The Last Trade E053: Educational Empowerment with Paul Nylen

Brian Cubellis (00:02.51) You guys are going. We're going. This is weird, Paul. I'm in a far away studio with this connector from Logan, our producer, and he usually gives me the, we're live and I'm just seeing it here on E -CAM. But we are live and really excited for this conversation. Paul Nyland, assistant professor in the department of accounting at the university of Wisconsin, Whitewater, also the faculty director of the blockchain and cryptocurrency Institute. Faculty advisor of the UW Whitewater blockchain and cryptocurrency student organization and somebody who had some some thoughts on the recent allocation to Bitcoin by the Wisconsin Pension Fund which we're here to talk about today But before we hit record we were just talking about David Krauss and his appearance on PBS earlier this week talking about the allocation And we were laughing about how people who begin commenting on Bitcoin aren't really prepared for how much it will get echoed and blasted on Bitcoin Twitter as people are excited that institutions and people who have been waiting to come to Bitcoin are here and they're talking about it. It's really exciting, particularly right now, post -Having, post -ETF launch. So Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Yep. Thanks for having me, guys. So I think to jump into this, let's learn a little bit more about you, how you got into Bitcoin and how you came to become the faculty director of the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Institute at UW -Whitewater. So I think I've heard a thousand people's journeys on how they got started in Bitcoin. I think everyone's almost the same, maybe outside of a few cypher punks, but I'm pretty confident I read about it or a little bit about it in 2013, 14, 15 and just dismissed it like probably everyone did when they first got into this before they got into the space. I had a good friend. You guys may or may not know him, Austin Wilcox, who's been kind of in the Bitcoin space now for a number of years. I grew up with him and he actually was the one who sent me some stuff to read about it and sort of insisted that I hadn't really done the necessary homework to start with on the topic. And so. Brian Cubellis (02:25.486) Actually, so the Bitcoin Standard was probably the first book I read on it. And gold always sort of made sense to me as an investment proposition, although I will say, as someone who liked gold in sort of the early 2000s and mid -2000s, it drastically underperformed, I think, what people thought it was gonna do. But yeah, I would say, for me, that was probably the starting point. So 2019, 2020 was kind of when I first got into the space. I was already teaching at University of Wisconsin Whitewater. My background is a lawyer and CPA. And as I was getting more and more into the space, it seemed pretty crazy to me Whitewater didn't have any hub or any system set up for teaching students this stuff, getting them exposed to like all the different interesting Bitcoin areas, ways to accept Bitcoin donations, all these sort of things. And so. A couple years ago I just went to our, the dean of our college and said, hey, we really should start an institute on this. Kind of a launching pad for students and companies to come hire our students, that sort of thing. And so we have a very, I think a very smart college of business. We do a biggest college of business in the state. And so they're willing to sort of what seems like take risks and try new things. And so that's what we did. And that's what we decided to put some money behind it and give some resources and. with some student workers and that sort of thing. And so, yeah, for the past couple of years, I've taught a class on Bitcoin here. We have student workers doing research on different things. We're in the process of trying to get mining going on campus, but as you can imagine, that's a whole nother animal because the people that are otherwise on campus and would help us with this, they have all the different, they have all the typical FUD concerns about the energy use and things like that. So. We're trying to cross that stuff off the list also. But yeah, that's kind of where we're at now. And I'll actually be in Nashville in July. And I got a bunch of students coming with me too. So that'll be fun for them to sort of hear from people and network and hear different speakers and stuff like that. UW Whitewater students are lucky. And it's funny that Austin is the guy that got you into this. I know Austin well from down in Texas, Michael. You too. Brian Cubellis (04:49.998) He's doing great stuff out of that, out of Austin. And it's been funny developing a relationship with him over the years. And to learn that that's how you got introduced to Bitcoin is great. And I think this is why I'm actually writing a newsletter on this today. Like I think this is the most bullish 90 day period that we've had in Bitcoin over the last 15 years, maybe potentially with the announcement from the Wisconsin Pension Fund. You have a bunch of publicly traded companies. You had a healthcare related company and a coal mining company within the last three months come out and say, Hey, we're going to use Bitcoin as our treasury asset. Obviously the ETF launch has been the most successful in ETF history. And then on top of that, like just learning stories like yours, Paul, where people like you have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and have not really been. too public about it or on the radar of many of us Bitcoiners, but just what you just described, like you're working on a mining initiative. You've got the Dean Bond in, you're one of the most prestigious business schools within the University of Wisconsin, excuse me, State University system. Like there's a lot of stuff that many Bitcoiners who are focused on the space 24 -7, 365, there's a lot of stuff going on that even we don't realize. And it's just an incredible time to do in the space. Yeah, to expand on that. I mean, Paul, when you were talking, what kept striking me was four years ago, this would just not have happened. Like you would not be in this position of being able to bring students to Nashville for the Bitcoin conference and, you know, spearhead some initiatives on campus around raising business students, understanding and awareness of Bitcoin as part of the landscape that they need to. be familiar with and know how to navigate to succeed in their careers. Like that, you know, I'm, I'm putting words in your mouth here, but I think that's probably part of the mandate and part of probably part of what, white water is trying to do. And that just would not have happened four years ago. And so Paul, you're like a perfect microcosm of, adoption and Bitcoin. Like, you know, we, we, we always get caught up in. Brian Cubellis (07:12.238) in the day to day and then thinking like, where are the institutions? Where is the next wave of adoption? You know, I'm not seeing it. It's not, it's not beating me over the head. But it's examples like yours, Paul, where you are seeding this idea really, in the minds of the next generation, but also in the institutional fabric of the university system. And, you know, these little colonies of activity propagate and spread and normalize Bitcoin as a whole. And then suddenly it becomes a part of the fabric of business education and learning about finance in general. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And so it's interesting, like in the academic world. So at a school like Whitewater, every school has a commission statement and they're trying to set themselves apart from other universities. At Whitewater, one of the sort of core things that we try to do, and this is plastered all over our campus, is we're trying to transform students. And to every professor on campus, that's gonna mean something different. When I take a step back, so when I started going down this path a couple years ago, I actually was able to take... two students down to Miami last year for the conference. And at the end of the year, we write reports about how our students did and all the stuff we did and activities. And underneath all of that, you sort of have to ask yourself, how did I transform students? So I teach tax law here at the university, some financial accounting, I teach a blockchain, it's a Bitcoin class, it's called blockchain, but it's mostly Bitcoin. And when I was writing that report, What really dawned on me was transforming that when I think about the most transformative things I did for students over the past year, it was pretty clear that taking the two students down to Miami was it by far. Now they had learned a lot of other, my students had learned a lot of other stuff this year, right? I mean, tons of fun tax laws and we'd done all types of things, right? But when I take a step back and I say, Brian Cubellis (09:34.894) what students came to me after certain experiences and said, wow, that blew me away. When I took two students to Miami and they saw four, I don't know how many presidential candidates were there at the time, they saw this hundreds of companies and all this discussion about energy. And last year in Miami, there was a lot of stuff going on with Ordinals and with the Wizard folks who were down there and stuff. And so the... I think you have to put yourself back in the seat of someone, a student who's 19, 20, 21, and all the stuff you're learning at the time, right? You're taking English and philosophy and accounting, and you're taking all this stuff. And the Bitcoin stuff of it, by far, to me was pretty clear was the most transformative. And so that was, I think, kind of a confirmation from my perspective of like, okay, Let's do more of this. This is the stuff that's like pushing the needle with the students. And interestingly enough, you can learn lots of other things as you're along for the Bitcoin ride. So like we can learn about taxes and accounting and all these other topics through the context of Bitcoin. And so I actually bring a lot of that stuff into my other class too. So the sort of orange pilling or orange Kool -Aid is like trickling