The Last Trade E078: Securing Six-Figure Bitcoin with Bram Kanstein

Jackson Mikalic (00:03.528) All right, welcome back to The Last Trade. We got an interesting one for you this week. We have Brian Cabellus, OnRamp's Chief Strategy Officer, joining us. And then we have Bram Kahnstein, who recently joined as Head of Growth at OnRamp. He's also the host for Bitcoin for Millennials. And also joined by Kam Shromy, my deputy on the private wealth side of the business. Kam is really the one who's taking care of our clients. thinking through the strategy. How do we continue to stay leaders in the Bitcoin custody and financial services space? So gentlemen, it's great to have you on today. Kim, Brahm, thanks for joining. How are the two of you doing? Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (00:46.476) excited we're alive so happy to finally have joined you guys happy to collaborate on building out this company and getting more people into Bitcoin so I'm very excited Cam (00:47.757) Great. Jackson Mikalic (01:00.755) Awesome. Cam (01:00.986) Normally I go to the gym at the night, but I got up really early this morning to make sure I got in a good session just to make sure that all the neurons are firing, so I'm ready. Jackson Mikalic (01:10.332) Excellent. Well, thank you gentlemen. Appreciate you guys jumping on. Tough to coordinate three time zones. So thanks for everyone being flexible in your schedules today. Brahm, how about we kick it off to you first? So you recently joined OnRamp. We've been working with you though as partners on the Bitcoin for Millennials show. OnRamp's been sponsoring your show for several months now. And I've had the pleasure of getting to know you over the course of the year as the team, but it's great to formally welcome you to the OnRamp team. If you don't mind, I know you've been on the show before. I'm sure some of the folks are familiar with your podcast as well, but could you just give a couple minutes on your background, why Bitcoin is such a focal point for you in your life, both personally and professionally now, and what are you hoping to bring to the table for the OnRamp team? Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (01:58.69) Yeah, well, thanks again. As I said, I'm super excited. think, you know, quick summary on my background. I kind of always say that like in the past 10, 12 years, I've seen the development and growth of digital businesses and tech companies from a lot of different angles. So I'm really interested in creating structure in the initial. kind of like chaos of any company that's starting up, right? Or early companies, mainly when people start out, it's hustling, right? You're trying to get the word out, trying to get your proposition out, trying to find people that could become interested in what you do, follow you, or become customers, clients, users, know, whatever you're building. And yeah, I love that initial period, but I also know that, yeah, in order to... eventually get to a scalable company, you have to create a certain type of structure, to keep doing what has been working and besides that also start experimenting with what might be working and taking along all the learnings and insights that you got from that hustle phase. So transitioning from kind of like a broad attention to more narrow focusing on Yeah, heightened execution and moving towards sustainable growth. Yeah, I've seen that process from many different angles. So from a VC investment side, I've had my own growth marketing agency build a lot of my own ideas. A lot of them failed, some worked out and got acquired. And I've also worked for, I think a total of like three years in traditional finance in kind of like, I'll do air quotes. innovation in banking at one really big bank and one really big insurance company. And the reason why I wanted to do that was, yeah, just to see, for one, just to experience, you know, what is stratify like, because everyone has an idea about that, I think. But I think it's interesting to have my own experience, but yeah, to see like, okay, my example was always like, yeah, if there's like two or three smart guys in an attic. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (04:20.326) building the best or the coolest digital product ever, then yeah, who kind of cares about that, right? Like the distribution for them is really difficult. Whereas my idea with, well, the bank that I eventually worked at, they have 3 million customers. I was like, well, the distribution is infinite in a sense. Like you can create all these segments of the customers that you have based on your insights. But then the question is, yeah, how do you stay kind of like lean, mean or nimble? and build and iterate in small steps within a big company that's basically all geared towards, yeah, just executing the business model. So I kind of saw like these two, yeah, different approaches to building new business ideas. And I wanted to experience that for myself. And I think I had a interesting experience there. mean, in that time, I was already into bitcoins. I always walked in with my backpack with my little Bitcoin pin. feeling like an infiltrator in a sense. yeah, that experience has really shaped, yeah, also I think partially my understanding of the reason of existence of Bitcoin, why it's kind of like the next big innovation or big technological advancement that we're going through together, like the perfection of money in a sense. And one of my biggest insights was when I worked at this bank, I was 30. I had a mortgage. I was already into Bitcoin. then someone explained, colleague explained fractional reserve banking to me. And I remember that after an hour talking, that really blew my mind. And I walked away from that meeting realizing that, yeah, I had no idea about this system that I was participating in. that really motivated me to go deeper down this. Yeah, what is the rabbit hole called? What is money, finance, economics, value, property, all these things that is the Bitcoin rabbit hole, right? And yeah, those experiences really drove me more towards I'd say like the finance and economics side of Bitcoin and also like the reason of existence of Bitcoin. And I feel that it's a very profound. Cam (06:29.072) Okay. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (06:41.474) invention on one side, right? So Bitcoin itself, I think is an invention, you can call it an invention. It's a combination of technologies that have been researched and worked upon for the past 40, 50 years, maybe even longer, right? If you go back all the way to cryptography, for example. But what it gives us is truly a discovery, right? The absolute digital scarcity, the verifiable digital scarcity of the 21 million. units of Bitcoin is a true discovery like the wheel, you like you do not reinvent the wheel. I had an interesting conversation last week where someone said, well, but NASA is making a wheel, you know, for the Mars Rover or like when it drives on the moon where there's like no air in it, it's like a mesh thing, but it's still a wheel, right? Like the shape is still a wheel. It's a different iteration of the wheel, but it's still a wheel. And I kind of feel like about Bitcoin like that, it's, yeah, it's the absolute digital scarcity. You can only find that once, that shape, that thing, that concept, you can only discover that once. I think that next to helping people understand why Bitcoin has a reason to exist, you know, we can talk about debasement and of the money supply and eventually the inflation of prices, how things get out of reach for people, and especially my focus on millennials is, well, and think you all three can attest to that, the whole story that's been, again, air quotes, like, sold to us, like, how do you build your life and your family and your career and all these things are just, what's been told to us by our parents is now just totally different than the main issue is that money is broken. And I think, yeah, for me, these things coming together made me even more interested in Bitcoin and eventually made me start a podcast and trying to figure out how I can make the switch from the field world into the Bitcoin world. And I'm happy to be here now. So I think that's a quick rundown of my background and current thoughts. Like what are the big teams that I'm looking for? yeah, reason of existence of Bitcoin. I think we need to help people understand that before we can show them. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (09:03.264) what we think is the solution to the mess of the fiat money system. Jackson Mikalic (09:09.651) Yeah, well thanks for that, Brahm. And certainly it's astute observation by you to focus on the millennial cohort. I think in part it's because you are a millennial yourself and that's the frame that you view the world in. But it's also a recognition that Bitcoin is a technology. It's a savings technology. It's a technology that helps you to not get poorer over time from monetary debasement. And so there's a recognition then that this is a technology that is almost an imperative really for millennials to adopt so that they can preserve and grow their wealth over time because what has worked for our parents or our grandparents is no longer an inappropriate or the best or optimal way to preserve and grow wealth over time. as you mentioned Bitcoin is this kind of once in a species discovery. It's a new technology and anyone who does embrace it can have the benefits of that technology and how it improves their life. first and foremost financially, then, Brahm, as you discussed quite a bit on your podcast, there are a lot of different ways that Bitcoin can kind of refocus one's mind or provide new perspectives. And so, Brahm, it's great to have you on the team. think just the proof of work is there as it relates to how incredibly quickly you've grown your podcast. I'm not sure exactly when you started it, if it was like maybe 18 months ago or so, ballpark in that area, but you've seen tremendous growth there and I think it does speak to the unique lens that you bring to the Bitcoin space, all the different experiences you've described, both in traditional finance and larger institutions, but then also being more entrepreneurial minded, helping startups. So it's great to have you on and excited for this conversation today. Cam, if you don't mind, I would love to just have you introduce yourself, get the audience that isn't familiar with you or isn't working with you already on the private well side to get a better understanding of. your background and what you're now doing here at OnRamp as well. Cam (11:10.458) Yeah, thanks Jackson. So I'm our head of private wealth and I've been working. It's kind of crazy to reflect on it now. I've been working in Bitcoin full time for four years now and I still have most of my sanity and you know, it's still very upbeat on a day to day basis, even through the bear market. But it's been, I think it's a big testament to Bitcoin because if I'm kind of sharing a little bit something personally is that typically I've found in my career, I hit a certain level of mastery in whatever Yep. job I had previously and then I kind of get bored and then move on to the next thing. I think that's actually a fairly common trope for Bitcoiners where we're looking for something that is intellectually stimulating. So been fortunate to be able to work in Bitcoin for four years now and meet and work with so many incredible folks, this group included. And I think really when I reflect in what keeps me so interested is the clients I get to work with on a daily basis because there are certain commonalities and I'll share that. talk about those two but everybody's different and then Cam (12:16.998) I get a tremendous amount of fulfillment just getting to work with individuals and families and business owners and helping them to secure their Bitcoin in the best way. I'm further down the funnel from what Bram is referring to. He's certainly right on that most of the cohort in Bitcoin at this point is millennials and he's more helping them to understand philosophically why Bitcoin is important. And then I get to work with folks and help them understand what are the best ways to secure this asset. folks have developed a conviction on Bitcoin, then they have to reach that second part which is, okay, how do I custody this asset? And it's very nuanced and I think the really the approach I try to take is, okay, if you have a hammer everything is a nail and that can be, you know, kind of a natural way for people to approach a situation oftentimes, but more so it's about providing a framework for people of how to think about custody. What are we trying to solve for? What are your pain points? And then, you know, what are the tools out there that can help you? If we're reflecting just generally as a Bitcoin community, I think it's helpful to understand or remember that a tool is only as good as a person's ability to wield that tool. So we can say like this tool is the best, if it's, if it's, it requires a great degree of technical competence, it's not fully form fit for that individual. I grew up hunting, can, there's a lot of analogies you can imagine there where if I say, do you want to come, like Brian, do you want to come duck hunting with me? And you're like, I've never been duck hunting before. I'm like, well, okay, well, do you want a 20 gauge? Do you to use a 12 gauge, semi-automatic, a pump action? Like, I don't know, I'm not really sure. Like, okay, so we're to go in the blind and it's dark and the birds are buzzing by at 65 miles an hour, but don't shoot me and don't shoot John next to us and you'll do great. Cam (14:17.762) really easy. So I think that a lot of times in Bitcoin in our excitement to help people hold the asset in the best way, and we've already done all the work, we can sometimes just overstep or overshoot the technical solution for what we're recommending, despite kind of the best intentions behind that. it's both meeting people where they're at, I'm not dogmatic. know a lot of us here personally, and then a lot of my clients both use self custody and use multi-institution custody. So that's really what I'm kind of driving at. think I'm not, certainly not opposed to self custody. I use it myself and have for many years and so do us on the team. And that's what I really try to impart with a lot of folks. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. when I'm talking with folks who are considering, do I, I've been using self custody for years. Do it, can I really extend trust to three institutions who are holding keys on my behalf? Am I willing to pay for that service? Those are big questions. But then I think with that underlying, you know, kind of premise that they're realizing that the risk always lives somewhere. If the risk is that they're working to mentally extend is to engage with multiple counterparties, well if the risk isn't there today, where is the lie? It lies with that individual and people feel that over time. The really the biggest Challenges that I help clients work through are one, would be inheritance. We're all gonna die. Hopefully we all live long and healthy lives and have a peaceful ending and everything works out well, but life happens in the interim and that's a huge challenge in self-custody. It certainly can be done, but. Cam (16:09.636) I can tell you too, from the thousands of conversations I've had that unfortunately most people haven't done that work. Like that's the last step that people have left off their to-do list is like, man, like I'm young, I'm healthy. I'm a millennial. I'm I'm listening to Brahms podcast. I'm in my thirties. I listened to the Rogan podcast. take all these supplements. I'm super healthy. know, everyone has a positive, optimistic view of their life. Most people, But that's scary part that I've seen over time is people need to develop that inheritance plan because of the truly generational wealth opportunity that Bitcoin affords. Helping people with that discomfort around making a mistake themselves. What I've been finding, especially more recently is people haven't used their keys for a couple of years. Like if they're using it, they've been in self custody, either using one key or multiple. Maybe the last bull run was the last time they really checked their keys. 2021, 2022. You know, you know, it was like when the asset drops 85%, a lot of your brain wants to kind of shut and power that off and you want to focus on some other things because kind of painful to go back to look at this asset class that's down so much, even if you know it will recover. cover and where it's going the long term. So it's just amazing and it's disheartening to see how many errors come up when people are trying to use their keys again. So they go to sign for a transaction and the keys just don't work. And if I'm working with them, they're soliciting my help, know, 30, 45 minutes, we'll work through it and I will help them to figure it out. But through that process you realize too, all of the assumed knowledge that I have built up and that I'm assuming that they have or that they use or have self custody because you're coordinating hardware, the hardware wallets, you're coordinating the firmware, you're coordinating the software that's being used to manage the wallet, you're coordinating your computer, you're coordinating the browser on your computer. Sometimes the accessories like the Trezor cable is notorious for just being poor quality like right out of the Cam (18:23.094) a certain