The Last Trade E060: Living Through Hyperbitcoinization with Jackson Mikalic

Brian Cubellis (00:01.656) Gentlemen, the world is on fire. Black Monday is behind us. Again, carry trade, which we talked about with Peruvian bull not too long ago seems to have blown out. We're joined by Jackson. Marty's last on -ramp post -ramp ever. just ninja launched you. We were going to talk about it at the end, but I feel like I should mention it at beginning. We'll get into why in the past, but it has been a crazy week. I'm excited to sit down and talk about it with you gentlemen, because it has been crazy. We had this crazy crash on Monday. It started over the weekend, really. And it seems like markets have leveled out to some degree. The Bank of Japan may have completely given up on any ability to control their monetary system or economy. Bitcoin obviously was negatively affected. Crazy week. Is this the beginning of the great deleveraging? What do you guys think? The main takeaway for me, Marty, was that the system is just increasingly fragile and it's becoming more more obvious over time, right? At end of the day, it seems that all that really matters for most asset class performance is monetary and fiscal policy. to think that 15 basis points of the Bank of Japan increasing their target rate by 15 basis points is able to Brian Cubellis (01:38.712) destabilize markets to the extent that it did. It's very concerning. It should be very concerning to all of us. And it really just brings to the forefront how unstable the Fiat financial system is. It's built on an insane amount of leverage, as we all know, and just a marginal increase to interest rates has very catastrophic effects. mean, there's, of course, everything to talk about as it relates to kind of the carry trade capitulation and the spread between the Bank of Japan rates and the Federal Reserve. But it is quite remarkable to me that You know, we're in this situation today. It really accelerated, I think, conversations with the Federal Reserve now to ease their policy. And of course, that will end up being a creative to Bitcoin and virtually any other asset class, because at this point, everything trades as kind of a proxy of liquidity. And it seems to be that we're through this period of tightening and contracting liquidity. it's really maybe this next cycle of greater liquidity that we saw in 2020 is on the horizon, which will be really creative to Bitcoin and virtually any other asset class outside of fixed income. Yeah, that's a great summary. Logan, you would pull up the chart I just sent. I think this puts it into great context. This chart is the Bank of Japan interest rate over the last 50 years. you know, in the 70s, 80s, they had four to 9 % interest rates and then kind of a steady decline in the 90s as they ran into. Brian Cubellis (03:26.573) economic challenges. And then I think the key is that since 2000, their interest rate has been effectively zero. So 24 years of zero interest rate policy and everything that has come out of that is, know, the financial system gets used to that. It becomes embedded in how everything is done. And a great amount of leverage is taken on when people begin to bank on that as a reliable constant into the future. And so then when they raise rates, just a tiny bit here in 2024, that's a cataclysmic event that they have to quickly undo as Jackson greatly summarized here. so to Marty's question, I think they tried to do the great deleveraging. They tried to start that. realized quite quickly how sensitive the entire global financial system is to any deleveraging and had to quickly back down. And so they have two options, deleverage or debasement. And they realized that actually the system is more sensitive to deleveraging than we thought. And we don't want to cause a Great Depression. So that one's out, which only leaves one other option remaining, which is continuing and accelerating debasement. Brian Cubellis (05:07.093) Is that option out there? The Fed particularly is seemingly holding steadfast. There was a lot of calls. One of the professor emeritus from Penn come out earlier this week his name is escaping me right now calling for an emergency 75 -bit break hike followed by an official 75 rape 75 bit break cut, excuse me two cuts at September's meeting They didn't do that and there's actually a good reason for that. It was actually funny to watch in the aftermath of the Monday chaos who came out and actually understood what was going on with the Yen carry trade because you had economists like Goldsby and others come out saying we needed emergency cuts. But if you actually did that, you would have exacerbated that deleveraging event. And markets are now pricing in a rate cut next month, I believe, of 50 bips. think the probability is more than 60 percent, so much higher than it was just a week ago. But I think that's the question. pal budge here and begin to cut rates because as you just mentioned, if we go the route of the basement, inflation is going to roar back and it seems like we're heading into some economic turmoil here in the United States. Particularly, it's something we didn't mention is the end of last week had the terrible jobs report. Unemployment went up to 4 .6%, which triggered the SAM rule, which is a new rule that I've I learned about last week, but if the unemployment rate is half percent higher than the six month average, which we just hit, it dictates that we may be in a recession. On top of that, had, I believe, manufacturing numbers come in pretty piss poor and credit situation is not getting better. Commercial real estate continues to roll over. So that's the question. What does the Fed do next? Brian Cubellis (07:19.117) Yeah, I think that. Well, I guess some quick context on I think that's where there's the difference between Japan's 24 years of zero interest rate and and the US is 10 years roughly that we're recovering from or have tried to buck. And I think I think that's kind of the difference between Japan is too far gone and got too addicted to zero interest rate for them to to raise rates, and that's what we saw. The US is teetering between still able to and not able to. so I think Japan's too far gone, and I think there probably was some sort of backchanneling to Japan, like, hey, you guys can't do this. You're going to blow up the entire financial system. Sorry. And the US, which is trying to figure out what levers they can still pull. and there are more options. yeah. Yeah. And to that point as well, think the turmoil in markets really accelerated the discussions around cutting interest rates because now we're kind of in a position the US economy is slowing down. It has been for a while, but now it's maybe being acknowledged more so. And one of the issues with how indebted we are as a country is that eventually under the weight of higher interest rates, that'll mean there'll be pressure in the, know, continued pressure in the economy, but also in asset prices as well. And as we all know, asset prices need to remain inflated for many reasons, one of which is the tax receipts associated with those asset prices. And to think that we're already $35 trillion in debt, we all kind of know where the story goes longer term, it only increases. We're at about a trillion dollars of interest expense and really to even have a shot at maintaining deficits where they're at today and not growing them exorbitantly, asset prices need to remain elevated to capture those additional taxes from capital gains. I think to the extent, of course the labor market is in consideration for central bank policy, but it's also maybe to a greater extent comes down to asset prices and the ability to tax on those and pay down Brian Cubellis (09:42.093) you essentially have that revenue to pay down some of the obligations the government has. Yeah, I think the two things like this reinforces an overarching lens is that monetary easing is there's two certainties. Monetary easing is coming at some point. And two is do not be leveraged if you want to stay alive. And to stay alive is you do not want to use leverage, whether it's in any financial asset. It's crazy to think about we're talking about this and we last week coming off the Bitcoin conference, we didn't have last trade episode in the amount of things that happened within between the end of that week of the Nashville conference with counter Fitzgerald, Senator Lumis is no Trump. There's multiple things in between seven like business days. It completely like a new world has shifted. And this like Japanese trade situation reminds me of the BTFP hiking of interest rates on the treasuries for the banks like This stuff, if you're looking at it, I don't see how experts would miss any of this because naturally people have other jobs and other focuses so they're not in the weeds. But to see the entanglement of that trade in the global financial system, it's kind of wild that that wasn't forecasted. I know in retrospect it looks like obvious, but it's just math and it's very strange that these things come out of nowhere. I don't think they