Tether's Fedcoin, Thailand Banking Crisis, & The Shifting Monetary Order

[Music] 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. Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. We had a awesome podcast this week covering everything related to the Thailand banking crisis, uh, Bit Chat, Nepal's usage, a lot of the, uh, adoption across global markets, the NASDAQ taking a investment in Gemini. Um, as well as we have, uh, some big travel plans this week. We'll be in Nashville, the team from On-Ramp, Early Riders, and some of our portfolio companies. Um, we're going to be hosting events, private toker tournaments, poker tournaments, as well as meeting with prospective clients and investors. If, um, you're interested in, you know, meeting us, shoot us a note or hit us on Twitter and, uh, we'd love to connect in person. Hope you enjoy the show. >> All righty. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, September 15th, 9:38 a.m. Eastern time zone. Gentlemen, how are we doing? Liam, Michael, >> here we go. Yeah, >> price is ripping. We got >> is it? I haven't even looked. >> I mean, I guess like relative ripping. We did a lot, you know, a little touch down to 107. Everyone was calling um end of uh you know, the the bull market or whatever and we we went back up to like 116. >> Yeah, obviously gold gold ripped and gold's that, you know, kind of leading indicator. Um but also we have a big week here in Nashville. We're gonna have folks from Cross Early Riders, On-ramp, Acropolis, other portfolio companies. Um, so it's it's gonna be a big week. Hopefully we will see uh some listeners in person. >> Yeah, big week. Let us know uh if you're going to be in Nashville and want to meet any of the team, talk to us, chat with us. Um we will be there. But uh >> we are going to have a very uh high signal allocators poker game. We still don't necessarily know the buying. It's more than likely going to be a tournament Thursday night. So uh I know a lot of you guys think you're never going to need on-ramp self custody till to the max. and we'll eventually be a client, but until then, you probably want to reach out to um you know, play poker with us and and may maybe during the poker game, you might actually get multi-institution pled and realize the uh the multi-institution light. And so, we'd love to have >> it wouldn't be the first it wouldn't be the first time, Michael, that someone's gotten uh MIC pill during a poker game. So there's there's some >> it's the same as bitcoin pill like as as individuals start to understand you know the value prop of bitcoin it's very hard to not you know a bit in the very same way once somebody deeply understands multi-institution custody and the ramifications not to have a tiny little bit of exposure is um generally not not the smartest thing to do. >> Correct. Well we've got a big list not many deals um but a good amount of news and uh a list to get to. So, we're going to start. Uh, Michael, I think you brought this one. Um, but a banking crisis in Thailand. Um, what what's going on here? >> Yeah. So, um, you know, I've been just checking our facts. Uh, a lot of things float around on Twitter like, uh, Amazon hiring a crypto expert. I couldn't find anywhere near that or what it meant and I saw it says 21. So, it didn't include that. Uh, but I did, you know, this is an independent source. um referencing I don't know even know the total number but banking crisis uh explodes across Thailand. They're referencing or leveraging um citing that there was some kind of like nefarious activities with certain accounts and that they just like kind of drag net across the board have halted seized capital uh from moving. But you can imagine, you know, that's a very easy out um when it comes to capital flows and in referencing, you know, any kind of Ponzi or just nefarious activity. Um I think this had been brought up either on last trade or final settlement a few months ago when um the Iran uh attacks were happening and they had leveraged that they got like cyber attacked and they had to like halt payments or halt capital and it's like well isn't that a very convenient way to uh you know reference why you know your clients can't pull money. Um where I think this matters from the business side or just you know in general building is um obviously for better products and services that can be centrally cons controlled is paramount but I think the thing that matters even more than that is ultimately the the whole outside money notion and theme because I think what's happened over the past couple of years is with the proliferation of ETFs digital asset treasury companies that are publicly traded uh among other um vehicles All of those products and services have one throat to choke ultimately and so you effectively have an IOU. I don't think anybody debates that. And I think as we go to this world and we're in a bull market for kind of uh authoritarian overreach, censorship, everything that we see and we continue to see in the market, we'll talk about Nepal after this. Point being is you may want actually money that uh doesn't have a single counterpart, a single point of failure. And this is a very easy case of that. even when banks start, you know, holding BTC in the US, we'll naturally start seeing we're talking with them, you know, leverage multi-institution custody. Um, so I think I thought that was just like a really good kind of thing we need to not forget in the west because we get lulled to sleep and the reality is there's no bailouts in Bitcoin. So if your counterparty is insolvent, even their Bitcoin doesn't have to be missing, but if there are other fiat obligations, right? Like I think maybe that's a core theme that I know you guys will like touch on is uh it's like the version of crypto but accelerated. So all these companies are generally insolvent. I think it came out this past week the amount of real unrealized losses banks have on their books. Uh well what happens if they have a hole there there's a bank run and now they have $50 billion in in u BTC. Whose BTC is that? And it may not be yours. >> Yeah. I mean what stood out to me of this is this last line here. As a result, honest people have been caught in a net meant for criminals. And I think to me that's like that's kind of the inevitable end state of all of this when you have um dependencies for your money um for your net worth, for your livelihood um even if you are not conducting criminal activity, the sort of you know clamp down from an authoritarian regime or even just um a regime that perceives some you know scam network proliferating. So they need to, you know, shut down the internet or shut down access to accounts. Um, you will not be spared for not being, you know, quote unquote a criminal. Like a as these um all these forms of dependencies uh sort of metastasize, you you will always have some um basically way to be captured uh in a system like this. And so it speaks to more broadly just, you know, forms of of money and forms of wealth that can be preserved outside of of systems like this without dependencies. And so that was the kind of the big takeaway for me is this last line there. It's like, you know, even if you're doing everything right, like that