Trump Opens the Floodgates: 401K Bitcoin Supercycle

Jackson Mikalic (00:02.182) Okay, we're live. It's the last trade. This is going to be an interesting episode. I can at least promise that this is going to be a good one. It's the first ever three way last trade. The first time for the three of us, I believe. Yeah. Brian Cubellis (00:14.894) Second, second ever. First time for three of us, yes, but a rare three heads pod for TLT. Jackson Mikalic (00:22.824) So that. Brian Cubellis (00:27.446) Mike is still, you're still on mute. Michael Tanguma (00:32.775) Basically what the guys are saying is if you don't if you were planning on a guest being on this podcast and that hurts your feelings or hurts where you thought you were gonna be listening for the next hour, you should probably quit listening for the rest of the pod. But if you're interested in knowing what we talk about behind closed doors at OnRamp and the relationship we all have with each other, for better or worse, this will be a very indicative next hour because that's the plan, to have a conversation like we'd have on last trade without a fourth person joining. Brian Cubellis (01:02.212) And to be fair, we also thought we were gonna have a guest on this episode. We won't name names, we'll have them on eventually, last minute rug. Michael Tanguma (01:08.142) you Jackson Mikalic (01:11.358) Yeah, it happens. And I think for an internal rip like this, what you could expect is Michael is going to have some incredibly spicy takes. If he doesn't, I'm not going to show up next week. That was kind of the promise here is Michael is going to show up in a big way for this podcast. So let's get into it. This is, this has been a rumor for a couple of weeks, but it looks like we might finally get to see Trump sign an executive order to open up 401ks to Bitcoin and unfortunately, possibly other digital assets. I'm not sure about that second piece, but certainly Bitcoin ETFs. we're gonna go around the horn on this one. I think it's exciting. I also think it's important because there is a lot of capital locked up in these vehicles. It's about 10 trillion. You some people quote it nine, eight, nine trillion. Others say closer to $12 trillion in 401k assets. And for a long time, people have not been able to allocate to Bitcoin if they didn't want to go open a Coinbase account or open an account with River and go through the Bitcoin native process. so there's, of course, a lot of people have done that, ourselves included, but most people as evidenced by the ETF have chose not to invest into Bitcoin because it hasn't been convenient. It hasn't really had the stamps of approval from regulators, from the government, from Wall Street. And so we're finally at that point. 2024 was really the kickoff of, let's say, the maturity and access of Bitcoin opening up into traditional finance. And this is really going to be, I think, the next big catalyst for the asset class going forward. And I want to call out as well, I thought this was humorous because on Wall Street Journal Pro, private equity worries that Trump might bundle crypto into 401k order. So the broader order, just so the audience is aware, is not... selectively for Bitcoin and crypto, it actually includes private markets as well. allowing for investors in the public markets with the retirement funds to start tapping into private assets, which I mean, that seems like excellent liquidity to me, but I wonder if you guys have other thoughts on this news here. Michael Tanguma (03:25.134) Maybe one thing just to call out, because I was speaking with somebody this past week on this that worked at Fidelity, they got the 401k product for Bitcoin specifically, and was just trying to understand that this is more of a Trump blessing and giving clarity, or not clarity, but just an air cover for 401ks to get access to private markets. There's no actual rule that kept people out. It's very similar to banks getting involved in the crypto space. I think that's just a little bit a nuance there. It's not something that's just like is a new legislation or new legal framework for it. It's just saying that I think that they approve. And then yeah, I mean I think everyone's probably familiar and you hit on it is it's positive for individuals to get exposure to Bitcoin especially even if they could set up a Coinbase account. The reality is those are tax advantage savings that they historically had not been able to get exposure. to digital assets or Bitcoin, the problem is that the leap from private equity over inflated multiples on a startup versus, know, Farcoin versus Bitcoin is still a big leap for people. And so you would expect there's gonna be a lot of capital lost. But, you know, it's positive on the, you short to long term, but it's worth calling out. There's also gonna be some downstream effects that aren't necessarily positive. Brian Cubellis (04:44.29) Yeah, I think directionally very constructive. guess I have questions around like the private equity stuff, like, wouldn't accreditation rules still apply in some sense, or is like, is it just gonna be a free for all on this stuff? Jackson Mikalic (05:00.606) believe the answer is accreditation still applies for certain investments, but I forget what the regulation was about a decade ago that allowed for like certain, you know, certain investors that are not accredited to access private markets. So that has been in place for a while now, but it is for, there's like certain, you know, reg D versus I think it's reg B. I forget the exact lingo, but essentially there's been ways to access private markets as a non-accredited investor. Accreditation just being a $1 million liquid net worth. But I guess there hasn't really been ways to allocate capital in retired and tax advantage accounts in many ways, unless it was self-directed. But now this is opening up, you know, employer 401k programs and just a broader exposure for retirement assets. Brian Cubellis (05:47.662) Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think Mike's right to just like caveat all of this. Like it's not Bitcoin specific. People are going to be confused. No one really knows what's going on with Bitcoin and the sound money trade. And like, so yeah, there's some, some left to be desired in terms of like just the education and how people go about this. The other thing that this reminds me of is the Tefra chart. If you want to pull that up, Jackson, I put in the, in the doc, like it's similar or a corollary to like the broadening access to the ETFs in general from banks and wirehouses, which is still like very slowly opening up the plumbing. so like Teffra has been putting out this table that shows all the major banks and wirehouses in the country and their level of access to the ETFs. And so they put this out a few days ago and they've kind of been updating it quarterly. So I went back and I looked at the previous quarter and those four shaded boxes are the only changes from a quarter ago. And so like there hasn't been any new entrance to like full unrestricted exposure in a quarter. There have been people moving in that direction. Basically it's not prohibited, but there's certain restrictions around it. But like to me, like this is just like pretty remarkable considering again, like most successful ETF launch ever, you know, billions and billions flowing into these products yet. most people still can't access them through their traditional banking relationships. And so I think this is something that I'm just watching closely because I think this is like the real, watching the floodgates open in real time as all of these restrictions get lifted and more exposure is able to flow through. And so it just reminded me of this because it's a sort of a similar idea around the 401k stuff. Michael Tanguma (07:35.982) The beauty of the 401k and ETF stuff is it's like ultra bullish for multi-institution custody and on-ramp because those are kind of mutually exclusive like people can do multi-institution custody and will without on-ramp having to be around but Matt Hogan was on a podcast this past week with I think Pete Rizzo And I generally, anyway, I won't go too far into it, but I was listening. And Hogan, know, talking his own book for the ETF was naturally like, well, nobody will need it in the future because right now it's just impossible to get exposure. There's no way like the UI, the UX isn't easy for somebody to get like real synthetic, like direct exposure. So you have all this kind of like, you know, dirt in between, whether it's Pubcos, Pubcos with leverage, ETFs with sitting at a centralized custodian and the V and all, you know, all the things associated. But it was the point of like we're just that early in the process that it's still like misunderstood on like how do you get exposure? What's the right type and then to your point even