The Last Trade E040: Contrarian Thinking with Allen Farrington

Brian Cubellis (00:03.022) to the Irish exit. Is an American phrase you've never heard this in in your neck of the woods out I I've literally never heard that before no It's my move in college The Irish eggs that you're out at the bar. I can completely imagine where it even comes from though that it's like I wouldn't say a slur exactly but a sort of an amicable slur between ethnic groups in the US where they all say, they're, oh, I'm Italian, I'm Irish, I'm German, and it's actually like they're great, great, great grandpa. And you need that environment to have a reason to make fun of Irish people, whereas actually where everyone's Irish is just like, not a thing. I've made all that up now, I don't know if that's, I completely believe that that's where it probably came from. Yeah. Those Irish lads at the pub having a good time and then they go home, Irish goodbye. It's an endearing term. It's a very, maybe it's not as polite as people would say, but it's just like, hey, I'm done with this night. I'm an individual. I'm gonna make my own decision. I don't need to say goodbye to everybody. I'm leaving. You just walk out the door. Yeah, I agree. I think it plays on both sides. I think a lot of people don't feel like I gotta say bye to it multiple times. You're kind of benefiting both sides of the transaction. Oh, I totally get the action. I'm not saying that the action is like, needs to be insulted or anything. I'm just imagining where that phrase for it came from. That this was something that people who, again, are like, claim they were Irish, but they're not really, because they're American. They disproportionately did this, and then, you know, they're also not really Polish and Italian friends. We're like, oh, fucking Irish exit. Sorry, real, I just swear on this. Just a current one, maybe not. You're going to bleed that out in post. Brian Cubellis (02:01.164) We can do anything we want on the internet here. Do you guys know what the opposite of an Irish exit is? No. Announcing a retirement 10 months in advance, which is what the CEO Vanguard did. Yeah, that's not not coincidental timing at all. So let's go over this. Bitcoin ETFs, I think. they surpassed even our wildest expectations so far. I think it's pretty safe to say. I think I said buy the rumor, buy the news, buy Bitcoin. When we were talking about this, there was only one way. I think the ETFs remind me of just the Bitcoin trade or havings. Like all this stuff is so simple. It's so straightforward. And so like, why wouldn't it be insane for open -air liquidity? Like that was always the take. I think there were some individuals that might have been a little less. bullish on it and you know, not naming names either here or and the Twitter sphere, but it's just like common sense. Oh, I agree. But with that being said, ETS launched a month and a half ago. Now at this point, a lot, I mean, objectively, there are a bunch of large money managers have a 90 day waiting period before they can get in. So a lot of the activity up until this point has been predominantly retail driven and driven by wealth managers that. don't have those restrictions. So the floodgates haven't even been fully open and what are the net accumulation is 371 ,000, I believe, Bitcoin? Yeah, close to over 300 ,000, I think. Yeah, so it's pretty insane. I'm convinced it's not even retail. Like I know they, the Eric, like these guys talk about it, but like us as a group, how many people do you know buying Bitcoin? Like net new people. I don't know the ETF, I know. A lot of new people are buying Bitcoin. It texted me. I think like just this notion of people like anecdotally reaching out and people stepping into the market, I think is a different kind of bit, at least right now. Like I think these pools open to RIAs and getting it on the platform and having the discussions and having to show all the disclaimers around it. Like I don't think it turned on and then people just started buying out of the gate. I think there's different buying pressure right now that's completely unrelated to like the channels that I think people talk about. Brian Cubellis (04:29.422) from like a registered investment advisor or financial advisor just saying, oh, now I can smash buy into a fidelity ETF. I imagine them using exactly that language. What are your thoughts on? You can smash buy now if you want. What are your thoughts on the ETF launch so far? I mean, I don't need to be a party pooper, but like. I just honestly don't care at all. It's nice for the price, obviously. I wouldn't say, by that I don't at all mean I'm bearish on it. Like clearly it's gonna juice the price to the moon and that's good. I just mean more, it's not really of interest to me beyond that. And even that I think is like, I struggle to see it as being a good thing as opposed to just an inevitable thing. That's kind of my, that's why I've been a bit confused by how excited it seems like most of Bitcoin Twitter is other than just the price, because it like, obviously, it's going to be amazing for the price. But also, obviously, eventually, there was going to be an ETF. So just to me, it's kind of a nothing burger. If anything, I can I can turn it around on you guys, like, why aren't you more mad about it? Surely every ETF buyer should be an on -ramp customer, but isn't yet because they, I don't know, they're not educated enough. I don't know, they haven't listened to TFTC enough. That's the exact thing. I went full circle and I kind of fell in your camp for a very long time. And then I realized an ETF similar to like the same mechanism somebody bought on Cash App is the same deal as somebody buying via Fidelity. It's like you buy it because it's the easiest way and then you go get educated because it's money. And that's the thing people forget. Like when it's an app or it's just like Amazon, you're just like, sure, I buy it. don't go that deep on it. I traded around, but inevitably when the position goes from 1 % to 3 % to 10 % because of price appreciation are doubling down. Yeah. Yeah. There's this inherent requirement to start to understand it. And then that's when people are like, holy crap. And we experienced this in 2021 with GBTC when people realized that to get spot exposure, they had to get out of the market. And generally those were tax advantage accounts. So it wasn't so much as a taxable event, which obviously happens with an ETF. It was more of. Brian Cubellis (06:47.342) when the price is railing and you step out of the market, generally people are like, holy crap, I have two weeks where I'm in dollars. And so this whole notion of like, oh shit, like I can't take delivery of this. I'm worried about now that Coinbase has a trillion dollars in Bitcoin, whatever the number is, like all those things will never really happen. And in our opinion, or at least my opinion, the only way they could have happened is with the ETF. So that's where I think it's ultimately bullish is because the education game for everybody started whenever this thing launched. Yeah, okay, that's a good way of putting it, right? It's clearly bullish on the price. It was always going to be bullish for the price. I don't think it's really bullish, honestly, at all for anything related to, I don't know if you want to think of it as like technical development or frankly even adoption. I think the best way you can view it is as an educational stepping stone. I think you need to expect this massive influx of capital into the ETFs. and then just sit around waiting for a massive outflux of capital into real Bitcoin. Well, it's massive into the ecosystem, like, and the margins people are going to allocate to infrastructure because the ETF is there, which translates to technological development. Yeah, true. But I mean, I see that as being part of the stepping stone, right? That's education in a snapshot, I think. I don't want to get too bogged down in the semantics of this. I just, I like being a party pooper on this. I just really don't care. I'm sorry. Yeah, but I think it is very, like even if this ends up just being a dead end for this capital, like people go in and they remain cash redeems and nobody ever takes their capital out. It does flip a whole lot of people from being anti -Bitcoin to now rooting for Bitcoin and wanting the price to go up and wanting more of it and wanting to accumulate actual Bitcoin. So like, I think the psychological impact of it, is a massive boon for pre -adoption of real Bitcoin. Yeah, and I think like there's a big thing that we forget how long we've looked at this space that we joked when this thing was about to happen six months ago. And like, what is going on in the normie brain that BlackRock and Fidelity are stepping in to like magic internet beans. And to Jesse's point, it's like the mask off moment of like, you don't put the genie back in the bottle and it's out. Now everybody has to have a position. Brian Cubellis (09:09.198) a good advisor that was framing overseas his synagogues like capital treasury. And he was like, look, you know, I've been meaning to bring it up. It hasn't added, uh, hasn't come up, you know, they're bearish, whatever. And the framing, which is like a really good framing. It's like, okay, that's fine if we're not allocating, but we have to have a very strong reason why we're not at this point because everything happened, which is just a foundational difference in having to like advocate for it. I talked with somebody this week who's mulling over their investment consultancy group and they were mulling over. going to their clients, they're sold on Bitcoin internally and they're pitching it to their clients and they're mulling over like having a document that they want their clients to sign acknowledging that they turned down their advice to buy Bitcoin for like legal coverage on the back end of the bull market when it runs. It's like you can't say that we didn't tell you to buy Bitcoin. And then turn it into an inscription. Brian Cubellis (10:08.718) I had a Stanford MBA classmate text me yesterday who I've been trying to get in and he works for a family office basically. And I've been trying to get him in for six years, four years heavily. I presented to his team four years ago, a PowerPoint presentation. I went down to the office and did it. and they were interested and curious and didn't buy any. And he texted me yesterday, you are a genius on Bitcoin. And I'm like, first of all, no, but where is this coming from? And he's like, the price. So it's the only thing that really moves the needle in terms of people wanting in is FOMO. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's another thing you can throw in in terms of... No, it seems like you guys don't really wanna do this, but I do quite enjoy just being pointlessly contrarian on this and trying to poop the party, right? Do you know what worry that we're all gonna get outrageously large egos as a result of this? Like if people keep calling us geniuses when we like nothing has changed. Not deserved at all, yes. That's definitely fair. It's getting increasingly difficult to stay humble. We all need a little Alexander the Great Followboy who just tells you you're only a man. You're only a man. Alan, you're spot on. I mean, that's where real alpha is like, you know, we talk about EC and Slack and everybody's like the price and like, I don't get like that's the alpha is like, you can have the focus of what we've always been doing, whether it's 20k or 100k, but the price helps. And that's why, you know, somewhat push back on the bearishness simply because you've made your mark and in a good mark and being contrarian, I think the contrarian nature for this exact moment is literally the opposite. Like this changes everything. It blows everybody out of the water in the sense of like, cause it's so obvious of like what it did. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You're probably right. Brian Cubellis (12:07.246) None. Thanks for coming on Alan. Bye ETFs everybody. And we already have an example. Again, going back to the Vanguard situation, CEO, forget his name, announced that he'll be retiring at the back end of this year. They made a very hard stance at the launch of the ETFs that they were not going to give their clients exposure to these products because they believed it was speculative in nature and too risky. And since the ETFs have launched, Vanguard clients have missed out on a more than 50 % appreciation opportunity in terms of exposure to Bitcoin. And so people are speculating, Bitcoiners are speculating certainly that he has announced his retirement because the internal clamoring of fumbling the ball so bad. with the Bitcoin ETFs Well Marty come on, we're not speculating, we're actively spreading misinformation. You guys, I never know it's real or not. You have to bend the knee to Bitcoin. You have to bend the knee to Bitcoin. Did he actually have the quote that never while he's CEO will they do it? Cause I've seen that, like I think it was, or is that not true? I think that's a meme. It's possible. I mean, I've heard it. I heard it right now, so I'm gonna say it. Yeah, I mean. Hey, I'm spreading information. I don't know if it's misinformation or if it's real information. I mean, 33 years as CEO and conveniently the year that the ETF launches and it's the best performing from all measures, yes, a step down. I think there's only one answer there. Yeah, it does feel, it feels very notable. It feels like, hey buddy, the board of directors is probably thinking, you know, This isn't panning out the way that our guy in charge said it would. We're seeing massive outflows of capital from our platform to platforms that do offer the ETF, the Bitcoin ETF. And maybe he's, you know, past his prime. Maybe this is a different time, a different era, and he's attuned to a prior era of investing. I could see that conversation happening in a boardroom. And it's probably also like, Brian Cubellis (14:28.14) He's like, I don't need this. I'm ready to retire anyway. I've been doing this for 30 years. Like I want to enjoy my family. And so maybe it was just time to pass the baton, but it is very notable timing here. And we just started in hot. Alan, how are you doing? Good to see you. Nice seeing you. Goodbye. It's the best way to start. I was thinking about this right before we jumped on actually. As much as I would like to say, you know, I'm doing great. Usually that's what I would say, start of a podcast. I'm actually kind of grumpy because all my friends are in Madeira and I suck here moving houses. It doesn't look like any of you are in Madeira either. I was watching the live stream this morning. A lot of high signal content coming out of my Madeira right now. No, don't tell me that, Marty. Come on. I'm trying to, I'm staying off of Twitter. How come you aren't there? Better join the real world. Did you, Alan, did you not pull up the weather in Madeira versus the weather in Scotland and just make a, you know, an obvious decision there? I don't need to pull anything up to know the answer to that. It actually looks quite cold. Everybody was wearing jackets. Oh, that's surprising. Yeah. The. Now, yeah, I mean, Madeira, the the content there is strong. I mean, bull run market or excuse me, bull market. vibes at conferences, there's nothing better. If you're at a conference and the price is pumping, it's one of the most invigorating energies you can be a part of. I think I disagree with that. I maybe don't have a big enough sample to really draw any meaningful conclusions, but like, for example, Miami 21 was ridiculous. And Miami 22 was like, oh, okay, there's like real conversations happening here now. I'm pretty sure this won't apply to Madeira because it almost feels like throughout that cycle, people learned a lot of these lessons. I mean, in particular, people who are planning conferences and like what kind of things they should be seen to be supporting. But I mean, my experience so far is that the bear market conferences are sadder, I guess, but better quite clearly. I'm honestly, I'm nervous for this next conference. Brian Cubellis (16:48.686) season, like Nashville will be absurd, I guarantee it. There's nothing better than Nashville in the middle of July. It's going to be absurd on many levels. It's going to be a hot market, literal hot days and a ton of people in a relatively small city. Marty, you might you might need to get some fresh air up on a rooftop and do a broadcast. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And get people to stack at the top. Yeah. That's what I was referencing Bitcoin conference 2019 the first one they ever threw That Bitcoin magazine ever threw San Francisco on a rooftop Matt Odell had no facial hair. We were we were pumped. It was like the the mini Bull fake out in the middle of that cycle up to 14 ,000 Yeah, and we were drinking whiskey telling people to smash by Partying like like the super cycle was upon us, but it was not it was not that was five years ago. I I do. I do like Alan, which you said about the price and being like, I was thinking about this the other day. It's like, nothing's foundationally changed, especially this return. Cause we just did this sharp run to 16 eight or whatever. And back up to 60, when you really think about it, it looks almost like a max, like a large bar. When it's just like, everybody got shaken out and nothing actually really changed other than maybe we wiped CZ and you know, some players off and an ETF launched into the reality. It's like nothing, the the thesis hasn't changed. What we're all building, I think is the exact same thing. And so that lens is always helpful. to have in it because we're not any smarter than we were back then or where we're going. And I think that's just like a very healthy way to look at this market and how we like allocate personal capital. I think honestly, I mean, I'm obviously kind of joking about it and I'm being a bit facetious just because it's amusing. But my kind of pseudo contrarianism, I think where it's coming from is like a frustration with what feels like, I don't know if you guys know this expression, the eternal September. Like we've now, it feels like we've now very much entered. the eternal September with Bitcoin. And so, yeah, again, obviously ETFs are great for price, but it seems to have created such a, it's almost like a vacuum of what people want to talk about, and in particular, what the newbies want to talk about, when, as you say, Michael, as far as I'm concerned, nothing worth talking about has actually changed. So why are these people all texting me? You know what I mean? Which I'm sure has happened to you as well. Yeah. Brian Cubellis (19:13.934) Yeah, well, but let's not let's not focus. You don't have to focus on the eternal September like what would be a different a big shift in the Bitcoin market, particularly particularly the market structure. Michael, you mentioned Dubai, Alan, I watched you give an incredible speech presentation at Riga. What was that two years ago on Bitcoin being Sharia compliant money? And that's. One of the themes that I'm placing my bet on this year is that we see somebody in the Middle East, an Islamic country, either define Bitcoin as Sharia compliant money, I believe one has already, in some layer of their court system, and not only that, but ape into Bitcoin in a big way, and make a public statement about that. You were all in Dubai, or two of you were. Do get that sentiment at all? Ellen, I'm pretty open book, so I'm going to throw it to you and you could share as much of our conversation that we had posted by on this call about like our stance there. And then we'll, we'll use that as a jumping off point. Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, there's loads of that. We could do the entire podcast on this. If you want to go down every, every rabbit hole, just back to, to Marty's point specifically, I think there's a distinction worth making that on the nation state, you know, adoption or however you want to describe it. That's almost certainly happened already. It's just a question of when they're going to be public about it. So I agree with you. It feels like probably this year, decent odds that there will be news around that. The point about it, I forget exactly how you phrase it, but something to the effect of becoming legally enshrined. I think that's a bit trickier. And I wouldn't hold out any particular hope for that. I mean, this is now immediately a massive rabbit hole. But. because of the way that legal process works, it's nowhere near as simple as a parliament passing a law or something like that. It's far more of almost a theological process around which there's no consensus, actually kind of an amusing term to bring up here. It's very sort of decentralized and unofficial and slow. Brian Cubellis (21:32.878) As a result, you could actually, I don't want to strain this too hard and end up insulting people in both sides, but it's not completely dissimilar, let's say, to something like core development, where you have many, many, no official central body per se, many unofficial contributors, and for completely different reasons, admittedly, people having, a very strongly conservative bias and kind of a fear of changing anything too quickly. So that's probably far enough down that particular rabbit hole, but I strongly doubt that will happen soon. But I actually think that whenever it does, I think it will happen eventually. I think when it does happen, the first point having happened first will have been really important to it because it won't just be theory at that point. There'll be actual applications in terms of how people are using this new money that can be pointed to as part of the justification for it. Yeah, one of the things we talked about, Marty, that I think you'll appreciate is just the whole mining and energy component and just there's fundamental reality tied to that area of the world of their goods and services or their their goods, their energy tied to like GDP that just like roots you in foundation of what is value that there's like a predisposition there than like in a lot of places like San Francisco. And not only that, and the culmination of events for that particular region, events or themes. I mean, the Saudi government, Aramco, Aramco the company, Saudi Aramco, they've made it explicitly clear that they want to begin diversifying their assets away from being so heavily concentrated with oil and gas, adding Bitcoin to the mix makes a lot of sense and they can leverage their oil and gas assets to make that possible. On top of that, obviously timing Bitcoin has the institutional stamp of approval of BlackRock, Fidelity and others getting into the space. Brian Cubellis (23:35.854) And then timing again and leaning specifically into mining you finally have industrial scale production of Hydro facilities that will make it much easier to mine in these climates. And so you have like those three culmination of events where they want to diversify away the narrative for Bitcoin is extremely strong and the hardware to actually materialize a Bitcoin strategy in terms of mining is where it needs to be for them to actually ape in. Yeah, there's another point on top of all of that too, which is, I'd say, even more intriguing, I guess, from like a geopolitical perspective, which is that they want to end their reliance on Swift as well. They've seen what has happened to Russia. And I mean, to some extent, it's been obvious that something like that could happen for a very long time in terms of the, I don't want to get too conspiratorial about it, but effectively the USDA department weaponizing the petrodollar for purely political purposes. Now, you know, that had been talked about in kind of conspiratorial tones for a very long time, but now the writing's very much on the wall, given what's actually happened to Russia. And so there's, the reason I say it's even more intriguing is that I don't think you're ever gonna see, or certainly not for a very long time, will you see any public announcements about this? You might even see denials in the face of the... the kind of the obvious reality of it playing out, but I think that's yet another reason for them to favor integrating various flavors of Bitcoin infrastructure to give them a payment alternative so that they can't just be shut out of global trade. Yeah, and one of the things that doesn't get talked about is the competitive nature in the GCC as a whole, where they like operate, you hear it in the sense of like they run countries like their companies, but then if that is true, but if it's to be true, then the different. Brian Cubellis (25:38.062) countries running as companies are competing with one another to one up each other. And the closest example, not even close, is like Texas and Wyoming. I feel like there's like a natural, healthy, like cooperation slash competition with, you know, being more forward thinking and all the things associated with Bitcoin mining, you know, potentially stable coins or things like that. And that's like on steroids over there specifically. And you hear this a lot between UAE and Saudi because Saudi sees what the UAE has done. And you've heard this multiple times. I'm sure you have as well, Alan, that they want to basically 100 X whatever happened in Dubai. Yeah. And they have the money to do it, which everybody understands that part. So now that's like Riyadh is this like area that a lot of people are basically buying real estate and starting to like move to because they understand that kind of they can do it at an accelerated pace, whatever happened in Dubai. Brian Cubellis (26:27.278) So Marty's moving to Riyadh. I don't think so anytime soon, but I would like to visit. See what's going on. It is, I mean, intuitively to me, whether it's the Middle East or some other country in the Middle East or some other country in some other part of the world, a more developed country, that's the next domino to fall. We have the institution stamp of approval. I think nation states and. Michael and Alan both make very good points where they'll probably deny it and they won't admit it but I think they're gonna get in in a big way that's like the next wave of Big adoption as nation -state sovereign wealth funds aping into Bitcoin Alan do you feel like The you know Zoltan Pozar or however he pronounces his name from Credit Suisse put out that that that very well -written piece right when the Russia cut off from Swift and the foreign exchange reserves sees occurred that, you this is the beginning of Bretton Woods three, the end of Bretton Woods two. And we're entering an era now where countries are going to be searching for outside money rather than inside money, meaning that inside money, meaning that it's part of the system. It's inside, it's controlled by. the powers that be and outside money is not. And I think he largely meant like oil and gold. But he also noted at the end of it that despite not being a Bitcoin bull himself in general, that Bitcoin could be the big winner out of all of this. Do you feel like, you know, fast forward three years, those probably two years ago, two years now. Do you feel like that's playing out? Brian Cubellis (28:26.798) I to be honest, I don't want to comment too much on that because I would very quickly get out of my depth and The one thing I would say though just in terms of tying together his comments it's very enticing as very encouraging that he would do this but I think just in general it's very enticing to start thinking of Bitcoin in the same category as something like gold or oil or oil, sorry and on the basis of something that's completely obvious to us, but I think isn't at all to normies and is now becoming so, that it is completely tangible value, right? It's not credit -based, like the system that seems to be unwinding. So, I mean, you've heard this kind of thing for a really long time, and again, still out of my depth, more just kind of as a curious observer and having read various historical accounts of this kind of thing that it's always in the back of, or maybe not eternally, let's say, but since Brighton Woods, it's been in the back of a lot of people's minds that it is just inherently unstable. It's inherently reliant on politics. It would be better if gold, oil I think is a little bit trickier, but certainly gold just because of its history could have more of a role in this. If it could be more grounded in reality, right? Like even maybe back to Michael's point about why. You know, Texas and Wyoming and then this tidy and UAE seem to get this more because they're This is more sorry what we were talking about before we came on but our theory I think is that it appeals to them far more in the first place because their own Economic experience is far more tethered to reality than you know to make a maybe a bit of a characterizing gross characterization, you know, I New York being tied to Fiat Finance or San Francisco being tied to software or something like that. So yeah, I mean, this kind of thing has obviously been talked about for a long time. We can all very clearly articulate why Bitcoin would be far better than gold in that kind of role. I think what's super exciting is, yeah, that other people are. The people who are, in fact, qualified to opine on these issues are starting to include Bitcoin in the conversation. Brian Cubellis (30:50.158) There is an irony there that when you grow up in a part of the world that enjoys the exorbitant privilege of being able to print the global reserve currency out of thin air, you are no longer in tune with monetary reality and you can't see when reality is knocking on the door. It's interesting too from the American perspective because yes, for the world of hyperfinance, New York and the world of hypertech in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. But I think due to the misunderstanding of Bitcoin in the early years where people really saw it as this tech play and haven't really grok to the monetary aspects or took people