The Last Trade EMERGENCY POD: ETFs Live! with Alex Thorn

Brian Cubellis (00:00.73) from somebody on the team. I don't know where it came from, but I'm gonna drop it in the. Well, we're live now. We've got 37 minutes. ETF launch day. We're joined by Alex Dorn from Galaxy Digital. Alex. Sorry for being late. Having some technical difficulties with this Macintosh computer. Are they called Macintoshes? I think originally they were, but they're just called Macs now. The nomenclature is Mac. Power Mac, yep. Yep. Alex is a scarce asset. He's been busy this morning. This is your second or third. Recording Apple and I got a head over to pub key in a little bit to do another one. So I know I love pub key. It looked fun last night. Were you there last night? I was there briefly Yeah, but um, we were we were celebrating a little bit, you know, right around market closed So I was an early night for me. We'll say that Yeah, if you haven't been to pub key in New York City and you're listening you got to get there make the pilgrimage It's worth a big So this summer How are we feeling today? I'm feeling great. I think these things are moving. I'm seeing pretty big volume in the scheme of things here. I mean, grayscale with the highest volume, but I think we know most of which direction that's probably going, but a lot of success out of the gate it looks like. Seeing tight spreads. The last number I said was 1.7 billion in volume in the first hour, so we're two hours in now Yeah, I have higher than that. I got to update my Bloomberg worksheet here I'm looking at share count so I'd have to do some quick tabulation, but I think that I think we're probably over two now Well, it's been a it's been a long run Alex. I feel like out of the group here even around closest to the hoop when it comes a financial services Fun fact me and Alex connected years ago. So it's a long game in this space I think 2018 or 19 I was at the box I went into fidelity when he was there on the enterprise stuff and curious on like what's going on You know with your former colleagues at fidelity right now at a galaxy like what's the sentiment people excited? What's going on? Yeah, I think people are very excited. Obviously. It's been a long time in the making I think I'm seeing fidelity is doing quite well as well. Keep in mind. They have their own giant distribution Brian Cubellis (02:20.866) platform, right? I mean, they have 30 plus million brokerage accounts. They're the largest 401k provider in the United States. So they have us and of course, they're self custody their Bitcoin, right? Because they have fidelity digital assets, their own regulated spot Bitcoin custodian. So yeah, I think they're quite excited. I know we're very excited. I mean, Galaxy and Invesco filed in 21 and were rejected along with everyone else. So it's been a long time in the making here. I think, you know, from When you think about the Bitcoin brokerage and expertise smashing into the traditional finance, there's a couple that stand out, Fidelity's obviously one. Invesco's the second largest issuer that has a Bitcoin ETF, or they're the fourth largest ETF issuer in the world. And of course, Galaxy has been a Bitcoin company for a long time and I hope it remains one. So... And then I would say ARK and 21 shares is another combo of crypto native and traditional. But I think it matters a lot. I mean, it's tricky to do this, actually. And Galaxy is in a pretty unique position. We actually already operate these in two other countries. So whereas I think only 21 shares is the only other firm that actually has experience running a crypto native ETP. So Look, we're excited. I think there's fast that we can finally move on. You know, we're not moving on, but we can move on from the endless months of discussion of, you know, T-leave reading on the ETF announcement and such. So I think people are just excited to get down into the actual race among the issuers. It's going to be interesting what happens to Bitcoin itself, right? I mean, I think you're going to see significant changes in the. Bitcoin brokerage space, right? People buying and selling spot Bitcoin. I'll obviously personally always buy Bitcoin. I use River personally, but there's plenty of good places to buy Bitcoin and I'll be storing it on myself. And I have a powerful multi-sig setup. I don't wanna show too hard or give too many details on, but there's good reason to own the ETFs also. And I think you'll start to see, you know, multi-custodial models emerge. I think I'm hoping Brian Cubellis (04:43.774) that the SEC will eventually allow shareholders to take physical delivery of the underlying. Obviously that's a huge limiting factor if you're bullish Bitcoin. With the vehicles today, it'll be a problem too for 401k providers that decide to offer Bitcoin exposure because if you're long-term right on this thesis, You don't want to get to the end of the road. You know, I'm 37. If I'm going to retire at 67, I want to put Bitcoin in my 401k and then take it out at 67. I don't want dollars. If we're right, you're going to want the Bitcoin, you know? So more to come on these products. I think they will evolve further. But for now, I think it's just, you know, it's going to be good for Bitcoin spot markets as well. It will create significantly more liquidity, I think, over time. So it's going to be interesting. You're going to have a fracture. We already have one between investors and Bitcoin. network users, but that gulf is going to widen. Yeah, it's going to be exciting to see the custody landscape evolve. I think it's three right now for the ETFs between Fidelity, BitGo with one and then Coinbase with the rest and to see. Gemini. Oh, okay. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. And to your point there about like the physical delivery, I think on that issue, I think it's just going to be forced at some point. Yeah. Especially 30 years down the line. It's gonna be I'm not taking dollars Yeah, right. I don't know if you're right about Bitcoin becoming like global money You don't want to end up with like selling into you know, a hyper inflating fiat occurrence and don't make any sense That's not ridiculous No I guess I mean we just had a discussion with Larry Lappard and David Foley About this. I mean, maybe we can rehash it today, especially since this episode is gonna go out immediately. Like do you view this as? a pivotal inflection point in Bitcoin's history? Yeah, I absolutely do. This is Bitcoin on every screen, on every account, right? I think this is a pivotal moment. Bitcoin's had many pivotal moments, right? I mean, certainly nation-state adopting it was a pivotal moment. We don't have to name them all. HAL receiving the first transaction is probably the second after the genus was blocked. There have been many milestones. I think in terms of global adoption, this is a major, major one. Brian Cubellis (07:05.006) Truly, and honestly, I don't think Bitcoin or traditional finance will ever be the same after this. How do we reconcile 15 years to the date from Hal running Bitcoin and the ETF gets approved? Yeah, I know. It's really, it's poetic. I mean, luckily, anything that happens in early January is always gonna line up with one of these big days, whether it's the Genesis block or the first transaction or Hal's tweet or whatever, right? I mean, that's the first tweet about Bitcoin, basically, ever. And I think it's very poetic. I mean, Hal, it also goes back. I mean, I cannot help but keep reading Hal's post on Bitcoin banks, right? Now, he's talking about something a little different than certainly ETFs. I saw somebody say that liquid was what Hal was talking about. That's also not true. If you read the post, he's really talking about literal banks in a free banking era issuing their own paper that's backed by Bitcoin. But the question remains, right? What is the place for? institutions in something that is inherently a peer-to-peer network. And the answer to that continues to evolve. And I'm of the view that if Bitcoin is wildly successful, it needs to be and will be available everywhere, right? It'll be in every fintech app. It'll be at every bank account. It'll be in every brokerage account. It'll be in your self-custody. It'll be everywhere, right? In Hotwall, it's Coldwall, it's banks. And so I don't know what that means long term for Bitcoin, the network. going to mean something. I think it only becomes more pivotal that Bitcoin stays secure and developers stay supported and I don't know it's gonna impact Bitcoin culture and so it's gonna be which is always evolving. We'll just have to wait and see but I can't help but again I encourage everybody to go into Bitcoin talk or find someone to send you a screenshot of Hal's famous Bitcoin Banks post which she wrote very early in the history of Bitcoin and We're making progress. December 2010, I believe it was December 30, 2010, right before the new year. He wrote that. Right on his mind, I love it. And it's extremely prescient, whether it's Liquid, Chalmium Mint, or Banks, I think it is materializing. And it was crazy how prescient Hal was less than two years into the protocol launching, recognizing that this network, specifically at the protocol level, would have scaling limitations. Brian Cubellis (09:31.882) and you would have to have this proliferation of layers above it and a more private banking enterprise on top of it leveraging Bitcoin as a reserve asset. Yeah, that one hit a little different. Sorry, I was just saying what Alex is referring to, I don't know, Logan, if it's up, or if you have it, but it hit a little different because I've read it a few times, but when it got posted the other day, because what we're describing, whether it's Chummin Mint, Brian Cubellis (10:01.514) we're doing it on ramp, it's all effectively the same thing. It's multi-sig controlling Bitcoin. You have transparency in knowing where the Bitcoin sits. You always have that auditability. At the end of the day, to the main point, which we talk about a lot is this free banking idea of that it's reputation based and you can take delivery of the asset to keep everybody honest, just hasn't naturally, hasn't happened. And that's kind of where gold kind of fell off. And so yeah, it's going to be interesting to see where the