with these like products that we all know necessarily You shouldn't park material wealth there people still can't even get access to them So there is gonna be a world as the market grows and especially what we're doing It takes a few minutes for somebody to create an account get spot exposure best-in-class Direct and I have to work out taxable events and all the other things that we know are inherently wrong with an ETF and And so it's just, we just have a long way to go. We're like, again, the best mental model, I think it was like late 80s, early 90s, and we're setting up the first computers while the hobbyists were still kind of like at the meetups trying to put together the computer and then others are building like these things for institutions. We're kind of there just figuring out how to democratize it for everyday individuals as well as large institutions as well. Jackson Mikalic (09:21.34) Yeah. And I will say as well, the other thing from a flows perspective is people just contribute passively to their 401k. I mean, I haven't done that in a while on ramp. We don't do 401ks here. My Bitcoin, I'm relying on my Bitcoin. So hopefully this all pans out. anyways, jokes aside, know, people just set up certainly in most cases, like you're kind of a fool not to take advantage of an employer match, right? So if your employer is going to put a match you up to 4 % allocation or contribution rather Brian Cubellis (09:33.284) You Jackson Mikalic (09:50.271) into your 401k, kind of put that 4 % in. And a lot of people, because they're told that the prudent thing to do, is park your capital in tax advantage accounts and 30 years from now, 20, 40 years from now, depending on your age, you tap into that as you need it for retirement. And so there's two things that I take away from that beyond what's already been discussed is that's a lot of passive bidding for the asset. It's kind of similar to micro strategy being in the S &P 500 where now people just passively allocate without really even thinking about it. And the second piece is... I forget the second piece actually. Michael Tanguma (10:24.494) While you're thinking about it, I just want to be clear. Are you calling listeners a fool for if they don't match in their 401k? Are you saying that's what the standard like? Jackson Mikalic (10:32.828) I would say that's yeah, that's like conventional wisdom, right? So that's what you're told. You should be matching. You know, it's it's up to the listener, right? Michael Tanguma (10:36.322) But you're not saying that. But you're not saying that's true. Well, because my perception was Jackson was going back to his kind of TradFi days. Because if you remember about a few months back, Jackson was... evangelizing for UBI on a Bitcoin standard. And this reminded me very similar because I think he actually believed that you're a fool if you don't match. But the reality is you're actually a fool if you do match because you should take those dollars and park them in Bitcoin and not have them tied in to all of those products and locked in. So I just wanted to clarify, you know, I can't let it get too far because people will be listening and they expect the best because this is one of the highest signal podcasts in all Bitcoin. know this. We have the feedback. People come in. They tell us. And so. Brian Cubellis (10:53.945) Ha ha! Jackson Mikalic (10:54.269) Hahaha Brian Cubellis (11:18.616) Mike, if you can get exposure to Bitcoin, it then make sense to match and keep it in there or still take it out? Take the penalty too? Because that's the other consideration, Is like if you're not 65 or whatever, like you're taking a penalty on it. Michael Tanguma (11:27.949) Wuh It's a great question. There's two aspects to consider. One is if you can eventually roll over the 401k into a self-directed and then ultimately take delivery of the underlying via like something like what we do. The other one really comes down to the question that we've always talked about. Would you rather 500k in MIC, self-custody, whatever you want, or a million dollars in cash? in the bank or whatever that number is. These are what I'm going at. It's like what level do you start to appreciate not being stuck in a certain system that is over levered, counterparty risk. And so those are decisions an individual has to make. But I just wanted to call out like you are not a sucker if you don't match your 401k, if you're putting it into the best performing asset of all time in a way that you can reduce the counterparty risk. Jackson Mikalic (12:19.826) Fair. Good clarification there. So the second part of my, the second piece that I just want to bring up as well is I think the passive bidding ultimately ties back into what is happening in this cycle, right? There's a lot of theories is this the last four year cycle. Are we in a super cycle? As some people would say, but it certainly has been unconventional when you compare this cycle to prior. And there's a lot of reasons for it that we likely have discussed and guests have as well in the show. So we don't need to get into it, but I think that at least supports the idea that if people are just allocating passively, let's call, know, even a 10 % exposure in their 401k and they're contributing by monthly to that vehicle. I do think that we'll end up seeing more of a floor on the retail side as well, as we likely saw, likely will see with institutional investors that are positioned for the long game here. So just something to call out. I think passive flows and liquidity channels ultimately end up changing what the cycle looks like. kind of depends of course you know where we top out and whether that's this year or next year and what that correction looks like but I do think that this new channel being opened up does change flow structurally. Brian Cubellis (13:30.98) Yeah, I think it's dependent on, you know, I'm sort of, I'm still unsure, like if cycles still exist anymore, at least to the same extent, because of the things you mentioned, but the other variables in my mind are like, well, what would cause a top? Would it be something like internal to crypto or would it be some other like more macro black swan where everything sells off and Bitcoin correlates and... So that's one variable is like, what is the actual cause of any top or downturn? then beyond that, like where have we progressed in terms of the education? Because like, yeah, theoretically, passive bids sound nice in a potential downturn. But like if the education is not there and people don't understand what Bitcoin represents and what it is and why it might not be related to whatever else is happening in the market, then there may not necessarily be like... Michael Tanguma (14:26.414) Yeah, so it sounds like Jackson takes the one angle, Brian's in the middle, and I'll take the other side. Strongly, like, there are definitely still four-year cycles and there'll be heavy volatility. And Jackson asked for spicy, so I'll provide it. The reality is that nobody says this. It's all relative. So what I mean by that is, like, if you cut the minor reward in half, Brian Cubellis (14:28.13) people stepping into that as heavily as we might think. Michael Tanguma (14:55.918) or even, you know, let's say the next halving, while the minor reward is cut, you still have the dollar amount increase, right? So every cycle it's much, it's a lot more dollars being mined every, you know, 10 minutes. And then when you take it a step further, it's hard to see, but what Jackson's referencing in passive flows have always been there. There's been DC errors. Now again, it increases. It's increasing 10 to 100x, but it's still the same natural system, and it's still the same amount of capital coming in and capital coming out, and the same people not knowing what they're buying, the same people knowing what they're buying, and same people stepping in to provide a floor. And then there's going to be the same amount of leverage. So it's kind of like, in my mind, incoherentability. Maybe they get elongated. Maybe volatility, and I think we all agree, volatility over a long enough time horizon will subdue, will be tempered. But to say like the cycles, and then there's just inherent bias in human psychology when it comes to animal spirits and business cycles and naturally as like capital comes in. But I think the notion of like there's just like this super cycle and all this stuff is, we kind of do it every four years. Is there a super cycle? They thought in 17 it was super cycle. Brian Cubellis (16:08.548) In your mind though, what causes it? Is it internal or external to quote unquote crypto? Michael Tanguma (16:15.19) It's the sovereign. It's the sovereign. think from all these discussions, the thing that I think changes everything, like truly changes everything is if there's the real sovereign bid, because they have