doesn't mean that, you know, your money in the bank's okay um if something like this is to occur. >> Yeah. there's uh they're always just going to manufacture emergencies or use emergency powers to justify actions like this um in any scenario in which they aren't actually in uh solvent and or do not want to give all clients their funds back at a single point in time. >> Yep. >> Yeah. There's actually one thing to call out here that I think um gets missed is this is where maybe it sounds it'll pick up steam over time, but the whole notion of uh proof of reserves being a fallacy. And this is another example of that because just because the bank or exchange shows you the assets the underlying set there, well, their obligation specifically at a bank or something like this doesn't necessarily mean they can have to let you withdraw or make you uh you be made whole. And that's a very uh subtle unique thing. I think it actually came out uh this last week for anybody that's not paying attention. Uh Swan, I guess I shouldn't misspeak. I think Swan is is either o exposed or actually starting to be sued from um previous users of Prime Trust that got caught holding the bag of the like 21 million plus that was left, you know, known secret in the space. A bunch of exchanges that leverage Prime Trust had taken their clients assets before off um and some were left on. Point being is in bankruptcy record receive issue with Genesis, FTX, Prime Trust, um you get left holding a bag, pennies on the dollar or ultimately holding uh nothing for years hoping to get your BTC or you know dollars out. With multi-institution, it's very unique um at least in its current iteration because the individual client is not only the title owner but the key agents are uh work on behalf of the individual client. So god forbid exchange goes down. It goes into receiverhip. It does not prevent any of the assets from being moved. They move in independence not on the uh uh request of the others. And I think that's very subtle but very important as we start going to a world where again you don't want to be exposed to somebody else's um you know whether it's technological failures or just asset management risk risk management. >> Yeah. and and and if you are going to be exposed like distributing that exposure to multiple parties potentially who are in different jurisdictions is a massive benefit and advantage. >> This also directly ties into um as banks start to get into the space too and their subcustodians because that's essentially how Swan works. Uh Prime Trust is their subcustodian um where clients actually hold assets. It appears that clients of Swan that withdrew assets from the platform and the final few I think 90 days or so uh before Prime Trust was um you know known to be insolvent or they're trying to claw back those types of assets which are are going to be difficult but we'll uh see how everything plays out. But for banks uh that sub custody um Bitcoin to other large places too, it even if you take the Bitcoin yourself off of these types of platforms, it doesn't mean that you're going to be not liable at all or or at least dragged into this uh lawsuit with um other subcustodians, too. >> Yeah. Um somewhat related story that we alluded to earlier, um what's going on in Nepal? I mean this is a this is a wild story. I think it you know it first crossed my radar because um there was a headline around Bit Chat uh Jack Dorsey's Bluetooth messaging app. Um there was basically a spike in downloads there as um the prior government the now former government in Nepal um had basically you know tried to curb social media uh usage and then you know the internet itself and so people were turning to freedom tools open source tools uh such as bithat to communicate and coordinate. They were also using discord and they ended up um you know this was you know multiple days of um unrest and riots and you know burning down of parliament buildings um and people in the government and they ultimately the sort of Gen Z protesters the youth of the country overthrew the government uh and picked a new prime minister via a discord vote which is just like such a uh microcosm of the world we live in today and where really where we're headed. in terms of just the usage of the internet um and sort of you know uh youth collaboration via these these tools uh and these networks and it's just a pretty remarkable story of um you know if you think about the sort of the long history of these types of regimes there you know the the reason that they persist and continue to occur is because it's often difficult for the you know whoever is being oppressed to actually revolt and do anything about it. Um, and I think what we're beginning to see is intelligent leveraging of these tools in order to uh collaborate and uh coordinate in a way that previously just wasn't possible. And so it now gives you know shifts the balance of power a little bit um towards the individual towards the populace. um if they are able to coordinate in these ways. As we know, you can coordinate with outside money like Bitcoin, but increasingly tools like Bit Chat, Noster um will enable people to um communicate, message each other um and coordinate in these types of ways. So, um any thoughts on this? >> Yeah, Brian loves taking the links I I pull up and then just going off with uh it's great. >> To be fair, I sh I shared this with you last week before you shared it with me. >> No, you shared it on a podcast. Uh, I obviously saw it as well, but I had Anyway, it was a great great recap. I think um I think the main reason I pulled this up was there was a few there's a few angle angles. One is um you know, Jack Jack Dorsey being behind Bit Chat is very interesting because, you know, call it 10 plus years ago. Um there was the Arab Spring in Cyprus and Twitter was heavily used there and you kind of fast forward uh close to you know 10 to 15 years and you see you know his new tool being implemented um you know across the world again to overthrow effectively u manage governance. The Discord thing was also interesting from from social media. Um, I think where this becomes fascinating is really we already see the kind of writing on the wall when it comes to Tik Tok the past few years, the internet, what China's done. Um, you can feel the like grapple of um, censorship, authoritarian overreach, communication, free speech. Europe is very heavily here going that way. And to Brian's point, these tools will naturally um start to proliferate. What I think makes it really unique is the ability to, and this ties back to crypto versus Bitcoin, that you're going to naturally need some kind of unit of account that's globally recognized that everybody wants to make it all work together. I don't necessarily know exactly how other than it's going to be the incentive model for the upload and download like with uh noster and relays versus applications. this kind of like I stumbled or had this thought like years ago um with this notion of how a torrentine system is completely different um in a bitcoin world because ultimately in a in a traditional fiat world where you have a throat to choke like um you know Visa, Mastercard or even banks, you can't really transmute value. So there's