come out of nowhere. They just come out nowhere for us because it's such a specific. knowledge base that only so many people know are looking that deep and I proving bowl is one of Yeah, like as soon as the Bank of Japan raised rates, it should have been obvious to everybody like, all right, the timer has started. There's only a matter of time before something breaks structurally here. Yeah, but I think that there's to some extent, like central bankers can't conceive of the level of degeneracy that creeps into large Brian Cubellis (11:44.109) like Wall Street firms when they are trying to find an edge. if you've got 24 years of yen carry trade, then you can see how there'd be literally generations of decision makers in a large financial institution who are trying to figure out how to squeeze more profits out. And they just crank up the leverage internally in their models. to squeeze more out of that and in doing so become hypersensitive to any increases that unwinding at all. And to an extent that I think is irresponsible and central bankers are probably not imagining as possible for people to have become so irresponsible. But that's the profit incentive playing out over 24 years. This is honestly fascinating because this is why the alpha, we talk about it all the time, why you just sit and hold Bitcoin and don't do anything because everyone tells you to do everything else. And ultimately we kind of debate here. But I think most on this call today would feel like it's very obvious as the more entrenched Bitcoin gets in the financial ecosystem, the more counterparty risks that will occur because it's the same people playing the same tricks, but with a different asset. That's where like, think if to Jesse's point is right, it's like human nature. And for decades, if you're used to certain behavior and systematic rules and bailouts, they don't exist here. There's going to be orders of magnitude of carnage or the next kind of decade as we figure out how to like treat this asset. Yeah, it's a great, that's a great foil of like, if you're trying to, if you're trying to get alpha, if you're trying to squeeze out profits and perform better than the market. your options in the world are kind of like take irresponsible risk like this Yen carry trade and leverage up to irresponsible levels or do your homework on Bitcoin and understand it earlier than the rest of the world and take what people believe is risk but you understand is less risky than everything else, every other strategy out there. Well, I mean, it brings up an interesting topic, which is Bitcoin's reaction to all this and its place in Brian Cubellis (14:08.301) the world as a capital asset that is extremely unique because we had the jobs report here in the US Friday and people were worried. But then over the weekend it became apparent that the yen carry trade was blowing out or was going to when markets reopen in Asia Sunday night here in the US. so Bitcoin started selling off pretty rapidly Saturday and Sunday and then obviously the Monday, I think 20 percent. overall decline by the end month. And I mean, but this highlights Bitcoin as an incredibly liquid asset that trades 24, 7, 365. So interested to see what all you think actually happened over the weekend with the price decline. Was it people looking ahead to what was going to happen in Asia and beginning to sell their Bitcoin to get liquid to cover margin somewhere else or people just simply going risk off because they saw this happen, wanted to get the liquidity. And of course, in the last episode, somebody's mowing their lawn midway through. But good. What do you guys think? Bitcoin's reaction to all this? thought it was it's almost counterintuitive because the price is falling and people think Bitcoin is not a store of value. It's not a safe haven asset. But Bitcoin selling off is actually highlighting another property, which is that it's extremely liquid. and trades 24 seven 365 and is this liquidity tap that people can tie into whenever they need to. I thought this dump came from Warren Warren Buffett getting rid of his Apple stock. We're just we're all we're selling everything after that. Marty, think you're spot on just about the liquidity and the 24 -7 market for Bitcoin globally and just investors getting to shore up some cash over the weekend. I think the frame here, though, is kind of comical because everyone who is an observer or a critic of Bitcoin will just quickly point to Bitcoin's dollar price volatility over the past week and say it's crashed over 20 % from 70 ,000 to 50 ,000. But I think really Brian Cubellis (16:22.733) The comical thing here is that we're, you know, we're existing within a financial system that just totally as catastrophic ripples through it when there's a 15 bit increase in the central bank policy. So I think really that's, that's the thing that people should be paying attention to. It's not that Bitcoin is volatile, which makes it a bad store of value. It's more so that this is a $1 trillion asset that exists alongside $900 trillion of value. And of course, just being an emerging asset class technology store of value, there's going to be ramifications to its dollar price in the short term, given the macro of what's happening in the $900 trillion financial market. So really the signal here is that this existing financial system is increasingly uncertain and unstable. And Bitcoin exists outside of it without counterparties, without a central issuer, with a known and predictable monetary policy. And that'll become more clear to people over time. I think the sell off was just a matter of a need for liquidity and just the instability of the system as it exists today and just the interconnectedness of it. Perfectly said. Pierre Richard likes to say Bitcoin is not volatile. Humans are volatile. I think this is a good example of that. Yeah. Michael, you're on mute, think. But Michael, to your point earlier, like in this crazy hyper levered global financial system, like the best bet is just like not be levered up, be in an asset like Bitcoin and understand and really have a like a well thought out thesis on where Bitcoin is going in the long term and don't freak out when these when these crashes happen, when people race to get liquid to shore up their balance sheets in case they need to meet margin calls or for whatever reason and use this as an opportunity to buy the dip. know me personally, Sunday into Monday, I was waking up in the middle of the night seeing that we were down another 5 % and we'll smash by. That's because not levered and I see it as an opportunity to get more Bitcoin when other people are freaking out. And it's a temporary blip. Brian Cubellis (18:45.069) dropped down to 49 ,000, we're already back up to 48. So depending on the timeframe at which you're looking at. Yeah, almost back at 58. So we're up almost 20 % in the last three days. So Bitcoin's pumping actually. I don't know why people are freaking out. Yeah, it's actually pretty incredible the resilience to see it pop back up to 54. was like, you asked about the sputter, it a little anticlimactic because there was no step in from like an interest rate. reduction of interest rate. But what Jackson was saying reminds me of Parker's. Now, I think Parker coin like Bitcoin trades short term stability or short term volatility for long term stability where the dollar trades short term stability for long term volatility. that's effectively like what we're looking at here. And it's just kind of reminds me of a future or like, needs to be looking forward to a future world where like volatility has to exist in a certain level. It's just like energy, right? And if it's put in the wrong direction, you're going to naturally see, naturally see you leveraging that's just the state of business cycles and capital markets. just push it out to the edges. And then we see these crazy things happen where like we can't imagine them happening. But it's like it was always embedded there. just live in there. And that's on the other side of the Bitcoin. We saw the favorite one is a what's the guy ham that's sitting with a fire behind him and he's just sitting there. like Zen. You're just got is it John Ham? John Ham from Mad Men. Yeah. And it's just like you got guys waking up at 2 a when their net worth is cutting by 40 percent, smash buying, buying more. Like what other market does that happen? It's just like you have a long -term view and you just stick to it. It's really not all that different than like the traditional financial system, right? Like what would if you're panicking on Monday as a client of a financial advisor and you're asking them, you know, what should I do here? They're just going to tell you to remain calm and to just remember your long term financial plan and goals, right? Like you're not going to sell out of your equity position because the S &P is down 5%. Bitcoin, of course, has more volatility for all the reasons we just discussed. But the investor behavior and the way to think about Bitcoin as a savings technology is just the same as how people have used the