no reason to sell. And that's the longest term hold. If you're holding the Bitcoin on behalf of your country, you're naturally mining it, and you're trying to accumulate as much as possible. And I think we end up there, and it's possible we go there the cycle, and then that would be the structural change. And the reason I think we could get there is because it ties into some of these other conversations we'll have is the 60-40 only exists. It's like the emperor has no clothes. Everyone knows that inflation is greater than what they say, but we never talk about it. Or you look like it's taboo to say that it's like 7 to 12%. In the same way that everyone knows, and Bitcoin is the same thing, nobody talks about Bitcoin even though it's been the best performing asset, and then bonds have this huge allocation across the world, but nobody talks about how they're negative yielding. But people know that exists. And so it's the same thing of like once the sovereigns make their play and you see the adoption and allocation, everything kind of like stems from that, because sovereigns still hold the debt, right? And so the second they start selling it, we're seeing it slowly, but as they step into gold and Bitcoin increasingly, when everyone else kind of follows suit, meaning like TradFi, Fintechs, and then individually the people listening to this and others and they're like, shit, like it's not the 60-40 anymore, it's the sound money index and everything else is credit and this is money. And so that's the thing that I think structurally changes is that quote unquote people that make the moves in the world eventually like show their hand, which they're already doing it, it's just we live in a vacuum in a bubble. Brian Cubellis (17:58.242) No, that makes total sense. I had actually meant the other direction. Like what would cause a material downturn or like what looks like a bear market? Would it be something internal or external to the crypto space? Michael Tanguma (18:11.406) That's a great question. Brian Cubellis (18:12.964) Because that's what I wrestle with, like what would actually cause a 60 to 70 % downturn in Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (18:20.504) Well, one of them, I didn't expect to bring it up, but I'll show it because we had this conversation internally. It wasn't meant to be here, but Jackson will appreciate it. If we look at the Bitcoin treasury adoption plug for the on-ramp terminal, if you ever want access to any of this, this randomly pulls up the ETFs and then the top holders. I think it's 80. And what I was looking at, if you scroll down, so this is just public. companies whether it's ETFs or Treasuries and down here it shows this is 85 of them and it shows 3.16 million BTC and it's 15 % of the supply but here's the kicker it's actually 20 % of the supply because what this is taking into account is 3,000 out of the 19.6 million mined not the four and a half roughly million that have been lost so this is really on 15 million BTC so that this is 20 % only within 85 holders this doesn't take account This doesn't take into account Coinbase and the rest of whatever they're custodying, the rest of the custodians and then other Pubcos. Main point is that the centralization issue is real and if some of these Pubcos or large custodians ever delever, that could be a natural cause for that. Because ultimately people are going to go to liquid assets, whether it's gold or dollars, especially if they realize gains. So yeah, I think that would be... Jackson Mikalic (19:43.614) I do want to I do want to clarify that does include the ETFs though. Yeah. All right. Yeah. But it's a it's a valid point. Michael Tanguma (19:47.33) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (19:51.609) Well, mean, ETF, micro strategy and BlackRock is basically like out of that three and a half million is like half. Jackson Mikalic (20:04.198) Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, that's kind of the risk that the coin based risk is just like, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's a big one in my opinion, not to say like their inter internal controls aren't up to snuff, but just the idea of a compromise happened there. think that That's very bad from a reputational risk for the industry. Not to say, of course, that doesn't imply that something actually happened to Bitcoin, but in terms of education and lack thereof and investor perception, if something happened to a public company in the U.S., by far the largest custodian securing whatever the number was, that not only from just like a cycle top and then draw down, that concerns me from a reputational risk perspective for the industry for a very long period of time. But yeah, let's move on to some of the other topics. And then just wanted to call it as well that the Trump family did front run the 401k executive order. So Trump media has whatever the number is like 16 or 17,000 Bitcoin on their balance sheet with Trump media company. So everyone wants to pump their bags. It's not to say that that's unique to the Trump family because everyone's aligned with their incentives, but you know, let's allocate a position and then let's open up capital markets and make it easy to access. Nobody wants to lose money, right? Everyone is in it for their own gain. that, you know, just something to point out there. Michael, I wanted to hand it over to you. So you mentioned, what'd you say exactly? That everything's breaking? Is that the right way to categorize it? Michael Tanguma (21:46.541) Yeah, I think the reason why we tied this in, this was a tweet that was going around, really a chart. I think maybe before this one, if you go down to the title, below this chart. Sorry, go back and then just scroll down. There's two charts. The first one, and this is probably near and dear to Jackson's heart, shows the US medium household income versus home price from 1970 to 2025. And the reason we're bringing this up is really ultimately to further underpin the investment case for Bitcoin, why it's important to be a pillar of all humans, including Americans, course, way that they store value, but also part of the 401k discussion we're talking about. It's from 1970, you can see the between income and home price was relatively small. And what's happened in the subsequent 50 years is just absolutely insane. And for better or worse, people hold their homes as not only storing of value, but really on future dependency on optionality and safety so they can develop social ties and fabric when you think about marriage and kids. And so this ties into the main chart that went viral. If this one wasn't the craziest, the one that Jackson's gonna pull up here, is ultimately showing since 1950 estimated number, a percentage of 30 year olds who are both married and homeowners. And this is probably the craziest chart I've maybe ever seen. It shows in 1950 over 50 % of 30 year olds were married and homeowners. And we sit in 2025 and it looks like on this chart it's like 12 and a half percent. I mean, it's just crazy. The tweet that I saw tied to this was how you don't come back from this. It takes a black swan to come back from this because ultimately this is decades of changes that ultimately are ingrained in everything that we see. I know you guys are gonna have lots of thoughts, so I just wanted to pull those other two up really quickly. So this one was just from another person on Twitter and it shows another chart, very similar mapping, it's from the 80s, and it shows US overall inflation, CPI. Michael Tanguma (23:50.177) again, know, quotes and then it shows college tuition, like 1200%. These just kind of crazy numbers that people manipulate, but at the end of the day, everything costs more, people aren't making more money. And then the last one was a Peter St. Ange post, and if you scroll down, you guys probably haven't seen this, you'll appreciate it. Just look here, so this first one is total pages published in the Code of Federal Regulations. So these charts are like fantastic, we should link to them, but just every year you see the number of pages increase, and they'll keep going down. And then here, look, total cost of regulations, accumulation from a percentage of GDP, and the US, it would be the fourth largest GDP in the world if we just did the cost of regulations for the US, and if you keep going. I think right here is really indicative too. So it shows expense budget versus the regulatory costs. So Americans make $66,000 and then it's showing the regulatory cost of like everything built into that is roughly $15,000. So we don't have go any further, but it's just showing that there's a status of the bureaucracy. And as you put more dollars into the system, they go to more inefficient outcomes. And that's why this would never be able to be solved. You'll never be able to repay back