The Sovereign Shift: Bitcoin, Gold, & Nation-State Game Theory

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extrem ever assembled in the history of data. 1974, 1987, '92, 97, 2000, whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. >> I say when we sell. Hey, Muhammad. I say when we sell. >> All right, we had a great conversation this week. We were joined by Blake Killian who recently joined on-ramp as the chief marketing officer. And in this conversation, we dug into nation state adoption. Uh starting with the Bitcoin Policy Institute latest piece of research and we really unpacked the education and the narratives that are required to actually get to mainstream adoption. So we discussed quite a bit in terms of adoption happens when the masses understand that bitcoin is a better form of savings and they ultimately have a way to securely save that bitcoin for the long term. Some of the other topical things we discussed were some of the movements in gold uh spot gold market specifically in China and the surge in gold price that we've seen this year uh what that means for the broader macro picture. what that means for traditional portfolios. How do gold and Bitcoin exist alongside each other for the foreseeable future? And ultimately on the topic of education and adoption, that leads us to on-ramp where we focus on multi-institution custody. If you're an individual, you're a business or an institution that is looking for peace of mind, a better way, a more secure way to secure your Bitcoin for the long term with insurance, inheritance, access to Bitcoin back loans. you should get in touch with On-Ramp. Uh we continue to pave the way. We just launched On-Ramp Guardian, which is the latest set of security features included in all accounts to protect against digital threats, physical threats, which are on the rise. So, if you're interested in having a conversation, reach out to us on rampbitcoin.com. You can book a consultation directly on our homepage. Hope you enjoyed the episode. All right, we're back. >> It is the last trade. >> We are back. I don't say we're back anymore because I've been relentlessly mocked by Brian and Michael. So, we're here live trade. >> This is going to be a good one because we have Blake Killian. Blake has joined on-ramp as the chief marketing officer. Blake, it's really a pleasure to have you on the team. It's been a lot of fun getting to work with you uh more recently and excited for you to be the honorary guest of The Last Trade this week. How are you doing, Blake? >> I'm great. Wow. the honorary guest. Well, I'll class up the joint. So, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really good. I'm so excited to be here. Jumped on the jet as it was already taking off. So, um yeah, I'm excited. >> Well, don't don't sell yourself short. Like, uh you know, you come from a highly regarded background, 20 plus years in the industry. We're at one of the largest um private media companies in the world and incredibly excited. would love for you to share more about your background and what you saw in on-ramp. But personally, when I think of it from an industry making move, it's part of the news this week. We announced and why we're starting with it because frankly there's a big messaging and branding gap that's existed in Bitcoin from the stigma that still exists across the spectrum. People think of it as speculative uh at best, a Ponzi at worst. And so there's a lot of work to be done there, let alone you need the infrastructure behind uh the scenes. that once somebody gets it, they can really adopt it and feel comfortable that it's not going to evaporate the next day. So, we're incredibly excited and that's part of why um you know, we're excited to have you on the show. I'm sure you'll be on others, but also kick things off with that news. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for the welcome and the introduction. Uh yes. Hello world. My name is Blake Killian and uh yeah, I I joined I think this is officially week two as CMO uh here at at OnRamp and I'm coming in um you know with with over 20 years which sounds like insane to say out loud of digital strategy and uh media uh experience that really you know runs the gamut from scrappy startups to big institutional um environments. And so, um, I've really sort of done it all, done a lot. And, um, but I would say for the last decade or so, it's really been focused on digital, uh, on, um, social, and, um, you know, just watching those cycles break. You know, right when I started out, you know, it was like the dot bubble. I'm sort of dating myself, but uh the.com bubble and and burst and social media wasn't even a thing. Uh and so um you know, just seeing these waves crash has been um really interesting. And now with the introduction of of AI and and all the automated things we could do um you know from a marketing perspective we just have so much uh uh at our disposal that um you know bringing that to bear to to tell our story to reach more people is what um I get really excited about. And so, um, yes, I I had the good fortune. I spent, um, the last eight years at, um, a really large, uh, media company, uh, here in the US and, you know, had got to have a lot of really great experiences. Um, checked off a few bucket list items in terms of, you know, clients I always wanted to work with, uh, Walmart, CBS television, Paramount, etc. But um you know I like a lot of people probably watching the show and everyone at on-ramp um you know am like deeply interested in in Bitcoin obviously. Uh I was first introduced to it, you know, in I think it was 2017 when a friend of mine had returned from uh a grad school, like a graduate program in London. And you know, he said everyone was talking about it. And and um at the time I had like babies at home and I was like, "Yeah, that sounds interesting." Um but then like 2019 2020 came along and I really started to pay attention um because like the context of our world was changing and so it just got me thinking about a lot of things differently and so you know 2020 2021 I'm sure it's classic story is when I got really interested in um you know what Bitcoin really is um you know it's this base layer and then I just completely orange pilled and and just, you know, established a belief and leaned in about how Bitcoin is inevitable, how Bitcoin is changing the world, um, etc. So, um, I'm really excited to bring uh, you know, all of my experiences here to on-ramp uh, and be a student of On-Ramp, but also sort of contribute to what um, is already happening here. >> Yeah, appreciate you sharing that. Maybe before jumping into the to the news items, um just curious from your vantage point external to onamp where you saw the pros and the cons in the just general digital asset space because my understanding historically we've had some of the best people come into digital assets, crypto from tradi, best marketers, but they haven't fully made that jump to the Bitcoin industry per se. And so there's a lot of learnings that we can embody um as an industry specifically Bitcoin only and on-ramp and then also some of the content and things we've been doing and just notably what you see where we can really improve and you're excited to get involved with. >> Yeah. You know like from a marketing perspective and just personally um I want to be laser focused on clarity. You know, I think that clarity is something that the industry needs and something that uh on-ramp can really leverage. Clear communication, clear design, clear storytelling. Um I think and I've believed this for a while, education is what is going to uh take bit Bitcoin mainstream. And I think that there's a lot embedded in that thought. It's not just understanding, you know, what the technical definition of Bitcoin is, but why it is and how it is and um where it is. Um and so yeah, right now my primary mission and focus is going to be about clarity, like clearly defining who we are, how we're different, what we bring to the world, the value that we're providing. But I I think um in in a larger sense from like an industry perspective um there needs to be this consideration of the rest of the world. Um because you know we're all sort of saying two things at the same time. We're saying that Bitcoin is inevitable and Bitcoin is changing everything. Um in 10 years from now we won't recognize the place. Um but then at the same time, you know, we and I'm saying generally um speak in maybe over technical terms or assume people know things that they don't. And so there's a lot of different mouths to feed um when it comes to who we're communicating with and how we communicate. And so you know I think whether you are a a highly technical experienced Bitcoin bro or a tenured seuite you know financial executive or our grandmas you know um they all deserve attention but they all need different things and so I think clarity is what um you know connects those dots and And you know that that's that's what I'm focused on. That's what I want to be focused on. >> Yeah, I love it. But I mean at the end of the day you the way we can describe on-ramp is as an education company as are all the companies in the Bitcoin space and really ties into the point Michael you made and then Blake that you just spoke to is that there's still such a there's still such a challenge for the mainstream audience to understand Bitcoin because you have people that are coming at it from all different angles whether it's from finance, tech, it's energy. Um, and once you get there, then there's all these different distractions, right? So then it's understanding, well, Bitcoin is this old tech, if you're coming from a technology background, well, is this old technology? Are these other assets newer technology? Are they superior? From a finance perspective, it