equities to save like over the past 50 years or so. Brian Cubellis (21:00.589) So it's really just like, we're just advocating for a sound financial plan long -term. Don't leverage it, buy the dip when you can. that's virtually what everyone is doing already just with another vehicle to do so in traditional markets. The fascinating part though is like March 2020 and what just happened now is almost the best time risk adjusted to buy the asset because it literally reinforces everything that's about to happen. Like the one time I remember pleading with a family member was March 2020 when it was 4K. It's like, just sell everything because you know what comes next in the same way we know what comes next. And, you know, we know what performs the best. Yeah, I think that is a good perspective for us to take heart in. Bitcoin is learning and the Bitcoin market is learning. March 12th, 2020 happened because everybody was too excited about the imminent halving and what that would do for the price. And so people had taken on too much leverage and that all got wiped out overnight in a 50 % drop. And what we just saw was hopefully this cycle's equivalent of that event where some people had taken on too much leverage, but overall the market is a little healthier than it was then. Granted, the COVID liquidity crunch was bigger than the Japanese yen unwinding crunch. But hopefully, this is a sign of the Bitcoin market learning that you can't take on too much leverage because March 12, 2020 can happen at any time. And it is likely to happen in particular when people are too excited about what the halving is about to do. We just had the halving, its impact has yet to unfold and I think will happen over the next 12 to 18 months. that's what people who take on leverage are too excited about. And that's when you can get bit by a 50 % drop overnight. Hopefully that was, this cycle is equivalent and now we've washed out the leverage and now we're actually set to go higher. We'll see. Brian Cubellis (23:21.803) You're a meanie. Brian Cubellis (23:27.469) was going to say, speaking of that leverage, I think all of it was wiped out on Monday. Trying to pull up the tweet. There was 274 ,729 crypto traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours. Again, this is Monday. The total liquidations of 1 .04 billion. So there was more than a billion dollars worth of leverage trading within the Bitcoin market. It got wiped out pretty quickly. I don't think everybody who was trading on margin got wiped out, but it significant. amount of people did. And incidentally, it's funny that this is how Bitcoin works because if you think about who those people are, they're probably younger, call them degenerates, taking on too much risk, trying to get rich quick. And they were forced to sell their coins. And who stepped in to buy? I mean, I know from people who reached out to me, like, disproportionately boomers were the ones that in my network, least who were like, hey, is now a good time? I've been waiting for an opportunity and they were the ones buying. you're seeing coins go from irresponsible risk takers who are younger to steady eddy old guys who have been looking for an opportunity to get in. And now that's their cost basis. And now they're looking for significant profits before they do anything. they're going to be. better holders than the degenerate traders who didn't properly appreciate the value of the coins they were holding, wanted more, got greedy, and now they've handed those coins over to veterans of financial markets who have a long time frame and are going to hold rather than take on leverage and risk. It's so true. think this is going to be the fun part of this bull market, which is a different topic that I think will be contrary to what Brian Cubellis (25:31.967) even on this call believe that I think we're almost like in a bear market still not fully a bull but it's a different thing that we can talk about if you guys want to but on the anecdote of boomers like from mother -in -laws to people like Jesse's referencing not only buying but they're going into like trusts that are planned to be given to their children like these assets aren't moving anymore after this which is a fascinating kind of user or just behavior in the market because I don't think historically outside of like this demographic. we bought and plan to use or have different plans for Bitcoin and maybe some of it goes to children and others. But I think to Jesse's point, a lot of boomers are set, but they're hearing this narrative, they're understanding they need to protect their assets and what they plan to give to their family may not be what they thought it was. And so now they're allocated to this and they're sitting in trust, they're sitting in cold storage. So it's gonna be interesting in the next kind of cycle, how much of that moves and Is it a larger percentage that moves to cold storage because you're not as conscious of drawdowns and needing to liquidate to live? know, you know, again, anecdotally from Bitcoiners, the last bear market was a little rough in the sense of you have to sell to live your daily life. think we might see a little bit of a longer term storage, which has a lower float from the amount of coins is going to be available for to sell. Brian Cubellis (26:54.893) Yeah. I mean, all this is happening the Wednesday, yes, or today. Morgan Stanley is unleashing 15 ,000 wealth advisors and allowing them to go pitch Bitcoin. So imagine they're going out like, look, you have a great dip opportunity to take advantage of here. So like the timing could be more perfect. Yeah. And we have to talk still about like, Canter, Fitzgerald and even like RFK and Trump and Michael Saylor's presentations from Nashville, like all of that is stuff that has happened in the last couple of weeks. And, you know, we haven't had a chance to hash it all out. And the market, I think, hasn't had a chance to appreciate how important all those pieces are for the imminent bull market. Yeah, the Morgan Stanley thing is interesting. And a lot of their peers are still on the sidelines, actually. think most of the large broker dealers are still on an unsolicited basis with clients. So their advisors, are tens of thousands across these firms, can't even have conversations with clients unless the clients are bringing up. And then there's other firms as well that have no product at all as it relates to Bitcoin. and these are massive firms, too. So the Morgan Stanley news is bullish. I think there's like certain stipulations around it. think saw maybe some clients need to have like over one point five million dollars in investable assets, which is kind of ironic, right? Because a lot of the appetite for Bitcoin is a younger demographic, many of which you probably don't meet that that worth criteria. And those are also the people who need Bitcoin the most in the sense like they've been priced out of other assets and they need to buy Bitcoin to grow their wealth over time. But also it ties into the boomers who are increasingly showing appetite. It's something I've seen as well here at OnRamp. And the boomers need Bitcoin too, because naturally their advisors are placing them into what's perceived to be less risky assets, a lot of which is US treasuries and other fixed income securities. And those are just mathematically guaranteed to pay them a negative real yield over the coming decade or longer. So I think it's incredibly bullish. It's really just the start to like, Brian Cubellis (29:09.709) eager to see what happens next week with the 13 F filings for Q2. The first quarter of this year, 80 % of the ETFs were estimated to be owned by retail. And I really do think that it's that that'll be decreasing quarter over quarter. And it's bullish to see that these massive advisor forces at Morgan Stanley and others are just really in the first inning in terms of having conversations with clients, many of whom like still don't understand Bitcoin at all. Right. So This is just going to be a little bit slower of a game, but it is going to be a game of persistence and growth over the coming quarters and years as it relates to advisor adoption of Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (29:54.509) Yeah. I mean, like I just wanted to make one comment. Like speaking of the conference, Trump, RFK, Cantor Fitzgerald, classic sell the news event. I know we pumped it up heading into the conference, like the day before RFK, was like, wait a second. This is like classic sell the news. That's probably why so many people got blown out this week because they probably went all lever long expecting these announcements and expecting the price to go up after that. As we know, Bitcoin likes to be patient and punish people who go lever long. Yeah, it's not time yet for any of that stuff really to have an impact. so people price it in too quickly and then that's the sell the news. I guess I want to bring up that there was an idea in RFK's speech in particular that I hadn't really thought of enough before and I think is potentially huge for Bitcoin. And that