always kind of uh there's a market that will be checked off, especially if you just go to the the worst example of anything that is um would be censored, any kind of document, any kind of video. Um in in Torantine, if you were going to be the uh the cedar, you're naturally exposing the the article. But if it was uh banned, you're going to be very hesitant to do it. Point being is a market would naturally uh be created especially if you were trying to pay over fees or whatever like strike will cut you off if they saw you getting traction but with BTC there's always a market to be formed on a bid ask on anything on the planet earth because somebody will always be interested it's like mining somebody's always going to be interested in taking and integrating putting that transaction block. So where that comes back to all this is like all these different primitives that couldn't be couldn't exist or once they got to a certain scale would have been choked off because of you need natural flow of capital for a number of reasons where that's the last piece with this and my understanding bit has like a implementation of ecash among maybe lightning. I think um it's going to be fascinating to see like encryption open source tools and then also the incentive model to like put a unit of account that everyone globally is going to naturally want together and that's when [ __ ] gets kind of crazy with some of these tools. Um I also think the other thing we should keep in mind is there's going to be some crazy crackdown coming down between what's happening there people. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. It was like rumored that the guy with the Charlie Kirk deal like went on Discord and literally said everything he did. So like the guy like got, you know, we won't go deep there, but like got out of there and went on Discord and explained like word for word what he did, which was like a little suspect. The point being is like these tools are going to naturally start to get really um uh demonized and vilified. And I think that's kind of a positive because most people have been asleep at the wheel on all this stuff. And it's like the banking stuff like people when the best way to build something is when you need it. And I think more and more people are going to be needing them. >> Yeah. No, it's a it's a really good point and why this is like such an interesting case study because you have >> effectively like both forms of tools being used here on sort of like the centralized could be throttled side of Discord and then something like Bit Chat emerging um which is more permissionless, more difficult to to throttle. Um, and you saw this example where, you know, both of these things were being used, but to your point, Michael, like it's it's um, you know, probably to be expected that the more centralized um, avenues for this this type of stuff will be throttled. Um, and so to your point, like that could be looked at as a positive in the sense that it will catalyze uh, future adoption of things like Bitchat, of Noster, of Bitcoin in general. um because people naturally will have to migrate towards more permissionless openless open source tools that can't be uh as easily throttled basically. And the whole impetus for this entire shutdown of social media be was because they were essentially filming the sons and daughters of uh the top prime ministers and rulers of the uh Nepal government who were living these incredibly lavish lifestyles and just showing the stark corruption between the millennials and Gen Z type uh people who feel like they couldn't get ahead because um there were those people at who were running the show that essentially for trying to implement a a communist party but living incredibly lavishly while nobody else felt they could get ahead. And I don't know exactly um what Nepal's monetary policy is but if I had to guess I would uh guess that they've probably had some pretty stark inflation just like pretty much everywhere else in the world over the past 50 or so years and uh leaving many of the poor um out of the financial system and feeling like they don't need it. And yeah, to both of your points, um I think that younger generations at at a whole pretty much all across the world are just feeling the impacts of inflation and um crackdowns on monetary policy and are really feeling the impetus more so than they've ever felt in order to necessarily uh build better tools, which is uh a really exciting time. >> Agreed. Um anything else on that, Michael, or you want to shift gears? Let's do it. >> All right. So, Liam, you brought this one uh from Harvard Harvard Business Review. Um, does Bitcoin belong in your balance sheet? An interesting article given uh what we talked about a week or two ago around Harvard Endowment making a uh allocation to both Bitcoin and gold uh in their endowment portfolio. But uh what was the main takeaways in here, Liam? This was an incredibly well-written article and they essentially had almost every single point that uh I would write. It was probably better written than um than I could do. And they've they went through all the adoption principles um from start to finish. But the takeaway was a little bit nonsensical to me that it's only 1 to 3% of your treasury portfolio. Um, and I think that's essentially just because that's what's politically palatable of being able to identify like cover your ass essentially if Bitcoin is as volatile as um it has been in the past. But um they did a really fantastic job of understanding the entire Bitcoin thesis um showing why it's a better gold uh the whole downside risks etc. Um, but the takeaway was only 1 to 3%. Um, but essentially it we're at a point where it's become almost mainstream to have Bitcoin as a part of your financial portfolio both as a a corporate and individual at this point. And it's just another uh great data point to see. >> Well, you know who wrote this, right? >> Who is that? >> It's the co-founder of Spark. Oh, I did not know that. >> Yeah, well, I was gonna I was going to caveat that in the beginning. It doesn't really change any of it outside of Spark has a [ __ ] ton of money and HBR is probably up for grabs for so this is probably like paid sponsorship. Maybe not. Um, it doesn't take away that it's probably well written or it is well written to Liam's point because those guys are smart over there. They were former, you know, Christian was with David at uh Meta or Facebook at the time for Libra. um he actually had a really good thread breaking down a lot of the the um whatever it's called tempo stuff but any anyway I think it the core point still stands Harvard no name uh breaking it down to the zygist to your point political palatable but I just wanted I felt it'd be uh good to know that there's an actual like Bitcoin person that wrote this it wasn't our version or anybody >> yeah no that that's uh that's often the case with with these types of things there was um a report last week that was um more of like a formal academic white paper u that was talking about sanctions of risk and the the sort of place for Bitcoin in a portfolio to hedge against um hedge against seizure risk and it was written by a guy who uh I believe went to Harvard um and so it