percentage of those just don't work. So if it's someone who's newer and jumping in, there's a lot that they're gonna need to know, like what steps would you even take to resolve this issue? it's not necessarily critical or one that they can't solve for, but if you don't even know where to start and all of sudden you're interacting with Bitcoin and the Bitcoin tools that you were told were kind of the end all be all, You're really in a rock and a hard place at that point because you know Coinbase or a single institution is not a good place to keep it. But now you're feeling incredibly uncomfortable because you're trying to deal with new tooling. So I could talk about this all day. This is what I do talk about all day, but it's really helping people to work through, understand where they're at, providing them a framework and then helping to make recommendations based on what they're trying to solve for. Jackson Mikalic (19:18.58) Yeah. It's a great point, Cam. I really appreciate you sharing your background because I've witnessed it firsthand and you have to be one of the best in the business as it relates to helping people work through those discomforts. You know, we've been on calls together before where as you have described, people have all sorts of firmware issues, the keys aren't working, they haven't touched them in a while. And this happens to very savvy people and it also happens to your point people who maybe only have used their keys a handful of times, right? And so I have to say that just your technical acumen and also the way that you manage your client relationships just makes you so well suited to take care of those people. And I've just been so impressed with the work that you've done since we've been working together now for quite a while here at OnRamp. And I want to take a step back to like the hidden hidden risks of custody because right now we are at about $98,000 per Bitcoin. So we're over six figures. We had our celebration and now we're back to five figure Bitcoin and it feels a little sad. But even though we're not at six figure Bitcoin, I think it's worth kind of framing a discussion around that because we're still up over the week about $3,000 at the time we're recording. Brian Cubellis (20:28.514) You Jackson Mikalic (20:39.68) We reached an all time high of nearly $104,000. And so this is the end of 2024. Got a couple of weeks left in the year. The four of us plus most folks, think, listening to this podcast are quite excited about what could happen in 2025 with the price of Bitcoin adoption. Will we see sovereigns step into the ring? Will we see more public companies adopt Bitcoin on the balance sheet? So I'll open up now this discussion to the group. Any thoughts here just in the past week we saw the price action and you know what are some thoughts that you guys have with six figure Bitcoin going into next year? What are some of the catalysts you're paying attention to any any news that you saw maybe in the past week or so that was caught your eye or got you excited? Brian Cubellis (21:25.974) Yeah, bunch of thoughts. Thanks, Jackson. Before that, though, just want to reiterate, super excited to have Bram finally aboard the on-ramp team. Been super impressed with him over the past 12 to 18 months that I've first followed him on Twitter, listened to his pod, and then gotten to know him over the past several months. So we're lucky to have him on board. And he brings just a wealth of knowledge and really is able to distill. a lot of Bitcoin-centric topics to a wide audience of, goes beyond just millennials as we've discovered. He has an audience across various age cohorts. So super excited to have Bram on board and always nice to have Cam on the pod. We should mention Cam is sitting in for Michael Tanguma, our CEO and co-founder, who's actually out in Abu Dhabi right now for the Bitcoin MENA conference. And so maybe we could start there. in terms of lots of bullish conversations happening in that region right now. And I've seen some various clips from yesterday was the first day of the conference, think the second day is today. And on-ramp, Mina is hosting a side event out there today. lots of interesting takeaways, think just, I guess it was roughly a week ago that we... surpassed 100 and are now just sort of oscillating around that six figure number. It's interesting to see sort of just reactions to the volatility that in my mind, like we should all be comfortable at this point, but like, you know, the drop from, guess, when we were in the low hundreds, I think it was the fastest. maybe like five minute candle or the largest five minute candle in Bitcoin's history, either up or down. And I think it was down like $6,200 in five minutes. And I guess if I'm being honest, for a newcomer, that could be pretty scary if you're not familiar with this asset and this type of volatility. But for people that have been in it a while, like it does still surprise me that people are, you know. Brian Cubellis (23:44.994) buying into various pieces of FUD. We've got a whole new slew of quantum FUD that came around the past couple days. We're just sort of recycling the quantum FUD. It's been around a decade. Obviously, there's new developments in terms of quantum computing that are taking place. But from my cursory understanding of quantum computing, I think we're still a ways away from that being a real theoretical concern for cracking any of Bitcoin's encryption. But it's just you see these things time and again, and then that leads to the volatility rearing its head again. And I think for folks like us, it's easy to see through that. But I do worry about people that are new to this space, particularly on the institutional side, who are seeing this type of volatility in the asset that they're probably not familiar with in other assets. And that's when it all comes back to the education and understanding like you need to have a long term view on this thing. I think unfortunately, there's I mean, fortunately or fortunately, unfortunately, there's still a ton of short term folks in the Bitcoin space, right? Like because of the volatility, you have people who want to trade this thing. Like that is sort of an inherent truth of the market structure today in that because it's very volatile, you're going to have a lot of short term oriented traders who are in the market. And what that ends up doing is at times exacerbating that volatility. So if you have a longer term view, you can kind of just chill, sit back and stack more sats when the market gives you the opportunity. But yeah, it's been a fascinating couple of weeks, breaching that psychological barrier and now sort of oscillating around it and trying to, I guess, of handicap how much consolidation is needed before next leg hire. Hard to say. There's been some good on-chain analysis from the likes of Checkmate on Twitter, who's fantastic on the on-chain side, as well as James Von Stratton, who we had on a couple weeks ago on the show. But putting out some good data and metrics around, know, things are heating up slightly in terms of on-chain metrics, but nothing... Brian Cubellis (26:03.586) too overheated that would suggest this is a top or anything, but just that this is a natural point of consolidation and a little bit of sideways movement as some much longer term holders do take some profits. And this happens every cycle and should be expected and honestly is healthy for the network as long term holders distribute those coins to newer holders. So those are my brief thoughts, but I'll open it up to the group. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (26:32.192) Yeah. I'll go ahead. Jackson Mikalic (26:32.221) Yeah, appreciate that, Brian. So, yeah, I think one thing that's always worth mentioning is that there are still a lot of people, to Brian's point, who take a very short term view on Bitcoin and that tends to lead to volatility. So I think that price candle that you mentioned, Brian, was that there were just a ton of liquidated levered longs. So we got through the 100K wall and people, I guess, thought that Bitcoin is going to continue to rip to the upside. There was some selling pressure and then a ton of longs got liquidated and it resulted in Bitcoin's price dropping by $6,000 in less than 10 minutes. So that's not a reflection on Bitcoin as an asset class or store value. It's just a reflection of people's emotions and how people are looking to trade an asset. And I think the same is true. It's always worth going back to 2022 where it was just a disaster of a year for the industry. You had all sorts of You had all sorts of really poor risk management and even outright fraudulent or illegal activity in the market. And so that is not a reflection of what individual investors like the four of us or our listeners or institutional investors, that's not a reflection of how most people are thinking about Bitcoin as an investable opportunity. It's actually the exact opposite, right? Because Cam mentioned that inheritance is the, if not number one, number two problem that most people are worried about and thinking about. And that's because they view Bitcoin as not something that they're going to take a 50X levered position on and trade for the next five days. They're viewing it as an investment for their family for the next 50 years, right? Or maybe longer, right? People have a very multi-generational investment thesis around Bitcoin. And so that's fundamentally how people should be thinking about it because if you add a little bit of Bitcoin to your portfolio, you should be at least willing to hold the investment for more than four years because of the cycles and everything that we've continued to discuss and the industry's been talking about. So I think it's always worth pointing that out that there's the reflection or short-term volatility is not a reflection of Bitcoin's merits as an investable asset or its monetary properties. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (28:48.802) Yeah, I mean, this show is called The Last Trade, right? I think that's how we all view it. It's The Last Trade because, yeah, I think we should primarily look at Bitcoin as a wealth preservation tool, right? It's a savings technology. But because it's the most superior savings technology, it will also grow your wealth because more and more people will move into this asset to... use it as their primary savings technology, right? And it will devalue. I think that's the bigger theory, right? Or conceptually the idea, it will devalue or at least bring other assets to a more fair valuation in terms of price than the inflated prices that you see now. And so I think... talking about debt, connecting back to what I mentioned in my intro about the reason of existence, right? Like why do you need a savings tool? Right? Why is this the best savings technology? Well, it's because the, you know, using money as savings, as we were all taught again, you know, that just doesn't work anymore. And so I think that is the bigger idea that we should tell people about, right? It's superior savings technology. And yeah, if you're still trading Bitcoin, you're betting with it, gambling with it up or down, doesn't really matter, then yeah, it shows that you still don't view it like that. And of course there's different risks with playing with Bitcoin like that than just basically buying and holding and using it as that savings technology. So I think that's what we are seeing in the market with. with the price and yeah, of course there are some people that pay attention to it. I mean, it's also the only 24 seven 365 market in the world. So I mean, if you like playing around trading it, then yeah, it's the most perfect asset to do that with. So I think we'll keep seeing that. But in terms of, you know, talking about price fluctuations and stuff like that, think Jackson, what you said, just looking at it on a longer timeframe, you know, the trend is up. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (31:05.664) because I think we talk about this a lot, Bitcoin is an individual kind of like mind virus. You have to study and understand this reason of existence about money and the debasement, et cetera, and then eventually why this is a better savings technology. So over time, more people store their economic energy in this asset and the price goes up. But I'd rather say that the... It's not the price, it's more like an exchange rate, right? Like, so a few years ago, you needed $4,000 units to buy one Bitcoin unit, and now you need $100,000 units to buy one Bitcoin unit, and you need one unit to get $100,000 units. And then just ask yourself the question, like, which one is valued more? And once you understand that trend and what you can use Bitcoin for, that is, I think, the main use case that we should... keep talking about. mean, we can talk about the day to day, but that's of course short term. I think when we see those discussions, we can also help people to get onto kind of like that longer timeframe track and show them, yeah, how to kind of broaden the scope of time. Jackson Mikalic (32:17.395) Yeah. Absolutely. so who is not trading Bitcoin? Who is viewing it as a long-term savings technology? Well, there was this news that came out earlier this week where the National Center for Public Policy Research submitted a shareholder proposal to amazon.com for its consideration at the 2025 annual shareholder meeting and the request that was the board assess adding Bitcoin to the company's treasury. So We should definitely talk about this. I read through it right before we hit the record button this morning and a couple of things caught my eye. One, there was an acknowledgement that CPI is a remarkably poor measure of inflation. So they mentioned in this assessment that over the last four years, according to CPI, was about 5 % peaking at 9.1 % in June 2022. but there is an acknowledgement that the true inflation rate is significantly higher than that with some studies estimating it to be nearly double the CPI at times. So this is an acknowledgement that if you're a company and you're leaving cash or short-term securities as part of your treasury strategy, we understand that there's good reason for that in terms of meeting any working capital requirements and having the ability to get liquidity, but... The downside of that, of course, is that you're losing your purchasing power over time. Your purchasing power is being rapidly eroded by the expansion of the money supply and by deficit spending. And so what this assessment suggested was that Amazon consider allocating 5 % of its balance sheet to Bitcoin. Jackson Mikalic (34:06.908) Or more than that. So there's an acknowledgement now by shareholders. And of course, there's mentions of MicroStrategy and other companies executing a, or adding Bitcoin to their treasury strategy and how that has been very creative to shareholders. So now we're seeing larger companies start to have to consider this shareholders putting this in front of them. And so I think this is going to, if it's not priced in already, it's going to be priced in in the coming months where we're going to start to see some of the largest companies in the world acknowledge that they need to do something about their massive stockpile of cash and continue to outperform their peers, right? And so MicroStrategy has been the best performing stock in the last four years. And why is that? Well, it's because that they're doing something called a creative dilution. They're issuing more debt and equity to the market and they're buying the most digitally scarce form of capital, which is Bitcoin. And so this is a really exciting development. I think we will see more of this. Brian, I lifted this chart from the newsletter that you put out last week and it just shows that Bitcoin was and still is the seventh largest asset in the world. And so it has a couple of numbers here, but essentially Bitcoin from 109k to 186 thousand dollars per Bitcoin will surpass Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple. So maybe this kind of ties into that. shareholder proposal, right? And the idea that companies will need to start considering Bitcoin on the balance sheet. What do you guys think about that? Brian Cubellis (35:41.779) Yeah, absolutely. I I love this very simple top assets by market cap ranking. think, you know, it's it's similar to the the meme of the Grim Reaper knocking on next door like of the price targets 60k 70k 80k. Like this is the same idea of like Google's the next door, Amazon's next door, Microsoft's next door. And the you know, with regard to the shareholder proposal for Amazon, this is just corporate game theory playing out in real time. This is all we expected to occur. The dominoes are falling. In this particular case, it's Amazon and Microsoft who I believe is voting on the proposal, maybe today, to add Bitcoin to their balance sheet. Those two companies, two of which are still above Bitcoin in terms of market cap, are considering adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet. So that's a signal that they might be looking at this same chart and saying, perhaps the only way we don't get caught by Bitcoin here is by embracing Bitcoin and adding it to our balance sheet. So I think it's fascinating, but expected to some extent. And I think that this ranking, this list has a mimetic quality to it. in the sense that I think this is going to be top of mind as this bull run plays out as it passes each of these companies. And then once it passes Apple above 186 per coin, which I think is relatively achievable, I think that's on the low end of people's sort of base case for what Bitcoin could do this cycle, then it's number two, behind gold. And I think that that will have a profound effect on how the average person views Bitcoin. They've almost certainly heard that Bitcoin is digital gold, but they probably didn't believe it until it was actually almost as large as gold. And then I think it will click in some people's minds like, this is actually competing against gold. And then if they actually want to put in some work and study the asset, they'll understand why it's actually superior to gold in so many ways. And its full potential market cap could be many, many multiples larger than gold. Brian Cubellis (38:04.993) over time. But yeah, think this is a fascinating one. It's exciting to see the news around Amazon. Shout out to our boy Tim Cotsman for breaking that yesterday. But yeah, pretty exciting. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (38:20.598) Yeah, I have two things to add to that. love what you said, Brian, about, you know, it's kind of also about the narrative or understanding, you know, combining narrative with hard data, you know, and again, how we grew up. If you want to store value, right? Like what are the things that are valuable? We learned gold and silver. You know, we all learned that. But now the narrative has changed. You just showed the chart, right? Brian Cubellis (38:41.995) Mm-hmm. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (38:47.916) gold and silver, that's wrong. You should say gold, Bitcoin, and then silver. already that narrative changing, I find very interesting, right? Because, and again, especially also for like our generation or maybe a little bit older when you have children, this is what we will tell our children, right? So this is already going to happen. This narrative is already changing towards the future. And I think when you start thinking about Bitcoin at Yeah, kind of like a higher level like that. You know, if you use it as a savings technology to create less uncertainty towards your future and eventually save your family's economic energy in that. And of course, you you can use on-ramp to make sure that the children of your children will eventually get that Bitcoin, right? If you start looking at that from a timeframe like that, you just see that the concept of Bitcoin will keep permeating in just amongst people, but also that the narrative is going to change and that eventually, yeah, what do you need if you want to preserve wealth? Well, it's going to be gold, Bitcoin and silver. And maybe in 10 years, it's going to be Bitcoin, gold and then silver, right? And if we think about like that timeframe, I just looked up how much cash Amazon has and it's interesting they mentioned CPI, right? So I just found a little calculator to do some quick quick maths, but if they have $88 billion cash on hand and you work with a 7 % inflation rate, which I think is very, very conservative, right? In real terms, after 10 years, that $88 billion is $42 billion, $42.5 billion. So you lose more than half of your purchasing power from that cash over 10 years. And then if we take 5%, right, you said Jackson, think that's the proposal. So we take 4.4 billion. Well, let's make it four, let's round it down, right? And then take 29 % Keger, that's the thesis of Michael Saylor, right? Side step, I think that's very important for people to understand that that is what he's basing all of his actions on, right? His thesis is. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (41:07.394) 29 % CAGR over the next 21 years. Let's say we take that over the next 10 years, then 4 billion will turn into 51 billion. so instead of losing 44 billion, you can earn 47 billion if you adopt Bitcoin with 5 % of the cash that you have on hand. I mean, I don't know if anyone has a rebuttal to that, but I think that's pretty clear. Brian Cubellis (41:34.401) It's pretty clear the only game is to play It's it's Jackson I'm glad you called out the CPI note in that proposal because it's nice to see some some normalization of questioning government data if you will and and having a real conversation around you know, this isn't the true rate of monetary debasement. It's just not. People feel that when they go to the grocery store. They feel it when they're paying for college or healthcare expenses. And so it's this sort of ultimate form of gaslighting that's existed for some time now. So it's nice to see some normalization of just at least having a conversation around, what's the true rate of debasement here? And yeah, that's some great, some great back of the envelope math there, Bram. think every single corporate boardroom, I think is doing that exact math on an envelope or on a napkin in the boardroom. And if they're not, then they should be because this is the reality of what's occurring and in the process of playing out. you know, if you have the, if you have the Amazons and the Microsofts of the world, at least starting to have a conversation. that allows every company to have the conversation. Because if it was just Sailor, if it was just some small companies that were doing this, you could still have the Fiat Air cover effectively to say, we don't need to worry about it. It's just a small company. It's just small countries like El Salvador that are doing this. With the Amazons of the world at least discussing it, That really opens sort of the Overton window, shifts it materially, and allows these conversations to permeate across market cap size. And the other component of that too is like the United States government also contemplating it, right? Like that is even larger sort of air cover to have these conversations, question the debasement rate, question whether Bitcoin makes sense for your treasury. And so- Brian Cubellis (43:54.678) There's all these really powerful sort of shifts in the narrative that are occurring sort of all at the same time. And in my view, like, none of this is really priced in. Like, I think the only sort of element that's priced in is, you know, perhaps priced in to some extent is like a friendlier administration now that Trump won. The government buying Bitcoin is not priced in. Like, that is very much still not does not show up in the price today at the 100k. Because if and when that does occur, which depending on who you ask and who you listen to, it seems like it's maybe not a foregone conclusion, but it seems like it's very likely. And if it doesn't happen at the federal level, it's probably even more likely to occur at the state level, which would still be pretty meaningful and is also not priced in. But that will then kick off a real sort of global arms race to accumulate Bitcoin, accumulate hashrate. We already sort of suspect this to be happening, sort of ex-US. I think I mentioned the Bitcoin MENA conference going on right now. I think I saw somebody, a government official or a prince of Serbia basically saying like, yeah, there's multiple countries over here that have been accumulating Bitcoin. They're just doing it behind closed doors. They're obviously not. being super public about it, which again, from a game theory perspective, makes total sense. Why would you tell someone out in the open that you're accumulating the finite asset that is Bitcoin? It would behoove you to establish a position, a material position before publicly stating that to the market. So I think it's reasonable to assume that various countries around the world have not only done the math that you elucidated, Bram, but They've also just looked around and seen the various discussions occurring at both the government and corporate level and said, you know, we've got to do something here. Jackson Mikalic (46:05.735) Yeah. Cam (46:06.17) the divergence between retail adoption and then adoption by sovereigns and the largest corporations in the world is also fascinating. You think about two years ago, it was mostly a retail driven phenomenon, still FTX and all these other big brands that dominated kind of the zeitgeist and then collapsed. And I think that has created a lot of overhang for that is keeping retail investors out right now because it is so quiet. Like Brahm, like is it even falling this longer, I had always expected 100k Bitcoin to be this kind of shot heard around the world for every individual to wake up and say, wow, how is this weird internet thing gone from $0 to $100,000? But that's just not the case. Like my conversations day to day are still with individuals that have been around Bitcoin for years and are evaluating CUSSY options. And it's very few new entrants to the market. But at the same time, for exactly the reasons you're saying, Brian, mostly due to game theory that at the highest levels, is already like, we just leapfrog to the very like top bosses of this video game. and certainly you have folks like within Apple that like Tim Cook has said, he's owned it for years. you of course have really smart individuals that understand Bitcoin at the executive level within these organizations. But also I don't think they even need to understand it that well. They just need to understand that like, okay, if we at Microsoft, you know, don't do this, then Facebook. Brian Cubellis (47:13.684) You Cam (47:34.258) is going to do this or if we and Trump has said explicitly, if we and the US don't lead in Bitcoin, then China will. So that's really all you need to know to start taking it seriously, which creates a conversation, which is then it's kind of own self-fulfilling prophecy. So, Bram, is that what you're seeing is the kind of individual investor side still relatively quiet from your network or in Europe? Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (47:57.826) Yeah, well, I mean, people are talking about it. But I think I think two things. Yeah, I agree. When when in 2013, I discovered Bitcoin, I mean, we fantasized about $10,000 and like $100,000 felt like, that's gonna melt the internet, right? Like that the internet's gonna explode when we get to 100k. I honestly feel the the the silence is deafening. You know, like, I mean, we do see it. But I think we need to I mean, people are talking about it, right? And people with opinions come out of the woodworks to talk about it again. But I think we have to realize that we are in just in very, very small bubble. do feel we are still extremely early. think that got reiterated for me when I just realized how much money there is in the world, right? And I mean, Jesse Myers has made a great overview of the full potential value of Bitcoin where it's like this image with the blocks. We are still so early. mean, even at 100k, we are so early. And I feel it's probably going to need to be way higher before people will really start paying attention. Maybe it helps when we pass this 168-ish k. where it's basically just below or in that second place below gold, maybe that helps to change the narrative. On the other side, I do think that a lot of people also really got burned in the last cycle. mean, and that, so the whole FTX debacle, mixing crypto with Bitcoin, I mean, you still see it even in quality news outlets, when they talk about Bitcoin, they say crypto. I think a lot of people got burned by that. just that experience of themselves or other people. also, and maybe that's harsh, but sometimes people reply with this to me on Twitter and they say like, yeah, regular people are broke. You know, like they don't have a lot of money. I mean, in America, the average person doesn't have $500 for an emergency fund. You know, so why would you invest that in Bitcoin? I mean, that makes a lot of sense. But I think that also reiterates the entire reason of existence again for Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (50:20.684) for Bitcoin, know, like we are participating in a financial system that is not designed to work for us as the individual. So I think that strengthens that narrative, but it's also, yeah, a bit of a harsh realization to just realize that, yeah, many people are just surviving in a sense, you know, it's the day to day, month to month survival. And so they don't really have time and space to, yeah, study to get to Bitcoin. So, yeah. Brian Cubellis (50:50.209) I think that's part of it, just to add onto that a little bit. I think there's a few components at play as to why maybe we haven't seen retail come back as strongly as one might have expected at 100K. think part of it is unit bias still definitely exists. I don't know if you guys saw Joe Kernan either yesterday or the day before, who I think is like... Jackson Mikalic (50:50.418) Speak. Brian Cubellis (51:17.921) fairly knowledgeable about Bitcoin, or at least has seemed like he is over the past couple of years, but he was basically saying, that's so expensive, like 100K, that's so expensive for one Bitcoin. And he was sort of insinuating that he didn't realize you could buy fractional pieces of Bitcoin. I don't know if that's actually what he was trying to say, but if someone was listening to that, they may have perceived that it is such that, you gotta buy a full Bitcoin. So I think as silly as it seems, The Bitcoin community and our space in general would like, we need just some like general PSAs about Bitcoin. Like there's only 21 million. They're not making any more of it. The 200 week moving average has never gone down. The 200 week moving average on a chart is not volatile at all. It's just up and to the right. And you can buy, you don't have to buy a full Bitcoin. If more people just knew these simple truths about Bitcoin, I think you'd see much more retail participation. The average person saving whatever they could, even if it's $5, $10 a week or a month, saving in Bitcoin because I think there's just these critical misunderstandings still at this stage. And so that's certainly part of it. The other component in my mind is like, you know, to your point, Bram, like there's a lot of people who just don't have the excess capital to start establishing a meaningful Bitcoin position. So there is this tendency to sort of migrate into the world of like financial nihilism, as I would call it, and say like, I need to just go gamble on meme coins effectively if I ever want to get ahead. And so they perceive Bitcoin, obviously, as something that's important, but that if they ever want a meaningful amount of Bitcoin, they've got to go gamble to get enough money to buy a Bitcoin, basically. So I think there's also a component of that going on where you're totally right that people don't have a lot of excess capital to put into the asset and the capital that they can scrounge up. They're almost more inclined to gamble it on a meme coin because, again, they're still just at the fringe of understanding these things. Brian Cubellis (53:38.347) They're conflating the assets. saying, this is all crypto. Like, I'm just going to gamble on this one because it's much smaller and I'll probably make a lot of money. Maybe I can buy a full Bitcoin. So I think it's the confluence of those things that maybe we haven't seen as much retail participation just yet. The cycle. I also think the retail participation maybe just looks different, right? Because this is something we've talked about in recent months, Jackson, with like 13 F filings in the ETFs. Like a lot of the early buyers of the ETS were what you would call, quote unquote, retail buyers, not necessarily institutional or sovereign or corporate. So maybe the retail buyer just looks a little bit different than it did in prior cycles. It's folks buying the ETF through their brokerage account. But yeah, combination of factors, I think. Jackson Mikalic (54:27.295) There's also the flute. Cam (54:27.91) to that too, Brian, when we were in Dallas recently, so that's kind of the other end of the spectrum for the retail investor. The meetings we had with individuals who are worth 50, 100, hundreds of millions of dollars, very sophisticated, own multiple businesses, they're paying attention a little bit. Some knew where the price was, some were like, it was more like, congratulations, Bitcoin was at $90,000 at that point. I missed that trade. but they also didn't seem too concerned about the trade that they had missed. So then there's still education there to be done, which is unintuitive that this is not a trade that this is superior technology that everyone will adopt on some sort of timeline. And that is really hard to grab. for folks like that, I think they're still in their daily routine of watching CNBC, following Nvidia, following the hottest trends of the day, or just kind of the framework that they're more used to evaluating. not still quite sure how to evaluate this Bitcoin thing. know, like one said, well, I just can't get my head around how Bitcoin can be money. You know, you're saying it's better money. It's money. We use that term, but it looks nothing like what we perceive as money where you're using that to transact and it's like relatively stable and boring. So just a lot of work there to be done even with very high net worth individuals and sophisticated individuals as well. Jackson Mikalic (55:55.517) Yeah. And so one thing I definitely want to touch on is, Bra mentioned earlier, there are some harsh realities in this space. And then it also kind of ties into the unit bias in a different way of a hundred thousand dollar Bitcoin. that's having a real conversation about securing six figure Bitcoin. So I saw this tweet that was put out, might've been sometime last week by Oliver Velez