was his point that the US holds 19 % of the world's gold. And if the US wants to match that in Bitcoin, if they want to retain their relative position in what could be, and we think will be, the future preferred reserve currency of the world, then they have to be stacking Bitcoin heavily. And 19 % amounts to 4 million Bitcoin. And obviously right now they're starting from 200 ,000 and quickly getting rid of that so that they're effectively at zero. And it just raises a really interesting point of like, if Bitcoin becomes what we think it will be, then nation states are all starting from zero. They're all way behind relative to how things played out with gold. So if they want to have a position the way that they enjoy with gold. Nation states everywhere need to be stacking their brains out and currently are not. if nation states wake up to that reality and realize that they, we want to have 19 % of the world's Bitcoin because look what that has done for the US over the last 250 years. Well, you got to start buying like crazy and there's not that much Bitcoin Brian Cubellis (32:20.685) for sale. you know, that those are the things that could play out over the next decade or two. As nation states wake up to what Bitcoin is, where we could really see the price of Bitcoin, you know, get into the $10 million per coin range when that buying pressure really turns on. Brian Cubellis (32:45.077) Yeah. Well, I mean, let's talk about the not only the concept of nation states acquiring Bitcoin, but like, how do they do that? And so that was the other big announcement at the conference with Cynthia Lummis presenting the Bitcoin Act, which creates a legal framework and some guardrails by which the government can buy Bitcoin. And Cynthia's bill, she's basically creating the way in which you can buy it and then also defining what you can spend it on if you're going to dip into it. And in her bill, you can only sell the Bitcoin to pay off debt, which I think is a good move to have it sort of pigeonholed into that use case for the federal government. thinking about this, just that small concept, like it's actually really smart to do that. then like it got not only my brain, but a bunch of people's juice is flowing at the conference talking about like, all right, if the government has a Bitcoin reserve, what else can they do? then I talked to Preston Pish and a couple others and Jesse, I'm sure you were on this tip as well. thinking about sort of backing the long end of the curve, 20 year, 30 year treasury bonds with Bitcoin. And that's took some conversation, I a newsletter about it last week and then Buck Perley, the head of engineering. at Unchained sort of quote tweeted that reminded me of Alexander Hamilton and what he actually tried to define when they started issuing government bonds back after the revolution. And Hamilton warned when pitching America's first central bank that the creation of debt should always be accompanied with the means of extinguishment. And so I think this Bitcoin reserve and then the conversation around backing some long -term treasury bonds with Bitcoin sort of goes full circle to what Alexander Hamilton founding fathers thought about the relationship between the government and the debt it issued. Like if you're going to issue debt, have to figure out the way to extinguish it and what better way to create the way to extinguish the debt than to back it by an asset that's monetizing and will continue to monetize for decades. So you issue the debt, you've got Bitcoin underlying. Brian Cubellis (35:08.941) the bond maybe 5 to 10 % of the overall value of it in the beginning when you issue it. And that actually gives you the potential Bitcoin continues its road to mass adoption and price appreciation to extinguish that debt at some point down the road 20, 30 years. Brian Cubellis (35:28.941) I think it's logical. think the question though, my thought is A, what would be the incentive for the US like to do it ahead of anybody else? And just what I've seen, whether it's here or just historically Bitcoin is very emergent. So you would see a nation state, smaller nation state do it that really doesn't have much to lose. That would be the question with that. Like it makes, I think, complete sense. Just like what would be the incentive model for them to do that? Where would it like the only version that I can think of off the top of my head is another nation state doing it already effectively, and then they have to start competing. But to take the first leap would be pretty wild. That's right. The US is in many ways likely to be one of the last ones to adopt Bitcoin out of need. But it's possible that we could adopt Bitcoin as part of a Treasury Reserve out of foresight. you know, we were We as a country, we had the greatest foresight with regard to the Internet and Internet adoption and development and regulatory frameworks to incentivize the industry to be here. And Bitcoin is aligned with American ideals of property rights and individual freedom. So it's possible that foresight and opportunity could allow us to get there. But. talk about a hard slog to try to get, you know, bipartisan majority on board with this. But yeah, I suppose it's possible. And there's a narrow window of time where the US could deploy what's insignificant, a relatively insignificant amount of resources from a budget point of view or government. resources point of view and acquire over time 4 million Bitcoin. That's possible today. That is probably a lot harder 10 years from now. I think we will probably not have the foresight or resolve or bipartisan agreement consensus to do that near term, but maybe we get a start. Maybe we get Brian Cubellis (37:53.101) You know, 200 ,000 turns into a million. And we managed to do that this decade. And that's possible. Again, the sooner that we as the Bitcoin industry can communicate that possible power of that, the sooner that our elected officials see that as something they want to align with their personal brand the way that Senator Lummis has. And maybe it's doable as, you know, not so much as an existential like, you know, we're going to jump ship from Fiat and move into this thing, but instead as a, we like to be the world leader in all new technology. And this is something that has proven itself. And so we've decided we want to be the world leader in that, even though we don't think it is a threat to the dollar as a currency. frankly, because we don't understand that is inevitable at this point. But we like to be a leader. And so we're going to take a leadership position. That's what I'm hoping, because that would be it would be great for America. It'd be great for international game theory of Bitcoin adoption. And therefore, it would be great for Bitcoin. So this is a good transition or question about what do we think happens if Trump doesn't win? Because I think we all agree if Trump wins, it's going to be positive for the industry, it's going be positive for all of us. But post the conference, we saw the potential pandering. Because you mentioned earlier, Jesse, they sold, is that A, been confirmed, or was it just like the movement of it? And then two, real quick, is there's this notion that they're starting to pander to get like, you know, could cube in and different policy or different people in the industry to help shape policy? Is it just showing before the election? And because I think we probably lean that way, what ultimately happens post -election? Because I think that's like what I've been thinking about. Where does this go after that? Yeah, I saw a tweet that was measuring that their wallets are depleting at like $5 ,000 a day, which was speculating that they're selling $5 ,000 a day. That is speculation. So we don't. Brian Cubellis (40:09.471) I think know that they're selling but yeah, the there was an announcement, a joint announcement from the US Marshals and Coinbase about a month ago that said, hey, we're switching up the custody of the seas Bitcoin. And we talked about the Sun Rabbit hole recap last week, but everybody thinks that they're selling Bitcoin because they're moving it. I think they're jumping to conclusions because it would be it would be abnormal in the sense that Historically, when they've sold Bitcoin, they've auctioned it off and been very public about it. So to think that they're smash shelling Bitcoin to spite a potential incoming administration, I think is far fetched and is actually from a narrative perspective, it's like a bad luck. It's like we're trying to position Bitcoin as bipartisan. And if you're basically accusing the other side of dumping Bitcoin despite the opponent, and that's not happening, that's just a bad look overall. I actually, think it's a custody switch and not really them selling Bitcoin. Yeah, contradicts basically them trying to what at least I think getting pushed the narrative of understanding the industry of resetting, which is I think what came out of that conference. But we all know like, you know, false promises and like, what does that look like? Post? Yeah, with all that said, Bitcoin