doesn't have cash flows, right? So then it's really challenging to understand how does Bitcoin fit into a traditional portfolio. We're used to looking at uh income statements, different financial statements, cash flows, interest payments. And then from an energy perspective, we're kind of, you know, we're told in many ways that energy consumption is inherently bad. You don't want to over consume energy. So then you hear from the energy sector, well, Bitcoin uses so much energy, this might not be good for the environment. And so I think one of the challenging things for this industry across the board is fighting a lot of different competing narratives and to your point Blake being very clear about what Bitcoin is and ultimately at the end of the day the education has to start at the very top of the level right just on understanding what money is. Why do we have the financial problems as a country or as an individual that we have today? Why are we $37 trillion in debt? So really, it's about answering those questions to finally understand and educate the masses on Bitcoin. And then what I'm really excited particularly about you joining Blake is then educating the market about a lot of the things that we do here at On-Ramp and why that's ultimately going to take the educated person on money to actually be able to save and preserve their wealth for Bitcoin in the long term. >> Yeah. One one thing I would I would uh not challenge there, but I think challenged us and and where we're at an inflection point that I think for first 15 years, everything Jackson said was insanely important because it was an early adopter phase and you ultimately have to really understand those nuts and bolts if you're going to be an early adopter and park money and magic at internet beans and figure out self custody and and all the things along with it. But if we're truly going to cross a chasm to ubiquity and the same thing as the internet, email, an iPhone, water running out, people are not going to care about any of that. They're going to care about what does the what is the solution and how do you make it easy and how do I know it's secure and safe? And so we're still not there. But I think that's really the opportunity and where I'm most excited is how do we like slowly cross that chasm into still building trust and recognizing the debt system and all those things and educating, but over time it becomes ubiquitous that I go to I go to Bitcoin because it's a better savings technology and I go to on-ramp because it secures that without a question. And that's how we really win as as a as a society because people can just preserve their wealth. And I think if we have that as our northstar and even fall a little bit short from it, we're in a really good spot. Yeah. >> Well, why don't we riff on some news? Um, now that we have Blake introduced, the audience is more familiar with, uh, the latest addition to the team. And so, I was joking before we hit record here that it's deep in a bare market. Sediment is very poor. If you go online, um, doesn't feel like we're still above $100,000 per Bitcoin. doesn't feel like um you know retail at least is enthusiastic or excited about Bitcoin currently. Uh more so the price of course. But one thing I think it was worth calling out is when you look past the enthusiasm and the FOMO that and the emotional investing, the emotionally driven investing of retail investors, you start to see some signal here. And so Michael, maybe I'll hand it over to you first. um some of your thoughts on this chart from bit uh the Bitcoin policy institute on nation state adoption. >> Yeah, thanks Jackson. I think um this is something we've been actively talking about specifically related to the hash rate being a little bit I don't want to call it inorganic but just the past 2 years um nation states stepping in to be mining Bitcoin on their balance sheet and um Bitcoin Policy Institute did a great report basically breaking down that there's 32 countries roughly one out of every six nations on earth already have Bitcoin exposure or actively pursuing it. And um if you scroll down to the second tweet, it actually shows the type of adoption. Uh if you show more right there. So it's like strategic Bitcoin reserve 16, Bitcoin mining 14 countries. Um I think this is some of the first steps as we'll see and we've been talking about into potentially cycles changing where if sovereigns are naturally stepping in to adopt a better form of money. We've seen this with gold. We'll talk about later. It kind of changes the overarching cycles when it comes to um the the reflexivity and downward, you know, 80% uh uh retraces. And so I thought this was very cool to see. It's something we've been already instinctually thinking about, but to see it um put into with empirical data is is fun. And it's still very early, so you can imagine a year from now this will be tremendously different. >> Yeah, this is uh great great stuff from BPI as always. We'll we'll link to it in the show notes. But um a few other things to call out around this is um you know in my mind like a lot of what's talked about in the report and just general sort of sovereign game theory is not reflected in you know the Bitcoin price today is what I would say sort of first and foremost. So, let's like put aside the price for now and think more about sort of just the Overton window continuing to shift and the perceived uh toxicity around Bitcoin as an asset um really eroding before our eyes. And so it's, you know, this this transition not only from central banks, governments, sovereigns around the world recognizing that, hey, maybe we don't want to own as much uh US Treasury debt, uh, and maybe we need some other reserve assets. And so we know they're stacking gold. We'll get to some other gold headlines later in the show, but increasingly there there's this recognition that there's really only two neutral reserve assets in the world. It's gold and Bitcoin. And you know, as this report from BPI outlines, you know, even if even if these things haven't been, you know, enacted or there isn't outright spot buying, we know there's mining going on at the nation state level and we know that there's things being proposed uh legislatively to to put these things in place. And and I would also call out uh they do a good job in the report of saying, you know, how are they going about do doing this, but also the why. And so I think there's three core rationale that they they outline in in the piece. And so the first is obvious, right? It's it's what I just referenced around reserve diversification. So getting away from uh having so much exposure to US Treasury debt um as sort of trust in US Treasury erodess post uh you know the freezing of of Russia's assets in in 22 and you know governments are looking for these neutral reserve assets. Um and the other big big component here is is trade facilitation. So, we've seen little glimpses of this here and there, but this will be more of a long or medium to long-term story of Bitcoin's portability and neutrality, making it a very viable uh sort of bridge currency or transactional currency, especially for developing economies constrained by uh you know, dollar reserves. And then the other component worth mentioning is just sort of the the natural FOMO and game theory of all of this because the the proverbial gun is on the table uh in terms of Bitcoin being an option as a neutral reserve asset. And so once you know a handful of major sovereigns decide to actually adopt enact these pieces of legislation and buy Bitcoin that will be a very strong feedback loop for others to get involved because it then becomes not offensive but actually defensive where if you know G you know G7 or G20 countries around the world start owning Bitcoin and you don't have any then then you are in uh you're you're sort of off your footing in that sense and so you have to you have to make a move. >> Yeah. And you know just from a marketing perspective it you know nation state adoption is like the holy grail of social proof because you know it's undeniably moving you know anti-f fringe becoming infrastructure and um you know in a really big conspicuous way. And so I think that, you know, events like that can't help but create momentum and yeah, eventually lead to like landslides that, you know, um that that day is coming. And so um you know, I I think that's really good news. Of course, it is um for everybody in the space. >> Yeah. I've always um you know I've been thinking about more recently on the topic of nation state adoption. I I agree with you Blake. I mean the social proof is certainly there but one of the things I'm unsure about as it relates to the US in particular is since everything's so politicized these days if adopting Bitcoin within a specific state is just seen as like some political move and you know the opposing party just you know hates everything about that. You know what I Like so there's social proof there I think for like one side of the demographics but then particularly in like overpoliticized economies such as the US right now. I wonder if there's like you know the budding tension there actually could be detrimental detrimental to Bitcoin in the short term. Now I know in the long term it doesn't really matter what your politics are because every country has the same problem of um insane debt levels currency debasement. And to Michael's point earlier, it just ties back into the idea that people will need to understand that Bitcoin is a better savings technology. So it doesn't matter where you stand on the political spectrum. It still protects your purchasing power. It doesn't care who you voted for in 2024. And then once you get past that point, then it's just a matter of all right, well, how do I actually secure this for the long