Wall Street Joins the Sound Money Renaissance

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 Dapis. 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. >> Hey everyone, welcome back to the last trade. Jackson, our noble and fearless leader is out for this week. Uh so I'm stepping in. Brian Cabellis, chief strategy officer at on-ramp. Uh and I'm joined by Michael Tanguma uh as always and also joined by Liam Nelson, partner at Early Riders, and Cam Strowy, who leads private wealth at On-Ramp. And we had a really great discussion. Uh we dug into the debasement trade that's finally gone mainstream. Gold is ripping. Bitcoin just printed new all-time highs. And the largest players across markets are really beginning to say the quiet part out loud uh in terms of dollar debasement. Um and the unsustainable nature of our our debt in this country. Uh and really, you know, that flows to all fiat currencies around the world. We'll also react to uh fresh signals from Ken Griffin, Paul Tudtor Jones, Ray Dallio who are speaking about this trade. Uh we'll also unpack why it's not really a trade. Uh or in other words, it might be the last trade. Uh we'll also unpack nominal versus real returns and look at what happens when you change the denominator uh to sound assets like gold and bitcoin. We'll also discuss uh the ETF surge, why ETFs are a helpful access point for folks, but uh not really an end state in terms of Bitcoin ownership, and we'll lay out some practical paths to resilient ownership. Uh and then also zoom out to the sovereign level. uh Japan's financial repression, India's CBDC push alongside gold stacking, Germany's pension stress, and why stablecoin giants like Tether are starting to look like many nation states. Um, and so if you're just trying to navigate this shift from inside money to outside money, this one's for you. Uh, quick note here, nothing is investment advice. Uh, with that, let's get into the show. All righty, gentlemen. We are back. Uh, slightly different crew today. Uh Jackson, our our noble and fearless host of The Last Trade, uh had a little family emergency, the the good kind, I should say. And we'll we'll let him uh elaborate that on that when he's back. But um needless to say, I'm in I'm the host today. I'm your captain. Uh I'm joined by Michael Tanguma. I'm joined by Liam Nelson. And I'm joined by Camp Shomi as well, head of private wealth at OnRamp. And uh lots of topics to get into today. Uh no shortage of news, no shortage of uh commentary on the debasement trade, folks. Uh something that, you know, folks on this show have been talking about for some time now, but seems to be uh permeating into the zeitgeist a bit. Uh both gold and Bitcoin are are running. Gold's at 4K. Uh Bitcoin hit new all-time highs over the weekend, was around 125 this morning. We've we've crashed back down to 121 uh right now, but um boys, how are we doing? Thanks for joining today. doing good. Excited to have uh Cam join and Liam, you know, we talk with him weekly on final settlement. Um Cam leads our private wealth team. You guys listening probably know have worked with him, been onboarded. The show's called the last trade for a reason, everyone. And it's been understood on a long enough time horizon. Bitcoin is the last trade, but until then, gold will play a big and heavy part of the financial system. and the market's starting to wake up to it and it's going to be a very interesting ride. We have some clips to play. But before we do that, uh guys, anything to share? Cam, how are you doing? >> Doing well. And uh I've been eating some crow from my gold friends in Texas. And Michael, you're one of them. So I'm going to suck up my boss a little bit here on air like for calling out gold years ago. But I switched from u on my phone looking at BitBo just that indicator to now looking at trading view because I can see Bitcoin gold futures and then the Bitcoin pricing gold chart. And that's given me a better picture of kind of where we're at relative to this uh debasement trade in recent months. But that is astonishing to see an asset literally a shiny rock with such a large market cap relative to Bitcoin go parabolic. And then also so u bullish for Bitcoin because this is not an isolation anymore where Bitcoin is having a retail rally uh is just part of a broader narrative that many of us have been uh you know been calling out for years but now we have kind of the backing of so many different voices that are pointing at the same issues. So, all that to say, I always tell my wife about this in the kitchen, you like it's not just Bitcoin, it's about gold, too. And there's this whole broader narrative, which is really exciting to think that the world is going back to sound money. >> Breaking your local podcast influencer may not know everything about the world >> because gold was on no one's radar. Everyone has these total addressable market clips where it's just like everything stays static. We just have to hit back in the day was 350k to hit parody with gold. Gold added 11 trillion dollars to