should be bipartisan and as apolitical as possible. But I think it's abundantly clear that for the industry's sake and for the sake of Bitcoin in America, at least a Trump win would be massively beneficial and a Kamala win would not, I don't think it would be good. I think we'd get a continuation or maybe a doubling down of bad policy moving forward because she seems to trend towards socialism and central planning. Bitcoin throws a wrench in that. Yeah, I think that's right, that Trump would be, from a policy perspective, better for Bitcoin at this point in time. Hopefully the Democrats match the Republican platform there. But the other side of it is that I think the Democrats have shown a greater likelihood of profligate spending and expanding the deficit further and getting us into more trouble financially, which would Brian Cubellis (42:38.431) in a funny way, be good for Bitcoin, because it would accelerate the money printing and it would accelerate the clarity of the diverging nature of fiat and Bitcoin. So it's sort of good in one more immediate and probably larger way on the Trump side and good in a different way on the other side. So all things are good for Bitcoin. think it does kind of tie into... I was just going to say... You know, there's obviously we can all agree that the Trump administration seems to be more favorable toward Bitcoin at the moment, but it's worth acknowledging as well that there is more entrenched interest as it relates to Wall Street. Like we already talked about Morgan Stanley that that is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of advisor bases and these large broker dealers getting involved. But then there's also, you know, like the cancer Fitzgerald news and they're one of the primary dealers and they're They announced their plans to get involved in Bitcoin lending. So there's going to be a lot more entrenched interest in the 2025 to 2029 election years. So while I do think that there's. While I do think that Trump came out at the conference and seemed to be pretty favorable toward Bitcoin, I thought it was maybe a little bit less than what was anticipated just regarding his comments and his general knowledge of the space. Nonetheless, there's these these administrations have different takes at the moment, but there are a lot of entrenched interests that exist with Bitcoin and that's only going to grow. then states of course, maybe could take divergent paths is how they treat Bitcoin within their own jurisdictions and how they protect private property as relates to self -custody and running a note and everything else that we know in Bitcoin. Yeah. Well, one thing we did, we haven't chatted about And I'm curious, Marty, you probably felt this even more or saw this as, I think for the first time I, I felt a feeling of like inevitability for all of this. Like I could see the path because there was a lot of pandering from political parties for capital from this user base. And they didn't want to be there. Like the Trump thing was like at the very highest level, right? He was there talking right at the end of the day, like there was monies involved and he got the talking points. Brian Cubellis (45:01.911) But you can go more micro to different events at that conference. And there was people there that, I don't know how much they care about Bitcoin. They really care about America. And they were looking for a user base to provide capital. And it's this whole game theory notion of like, we push, they can't pull. And as more capital is sitting within our wallets and our infrastructure and the things that we do, well, then you have to meet individuals in the middle to get that money. And by doing that, you have to naturally appease them. And so I think to Jesse's point, like as it accelerates certain states and certain politicians will naturally want to, they need money. And if you have bases that are getting wealthier and wealthier, you naturally need to do things to appease them to get that money. And so it this first moment of seeing it, I was like, wow, this is how you get to the other side of this because you talk about it with like the wars are the most extreme example that you can't go to war unless somebody's willing to, you know, capitalize it and you can't pool. capital, you have to push it. You have to make sure it makes sense and then you have a certain amount. So that was one of my biggest takeaways from that event. And Martin, curious your thoughts because I know you were there all week and I'm sure you saw a lot of kind of, don't want to call it, pandering is not the best word, but it was the best way I could equate to somebody standing up and explaining all these things about the country to a bunch of Bitcoiners and saying, and also we need you to give us some money. Please donate to my campaign. No, it was mind boggling. cause Matt and I were joking, we did live rabbit hole recap, and it sold out 600 people, massive venue. And if you reverse time five years, 2019 Bitcoin conference, the same conference hosted by the same company was in San Francisco on a roof. Like we did have live recording on the rooftop, sitting on a picnic bench. The conference was literally in a parking garage and to think in five years we've gone that conference that Trump just spoke at was literally in a parking garage in San Francisco five years ago. The fact that Bitcoin, the industry and the mind share around Bitcoin and the industry has gotten to where it is in five years is astonishing. And Matt and I actually had the conversation. It's crazy. lot of people within the industry think things are happening slowly, but when you zoom out and you look at that perspective, like 2019, Brian Cubellis (47:25.101) That conference is in a parking garage and the keynote speaker was from a company that doesn't exist anymore. And then five years later, it's this massive event where presidential nominees or candidates are coming to pander to Bitcoiners. That is insane progress in a short amount of time. We're in the day -to -day minutia of this industry. And when you're part of the day -to -day, in the industry, can be hard to actually recognize that perspective. Because you're like, it's not happening fast. But then you zoom out, it's like, holy crap, this is happening way faster. And to your point about the pandering, certainly was happening. But I think it was a combination of that and genuine engagement. At Bitcoin Park throughout the week, they had events. And Cynthia Lummis came and spoke. The Tennessee Attorney General came and spoke. Senator Haggerty, Governor Lee. The head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Commissioner Laiash, showed up in the conversations at Bitcoin Park in Nashville in the lead up to the conference for particularly the conversations with politicians and people in positions of power within the state of Tennessee and Wyoming and in other parts of the country were very productive two -way conversations. The panel with Senator Haggerty, Commissioner Laiash and Governor Lee was incredibly encouraging because they were genuinely engaging. Tennessee Valley Authority has to do a massive expansion of their generation assets and their capacity. And Commissioner Laiash was very smart about Bitcoin mining and how it can actually help the TVA achieve those goals. so that's another thing. Five short years we've gone from Alex Mischinsky being the keynote speaker. at this conference to the commissioner of the second largest grid system, maybe even the largest in the United States, talking seriously about how Bitcoin mining can fit into his roadmap for increasing the capacity and the amount of generation assets within the TVA. It is for as much pandering as there were politicians Brian Cubellis (49:52.237) holding out the hat, looking for donations. there was also a good amount of genuine engagement, which is extremely encouraging too. Yeah. Yeah. We're winning on both fronts. And Mike, to Michael's point, I think the Trump, org, said they got 26 million from fundraising efforts, at the conference, which is pretty great for, you know, a one day, a pit stop on the, on the trail and speaks to like, you know, that's going to be a part of everybody's playbook going forward. So, you know, play that forward to the next election cycle. What does that look like? And to Marty's point of zooming out to get the perspective of growth over five years, one of the things that I wish people talked about in Bitcoin differently is, you know, everybody says like hyper Bitcoinization is around the corner. And I think that's wrong. I think that we've been living through it the entire last 15 years is hyper Bitcoinization. It's just the very early stages of it. So it's kind of hard to see, when you have exponential growth like this, something like 50 % per year, and that's about as fast as the world can change. I think Michael Saylor has made this point before of that's about as the limit of what the world can incorporate, integrate, and sustainably grow on. And that's what we've been clipping at for the last few years, at least. And that's