its way into like other topics, I think in the university, which is great, but. You know, at a school like Whitewater, we'll probably never have the publicity of a school like UW -Madison, like a Big Ten school. But over time, I think we're getting the momentum going. And over time, if we're graduating 20, 30, 40 students a year who all have sort of a core educational background in some Bitcoin stuff, You know, if we get a five, 10 year headstart, we're going to have several hundred students from Whitewater who understand how this works. And by my estimation, the other schools aren't going to be able to catch us. We're going to have built this lead so far up that like a lot of the intellectual firepower will be coming out of Whitewater. And so for me, it's hard to be more transformational than that. Yeah, that's, it's incredible. I mean, for anybody that's not watching, listening, Paul behind him has a, I think it's, I know it. Brian Cubellis (11:53.069) I don't know what cartoon it is. I know I'm going to miss it. It's a little Hodler with a B, but like really stands out because Jesse and I have been on calls with schools and pension faculty and they'll take a call very different. It'll be dark and the lights will be off and they won't feel very comfortable and their faculty knowing that they're talking about, you know, maybe an allocation or how they're thinking about Bitcoin. So it makes a lot of sense. it seems it's in the culture. I'm curious, like any anecdotes you can share from either the classes or from faculty that you've naturally been able to help see this because that's really fascinating. Like it makes sense that students would go to the conference or be interested because it's just so real and different than anything they hear about. It's you're naturally going to gravitate it because gravitate towards it because the energy is there. So just curious, like how like that's actually transformed a conversation. Yeah. So I have, if you can see behind me, I have a. I see part of it. I have a stack of Bitcoin books back here, right? And so I think in the academic world, you know, knowledge is power and sometimes even like, you know, the physical book is powerful. And so I have a lot of people come to my office across campus and ask me about this, right? They've heard about Bitcoin in some context and they've got some association with it. And so what I try to do is actually steer them to, I actually, I actually try to take Jameson Lopp's advice on this, right? I think he's always said something like, he's not trying to convince people to buy Bitcoin, he wants people to convince themselves to buy it. And so I try to take that approach just in general with Bitcoin. So when people come to me with a neutral or it's called a neutral view, what I try to do is figure out like what worldview they're coming from and which kind of... book or author I think would be most helpful to them. And if they don't have the sort of patience or diligence to sit down and spend, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 hours reading a book, then Bitcoin's probably not for them. But if they do have that patience and want to, you know, want to learn, I usually can find a book that like reaches to just about everybody, right? And so, you know, if it's a shorter attention span, it's, you know, it's bullish case or Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (14:14.445) If it's like on the humanitarian side, it's check your financial privilege. If it's on the banking side, it's going to be something from Len Alden. If it's an economics person coming to me, it's the Bitcoin standard. If it's a person with very progressive views or maybe believing a lot into the sort of the energy fad, it's the progressive case from Bitcoin by Jason Mayer. And so I think having this sort of stuff at my desk, having read these and be able to like hand them out and say, hey, I got multiple copies of these, you take one, you keep this. when you're ready to learn more about it, do that. And there's been, I don't know how many people on campus, but there's been a number of people on campus where I've given them a book and they've come back to me and their one response is like, okay, I misjudged this or, you know, totally bought into the FUD. I'll just, just to give you one, one, one anecdote I think you guys will like. There's a guy in our hallway who I'm actually working on a paper with right now. And he had very, I'll say no background in Bitcoin and him and I were going to try to figure out what we wanted to write and publish about. And he had a couple of topics. And when he came to me, I said, hey, you know, the thing I enjoy writing the most about right now is Bitcoin. So if you're willing to sort of do some homework on this, let's team up together. But you got to like learn about this first. And his background, he spent about 30 years in corporate America at a large, I won't say the name of the company, but a large chemical company. He was in -house counsel for them. So he has a safety and chemical background, very different from mine, but he's also a lawyer. And I gave him a couple of books. I gave him the Progressive Case for Bitcoin by Jason Mayer, especially around the energy stuff. And he had a pretty big background in what we call, you guys probably smirk at this, right? But like misinformation and disinformation and those topics. And... His thought was, hey, all this stuff written about Bitcoin mining, it's like misinformation, right? It's people giving, it's like these New York Times articles that are half truths or loaded with omissions. And so him and I were working on a paper together, basically going through all these New York Times articles saying the mainstream media is completely, you know, it's stuff like in the Bitcoin community we know, but the mainstream doesn't necessarily know is, hey, all this stuff, you know, the grid balancing, the loading, all this stuff has been mis - Brian Cubellis (16:43.181) understood in sort of the mainstream media. And, you know, mining is like an energy positive force, right? It's not this, it's not like a bug of the system. It's like a feature of the system. And so that's probably one example of someone who just works down the hallway from me who a year and a half ago knew nothing about Bitcoin. And now he's all in, right? And he's bringing his own perspective to it. And so I've got a couple other people like that, but I think that's probably a good one. That's incredible. Yeah. That I mean, talk about, talk about, something, a report that could make quite a bit of a splash and get a lot of attention and bring a lot of spotlight to Whitewater and to what you guys are doing there with your Bitcoin initiative. You know, like that's the opportunity in front of so many organizations, academic institutions to do some homework and put out something fresh and unique about Bitcoin because there's so much appetite out there for novel, interesting, professional analysis in the Bitcoin space around Bitcoin, trying to understand this phenomenon and what's going on here. And I feel like that has been so untapped to date. And every time someone like David Krauss opens his mouth about Bitcoin, it gets a ton of attention. And that's an incentive that's available. for people to take advantage of or make the most of. And I look forward to Whitewater coming out with a report on mainstream media reporting on the nature of Bitcoin mining, because as a Bitcoin evangelist, we know that it's horribly skewed. It's, you know, the mainstream media narrative to date has been misinformed. And really kind of a perfect example of the gel man amnesia effect, right? Of when you're reading something in the media and you come across a topic that you understand well and you realize how hollow the journalist's understanding is, it makes you feel less confident about everything else they're writing about. So it's secretly undermining or unintentionally undermining the... Brian Cubellis (19:06.125) credibility of the New York Times and other publications when they dip their toe into Bitcoin and spread misinformation and reveal how little they understand about it. And that's got to change. So, you know, very excited to see what you guys put out there. Well, and it also highlights the multi -layered approach to weaponized greed that Bitcoin has set in the world. Like layer zero is like, all right, there's only going to be 21 billion Bitcoin if I can get a good portion of that and adoption continues. My wealth will increase, but then you see it on the social layer, where it's like, okay, if we are a leader in terms of educating our students and putting out really constructive pieces on how Bitcoin actually works and how it's interoperating with our world, that is going to set us apart from our peers at the academic level. And then similarly on the pension side, I mean, going back to David Krauss's, interview on PBS earlier this week or end of last week. I mean, it really highlighted there too. I mean, a lot of what the interview revolved around is the Wisconsin pension systems, pension for innovating and being innovative and being ahead of trends. And this particular trend being Bitcoin, be one of the first pension systems to allocate to Bitcoin ETFs after their launch only six months ago. And I think, is a good time to transition into the allocation by the Wisconsin Pension Fund. And David's interview really highlighted the fact that this was $180 million allocation, which is 0 .1 % of the overall pension system, which is $180 billion. I believe it's the sixth largest pension in the country. And I think David's interview was illuminating for multiple reasons, but one of which is the fact that the Wisconsin the Wisconsin pension system particularly could make an allocation like this due to the fact that they're overfunded. So maybe before we get into the particular allocation to Bitcoin, maybe just talking about which pensions actually have the ability to allocate in the first place due to where they are in terms of relative funding for their liabilities. Yeah. So this is an interesting topic. I mean, I think so with Brian Cubellis (21:30.125) what David Krauss