the debt because the debt goes to unproductive things. those unproductive things have to de-lever because by nature of not being productive and so you have to insert more dollars into the system and which structurally causes more inflation and you can't keep up because the cost of somebody to pay an employer you go to business if you had to keep up with that and so it leaves this disparity and it's just continuing to get worse and worse and it's a real know concern because it's a fact it's a core part of the fabric of society all these things and they're all fundamentally broken. Jackson Mikalic (25:34.204) Yeah. you know what this very sad thing is, even with all the revenue they're bringing in from the egregious amount of money it costs with all these regulatory burdens, they still don't even have enough revenue to fund the spending. it's like just crazy how structurally broken the system is where there's just so much excess in spending for things that we have no idea. You know, it's tip of the iceberg type of thing with you know, how the tax dollars are being spent at a federal level and nobody can get it under control because it's, there's no incentive at a political will level to do so. And the ramifications as Michael showed are pretty devastating. mean, I didn't realize how close the gap was between the, the median home price and the median wage back in 1970. It's almost like a one for one. if you know, you could in theory buy a house with about maybe one and a half years it looked like of wages versus whatever, I think the number is closer to seven or eight times now. Michael Tanguma (26:36.652) It was the 50s, but similar, yeah. That one was the 50s. Jackson Mikalic (26:38.749) Okay, 70 years, yeah. Yeah, so mean, it's pretty devastating and then, know, 30 year olds both married and homeowners, well, yeah, that's big haircut. Brian Cubellis (26:51.15) Yeah, I'd be interested to see the breakdown of that because I don't know. Maybe they're relatively equal in terms of their influence on those. But like if you broke it down by each of those marriage or homeowner status, like which is more egregious. But just to reiterate Mike's point, I think it's like. It's totally clear that it's like too ingrained because I think like Trump and Doge and Elon was like the best shot. we had at reversing any of this stuff. like, know, Elon was calling out a lot of those similar charts many months ago around the, just the sheer number of regulations, the cost associated. And we barely, you know, barely, barely made a dent in it. And so like, you know, I think that that was our, terms of like the political will and like the actual ability to turn the Titanic in another direction. Like I think that was our best shot and it didn't work. So like it's abundantly clear that it's just too ingrained at this point. Jackson Mikalic (27:55.997) Yeah, there's no coming back from that. Brian, want to hand it over to you. something interesting that came up from macroscope, I'd say, you know, if you're not following macroscope, check him out on Twitter or on X. I like his account because he actually posts some interesting stats. He follows the market and he has really good analysis and it's a breath of fresh air in the Twitter world where everyone just posts in all caps a bunch of nonsense. So macroscope's a good follow. Brian, what do you make of this post on the Asia markets and an appetite for BTC? Brian Cubellis (28:31.5) Yeah, it mainly just stuck out to me in the sense that like, think people, well, one, we're definitely in a bubble in the Bitcoin world, but even in TradFi land, I think we're in like a US centric or domestic bubble. And I think this was just, it stuck out to me in the sense that like, not only is there obvious real demand domestically for Bitcoin and specifically via these ETFs, but it's a global phenomenon. Bitcoin's global asset. And, you know, for the most part, like, tried by firms internationally can get exposure to iBit. So I think it's just, it was an interesting data point to me just to, put it in context, zoom out a little bit and recognize like, this is not just a U S centric dynamic here in terms of the plumbing getting opened and people allocating. And, know, you could also make the argument like for anyone X us. from an institutional allocator perspective, like the imperative is arguably stronger than like institutions in the US to embrace Bitcoin and have some form of allocation, just given the relative standing of other fiat currencies to the dollar. So that's why it stuck out to me. But yeah, give Macroscope a follow if you haven't. Lots of good content for Michael Tanguma (29:50.607) You know what that just hit reminded me or maybe think of is the delivery the delevering we've been talking about is going to be infinitely more greater than anybody's expecting and why it came to that conclusion was You know, the notion of like paper Bitcoin and non paper Bitcoin and is it being suppressed or not? I think regardless of where people land with that, everyone I think understands the ultimate barometer or way to reconcile that is to take delivery of physical. And so if you go down that line, imagine where, you know, whether there's somebody that blows up or somebody, you know, has counterparty risks, it comes back into the system. People naturally seek delivery. Well, think about how much cash we're talking about, just given the amount of money that's been printed, the amount of money that's in the system, we've never, even including stable coins or bank deposits with SVB, we've never seen a digital borderless asset accrue this much value, and that can move within 10 minutes. Right? So when it happens, it's going to happen insanely fast. And that's when you see maybe Coinbase stops halting, maybe ETFs, you know, if there is some suppression, pubcos, if they're levered, see drawdowns that we've never seen. And that's when everyone kind of like wakes up to a lot of this stuff. And so I think that's something that doesn't get widely explained or talked about. We've actually by nature of just the amount of monetary units in the system have that many and then also tied to a digital borderless asset by nature of the Quintin Market Cap being two trillion plus. And then this free ability to move it at any point is going to naturally cause a lot of things, disruption eventually, because not everyone's doing things the right way. And that's going to be a massive tailwind. Michael Tanguma (31:41.376) point. Or headwind, guess. Jackson Mikalic (31:45.919) And one other thing too on that topic, Brian, you just mentioned is Jackson Mikalic (31:52.715) here. Yeah, here we go. So Brazilian lawmakers have discussed strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill. Ultimately, it's in everyone's best interest to allocate some Bitcoin, whether you're a sovereign or you're a fund manager in Hong Kong or you're an individual in, you know, wherever really at the end of the day, like everyone's looking out for their best interests and it's becoming more mainstream at this point that US treasuries are a big problem. They're not really the flight to safety trade or store of value trade that people perceive them to be. Even five, 10 years ago, right? There's a combination of factors that have happened since then. But I think the most concerning one outside of the United States is maybe two. The first one is the fact that, well, if you tie up your capital and US assets, you ultimately have. a lot of counterparty risk. You don't even have counterparty risk just at the investment level. You have counterparty risk at the sovereign level. And if you don't agree or comply with, United States directives and maybe your capital seized. And then the second aspect is, well, everyone looks at the numbers and there's just no feasible way to pay back the numbers on a real basis. So if you are a government outside of the United States, it really is in your best interest to acquire Bitcoin. and especially do it before it becomes a mainstream thing to do. I mean, we're all kind of waiting. know Brian in particular is very disappointed that the audit of the strategic Bitcoin reserve in the United States has not been made public yet, but let's our hopes out. Maybe we're going to get one, but countries, it's really in the best interest of them to start acquiring before the United States just has the ability to, you know, take out whatever budget neutral ways they want to. Gold revaluation. That's something we wanted to talk about as well, but Yeah, this is a trend that I think is really only starting between what we talked about at the start of the show with traditional pools of capital starting to trickle into Bitcoin. I also noticed too, I didn't even include it in our topics, but it reminds me that I believe it was Michigan's state pension fund, the latest 13F