set to continue. you zoom out enough to see that kind of the rate of change over five years. that's with the Bitcoin conference. That's what it looks like. so there is no I think there is no moment in the near future where we hockey stick up and suddenly the world gets Bitcoin. I think it is this exponential continuation, 50 percent per year. And at some point that takes over the whole world. over cumulatively over time, it's not a singular moment. And so, you know, we are living through hyper Bitcoinization and the Bitcoin conference going from 2019 in a garage to 2024 with, with Trump, being the keynote speaker and then senators being on panels, engaging in policy and excited about it. That's what it looks like. It was really incredible that is there's so much. Brian Cubellis (52:14.967) proof and use cases now like it's not hockey stick. I think it's a great point. We've been living through it, but you can hockey stick yourself effectively into this. And what I mean by that is you can be Wyoming and go all in. You can be on rep and just live everything on Bitcoin. Like there's the version of you can go all in. And we've seen this Texas and mining Tennessee, Wyoming. Wyoming in two weeks is having the salt conference with Kraken there. A few of us are attending and it's at the same weekend of the Fed symposium. And so there's going to be this drastic with Joel from Two Ocean and a bunch of, know, I think the Wyoming governor is actually going to speak. But you think about five, 10 years ago, if you told even the governor at the time, you're going to have people from all over the country, I think in all over the come and talk about this nascent asset. They would have laughed at you, but they made a concerted effort to go all in. Texas is a similar example with the amount of mining deregulated markets. And I think even from an individual perspective, us on this call and probably a lot of people listening, the more we've embraced, right, you know, the staying humble and not using leverage, but managing risk and volatility while allocating more and more capital and then time if you make the choice from a personal perspective, it's just been the best net benefit you could ever imagine anything else to do. And so I think as we get more proof for the marketplace, then nation states can start to come in, they start to see the economies in states and then individuals, businesses. So yeah, to Jesse's point, like we're living through it. It's just, it's gonna take time, but only as a whole from a micro example, everybody can basically hockey stick at any point once they're educated enough. Yeah, we have it on the list. I haven't mentioned it. Talking about engagement with politicians at the policy level, but we've had another state pension allocate to the Bitcoin ETFs of I think a similar allocation in terms of total assets compared to Wisconsin. I think you had one of the largest hedge funds in the UK via their public filings basically disclosed that they've bought. Brian Cubellis (54:27.853) think like a billion dollars to the ETFs. And so as you have this pandering and policy engagement happening at one layer, like at the state level, at the pension level, at the hedge fund level, there are people taking that hockey stick jump that you just described, Michael. so I didn't get to comment on it, but completely agree with your comment earlier, Jesse, like we are living through hyperbicronization. like that net zoom out looking comparing the parking garage conference to the other week in Nashville. It's like, yeah, this is what hyper Bitcoin ization looks like. You don't realize it in the moment, but it's happening. Yeah, it's a necessity to write like us as individuals determined at some point that Bitcoin was the best way for us to protect our purchasing power, grow it over time, protect our families, allow us to have more time to do what we love to do. And at a business level, it's the same case, right? Like how Do you preserve your business over the next 10 or 20 years without Bitcoin because you're constantly going to be under pressure from a depreciating currency? And then it's the same thing, same story with a pension. How do you meet your future liabilities? As we know, underfunded pensions are a major issue in the U .S. and other countries as well. there's a case to be made that Bitcoin is really the remedy and allows for some of these pensions to actually get back to par or at least get closer to par. and actually be able to pay out the obligations that they have to pensioners. In a world where we live in 10 or 20 years from now and these are still massively underfunded pensions, there's going to be, it'll be a very dark place to live in. So whether it's at the individual level, the business, the pension, the nation state, there is an imperative to adopt Bitcoin sooner than later. And as we all know through our respective journeys, some people figure it out sooner than others, but yeah, there's... It's only going to increase kind of regardless of what happens in the elections. There's a need globally for it. Nation states will have to compete for Bitcoin. Businesses will have to compete to stay alive and individuals have to compete against the existing fiat system to preserve and grow their purchasing power. So this is it's all really exciting and Bitcoin at the end of the day is just empowering everyone, individual or institution to really have ownership of their financial future. Brian Cubellis (56:53.309) and mitigate some of the risks that we all know exist within the current framework here. Brian Cubellis (57:01.697) Yeah, and I want to further into, I mean, we touched on earlier, like how receptive would. the federal government be to Bitcoin as strategic asset and actually using it as a tool to help pay down the debt in the long term. And Logan, pull up the chart that I put in the chat. What would initiate that? Like, that's what I wrote my newsletter last week, is I think we're getting to the point where the treasury specifically has to get creative to drive demand for the long end of the curve because as we've mentioned ad nauseum over the last couple years, the weaponization of treasury assets, freezing Russia's assets, and the expansion of the debt happening as rapidly as it is. printed $100 billion or they issued $100 billion in new debt just last week in two days. And a lot of the debt that's being issued by the treasury over the last year, year and a half is bills. They're not issuing 20, 30 year treasuries, which is probably a combination of the fact that they don't want to issue those bonds with interest rates as high as they are. the fact that demand for those long -term bonds is diminished as the uncertainty of the US economic situation increases. And so they have this problem where they need to figure out how to drive demand for the long end of the curve. And the chart that Logan just had up is the treasury buyback schedule. So Yellen, announced, I believe last year, beginning of last year that she was going to open up the treasury buyback window for the first time since 2001. This year, earlier this week, she came out with the schedule. it opens tomorrow, I believe. And so starting tomorrow and throughout the rest of the year, I believe the treasury is going to begin buying back treasuries, which is a sign that demand is extremely weak. Brian Cubellis (59:06.487) from the broader market and the treasury is being forced to step into the market and buy these bonds. so bringing it back to the question of how long will it take for the government to embrace Bitcoin and implement it into strategies to issue and pay off debt, I think it could happen sooner than people realize, especially if we in the industry and others who are talking seriously about potential economic policy. really drive this narrative. like, embrace it as a reserve asset and then figure out a way to get creative with long -term debt issuance to incorporate Bitcoin to increase demand, which is obviously petering out due to everything I mentioned earlier. Brian Cubellis (59:56.555) I mean, it makes sense from a like game theory that majority of the Bitcoin custody is in the US. So we stand to gain from adopting it first, right, and increasing its value just from that alone, right, between Coinbase, the ETF, which is also a scary part about sitting all at coin, if your Bitcoin's at Coinbase, because it's one extension from the government. But to the point of what you're describing, If the majority of it sits here, then our purchasing power increases and we stand in that benefit from an economic perspective. And the other part to your, your thing, Marty, which I think was also really encouraging is like Bailey's been pretty upfront about, I think, grayscale supported, what he did with grayscale and really sparking a lot of that narrative, helped lead him to what he was doing with Trump in the sense of that you can do things, right? It starts with a small idea and you get. the groundswell and other people working with you. And so do your, what you discussed about having these discussions on