term? But I agree nonetheless at the nation state level, it's very encouraging. I'm just kind of unsure about what that'll look like in the next couple years within the United States in particular. >> It's a it's a good call out. Um, it's something for us to keep tabs on because you can already see this happening. I think in some of our links, um, there was Senator Warren among others. Um, I don't know if they were suing, but they put up into the like, you know, into the stratosphere around Trump and missed dealings. And we can kind of see this play out over the next couple years heading into, yeah, here's the the post center warrants lock and call for ethics probe into Trump link crypto dealings. and it it links out to some other things where his sons were referencing, you know, this we're not the first kind of family administration to make money um off of the presidency. I think the main point, Jackson, and it gets a little I don't want to go like conspiratorial, but ultimately when we come into whatever looks like the next administration, if things get hairy and and I don't want to say blow up, but effectively blow up, they're going to blame a lot of it on this like wild west uh style, you know, um policy that's coming in because we've seen this with like ETPs and ETFs and the standardization. and they're basically going to let everything under the sun fly in the public markets. And it's going to be a very nice angle to bring in some draconian um legislation when it comes to policy around like who can do what with it. You can just already see it coming. Uh so to your point, it doesn't really hurt Bitcoin, it just hurts US citizens if this is the route we're going down and it's something I've been thinking about. Um still early, but it's something we should be monitoring and talking about. >> Yeah. One thing we talked about um with OC Roy on scarce assets recently was the idea that ultimately it is just a matter of Bitcoin being embedded in enough of the public and private sector that the incentive turns away from the government wanting to fight Bitcoin to wanting to embrace it. Right? Because there's always this embedded concern within the industry that at some point the stakes are high enough where the government comes after the private assets particularly Bitcoin. But if you can actually reverse the incentives and that politicians, Wall Street, um you know, name your influential people within a given country, if they all have Bitcoin exposure, then they're far less likely to um attack it in any way. So I think it's ultimately the goal is like we want to take advantage of the opportunity that we have now as an industry to get Bitcoin as widely adopted as possible because then it really does change the incentives and and perhaps it does allow for um you know a more prosperous future rather than the government having to come back and try to attack those who have embraced it. I I totally agree with that and I would also say like in sort of the context of what you described Jackson in terms of some negative perception around Bitcoin crypto as a result of uh the Trump administration, it ultimately comes back to what we were talking about before around education in the sense that the people in government or even just you know uh normal citizens who are are um heavily political, they are effectively outing themselves as not having done the work by just naturally saying, "Oh, well, Trump's associated with this, so it must be bad. I'm going to be anti- it." Um, that is just, you know, simply outing themselves as not having done the work themselves, being an independent thinker, and and coming to a conclusion because at at sort of the actual government levels, like politicians, there is bipartisan support for this stuff. There's there's plenty of uh Democrats who are are interested in in Bitcoin and crypto and pushing forward um productive legislation. And so I I think it's more of the perception that you're referencing around um just generally being anti-Trump. Anything he does, anything he touches, we're going to be anti- it. Um but that ultimately comes back to education because once you actually open your mind to it and are willing to learn about it, you don't you don't look back. Um and you end up embracing the technology and embracing uh better rules and regulations for the citizens that of the country that you're, you know, a government official in. And so I think you know that that really is the story. If you just think about Bitcoin in general, the the entire story of Bitcoin adoption is education. We know what the supply is. It's finite. There's 21 million. All the only function you need to assess is is demand increasing and increasing demand is necessarily a function of education. And so that's that's the entire story of Bitcoin. And you know, I think it it's it's playing out at different different sort of rungs of society from the individual to the corporate to the nation state. Um but that is the trajectory. more education, more learning, more people supporting this asset and network. >> Yeah. I mean, the the lack of education, the less education there is, the more likely Bitcoin is to become associated with one thing or being one thing or associated with one person or policy or or set of uh politics. And so, you know, education really broadens that horizon, stretches it out. And so, you know, you get to see it as not, you know, something that is politically motivated, but you get to explore the utility of Bitcoin, the function of Bitcoin, what it enables. Um, and you know, there's a lot of other conversations to have around that. And I think that that's really crucial to sort of swarm around uh you know conversations that may be you know not serving Bitcoin um with um you know not arbitrarily positive uh information but true objective information that you know needs to stay in the spotlight and stay balanced because um you know ultimately it'll swing back into that favor and you know all that knowledge and understanding will be there um to move. >> Yeah, it would be an interesting case study to look into other technologies and the polit politicalization of them in in the early adopter phase because we get to a point to your point Blake and Michael is just once it's mainstream enough that people just understand that this benefits them and they don't really care about any of like the ideology that was behind it like a decade or two ago. Um but yeah, shifting gears, I want to talk a little bit, it's still on the topic of nation states, but we should talk about Tether. Um so some news that came out recently there and then we could also talk about in particular as it relates to gold, uh some of the action that we've seen out of China. But we'll pull up the article here first on the topic of Tether. So Tether seeks $500 billion valuation would rank among world's most valuable private firms per Bloomberg. Who wants to take this one first? I think the main thing that I'm most interested or fascinated is uh Tether's obviously, you know, playing for keeps in the sense they're going, you know, for for dominance in this market. And um there's a playbook, you know, they brought in Caner on the I think $600 million valuation round. I think in the Bloomberg article, it would put their holdings on the investment at 25 billion, I believe, if if they get this uh valuation. Yeah, that 500 billion would mean Cander's um stake would be worth 25 billion. But you could see the playbook of they got Caner involved, they had Lutnik, they got Bohines that this wasn't, you know, the next step in the plan to go raise significant capital. They don't really need the capital. If you raise this amount of money, you're effectively, you know, going for market penetration, meaning the people they're raising from are going to be some of the most um well-connected financial institutions, which would give your kind of strategic advantage to getting Tether embedded into financial institutions in the US and probably globally. So, it'll be very interesting to see who ends up investing and then what that looks like. Um, so yeah, that's the immediate interesting take. I think the only other one is really probably where we're all at is who else ends up uh in this world like Circle just doesn't feel like they have the confidence um or strategic planning to go and do something. My instincts would tell me that there's like a um wild card that ends up in some kind of consortium with uh whoever doesn't invest in the Tetheround to figure out what are they going to do from a distribution perspective when you think about the JP Morgan Chasees and the Wells Fargos of the world. Um, but yeah, it's it's really fascinating. >> I mean, I I think that the Tether story is a branding story because, you know, I think it's a great big signal. I I don't really think it has anything to do with uh balance sheets really. um because you know where they have gotten to um is it's just very clear to me that they've gotten where they've gotten based on brand momentum. You know, users trust it and use use it because a lot of other people are trusting it um and using it. And so, you know, for the Tether name to become shorthand for something like dollar liquidity, um, you know, is to me a a a fascinating story and case study in, um, branding. And so, um, you know, it's definitely one uh to watch for lots of different reasons, but um, that's why I'm watching it. Yeah, >> it's a it's a good point, Blake, because, you know, historically speaking, Tether's brand um was somewhat maligned. You know, for for a lot of Bitcoin's history, Tether was viewed as an unscrupulous actor, often viewed, you know, in in certain sort of FUD arguments around like this is the reason that Bitcoin goes up because they're printing Tether. So they really have um done a remarkable