like well that's interesting like why is I'm I bought X amount now it's y like what would cause that? And so you think about, you know, this interoperable notion of stats within any application, but then the price goes up in US dollar terms is an interesting way to embed it into rewards. Um, that hasn't really been done at scale. And Brian always was last cuz I bring it up, but like the crypto crypto people did this. I think now the new one is some golf thing uh for like golf membership or whatever, but like the the initial or not initial one, but in 21 was like the running based application step in. Um, so anyway, I think like there's ways to get people familiar with it before having to buy and then take that like positive reinforcement of like, I already own it, so now I feel a little bit better if this thing makes sense because then that means that my bias is positive in the direction it'll go up for me. Yeah. No, that notion of just being off zero in any respect does shift the the sort of psychological bent towards, you know, how you think about the the asset itself. Even if you know if you are earning it in some way that doesn't feel um you know you're actually just doing something in some consumer application to earn value and you're not necessarily thinking about the value of Bitcoin or it's you know its uh investment thesis but then you see it it's in your account that shifts your biases that shifts your preconceived notions about what Bitcoin could be um and then sort of incents you to learn more about it ultimately and the sad part is this is being worked on, but I can guarantee it's being worked on at the highest levels on the crypto side. And so it's going to put some token on some blockchain and it's just because of kind of everything. It's the same thing with the trady and the ETFs and all the products. It's like for whatever reason the natural inclination is to to build into this like closed architecture kind of zero sum versus building an open standard. Um which is the alternative is the other side of that is it's a big u opportunity for the people that can think about it. Yeah. Well, um, anything else we wanted to cover? Liam, I know you put out a, uh, a newsletter on Sunday, uh, from Early Riders. So, if if, um, anybody wants to get sort of latest commentary, insights, uh, from us, we put out a newsletter, uh, on Sundays. You can just go to early riders.com and subscribe to that, get it in your inbox every Sunday. But, uh, we have, anything else, anything else you wanted to cover? Yeah, I mean one thing that uh is very exciting is the New Hampshire, you know, approving their Bitcoin strategic reserve bill. Uh we talked a little bit about adversarial, you know, jurisdictions. It's great to see one that, uh, you know, New Hampshire's always been a little bit more libertarian in terms of their skew. Uh, sounds like, you know, it's getting very positive momentum in Texas, too. There may be, uh, a Bitcoin strategic reserve down there. Um, this New Hampshire one can, you know, allocate up to 10% of state funds to Bitcoin. Uh, it needs to take like 60 days to to get approved, but, you know, continues to just be a race for everybody to get as much Bitcoin as possible. Uh, and then outside of that, one other um kind of regulatory piece of news that was was great to see was the OC, the office of the um currency comproller putting out a a tweet and, you know, also a longer post clarifying that banks can uh engage in Bitcoin activities and digital assets, I think is the exact word, but uh including being a subcustodian, being a custodian, offering ing um bank crypto asset related execution services. So buying trading and honestly uh we talk about Bitcoin treasury companies and uh everything being good for Bitcoin in the long term. I think this is also something that's going to be good for Bitcoin once everybody can buy it directly through their Chase account. uh it's just going to be the way that most people are comfortable coming into the space and uh you know these these banks will also want to buy other trusted companies as well to that have you know one both one the customers already and two have deep experience in the space uh because if it's a race between banks the ones who acquire other crypto companies first will necessarily be the ones that that went and end up uh getting most of the Bitcoin under custody and and under trade and those other associated financial services. Yeah, I think it's exactly right. I think that's tied in to the earlier comment about um everyone's kind of there's different uh siren songs or like things where people are gravitating towards and the banks right now are on the stable coin deal and a lot of the banks that we've talked to um they're interested in custody but they see the stable coin aspect. Um I I don't know how much is business purely business revenue driven. I think I know there's some aspects to that when it comes to movement of capital, but I think it stable coins and banks are remind me a little bit of the blockchain narrative. Um, it's a lot easier to wrap your head around stables than BTC and the the strategy around it. But to your point, once they recognize they're going to need custody and to sit next to deposits and then they're going to need differentiated custody, it's a very big opportunity 100%. Uh the other thing to maybe to wrap or one last thing to call out was last week we had on-ramp trade launch um which we think is a big deal because ultimately um it's the you know on-ramp to on-ramp in the sense that friends and family or even individuals that are looking to increase their position can go in and maybe they're not ready for multi-institution custody. They're still learning. They're still learning about on-ramp but they want um one of the most cost-effective ways to buy Bitcoin in the industry. They can go in get onboarded within minutes. uh currently sitting with a qualified custodian but the idea is sometime this year ideally in Q3 it's able to sit within multi-institution custody and the core aspect of that is that you don't have to have a single uh counterparty risk when you're buying Bitcoin you can buy you know however much somebody's starting out and know that even god forbid something happens to the exchange the assets are still uh secure so that's going to be um an interesting dynamic as we grow to let individuals come in offer the most cost effective way to buy BTC, get Bitcoin education, get everything related to client services with on-ramp, and then ultimately as they're ready to kind of like graduate into multi-institution, segregated accounts, all the things that you know, um, Lloyds of London insurance, all the things that somebody that is an on-ramp client gets, they'll be able to move over seamlessly and not really have to play hot potato with the asset, which historically uh, in Bitcoin, people have had a start at the gaues to the BlockFi to the collaborative custody to the hardware device and you're just always moving around and it ultimately leads to either not increasing your position or having to decrease because it just feels unsecure. We want to provide like that one-stop shop um in our ecosystem. Yep. Well said. And yeah, it's it's effectively a, you know, a new introductory account tier, um, that allows you to go really soup to nuts in terms of, you know, initial accumulation all the way to long-term storage, inheritance, insurance, all the rest of the the, you know, product suite that we have at on-ramp. Um, and also there's a, you know, running a a pretty nice promo. So, if you sign up before, uh, the end of June, uh, you basically trade for free on the platform, um, through September. Um, so check that out. You can go to onrampbitcoin.com. Just click sign up in the top right and select the on-ramp trade account here and you can get started right away. Um, well, one last thing. We didn't bring this up. Uh, but like what do in the last like two minutes? What uh what do we make about this make of this Conor McGregor? Yeah, left field. Out of left field. But I also had to look to see like I'm always just curious um the follower count these guys have and he has 10 million followers. Jeez. Yeah. He Yeah. And then that was the tweet right there. Just scroll back up. He goes, "Bitcoin or cryptocurrency?" Like a genuine ask to be like, "Hey, am I thinking about this correctly? Uh I see a lot of stuff around crypto, but Bitcoin seems like the people's money." Um and then you know obviously all the comments from from Bitcoiners uh going through and telling him it's it's Bitcoin not crypto. Yeah. Yeah. I mean what's what's the GDP of of uh Ireland? I don't really know but uh exciting nevertheless. People buy things from uh from their f uh people they love too. And so once uh once every influencer is a Bitcoin influencer, then we'll know we've won. Well, you're saying like so Connor is gonna launch a uh a memecoin. Is that is that you know they buy from their influencers? Yeah, exactly. Uh I think they he there's a there's a decent chance that he does. Uh but you know, hopefully he he ends up realizing that it's going to be Bitcoin, not crypto. Yeah. Love it. All right, boys. tight rib today. Uh, but thanks for joining as always. Take care, gentlemen. Take care. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are in your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.