was talking about, he made an interesting point, which I have to think about if I agree with or not. I mean, he, one of the things he, I think, sort of stuck the flag in on was the idea that Wisconsin was maybe better suited because the pension is so well funded. And I guess I don't know how much I agree with that. I mean, is it nice to think, I mean, you, I think it's a comment you make if you're investing in something maybe really risky, right? So he thinks, so this is super risky, we have some extra money, let's just throw it in this pot and hope there's some upside, but if it goes to zero, big deal. My opinion is sort of the opposite, right? I sort of think of Bitcoin long -term as the least risky asset, and I know I mentioned when I was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio, I said it's like the last thing you sell. So in some ways, My sense would be that using his viewpoint, he would sort of, you know, heavily be taking profits and getting out, you know, permanently. In my view, it's really a, it's the longest duration asset. I was trying to think of a better term the other day to describe this. I think the better term is like permanent duration because it's really hard to find circumstances in which you would sell. Now, a pension fund has to sell some assets to pay out its former employees over time. But when you're looking at your portfolio, what's the stuff you're gonna sell before this? You're sitting on some T -Bells, you're sitting on, I don't know, GE stock or Apple stock. In my estimation, it's really hard to sort of compare these investments side to side and say, yeah, Bitcoin's the thing I wanna sell because that's the stuff I need to pay out my employees. I mean, I am an employee, in my sense is that would be the last thing we sell, right? You'd want to be selling all this other stuff first. And so, you know, like you mentioned the state of Illinois, which is a good counter example. So I think the state of Illinois is one of the lowest funded pensions in the country at about 50 percent. And, you know, it does make you wonder, you know, who needs Bitcoin more? Is it a state like Wisconsin or is a state like Illinois? I'm glad Wisconsin. Brian Cubellis (23:56.525) obviously is about the ETF, but I think you could objectively look at it and say it's probably a state like Illinois who probably needs to get more invested quicker because there's no real economics to make up that shortfall and you need something that's compounded annual growth rate in 30 to 45 % a year to probably help make up some of those gaps. So that's just my two cents and the initial thoughts on that. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I did think that was peculiar stance. What I think his logic would be was would be the sensitivity to the volatility. If you're underfunded, right? Like if you're underfunded and that volatility happens, now you're more likely anywhere. All these firms are made of individuals, right? And they haven't gone down that education curve of volatility in the long enough time horizon or timeframe on it. So I think maybe if to make the counter to where he's probably coming from. Because I agree with you in the sense of like, if you're underfunded, this is the only way you're going to be able to get back to par. But the alternative is if not everybody has learned about the asset, it's the volatility profile. They see a drawdown of even 30 to 50%, let alone 70%. That might be the first thing that the over the total want to cut. And then that makes it a very bad investment if you end up cutting that 50 % drawdown. Yeah, there's a terrible irony in with Bitcoin in general that the people or organizations that need it most or like could benefit from it most are often the ones that are least positioned, least well positioned to take that like perceived gamble. You know, like like whether that's a pension, underfunded, underfunded pension or like Social Security, like, you know, Social Security is never going to pay out for the millennials and later, but it would. If Bitcoin was a major part of how those funds are invested, but it's not, and it won't be because there's no political will or reason to do that. And Paul, to your point before that about Bitcoin creates this wild dynamic of Gresham's law across all assets where Gresham's law is bad money drives out the good. Brian Cubellis (26:23.149) meaning that you end up seeing the good money being held by people. People realize that they should just keep holding good money, gold, and spending paper money. That's the reverse of Gresham's law. It's Theor's law. So Gresham's is what we've been living in for the last five decades. Now the Bitcoin exists. Theor's law can be applied because we have a good money. So it drives out all the bad money. man, I'm mixed up with the two. Okay. Well, whatever the labels are, the, the dynamic of in anybody's portfolio, you have this one asset that's better than all the other ones. And if you understand it, you realize like, I should keep holding that one. I should probably not sell my winner. And that's the, the, the natural reflex of any portfolio, manager is to rebalance by scaling out of your winners and then. You know, rebalance to you to, you know, deploy some of those funds into what are your losers? And there's this, this funny tension that Bitcoin creates where like, you're actually just better off holding the Bitcoin forever as this permanent asset, as you put it, Paul. and that's going to take a lot for people to wrap their heads around still. Yeah. And to add to this conversation, Michael, particularly your comments, I think what it. is most surprising about the Wisconsin pension allocation is how quickly we moved because behind the scenes, the 1031, we've been talking to a lot of institutions. It's like our biggest worry, and I'm sure you guys have this worry too, and on ramp is that due to the bureaucracy that exists with a lot of these institutions and the investment committees that you have to go through and the amount of people that you have to convince that they could ultimately be convinced to allocate to Bitcoin, but it's going to be starting from the ETF launch at 12 to 18 month process, at which point they could be giving the go ahead and saying, all right, we're ready to allocate in Bitcoin. Then they top tick the next price peak during the blow off top of the next bull market. And that's the biggest worry. And that's why I think particularly for the Wisconsin pension to allocate this quickly after the ETF launching is extremely impressive and hopefully really is a shot across the valve other pensions and institutional capital. Brian Cubellis (28:46.637) allocators across the country to say, hey, they were able to move quickly, maybe we got to move more quickly here. Because again, ultimately, the goal is to preserve wealth of the pensioners and the institutions where this capital is being preserved. And part of that is timing and stomach of volatility if you if you enter the market at the right time. Yeah, that's a great point. Like Paul, that was a thing that obviously on your interview caught you didn't. You didn't hedge. I think we got it. We were getting better at this as Bitcoin enthusiasts of like the state of the world. All the things like, look, we know what this thing is. We know where it can go. And you made the comment of point one percent, you know, is just starting out in this one to three percent you forecasted for other pensions would be good just to share like how you think about that. And then I don't know how much color you can't share if you have any about, you know, to Marty's point, the homework that had been done. before these ETFs, because I would imagine, you know, had been done 12 months prior and with the ETFs launched, it was a little bit more of a formality from investment committee before the allocation was made. you know, how that played in or anything you could share there because I think that's important from, just like anybody that's sitting around, whether it's a, you know, publicly traded company, small business, or, sitting at a larger institution, like the groundwork starts six to 12 plus months before. when you're giving the books out to individuals that ask you about it, not the moment the ETF launches. Yeah, I mean, so in terms of the one to 3%, I'm not sure there's magic and if it's 2 % versus 3%. What I do know is that this cycle or next cycle, it's going to be probably easy to be 10x up at some point. And so even if you're taking a conservative approach like Wisconsin and you're I think between this cycle and the next cycle, it's not hard to see that 10Xing, and so then you all of a sudden are at a one or two percent by just doing nothing. And so I think the fact you sort of dip your toe in suggests that if you stick around for the ride, you will end up at a larger allocation, and people see this in their own portfolios all the time, right? When you buy Bitcoin and can hold out at least through a cycle. Brian Cubellis (31:07.597) What started out as a small percentage in your portfolio just inevitably ends up as a larger percentage. I think people, on a personal level, I've had some people asking for, is one to 3 % what an individual should do? And I think it's a whole nother animal if you're an individual person. I think probably one to 3 % is too low. But on the pension fund, in terms of the homework, it's interesting. I'm not sure I have any... you know, proprietary or, you know, secret sauce I could share with anyone on what, you know, the state investment board and the homework they did. I think the stuff that people have been talking about for a while now, which is the complications around holding your own keys from a, you know, institutional level, I think that's real. And I also think whether we like it or not, the BlackRock and Fidelity stamp is real. You know, Grayscale has been in the business for a while, so that's a little bit different, but. at the end of the day, people are going to, they're going to do their homework at their own rate, right? And I think in Wisconsin, and I guess I'm kind of Pat in Wisconsin on the back here, you know, Wisconsin