next decade plays out, especially as people get educated. And that's what they demand from like their custodial relationship. Brian Cubellis (10:33.674) Yeah, absolutely. It's crazy. I'm on Bitcoin talk right now and how's account and you can see actually talked about banks a lot. It's amazing. I put it in there looking. Brian Cubellis (10:46.354) Oh wow, I got the date exactly right from memory. That feels good. That's nice. Yeah. Actually, there's a very good reason for Bitcoin backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world to be broadcast to everyone and included in the blockchain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems, which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical from medium to large. value purchases. I won't read the rest, but that's the first paragraph. Yeah. Yeah, you know, this goes back to like, it's a settlement layer. Bitcoin created a digital settlement layer and that solves the very foundation of finance, but you need to have all of your like usable interfaces built on top of that settlement layer. And so Hal was, in my opinion, just recognizing reality that... finite block space, 10 minute block times, you need some solution above that. And lightning solves a large part of that. But having a free banking sort of model where people are, companies are competing to be your home for your Bitcoin financial life, of course makes sense. It's just the rediscovery of free market capitalism in banking. you know, several centuries of it becoming increasingly less free market. Yeah, I think as like individuals that have looked at Bitcoin for a while, it's generally thought like we're going to recreate the wheel. And if you look more and more, it's just we're just repurposing it. We're looking at the existing market structure and we realize that there were certain flaws or, you know, holes in the mechanics. And so I think it starts to look a lot more like the existing world with just checks and balances, which is effectively like existed for a reason. There just need to be a better unit to measure it all by. Brian Cubellis (12:43.006) Well, not even a better unit, it's just you change the incentives where there's no lender of last resort. So the banks are forced via economic incentives to actually run a good business and not actually reserved to an extent that their users can't get their money at the end of the day. I mean, I mean, the unit in a sense of like I joke around and I kind of don't joke around. It's like the difference between gold and Bitcoin is multi-sig. Like that unit and the programmatic ability to like have it segregated within different entities is what will keep us from doing what, in my opinion, what happened with Gold where it centralized the unit of too many paper claims on the unit. Yeah, I think I mean, it comes down to what we you either want Bitcoin to be or think Bitcoin will be. I mean, if everything ends up in, let's say a centralized a layer of centralized intermediaries like banks or like ETFs or whatever, right, then it probably does mean Bitcoin is not no longer going to be used for unstoppable payments. Right. But even in which I don't like, right, I don't want that to happen. I don't think anyone does. That's why we need also proliferation of truly decentralized layers that we can. do Bitcoin with. But I would say that even in that world, you could still take on the dollar, right? It can still become the world's reserve asset. It may not be used for payments, but it can, because Bitcoin is doing multiple things, right? It's simultaneously challenging the never-ending inflating fiat money supply. That can still work if it's Bitcoin banks that are the primary holders and users of it, right? That can still win. But if you want it to be for unstoppable payments as well, then we need something more, right? It can't only be that. And luckily there's a lot of people working on that stuff. So it absolutely is unstoppable payments and a store of value today that can't be inflated. But you know, there's the forks in the road in the future will lead us down different directions. And I want it all, right? I want both, I want everything. So I'm very supportive of people using Bitcoin for payments and for internet. Brian Cubellis (14:46.206) in a non-custodial, self-custodial way. I think that's the obvious core of how Bitcoin should be used and will be used. I don't think that the ETFs, for example, challenge that. I just think that they grow the base of users. And that's why I say I think it's so important. I hope that eventually these ETFs will allow physical delivery, because then you're, you know, first of all, that reduces significantly the the, you know, the tradeoff that you're making by owning the ETF and not the physical underlying. I love calling Bitcoin spot physical. I think it's hilarious Right because you'd be able to get it out theoretically right and right now you can't right? So if you own this ETF, you can't send the shares like that like it's money over the Bitcoin network So it's not for payment those vehicles and you can't get the Bitcoin itself out So all you can do is just rely on you