its market cap in one year. Now it takes like 1.2 million and that will continue to run. And breaking your local Bitcoin influencer might also not know about Bitcoin Treasury companies, but we'll save that for later in the podcast. But folks listening, it's great to learn. It's great to follow the podcast, even this one. Take them with a grain of salt. Do your own research. The same thing goes for holding your own keys. Yes, it's valuable, but we're not going to go into a world where everyone's holding their own keys. Friendly disclaimer, a lot of people have no idea what's going on here. It's well said. Uh you referenced we had a few clips to play, so I'm just going to go into the first one. Uh this is um Ken Griffin. I guess this was at some sort of conference uh yesterday, but uh let me know if you guys can or can't hear this when I hit play. >> And substantially above target in all forecasts for next year. I mean, it's part of the reason the dollar has depreciated by about 10% in the first half of this year. It's the single biggest decline in the US dollar in six months in 50 years. Gold is is at record highs. And the appreciation in other dollar substitutes, um, to use that word loosely, in in items like crypto, for example, is is is unbelievable. So, we're seeing substantial asset inflation away from the dollar as as people are looking for ways to effectively dd dollar or d-risisk their portfolios visav US sovereign risk. >> Are you really seeing that? >> No, just check the price of gold. >> Well, >> I mean I don't have to look very hard of it own. >> Yeah. >> What? >> It's a life of its own gold. >> No, but it's a life of its own. as as you see sovereigns around the world, as you see central banks around the world, as you see individual investors around the world go, you know what, I now view gold as a safe harbor asset in a way that the dollar used to be viewed. That's that's what's really concerning to me. And there's been plenty of published research in in recent weeks, months about foreign investors now when they buy US equities hedging the returns back to their local currency. So that again is a bifurcation of I I'm going to bet on American business, but I want to immunize some of my sovereign exposure to the United States. >> Okay. So that's the clip and um you know uh maybe I'll kick it Michael to you first. uh initial thoughts on this. I I have some of my own, but I'll kick it to you first. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that the biggest one just looking at that chart of $4,000 gold is just absolutely insane because it's not gold getting more valuable, it's the dollar becoming worth less. And the notion that you have Ken Griffin, you have the some of the largest hedge fund um managers, we're going to pull up another clip in a in a bit. Um it really should scare everyone because it's the notion that this is becoming unders not only understood because I think it's been understood by a lot of people for a long time but it's becoming part of the natural uh lexicon and discussion that the dollar uh is basically cooked like and the thing is and this is where I was referencing the last trade is all these concepts were taboo and that's where you saw this cyclicality with Bitcoin as a risk on and then individuals that understood this were long-term holding But the reality is where do we go from here when the largest institutions and sovereigns are effectively telling you that they the dollar's done? And they're saying this by getting out of treasuries. are saying this by um different actions and they're doing and so it's just a it's a very astonishing thing to see because this is gold hasn't really been allowed to run like this for a reason and it's doing it it's making its move because you can't put the genie back in the bottle and it's going to be a very interesting ride for the next 10 years. Yeah, the um the notion of of this only being a trade is is um there's sort of a logical inconsistency there in the sense that if you handicap or break down what is causing this trade to ex this trade to exist, it's the 37 trillion in debt, it's the deficit spending, it's the um sort of unsustainability of the fiat system, which isn't going to be solved likely ever, or at least not in the foreseeable able future. So like to your point, Michael, like where does this go? Um it it's not a trade. This is a structural shift in how people perceive money and value um and inside money versus outside money. Um go ahead, Liam. >> Yeah, I was just going to say I completely agree with that, but just like for the past 40 years, bonds were a trade. They were a great trade after the 1970s and um you know they raised rates in the double digits and then essentially just because over the prior decades it kept rates artificially low and then they couldn't actually maintain the peg because uh with gold because there were too much dollars in the system and they actually had to increase the supply of dollars and uh they had to break parody with gold. Then after they finally tamed inflation or or