is, Wisconsin is a very purple state, right? I mean, it's sort of a politically divided state. And I think in some senses that reflects well on the state's like educational background. And so it just doesn't surprise me that we have people on the investment board who actually are there, like as fiduciaries, doing the best interest and making the best investments. In other states, I just, there's too many political factors. I don't want to like throw, you know, some of the other specific states that are underfunded, you know, under the bus. But, you know, when you just look at like how Wisconsin is governed in general, it does not surprise me that the people on the board did their homework. And, When I talk to students about this or even people who come to my office, I tell them the same thing. Bitcoin is a homework test. Tell me what you know about Bitcoin and I will tell you how much homework you did. And so I just think that we're going to see this replicate across other pension funds. Like show me the allocation you made and I'll show you the homework you did. And if guess what, if it's zero, I can show you the homework you did. You didn't do your homework, right? And if it's 0 .1, Brian Cubellis (33:31.277) Well, you probably did some homework and if you're the first pension and it's point one, you probably did a lot of homework. But the anti other states are on notice now, right? So the other states are on notice to do their own homework and them investing at point one doesn't suggest they had done the same homework, right? For them to do the same homework as Wisconsin is gonna take a 2 % investment. And so that's just how I see this playing out across the states. Yeah. And here's my quick view of the homework of 0 % doesn't make sense. If you're a pensioner and your mandate is purely to be defensive and have like a representative allocation across all asset classes, well, Bitcoin is 0 .1 % of all the assets in the world. So if that's part of your mandate, you should have a 0 .1 % allocation. But... If you include a one to 2 % allocation, which is, this comes from an excellent report that, two ocean trust put out, your overall portfolio not only receives, better performance, but actually reduced volatility in the aggregate because it's not core. The volatility with Bitcoin is not correlated with the volatility and other assets. So that's a kind of Holy grail status. So it makes sense to have one to 2%. But if you go further down understanding Bitcoin, you. realize that it's an asset that's going to perform 30 % to 45 % in Paul's opinion. And I share that opinion on a CAGR basis. And so that makes it a better asset, more attractive asset class than anything else in your portfolio. So you should probably have more than 1 % to 2%. But those are your clear checkpoints of understanding. And the only one in there that doesn't make any sense is to maintain a 0 % allocation. Paul, can you reference like the purple blood and there's a comment of innovative pension and then like just you in general feeling comfortable and talking to your students about Bitcoin. Like what is it in the culture, whether it's the exact school you're at or in the state that people feel comfortable because like this stuff, even though we have ETFs and we all feel okay about talking about it, it's still like kind of taboo at that level. Brian Cubellis (35:52.877) Like just curious, like how you were able to get to that point. I think it's just interesting, but also can provide a framework for others to like naturally feel out and they don't feel like they're going to get themselves in some trouble or lose their job. Yeah, that's an interesting question. So I would, I guess I'll start off by saying, and this again, this is me wearing a professor's hat on this, but you know, when you're up, when you're like in front of a class teaching all day, one of the first things you learn about when you. first get in the academic world is you're really only nervous about talking about stuff you don't know. And so if you actually know what you're talking about, it's not that nerve wracking to talk about it, right? And so I think from my perspective, when I have people sort of funneling through, it doesn't, I'm not like walking on pins and needles talking about this because I'm confident that I basically did the homework, right? So it's like, it's... It's just like walking into exam. If you prepared, you're not nervous walking into the exam. The same way like if you're playing in a big sports game, if you prepared, you're not nervous for the game. Your preparation is fine. So I think for me personally, that's just sort of just a starting point. Now I'm not going to pretend that Bitcoin has all these things that leak out in different areas. I don't want to pretend that I'm an expert in every possible area. I don't think anyone is. But... So I think from a personal perspective, that's just, that's my approach. And then I think from, you know, like a Whitewater perspective and I don't know if I should say like Wisconsin in general, but I'll just say like from Whitewater, you know, Whitewater, we take a lot of pride in like having innovated things early on. And so one example people talk about at Whitewater is I think we were one of the first universities back in the nineties to have like an online program. And, you know, nowadays it's like everyone has an online program, no big deal. And that's something that kind of gets brought up all the time. Like, you know, we should be pushing the needle on stuff. And so I know when I went to the dean on this and talked to him about this, one of the things I brought up is I know Bitcoin is going to be loaded with FUD and misunderstanding and I'll probably get pushback, but it is the definition. It is the perfect analog to the internet in the 1990s. And I, you know, I wasn't teaching in the 1990s, but Brian Cubellis (38:17.133) I'm confident if I was here there would have been tons of FUD around well, no one's gonna take online classes. It's a waste of money. We don't have the bandwidth or technology or all this stuff, right? And all those same arguments for me just stood perfectly parallel in Bitcoin. And so I sort of always felt comfortable because I know I'm on the right side of this. And like I said, it's my job to transform students, right? And... Can I do that through teaching tax law and accounting and lots of other things like that? Yes. Can I do it at a greater degree with Bitcoin? Absolutely. So for me, that's why I don't have to like hem and hop here about, you know, we should be diversifying and you know, the students, you know, learn a little about it. Like I've, for me personally, I feel like this is the right thing for the students to be learning about. You know, whether the students buy it or tell their parents to buy it, I could care less. But they have to learn about it. You have to have done your homework and competently dismissed it. You can't fake it and say, well, I spent two hours and here's my two cents. It's like, no, you have to have hold your own keys. You need to have set up multi -sig. You need to know how this stuff works. And so for me, that's been my approach all along. It's very cool. It is no shortage. We had a rich Kerr 33 year Charles Schwab vet and he was on the pod last week and he called out how, and I don't know if it was 17 or 19, it was one year where somebody brought it up at a local regional, you know, where he was working and he was like, it's just, he was embarrassed by his response, but it was that humility to reference that his response was there. And then he went and did the homework eventually. And I think that's a big point for everybody. It's just like this natural easy way to dismiss it because it, You know, the world is easy to dismiss when things look too good, but the reality is if you dig a little deeper, there's a lot more happening. Well, and Paul, to your point earlier, it's never been easier to do your homework on Bitcoin specifically. The amount of literature that's out there that form fits to particular people with a particular set of mind and connect with them is richer than it's ever been in Bitcoin's history. There's no excuse to say you didn't do your homework. It's. Brian Cubellis (40:34.509) cognitive dissonance at this point if you're Dismissing Bitcoin as it's succeeding right in front of your face which all this begs the question to like from your seat at the University and as it was conscience and Wisconsin pensioner Wisconsin pensioner back -to -back is making me say wish conscience. I don't know why I'm sorry for that But like What do you think this does to, again, incite that, like the shot across the bow? Like, do you think people are dismissing the allocation by the pension system? Do you think people will see what you're doing at Whitewater and say, hey, that's cute, but we're still going to hold out? Or do you think now that it's becoming abundantly clear that states like Wisconsin and universities like the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater are thinking about this seriously that people in institutions around the country. are moving rapidly to say we have to have a position on this. So, yeah, so I actually think, I don't know if you guys are, which states you guys are all in right now, but I'll take the, I actually think Wisconsin is, I don't know if you guys have thought about in this context or not, I actually think in a lot of ways the fact Wisconsin is leading the way on this is a very, very, I don't want to say sneaky good, but it is sort of the best case scenario. And like, I have plenty of friends who live in Texas, right? And I don't want to suggest that if Texas was first, that would be bad or anything. I love Texas too, but I think if you had a state that was politically one way or the other, you know, solid blue or solid red, I think that adds like a politics aspect to Bitcoin that's just not really needed. And to have a state like Wisconsin, where you can go back and look at the past 20 years of politics or even longer in Wisconsin, Wisconsin is a very interestingly purple state, right? We have big metropolitan areas, lots of rural areas. It sort