job of turning around that that image or that perception of the brand. Um and now they're at a place where you know there's as Michael sort of ran through there's a lot of uh connectivity with the current administration um and Tether and so they've really done a full um sort of brand pivot or brand uh you know rebrand in some sense. And the other thing to to note which I I I saw earlier this week around this announcement was I think in that headline it says you know they'll be one of the largest privately held firms in the world. But I think in terms of um like publicly traded uh banks, they would be I think the second or third largest um if you know at that 500 billion valuation which is just remarkable um and and I think will be a wake-up call for a lot of trady banks, studying the financial sector. They see this headline, they see this news, and maybe they still are working off of that historical perception around Tether, but now they have to update their priors because this is real. It's happening. The connectivity with the government is there. And so you need to assess this thing as one of the largest financial institutions in the world, which is just objectively what it is. Um, and so I think this is a big headline. I think it's a big headline, not necessarily for us in the space, because I think we all have known this about Tether for a long time. But I think it's a big wakeup headline for a lot of people who are on the outside looking in. >> Yeah. I mean, I think to your point, Brian, whenever you see market perception outweighing technical specs or outweighing history, um, you know, the the history of the company of of the brand. um when perceptions are bigger than that and leading to valuations and and progress in this regard that points directly to brand. I I I really believe that and I'm biased of course because of what I do and and what I you know want to keep doing but um yeah I just think it's amazing. >> I think there's two sides. It was a good point like something that I had thought of and I wanted to bring up was um just from a market perspective the fact that whatever top five list of most valuable private companies like that's pretty wild for digital asset space um I don't even know what you would call you know AI as from a market cap but you know four trillion roughies in the digital asset space and you know a $500 billion valuation is is a big um head turner for just people realizing this this this asset class and this industry is here to stay. Um, you know, we won't go far, but like the reality is if somebody's brand is changing that fast, nothing really changed. Like if you go back and look at 17 to 20, like there was very shady things happening. Nothing's fundamentally changed other than changing the brand. >> But just taking it a step further, which is easier to view, is it's effectively if this is the winner, it's a CBDC. If it becomes ubiquitous and it gets deemed and this is what everyone from the administration it's just public private relationship of this is what you use and it becomes systemic and anything that's systemic naturally has to uh and it's funny because this isn't even like conspiratorial. We already seeing stakes being taken by the government and then it's increasingly looking like the government will take in larger stakes in other businesses um that are quote unquote systemic. So, uh, yeah, I don't know. It's it's not either or. It is what it is because global liquidity had to come into the digital asset space. It's happened since the beginning. Tether's been the main trading pair. It's allowed for liquidity to come into Bitcoin. It'll increasingly do that. >> Um, but it's also being weary and understanding like this route does not lead to uh the most positive things from an individual perspective. >> Yeah. And and I think we saw there was a sorry there was just a headline this morning from Circle saying that they're considering uh basically the ability to reverse transactions for us. >> Well, they've always they've always been able to do that. >> Blacklist reverse like all this stuff is always it's it's fiat 2.0. There's nothing really different. Uh it's a large database for how dollars move. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, I I think for companies like ours, I know I'm going on and on about it being this um branding story, but for on-ramp, what Tether has done is really a foil to what we're doing and what we endeavor to do. uh because it it sort of shows like to all of the points you guys are making that you know the market will accept obviously um a large degree of opacity if the utility is high enough and so Bitcoin is really the opposite of that transparency auditability that's the utility on uh Bitcoin side and so um you know I think for for Tether, it's about becoming ubiquitous and and that's how they've like muscled their way to where they are. But the branding story for Bitcoin is still about truth. And it's it's amazing how um truth has survived um so many things um over the last decade and and more uh and still keeps moving. And so, you know, Tether isn't a story that we from we should run from. I think it's a story that we learn from and use it as an example um you know to show again what Bitcoin is and isn't. It's educa. It's an education opportunity. >> Yeah, I would add to that too. In addition to truth and transparency, it's the the actual decentralization of the network. And so I think what we've seen really over the past decade to your point Blake is that the perceived utility around something uh is is sometimes inversely correlated with basically the actual decentralization of of the thing. And so all these other blockchains, you know, Tether's coming out with a new blockchain, a new L1 that's obviously inherently centralized, but it'll be very uh you know, widely used. that will probably end up being where most of the stable coin liquidity resides and so people will perceive a lot of utility in that and they won't necessarily care whether or not it's decentralized. Um now all of those other use cases um are effectively just you know mapping traditional assets whether it's dollars or real world assets to marginally faster cheaper blockchains like there is some utility there mostly for the issuers of the assets um less so for like the individual person um but those things don't necessarily need to be decentralized inherently and I think that that's what a lot of the crypto space is waking up to as we see, you know, a lot of these players that, you know, some incumbents, some Tradfi folks entering particularly the stable coin and real world asset space launching their own chains that are going to be permissioned and not decentralized. And I think that that is just sort of a recognition broadly in the space that is occurring. Um, and I think it's helpful because it it actually continues to portray the actual difference between these things between neutral sound money and, you know, a marginally faster, cheaper database. All right, just a quick break. If you're not subscribed to the on-ramp research newsletter, I certainly encourage you to do so. If you're a fan of the Last Trade and other shows here at On-Ramp Media, I know that you'll find a lot of value in the newsletter that Brian on our team produces each week. We just sent out the weekly roundup this morning and Brian really dug into the sovereign accumulation watch as he called it. So dug into what is happening around the world as nation states approach Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset. So again, if you're interested in what we do here on the research side and want to follow our research updates as well as team updates, product updates, head to our website onrampbitcoin.com and you can put your email in right on the homepage you see here. Maybe we could talk maybe we could talk a little bit about debts, digital asset treasury companies or Bitcoin treasury companies. I know we had a few uh topics in the hopper for this week. There was the uh Strive and Semilar acquisition. there is be huddle and then there's another article yet that I um not familiar with but I'd be curious to hear because it does tie into the topic of adoption and you know we're seeing was at the start of the show we talked about nation states and Michael had pulled up the chart from Bitcoin policy institute and different um I guess already authorized or let's say pending use cases of Bitcoin at the nation state level talked a little bit about state adoption and then just kind of the overarching you know Tether, the rebrand there. But I I think ultimately like everything is a story of adoption and this cycle has really been dominated by the adoption story around corporate treasuries. And so one of the big news items of this week was um Strive and Similar Scientific. And I wanted to maybe hand it over to Michael first for any thoughts on that topic. Um because they did a transaction just this week all stock. and curious what you make of the transaction or maybe just like the latest news in that space. >> Yeah, I um maybe I'll get worked up to to really share the the spicy stuff. Uh I talked about it this week earlier on on final settlement. I don't know if I have the energy to just keep explaining how ridiculous these things are. Um but I I can be goated and I'll let Brian because he was at the two prime event earlier maybe share some thoughts and feedback. Um, but maybe just in the spirit of what you said and Blake being on the podcast, um, I think independent of of any of the mechanics structurally not making sense of these things trading for more than one Bitcoin, this all comes back to education and adoption because frankly, we're still so early that very few people on the planet Earth treat Bitcoin as just a savings technology. They look at it as an