filings that would be for the second quarter of this year, 2025, showed that they increased their allocation threefold to, I believe it was ARK's Bitcoin ETF. Jackson Mikalic (34:11.457) Product aside, mean, these institutional investors tend to start with a smaller position before kind of expanding on that based on conviction, due diligence, et cetera. And so it's still a really small allocation at the pension size, but they are an underfunded pension. I think they're about 70 % funded at the state level. They're trying to generate a return of about 7 or 8 % nominally just to keep pace with inflation. And I think as more people in the institutional investor world recognize that there's really no way to make up a shortfall with traditional assets. They're going to have to be forced out on the quote unquote risk curve, right? And Bitcoin is at least how it's perceived right now to be furthest out on the risk curve, even though we would make an argument that it is a risk off asset, but it's really one of the few assets that will likely vastly outperform the benchmark of real rate of inflation going forward. So it's like, if I could summarize that it's the retail markets opening up at like the 401k, then you have institutional investors starting to just really small allocations to start. And then you have sovereigns that are looking for passing legislation to start acquiring Bitcoin for their countries. So we've only just started to scratch the surface of that. Brian Cubellis (35:25.966) Yeah, and it's going to get wacky too because there's still, I would say, increasing conflation, unfortunately, between Bitcoin and crypto. so we don't have to go deep into the treasury company stuff. But like there's been a number of announcements over the past several weeks of digital asset treasury companies or DATs as folks on Twitter like to call them. And I was thinking about this the other day and it's like Maybe this is just the path. Like this is the path for both institutional allocators, but really more so like the normie retail equity trader to educate themselves or just get educated on why Bitcoin is different than crypto because these other digital asset treasury companies are going to fail. And maybe that is the learning is that like, they tried to do a treasury strategy around a venture tech bet like Ethereum or Solana or or whatever and didn't work. Well, why didn't it work? It didn't work because it's not a reserve asset. It's not sound money. It's not credibly neutral. It doesn't have the same fundamental monetary properties that Bitcoin does. So say what you will about the Bitcoin treasury company stuff and the layers of embedded risk there, but at least it's like at least logically sound. Like you're trying to accumulate more sound money. Whereas all these other things, these digital asset treasury companies are accumulating venture tech bets like Michael Tanguma (36:54.494) That's it. Brian Cubellis (36:55.204) generously. And so I think like, as this plays out, like, I think that's going to be the learning for a lot of people. And I already see Michael kind of take the other side of this. But I think that's going to be the learning is like, shit, like they tried to do this strategy with something other than Bitcoin and didn't work. You know, maybe maybe there's something different about these assets. Michael Tanguma (37:14.67) man. No, mean, Brian's right, but like I just have to, I want to tempt myself because we have a lot of clients and listeners that enjoy the dabble in the pubco, so I don't want to go too far in the direction, but I also want to be on record as much as possible explaining how they're all the same. So at least we'll have the tapes and then if I'm wrong, then people will get, I'll have egg on my face. Brian Cubellis (37:15.896) Hahaha! Michael Tanguma (37:39.823) So that's the caveat to say that the same thing that there's no difference between Ethereum and Farcoin is there's no difference between Farcoin Treasury Company and Treasury Company that's holding Bitcoin, 101 or whatever. They don't have fundamental, they actually don't truly have fundamental value because you can't make money on money. So it's an over-financialized system that's allowing people to leverage debt and other products and also uneducated to buy the Bitcoin. But I think everyone agrees it's in that trade is the MNAV will eventually get to parity or below. And then that will naturally cause market forces to take care of them in the same way that like there is no fundamental value to a shell company buying Bitcoin because there's every way under the sun for an individual to get it via their brokerage or buying spot. So anyway, the point being is like, yes, that there it's nonsensical, Farcoin or Ethereum because you can make more of it in the same way. to go to like tap the capital markets to buy it if somebody's buying the equity expecting to get more Bitcoin and eventually like the the rubber meets the road and the market either gets educated or the MNAP gets arbitraged out and then somebody's holding a bag and they should have just bought the Bitcoin because they also have all the execution counterparty risk fees associated with it. Jackson Mikalic (39:02.111) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (39:02.146) Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with any of that. My take was more like, if you're just comparing a digital asset treasury strategy to a Bitcoin treasury strategy, like even if the Bitcoin treasury strategies go to 1x or below MNAV and underperform Bitcoin, I still think they'll outperform the digital asset treasury companies. It was my main take. Michael Tanguma (39:23.564) And my main take is I rather take the Farcoin 100X bagger because at least if I'm going to be a degen, like I'm going to maybe hit it and then run out versus think that there's fundamental value that Bitcoin Treasuries are going to take 50 % of all the BTC and that this is a sustainable thing is my main point. Brian Cubellis (39:25.956) you Brian Cubellis (39:40.686) fair because they're trades. So yeah, if you time it right, the Farcoin trade might be better. Jackson Mikalic (39:41.899) Yeah, I mean. Michael Tanguma (39:46.594) Definitely be better than Treasure Co. XYZ. Jackson Mikalic (39:47.809) That's well, that's the thing too. Yeah. mean, at end of the day, the equity, the equity bets are there. They are trades. And so the people who are allocating to them on the retail side are hoping to exit the position and have more Bitcoin than they would if they had just bought spot. And so I think there's, I hope people at least acknowledge that. I don't know how many people on the equity side, making equity invest investments believe in a lot of the other, you know, aspects or narratives to these companies. But I think there is an interesting angle from like strategy in particular with Michael, temper yourself. There's some interesting stuff I think on the convert side and the preferreds. And I'll admit that I don't know enough about it to speak, you know, in a sophisticated manner on the topic, but I do think what is happening there. looking outside of the fact that there is a lot of counterparty risk at the treasury, Bitcoin treasury level. actually strategies, Bitcoin treasury, which if you're monetizing the balance sheet, you really can't have an issue with the treasury because then the entire business is effectively defunct and investors are going to scramble out of the door. if you put that, you know, that aspect of the due diligence aside, I think there's an interesting angle because they're the only company, hang on. There's the only company that I think, I think at this point we'll actually have like Michael Tanguma (41:06.988) But wait, how can... Jackson Mikalic (41:12.917) serious institutional scale in the sense that if you think about like spot Bitcoin, there are still going to be a lot of investors that maybe will not allocate to spot Bitcoin for some time. And not to say that we think that's the right call, but that's just the reality. And so I think that there are, there is a space for companies to engineer products that allow them, allow investors to get different areas of the capital stack, depending on their risk tolerance and their investment objectives. And so that, in my opinion, is one of the bigger differentiators with strategy versus the others. And I think the others are just, like I said, people trying to trade to have more Bitcoin in the future, which I think most people will end up missing the trade. They'll time it wrong. Michael Tanguma (41:53.795) Yeah, I just have to call out, you said put aside the most fundamental thing that exists. And by the way that you focus and work on for two years is like, just make sure we're all aligned there, the listeners as well. So you said put aside, like it's like, I