of splits Trump, Biden. I think this type of state going first or Brian Cubellis (42:54.509) you know, being among the first is critical. And I think it makes it easier for other states to follow as opposed to if it was a state that's sort of like in the news all the time on the political spectrum one way or the other. So that's how I see Wisconsin leading the way. Totally. Would love the next handful of pensions to be all the swing state pensions. Just to put that, you know, make that a politically off, you know, off the table sort of target, you know, because you got to win votes. I think that's a great point that if, though ironically since now the White House has taken a negative on crypto stance. It would be kind of good for a blue state to embrace it, but given the highly politicized and aligned nature of things, I think that the fact that the White House has taken that anti -crypto stance recently makes it less likely for a blue state to embrace it at a pension level versus a red state. But thank goodness for the purple states first. And with all this in mind, I mean, Jesse, you may be able to answer this and Paul as well, but thinking about what this could do in terms of a catalyst for inflows to Bitcoin specifically, I mean, state of Wisconsin pension, 180 billion, 10 basis point allocation now. Let's push that up to the high end of the range that's been put out there, 3%. That's $5 .4 billion that would be allocated to Bitcoin within this one pension. How much? What flow do you think we'll see if this allocation doesn't cite FOMO and people start wising up and saying, all right, we need to make an allocation. And then they start pouring in. Brian Cubellis (44:51.245) It's a great question. Paul, if you have any thoughts on this, I have my high level, but yeah. Yeah, I think what's interesting is, you know, Marty, your original point about when people, the timing of when people buy. So if you push it out, say 18 months and they're buying at the peak, you know, their fiat is actually getting them the least amount of Bitcoin possible in that, you know, peak. So, you know, I really don't know. I just don't have a sense for. The timing on all of this is fuzzy to me, right? And I think, I would just, for me, I, like my step back on this is we're clearly going through the store value phase. And when you're in the store value phase, very difficult to know the timing of when things are gonna happen. And so I think that dipping the toes in those allocations just become bigger over time. But the, timing who goes first or who goes next and at what percentages. I sort of feel, I feel like it's predicting, it's like predicting, you know, the, the congressional swings on this stuff, right? It's like, you know, one day Trump hates Bitcoin, the next day he's accepting political donations. Who knew? Well, I don't know. It's just, you know, it's like how the winds blew or something. And so that's sort of how I feel like the initial wave is going to come. I think once everyone's got once, you know, we cross some threshold of 25 states or 35 states who have invested in it, then I think the question of total flows becomes really interesting because I don't see a path where once states turn on the flows and investments that they're gonna turn it off because that only suggests they like did their homework and then somehow lost their homework. So maybe a board turns over or something like that. But other than that, it's the same way on a personal level. People generally don't do their homework and just buy 10 bucks of Bitcoin. They do their homework and buy more and more and more. And I just see the pension funds doing the same thing. Yeah, totally agree. I think for me, this comes back to the super zoomed out view of currently the world's value is allocated to the traditional asset classes. And Brian Cubellis (47:09.709) there's this osmotic pressure to reallocate a small piece of that to Bitcoin and that pressure will grow. It's almost like a glacier going into summer. You know, you got little drips coming off of it and those drips are small in their localized areas, but then they trickle into little river, riverettes, and then those rivers can converge into a bigger river. and you have a torrent of, of flow from the, from the old state to the new state. But, you know, wherever you look, from a grassroots point of view, it's a tiny, tiny little trickle, but it all adds up. And I think, you know, I think that's, I think that's the, the, the process that we're living through in general, as the world's assets will be reallocated from. the traditional norms and into the digital future to accommodate the reality that Bitcoin imposes on portfolios, which is to say that here's this asset that's a better store of value asset, has better properties, and is likely to outperform all of the traditional store of value assets. And so that economic reality will be imposed little by little, a trickle at a time. on the microscopic level. Like if you go talk to any pension, if you go talk to any individual, they might be thinking about a small allocation, but that grows over time. And each of those individuals making those decisions adds up to a torrent. And one other thing I just would add to this, and from my own perspective, I think what makes timing so fuzzy on this, I don't have, and I like to think of myself as having done as much homework on this as possible. But I don't actually feel like I have good historical analogies of one asset coming in. We like to use the apex predator analogy. I don't have a good example I can think of where we've introduced another asset that's sucked the monetary premium out of other assets. I know they exist, right? So at some point, Brian Cubellis (49:35.405) gold would have done this, right? Yeah. But when you think about these other assets that have done this in history, they were in such different economic environments. It was not like in modern society it's happened. So it's really hard for me to think about how this stuff goes over. I know people like talk about S -curves and adoption rates. But if you're thinking about it in terms of sucking monetary premium out, Because that is actually where like dollar for dollar comes something comes out of real estate into Bitcoin or out of some some other asset into Bitcoin. That to me, it's it's really hard to think about what we have in modern society. And, you know, the only examples I can think of, which are not great examples, it's kind of like the Internet came in and did this to like, you know, brick and mortar companies. So I guess we could look at maybe, you know, like Sears or something like that or Boston store. But even that is not nearly at the level of a money. And so I, it's just, it's very hard for me to think about this timeline of like how funds come in when it's like this, these dollars competing, sucking out monetary premium of different assets. I don't know if you guys think of it like that, but that's what makes it tough for me. I think there's a, I think there's a big component of the human nature aspect of it as well. Like everybody here is talking to other individuals. that have been are now talking to other individuals about this asset from pensions to publicly private, you know, businesses on Treasury management, family offices. And, you know, whether it's ETF, the politicization of it, or, you know, a pension coming in, everybody's having the discussion. And everybody's looking at I'm not everybody, but different cohorts are looking at it as potentially, you know, like we're watching it, we're having views or remember last year at this time, the price of Bitcoin was whatever $25 ,000 and you kind of crazy and now the conversations are coming back like, yeah, we'd love to chat not in not interested whenever allocate, but we'd love to learn a little more. And so that that conversation, you know, you think about it as the price appreciates call it into this year next year, whatever it looks like. Well, it's impossible to forecast what does the committee and the group look like that's been looking at this for the past now 18 months versus six or whatever the number is and who goes in and then to Marty's point kind of like, Brian Cubellis (51:59.117) you know, apes in and now is sitting underwater and that volatility. That's why we've always thought like volatility always kind of looks similar to how it has been, at least for the past couple of epochs. It's just the pools of capital coming in and it's still run by humans. I would say be remiss to say like the education doesn't stop, you know, with the ETF. Paul, I don't know if you're familiar with like what we do. and independent of what we do, there's just this natural problem of the, the idea that 90 % of the ETF sit at Coinbase and a pension coming in may not look past the, not to say that I would imagine not all would do this, but there's this natural idea that somebody looks at the number and the, and number go up in the price on a screen, but going back and remembering why they stayed away from it. Some may be because it looks like a Ponzi, other may be because it looks like if I allocate it won't be there because of an exchange hacker insolvency and all the things that have been mired in the industry. There is this reality that like the end state isn't an ETF and there's a number of things that somebody may want out of Bitcoin's exposure outside of just the dollar liquidity or the profile against the dollar. And this nature of it sitting at a single custodian and the risk that comes along with it or the asset, the aspect of like maybe you want to take the delivery because you need to use it. and you know, an economy, there's a lot of things that like continue down the path outside of just the ETF. And so I think that's an important function as individuals go in. It's like, it's one, it's the first step, but it's just the beginning. when it comes to the allocation via like a BlackRock vehicle. Yep. Go ahead, Paul. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, this kind of gets into the whole discussion of should, you know, should institutions be holding their own keys? and. I think people have different views on the ETF side. Is it sort of additive to the whole space of people holding their own keys? I guess my current position, which I'm happy to change if this is wrong, but my current position is I think the ETFs are probably Trojan horses for people learning about it and eventually holding their own keys, but getting institutions to set up the key structure and... Brian Cubellis (54:13.997) You know, the revolving door. So I'll just, guys, I'll give you an example here. We've done like thought experiments at the university about like if the university gets Bitcoin sent to us in a donation form, and maybe this would be a fun conversation. Who at the university should hold the keys to, so how many keys should we have? So like what should be the multi -sig setup? And. and how many signatures should we have at the university if we wanted to hold our own keys? Do you guys have thoughts on that? yes, yes we do. You've happened to stray into our core business here. I guess our perspective is that it doesn't make sense for institutions to be grappling with these issues. It demands competencies and capabilities and systems and processes that are very difficult to build. and get comfortable with and manage and maintain a huge, you know, technical learning curve that everybody on the investment committee would have to get a sufficient amount of familiarity with cryptographic materials and how Bitcoin works and how to maintain perfect security and then, you know, implement and establish and implement all those systems such that it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for an institution to be holding their own keys in a multi -sig setup. But it also doesn't make sense for an institution to trust Coinbase or any other third party custodian with unilateral control of their keys. Because frankly, because Bitcoin allows you to have a better form of security with multi -sig. And it's a shame if institutions don't take advantage of that. So what OnRamp does, has built and has pioneered, is multi -institution, multi -sig custody where you set up a two of three multi -sig and the end client doesn't have to hold their own keys. They don't have to set up their own keys. Instead, it's three different institutions that contribute a key. Brian Cubellis (56:35.053) And so in on ramps case, that's on ramp, BitGo and coin cover and Bitcoin coin cover kind of the perfect partners for this because this is what they do. You know, Bitcoin has been around for 10 years and and invented multi SIG. And so those are your key holders on behalf of the institution. So in that sense, you managed to take the advantages of Bitcoin's multi SIG and then wrap that in a in a legal trad fi relationship. that is familiar to an investment committee. And then that is the relationship by which the control of the assets is governed. And importantly, crucially there, each of those three institutions that hold a key on behalf of the client do not have unilateral control because they only hold one key. And so it's the end client that retains control of the assets in the multi -sig. without themselves having to set up and maintain a key. So that's our business, that's what we do. And it's because of this problem that institutions face of, how do you set up and maintain custody of your Bitcoin? The options to date are trust Coinbase or do it yourself. And neither of them really... solve for or take advantage of the benefits of multisig while also, you know, solving for the user error that could crop up and the massive amount of setup knowledge and proficiency that's necessary in order to master your own multisig. So yeah, that's what we do. Yep. Paul, one of the things I think, You're probably wondering, are you references like you mentioned a pension is not going to set that up or do spot custody. And we had it announced today. Mark Connors joined from a three IQ. He was at a ETP provider and in Canada, traditional Wall Street background selling a private or this was a public vehicle. Where we started was effectively with the gray scale competitor at the time pre ETF, which was the underlying leveraging the same multi -institution custody. Brian Cubellis (58:53.517) with the, so you benefit from, you know, what Jesse was referencing if an exchange or something happens to a key holder, your assets are okay, but then the kicker is you allow for delivery. And that's when you really start getting into like a best in class product. And so that's the, the angle, like we'll get heavier with this drumbeat in the sense of like, there's a lot of narrative that's coming up and it'll continue where more and more of the ETFs are being housed or, you know, I think it's 90 % now, whatever. I guess it's, what is it? 1 million coins? So 900K BTC in just the ETF sitting at Coinbase. And obviously that will increase as the ETF flows. And so there's just a natural narrative we think will continue to grow, especially if you can't take delivery, which will, you know, as people who, to your point, get educated, that becomes an or a Trojan horse into understanding the asset. And then you may wake up and realize you don't want three million BTC sitting at Coinbase. But if you have an ETF, you're effectively have to sell the position. depending on your account, have a taxable event, because you're not going to be able to take delivery. And so this is the point of education. It's like the education to the point of ETF starts, but it doesn't really end there. And that's a big part of what we're doing here. Yeah. And just to add to that, or just to comment on you guys' points. So I think, and maybe you guys make this argument already, but I think one of the arguments for getting away from the ETFs too, and to multi -institutional custody, or however you want to design it. is the ETFs are charging albeit a small percentage fee every year. And that fee looks small and feels small, especially over short timeframes. But if you're a public institution where the duration for the time you hold it, like I said, should probably be permanent, that fee is compounding permanently. So I would probably argue that... setting some other design system up is probably a better way to manage your fees long term. Even if the ETF fee is maybe smaller to start with, as your balance grows, to me it probably doesn't make sense to be holding the ETF products for long periods of time. You're just gonna see, I know even if the compounding growth rate's gonna be great, but you still don't wanna negate any of that over time. Brian Cubellis (01:01:21.997) And so I would think if you're in permanent duration mode, you know, holding your own signatures or whatever, however you design multi -institutional probably is a better mode forward for some of these larger pensions. Yeah. Yeah. A couple other considerations there. there's a little different for pensions because they're tax exempt, but, you know, if, like, if, for a holder who's, who's holding ETFs, they are, they don't allow in -kind redemption, right? So if you. decide at some point that you want to take possession of your assets, your Bitcoin, and you're not tax exempt. Well, then if you want to do that, you suddenly hit with a 20%, maybe 30%, depending on the state you're living in, hit to your assets as you have a taxable event upon redemption, and then you use those proceeds to buy Bitcoin. So right there, you could be looking at a 20%, 30 % hit. And then there's the other problem of of, you know, if you're trusting the ETF now and into the future, that's great while it's small. But if Bitcoin continues to become a bigger and bigger part of the financial system, we could enter a timeline where the US realizes a little bit late that accumulating Bitcoin is imperative to geopolitical success. And you could enter a scenario where there's incentive to 6102 or seize some Bitcoin. And then the ETFs being held at Coinbase would be the number one target on that list, unfortunately. So that's a scenario where you could think you're great and then it turns into a zero because unknowingly, you gave up control of your assets when you entered the ETF in the first place. And that's one of the advantages of self custody, but also multi -institution custody is that the end user maintains control. And that's so important for people to be thinking about, you know, whether when they're evaluating whether to go into an ETF or a different product. Yeah. And the other thing that's interesting too, and I think the elephant in the room with Coinbase and BlackRock, Brian Cubellis (01:03:44.685) As of right now, iBit is a fraction of BlackRock's assets, but given enough time, it actually... It's been recorded. Yeah, exactly. And so I think the thing that makes everyone kind of uncomfortable to think about is, well, if something were to happen to Coinbase right now, I think everyone thinks, BlackRock is just big enough, they'll make it right. You know, they'll refund everyone, but there's going to come a point in time where even BlackRock can't do that. The time might not be now or 10 years from now or 30 years from now, but it can and could happen. And so the question is, is do you sort of play out that scenario and hope for the best and hope that BlackRock is just always big enough to sort of bail its own customers out in the event something to happen to Coinbase? Or do you avoid that to begin with? So that's why, listen, that's why I think the ETF is great for people to dip their toe in or for people who don't want to do the homework. But for just about everyone else, you know, it's an inferior product. Yeah, for clarity, totally agree with you. I think the ETFs are a great way for people to dip their toe, learn about it, realize they want to own actual Bitcoin. And then to the other side of things, like if an institution can figure out how to educate everybody that needs to be educated. on the investment committee or whatever, and get everybody on board with like, here's what you need to know about cryptographic material, how we're going to set up a multi -sig, how we're going to run it, the operationalization of those, you know, checks and balances and systematizing of all of the things that you need to do at an