relatively tamed it for uh what the central bankers were looking for, they were able to and they pretty much had to lower rates over any large period of time and just uh you know expand the world, globalize in order to actually uh have the prices of TVs and all of your products and services go down over time. And so bonds were a great trade then, but we're seeing the reversal of that now essentially with um increased fear that the US dollar and and pretty much all currencies are uh don't have a way out of this without extreme debasement. And so uh you know what that's why we talk about gold a little bit too is it's not just going to be um one asset in the trade that makes the most sense. And and I think the purest way to play the debasement trade is Bitcoin. But there are going to be a number of other assets like gold and uh you know products and services around those assets that um end up create uh creating and capturing a lot of value just like how with the 40-year bull market and bonds, home prices uh captured a ton of value as well. Um so it's not it's it's it is a trade but it's probably like a more like a 40-year trade. >> There's two aspects. um around that one is just the notion of you know the purest way it's a great way to play it. The reality is um you know the world's not black or white. There's nuance and whether it's portfolio construction or really time horizonvatility profile um and then and currency pairs, right? I think for a while I've been thinking about it's naturally going to be stable coins, gold and BTC that are going to just be trading around and also like for oil frankly as the net settlement and then we'll figure out the best product services that reduce counterparty risk. Um, but going back to the clip, one of the most fascinating things of the clip is it's like in a microcosm of the example of a conversation you would have in any state of like explaining sound money to an individual because she's like, "Well, what do you what do you mean? Like, do you really believe that?" And he she's like, "Well, have you seen what gold did?" You know, and she's like, "Uh, you know, like that's just basically she has a natural inclination to just dismiss it as something that's like external to to what they're talking about." And to to add context that we pulled up before we started recording a 2014 Financial Times clip. It's really funny when you just break it down of the headline was gold a 6,000year bubble or like uh I don't even know it wasn't a bubble 6,000 years something but equivalent of bubble. It's just like the reality is um this is honestly like the the proxy for why the world's so messed up because if you don't understand where values derive from then everything else is just going to have like a shaky uh you know structure on top of that unound foundation. >> Yeah. Basically that there's that there could be a 6,000-year anomaly where you have non-government created money that could still exist and have value and be growing in value. Then I think the other thing we're getting at is u this strange notion in the Keynesian philosophy that if you actually call out inflation that's actually the primary cause of inflation. It's not so much money printing or money creation or credit creation but is actually just acknowledging that there could be or is inflation which then sends like a false notion in quotes to the population uh which is creating this reflexible loop that actually then creates inflation. And so it's it's I think part of what's shocking to see Ken Griffin and Paul Tudtor Jones and others u acknowledge this outright is that this is typically what they don't do is like this is the elephant in the room that you can't acknowledge. You can talk about why other assets are performing well uh but not in into relation to the root problem. >> Yeah. No, that's a really good point, Cam, because like you can hear it in his voice in the second half of that clip that he's like, you know, this is concerning to me. like this is um it's almost like the jig is up in a in a certain sense and and everyone is slowly starting to realize it and then thus, you know, position themselves, place their their chips on the table. Um should we go to the second clip we wanted to play? >> Yeah, let's do it. >> Okie dokie. >> Look at the biggest winners, right? The biggest winners are gold. I think it's up 46 47%. Bitcoin, I want to say it's up 50 or 60. I'm not even sure. There's a Morgan Stanley basket that's a retail flow basket that has all the meme stocks and it's up 67 68%. So, it's really what retail jumps on. So, crypto, digital, gold, that's obviously something that's very, very appealing. >> Does that mean you're jumping on all of that right now? >> Well, I'd want to have positions in all of it for sure. >> So, if you said to me, what are going to be the winners? Yeah, again we have this race, >> right? >> The race realistically certainly to the end of the year um because that's when everyone marks institutionally and then you have to figure out what's going to go on in next year. So