was being sort of portrayed as Harvard economist says XYZ about Bitcoin um but that guy similar to this scenario uh is someone who's been around Bitcoin for many Um and so it wasn't all too surprising to see uh takes from that individual. But um yeah, just just something to be wary of when you when you see stuff like this. >> Yeah. The other thing that's worth um I know we have a limited time, so we can go on, but they're just worth calling out is like he may actually be like two to 3%. That's the the careful part about everyone shilling anything in the space including us is kind of like take it with a grain of salt and then understand um what is uh incentivizing the discourse and it doesn't make it wrong or right it just makes it you know biased and and people naturally talk their book and then ultimately discern if it's the right thing for you. The reason why I bring this up is because you know MIT I think you know he's definitely an Ivy League guy um was at Libra believed in what you know Libra was doing with the basket of currencies. Point being is like you may look at Bitcoin as software for movement of like data and money and maybe it's like there's somehow the gold will be you know the reserve currency or treasuries like I don't necessarily would it put it past that like the I know it sounds crazy but the connection from movement of capital in a more seamless way versus like storing all the world's value it's not just like intuitive for everyone that those two things can be simultaneously >> yeah no it's a good point um pivot to uh let's talk a little Gemini. Liam, I think you you brought these links. Um but Gemini going public. Winkle boss founded crypto exchange uh NASDAQ made an investment of 50 million. Um and I believe Gemini popped a bit on its debut. Um not sure where it is today, but uh Liam, what are your thoughts here? Yeah, I mean just shows one all public companies are at least virtue signaling that they're doing something in the digital asset space just because it's the hot industry just like with AI. Um interesting that uh NASDAQ invested $50 million into them and there are some synergies in terms of other of their clients just wanting to sub custody with Gemini's custodial services. And then just another interesting data point despite their losses um financially that we've discussed a few weeks ago at Gemini um I think that they upped their IPO price and then had ended the day up 15%. So it's just another positive data point that the industry as a whole like there is significant institutional demand for it and everybody across the space is looking to at least get into it a little bit. Many people will make um make mistakes early on, but uh right now the the space is being looked at fairly closely, I would say. >> Yeah, it's a good point. I would say we're a little early in the virtue signaling aspect. I think we're still tempered uh in the sense of like nobody What was the back in 17 where they were putting like the >> iced tea block? >> Yeah. But but to your so I think and I I mainly say that because of where to share where we're at in the cycle and also $50 million is pretty material. I think it goes to, you know, your point of subcustody and then also in general, um, something I'll touch on before wrapping on this point is, um, just trading and around trip, you know, trading on quote blockchain sounds funny. Um, I think, you know, the the broader theme is the merging of digital assets and uh, tradi. We saw the Franklin Templeton and Binance news. We've seen this. Um, there's a lot of others. And I think to your point the balance sheet and their revenue is kind of like immaterial because when you think about uh like Franklin Templeton as example 1.6 trillion like they need uh they need a viewpoint they need to express in a certain way and they need a team and they need it fast right because it's all just like flipped on a dime. And so NASDAQ is another example they're also in New York and Gemini being in New York they probably have had relationships for a while. Point being is the revenue is immaterial and I always joke because there's a lot of companies like you can fall forward in this industry by just staying alive right you know you need the team you need kind of like the tribal knowledge you need wallet architecture the one that I'll say is not necessarily it'll be interesting to see play out is a lot of the collaborative custody providers and the reason why is because it's always been a common theme that oh like well a bank will buy them or afy firm will buy them but I don't think unless they're just completely unsophisticated when going due dilig going through due diligence like well what am I buying here and then you have to realize well I'm inheriting you know 5,000 10,000 30,000 whatever the number of clients that who are holding these plastic devices that are spread all over wherever they have to figure out how do you manage it because you have client services there's high operational uh opex and capex and then it almost can be a liability if it's in the right way if you have billions of dollars or a client and the assets are lost and so there's going to be certain business models like I think that financial institutions will will shy very far away from but then there's going to be a lot of others to Liam's point that may not necessarily have the revenue um that you would expect in an acquisition, but it's not really going to matter when you're a multi-, you know, uh trillion dollar asset manager needing to get into the space. >> Yeah, the learnings alone are going to pay for itself. Um no matter what the actual financials of of this firm are, assuming that NASDAQ does want to get deeper into the industry and they're going to try all their crazy things with tokenizing stocks, etc. um especially just based on what Sachs and everybody else who is uh high up in the administration is saying at this point. Um so yeah, it's it's more so about just trying to get in early and and learn more than anything else. >> Brian, do you have anything here? Because I do have something uh kind of uh spicy to share. >> No, you can go for it. The only thing I was going to say is um this is one way that the trady incumbents are getting involved and then the other headline that we have was uh capital groups battle on Bitcoin treasuries which is another avenue of of you know getting involved in the space but go ahead. >> Hi everyone I hope you're enjoying the podcast. Wanted to do a quick shout out uh for on-ramp in one of the core new products we released uh guardian core. Ultimately, clients love um that OnRamp has distributed custody across multiple institutions, access to best-in-class financial services. They don't have to worry about, you know, going deep into uh you know, their their secret cave or wherever they're holding uh you know, their hardware device or seed phrase if they want to sell a little bitcoin, take a loan against it. Um but on top of that, clients have increasingly been asking for additional permissions. And so, not only do we have a deep fake protection, um, using liveless checks to make sure that the individual is, you know, an actual human, withdrawal delays to create real buffers and controls, uh, something that