need to live without the oxygen. Well, let's put that aside for a second in this like scenario. And then I've also been trying to... Brian Cubellis (42:02.542) You Jackson Mikalic (42:08.6) haha Jackson Mikalic (42:13.335) haha Brian Cubellis (42:15.374) Let's just assume that Sailor adopts MIC and the coins are in MIC. Does that change your view of MSDR? Michael Tanguma (42:24.526) I don't think on a long enough time horizon it matters if it's at MIC or not because the market will just naturally want the underlying and then we are too early to know what the best products that will accrete because I think on a long enough time horizon there will be just like all financial products or financial assets it'll monetize to a point where we'll have a close enough risk-free rate of return whether in there's different permutations that it could take But I don't think we're in 100K early adoption. this early and we found the solution that is just going to be in perpetuity, this Bitcoin printer, private bank and all the things. again, it all sounds kind of like taboo and spicy and whatever, but the reality is like, there's so much embedded knowledge, like tribal knowledge and building financial products and services in this space. And you see this because there's only so many companies and there's definitely only so many companies that have lived through these cycles. And to assume And I've been in these rooms when it comes to the SBRs and all this stuff happening. And it's like, you're just going from like zero to start to educate individuals and to assume that we're just gonna like jump in and people are gonna buy 500,000 BTC or 50,000 BTC and then start financial service firms and make all this money. And we're just gonna go out and the government's not gonna have any problems with it and all these other things. It's just like, even if it's right, put 5%, 10%, but don't like, it's not your God and don't put all your capital there. So anyway, and that's where Jackson's, Jackson, have to caveat these things because Jackson's listening and following you get on Twitter and everyone's there and it may be different with MSTR. It's like, it's still the same deal. You're getting Coinbase exposure on top of a third party. Jackson Mikalic (43:53.495) I just. Michael Tanguma (44:08.0) equity and they have to do everything right for you to get your return and it's like we talked about on Brown's podcast the Bitcoin per share theme it might as well be like casino per hour deal it's like what are you up at the casino per hour when your buddy goes to Vegas he's like up up up and then you get him on Monday morning with the hangover and he's like yeah I lost like ten thousand dollars it's like nobody's realizing it and if you're realizing those gains I mean that's really good but it's not gonna be forever because if you're realizing the gains by definition somebody else is getting the other side of that trade It's kind of like a Ponzi. So anyway, you asked for spice. You asked for spice. So you're getting it. Jackson Mikalic (44:40.662) Well, yeah, just have to listen and I'm happy. I'm happy that you're giving the spice. But I want to go on record and say that I'm not encouraging people to overlook the fact that there is that risk. I'm just saying if you put Brian Cubellis (44:45.156) You Michael Tanguma (44:54.636) It sure sounded like it. It put all the custody aside. Let's just think about it in an abstract. Brian Cubellis (44:55.927) You Jackson Mikalic (45:00.086) Yeah, I'm not saying that it's a good idea. I'm just saying. Brian Cubellis (45:02.544) But to be fair to Jackson, that's what people are doing. They are putting the custody to the side. And that's why they're allocating to it. Jackson Mikalic (45:06.678) Yeah, nobody really talks about that. Yeah, nobody really talks about it. Michael Tanguma (45:09.026) Yeah, but if you put the custody aside, which is the fundamental, I know, no, but no, let's break something down. If you're putting aside the most fundamental issue that has mired this industry for 15 years, then what else are you putting aside is the basic point. Brian Cubellis (45:12.312) I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying that's what people are doing. Jackson Mikalic (45:13.098) I know we understand that. Jackson Mikalic (45:26.581) I agree. Jackson Mikalic (45:30.989) So yeah, maybe take into account the custody risk. And I just wanna be clear that I wasn't suggesting people to look past that. Brian, you wanna talk stable coins. I wanna make sure we get to cover what was discussed here. Let's see. I got two things here from you that I can pull up. Is this the first one you wanted to start with? Brian Cubellis (45:47.108) Gotta talk stables. Gotta talk stables. Michael Tanguma (45:55.31) We'll be Brian Cubellis (45:58.726) yeah, we could start with this. so this is, just broader thinking and my evolution of thinking around stable coins. Like, I think there's a, there's a thought in the market or a perception by the market that the advent of stable coin proliferation and the genius act and regulatory clarity is going to be a massive boon for all of these other chains. Ethereum, Solana, etc. And I just don't think that's how it's going to play out. And it's mainly because Tether has been and remains the largest player, the largest stablecoin issuer in the world. And Paolo, the CEO, is a pretty hardcore Bitcoiner. Like he has been on record multiple times. Like he doesn't really like, you know, other chains, other rails outside of... You know, he prefers Bitcoin and there was an announcement a couple of months ago of bringing Tether to Lightning. But the other announcement, if you go to the other tweet, is that Tether is launching its own blockchain. But why it's interesting is that there's no sort of native free-floating token like in Ethereum. Tether itself, USDT, will be the native token. for this chain. And so it's a chain basically designed for Tether. And so I think it's just the logical progression of thinking like, yeah, if the largest issuer, the most dominant stablecoin player is just going to make their own chain, then the value is going to accrue to them as a business. It's not going to accrue to these other chains because there'll be the most liquidity on stable chain or whatever it is. part of, I think part of the launch of this also, which is referenced in the other tweet is like, so because of the Genius Act, they have this three year window to comply with all the regulations, et cetera. But so they're going to launch basically a new version of USTT at some point that is like specifically for US markets. And my assumption, working assumption is basically like that is going to be on whatever this stable chain is. It's not going to be on Ethereum. It's not going to be on Solana. Now that's kind of speculation. Who knows what ends up happening, but like Brian Cubellis (48:20.118) It's just I think there's a different path that most people in the broader crypto space are not accounting for when they're thinking about why stable coins are so bullish for XYZ chain. I think Tether is just going to continue to dominate. so, yeah, Mike, know you I know you have thoughts. Michael Tanguma (48:35.438) I don't know. I'm not gonna be too spry. See, like, I don't even... You were referencing the guy that hates all chains, launches chain. So there's that. Well, Tether's his native token. Brian Cubellis (48:50.244) but with no native token that like, I know, it's it's pegged to the dollar. Like it's not, it's, it's very different than saying I'm going to have a theory of them and like, Oh, all the value is going to accrue. Ethereum is going to 10 K because of stable coins. that's crazy. Michael Tanguma (48:58.286) No, I understand. I'm just calling out the... Michael Tanguma (49:06.582) Yeah, I think the interesting thing brought to light was probably people in the know knew this, but it was that number floating around like 40 % of all fees accrued on Ethereum and these other chains were on stablecoins. So really highlighting that. And the reason why I just... I guess it's interesting because you hear all these people to Brian's point talk about blockchains and their usage and I think we all know that there's nothing or a lot of people. I guess where I have difficulty talking seriously about this is because you don't need a chain for any of this. It's all just a database that's run by Tether and they can stop it at any point. And who's running the nodes and who's running the validators? It goes back to a proof of stake or a theory. like, I just can't help but not validate any of this because it's all just a database that it's just ledger and they can stop it at any point. So I don't really know what they're doing or talking about. Brian Cubellis (50:04.526) No, I agree. I totally agree with that. I just think the concept