know The DTCC and your brokerage and the issuer right to honor its value and operate it well and luckily there are very trustworthy issuers here. And, you know, I trust personally that stocks that I own at Fidelity are actually being held there or whatever. Right. But we shouldn't have to trust. So I'd love to see them evolve and offer that physical delivery one day. Alex, the mental model I have right now, at least for the these ETFs, is that classic Trojan Horse meme, you know, of bringing into the citadel of mainstream America, Wall Street is introducing these wonderful Bitcoin ETFs. And I can't help but feel that as people invest a little bit into these Bitcoin ETFs, they learn a little bit more about Bitcoin, they start to value the properties of actual Bitcoin and want that as maybe in addition to their allocation in the ETF. And... then what's inside the Trojan horse is Bitcoin adoption because people are learning about Bitcoin and flipping the script entirely where we've had 15 years of just kind of baseless FUD floating around in the media. And now there's gonna be Wall Street singing the praises of Bitcoin as an asset and people coming around to its properties as being desirable. And some of those are attained through the ETF but some of those... Brian Cubellis (17:09.99) you know, especially if you can't redeem in kind, live outside of the ETF. Any thoughts on your perspective on is that part of how this plays out or your thoughts around that? Yeah, I think it I think it's going to play out. It's going to be tricky. I mean, I, I really just want to see the ETFs be I want to see the education materials that everyone's going to be putting out on this. I mean, we've got a bunch together. You can go somewhere, I forget, on Invesco's website. I'm in some fancy videos explaining how Bitcoin works. I hope that it leads to real Bitcoin usage and not just ownership. I can't see how it would decline it. So I think we'll see marginal increased understanding in Bitcoin broadly. And I think that can only help. And I agree. I mean, the Trojan Horse meme is perfect here. You know, come by this asset. But actually it's, you know, learn about Bitcoin, spread the spread the Bitcoin story, right? We've now deputized the world's largest asset managers to tell that story. Yeah, there it is. Unreal. Yeah, there it is. We're now I think for me, the demarcation point is, yeah, Bitcoin's gone public today. But really, what's different is that now TradFi is going to seeing the praises of Bitcoin. And that creates this pretty strong demarcation in the history of Bitcoin, where the mainstream goes from 15 years of just general Bitcoin is bad to now, now and into the future, TradFi having an incentive to educate and to praise Bitcoin to inform the public about why this is actually a really cool asset that you should consider, including in your portfolio. And I think that's the true demarcation here. You know, the fact that these things are trading now is great. But the psychology is going to be night and day from the last 15 years to the future. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's where this goes. And I think, look, it's getting easier to buy real Bitcoin also. Right. I mean, I mentioned that I use River personally, but. Brian Cubellis (19:29.526) I mean, you can buy Bitcoin on fidelity.com as well, right? And you will be able to get it everywhere soon. I'll be shocked if you eventually can't just buy spot everywhere. I don't think the ETF, like it might slow down some brokerage that's on the cusp of deciding. But again, like, don't tell me that if you have one of the world's most popular best performing assets and it's natively digital, that every digital platform is not going to eventually offer it. So I, and I think also like You're going to learn people are going to learn how to use it. That don't already know there'll be at least some net new marginal Bitcoin user base growth from the ETF ownership. And we already know. I mean, guys, you've we were all around and like, nobody, only the tourists that would buy the ETF anyway, left, we net stacked Bitcoiners through all the bear markets. That's exactly right. I think it's just a different segment where you have precedent for this with like, um, you know, very different segment, but like Cash App and just making it easy for somebody to buy. But some people just left their Bitcoin there. Maybe they bought a small allocation, but there's a lot of people that learned, bought the Bitcoin, took it off into self-custody and then also looked at larger allocations post that initial like taste to understand what's happening and then where to go, you know, buy in size. But Alex, your point about everybody's going to offer it that like is an interesting. brings an interesting dynamic with the authorized participants in Goldman and JPMC in particular. And, um, is it the sab one 21 rule with the banks not being able to custody? Like, how do you, do you have any inkling into like where banks start to play into this? And is it like, do we think it's going to happen in the next 12 to 24 months or is that still further out where banks being able