really to hone in on the monetary aspects of what it was. It looked like a tech play to a lot of people. here in the United States and afforded American citizens to accumulate a large portion of the Bitcoin supply today. Brian Cubellis (31:57.518) Which is an explanation for why there's been alt -coining for the last decade, you know? That energy has been diverted into what else can we create with technology and cryptocurrency? Yeah, I've said this kind of thing before actually that not exactly wrapped up in like, oh, it's America's fault. But that is kind of a funny framing for this, right? That you could very easily think of crypto. in its various flavors. I mean, certainly still today, I'd say more so, I think we'll probably look back on the peak as being 21, 22. But it's basically, the starting point, obviously, is Bitcoin, but it's then specifically misunderstood through the lens of both SF Tech and New York finance. It's like, how can you misunderstand both the technology and the monetary components of this, and then dial that up to 11, and then what you get is crypto. I think there's a poetic version of that of like who, what the individuals, whether it's in China or the U S and in between, um, who gets it, like who's holding Bitcoin today versus who holding crypto in the future. And like that lens, I think it affords itself for the right people are holding it and we'll kind of like work through whatever transition or whatever it looks like and the things that are built. Um, it's fascinating to see the past 15 years and who are the adopters and then who got in early, but have basically gone crazy and lost all their Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then it also provides, I mean, for what we do, Alan, in the context of 1031 for me and Axiom for you, it provides us an incredible opportunity where all these people are raising billions of dollars and misallocating it to nauseating levels, overlooking Bitcoin and the industry being built on top of it. And there's not a lot of Bitcoin only funds out there. I think the two of ours are two of less than maybe two dozen. If that many and it just provides an incredible opportunity for us to go support the companies that actually get the signal. I wonder if you've ever thought about this before actually. I'm not meaning to shit on, well certainly on myself, not really anyone else either, but I actually think it's kind of sad that there even needs to be such a thing as a Bitcoin only fund. Like that, it exists in the first place because of the misinformation, not saying that. Brian Cubellis (34:26.382) ironically, but like literal misinformation spewed by crypto. That's the only reason Bitcoin only funds exist. It should just be something that competent tech generalists understand, but it isn't at least not yet. Yeah. David King's a good example of this. If you guys follow him, he's a good buddy with Max Webster. He like actually, he understands Bitcoin so deeply. He doesn't even like talking about it because he knows like the whole kind of connotation around. He's still like scarred from, you know, whatever happens on Twitter and you know. Obviously we're past that, but he doesn't like to be labeled from individuals that are building. He's thinking a bit more of his background in technology, former Google guy, that's like, just where does Bitcoin insert into the traditional world that provides it more utility? And so to your point, I think that's what the future kind of looks like is less of individuals chasing a small amount of Bitcoin companies versus just like every company ends up looking like that in some respect, that incorporates Bitcoin. or builds on? Yeah, I mean, we say this, we say this all the time. I think it comes up on both sides. On the one hand, we're typically very attracted to investment opportunities where in some other form, the Bitcoin component is just obfuscated away. So the company is just, I can say this in entirely general, almost vague terms, right? The company is providing some good or service that is dramatically improved or only possible in the first place because they're utilizing Bitcoin as technology, we find that a lot more exciting than I was going to name any names and like shit on anybody, but find that a lot more exciting than, you know, yet another wallet or whatever, or just just again, maybe suitably general level, something that we've talked about this before, Michael, as well as something that would absolutely make sense if we'd already hyper Bitcoin eyes, but you know, we haven't so the time is like you and your friends, essentially. And aside from anything else that you know, obviously, there's an investment rationale there, but I think you can and we do our best to rationalize it on the basis that actually that's what's going to grow adoption in the first place. I can think of all kinds of almost use cases, if you like. Maybe even Marty's example of sovereign states, in particular Middle Eastern states, getting in through energy is a good example of this. It's not exactly the kind of thing that we are likely to be in a position to make an investment case around. But I think the logic. Brian Cubellis (36:50.35) perfectly applies of, you you're doing it in their case for energy, in our case, it could be anything, it could be like FinTech or telecoms or whatever. You get involved because it is superior technology for precisely the thing you need. That then encourages you to learn more about, you know, Bitcoin in a wider sense. And then it's kind of inevitable at some point after that you end up orange building and you start thinking about it more generally. But everybody has something. you know, every business in particular will have some area they're involved in that they deeply appreciate and that it's frankly just a far easier way of orange pilling as well, or at least a first step, right? It's not, you know, you don't need to tell them about the evil conspiracy if either the Federal Reserve was formed. You just say, you know, if you use this, your costs will go down, something like that. So yeah, so that's on the company side, but then, just in terms of us trying to fundraise as well. And maybe not even fundraising, just thinking about what we want the business to look like. We do say quite often that we think it's only gonna be so long from now that it's even gonna make sense calling ourselves Bitcoin investors. And this is sort of an obvious comparison to the point of kind of being a cliche at this point, but nobody calls themselves an internet investor, right? There was a time when that - meant something when it was helpful to say that because it was was helpfully communicating the more limited area at some point, extremely limited area in which you were looking to deploy. But I assume everyone and everyone on this podcast and probably everybody listening to this podcast as well thinks the Bitcoin will end up having a similar effect. Don't know over what time horizon exactly, but certainly as it becomes more and more normalized, it'll just become. less and less relevant to specify that that's what you're investing in. Yeah, I mean, the concept of Bitcoiners will fall to the wayside at some point. Yeah. Yeah, Alan, you reminded me of some venture capitalists came and spoke at B school about to a class and they were asked, like, what's the number one thing you look for in a startup? And without hesitation, they said, Brian Cubellis (39:17.038) shrinking markets, which is to say, like, I want to find something that through technology provides a service that incumbents provide at a higher cost. You know, so really the manifestation of deflationary technology, like that's what wins and that's what really has an edge in the market. And that's what they look for. But also which the fiat mind cannot compute, right? Yes. Well, and so, You're talking about you're talking about, you know, writing, leveraging the Bitcoin infrastructure, the rails, which touches everything in order to tap into that kind of that kind of investing philosophy of like what does how do you how do you invest in companies that do something better by using Bitcoin than in companies can do? Yeah. And just to tie it back to Marty's question as well, that I feel like not just me, but again, almost every Bitcoin focused VC has such a ridiculously disproportionate advantage in not only finding just because of the community, but evaluating and hopefully successfully investing in companies like that. For again, I think a really sad reason, it's not even that we're brilliant or, you we, I don't know, I don't even see it. I don't think... complimenting ourselves as the appropriate way of addressing that, it's that the generalists should see it, but they don't because on the one hand, they just don't understand Bitcoin basically. But I think it's even worse than that. It's that they deeply misunderstand Bitcoin. They believe a lot of things about Bitcoin that are completely false. And so they'll dismiss it rather than take it seriously. And then that's only dramatically compounded from there by all of the misinformation. Coming from crypto that that just exacerbates the entire situation. But yeah, I mean I I think of a lot of what we do is just so incredibly straightforward that I'm just I'm like amazed that others don't see it. Well, they will one day and then hopefully all these investments will be amazing Well, it's like going back to Michael's point from earlier It's like we've been in this so long that we've seen it and we've understood it and internalized it and it's crazy to us and others Brian Cubellis (41:42.126) have not gotten to this point yet, but you have to remember it takes years, maybe shorter now with all the information out there, but it takes quite a while to come to fully grok it. Start with the monetary properties, the distributed network, and then diving deeper, understanding how the protocol level interacts with the Lightning Network, how protocol level interacts with things like Fediements or single member federations. That's