really exists in the traditional financial system, but doesn't exist in Bitcoin ultimately, which leads to bad actors believing they can attack individuals for their Bitcoin. Different types of freezes, obviously, the Lloyds of London insurance, and then also additional permissions for our private clients. Um, if you want to learn more about that, you can find it on our website or you can reach out and book a consultation. Uh, lastly, we will be in Nashville this week hosting multiple meetings and events. If you'd like to reach out, meet the team, please shoot us a note. All right. Hope you have a rest a good rest of the show, good week, and we have a big guest this Thursday along with some big announcements. So, we look to look forward to hearing from you at some point. >> Yeah. So um back so we were talking about Gemini and u stock like you know tokenizing stocks and and blockchains for stocks and uh I think if you take a step back there's a whole I forget the term but it has to do with a a register um that has been the uh the fragmentation in private markets when it comes to and and there's a lot of people that have been working on this for a very long time. seed invest and circle that was their acquisition. it was basically trading around private equities and and the issuers and and I do think that there's going to be some interesting fundamental value not necessarily you need a blockchain but a standardization that can be created because it can allow I think that's one of the markets that have been a little bit uh not only fragmented but just kind of you know haven't been lubricated for lack of better words in the right way to get flow but um what what hit what hit me today because there was another thing on the list and we'll knock it out as part of this is uh it was Salana and uh you know, or Galaxy issuing uh their their class A common stock on the Salana blockchain. And I just like stumbled into hearing Alex Thorne uh talk about why they picked Salana versus Ethereum and these others. And um and he was referencing about the the validators and I guess it just broke down about like if you have to issue on a different layer like outside of the the you know L1. Again, I'm going a little bit out of my depth, but it's just a point of like how do you actually roll up and then you have these different validators um and you can't feel confident that it would do that and then from a securities perspective, it would cause a big problem. And that's where Salana um was able to to make it work. Why I'm bringing this up was like I did think it was interesting if this is the world where it goes from trading and really the one that like at some point it's going to exist. I don't even know if we'd invest in it because it's it could be, you know, 10 years. But imagine how fascinating it would be for you, me, anybody to invest in a company and it generates its cash flows in BTC and it programmatically on a monthly, daily, whatever dividend basis gets like passed back to the individual. Like that's kind of like very interesting and you could see it going that direction over long enough time horizon. And I think like a lot of these I don't even know how the validators would ultimately like work but you know whether it's side chains or you know lightning that if any of this stuff has validity it'll ultimately go to the the most liquid and kind of viable technology. Um, and yeah, I guess the last part of why I was or maybe I'll pause there. Is there any comments that I just thought of that was like very interesting because at the notion of like the crypto stuff is always fascinating to me because there's so many intellectual people working on it and it's like they got halfway to the problem and they didn't realize like these things are inefficient and they won't like actually scale to get any real deal, but they have good ideas that will ultimately port it be ported over to Bitcoin. >> Yeah. I mean, I I thought it was interesting. I I listened to Thorne's clip where he was articulating why they chose Salana. I did think it was interesting because it sort of um to a certain extent like confirmed a lot of my current assumptions around like why people will choose not to build on Ethereum because of the um sort of embedded tech debt and complexity um that exists there in terms of all the L2s that they've um sort of pushed activity towards. Um, and I think part of what you were trying to describe there in terms of why they pick Salana is that there's just less dependencies if you are issuing, you know, a real world asset on actually a layer 1. And so because the layer 1 of Ethereum is generally fairly slow and expensive relative to a Salana, uh, the thinking was that okay, you would do it on the L2s like a base or an arbitrum or something like that. Uh but then that that creates complications in terms of like if something were to go wrong then basically where's the source of truth has to come back to the L1 and that and that just creates some various complications. Um and so I think that is part of why they chose Salana but to me it's just like confirmatory of like people don't really care about decentralization when it comes to this stuff. people don't care about, you know, the fact that Salana has been, uh, you know, down multiple times over the past several years. Um, and has to be like, you know, the chain has to be restarted basically by by a foundation or a team. And so I think it's it's very just confirmatory to me of like, yeah, these things are just going to be built on the cheapest, fastest centralized thing. Um and no one's going to care about, you know, marginal decentralization benefits on a on an Ethereum L2 or something like that. >> Yeah. And and to your point, um I think that's all right, but taking a step back like there is significant um there they do work on very interesting things in the broader crypto space including um just breaking building out new technologies. But I always think that they get distracted by trying to attach a token to it and then they get more distracted about bringing uh the token revenue or distributing it to different channels and trying to pump the token in order to bring more employees there and then the token grows too fast and then it dumps hard and then all the people leave and go and work on a different project and uh many people haven't really been interested in uh in the broader crypto space and working on Bitcoin because the transaction volume hasn't been there um yet, but it's it's starting to um be so large that people are going to come back to it hopefully in my view. And I I do think that working on a project like that of distributing dividends via Bitcoin and taking a small fee is significantly more interesting than many of the other projects that uh the space is working on. >> Yeah. And I think like you know if anybody's curious because I would be like or maybe not. I mean, you find it intellectually interesting. Like, we talk about this stuff because I don't really know how many like I don't even know if we're a Bitcoin podcast, but how many people would talk about it is what I found is if you're going to play at the highest levels and you're going to want to work with these individuals and show them how