institutional level to maintain that and run that. If they can do that, great. That's like, that's probably the best way for an institution to... you know, seize their own self sovereignty in the Bitcoin landscape. But my sense is that that is an incredibly high barrier. And instead, you see the behavior, you tend to see the behavior of, you know what, I'm going to trust Coinbase, because that'll be way easier and they know what they're doing. And I think that the hidden sacrifice and trade off that many institutions are making when they Brian Cubellis (01:06:10.989) default to the easy Coinbase option. I think that is it. There are bigger risks there than many institutions realize when they are giving up control of their Bitcoin to a company that could be is a black box. Ultimately, how they're maintaining custody and security of those assets is a black box. And then of course the legal layer, the 6102 threat is non -zero. So, you know, I think those are, I think if an institution can get to multi -sig and can set that up, they absolutely should. That's fantastic. And if they can't, they should be wary of giving over unilateral control of their funds to an ETF or to Coinbase or to any third party custodian. I think, yeah. Go ahead, Marty. Well, I was gonna say, I think you may, like, I think in kind of redemptions at some point in the next five years is going to become table stakes, not necessarily for, not necessarily for the fiduciaries of these funds, but for the end beneficiaries. They're going to say, Hey, like, I don't want you getting paper exposure to the selling at a big tax loss and not being able to take any kind, especially if. what you believe, and I think we all believe is going to happen if Bitcoin begins to suck out the monetary premium from all these different assets, the US dollar and the treasury system included, like you're not going to want to sell that for dollars and then quickly get back into the asset. So I think in -kind redemptions will become table stakes will be driven by beneficiaries of all these different pension funds and endowments that say, hey, like we need delivery of the good stuff. We don't need paper exposure for this. Yeah, the beauty of this whole market is it's going to be, it's either like on the pension side or, you know, corporate treasuries that have their banking partners and they say, Hey, BNY or whoever, like either participate and hold a key or we take our money and we go somewhere else. Like that's how this, this, this concept, I know it's probably a little newer Paul, but like, it's pretty straightforward. The keys instead of living with an individual, they just live with an institution and you can break down like, Brian Cubellis (01:08:28.493) Jesse was being fair, nice to the institutions. They can't hold keys even if they want or at the level of what exists today. If it's anything related to consumer grade devices because churn is too big of an issue. If you hold cryptographic material and you have a seed and somebody leaves, now you have to burn it all down just to restart it. Like you can get to institutional grade like sharding and all that, but that requires cells and engineers to go in and do that. So right now it's really not. Yeah. Operationally, it's just like, it's almost impossible because you can always move the assets off platform if two people go rogue, which just makes it very difficult. And honestly guys, I think this is just all a matter of time. So I view a lot of this as, you know, like the difficulty now people have in making like a transition from an ETF to some sort of multi -sig setup. I think this is the equivalent of sending like an email in 1992, right? It's just, you know, it's hard for everybody. Some people can do it. Some people can't. You know, you just, you can't. probably, I'm sure there were companies that were successfully running meetings on email in 1992, but it was probably just hard, right? The way I view it is, if every year, schools like Whitewater have 30 students graduating, and those 30 students are going out into industries and doing all types of stuff, at some point, there will be a critical mass of people who have learned this when they were 17, 18, 19, 20, and they're eventually on the corporate boards, And so when someone comes to them and says, hey, we want a multi -sig setup, their thought is like, well, of course, this is like an email, right? So we just have to like technologically get through to the point where there's like enough people in the room who don't blink at this. And then it becomes, I think, pretty intuitive. But to the extent no one's familiar with the tech, I just think it gets really hard, right? You're essentially educating a whole bunch of people from ground zero. And... In multisig, you don't want to do that, right? You want everyone to come in with like a base layer level of knowledge in Bitcoin. You don't want to have to convince someone to multisig who knows nothing about Bitcoin. You need them to come in. We joke like we're making products for the market as it gets educated. And to your point, like pensions and people that are fiduciaries, some of them have to do insane amount of diligence and risk. And so we're actively like what you're describing, they sit. Brian Cubellis (01:10:51.373) at the highest level working with pensions, you know, by notion of educating, like advisory firms is exactly what they exist for, right? To work with specialists to help, because at a certain level, if you get that far into the details and the weeds, you look at like the S1 and Coinbase or the ETF basically says you're an unsecured creditor if Coinbase goes away in the S1 of the BlackRock ETF. And so that's a non -starter. They'd rather just not have a position at that level of like their brand is everything. And so to your point, it exists today, but over time, it's just a function of time and education that it'll just be more and more individuals start to look at that. And also it's like, at a certain point, it becomes less education and just a market standard, right? You just go to the place. It's the notion of like, you don't test your food every time you want to eat it. It's just like, doesn't kill you in the sense of like, we're just been so early that you don't know if the exchange is going to kill you. And that's where there's been this like, you know, it's kept people out, frankly, I'm convinced like, this idea of multi -institution custody in the sense of it's just redundancies and fault tolerance built into the asset that once it becomes standard, the market price will increase 10 to 100X because everybody wants 10X the exposure they have into Bitcoin. If it's zero, they want 10%. If it's 10, they want 100. They just don't feel comfortable. It'll be there when they need it. And historically it hasn't. Yeah, we're building a solution that, so Paul, to the idea of institutions will all have the competence of involved participants to understand multi -SIG and know what's necessary there. But then the operational requirements of that will always be prohibitive, I think. Because in a sense, what Bitcoin has made possible is you can be your own bank if you want to be. But God, is it hard to run a bank? If you're a pension or if you're a company, you don't want to have to install a bank grade safe in the back and figure out your... Brian Cubellis (01:13:01.421) your employee protocols for who has access and when and under what conditions and what are the forms you need to fill out. And you don't want to do that. You're going to outsource it to a bank. And I think that I think the real exciting thing for us at OnRamp about what Bitcoin makes possible is a type of bank where you don't have to have you don't have to give up unilateral control to a third party bank. You You can use multi -sig to put your assets in a multi -institution vault where three different institutions are each, you know, being a guard and none of them individually have control of your assets. So it's this, it's totally paradigm breaking form of like a new digital bank that multi -sig in Bitcoin makes possible. And that's what we're super excited about working on. Brian Cubellis (01:14:02.829) Marty, we need a, we need an e -cash, pod on how that that's gonna, it's going to revolutionize e -cash and the everything that's going on there. There's a lot to catch up on. There is that's a whole nother rabbit hole. I don't think we have time to jump down today. Definitely not today. I think, I mean, multi -institution custody providers who are comfortable with these multi -seq quorums. I mean, I think they're a natural. natural leaders in that space in terms of like institutionalized, e -cashments, like creating banking services on top of cold storage Bitcoin, or maybe not necessarily cold storage Bitcoin, but if you're comfortable setting up multi -sig forums, running a Fediment, particularly should be pretty easy for these institutions. And you get into weird financial and banking services on top of that using Bitcoin collateral. I read that health any post you shared a couple of weeks ago, or like maybe last week. that you said, the bitsteen. And it was like, it's just so crazy impression, like how clear you needed the different levels to like get to a certain point to be able to do it. And it's like, we were always in free banking. Like, I mean, that's what we did before you had notes or you had claims on, you had notes or claims on the underlying and then the reputation on those notes. and the institution to make you whole was what dictated if you continue to use them and then you built certain reputations and others had runs and they went away. And then, so it's like, it kind of seems weird that that would happen, but that was like how it existed forever. you parked your, you didn't take the gold home because people came and stole the gold. Like it's pretty, well, one less just note on the gold is it came up from one of the guys in a UK that were here in consensus. They brought up this idea of, of a, Spotters in London for Patek Philippe watches so they just like naturally having this is probably in a lot of major cities where people hang around and They just