investment. And because of that, not only do they look at his investment, it's still very opaque and how they can secure a material amount without the counterparty risk of custody and figuring it out themselves or outlaying it. And that's why we see demand for products like this. But ultimately, if you look on a long enough time horizon, if we have a a positive and bullish take on humanity, as individuals get smart, as the tooling and education get better, people will opt for better solutions that do not give them exposure to the execution risk and everything involved. And that's the thing that is just discounted. It's not intuitive, but if you worked in the space long enough and understand how people have adopted this technology and also on a long enough time horizon where these things trend, the market will just get there to the point of why do I want all this execution risk when I can just have the underlying >> and that's what I'm most excited about our business is because I can walk backwards and forwards with anybody on how ridiculous treasury companies are, but we also have solutions for them and we can explain why they're ridiculous and then also how we solve for it. We're not on Twitter. We're not somewhere saying, "Oh, you know, it's because I have this hardware device. Park all your money here." Or, "Oh, I have this DAT." It's like we have the actual solution that um helps solve for the problem that exists and why people are adopting or putting any money in these digital asset treasury companies. Yeah, it's it's um it's spot on in the sense that the reason there is so much interest and uptake in Bitcoin treasury companies as well as just the ETFs is because of the challenges of Bitcoin custody because the challenges of a digital bearer instrument and people not wanting to manage private keys and basically just offload that responsibility to a quote unquote professional. I think, you know, as Michael mentioned, I was at um a conference this morning uh here in New York held by uh Twime. They're a a sort of Bitcoin yield shop. Uh they are Bitcoin only, which I appreciate, but um you know, there was a lot of DAT talk at this conference. I mean, that was the topic of the day. Um so, lots of discussions around these pipe structures. um you know supply overlaying over overhang from these unlocks and and why a lot of them are are dumping below 1x or 1x mnav. Uh but the the massive elephant in the room is custody and and a couple of the panels got to it uh where the moderator asked a question around custody and there's just not a good answer there. There's there's a a growing recognition that there's a real centralization risk with custody particularly Coinbase. They custody nine out of 11 of the ETFs and there, you know, at least partial custodian for a lot of these treasury companies. And so there is increased recognition that there is a problem here. But people don't still still don't see the solution. They think, you know, effectively what I heard on on some of the panels today was um you know, you just have to really keep diligencing your your custodian, your single custodian, and make sure that they're doing everything right. And you know, maybe you could diversify custodians. So have multiple custodians and then you know, you don't necessarily lose all your assets, but you know, that's still not a great solution if you have four different custodians and one goes down, you lose 25% of your assets. For the ETFs, like that's not palatable. Like that that product goes away if you know uh the ETF loses 25% of the assets in there. So it's not a realistic solution. It's not a palatable solution long term. And you know I I wanted to just stand up and scream and shout like we we do have the solution here like there is a solution. You distribute the keys across multiple custodians in a quorum so that you actually have fault tolerance. And I think um you know it's going to be a long long journey here but like the at least the problem is being recognized uh more overtly. People are be you know talking about it more. And so, you know, part of why I'm so excited for for Blake to be on the team now is because we need to tell the story that the solution exists. Um, and you know, there's a better way to get quote unquote exposure to this asset. You can own the underlying. You can do it in a risk mitigated way. You can do it in a way that's easy. It feels like a brokerage. Um, you're not handling cryptographic material. >> Go ahead, Blake. >> Yeah. No, I I was going to say like this is a perfect example of where um clarity I think will serve us really well and clarity is is going to be uh one of the ways that we win. Uh because um that's I I think that's market noise. It's I think it's noise and and there's noise everywhere. But, you know, I think it's essential to sort of call a spade a spade and, you know, point to new structures and new ETFs. You know, this that's the what alphabet soup of acronyms that pop up um every week. Like, people can't keep those things straight. And so I think maintaining a position that custody is the signal and all of these rap ra rappers are um noise really helps to not only differentiate but uh facilitates understanding of wait you know now I'm starting to get it and it and it's almost as if that learning will occur um you know by knowing like what you don't want or or what you want to avoid. And so um >> just just to piggyback like >> this is a common theme we're recognizing is um the noise and the noise is directly correlated to the increase in the amount of monetary units because if you dislocate fundamentals from the amount of capital you will inherently get more distortation, more distorted noise. And so the key concept here is don't mistake u inertia and consensus with being right. We've talked about this at nauseium around most of the smart investors would know bonds are neg negative u yielding they're impaired but nobody's incentivized to say it in the same way that there's a lot of people that recognize bitcoin as the best performing asset but can't say it and can't allocate in the same way that uh the digital asset treasure company a lot of people fundamentally feel and understand there's something intuitively doesn't make sense to trade 90 cents for a dollar but if you have those amount of monetary units and people can make money and 90% of the industry that or thought leaders are are on some kind of board or affiliated, you don't hear about it, but on a long enough time horizon, you will because it just doesn't make sense in a fundamental sense. And so that's where um really doing diligence and understanding the mechanics and truly like does it make sense for your own personal portfolio where you start to hear and you don't get a lot of these takes um but they'll increasingly come up. And then the last part is yeah, the custody stuff is uh goes the same way with consensus that you'd be surprised in the level of multi- trillion dollar uh financial institutions that are talking with us about holding keys. They recognize this problem. And the beauty is it's the same way with nation state adoption. It's all game theoretical. So if your country is not adopting BTC over a long enough time horizon, you're going to lose out in the same way that the custodians are all competing with Coinbase. And if they can effectively differentiate and have a better story which is rooted in the fundamentals of the security of the asset over time we're going to get more and more adoption and that'll naturally we see this we pull assets from every major custodian because sophisticated investors know this is kind of the end state people listening to this every week it helps because they hear it they come they leave their firms they join our business like Blake um this is the beauty of asymmetry and alpha like that this is the difference between uh you know being wrong and right and the nice part is we're so early that If you're right, you get to make a lot of money. >> Yeah. I think this also ties into something we wanted to get to on the gold side because Michael, you mentioned the point about incentives and are you incentivized or not incentivized to tell a certain story or tell your clients the truth. Um I I always found it interesting how in the traditional finance space there was such a lack of acknowledgement of gold as um an investable asset, as a macro asset. I've talked about it on the show before. What I found interesting um about a week ago was that Mike Wilson, who's the chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley, has kind of come public with a 60 2020 portfolio. And so I can just read this here quickly and then we can react and get thoughts. But zooming in a little bit, um the idea, right, is to take the 40% that typically sits in bonds in that 60/40 portfolio and allocate 20 or 50% of that, so 20% of the total portfolio into gold. And so they cite here 20% gold is a more resilient inflation hedge at a time when US equities are offering historically low upside over treasuries and investors are demanding higher yields for long-term bonds. And so what sticks out to me here is that this is a story and narrative that we've heard for a long time in public markets. US equities are overvalued if you compare any of their fundamental metrics to any historical period. But I think what is often missed here. And so that is part of the reason why Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer is recommending a gold allocation in the portfolio is twofold. Because of the stretched valuations in equities, which you know on a look forward basis, you would imply then that they have lower returns in the next 10-year period. And then the other part of that is that the Treasury market um particularly on the long end of the curve demanding higher yields which