a very steep learning curve in Going back to your point earlier that the journalist should get this and you should be incorporating Bitcoin into businesses that aren't even Bitcoin first businesses. I think as venture funds in this space, that's gonna be one of our biggest advantages moving forward is you're gonna have all these companies that are like, oh shit, we need a Bitcoin strategy. We need to figure out how to incorporate Bitcoin into our business model and into our application stack. And they're going to go to us and be like, all right, you guys know Bitcoin, you have capital, get on the cap table and help advise me as I do this. There's two sides of that. Because the other side is like there's two missing parts of like the thing that operators or generalists have generally, if they're doing it right, is they have operational experience in the traditional world, which is like a prerequisite from building. So you have to like tie both together. But I think what Alan said, that's really like you were saying that they're deeply misunderstand Bitcoin. And if we take it a step further, it's the foundational layer that Bitcoin allows us to see the world through that I think you're alluding to of like, there's like whether it's chasing a dollar return or just thinking about how do you build a business because you have this like unit that just fundamentally warps your brain and how you think about growth and all of these things is that like fundamental layer and then everything else starts to build on top of it. And that's where you see this like insanity, whether it's WeWork or all these different things that get them from it. And so it's almost like if a VC like in like whatever top tier just understood Bitcoin and there's actually ones like that. The guys that the Palantir co -founders, Joe Lanzel and Drew Oding, which I would think is like top five VC sitting in Austin. Like they actually foundationally believe that crypto is all BS Bitcoin is the thing. And you can actually see that thesis. If you go look at their site, what they do, they have an incubator. They do like really incredible stuff. Brian Cubellis (44:02.222) But I think that's like the prerequisite to be a top tier in the market because you got to understand like Bitcoin. That's not enough because you have to know the current market landscape, operational excellence, who operates at the highest level and how do you infuse those together to like actually build the next generation of companies? Yeah, there's a couple of others like Valor Craft. They seem to get it as well. Yeah, David Sachs is an interesting person that like seems to grok like foundational kind of you can't make things out of thin air. Yeah. Yeah, and so this is how Bitcoin is affecting venture capital. I know we wanted to talk about Bitcoin's overall effect on asset management as well. What hard lessons is the asset management world going to learn over the next decade because Bitcoin is gaining in adoption and proliferating throughout the global economy? Could I make it like 50 years rather than 10? Because then I get to be even more obnoxious in my answer. I'm pretty sure we've spoken about this before, Marty. I've definitely written about it, although potentially in a similar tone to my chat earlier about the ETF, it might have been so facetious that people didn't take it seriously. But I honestly believe, without intending this as a joke or a dunk on Vanguard or whoever, I do very much in 10 as a Duncan Vanguard, not as a Duncan people buying ETFs. Global asset management in the very, very long run is going to go to max 10 % of what it is now, maybe even smaller, basically because the vast, vast majority of the purpose it serves is legitimate now, but only because of the perverse incentives of fiat. I'm phrasing that very carefully because I'm not saying, oh, it's all a scam. If anything, it's kind of a coping mechanism for the far more widespread, more insidious scam. It allows a lot of people a way to maybe not escape the scam entirely, but at least not feel its effects to the fullest that they might otherwise. But as that... Brian Cubellis (46:26.158) gradually gets replaced by Bitcoin, so will the entire purpose of most of asset management, I think. Which, by the way, was quite a daunting, to the extent it's true, was quite a daunting realization when I worked in asset management. Well, I still do work in asset management, but now at least it's explicitly Bitcoin focused. When I worked in generalist asset management, I remember realizing this and being like, oh, this is bad. Well, I mean, I guess it's good for civilization. It's good for my career. It was bad. And so I guess the implication there, Alan, is that... the Cantillon effect and a debt -based monetary system creates inefficiencies or opportunities that necessitate or allow for, not necessitate, allow for value accretion on a much larger scale than you can have in a financial system if you do not have a Cantillon effect and a debt -based monetary system in action. Is that a think that's part of it. That's not exactly what I was getting at, although that is also... that's yet another reason to believe this. What I meant was more like the fact that you simply can't save with money, right? Money is purely or almost entirely useful transactionally, but not really as a savings instrument, which is why I think it's so useful to just click, you know, this touches on a whole bunch of things we've talked about so far to call. Bitcoin savings technology, that's by far the most accurate way of describing what it does. And also not just in terms of being accurate, but kind of downplaying a lot of stupid hype around what it doesn't do that actually lends itself better to crypto. So with that in mind, given basically given you can't save with fiat on an appropriately long time horizon, you'd say for a couple of years, but you certainly can't say for your retirement, say it creates this absolutely gigantic. Brian Cubellis (48:31.034) need for not only a savings instrument, but channeled via investment vehicles that have no business at a very high monetary premium that they now have. But I think, frankly, in a lot of cases, they have no business even existing because they exist at all to fulfill this, you know, ersatz savings role. And so that's what I mean, that eventually all that will just go away because you can save again. So savings technology shrinks the market of needing to find a way to generate yield. Yeah, I mean, the level of the level of fuckery is absolutely like insane. Like I can't even wrap my head around it's why I appreciate like what we're trying to build and just figuring out the custody because then you can start to build up. But to Alan's point, I think about like zombie companies that go to the capital markets. Like I cannot understand. I think about not to throw. them under the bus, but IBM is probably a great example. I think it's understood that they're like a zombie, you know, effectively, but to be able to go and raise debt and do all these things to continue their life, like the amount of ways that transpires, whether it's economically through an investment bank and managing that and who's getting the fat check and then the people that are still working, going and building things that like, again, I think Chamath got crap for this, but it was like there was directional to it a few weeks ago when he made that tweet about like, I'm starting a fund. to go just invest in companies that will rebuild like fortune 500s are publicly traded, but at one 10th, the amount of like just one 10th, the efficiency or the, or one 10th, the, the cost at a hundredth or whatever of the efficiency, basically being like all these companies just foundationally aren't built correctly. And that's just one micro example of what you're alluding to from a more macro finance, financial architecture, how everything has been built. It's just so much fat everywhere. I mean, I I don't know. I don't know the details of Chimath's proposal. So I don't mean to. I'm not really arguing against it per se, but from what you outlined just there, it seems like it's nonetheless missing the critical component of Bitcoin or more like missing the critical lack of a component of fiat given that, yeah, you can go after IBM if you want. Boeing came to mind as you were giving that example too. I mean, the point though is that there's endless examples that you could get. You can go after them as a startup. Brian Cubellis (50:52.494) but you can't compete with their completely artificial access to gargantuan amounts of capital that keeps them alive, even though they shouldn't be alive on the one hand and this capital shouldn't really even exist on the other. So good luck to him, I guess, but I think he's not, the problem is far deeper. He should just buy an Incoin. And the beauty of that is like, we will get there with like the core theme is the opportunity cost should be Bitcoin. Because once it's Bitcoin, then you don't end up with all that because that's like where we end up the end state. Yeah, it's interesting. You've actually I've realized just in the past couple of minutes, the past few questions, you've taken a slightly different perspective on this, which again, I also approval, but it's not exactly what I meant. So it's correct me if I'm wrong. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you're more interested in describing. the opportunity cost of all the capital misallocation that follows from this, which is also true. Very happy to talk about that too. My original concern though was that to some extent, this is a misallocation of capital, but I see it as more honestly like an injustice more than the directly economic implications is why does this industry even exist? Like there's a huge amount of middlemen and intermediation of various sorts. that again is a rhetorical question because I know why it exists. It exists to provide a means of saving that otherwise just wouldn't. But now we have a means of saving that doesn't require any intermediation, which actually we've come full circle, right? This is why the ETFs are bullshit. Why are you paying these people? Just use savings technology. And to go a layer deeper into the bullshit, it's gotten to such a point from a passive. investment standpoint that a lot of the relationships that are built between companies and the investment managers that are running the 401k plans, whatever, they're just literally people taking each other out, getting them drunk, becoming friends, being like, hey, you should just come into our fund, pay our fees because you like me. And everybody's doing the same thing, essentially. And there is actual value, Alan. To your point, this came up yesterday with a guy that's Brian Cubellis (53:11.662) we may know Circle, they manage like $80 billion from an investment perspective. And I was telling him about some like very large institutional investors that are, we're onboarding and he's like, well, why wouldn't they just go smash by Bitcoin? And again, I was telling him, I was like, this tell you told me exactly what I need to know how far you're down the rabbit hole. Cause it doesn't make sense to us. But if you take a step back and this is part of like where, you know, we say an asset management firm built on multi -institution because at the end of the day, there is value in somebody, whether it was BlackRock, I don't think it's BlackRock because I don't think they understand what's happening here, but educating the buyer of what they're getting into and the price cuts in half to double down and when it appreciates not to sell and all the things associated with the asset because there's so much inherent understanding or innate understanding from this group, but that isn't there and they don't necessarily know what they're buying. It's the same example as like financial advisors, which I think in today's terms are almost like, this is gonna... you know, a lot of financial advisors piss them off, but they're almost in my mind like travel agents in the future. They won't really exist. Others, they're very niche. I think what will exist. And it reminds me of what a lot of folks at like an Unchained are here doing. What we did was thinking about what is financial advice around the asset? How do you think about it from an inheritance perspective? How do you think about it if you do need to access the capital markets to get dollars because you have to buy a home and you don't want to sell because of a tax gain or a capital gains? All of those things will be foundational and are needed because of the understanding of us looking at this for so long. They just take a different form and they should be paid for like it's a good value being delivered. It's just not an ETF where somebody smashed buys. It sits on Coinbase where they like go to zero or whatever happened the past week. They get, they like, you know, incompetent in multiple levels and they're hoping that they're going to give them the Bitcoin when they want it. Cause we know how that ends. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot to pick up on there too, just that I was very deliberate in how I said I didn't. say or certainly didn't mean to say or imply that asset management just goes away like Bitcoin just disintermediates finance or whatever, which interestingly, there's maybe even a good tangent there about why I hate DeFi as a meme because it doesn't make any sense. Even if you believe all of this, it still doesn't make any sense. I pick 10 % because it seems like a nice right number. I don't know, it could be 5%, 1%, who knows? But I think there's a huge number of functions of financial and financial intermediation that are Brian Cubellis (55:31.35) extremely valuable and will absolutely still be needed on a Bitcoin standard. I don't know how interesting it is to go through what I think some of these will be. My point is more about the quantum of capital that is forced through this system. That's what I think goes away, or mostly goes away. Because currently, and I think actually even to your point about somebody like BlackRock, thinks or does or doesn't understand about what's really happening here. I almost feel like the, I forgot where I was going to go with that. I was going to make fun of BlackRock, but I forget why. There's too many reasons. The thing that I was anchoring and I think where we're both saying the same thing and I just try to pull back where you're given a wider aperture and I think to like zoom in. for individuals that aren't again as deep as I think of FinTech. Like I think Bitcoin is the real FinTech and this idea of like, think about how much capital has been thrown at Yeah, but think about how much capital from like all the way from the fat of formation that you're talking about investment banks and VCs and pensions putting money like to the tunes of probably trillions of dollars. It's not hundreds of billions of dollars into FinTech. And what we're describing here is Bitcoin is financial technology and there'll be capital invested into it. It's just one one thousandth or whatever. of the amount and that takes out a lot of needs for all the different people right now playing within that capital stack. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm going to remember how I was going to make fun of BlackRock, but I remember what it was. Yeah, no, it ties perfectly to exactly your point just there, Michael, too. And it's that they, I think the, this is, this is almost like a truism in a sense, but appreciating exactly why it's the case, I think is interesting that. they're acting with a very, they're acting what seems rationally on a very short term time horizon. And the problem is that they've never really thought about why the circumstances they're used to even exist in the first place. So you can kind of see why they'd be, if not like super strongly resistant to Bitcoin, at least highly, highly skeptical, even in the context of like, oh, we can make a shitload of money off. Brian Cubellis (57:57.538) an ETF, right? We can skim the flows of this, even if we don't really believe in the stock. Their entire business model, I guess, that's probably the best way of putting it. Their entire business model is predicated on a need that this undermines. I mean, that's yet another reason I like to be kind of jokingly contrarian about the ETFs. I think they, I think, in all honesty, this is maybe not that much of a joke, it's maybe just more on what perspective are you willing to adopt that you can't really be bullish on Bitcoin if you own an ETF. It's philosophically incoherent. You can't have a bullish thesis on Bitcoin that involves ETFs making sense. So that's another, I mean, obviously no one cares. No one smashed by an ETF cares about this. But I think in like 50 years, they will. That's kind of my point. Yeah. No. I love that because I think it's resonates with like, I just joked that it's a different, they're different planets. The gravity is different. Like we're just talking about different things, right? And like, when you try to like understand this, you're like, wait, you're breathing a different type of like oxygen than when I'm at it. We're talking about a different level playing film. That's what you're describing. And so you can, yeah. I think, I think it happens sooner than 50 years. Cause we've discussed this, I think in the summer, last summer, Michael, like the ETF, when, when the ETFs, first started getting filed, they were coming big conversation. We were telling people, don't buy the ETF, you're gonna want actual Bitcoin that you can call in kind at some point, because what we're seeing is that it is turning into actual money that you can spend in many different ways. And I think at some point, sooner than 50 years from now, it's gonna be abundantly clear that you're gonna be able to transact with Bitcoin and use Bitcoin in unique ways as collateral or use as properties to do. specific escrow agreements that you're going to need the actual underlying utxos or access to Bitcoin on the lightning network or within via e -cash tokens within a mint like and I think the pure utility that using actual Bitcoin Provides today and will provide in the future It's just gonna force people out of the ETFs because they're like I actually need to use this thing. I can't just Brian Cubellis (01:00:18.03) Yeah, have it sit in this. Well, so that's interesting. I think obviously completely agree with the points about utility. I do think to some extent, though, the the bull case for the ETFs kind of necessitates a bit of a bear case on the timeline of all of this. I'll explain what I mean by that. So I think the I don't really know the details. This is pure speculation, but. I would imagine that the vast majority of ETF demand, not just now, but probably ever, is coming from, best way to describe it, I guess, would be something like pools of capital with no other legal option. So it's people who actually can't just go buy Bitcoin and hold it. I mean, actually, Michael probably disagrees with this because I'm sure you have a whole on -ramp presentation explaining why this is misunderstood. But I would even in light of that, actually, Michael, you should comment on this in just a second, but I would imagine that the extent to which that's true is largely the case just at the margin and still for the majority, if not all, but some pretty solid majority of EDF buyers. They also couldn't just have dollars, right? It's it's trapped in this environment and this is like a nice. release valve almost, but it's again, it's not, you know, it's not real Bitcoin. It's not like going all the way. And so in terms of linking that to the timeline though, the way I see this unraveling and the reason I just picked 50 years again, it's just, it's like a round number, but it's suitably long that it's difficult to think about is that I see this unwinding by people not contributing to pension plans in the first place. So it really takes an entire, it won't be the only reason obviously, but I