of a stablecoin specific chain with no free floating native token is a little bit more honest version of it, right? Like we know all these other chains are centralized to some extent and there don't necessarily need to be on a blockchain. I think this is just like a slimmed down version that's more honest about what it is. Like it is just a database controlled by Tether. Michael Tanguma (50:29.006) Sounds like a CBDC. Hey, real quick, something I've never really understood and I think, you know, it's like, help me understand in the audience that doesn't like this notion of gas. I think I understand it, but it'd be good to hear you like, what's the version of quote unquote gas where Tether's paying the gas fees in Tether and who gets paid? Is it the validators that are setting up the node? Like, help me understand how that works. Brian Cubellis (50:52.802) Yeah, I don't know. mean, in other on other chains like Ethereum, the native token is used as gas and whoever is validating those transactions receives a portion of that. But yeah, I haven't looked at like the specifics of I don't even know if they've released like full details on what the stable chain will be. But the thinking is that, you know, like the gas would be paid in USDT itself. But like my assumption is that it would just be so de minimis that like it. doesn't even really matter. Like it's not eating into the transaction value that you're trying to send to a material extent. But I think it remains to be seen like what that actually looks like. So I don't know to answer your question. Michael Tanguma (51:32.0) It's funny because it's like, would imagine instinctually whatever they're doing in the topography looks like what Visa's network looks like. So you have like central clearing houses and you have different layers and then you have somebody taking de minimis fees and there's a net fee and then you own that network and you can shut it off at any point. Like this is literally the same thing. It's just in the digital asset world. Jackson Mikalic (51:58.88) Alright gold member, show us what you got here. This is actually Brian's topic but I'm sure Michael has some thoughts on gold revaluation. Brian, you want to catch us up? What's going on here? What does Luke have to say? Brian Cubellis (52:14.828) Yeah, so I guess this was a note about a week ago that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve put out, and they're not like explicitly saying they're going to do this. They just kind of floated the idea of like revaluing the gold reserves, which has been talked about, been rumored as one of the potential ways to, you know, in a budget neutral way, accumulate Bitcoin. And Luke is highlighting this and just saying interesting timing. In admission, the US dollar has fallen from 142 an ounce to 1,3300 an ounce of gold in the past 54 years, a category of 8.4%, which is much higher than reported inflation. So his point here is like, this is sort of a tacit admission that CPI's bullshit directly from the Fed. Because if you're just comparing dollars to gold, which we haven't revalued in however many years, 54 years. That's your much more accurate gauge of debasement and inflation. Jackson Mikalic (53:22.647) Yeah, I would be curious to see how this could potentially materialize or mechanically be done. I guess I haven't fully thought it through yet, but just revaluing an ounce of gold to... I guess, I don't fully understand like mechanically how it would be done. It'd just be like the United States would say, yeah, they would just say on their books, yeah. Brian Cubellis (53:43.62) It's just accounting. think it's just accounting. Like on our books, it's at $42 an ounce. And then you would just say, we have all this money. Michael Tanguma (53:51.203) Yeah, they've talked about it where they it's the Treasury. What's the TVA like the Treasury General Account TGA? I think the big thing that stands out here is we've been talking about a lot where there's going to be overcorrection back to what is sound money, gold and Bitcoin. I think the thing that sticks out here is I haven't looked deeply into this, but we do know we live in a bubble. And so there's all these discussions around bit bonds, SBRs. Bitcoin And it would make logical sense that in their own bubble, in a different world, there's a bunch of discussions happening. And think I've seen a little bit of it where bonds get gold inserted. We know sovereigns already stack gold, but think about it from the state level and others, that it's not gonna be either or, it's gonna be both. And that would be part of the mechanics of it is repricing the gold because that would help you offset some of the liabilities on that bad debt. So I think this is part of that whole way that this will play out. Because again, Bitcoin two trillion, what's gold, 14, 15 trillion dollar asset. I think of all this as like, putty or whatever, like you need malleable things you can start to like mess with to insert to keep everything juiced and what better asset than the thing that's worth 10x what BTC is. Jackson Mikalic (55:16.118) Yeah. All right. So we got, get a little bit more time here. I'll toss it over to Michael. Do you want to talk about the new cost of capital report or do you want to talk about trust services launching? Michael Tanguma (55:30.392) We'll do the gloss over really quick. I just wanted to call out the reckoning with the cost of capital. I think mainly to call that out. It was done by early writers. In breaking down Bitcoin as the hurdle rate, think the main reason, and there was a great quote from Luke Groman that was in the piece to read it out really quickly. Groman's quote was, $1.4 billion Fartcoin is what you get when the risk-free asset underpinning the entire banking and currency system is a bond issued by an insolvent government with debt of seven times revenues off balance sheet liabilities of 20 to 30X revenues. Point being is this tied into the 401k discussion and everything we've talked about today is All assets will eventually get juiced whether the amount of liquidity having to get injected into the system or interest rates being reduced or both But what's going to get obfuscated is real versus nominal returns and real returns are more purchasing power in the economy Nominal returns are going to be number go up, but you're not actually getting better off and that's kind of like the version of what we talked about early with home prices or school like sure you may get an incremental two and a half percent five percent pay bump annually, but if inflation is 7 to 15%. And so all of that's embedded in what is actually the return. And that's really Bitcoin from an underlying perspective, the risk-free rate. And it breaks down a lot of just like how to think about it, how to manage it, how to plan in the future. So I thought that was a very timely piece that ties into a lot of the discussion, because the noise is only going to increase from here. And that's where it just, again, focused so much on explaining this stuff versus the Treasury company, because like my job is to help people hold their Bitcoin long term. And so I focus on that and you probably would want me and like our team to be more focused on that than making more Bitcoin in a treasury company because that's perfectly fine, everybody can do what they want but you would naturally want the person in charge or helping you safeguard that asset to be solely focused on like how do you propagate that into the future and not how to like go and leverage it up especially because for 15 years Bitcoin has been the best performing asset and the game has been just to hold on to it and it's been increasingly harder to do it so yeah. Jackson Mikalic (57:38.678) Yeah. And also Bitcoin only becomes the hurdle rate to the extent people have secure ways to hold a long term because it's like, what's the point of measuring all of your financial decisions in Bitcoin if a year or five years from now, you feel like there's a 50 % chance you don't have it anymore. Right? So the whole, lot of the idea about building the business here is that it helps both people who already allocated, because we hear it all the time. People say they have whatever allocation and they say, well, I wish I had more, but you know, I don't love the idea that this just disappears and then, you know, my wife and my children are looking at me like what happened to our money and our home is foreclosed and all this crazy stuff. Right. And so to actually have a new hurdle rate, a new cost of capital, a new way to allocate capital beyond that hurdle rate, you actually need the hurdle rate to be there and be secure. And it's almost like if you don't have secure Bitcoin, kind of similar to measuring against the U S treasury, it's secure in the sense that you get the principal back when you want it, but