they're starting to show weakening of the the US fiscal situation. And now what I think is typically underappreciated in the traditional finance space is you've heard for a decade now people talk about oh well the you know the US equities the stock market is overstretched if you compare any sort of fundamental valuation there. But what's not appreciated is the fact that investors there's two things. The first is that passive flows exist at to an extent they have never existed before. Like compared to a decade ago or 20 years ago, there's just so much capital that's constantly flowing into markets regardless of what the price to earnings uh ratio is of the S&P 500. And then the second piece is that the debasement is accelerating. And so people don't they whether they actually realize that or not, there's a subconscious recognition that I don't really care what price to earnings I buy the S&P 500 at because I don't want to have my dollar sitting in my savings account that's buying me less and less goods at a raper more rapid pace each year. And so I think it's an interesting story because you know typically we talk about the bonds part of the portfolio faltering but it's really is twofold. it's the equities as well. And you're now having this kind of lashback from, you know, the traditional finance world recognizing that there's a lot of these issues in the uh in the public equity market. >> Yeah. And this is this uh headline that you pulled up is one of many in in sort of a slew of of similar headlines over the past several weeks from Trady folks. Uh the Morgan Stanley's of the world. There was a Deutsche Bank note the other day. Um Jeffrey Gunlock who's known as the bond king came out and said you know 25% in gold is is reasonable. Deutsa bank note was saying that central banks by 2030 will own you know more gold and bitcoin than they do today effectively. Uh Dalio was out again making the rounds uh reiterating his 5 to 10% bit or uh gold allocation with some bitcoin as well. Um and so this is really Jackson to your point like for a long time in trad circles gold was ignored. If it wasn't ignored it was a marginal dimminimous allocation 1 to 2% in a portfolio. We're now talking upwards of 20%. Like that is a significant shift in just the perception of where gold fits in a portfolio. And really what we're talking about is is sound money. We're talking about hard assets. Mhm. >> Um and so as the the debt deficit issues continue to get worse, um there's a a growing recognition that hard assets have a real place to play in a portfolio. And the natural inclination of anyone learning about gold uh or beginning to appreciate gold in a different light is to then look at Bitcoin. Like it's just a natural evolution and progression to then look at >> the digital form of gold that actually improves upon a lot of gold's monetary properties. Um, and so that that's where we're headed. We're still a very early days as gold's breaking out. Um, and central banks, institutions, endowments around the world are are taking note and they're publicly coming out and saying like this is this is the right way. We're we're we want to own less fixed income um to because to Jackson's point, it's it's negative yielding and probably only going to get worse from here. uh frankly and so it's a real changing of the guard in sort of the the trady mainstream circles around what is gold, where does it fit, and oh yeah, what's this Bitcoin thing? >> Mhm. >> Zooming um I don't want to leave this topic entirely because I want to go back out. There's some China news on gold, but if you zoom in, like there's also a notion that gold is really clunky and hard for individual investors to buy and assay and know where to purchase. And it's going to get easier because this thing isn't going away. And so businesses are going to get stood up to allow for similarly like Bitcoin where you can have SMA style products and execution and you know lend against them. And we've seen a lot of this in Switzerland because it's very sophisticated capital market. But point being is think about like a high net worth individual that we know, somebody listening knows that has um anywhere between a million to $10 million total net worth and they say, "All right, I I hear Brian, I hear the guys, I want 10% in my portfolio, 20%. Only worth a million. Call it." And they say, "I'm going to take a 100 to 200k and I'm going to go down to wherever and I'm going to park this in my house." Like how much how insane a proposition would be for them to put 200k in their safe. Um, now some people might not worry about it, but the point being is that there's a level of clunkiness where um >> is why there's been that innate um uh apprehension for in retail investors to allocate, but this is effectively what everyone's doing when it comes to Bitcoin. They're still bare assets. Now, obviously, you can hold more of it on a hardware device than in your hand when you're holding a gold bar, but the the point still remains that that proposition is pretty insane and it's something that we needed to do for so long in Bitcoin. But as the price appreciates, we will look at it and be like, I can't believe and that's kind of the the the testament to like what we're working on. And um also, frankly, where we're at at 108,000, we're kind of dipping. um is imagine somebody high net worth that same high net worth ready to to take his allocation let's say 20% of a million he wants 10% in BTC and 10% in gold that person is not generally going to put 10 bitcoin on a ledger or treasure or any other hardware device because that's fundamentally different numbers um or let's say 10 million so it's a million bucks point being is like what 10 bitcoin was for years is fundamentally different and so when you think about risk it's just changed and that still is not like priced in or understood by the market is somebody buying 10 to 100 BTC 5 years ago is going to be completely need different products and services because those numbers are drastically higher. Um, so yeah, >> I mean I I may go way out way out there on this topic, but I just think that, you know, gold, you know, macro news cycles uh is a signal of like people searching for protection. And to me, that means that people are afraid. And so where this gets a little wacko is, you know, I I think like our ancestors, you know, living in caves, wandered outside of their caves, saw saber-tooth tiger, and ran back to the physical protection um of their of their caves. You know, gold, the physicality of that, I think, for uh forever has been what has brought people comfort and safety and protection. But uh the context uh that people seeking protection now um is really really different be because of you know how we are accepting uh and embracing things that are intangible. You know think about the the first time you used your phone as a plane ticket instead of a physical ticket. You know, there's lots of people that were afraid of that and then that fear eventually went went away because of the function utility and portability um of that. The first time you got into an Uber and some stranger drove you somewhere else. I mean, I personally still have these moments where I'm like, are you going to take me somewhere to kill me? Um but, you know, the you know, having that go mainstream and become a norm. I mean even Netflix like watching you streaming shows and wait I can watch a a whole series there there is some latent fear I think associated with that. The point I'm trying to make is that I think that uh you know utility um and and technology uh eventually you know trumps uh a that fear. Um and when we all get to that place where we don't need such physical um security blankets like a bar of gold um then I think the clunkiness of that Michael to your point becomes like something that we see uh in a new um light and it makes it then easier to see scarcity, portability, transparency um easier and getting on board with that and opening up to that. And so um I wasn't planning on bringing up Saber-Tooth Tigers uh on the pod today, but um I mean that that's what I think that the human experience is all about is being afraid and being brave and you know conquering fear until something else comes along. So >> yeah, I mean I think tying that and taking a step back like to uh maybe Jackson if you pull up the second link um around China. I think there's a reality from a structural perspective whether it's the amount of liquidity in Bitcoin and then also some of uh Blake's points of just unfamiliarity in the physicality. There's a gold telegraph tweet about China's quietly aiming to recentralize pricing power in the east, shifting the gravity of gold flows away from western vaults into a system of full controls. Um, the reality is the Shanghai markets have just gone insane when it comes to the amount of gold being delivered, but then also what they're structurally trying to set up when it comes to repricing um, oil pairs and just in general leveraging gold as the underlying denominator in a world that is moving around some other stable u, some other digital form of money that's tied back to gold. Now obviously on a long enough time horizon it doesn't make sense >> but that's what we're seeing play out here is the recognition that the dollar system is ultimately failing it will end >> and um there's a glo it feels like a global competition to figure out how those flows and who will control them. I think that's the other side of where tether and US stable coins come in is it's it's less even about absorbing the debt. It's more about the proliferation of dollar and and uh US dominance from a actual physical exertion perspective because it's almost more powerful than having an army in any country if you can basically shut off uh the country from being able to