Bitcoin can be the thing, you have to actually understand what trade-offs they're making and why they're making them and like um articulate to them and then they kind of can sit back if they're uh um clear-headed, pragmatic and and self-aware and say, "Oh, that makes sense." Or they can look back in retrospect And I think it doesn't really even matter if it's on today, if it would be on, you know, however it'd be managed on Lightning or Salon or whatever because the main idea is nobody's using any of this stuff. It's all gimmicks. It's very interesting because like, you know, it's been rumored Galaxy's buying a bunch of Salana. They just issued the thing. Like it's a very reflexive kind of old fiat way to do it. Um, but the main point is as if the direction it goes, I'm not convinced it does because there's still an underlying custodian of the uh title of the equity or whatever that ultimately is the is the owner where it sits and you still have to manage like the underlying to where that that ultimately lies um the the transfer. But the point being is that if it does, if it does, it'll naturally be the most efficient uh distributed protocol that will win, which will be Bitcoin and then um you know, Lightning as we're seeing built out because there's just so many other use cases and people are using that as money. And um where this kind of maybe ties in to wrap up the crypto stuff is uh the hyperlquid. I I thought it would be interesting just to to share. Um so Native Markets, I don't even know who Native Markets is. I guess it's like a new team. They're like was the guy was using hyperlquid u before but were there's two fascinating things that I thought stood out. So we talked talked about before hyperlquid like top 10 volume um I think number one like quotequote decentralizing top 10 volume globally in exchanges they issued this kind of like public RFP there and the two fascinating things one is all the way up to PayPal and Venmo were basically like boot kissing uh bootlicking um trying to get like the the dollar like you know issued there. Um, and the core idea for anybody that's not familiar with this is Hyperlquid U, you know, decentralized exchange. They have like 5 or6 billion dollars of USDC sitting on there that they're not monetizing. USDC's monetizing and they, you know, wanted to get um a request for if they were going to issue it on the Hyperlquid uh or a native Hyperlquid token and then what would be the um incentives or the economics that would get kicked back to Hyperlquid and the people that hold the token. Point being is uh well the the the crypto or fiat side was it turns out that it was like a marketing stunt or directionally marketing stunt that native was the people to win it the whole time when they like went to go talk to all these like you know node validators or whatever. They were all getting pitched um by all these firms and they weren't taking the pitches because there was already going to native. So it's like just proves you know the centralization the all that. The thing that I thought was the most fascinating with this is that this is going to happen to all stable coins because all the blockchains, even if they don't have to do it, they can basically go back to uh the stablecoin issuer and say, "Look, we're going to do this unless you share more of your revenue with us." And it ultimately means there's a commoditization of stable coins and uh not only commoditization, but like a margin compression that will ultimately happen. So, that's one. The other one was realizing uh well that'll also happen when you start to see interest rates lower and thinking about like already the level of kind of craziness we're seeing and just like this lack of signal and focus in this industry specifically crypto but also DATs. Well, what happens when interest rates go lower in the amount of you know printing of like these tokens USDC or whatever, but also um people going further on the risk curve like this is how we're going to blow everything up is because there's going to be so much capital just flowing around on chain in this next cycle. Um, that's gonna get crazy. >> Um, not much to add there. Liam, do you have any thoughts on the on on Hyperlid? >> That was a crypto recap for the week. Anybody listening, if you don't like it, comment and we'll never talk about uh Hyperlid or stable coins ever again. >> Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the podcast. we've been going a little bit deeper into uh the digital asset markets and think it's important because of uh how it's going to ultimately relate to uh value acrruel around Bitcoin. Um quick word from On-Ramp. I'm sure everyone's familiar on provides multi-institution custody and financial services. Ultimately, our goal is to provide peace of mind for investors. We've had no shortage of inbound from different investor types from individuals all the way to institutions. Um the one I'm going to call out today is individuals. It's very often comes up the difference between self- custody, collaborative custody, thirdparty exchange. And there's no shortage of different angles we can take in explaining multi-institution custody, the level of permissions, video verifications, multiple institutions, holding keys. Um and there is no shortage of feature set. But I think one of the core things that comes up often why clients end up choosing on-ramp is because of the peace of mind we provide them. A lot of clients just are getting increasingly uncomfortable with single counterparty risk, whether it's themselves and how they figured out their distributed custody and ultimately as the price goes up being uh attack vectors for bad actors as well as potentially, you know, uh creating problems around inheritance. And so just wanted to call that out because I think that's a common trend. We're seeing clients come to us really so they can sleep good at night knowing that their assets are taken care of. they have access to best-in-class financial services like trade, bit Bitcoin back loans, dynasty trust planning if they'd like, as well as um the ability to really safeguard those assets for multiple generations. So, if you'd like to learn more, I'd encourage you to book a consultation or sign up and our self-onboarding flow is very unique and quick. Uh hope you enjoy the rest of the show. >> No, I think that was well said. >> Um all right, Liam, you brought this. I admittedly have not read this, uh, but I'm familiar with what Versal is, but what are they talking about here? Open protocol payments. >> So, um, Versal essentially AI, they do a bunch of different things, but a lot of AI um, cloud and they offer APIs, um, for and they're essentially trying to create a aentic native protocol and have partnered with Coinbase for X42. X42 um formerly held for HTTP uh as um the internet native money, but that never really necessarily happened. But they've essentially created an SDK for anybody to offer um agents the ability to uh pull from APIs to offer um certain like small micro payments pay for per pay per service um and will allow for microtransactions using um a agents essentially to pull from all of their products and services that they offer. they partnered with Coinbase and so um essentially