it's not secure in the sense that the principal's worth nothing when you get it back. So it's like both could have potential insecurities and that's ultimately how I would think about it is you need to have a secure custody solution to actually use Bitcoin as a hurdle rate for your decisions. Brian Cubellis (58:53.57) Yeah, it's a good point. the other just pulling on that analogy to treasuries, it's like, well, yeah, the reason treasuries are no longer risk free is because they can be seized. And we've learned that. And so it's a similar idea to like if you don't have direct control or access to your Bitcoin or you're trusting a single counterparty, like it's similar notion of like it could be seized or could be lost in that sense. Jackson Mikalic (59:22.647) Yeah. So big week this week, we launched on-ramp Bitcoin trust services and Michael, you shared a tweet. think it was earlier today. if you want to just give a high level thought, I know we released a podcast focused specifically on that. If people want to listen to it, but if they kind of want the TLDR or they want to sneak preview of what's discussed and what the product launch is, you mind just sharing your thoughts. Michael Tanguma (59:48.751) Yeah, for sure. I think at a high level... Our goal at OnRamp is to continue to provide value and deliver value. Multi-institution custody is the base layer. Custody is the base layer for all financial services, so we focus there. But ultimately we have conversations weekly. We hear the feedback. There's a lot of listeners that enjoy what we do. They think maybe it's not right for them today. In the future, they want to sign up. And so we continue just to add, whether it's reducing the cost of services, but increasing the amount of value we deliver, whether it's trade, IRAs, lending, And this is another function of that. We know from the market there's really two types of holders. There is, and I'll start with the first one, there's the existing large holder, somebody holding hundreds if not thousands of Bitcoin. As that asset appreciates, they haven't had traditional financial constructs to protect that asset from privacy to estate planning, the tax benefits that traditional sophisticated wealthy investors have had. Mainly because while there's people that do it and they're world class, they don't operate at scale, so they have to work with clients with over $100 million. So it's put them out of a position to work with them. But even more than that is they generally had to use the traditional financial tools, which is centralized custody. Because anybody that's familiar with irrevocable and just trust in general, you naturally, you have to get the asset under your direct control, out of your direct control. And it ultimately ends up with this paradox where if you have a large position, the way you got it is by not trusting a single entity. So you end up in a place that's really stuck. So this has been my experience working in building infrastructure for five plus years is that problem. Michael Tanguma (01:01:30.636) The other person is more likely, the majority of the people listening in us, is these sophisticated tools have only really been present for people that are holding 10, 50 million plus in net worth. The ability to think about privacy, perpetuity planning, into perpetuity, moving the assets away from creditors and other people that may want your estate, because as you get wealthier, more and more people are targeting you. The tax savings that associated with it. And so this actually solves for both sides if individuals, so that's at a high level kind of like what we launched. To go a little bit deeper, we partnered with a multi-billion dollar trust company that's parked in South Dakota, which has I think objectively the best estate and legacy planning laws in the country. And why it's really special is because at the end of the day, there's all these functions that we can talk about again, from privacy to the legacy planning, estate planning, but the biggest one, as you'll see in this report, we'll link to is really the gains that you save in from the tax advantages. Because there's certain features within gift taxes that you can get assets out of your estate. Generally, there's seven or $14 million, depending on your relationships that is being married. But then ultimately, any assets you get out of your estate via gift taxes, As you move in and those assets grow and you happen to pass away Who you're leaving them for given a lot of people are thinking about multi generations for Bitcoin They're going to get hit with a 40 % death tax And so there's a I don't know if it's in the link that I shared but ultimately in the report You'll see kind of the drag on somebody holding call it roughly a hundred Bitcoin ten million dollars today That conservatively if we think Bitcoin goes to a million dollars when somebody outside of a has to pass on those assets, they're gonna pay 40 % to that government we talked about in the beginning of the pod that's just wasting the money versus parking it in these vehicles. And the beauty is with these dynasty trusts, you actually can still direct control. So you can still... Michael Tanguma (01:03:40.983) lend against the asset, manage a portfolio, you can still buy other assets, but you just get them out of the direct purview of your personal estate. So somebody commented in one of our notes is like, this is on ramps iPhone moment. wouldn't, don't know if I'd go that far. have a lot of other things planned for the market, but I will say that this is really going to be an incredible thing for the industry in my opinion, because ultimately what's really mired or not been available is just resilient, robust custody solutions that you can embed in these constructs because by definition of needing them to last 10 to 100 years no custodian including Coinbase has lasted that long and so you can't really trust somebody that long into the future and that's what multi-institution allows is if a custodian goes away defunct goes rogue you can just move those assets to a new custodian. Brian Cubellis (01:04:30.508) Yeah, it's really powerful stuff. Not a ton to add to that other than like, yeah, I don't know if it's our iPhone moment, but it's certainly something I'm super excited to have live and out in the wild because like you explained, there's been this natural gap of the person who's accumulated a material Bitcoin position is probably smart enough to know that they shouldn't trust a single entity. And historically, that's been the only way to access these types of trust services. And so ingraining everything we do from a custody perspective with MIC into this is really a game changer. And like when you go through the report and look at some of the numbers that we just had up on the screen, like it is absolutely staggering. the exciting part about it to me is particularly like, you know, we have a lot of prospective clients who haven't onboarded yet who, you know, lot of their main questions is around like our fees and our costs and When you combine that with this type of generational long-term planning, like the fees are de minimis relative to the magnitude of savings that you'll have by setting these things up, it becomes an absolute no-brainer. So super excited to have this out in the world and yeah, reach out to us if you want to learn more. Jackson Mikalic (01:05:46.7) Yeah, well said. know we got to wrap here. So it's a good one this week. we'll have to do it again sometimes, but I will say we'll only do it again if people say in the comment section that they liked the episode. And if you didn't like it, I want to hear that as well. and you can tell us why you didn't like it, but let us know, should we do this again? Should we not? Yeah. Were you disappointed? Michael Tanguma (01:05:51.714) Yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:06:05.092) Was it spicy enough? Let us know. Michael Tanguma (01:06:07.79) Well, and the thing I really want to know is if you enjoyed it over our traditional podcast, because if that's in the comments, you know, we can always have more three way calls. Internal rips, we can spread it out. So it'd be good. Or if you actually didn't enjoy my takes or some of Jackson's crazy takes, we can also make sure we get a fourth guest. We have very big guests lined up for the next couple of weeks. So yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:06:20.215) internal rips. Brian Cubellis (01:06:34.531) We Jackson Mikalic (01:06:36.643) Yeah, let us know. Some people say best show in the industry. Others say, forget the exact language. It was like rambling idiots or something. So it's like, let us know which one you think we are and we'll see you again next week. Michael Tanguma (01:06:41.902) We're a show in the industry. Michael Tanguma (01:06:49.987) Thanks guys.