coordinate economic activity. So either way, independent how this plays out, there's everyone kind of um placing their chips on the table of recognizing that the world's changing very fast. >> Yeah. I'm I'm curious to like pose a question to the group, you know, do do you guys see um Bitcoin and gold being BFFs or do you think that Bitcoin should be synonymous um with with gold in some way? >> Where do where do you land? It's a great question because I think historically speaking the gold bug camp and the Bitcoin camp have almost acted adversarially for some reason um in the sense that you know there and there has been some overlap like the Larry Leards of the world who who came from gold and and appreciate Bitcoin >> but you know by and large it's it's been this notion of like oh Bitcoin's going to demonetize gold so gold's going to go to zero Bitcoin's going to go to the moon and that's just how things are going to play out and frankly like I I used to think that I I you know a year two years ago I I was more into in in that sort of camp of thinking and you know partially as a result of the price appreciation of gold but also you know just learning more about gold and the history of gold I've come around to the idea that they are on the same team they are bffs it's the same thesis you know gold is just analog bitcoin you know I I like that better than actually saying bitcoin is digital gold like because you know again the monetary property improving on what gold meant to be. Um, you know, gold is really just analog Bitcoin. It was it was the best humans could could find before we actually engineered it ourselves in terms of the the perfect form of hard money. And so I think, you know, we're in the early stages, but I think that dynamic is shifting where people are are waking up to the fact that it's really the same trade. And and I think you know one signpost of this was very recently with Harvard's endowment uh making a simultaneous allocation to both gold and bitcoin. Um they in their minds it was logically that is the same sleeve. It's sort of the sound money allocation or the sound money exposure in that portfolio. And you know I think again it's early days but I think people are waking up to it fundamentally is the same trade. And you know, if you if you have a thesis around the dollar system, if you have a thesis around debasement, you probably want some exposure to both of these assets. Um, and can sort of flex that percentage based on risk risk tolerance, the, you know, demographic, age, etc. >> Um, but it's the same story. It's it's it's fundamentally the same thesis. Um, but Michael, I'm sure you have thoughts. I was going to just say it's wild that most investors own no Bitcoin and no gold as well. >> Yeah. >> I mean that's just like >> if I were to walk down the street to there's a RAIA like at the corner of my street, I I would be shocked if they had more than like a 1% allocation to gold and probably close to 0% allocation to Bitcoin across client portfolios. And then I think it ties into what all of you guys have said, but it's worth reiterating is that the gold bid right now is not retail investors. It's not the professional investment community. It is sovereign nations. And so, Michael, I know you had some news on uh China in particular. But Brian, you also dug up an interesting chart that shows spot accumulation of gold versus uh ETFs, right? And so this is a chart from earlier in September. the blue line here that's going parabolic is the spot price, but you can still see that the ETF um the inflows have been down quite frankly if you look from 2022 to start of this year, they've just been down and they're just slowly slowly trickling back up. And then more recently, you can see here that um if you dig into the the details a little bit more, bullion back ETF surged close to 1% um the most in percentage terms since 2022. And so this is still like very early stages for a repricing of gold, but the overarching theme here is that most people own zero Bitcoin and zero gold. They're fundamentally on that they're fundamentally um unprepared for a more rapid period of debasement and the realities that they actually have to face as relates to the debt and um you know monetary inflation. >> Yeah. the to tie both of these themes, what you're sharing here on the the sovereign bid and then what Brian was sharing is um I think close to two years ago I started to go down this path because I ultimately and this is very naive of us on the Bitcoin side not to recognize the just the notion of anybody that's of age call it over 50 that has any wealth either a can't stomach the volatility or b doesn't want to catch a falling knife. So the notion and that's how sovereigns you know would think as well like this whole um inevitability of Bitcoin is not is not certain and even if it's certain in our minds think about how much time it took to get there and we talked this with with Brahms ppod like think about how much noise exists between like the running of nodes in core versus not versus quantum like that exists in the Bitcoin community that's looked at this for 10 years. What are somebody that's never looked at this space or sovereign supposed to think when it's like, "Oh, so I'm going to park all my like uh citizens assets in this thing and it goes belly up." It makes zero sense. So, tying back to 2 years ago, it's like, well, wait, if my grandmother can't stomach the volatility, I'd much rather have her in gold, it's an easier path progression. That's going to be logical. And then people can play the trade if they want to go more into gold or Bitcoin. And it goes back to like you know a new age 6040 uh is you know if you want to look at it from a you know tax style equity uh BTC and then that your your store value bonds and gold um it's just logic it makes logical sense that those will be paired they'll take longer and also there's just so much built-in um education to even get to a place where you're going to even talk about it in those ranges in size because most people are still uh I guess the last part was isolating gold from digital assets because that is historically and I was thinking about this all from our business perspective of like how do we actually go into a larger total addressable market because I've just seen this for 15 years. This bubble that we live in is still relatively small. Every founder, every investor, every large allocator, we pretty much are a phone call or one degree away. And there's all this other capital out there. But they look at Bitcoin specifically think about family offices. They look at Bitcoin and digital assets and it's all speculative. it's all sizing at minimal, you know, sub 5% allocations. Well, it's like, how do we get this related to gold? Because once it starts going and gets closer to gold and saw this kind of like gold move as a natural progression as you know, people start having to go back to what are hard assets and real assets, you start to go back to what Brian was saying is analog gold versus digital assets in crypto. And now you start to align better. Now we then that goes real back to branding and marketing because that's what naturally needs to happen is uh there just needs to be a natural bifurcation of like gold is Bitcoin is much similar to gold and crypto and digital assets is at best you know uh it depends on what room we're talking about is is venture style bets but generally ponzies. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's a hyperritical point because the the taxonomy for basically you know really the past 10 years of Bitcoin once you know Ethereum came to be the taxonomy has been wrong that that you know the people from the outside coming in are lumping Bitcoin in with the rest of these crypto assets and it's just the wrong taxonomy from an investment thesis perspective. Bitcoin is a hard money. It's sound money. Uh all these other things are to your point charitably venture tech bets um that again back to my earlier point maybe have some marginal benefits in terms of uh transaction speed or cost relative to to you know incumbent fiat rails but that's very different than money. Um the the TAM alone like if you just think about the TAMs of these things the TAM of money is you know at least 4 to 500 trillion. the TAM of, you know, a cheaper, faster database is, I don't know, maybe a few trillion. Um, so they're just fundamentally different bets. And even from a, you know, not even just from a return perspective or a TAM perspective, but from a risk pers perspective, they're fundamentally different. Um, the beauty of Bitcoin is that it's extremely transparent. The supply curve is known. So, it's it's the most trustworthy and transparent monetary policy we've ever had for an asset. So that's why that's why people are buying it. They're buying it because they know what the supply is. It's 21 million. All these other coins, all these other tokens, all these other blockchains. It's just a fundamentally different thesis. That's not why people are buying them. They're buying them for tech innovation. And they whether they know it or not, the supply can be changed. The rules can be changed because they're inherently centralized. And so the correct classification is uh is with gold. It that is that is the bucket. It's the sound money bucket. gold and Bitcoin and you know if you want to play around with this other stuff it's you just have to think about it in a different light. >> Yeah. Like, don't quote me on this, something I'm saying that will be forever captured in this podcast, but a scrape I've wanted to do for a really long time is to see um you know, our our beloved Michael Sailor and you know, in the early days of of his uh campaigning, educating, whatever you want to call it, of what Bitcoin is, um gold was