think this will be the most important reason on a sufficiently long time horizon that because we have this savings technology now, which we just never had in any of our lifetimes, people will choose to actually save. And one way you can actually interpret this, I guess, is that in doing so, they will be starving the beast, right? The capital that would otherwise have just naturally flowed into whatever ETFs, mutual funds, all. Brian Cubellis (01:02:36.078) kinds of active passive management, trillions of dollars of most of which is useless intermediation now actually just goes into money instead. But I think that takes, I don't know, 50 years is exactly the right number to pick. But you know, it takes a life cycle of workers opting for a different way to save. I think that's like the cleanest way of understanding it. So that's why I'm kind of bearish on that. on the timeline. Yeah, there's a few things there. One is so Marty's wife listens and you know, she he's promised eight to 10 years because she's tired of him hanging out with his internet magic internet friends. They want to go there. He has a small Latin American country he's going to buy with his his Bitcoin price. But another eight years. Yeah, the funny part you referenced, Alan, is a There's a lot of like, like corollaries to like past, you know, biblical and like, not even to get like in that side of, but there's just like notion of you got to be out. You got to like wait for, um, almost like what you described as a group to pass before the next people will understand it or like adopt it or fully embrace it. Um, but then the, the ETF thing is really interesting because I, I've found like, um, when you build in this space, like the closer you tie to like Bitcoin or the protocol or the history and experiences at Unchain where you start to really like tie into like a lot of the sayings or like the notion of, I guess it's a Sun Tzu quote, but wait long enough by the river for the body of your enemies to float by. And it's like, you think about exchanges and all the things happening. And another one I think of is like the Bitcoin ETF for specifically you reference on ramp or any like buddy building custody is, It's almost good. Uh, unchanged, a great example as well. It's good if they don't release, if they don't let you have this escape valve, like you can take delivery and it's, it's good if they let you and it's good if they don't. And for obvious reasons, if they don't, then people are going to learn and go other places. And if they do the beauty is like people are, at least my thesis is like, they're going to need help and they're not going to go to Coinbase. Like they would just leave it with the ETF. So then they're going to go search out solutions. And then we talked about this with KPMG last week. Brian Cubellis (01:05:02.51) It's like, I see a future world where like, again, let's say Michael Saylor, somebody like him is holding a large position, like $10 billion into Bitwise or you know, whatever ETF, it might as well all be the same, right? They're at Coinbase. And then they wake up and they say, well, why don't I participate in this governance effectively? And why don't, you know, in a three or five, four or five, whatever the number is, why does our organization sign the first transaction between 10 controllers, whatever that looks like. And then some, if they come to that, they're going to need somebody to support them with that. process. And so I just see that would be the the valve regardless of if they let it come out because BlackRock is not going to do that. Like, no, I mean, there's very few people are going to do that, because that's just not how they're built. They want to centralize and hold the assets. So I don't know if that helps in like the framing of like how I think about this playing out. But either way, they're going to get educated and they're gonna be like, holy crap, BlackRock holds a trillion dollars. This is not good for my position. Because if something happens, that's a zero on my book. And that's why I like very bullish everything building because we've seen this happen with BlockFi. Nobody thought it would go to zero. It goes to zero. Yeah, I think the market's gonna force this. I mean just look at what happened Was it two days ago now at this point like Coinbase could not handle? The the trading volume they their systems went down you couldn't buy you couldn't sell you're seeing zero dollar asset balance in the application like if you're an ETF I didn't know that that's funny if you're an ETF custody with this company or if you're a buyer of the ETF that is custodying with this company you're like What is going on here? We need we need to make sure not? that all this risk is not concentrated within this one company. So I think to your point, Michael, the participants will begin to force this. Like, hey, if you want my business, you're gonna have to play in this model. Yep. To be fair though, so this is an interesting point to again, be a bit bearish, but for a more serious reason rather than just pseudo contrarianism, right? And I guarantee you, Michael knows what I'm about to say significantly more detailed than I do. So I encourage you to push back on this. But I do wonder if there's the kind of the glass half empty view is, you know, okay, yes, all these somewhat inevitable failures will encourage people to think it through more thoroughly. And if anything, I think that goes to what we talked about right at the start in terms of the being an educational stepping stone, but how much will not be able to escape? Like how much will go in and will never come out? Brian Cubellis (01:07:27.274) regardless of how educated everybody gets. I don't know. Do you have a comeback to that, Michael? I have a very strong one and it's kind of, it's scary. I don't even want to say it, but I will because I don't care. I think that there's a real world, there's a non -zero chance whatever goes in never comes out. Yeah. And what happened? You're agreeing with me even more. Never comes out in Bitcoin and dollars or just Bitcoin? the Bitcoin gets up there. Are you saying that it's getting confiscated? Is that what you're trying to I've been in chats with you. I've told you that I think that there's a non -zero chance, whatever the ETFs are, we like, it's basically forget about the ETFs that whatever 21 million, obviously we all know it's arbitrary number. And we think in our heads, it's 17 million. We end up with our 16. It could be maybe 12 or 11 or 10. And this could be a real reason why I think there's non -zero chance. Like I think it's that, like I fall in your camp. Alan, like in my heart and my head of like where you're coming as staunch, like this is not good. But at the same point, I like have to build a business in the real world. And like, from this perspective and you know, the, the products and services and the reality is when you meet people where they're at, they don't want to hear that. So you got to explain that. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. And all of it, but there's just, it's true. Like I would tell anybody that it's like you go in and it happened. Like the beauty of all the things we're saying, we're not. pontificating for the sake of it. It's like, we saw this, we told people this at previous firms, whether it was Genesis, which I guess maybe they're making people whole, but in some respects, not that every respect, 3AC, Celsius, FTX, we can continue to go and it's going to happen again. It's basically the basis of what we built this for is because we believe orders of magnitude of carnage are going to happen in two to three years when the market. The fun part about this or not fun, but I've been having this conversation is, it'd be like, well, why would you think it's going to happen? And the easiest answer is the same people that were running block fire FTX or running these exact same products. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were going to say something even snarkier than that. I thought you were going to say, uh, why don't you think it's going to happen? Yeah, there you go. I think that's what I'm so bored with Alan on that. That pushes them to again, actually start going deeper and like force them out of the, you know, the, I wouldn't, I don't mean to be insulting, but. Brian Cubellis (01:09:44.254) Non -bake, I was gonna say the Fiat attitude, but it's just you know, the the pre Bitcoin legacy financial system attitude of you know It's slightly different to the point I was making before about all these intermediaries now It's more like custodians right like these assets don't really exist in any meaningful sense without the custodians involvement But now they do so like why are you putting it back in the box? No, and it's I mean we've seen this I've seen this person, I saw it this week, I told the story on rabbit hole recap yesterday, but it is important to list because this stuff will happen. We've seen it many times, we predicted it many times, we talked for years about BlockFi and the fact that their lending practices were extremely risky and likely to blow up. Celsius was a well -known scam behind the scenes and then FDX was just obviously a corrupt institution. SBF had no idea what he was talking about, if you actually listened to him. during his interviews. And so you have examples there. And as we're talking here, like it seems like there's a similar trend taking place right now, even though there may be an institutional stamp of approval on these things. Like I would not rule out the likelihood that the Bitcoin is mismanaged in one way or another, whether that's taking it and lending it out for degen traders to do something with it, whether the government confiscates it, but. You have this ability via multi -sig setups like the ones that OnRamp provides to actually take control of your Bitcoin and reduce this risk and eliminate this risk. And I had a buddy who called me on Monday. He got SIM swapped on Sunday and he thanked me because two years ago I convinced