closed doors is like, the right people in the right store and the right narrative and the right kind of like timing, you can actually, bring these ideas to the, to the right place. So it's not to say it can't happen. just don't know. There's a lot, there. And there's so many, disparate variables that could. really convince people or push people over the line. Micro strategy, perfect example. Like if you just view micro strategy and what they've done over the last four years and you say, all right, that's been pretty successful. Their stock price has gone up significantly, not only in US dollar terms, but it's actually out competed Bitcoin. It's been a creative to shareholders. And it's like, if a publicly traded company can do that, why can't the treasury do that? And that's That's another thing that I think has become crystal clear since Michael Saylor's speech at the conference is really diving into the nature of his strategy. I think the way he described it on stage really made it crystal clear for everybody. He's simply like, we look at the net asset value of the assets on our balance sheet. And if the stock market is putting a premium on those assets, we're just going to issue debt convertible notes or new shares of stock. Brian Cubellis (01:02:16.397) commensurate with that Delta by Bitcoin, which pushes up the book value of our assets on the balance sheet. then the stock market puts a premium on that and it's like rinse and repeat. especially micro strategies. So funny, like you have to say micro strategy strategy, particularly with the convertible bonds. Like you could see a similar strategy deployed with treasury bonds as well via the treasury. Again, like I think one thing that works in the benefit of America is greed and the one to make money and the drive to make money. If you see somebody doing something very successfully for a long enough period of time and you're like, all right, how can I apply that strategy? It's what I'm doing here. Maybe I'm not saying it's foregone conclusion, but I think it's a net positive in terms of, in terms of changing hearts and minds. potentially in government to really get creative with Bitcoin as a reserve asset. it's funny too, because it's almost counter to the people like, why do you want the government to hold Bitcoin? Why do you want the treasury to underlie bonds with Bitcoin? Doesn't that mean that the government's like going to take over Bitcoin? No. Number one, you can't control Bitcoin just because you hold a lot. Number two, actually, do think that this is the way that you decrease the size of the government. You make the government smaller in the long term. Like Alexander Hamilton said, if you're going to issue debt, you need a way to extinguish it. And that's part of the problem that's making the government hyper centralized and it's like metastasizing as this cancer is because they don't have a way to figure out the debt. So they have to issue more and get bigger. And they're sort of caught in this doom loop of needing to get bigger and issue more debt. just to keep the charade going. If you were to inject a solution that provide a way to actually pay off the debt. I think that is, there's a good case to be made that if you introduce that mechanism to the federal government, you actually have an easier path to getting a smaller government in the long run. It's fascinating what you just back, you backed into is what we talked about with Joel. Brian Cubellis (01:04:40.277) Remember we were talking about Wyoming and the stable coin and then like increasingly you would have to back it with Bitcoin and that would be the seamless transition. kind of before jumping to there when you were talking I was thinking about all the conversations with stables and treasuries and naturally Tether being the 18th larger like this is actually how you transition. You keep dollar hegemony where you back the back end into BTC. And then over time, like the thing that everybody doesn't get that we probably all hear is that eventually you just end up with sads because it's just not efficient to have two different currencies. Yeah. One thing embedded on all that that I think is hopefully a sign of what's to come in terms of the political narrative around why Bitcoin is a good idea is, you know, last year, RFK spoke at the Bitcoin conference. He'd done his homework. This year, he had gone down the rabbit hole much deeper. And it wasn't actually at the Bitcoin conference, but remarks he made after referred to like why Bitcoin adoption is a good thing for the government. And he cited how Bitcoin makes it hard to pay for war. know, Fiat is based on being able to pay for war by printing money from Vietnam since And he's dead right. And, know, that's kind of the sign of really going pretty far down the rabbit hole to understand how Bitcoin helps make a better world. And I think it's interesting. And I hope this is starts to happen. But I think one of the best things about Trump is that he is rather anti -war. He doesn't want the U .S. to be engaging in needless spending and and death. And if he goes down the rabbit hole enough to start to understand the Bitcoin makes war untenable or less tenable, that could be very appealing to him and to whatever portion of the country cares about that. And that could be a part of the political narrative of why Bitcoin adoption is a desirable thing for Brian Cubellis (01:07:01.877) at the government level, you know, if you have politicians who are against the, the military industrial complex as, as Trump has been, and I know those are kind of few and far between, but I hope that that's a sign of what's to come with, you know, Trump is clear. It's clear he's early in the rabbit hole and RFK has had more time and gone much further. And hopefully Trump finds that portion of the rabbit hole and gets excited about. Bitcoin making war too expensive. And that could be part of why Republicans or maybe it's Democrats. But at this point, Republicans are less pro -war than Democrats. So maybe that becomes part of the rationale for adopting Bitcoin at a nation state level. Yeah, Marty, that was like the big white pill with Trump. And I don't know anything about Vance, but the understanding is Teal and Vivek and these like tech entrepreneurs are part of backing them. It's this notion of A, they're creators, not destroyers without getting into politics, like creating, you know, better than destroying or providing value to the world. But the second part was that, so the creators, they value competency and anybody that's heard anything about Trump's campaigns, that they're very small, but insanely efficient. really competent, just they run almost like a tech startup effectively. And to Jesse, what Jesse's describing, it's like, they get all the ways that you want to build, be efficient. Well, it's one step removed from Bitcoin just making sense there, right? And I think that's part of the whole thing that just gives hope for if that's who's in his corner. And that's what that camp wants is to be competent, be efficient, to grow, to build, to excel. It's fundamentally different than everything we've seen the past four. eight, you know, 20 plus years, probably anytime that we've been alive, which is, you know, very hopeful. If he can win and then that's where we go. Obviously like we're all pretty, you know, jaded and everything politicians say and what's promised, but it's kind of like, you kind of, you want the team that's backing your, your version of the world, or at least where you're building towards. Brian Cubellis (01:09:22.955) Yeah, you want competent people in positions of power, particularly when the stakes are as high as they are right now. Where you look at the world, whether it's from a geopolitical perspective, a financial perspective, a social cohesion perspective, you want competent people there that understand and are forward thinking. And again, We don't like to get political, but I think it's just blatantly obvious that one side is more forward thinking, especially in regards to Bitcoin and its position in the future of America compared to the other. Regardless of what happens in the election, Bitcoin is going to succeed long -term, but I do think we do have a critical juncture here coming up in November where it could really decide how hard it's going to be for the industry specifically. It comes to asset appreciation. I don't think one side winning over the other is really going to affect that because it's a global phenomenon. There are going to be decisions to expand the monetary base and issue more debt that are going be tailwinds for the price of Bitcoin, but whether or not the industry is able to really go after its goals and build without a the overarching thought of, I going to get arrested for trying to build this company? That's where I think that's the unanswered question that we'll find the answer to when the election is over. I'm hopeful though. I'm hopeful. think people are beginning to wake up and if we'd keep doing our jobs here, And not only in this show, but other shows and conversations we