to custody the asset to participate? It's tricky. Yeah. SAB one 21 requires, um, actually not just banks, I believe public companies to carry the coin. and they're on their balance sheets, which is crazy, right? Because like, you know, bank like take like State Street, which is, I think the largest custodial bank in the world, right, but or BNY, right, which is also a large one, like, they, the assets that they hold belong to the clients, right? So you don't hold, they don't hold, you know, trillion dollars of assets as if they were theirs, right? In a bankruptcy, those are remote, right? They're, they're held, they're owned by the clients. It's their trusts, right? So, and that's how. Brian Cubellis (21:46.274) custody should work for everything, right? You're not, you're not giving it over, you know, your, your life savings or if you're a company or foreign currency or whatever to a bank and saying, yeah, actually, you know what, like just promise to give it back. It's legally segregated on the balance sheet and, you know, actually, right? So SAB 121 makes it impossible for banks to hold it because like, let's say you put, okay, maybe if it's $1 million, the bank can put you know, count that as their own asset, sure. But if, let's say it's 2011 and that one million becomes, you know, 10 billion over the next five years, they've got to segregate capital out to match that, they're not gonna do it. And it's why they don't do it. It's why even though BNY Mellon has Bitcoin custody, they have, they self-describe their custody assets there as de minimis, because they don't, they're not really operating yet. I think that is what, that's coming under congressional rule. review. I think, you know, with the change of leadership at the SEC and or at the OCC and the banking regulators, you'll see a change there. But capital requirements make it hard for banks today, which is, again, stupid. Like, wouldn't you want people to be able to store their Bitcoin in the safest quote unquote place there is like, I don't understand the move from a regulatory standpoint, it seems backwards. It's very similar to like, not having any regulated products in the US and effectively pushing people into offshore exchanges, which is what happened for so long. It should change. I don't know if it will change within this year, but I think we know that banks and others would like it to change. When you consider liquidity profile of Bitcoin, it doesn't make any sense. You can liquidate this immediately if you need to. But with that being said, let's talk about... Landscape of these ETFs obviously 11 approved 11 launched today. I actually caught CNBC I caught Novo this morning explaining why you guys have done yeah, so good historically in Canada and Germany, it's because the The way you guys track spot is very good. I believe he said something like around 1% slippage in the spot price to underlying shares of your ETPs historically, so how do you see Brian Cubellis (24:07.838) This playing out with 11 ETFs obviously it's probably gonna be a Pareto distribution where a few take a line share of the market How does this play out? How long does it take to play out in your mind? Yeah, I think it's probably if we fast-forward a year I think you probably have one or two big ones and then you know theoretically like each one Down on the list is half the one above it so You know, obviously, they're a real tricky one to think about as grayscale. They are already very large, right? But you'd imagine with their fee and whatnot that they'll see outflows. I think of it primarily as a grayscale versus BlackRock, Invesco, and Fidelity Game at true scale, just because, you know, BlackRock's the largest asset manager, but also the largest ETF issuer in the world. And Invesco is the fourth largest. And even when you think about Fidelity, Invesco has 10 times the assets under management in ETFs than Fidelity does, right? So Fidelity is like 13 on the list, right? Wisdom Tree and Van Ecke are bigger than Fidelity in ETFs. But it's gonna be a bit longer of a game. I mean, there are some that, you know, even like when we look today, wherever we end up having closed in this horse race, like I don't think any of the advisor platforms are turned on yet, right? And... there are issuers that have significant advantages there, like BlackRock and Invesco, which are deeply connected in the advisor community, right? So I think I've always viewed the ETF as primarily a product for advisors. Obviously it's for anyone, any retail can buy the ETFs, but this is the first asset in history that retails had access to before institutions, right? We've all been buying Bitcoin already, right? We have plenty of places to buy spot Bitcoin. So... I view the net new market for the ETFs primarily being wealth management and that's a $48 trillion market in the US alone in terms of their AUM. And those aren't on today. As far as I know, none of them have turned it on yet. We're talking about the Morgan Stanleys, the Merrill Lynch's, etc. where advisors are affiliated with banks and broker dealers. That's a huge pile of assets that should now gain access. Brian