him to move his Bitcoin off of the exchange he was using and into a multi -sig vault. At unchained and the reason I told him is he's a public figure and he's talked about owning Bitcoin. I'm like dude You're a target. You've talked about Bitcoin publicly You're pretty well known like you are going to get attacked in the future and that is exactly what happened and He texted me to thank me for telling him to get it into a secure A secure custody set up with unchained and this is gonna happen time and time again Brian Cubellis (01:12:08.782) in many different ways. The thing I'd be careful in that one is it was good for now, but like, I think we all agree we're in a like bear market for whether it's statism or the, just like, you know, what, or I'm sorry, bull market for statism and overreach and also in the same way of like degradation of, you know, just we all walk around cities and we see kind of, I don't know if it's famine's the right word, but like, despair and you see that on the internet, it manifests in the internet form and that's why you want to protect the asset. What concerns me is being loud about us holding our keys and it's not to say not to do it or whatever. It's more of like, I talked to somebody the other day in South Africa, his brother was tortured for his Bitcoin because they knew the process. They knew how to like, it was just a whole OTC transaction went wrong. But it's this whole notion of like, that will not not happen. as the price goes into hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so this idea of like, because we have our keys and now they're split apart, like our families are not, it's not something we want to be loud about, even though it's a good like thing to say off the exchange. It's like, we're still so early that what's good at 40K won't be the same at 400K or 4 million. So anyway, that's just a notable thing. And then Alan, I really liked your position on there. It's like, tell me why this wouldn't happen. It goes back to what we said earlier in the call. It's like, tell me what your position is on why this, Why we shouldn't have a, uh, an allocation in the same way. Tell me like why the ETF or any centralization will work out well. And Brian Cabellas from our team said it really nicely. It's like, we have the most decentralized asset we've ever seen. And we put it on a centralized custodian. Like it doesn't even make any sense. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I agree even further than that, right? It's, it's obviously agree with that framing of it, but I know, and Mark, you mentioned this before in terms of, um, you know, various, uh, utilities, let's say of, of actually owning it that. It's also natively digital. It's arguably the first and own the kind of the only natively digital asset and you're you're also just forcing it back into an Analog wrapper like why yeah, I joke around I say the only different stream Bitcoin and gold is multi -sig Yeah, I've said I've said a similar version of that several times that that you can't multi -sig gold Brian Cubellis (01:14:26.67) Yeah, again, usually in just kind of a snarky way to like make people think rather than making an actual point. You probably could. You could have a vault with three keys, three individuals. Yeah, the gold would still be in one place. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's a. I know it is hard like timelines and thinking how quickly all this will evolve, whether it's on the capital formation side and the price of Bitcoin or the utility side. and what you can do with Bitcoin. It's fun to think about, because I mean, on the utility side, I see it every day. Just new apps coming out that you can interact with very easily. That, again, we're in a bubble. We've been in this for a while. We see it clearer than most people on the planet. It's like, holy shit, this is a step function improvement on the way I was interacting with apps that exist in the incumbent tech space, just because you had some Bitcoin. to it, maybe add Noster or something else. And it seems like things are happening quicker. And then you also have the tailwind of the maybe, I mean, societal degradation is one way to see it, but another way to say it, another way to say it is just the complete collapse of confidence in institutions. And I think that introduces a catalyst where people will be more receptive to looking into Bitcoin and using Bitcoin. Yeah, no, I knew ways to do things. That's huge. I think my only, uh, I don't know what's the best way to put this. I was going to say my only issue with it, but I don't disagree with you at all. It's more like my concern about it even being true in the first place is that I've always found that is a terrible way to advertise it. Right? Like nobody, nobody wants to hear that everything is going to shit. Like if I or if they are willing to hear that they're certainly not willing to hear You know, they just sit through the lecture on how everything's going to shit and then you're you know You're gonna fix it with your magic internet beans like that's that that just pushes them over the edge So yeah, I mean I completely agree with the the facts of the case if you like I just have no idea how to make that argument I kind of feel like it almost came across in the way you said it there Marty that Probably the best way that works is people Brian Cubellis (01:16:46.382) just making the argument for themselves, like all coming to a similar conclusion by that. Yeah. I mean, that's what's happened up until this point is individuals coming to their own conclusions. Okay. All of us at one point looked at what was happening, looked at Bitcoin. We're like, all right, I'm going and playing over here. That'll happen. I think at an accelerated pace. And it's hard because you can't completely disconnect the state of the world from the value prop. of Bitcoin, but I agree messaging is important. Narratives are important. And that's why I'm excited to see all these new applications and use cases for Bitcoin come into market because it provides the opportunity to pitch Bitcoin in an optimistic light. Like look at what you can do with Bitcoin that you can. Well, to Michael's point, right, to reach people where they are, right. If you can, this is, I mentioned this in a completely different context before in terms of like what we like to invest in. And if you can, I'm trying to think even how sneaky you can be about it. If you can actually get somebody to use something or to start using something fairly continuously on the basis that it just works, right? Or it just is cheaper or whatever. And then at some point, you know, pull back the curtain is like, aha, it was Bitcoin all along. Like that's great. That's way better than was I said before, you know, whining about the... the conspiracy of the setup of the Federal Reserve or as you brought up now, like pointing to how everything's going to shit. There's very few people you can meet there. There's a lot more people you can meet by it just being useful. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think the people coming in is an exciting component because price is the forcing function for awareness. And a lot of these discussions in people and companies will be exciting at the next wave. And I'm actually... I would say this after the thing, but I'll say it now is I'm pretty bullish on Alan being on the last trade. You know, you're going to have to do this again. It's a nice, like different take than to help it. What's that? It's much more laid back since we all know each other. It's much more laid back conversation. Well laid back, but there's like a healthy, like pushback and contrarian take of like, let's think about it in a different way that I think I think listeners are going to like. I think this was a good, uh, this is a good rep. You got to take that with a pinch of salt though, cause keep in mind. Brian Cubellis (01:19:09.742) My proclivity to do that very much comes from Twitter rather than like real life or it being useful or anything I just I just want to kick the hornets nest a bit No, that's why that's why it makes good because instead of just taking it we're like wait Let's let's really dissect are you saying this just to say it's ruffles and feathers or there's the validity and I think that's what we've done kind of on this the set episode Yeah, and for anybody who has not read the incredible research pieces that Axiom puts out. Make sure you go read those. One of my favorites is the one that Theo Mosjane wrote on recreating money market funds. There's three of them and I think they're all good. Yes, Eric Yates and then your piece, right? My one was the first one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Go read it all. Orange is the New Green, I think was my favorite. We'll all have to get together soon. I think me and Alan might be looking at the UAE, a little part time go visit and then Marty wants to go out there. So are you getting a place in the UAE too? I don't think he was getting a place. It's flagged here, isn't it? Right. You got to get places everywhere. I'm not a fan. Don't you know society is collapsing? I'm not going anywhere. America will be the bastion of freedom. I will die on. Are you going to be in Texas or... You probably will literally die on that. Brian Cubellis (01:20:44.916) Man it's stabbed by some person on the street by some shit -coiner. I should have went to Dubai Well Alan Thank You Michael We have anything else we want to wrap up. Thank you guys No, it was awesome. I'm looking forward to doing this again. Yeah. Yeah, definitely Good luck with the rest of your move. I know it's a literally the worst activity in the world is to move. Thank you I don't have a year position at all. And hopefully you get some time to enjoy part of your weekend this weekend. I will do my best. Yes, I will stay off Twitter. I will temper my FOMO. I'll maybe go outside. I'll enjoy the real world. That's nice. Get some fresh air. We'll be back next week. See you guys. Boom. Still don't.