always a part of his talking points. And um you know he was including gold in in those speeches uh because you know he was using you know association to um illustrate scope and scale like no no take Bitcoin seriously and you know in contrast or comparing to gold here's how big it could get. um etc. And it seems like uh lately, maybe the last year or a little more, um he's doing that less. Now, that could be a function of just um everyone getting wiser too or or more sophisticated um on the topic, but uh I think that that's probably a a more intentional choice if I had to like read his mind. um that uh you know that was sort of pitting Bitcoin against gold and you know now seeing them as BFFs or seeing them as uh synonymous um actually helps in like another way and so um it's interesting to see how that that journey has uh evolved. All right, if you're enjoying the show, please rate five stars on Spotify and Apple. Subscribe on YouTube, and most importantly, if you could leave a like and a comment, that will really go a long way. It helps with the visibility of our show. It's nice to see the comments as well. I appreciate them. Even the constructive criticism helps to improve our show and deliver a better podcast experience. So again, thank you for being here. And if you're enjoying the show, if you're getting value out of the episodes that we do week in and week out, please leave a like and a comment. I really appreciate it. The team does as well. And hope you enjoy the rest of this episode. >> Any um any topics we didn't get to cover yet that you guys want to get into. >> Yeah, let's uh let's definitely do a quick hit for the stables and then um maybe the crypto millionaire account. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, stable coins as collateral. >> No, the stables uh on the top. Escape the noise. >> Oh, I see. Oh, those those types of stables. >> Yeah, the the good stables. >> Okay. >> My apologies. >> So, we didn't even get to a chance to catch up, but we were, you know, Jackson wasn't able Well, Jackson was was selling dad, so Jackson was in New York. He was on the road as well. Uh but while he was there, we were in Nashville for a few events and we had the announcement of um the Texas the first accelerator in Texas, the stables. Um what's exciting about this and I was talking with the uh Texas Blockchain Council yesterday about is the core idea here is uh a place we talked about earlier on this pod around how much noise exists in the market. there's really a lack of um fundamentals that exist when it comes to entrepreneurs chasing the right projects. Um but also really when you think about city centers and how much noise exists from you know whether it's coffee meetings to just the different things that have been really uh romanticized about entrepreneurship and so we felt this firsthand me specifically living I moved about 50 minutes outside of Austin um and have been focused on building these businesses and realized you know the amount of value that has been created from just getting isolated and then creating intentionality when you want to step away from uh the the quote quotequote fundamentals of building a business. And so it'll be a touchdown space for on-ramp early writers uh and portfolio companies, but then we'll be having this accelerator where we're taking submissions for entrepreneurs that are looking to build in the space, leave their job, if anybody's listening. Um, there's a lot of folks we've naturally talked to that are ready to leave their quote unquote fiat business, whether they're in tech, finance, or across the board, but have been looking for the right group to either get involved. Uh, Blake is a we talked about this is a great example of somebody that's been following the space, but naturally was around a lot of individuals that either thought he was crazy or also just needed support and thinking about whether it's legal, how do you think about the right commercialization, what do people really want to pay for today versus, you know, 10 years from now. Um, so super excited about this. wanted to call it out because I think it's relevant in a world that we're talking about there's a lot of noise that exists. Um you can't just you can't just talk about things. You have to either provide solutions or um invest or put your capital or human time in. Uh or you really shouldn't talk about them because it's not really providing any kind of uh solution to where the market currently isn't going. Mhm. >> Yeah. the stables is a is a really uh exciting um development that um you know whenever I was uh brought in to what that is and where that's going um you know once the word gets out I just I I think so many people are going to be beating the door down because um it it it takes sort of that classic uh accelerator incubator model uh and puts it in this really unorthodox context, you know, uh in a quiet place, in a place that uh prioritizes uh wellness, um uh focus, etc. um you know that that's a really uh interesting and compelling um proposition that um not only I I think a lot of people are going to be attracted to, but a lot of the right people um are going to be uh attracted um to that. And so um that's exciting um for two reasons. Because of the thing, what it is, but then to see what springs from that environment. uh and and how and if that those businesses um are different in some way. Uh and so yeah, a lot a lot to keep keep uh a lot for people to keep their eye on there because um yeah, >> where should people reach out if they want to learn more about the stables? >> Yeah, they can go to earlyriters.comstables or just shoot any of us an email. Um, we had a really good podcast breaking down a lot of the concepts and and different businesses we're looking at. I mean, frankly, I know Jackson, you and I have had, you know, thousands of conversations at this point the past couple years on the the business development and sales side. There's no shortage of really good ideas and great operators kind of stuck in the legacy system. And so, um, there's been no already no shortage of applications. The ideas, the top five will get to, um, pitch in front of our LPs, our adviserss, founders. So they can still get funded, but the number one um you know the chosen company will get two to five BTC and then come out for four weeks to build alongside a lot of the team. We'll use it as an offsite and a and a you know lead jumping off point. Um good example of what Blake was talking about is legal. Gavin Fury is an adviser, worldclass um legal expert in the digital asset space. And generally when you try to build a business in the space, legal will crush you. like it's anywhere between $50 to $250,000 because there's still such a lack of education. And so we've just built a lot of that framework um to help and and kind of like offset those costs from a company's investment. Um really quick, maybe the other thing because I know we're we're short on time is uh I just wanted to call out the uh Henley and Partners. I've seen them do other stuff before. They had pulled up uh the number of crypto millionaires. Um, so it says crypto millionaire account surges 40% to nearly 250,000 amid historic boom. But then if you click into that link, Jackson, there's actually a table that shows the sention's the growth. Um, and I just thought that was really fascinating to see the growth of the asset class and individuals, but then ultimately it ties back into just the risk that is associated when you have that amount of capital. came out also that uh Crypto.com had unreported attack where leaked users personal data was out there and and so I get no shortage of like every digital asset firm under the sun whether it's Coinbase ledger things I've never heard of or emailing texting um as the market starts to wake up and realize this amount of millionaires are sitting with this digital bear asset in their house or one click away from being taken away it's just something to be aware of because the market is already very sophisticated in the amount of attacks and it's only increasing Um I don't know Blake Wolf as we wrap if you want to share any of your history with that or that's a topic for another day but uh it's just definitely important. Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely something that we could uh get into, but yeah, I I was, you know, one of those uh people that was uh in the space and thought I was doing all the right things and playing by the rules uh and and I was uh the victim uh of of a hack and and I would say I was even going um above and beyond on the protection side, the security side and uh I still um was uh the victim uh of an attack. And so, you know, lesson learned and I'm glad I learned that lesson in 2022, 2023 and not in 2030, you know. Um but uh yeah, we can we can definitely uh get into that because there's a lot to unpack, including recent conversations with the FBI um which have been uh surprising. So, um, yeah, they caught the guy. >> He just got sentenced last week, so it's it's amazing. >> Well, that's he got eight years. Yeah. >> Wow. Yeah. Um, I know we got a wrap here. That >> He was 15 years old, by the way, when he stole it. So, that's that's incredible. >> Yeah. >> Wow. That is that's impressive. >> Yeah. Um well, I think that wraps it for this week. On a very sad note, I'm I'm very sorry, Blake, that we had to end on that note, but um we're excited to be sad, you know, team >> and um yeah, excited for what we will do accomplish the rest of this year and into next. And again, for anyone who's interested in the stables, reach out to early riders. It's a great opportunity. >> Thanks, guys. Have a good one. >> Thanks, boys. Later. >> Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. 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