Cubellis (26:24.686) you know, there's a couple games here, right? I mean, I think day one flows matter day, seven day flows matter three months, six month a year, it's it could look different. I don't think you're going to see 11 a year from now with meaningful assets under management, but there'll be a couple. And I think there'll be a few big ones. I think we just sort of have to wait and see there is more to it. These are not all created equal, right? I mean, I know, again, I talk about wanting to see a multi custodial model. I think it's clear that the issuers primarily decided that Coinbase was the fastest way to approval, probably because they're a public company. I don't know. They're also, I'm willing to bet, are good at Bitcoin custody, right? There's never been at least a publicized theft or anything from Coinbase custody that I'm aware of. But it's not just that, right? It's where and how you execute, who your authorized participants are, how many liquidity providers you have, right? There's a lot more that goes into managing. these vehicles than simply buy Bitcoin and store it somewhere. So I think that obviously Invesco has advantages here. We're the only ones, our fund, which with which really they're fun, but we're a partner of theirs that doesn't use Coinbase Prime as an execution venue. Right. So we because Galaxy is the execution agent. And of course, we're one of the biggest Bitcoin trading firms in the world. So. Look, there's a variety. Yeah, you got to look at things like liquidity and bit-esque spread and tracking quality, right? But we need some time. I know the horse race has just begun, but we need a couple days and a couple weeks to really start to see how these things are performing and who's doing a good job and who's doing less of a good job. So it's honestly more to come. I know making fun of Eric and James at Bloomberg, like they've got so many demands for real time. I mean, people have been doing it for a long time. I mean, they just need to launch like a cable news show and call it like a sports game at this point. That's what people want. It's going to take a little while, I think, for it to play out. Yeah. And another question I have is, do you think the unit bias comes into play in terms of the way the shares are denominated? Because I believe that I think BlackRock's just dividing the price by 2000. Brian Cubellis (28:41.918) Yeah, it's a good question. It looks to me and I don't have all the I'm looking at the sort of slate here. Most of them again are trading at like the 40 or $50 range. So again, I'm making just I don't have the all the prospectuses up in front of me. But but yeah, I see BlackRock is trading at 2650 right now. So presumably they have smaller units. I don't know. But I don't think it's going to make a huge difference between them. Like. But it does matter the broader point, which I'm sure you guys have talked about in the past, the unit bias versus Bitcoin, right? It's that old question between like one BTC or a bit or a SAT, like how should it be quoted, right? Because at 47K, that looks like a pretty expensive thing to buy, right? But at $26, which is BlackRock's is trading at, or BTCO is trading at $46, like that seems a lot more reasonable. So I think- Exactly. That's going to be how people think about it. Yeah, I think it's important. It's a similar reason as to why sometimes you see really valuable equities do a stock split for the same reason. It's it's also maybe the reason that like Berkshire Hathaway, it hasn't done one right. And it's such an expensive equity, quote unquote, just from your unit price. Maybe they like the sound of that. Right. Like, who knows? I don't know, Marty. I think, you know, I think maybe I think the main things that people care about are liquidity, spreads, fees. That's the main, I think most people know, but look again, like Fidelity out of the gate here pretty strong with a lot of volume, probably again, they've got a giant platform, right? They can advertise on one of the biggest brokerages platforms in the world for free because they own it. Yeah. It's been a crazy week. The the SEC Twitter account getting hacked. Truly wild. Jumping on the gun by the CBOE yesterday morning and then the eventual capitulation. Everything's a go. And then Gary writing a letter saying he doesn't he doesn't advise the people invest. Yes, he's not a fan. He's not their asset neutral. But then he proceeded to shit on Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (30:55.554) Yeah, that's strange. It's been a strange Very strange then you had Hester Pierce counter signaling them on the SEC website as well. It's been Bitcoin drives people crazy Yeah, I mean they couldn't even like do I mean I guess look I guess it was a pretty unique situation with 11 issuers a new asset class quote-unquote right like okay. All right, it was different. I'll give them that but like Yeah, it drives people crazy. It drove the process crazy and they had to be sued in order to even do it, which is also crazy. Like they shouldn't have had to be rebuked by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to the extent they