have off the record and engagements with politicians. I do think we are making progress in terms of opening people's eyes to the potential that Bitcoin provides them because we have massive problems that need to be fixed and Bitcoin is a potent tool to begin fixing those problems. Marty, I don't know if you've seen on LinkedIn, but we talked, Jesse brought up hyper Bitcoinization. Brian Cubellis (01:11:42.701) It's very like niche, but what hypervicanization looks like is 30 plus year business professionals, Wall Street professionals on LinkedIn with a show talking only about Bitcoin and callers shirts. Like it's something that sounds very simple, but like it's just never been done. We normally have, I'm obviously bringing up wake up call and Rich and Mark. Yeah. mean, Rich is a perfect example of like, that's the white pill. Like somebody like Rich coming, working for OnRam. wearing Bitcoin on a sleeve and going out there and being the bridge between the world he came from and the world we're heading into. That's just one example of many that probably already exist and will only grow in number moving forward. Because everybody knows a deep down. Everybody understands that things are structurally broken. You can feel it intuitively. You can feel it in the vibe, in the air. There's a lot of uneasiness out there because something is wrong. Some people are more perceptive and understand that it's really an economic and monetary problem and do want to find solutions. And once they recognize that Bitcoin is solution, Rich is a perfect example. It's like, you drop everything you're doing, you go work on the solution. It's funny that the, coming here on this with your last pod with us for, on a consistent basis, but This notion of, think you talked about it recently, those two studies, and Jesse will know the studies exactly with like the classroom where 15 people are facing the opposite way and then one person faces, or like when they go to sit down, that person faces the wrong way against the board. And then there's another version of it. There's another version, but basically like psychologically, like we want to adapt or go with the crowd. And what you just described is we're increasingly seeing by the discourse happening, people feel more confident in opting out. and saying, wait, this doesn't make sense. I'm ready to like make the leap into the new world. And I think that only increases once that installed base is there via conversations like this, it just reinforces until you only need a certain amount. And then the flywheel just takes off itself. Yeah, it's the meme of the guy dancing in the field by himself. And in that three minute clip, the whole field is dancing. We're probably like three people dancing right now. Everybody's looking at us like, hey, they're having fun. Brian Cubellis (01:14:00.781) They're having fun, they're making money. Let me join that party. Yeah. And crucially in that example, you're past the, you've de -risked it. You're past like the peak chance of its failure, which is one weird guy dancing alone forever. And now we have some sort of critical mass of like, that is fun. And people have acknowledged collectively that that is a good idea. you know, and then people want to be a part of it. And we're at that point now. So very exciting place to be. Brian Cubellis (01:14:39.265) Gentlemen. This was a great conversation. Yeah. Yeah, what? This was a good one. Good one. Send you off. see. Jackson race. Got big shoes to fill, Marty. You know, it's it's kind of a surreal position to be in. I'm obviously very grateful to you over the years, having been a very instrumental part of my personal Bitcoin journey. Obviously a lot of common connections here in the Philadelphia area and. to think that I had the opportunity to meet you back in 2018 and now be able to try to step into the big shoes and take on the podcast. It's quite a journey to be here today. So thanks for everything that you've done for me. Yeah, well, as a fellow prep brother, I'm very proud that you're the one filling in the shoes here. And it's not filling in. It's not like I'm going off to war and never going to talk to you guys again. So for context here, I've got is the main priorities for me, 1031 TFTC, picking up. We've hired a couple people at TFTC and we're really throwing gas on the fire to blow up that media company. 1031, similar situation, things are getting very busy in a good way. And I've just got to, particularly hiring people at TFTC, I've got to make sure that I am focused on. making sure that they came onto the right company and are happy with their leader. So it's a time management thing, but like you said, it's not the last time I will be floating in and out when I can. And it's been an incredible year. think we started this, what, in May of last year? what did I tell you guys in the beginning? Consistency is key. If I'm gonna come on and do this, we gotta do it every week. Brian Cubellis (01:16:40.353) which we have, I think maybe minus one or two weeks, to see where not only the show, but the on -ramp family has an on -ramp as a company has come in a year and two months since we started this podcast. It's pretty crazy. Like everything that's happening. You've got a on -ramp Mena. You've got, you're pulling people in from Charles Schwab. The product has adapted and launched extremely quickly. again, OnRamp is echoing the hyper Bitcoinization. If you zoom out and put things in perspective, it's pretty crazy how far everything's come in a very short amount of time. Yeah, we appreciate you. The commitment week over week, it's a lot to jump on and talk about this stuff, but couldn't have thought of anybody better to join when we started. and the, yeah, the, the year that's been year, two months, the amount of things we talked about, like, think, and we have like five podcasts. I can't even keep track anymore. have this, new space of stuff going with global macro and the MENA region, Latin America with Peruvian bull and Mark Connors is really exciting. so hopefully we can collaborate and get some of this stuff on your site. And obviously the. being a leader, it's important to make sure the focus is there and that the commitments there so completely make sense that you have to get the bandwidth down. But we hope we can pull you away, you know, once a month or once every quarter to come to maybe we'll get a little bit on the edge on the fringes and we'll talk a little bit more. think Jackson's gonna have a little more buttoned up and polished when it comes to the institutional side of things. Yeah, I mean, whenever Whenever you have like directed energy weapons going off at some point, some place in the world or interdimensional demons that are breaking through the third wall, we say, hey, I'm here. Okay. Yeah. And if we don't even record, if you need that in your life, you just go to tftc .io and it'll be right there ready for you. Marty Jones came out at the Zach Bryan concert last night. It raining in Philadelphia, pouring rain. He went on late. Brian Cubellis (01:18:56.781) Marty Jones ripped off his shirt, bare -backed it for the whole show. was... Yeah, Logan, can you put up the picture I just put... No, I'm just kidding. I woke up to a text of Marty's shirtless at 5 a So that was his... I think that was his... He was channeling this pod last night, Yeah. Awesome, Marty. I know you got to go, but one last thing. That concert gave me hope in America last night. It was sold out show. He's an incredible lyricist, credible writer. I don't know, there was just a vibe. was kids, families, it's like wholesome music, was people having fun. It was an impassioned artist with a connection. I don't know if you know the backstory, but he's got a very intimate connection with Philly, having lived there for five years, boy from Oklahoma. it was just, I don't know, the juxtaposition of that concert with the Kamala Harris VP announcement in the same city was very stark last night. it was, I don't know, it gave me hope. America's still got it. It's super important to get that juxtaposition when the timing makes sense for anybody listening. remember 2020, everybody's saying all the craziness of COVID and it took my wife to a Texas A Alabama conference with your brother actually, and they stormed the field. A beat number one, Bama, and they stormed the field and it was all over the press like crazy Texans are all together storming the field and she like, it was a complete like. 180 on like the whole scenario of what was going on because everybody was okay. Everyone was fine. Everyone was together. There was no, you know, mass. So I think those those time those things are important to all get together. And so that's cool that Zach Ryan did that. Yeah. We've got a lot to be hopeful for. That's right. Between Bitcoin and pendulum swinging in America around a return to rationality and family values too. It does feel like, you know, there's a saying from a very wise man, think summarizes it nicely here. We're going to win. We're going to win. And that will end it on that. Godspeed, See you guys.