they're going to use uh base on USDC I would assume for most of these especially for microp payments as is but it's interoperable with any protocol and so anybody can um use Bitcoin on lightning or whatever else. I would assume that people, you know, we live in a dollar world. So, it's uh I'm not going to say essentially that in the world uh today everybody's going to adopt Bitcoin all of a sudden, but it's really interesting to see the CEO um came out and said this was essentially what I thought Bitcoin was going to be back in 2013. And you know, um obviously takes 10 minutes or so for uh onchain transactions to settle. So it doesn't necessarily make sense for small microp payments in every scenario on the layer one but eventually everything is uh this is really interesting to see and essentially how a lot of new transactions are going to work. It's interesting that they're not a Bitcoin or cryptonnative company coming out to do this. And um it's great to see, but eventually I think all of this will naturally be done with a Bitcoin or or eCash type of token rather than uh USDC on base that's naturally centralized. Um but yeah, I was curious if you guys had any thoughts there. >> No, it's it's super interesting. But so at all at at any point do they reference you know Bitcoin or lightning or or other blockchains or is this really primarily being built to work with phase? >> It's interoperable with any coin token etc. to my understanding. >> Interesting. >> Yeah. >> So basically like a aentic APIs that allow you to touch blockchains uh efficiently quickly. Like is that that kind of the idea? Yeah, it's it's essentially used for model context protocol um and for anybody to use their APIs uh request pay-perclicks um everything like that. Um so but it it can be for AI or agentic agents to use um >> in the future. Yeah, this is probably an oversimplified version and I hope I don't like kill myself in what I'm about to say is it's basically like if you think about a payw wall or you remember like there was a lot very heavily on payw walls online and >> you could pay um obviously you could pay with a credit card and then they started to put like sats and you could pull it up and you could pay and imagine like the pay wall popping up and it has like four different ways to play and you can pay with like USDC or you could play like that API and what it hits can be very but this I mean I don't know if you guys I know Brian you probably saw it but it reminds me very similar And it's probably like inspired with um what came out by Lightning Labs I think maybe six months ago which was the L42 >> using Lightning over HTTP. Um, and I think this is probably one is um I think orders of magnitude larger Amjan and Replet and I think they already kind of do stuff like this and they're probably all in Silicon Valley and San Francisco talking and seeing like this this version and to to the point we talked about earlier it all aggregate and people want to barter so Bitcoin will naturally be that layer. But what I think the most fascinating from all this is u the notion of like bitcoin becoming ubiquitous in society was never going to be one or the other. It was going to be both uh when it comes to price goes up and then also as price goes up in parallel to it the utilization on the internet but not from a novelty perspective out of pure like to the point of microtransactions. If you're able to load up a wallet and you're going to be hitting these agents to build out whatever you need from a coding perspective and those microtransactions are running, well, if that's your first experience and then you see the number go up because it's going to naturally have a BTC or SAS price with USDC or USD, you're wondering what that is. And then similarly, like you're just kind of like it'll just grow with society and the culture and then you can almost take a step back and squint how it's like it's just the thing like people just use Bitcoin. Um, >> yeah, you're >> that's not like a taboo or just like a weird like novelty. It's just the thing that you use when you're natively online. And uh >> yeah, it's very cool to see because it's generally I think we're all very bullish or positive, but it's very hard to see like how am I going to use this? How is my parents going to get like comfortable with this? It's very similar on the banking side where it's like you actually have a savings account. The savings account goes up over time. You can have like a module underneath your checking account. the savings account will be there and it's like if you you know decide to deposit your savings account over X time frame you can see how much it'll just be the price of Bitcoin moving but it's in dollar terms and it's like you move it there and people like well I kind of want a little bit of savings in my account and you'll just park it there um and then it just becomes ubiquitous. >> Yeah. people will realize uh damn I this guy used Bitcoin instead of USDC or UST um now and and he created the same exact model as me for half the cost and uh so maybe I should start to use this uh asset that actually goes up and over in time rather than just continues to depreciate and it'll just be another touch point for people to get into the industry. But this is obviously Oh, sorry. >> No, no, sorry. I didn't mean to cut you up, but it was it was based on that point. It's like this stuff is like the most fiat. Like when you think about building like on USDC, on Coinbase, on Ethereum, like all you have to do is just build on Bitcoin like Spark's making and there's more companies creating these open source tools. It's interoperable. You net settle in the best form of money. It goes up over time. It's not like rocket science that where this all ends up. And it's kind of like a beautiful thing because everyone else is talking about all this other stuff. And again, it's that's where the like there's a truth in every lie. It's like, well, they kind of get it, like we're inefficient in moving capital. What they just don't get is they miss the like main part of like, oh, it's just Bitcoin. It's just the money. Um, but when they wake up and it's like, why am I doing all this? And whether it's like USDC. Oh, yeah. I forgot we didn't even add this. >> Yeah, this is where I was going to go. You don't you don't want to use Fedcoin, Michael. Tether unveils UST. It's planned US regulated stable coin. Um, I'm assuming this is going to run on their stable chain. Uh, but TBD on that. Uh but yeah, any any thoughts as it relates to to this new stable coin? >> Man, I don't I don't even know. Um I guess the biggest one maybe is it'll be interesting to see who competes and um it will come. I just don't know where and I don't think it's from USDC uh but where the competition comes from global flows because I think to the point we were talking about earlier and that's kind of part of the reason is um the stable coin markets will really matter uh we talked about it from like US you know reach and and control and um tether has such you know liquidity mode and that allows them and it kind of is like even as interest rates will lower naturally their revenue will lower, but they'll still be outpacing everyone else. So, they can undercut a lot