what would I want to have? I'd want to have a combination of um gold, crypto, probably the NASDAQ. I I think I want to say that I've said that before and I think that's still the right one. And I think uh whatever the fastest horse is at this point in time probably has a good chance of being that on deck 31. >> So you got to love like I think uh Paul Teter Jones is worth roughly $8 billion pioneered the modern hedge fund industry on Wall Street by the way like slow walked and maybe possum play possum his way to 8 billion because he sounds like just a good old boy you'd find in the you know back streets. It reminds me of uh give Cam a shout out for for great flick hell or high water. If you ever watch the movie like what aren't you having? He's like he's right now saying what aren't you having gold or Bitcoin? Like what what don't you want? Um there's a reason why they're saying this too when you think about Paul Tudtor Jones and Hen Griffin like the bags are packed, they're ready to go, the system's cooked, the dollar's cooked, but it goes back to the same point. Um doesn't make it untrue as well. Yeah, I mean my my take away from that I mean first of all ton of respect for for Paul Taylor Jones but he is you know he's still fundamentally a trader like so he is thinking more short term than maybe us or I am about this quote unquote trade. Um you know he's sort of thinking through the end of the year and then reassessing. But towards the end, he he sort of hearkens back to um a famous clip of his from probably six or seven years ago where he talks about Bitcoin being the fastest horse. And so he hearkens back to that sort of uh mental model and says, you know, sort of own whatever the for fastest horse has been uh through the end of the year, which I mean right now technically speaking, it would be gold uh which is uh outperforming Bitcoin over over this calendar year. But, you know, if you go back to when he first said that, Bitcoin has been by far and away the fastest horse. So, if you just stretch out what he's saying here and have a little bit more of a a long time frame on it, it's very clear that he is um you know, vouching for Bitcoin as the fastest horse. Um, so that was kind of the takeaway for me. >> Yeah. I also don't >> Go ahead, Cam. Oh, I was going to say when he came up with that fastest horse moniker, I thought it was fascinating because he and his team had put together a framework to evaluate Bitcoin and it was similar to what VJ had done in bullish case for Bitcoin where he made the chart of properties of gold, properties of Bitcoin, properties of the dollar and then compared them and they gave bit he gave Bitcoin some sort of relative score and he said, "Oh, this is really something worth owning. This is actually gets quite high marks." So, he was willing to dig through the Bitcoin's bad reputation or it was that was I think it was pre FTX or whatever the u you know negative headlines could have been about the day and just take a look at the objective asset properties that it has and say yeah this is going to be do really well given what else I know about the dollar and about the situation we're in. >> Yeah, exactly. And it's just a recognition too that even if they even if he is a trader, it's pretty much like he is looking at Bitcoin and gold and Bitcoin in particular is uh always been a little bit more volatile too is the best way to express that view of debasement in the short term. And so uh you know he's been pretty consistent on how he is a big fan of Bitcoin over the past you know almost decade or so. And so he'll be in and out of trades etc. But um just a recognition that it is something that is core to the portfolios and uh a proxy that we pretty much talked about earlier this week for dollar to basement just makes it a great way to play the trade. There's there's one other aspect that's worth calling out here. Um and it takes place in a couple things like there's a notion of I think people just really forget Bitcoin's core value prop for the next 10 years is literally just a store value. Like if it does that it achieves what it was meant to do. we don't have to worry, you know, you have to be able to naturally be able to send and receive um without censorship, but the reality is people are parking capital to store value and that gets lost from the crypto people and it as a um uh speculative asset, but it ties back to his underlying thesis because if you remember back in the day when he was doing that diligence that Cam was referring to, the thing that he he references in a few areas publicly that he couldn't understand how it could retrace 80% uh and that the majority of holders were still holding this thing and that ties back to certain monetary properties that make it objectively a better form of store of storing value and money and as long as those retain um intact more and more people will you know go into that it's the money's the bubble that never pops right and so that's the core idea here is like we sometimes lose sight of this notion of a is like fundamental