like stay on corners They watch your mapping of when you leave from home to where you're going and then they'll go steal your watch and different versions of how they like take the watch off your wrist But the point being is that's like a five to twenty five thousand dollar You know item you think of a notion of somebody's holding to to twenty five thousand to two hundred fifty thousand to three hundred, you know three million and Brian Cubellis (01:16:26.957) And most people know all your keys are sitting at home or one's here, one's over there. This notion that we solved custody today where people have spotters for a $5 ,000 watch. I don't think we fully thought through the implications of, again, the gold doesn't go at your home and that's how you had this banking layer and that ties back to the e -cash and being able to park it with a reputable source. And I think that comes back to Paul's earlier point of what's the historical analog for what's going on here? Paul's... example of how capital flowed from analog businesses to digital businesses with a lag effect as the internet took over and Blockbuster turned into Netflix and so on. That happened and that's the best modern example that we have. But to Paul's other point, it's really gold and the bootstrapping of gold from a nothing rock. to being the preferred money for the world over a 6 ,000 year period. That's the only base layer monetary revolution upheaval that we have in civilizational history. And that's what Bitcoin is doing. So it's the internet, but it is at this deeper level and that changes everything and all of the infrastructure that makes that new form of base layer. work still has to be built and that's a long and slow process that touches everything. Yeah. I mean, it's going to take time. It's crazy. Like Michael bringing up that Hal Finney post that he put out in 1993. These ideas aren't new either. It's just, there's an order of operations to all this. It works in fractals and the banking system that we're describing right now in the digital age with Bitcoin and these charmiaments and Lightning Network acting as this connective tissue. Like Hal Finney wrote about these ideas. Brian Cubellis (01:18:31.949) 30 years ago, 31 years ago now, but it wasn't until the combination of the technologies were in place as they are right now that this idea was able to be bought to fruition. And it's in the process of being brought to fruition, but it's going to be just that a process. It's going to take time, trial and error, user experience, design flows being built on top of this. It's going to be really cool. It's, it's, we should all feel very fortunate. to be alive right now because these are sci -fi subjects that were nothing more than ideas that weren't really applicable 30 years ago. And now they are. And we're on the tip of the spear watching it all be built out. And it's insane that we like it's to the point now where it's mature. Yes, we're talking about pensions allocating the Bitcoin ETFs, but that's a, that's a big first step. Like imagine what they'll be doing in the future with the combination of all these technologies. Brian Cubellis (01:19:33.101) Absolutely. Got it. It is exciting. We know what Paul's going to talk about in class next class. Yeah, I should tell you guys, you'd probably be interested to sort of think about like at the university level, like how like the approach, you know, you take with students on this, like where do you start? And to me, this was actually one of the harder things to do. Like you figure out like when you're teaching this to students, like what problem you have to explain, like what problem are you solving here? Right. And to do that, you almost you have to go down all these other rabbit holes that you guys have already gone down to. Right. modern monetary theory, all these other things that they've never been taught. And the stuff we're in now is, to me, the custody stuff and all this other stuff is, I don't want to say it's at the very end, but for the students, they have to, for them to really understand it, they have to know why we're here. The idea that something in their pocket is not worth next year the same amount it is today. That whole concept is just it really is like the matrix, right? It's it's it's them trusting me to say, OK, go down, go down with me for 12 weeks on this path. And at the end, I'll basically show you like what we're getting at. And in custody is kind of like at the very end of it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Table stakes to understand why this matters, why this is important. Paul, do you do you have your students read shelling out? Because that's what jumped out to me just now. And you're like, where do you start? I was like. shelling out feels like the perfect thing. So the books, my general order of operation is I have all my students read two books, regardless of their background or whatever. So they have to read Bullish Case or Bitcoin and they have to read Check Your Financial Privilege. So the reason those two books, Bullish Case, Brian Cubellis (01:21:38.765) It's short, it's got great graphs, it talks about store of value, medium of exchange, adoption rates. So in my mind, it very kind of cohesively gets a lot of those points across. And then I like giving students Check Your Financial Privilege, Alex Gladstein's book, because it immediately dispels any concept of Bitcoin has no use. That's like. That's the big thing people have, right? It's like, well, it's this internet thing that has no use. And Gladstein's book is 200 plus pages of use case. The whole book is that. So those two books are always the starter books for people. You know, the other book I actually found myself recommending recently, I think I have a copy of it. It's the Bitcoin handbook. You guys read the book, Bitcoin handbook? No, I haven't. It's by... I'm sure you've probably seen it, but it looks like that. yeah. Yeah. I have read that one. I have a copy of that one. So this is fantastic because it's a series of one pages on Moore's Law. And you just go down the list, right? And so this is also, I think, great for people who have decided they want to learn about Bitcoin. So they're like down the path. but they're also just confused, like every time they listen to a podcast, it's like 30 acronyms and words they've never heard, and most of the stuff is like in here. So this is usually, this is sort of like the phase two book I give students. And then after that, to me, it's personal preference, right? It's things that, it's gotta be things they're interested in. Is it the mining aspect? Is it the use case aspect? Is it the economic side? There's different books for all that stuff. Yeah, well, that. Very cool. Your students are very lucky, Paul. I feel very fortunate to have somebody of your caliber out there educating young minds in America, particularly Wisconsin. I think, as you said earlier, the students going through your class are going to have an edge. And that'll give UW -Whitewater an edge in the long run as well. Yeah, we have great students. And Brian Cubellis (01:23:59.853) This probably is not surprising, but you know, very, it's very common in academics to, you know, be the Jedi in one realm and quickly realize your students are surpassing you. And so, you know, lots of really bright students in our stuff. And so, you know, we'll talk about, there'll be some topic on there that's like hardcore encryption or something. And after like 10 weeks, you realize, okay, this student is like a math wizard. They're actually going to like, they're actually going to end up, you know, knowing like how all the probability stuff works better than I do. And so that to me is like the fun part too. It's like being a coach and realizing at some point like your players surpass you as you were a player type thing. That's like the best part about teaching, right? Is you get these students that are super eager and you're like, okay, they're going to go off and like do even much better things. So we got a bunch of those students coming through the pipeline too. This is a very enlightening and very cool to think that this is happening at lower like middle school and high school. And maybe this is how we fix education in the sense of like, because it's so multidisciplinary, it makes everything else interesting, as you know. So if teachers can include this in their own like special, you know, whatever curriculum they're teaching, you can naturally like let people pick which course they want to go through and what they find most fascinating. I think that everybody has their own version of like what that looks like. I never thought about it that way, but that's a very inspiring version of like getting closer to younger minds and where we're headed. So, you know, you guys have probably read about Ella Huff at Cornell, who's like got her own. So long term, my hope is to have something like that in place here. You know, I think she's she's like one student at one university, but I'm kind of optimistic that we could just have a program on it. Right. So you just you basically come out like with a degree and like Bitcoin stamped on. Yeah, we mean that that's that's some of the Texas, you know, we I know you know her mother Lisa Huff and Carroca Ray in Texas A So we like, you know, we do our we do our stuff under the hood here in Texas, too But we got a you know pump those numbers on the pension side you Tim goes, you know, just calling them out We got us. We know some folks over there. We'll make sure to send this one over If they need some help, yeah do it Brian Cubellis (01:26:19.629) Well, Paul, this has been awesome. Thank you for joining us. I'm really bullish. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, I think the last 90 days have been some of the most bullish fundamental buildup that I've seen in Bitcoin in quite some time. And I think you just confirmed some of my preconceived notions there. So thank you for joining us. And hopefully we can do this again at some point. Yeah. If you guys are in Nashville, hopefully I'll run India. And if not, we'll catch up again. Awesome. Thanks, Paul. Thank you, Paul. See you guys.