of people to maintain that market share. Um, so maybe there won't be as much competition because this is effectively like like the deeming of the US government. >> Right. That that's what I was going to say. Like there's Yeah, there's a lot of um interlinkages here with obviously Bohines with the Lutnik and Caner connection. Um there's just a lot of intermingling here. So, this is probably as close as we're going to get to a quote unquote Fedcoin. Um I would I would imagine is is USAT. >> Yeah, they can just absorb losses for so long just given how much gold, land, and Bitcoin they have. Um, I I I was going to say if I would I could see JP Morgan, all of those guys paying an arm and a leg to try to own a very small percentage of the business just to similarly to what we talked about NASDAQ earlier on trying to understand how um the largest player in the space really operates. But I have no idea why Tether would let any of them in. Um I think they're they're just going to operate kind of by themselves how they have over time. And uh it looks like Anchorage and Caner are their respective partners for issuance and uh custody. Um but yeah, I I don't necessarily see them working with the the JP Morgans, etc., unless they actually provide real value on their side. Um it will be interesting to see who they partner with and why. >> Yeah, I mean, yeah, I I don't think they would let them partner. I don't think either one would actually want because to get an inside seat on what um Tether's doing. Tether wouldn't want them to see that. Like I think as big as tether is ultimately the capital flow specifically US when you think about the big banks and this also kind of like sheds light on like Fidelity's big kind of plans or they've been you know rumored to be launching you know stable coin um amount of assets that they custody that I think that's probably the closest you end up is like some kind of consortium um because of the liquidity profile and also uh economies of scale and just like distribution with all these banks and they have like the underlying banks, right? So like you think about sub custody and then going out to like merchant banks like that's probably what sparks this deal. And so you you know tether's just going like you know just all in before these guys wake up to it. But you can't you can't imagine I think one other thing I was going to share is um this kind of further shows how these they're dead unless they figure something out because what Tether understands is banking is effectively all digital. Now when you think about in cyerspace you can have you know your wallet multi institution your own self custody whatever and then if you need dollars you can actually have a a digital wallet for your USDC or USA or USAT and like how much like banking do you really need in rails do you need for that if you're dependent on the exchange maybe you have to do KYC but you can effectively do almost everything without the notion of a quoteunquote banking license and so if they don't figure out that like mode with capital they're going to um see more and more capital flee and then you're going to naturally have native like financial products that are built in that version of it and it'll take time. Um but yeah >> yeah I'm I'm really bearish on the consortium too just because essenti it's a it's a startup and trying to get a bunch of slowm moving bureaucratic compliance first banks to try to create new products and services though they obviously have the distribution that will allow them to to get significant benefits especially out of the gate but I just don't think that they're going to iterate meet their customer needs nearly as fast as um the company's actually done it before. >> Yeah. >> Well said. All right, boys. I know we have to wrap. Uh, any final thoughts? Parting words? >> Can we just pull up that uh fragile economy deal thing real quick? >> Yeah, >> I thought it was interesting. >> Wall Street Journal. >> Yeah, I think it'll just pop up the the main headline. Um, so America's buy now pay later economy. Signs of emerging debt crisis everywhere from credit cards and mortgages to government budgets. Um this was written last week and um th this kind of like coincided with the uh revisions to the employment. Um I think it was like close to a million jobs and like 900,000 or whatever. Um, I mainly call this out because, you know, I I've found naive and I was naive to this that most people are very underweight. Bitcoin, even people listening to this and and following along and and definitely if they are, their family is um there's never been a better time to understand just how uh asymmetric the trade is, right? Like most people think of asymmetric just upside, but it's also protecting your downside. And um and a lot of individuals naturally hesitate because of the custody situation making sure nobody like again I always joke people would rather hold negative yielding bonds and have their you know Bitcoin evaporate if they put a large percentage of their wealth in BTC and they don't feel comfortable with self custody collaborative custody third party custody. Uh so I think it's just an important time to to go deep and figure out the why the value prop you know learn more about what we're doing and it doesn't have to even be with us. I prefer if somebody just gets Bitcoin exposure and gets comfortable with custody anyway versus holding uh bonds or um you know over um inflated equities because it's just going to get messier from here. People are just getting rubbed in and out. You kind of see this with this data coming. >> Yep. Very well said. Liam, anything else? >> That's it from me. >> You sell your bonds, Liam? Let the audience know. >> I have no bonds. Bitcoin only. >> Do your parents have bonds? Do we have to save them? >> Uh, yeah. They don't have enough Bitcoin. >> Just send the clip, this last clip for them. Just be like, you guys should just just listen. Read some of the content. Brian produces great content. It helps. Uh, every little like share goes a long way. I'm not even talking about us. I'm just thinking about like how many touch points. It took me like five years sitting at the dinner table with my mother-in-law before she just turned into a spike coiner because I was just like, "Look, you're you're you're retired and it's not going to go far enough." Uh because you see this, you know, happy with inflation and she just had to finally, you know, kind of ape in. But the point being is um >> to get some might make sense to get some >> and if they don't get some, just share the info. Just share the data, share the information, share the podcast. It's it's going to click eventually and then it's going to change everything for them. So, it's important. >> Yes. and just compound is is a good way to track what's going on and feel like they're invested too. >> Yep. Just get a little little starter position and then uh continue to learn more. But uh yes, please like, subscribe, share the pods, check out our new podcast, Bitcoin for businesses, released uh this past Saturday. Um and subscribe to our research newsletters. Uh and we'll see you guys next week. Thank you. >> All right. Thanks. 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.