to society is you need to be able to park your wealth in something that will persist into the future so then you can coordinate economic activity. It's as simple as that. And everyone just seems to like make this a lot more complicated. Uh, and so anyway, I think that's just like an interesting part of, you know, he may be trading his position for his personal account and also his portfolio, but I guarantee you he has a core position in this because it's like, well, what else are you going to Paul? Like, you're moving out swashing around $8 billion in financial system full of counterparty risk because again, this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. So, if this amount of debt exists in the system, well, people aren't going to be made whole. How do you actually assess that risk? And that's another thing that gets discounted is even if you can potentially make quote unquote more Bitcoin, you still have to play the exit game, the tax game, and then hoping to God that whatever you're in doesn't get rugged. That's why there's zen in just storing your value and money and then going back about your life. But for some reason, the majority of the world isn't there yet. >> Yeah, that's the that's the zen of um saving over speculating sort of full stop. Um, I did want to just pull up uh a tweet of my own here that to just round out the conversation on the debasement trade because, you know, it's not just Ken Griffin, it's not just Paul Tudtor Jones who's, you know, been bullish on Bitcoin for a while. Um, but it's, you know, the Morgan Stanley's of the world, uh, the JP Morgans of the world, uh, the Goldman's of the world are all sort of, um, paring the same lines right now. And it's it's also reflective of this. This is a chart from river um showing central global central bank reserves and the effective flight from fiat currencies namely US treasury debt uh and dollars towards bitcoin and increasingly uh or towards gold and increasingly bitcoin. This is a similar chart uh just in a different format just showing um gold overtaking US treasuries as the primary um central bank reserve asset. And then this was uh a great tweet from Eric Balcunas last week which showed uh a day last week where both GLD and IBIT were in the top 10 ETFs by volume which is rare. Um and he references the debaser or the debasement trade here as well. Um so this is all happening in concert in real time. the biggest voices in macro, the largest institutions in tradi and in and the fintech space more broadly are opening their minds to the debasement trade, sound money in general. Um, and you know, moving from what was historically, you know, a very small portfolio percentage, you know, at most 2% at most, um, tribe firms uh to talking about 20 to 25% in gold. like that is a material 10x jump in in what that allocation looks like. Um and so yeah, I just wanted to put that context around it because this is it's all happening very fast in real time and everyone's sort of paring uh the same lines which you know effectively are the Bitcoin thesis. It's what Bitcoiners and gold people have been saying for a long time. You need to protect yourself from debasement of fiat generally speaking. Um and it's just it's just permeating into the zeitgeist now. Um, and I guess you could also credit a lot of what this administration has done in the sense of um, removing the toxicity from the asset so that this this change in thinking around what Bitcoin is and what it represents and where it fits in a portfolio could actually manifest and take shape in a real way. Like I think you needed the ETFs for that to happen. You needed the air cover from this administration for people to start talking about Bitcoin and gold in this sleeve where it's really pivoted in a very short amount of time from uh Bitcoin's you know uh riskier NASDAQ exposure uh high beta to the NASDAQ to no it's actually more similar to gold uh which would historically being risk off um and you know as we know in terms of its objective monetary properties it's extremely riskoff it's the only transparent finite monetary policy in human history. Um, but that pivot is something that, you know, I think Bitcoiners have felt for a long time should happen, but now it's actually happening in real time in a very short amount of time. Uh, we've moved from, I think, you know, even at the beginning of the year, I think most of these firms, the the Morgans, the Goldman, we're still talking about it as super volatile, uh, risky tech-like exposure. Um, and this this dynamic that we've seen emerge over the past month or so is completely flips that on its head. Yeah, one of the exciting things maybe you could pull up that Luke Roman >> Yeah. >> tweet because it's funny uh Buckon has called it the debaser trade. I haven't heard I haven't heard the debaser since like Terminator. Um the debaser trade I think what's interesting is I think it's going to help accelerate the discussion we've been having around nominal versus real returns because ultimately it's been obiscated with the S&P going