were, which was significant, a significant rebuttal from that court. That shouldn't have had to happen, right? None of this should have, it shouldn't have had to be this way. You shouldn't have had the, you shouldn't have to have had the chair of the SEC, approve, you know, voting to approve a bunch of products and simultaneously disparaging their underlying collateral. Like that's, it's just, bizarre that shouldn't have to be that way. But yeah, having taught a class about it at MIT just a few years ago. Exactly. Well, it does it does beg the question what's going on behind the scenes. I mean, I saw a meme this morning of Gary Gensler talking to Elizabeth Warren. She's like, What happened, Gary? He's like, I don't know. There's nothing I could do. We had to. We had to launch it. Yeah, I'm not going to describe it, but there was a people one of it. You know, he does a thing every day He had a good one yesterday. It's worth checking out Then all the naysayers he had better markets come out with a letter I mean, they've been writing suggestion letters to the SEC don't approve this and approve this now They're like, oh you guys are enabling crime Obviously we have the Alex DeViers of the world who've been opining against Bitcoin mining energy use for the better part of the last half decade. We've got Greenpeace, a lot of the tractors out there that are going to have to e-cro in the months and years ahead. It just it doesn't seem I don't it is strange to me that people that have defined their public personas as being opposed to Bitcoin. There's that guy, the Steven Deal. Even though he's the worst. Brian Cubellis (33:11.562) I don't know, he blocked me a long time ago because I asked, I mean, I genuinely was like, are you okay, dude? Because this is on something he said. It's just again, imagine defining your life by being opposed to something, especially something that like it doesn't care about you. Bitcoin never replies to your tweet. I don't know who you're like, it's just a strange thing. These people who are so professionally anti Bitcoin. I don't understand. why. We you know, we hear some things they try to come up with reasons that Bitcoin usage of electricity is one or, or its use in illicit finance. But these are these are small, even if you believe they're real, they're tiny. Right? Like they have to start find some real world externality that Bitcoin is causing because otherwise they just look crazy. Why don't you let people just use what they want? It's, it's not impacting you in any way. Right. And of course, we know that we know that its use in illicit finances pale. in comparison by the dollars. We know that it's, and even take the thing with Hamas, those first of all, that was all tether on Tron primarily that was seized by Israel, but it was seized. It was tracked and found, right? That's because it's not good for crime. The blockchain is forever. And we won't do the whole energy usage thing, but Bitcoin is supportive, not negative to the environment, in my opinion. Yeah, great. And invariably with all those detractors, it turns out that they are salty because they had an opportunity to buy it in 2011 when they reported on it then and they didn't. And now they've been forced to watch all these shitty internet people get rich while they didn't. We used to call that the Nathaniel Popper syndrome. Like they couldn't buy it. There was an article the other day, it was a guy, Snarks, is that his name? And somebody found tweets from him in 2013 having bought and sold Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (35:12.95) Like, I get it. Like, it's just, you gotta, guys, let's just, I don't know, focus on positivity in your life. Or I find it's really, don't tweet against it. Unless it's Jim Cramer. Unless it's Jim Cramer, like continue to hate it. It's cool. This guy's been all over, he's been up, he's been for it, he's been against it. He was like, define the flip-flop on this asset, Jim Cramer. But, you know, I like the folks at CNBC, particularly Joe Kiernan, but that's a, I think we all like Joe. Nobody is more scoring than the individual who bought Bitcoin early and sold. Yeah. It's a bad syndrome. Alex, I know you've got something to do here in a minute. Thank you for joining us for an emergency rip of the last trade. Big day. Thank you for doing what you do. I know it's been a very long couple years for you and your team at Galaxy. Congrats on you guys getting this across the line and it'll be fun to watch how this plays out over the next year. Yeah, really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Marty Crecius, Michael, thanks so much. Love the show. Thanks for having me. Awesome, thanks Alex. Also, if you guys listen to this, go check out Galaxy Brains, especially if you're into good rap. Alex opens up his show with a good rap. Good one this morning. Go listen to this one. We have JFK talking about going to the moon on the intro rap. It's pretty good. You do it, you go to the moon in this decade. Yes, and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. It's a great speech. All right guys, thanks so much. All right, see you, Alex. See you guys.