and It's kind of twofold. He's taking a break from Twitter, I think, permanently. And that's part of him wanting to reduce his online profile and an acknowledgement that he thinks in 2025 Bitcoin will become the most valuable asset on Earth outside of gold. So it ties into our conversation earlier. He expects Bitcoin to continue to appreciate and to be the second most valuable asset following gold. So that puts Bitcoin somewhere around 200,000 to $900,000. And so Even goes as far to say, could topple gold. We'll see about that. It's very bullish. But either way, the point is he's tying this into how he thinks about his personal security and managing the asset himself. And this is really something that anyone who has a material allocation of Bitcoin, if you're not thinking about this already, you really need to be. And so his point is that when Bitcoin is six figures or it is the third, second most valuable asset on earth, people are going to have a target on their back. And no one wants to talk about this. I don't like to think about it either because we're all public in the space. And so we naturally will have targets on our backs by being publicly involved in the Bitcoin industry. And that's just a fact of the matter. So what we really need to figure out as an industry, and this is a large part in why OnRamp it exists, is we need better forms of custody and we need ways to protect our assets. protect our families, protect ourselves. And so this is going to be a really big issue. I hate to admit that and I don't want to seem like I'm spreading FUD because for a while I actually did think that physical attacks and threats were FUD. But we've been having more conversations. I've spoken to people who in some cases have been impacted directly but more so have heard of people or have read stories about people like even Jackson Mikalic (58:23.015) In the United States, mean, the three of us are based in the U.S. here and there's been, over the course of the past couple of years, organized crime to target Bitcoin and crypto holders. this is something nobody wants to think about, but it's something that everybody needs to think about at the same time. And so if we're actually going to make a decision to park a considerable amount of our wealth in Bitcoin for our families or for our business, et cetera, we need to really think about how do we secure it. So... What do you guys think about this? Am I being hyperbolic in terms of how I'm reacting to this or do you guys generally agree with this being a big issue? Brian Cubellis (59:00.481) It's a huge issue and I think part of it for me is I've always found it surprising or at least over the past couple of years as I've gotten deeper into the space and thought about specifically custody more critically, it is surprising to me that so many people that have been in Bitcoin for so long and obviously have a constructive long-term thesis on the asset fail to see this future reality where holding keys on your person or in your house could be a serious risk factor for the asset. If we just think about what we were talking about earlier around how early we are and how few people around the world understand this asset, that is also true of very few criminal networks understand this asset. maybe more than the average public just because of bitcoins like history in that realm. But I would say it's still probably pretty low on the radar of the average criminal or attacker who's looking to do some sort of theft or robbery of someone's assets. And so I think There is some amount of cognitive dissonance in the space of people not appreciating the reality of this risk and just thinking, you know, I'll be fine. I know how to protect myself. I've got enough guns to, you know, thwart off any potential attackers. But it's like, that the position you want to be in? Do you want to be protecting your family with guns? Like some people, yeah, that's fine. And this goes back to sort of the, what we've talked about a lot recently is, one, the diversification of custody options with Jackson, you've written about this as well, but also just this idea of like, it's not all or nothing, as Cam said before, like, you don't need to be in fully, purely self-sovereign setup where you are the only one in charge and you're gonna protect that with your life and your guns to the death in some future reality, or it doesn't have to be fully with a custodian, right? Brian Cubellis (01:01:21.013) Depending on how you perceive these different risks and threat vectors should influence sort of where you fall along that spectrum of These custody options so like for example if you are super worried about these threats that we're talking about violence in the physical world wrench attacks Then maybe you have a larger percentage over time in something like an on-ramp fault Where there's no single point of failure, but you're still not possessing keys yourself, so you don't have any worries in terms of someone coming to your house and commanding that you sign a transaction because you can't. Well, and then on the other side, maybe you perceive the risk of a 6102 or some government coercion as much likelier than that. So you have maybe less of a percentage in something like an on-ramp ball that are on Coinbase and you have a much larger percentage in your purely self-sovereign setup. So it's like this sort of barbell approach of, pure self-custody and something like on-ramp where at least you know it is third-party custody But at least you don't have a single point of failure and not trusting a single entity I think that's where most people end up over the next decade or so, but it is going to unfortunately I think take more instances of things going wrong people being attacked in the in the real world for people to wake up to this reality because part of this too that I think people don't appreciate is like In 10 years, if Bitcoin does what we think it does, there's a very real possibility that it's not that difficult for an attacker to sleuth out the fact that you own Bitcoin. by the way, they know your address. so, again, as the world wakes up to Bitcoin, criminals are going to wake up to Bitcoin too and realize that it's a pretty nice way for them to conduct. theft or robberies that's actually easier than like some other forms of theft or robbery in the sense that like, you don't have to carry the assets out of the house necessarily. Like if you get access to someone's passphrases or coerce them to do something, you can just drain their accounts and you're off. You don't have to carry anything. It's you're physically unencumbered to pull off this attack. And so criminals are going to wake up to that over time. And I think the world could look completely different in 10 years in terms of Brian Cubellis (01:03:46.475) people's readiness and willingness to secure private keys on themselves or in their house, or at least have the majority of their Bitcoin in that setup. think it just, it slowly transitions over time to where you have a few different solutions. You have a diversification of your custody setup where some of it's always under your mattress ready to go if need be, but some you actually can't access because you don't actually control the private keys. You can access it through a client relationship with an on-ramp. but there's those processes and controls in place so that it actually makes it difficult to move the asset, which in this scenario is a good thing. Cam (01:04:26.328) into highlight that Brian says specifically here at OnRamp. when a client requests a withdrawal, they schedule a live video call with a member of our team. So we're confirming a number of different things. know, one that is that individual who owns the account, maybe they set up some specific client controls around their vaults when they onboarded. And then we're making sure that they're not under duress. And people ask you sometimes, well, how will you know I'm under duress? Like, well, unless you're Ryan Gosling or Brad Pitt or the best actor in the world, like I will notice that you are acting very strangely and that you're sweating and pale. So we record that video call, we compare it with the video that the client uploaded when they onboarded. There's a quorum of on-ramp team members that review those two videos, on-ramp signs with our key, and then about 24 to 48 hours later, depending on the time that the client requests the withdrawal and how promptly they schedule that video call, they repeat the process with one of our key partners, typically BitGo. So they schedule, again, a live video call with Bicco, they're making sure the client is under duress, they're comparing that call versus the video that they uploaded, and then Bitcoin can be withdrawn. So what that means for the attacker is a worst case scenario. They break in, you're telling them, I've already put my Bitcoin behind multiple institutions to prevent this exact scenario from occurring. The attacker, the last thing they want to do is to hang around with you for two days. Maybe you client controls where it was a week. Cam (01:06:00.588) Maybe, you for some of our private clients, they've elected to require that for initiating a withdrawal, they need to meet us in person at an on-ramp location so that we can confirm their safety. So in that scenario, I think the best practice is to... Even if you have guns, really don't want to get into a gun battle. You want to try to get them out of your house. You want to call 911 and leave the phone on and kick it away. You want to try to give them something that will placate them. And I think what that ends up being for a lot of Bitcoin investors is the small amount of Bitcoin that you keep on a single signature hardware wallet. If you've developed that skill and that muscle as Brian said to use that barbell approach. I really view that now as like that's the Bitcoin you're willing to lose whether it's an attacker or it's a house fire or I talked with someone this week who's in Florida where the water got within inches of where he stored his hardware wallet and almost lost it all that's how high the waters rose. So you're so right. Imagine gold tomorrow goes like, it quadruples in price. And then attackers realize, well, okay, well, how is this gold stored? Like, surely they keep it all at banks, right? Or they keep it in secure vaults. And then they're seeing that the whole gold community is all about self custody and keeping it naturally in their homes, which is the one place that they can reasonably secure for most people. That's a recipe for disaster. There are ways in self custody where you can distribute keys amongst multiple geographic locations, but I can tell you from experience too, unfortunately, as much as you try to imbue that best practice and impart that in and really hammer that home, insist on it from clients again and again, most people are busy or couldn't tell you where to start to secure the keys outside of their home or like. Cam (01:07:55.778) how many banks have safe deposit boxes today? Some do, many don't. So it becomes very challenging. And then what people do is it drops lower and lower in their to-do list. The keys all up end up in the house, even if they have multiple keys, it's in one location. They're not achieving or realizing some of the benefits of even self custody multi-sig because it's not geographically distributed. So they're still at risk from that physical attack. So yeah, super uncomfortable to think about. And I can tell you even personally, I feel extremely good about my Bitcoin setup. But even as we've hit 100K subconsciously, I've been doing things around the house the last couple of weeks to bolster security of the home. And I like, I kind of caught myself like, I'm doing this because now I'm more concerned about the physical safety of my family. It really is disconcerting and it's real. So it's not FUD. It's really trying to help. people get ahead of this based on the hundreds and thousands of conversations we've had with individuals who have experienced this in real life or secondhand. Jackson Mikalic (01:09:00.093) Yeah. And even if that's not a risk that someone is concerned about it, I think that you should be concerned at least a little bit or be proactive in thinking about it. But even if it's not that your top concern, which I would say it's not my top concern, I've also been concerned about managing keys over the past several years and me being a single point of failure in the sense that, you know, my wife, my family, They don't really know how to sign a transaction. They don't fully understand the seed phrase and how do you recover a wallet with that. And so I had other issues that I had to think about as well. And these are issues that in my experience from just speaking to clients every day, most people are experiencing this as well where they're starting to become this acknowledgement where, you know, I felt comfortable doing this when Bitcoin was $5,000 or $20,000. or $50,000, but now it's six figures and it's a considerable amount of my net worth, whether it's 10%, 25%, 50%, et cetera. Some people are close to 100%, right? And so there becomes a point where if you're honest with yourself, you recognize that there's a lot of discomfort and maybe four years ago, last cycle, you could have pushed that off because it wasn't, because Bitcoin wasn't as... much of your foundation of your financial plan. But the reality is now, well, okay, I need to look myself in the mirror and if I mess something up, then I'm jeopardizing my family and putting them in a spot where they've entrusted me to be managing our family's personal assets and I've decided that Bitcoin has been a great way to grow our wealth. But now I'm also recognizing that I could mess all this up, right? And this could be, I could lose a considerable amount of my money. So human error is a thing too and... ties into kind of what Cam mentioned earlier about going hunting, right? So like, if you haven't used a firearm before and someone hands it over to you, you're not going to know how to shoot a gun. And if you can figure it out, you're not going to be able to shoot a well. And so the same thing is like, if you're the only person who uses a hardware wallet, and most people are maybe using it a couple times a year, or maybe once a year, right? Most people are not doing this on a frequent basis. And then, so you're doing it on an infrequent basis, and you already are having some discomforts about it yourself. Jackson Mikalic (01:11:22.675) Now put yourself in the shoes of your family, Where they may have held it in their hand before, but they've never actually used, in most cases, most people's family have never actually signed a transaction. So now it's like, you have to acknowledge that you've removed counterparty risk, you're not trusting a single institution anymore, and that's always been really important, is don't leave all your Bitcoin with one institution that controls all the keys and can lose your assets, steal your assets, or be compromised in some way. So you've taken full responsibility, which is a great thing to do. That's one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin is that you can do that. But there also are these realities that are setting in with six figure Bitcoin and appreciation on the horizon into next year where maybe things should be reconsidered. Maybe to Brian's point, Cam's point, everyone's kind of acknowledged that diversification plays a critical role in traditional finance. in managing portfolios. Well, the four of us, we think that Bitcoin plays a bigger role in our finances than equities or real estate or fixed income, whatever. But now we need to think about diversification of custody and how do you manage different trade-offs and risks of various solutions. Brian Cubellis (01:12:41.803) Very well sold, Jackson. Jackson Mikalic (01:12:45.055) Cool, well know we're well over time, so we could wrap it up here. I think one thing that would be important to highlight is that for folks who have been listening to The Last Trade or any of the OnRamp media shows, if you are interested in learning more about what we're doing here at OnRamp and you haven't gotten in touch with us or maybe we spoke months ago and it wasn't the right time, please reach out. We want to help our clients, we want to protect. their families, help them with inheritance, secure custody, access to financial services, all the things we discuss and we will continue to discuss. We are leaders in the space and we want to help you. And if you're starting to have more concerns about managing the asset for yourself or your business, et cetera, now's a great time to get in touch. I know the holidays can be busy, but we'll carve out some time. We'll meet with you. We'll understand your situation. And if this does make sense for you to work with OnRamp. we'll make it happen. And we also are offering some attractive incentive pricing for folks aligned on the value proposition, know, have been following the research, the content, et cetera. So again, now's a great time. Get your financial house in order, reach out, and we'll take care of you. And like I said, we have some concessions there for the end of the year. So thanks guys. Appreciate your time. Thanks for joining today and good discussion as always. And thanks for the listeners for tuning in week after week. Really appreciate everyone who's following along here. Thanks everyone. Brian Cubellis (01:14:18.091) Thanks boys, good rep. Bram Kanstein (@bramk) (01:14:18.242) Thanks guys.