up into the right and as well as other assets. But as you start benchmarking them against gold and Bitcoin, and it's just math, right? If you have a number of monetary units being inserted into the system, well, you're naturally going to have assets go up. But then if you have scarcity component like a money properties of gold and Bitcoin, those are going to move faster. They're going to be faster horses. It's just math. And I think this ties into some of the stuff we did at Early Riders and being Bitcoin denominated because at the end of the day, a it's easy to return dollars because they keep printing more of them. But in good faith, if you look at 10 years from now, like how could we talk to investors and say, "Oh, lock up your capital and we'll pay you in 10 years." Like, I'm not saying the dollar is going to go away. There's a non-zero chance. In 10 years, the dollar you might not even use uh to light on fire. Uh maybe you use this light on fire, but not anything else valuable. Point being is that more and more um capital allocators are going to start asking questions of like why am I not just holding these two assets versus versus putting capital at risk and it's going to mean there's going to be a lot less venture capital funding. It's a lot a lot less financial products across the board and it's like positive for everything. And I think we're still a ways from that, but it helps when you have the largest institutions effectively explaining this debasement trade because that's one step away from well if it's a debasement trade like is everything being debased like is everything moving up because the dollars are worth less versus most people think their house is getting more valuable every year. Uh and this is the the world's healing basically. >> Yes. Like if you if you are beginning to come to the recognition of this what is being called the debasement trade you the the natural evolution of that is saying okay well that that is a denominator problem right like the if if I'm being debased like the the issue is with the denominator so what we have up on the screen here is if you substitute that denominator for actual hard money not dollars and you instead price assets in gold or bitcoin The results are pretty stunning. So what Luke uh Groman is showing in this chart here is um basically the NASDAQ, the S&P and home prices priced in first USD. So you know since since CO you think you're doing great nominal terms you're, you know, up 165% in the NASDAQ, your house is up 56%. But if you price that in gold, the NASDAQ is uh barely above water 7%. The S&P is actually down. your home is down 37%. And if you price in Bitcoin since co uh you know you're you're materially down. Your house is down 87%, the S&P is down 84. Um so this is what you're talking about, Michael, of the the recognition of nominal versus real. But in practice, what that means is it means swapping out the denominator for something real um as opposed to something nominal, which is the dollars. This is something that we and as on-ramp but then just as Bitcoin investors should promote a lot more in different ways of just using different denominators like I was I've just started to read the book end times that Groman recommended so by Peter Church and so we've all heard similar statistics like this before if we're into these esoteric topics but Turin was highlighting that in 1971 the median wage worker it took them 150 hours to be able to afford higher education And then I think the second signpost the year was like 2010 or roughly in the early 2000s that took 500 hours for that same medium wage worker to achieve university. So it's all the things that we feel and you can apply those to home prices or any kind of American dream type goal, but they're important to highlight and help people change their frame because we're all being gaslit all the time too. Because then if you look at like the Wall Street Journal, the article will be something to the effect and they have these all the time of like millennials are richer than ever but they just can't appreciate it and they're so depressed you know like look at their uh look at their wages are up and all these wonderful things. So I I think when you look at like pricing in gold that can make sense to people. Pricing in Bitcoin is really going to be a stretch because it's such a weird new nent asset on its own. But whether it's like median hours or other ways to highlight some sort of inputs and outputs that is going to help people to pull out of that dollar phenomenon especially as we go into a meltup type period. And then going back to what um Paul Tudtor Jones was saying, do you guys when he mentioned as the NASDAQ as the last part of that bucket, is he betting on like an end ofear meltup as part of that trade? >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's that's part of his thinking is uh it it sort of gets back to like where else does the capital go um in the sense that uh this sort of I mean really the stock market has been driven primarily by AI related stocks. So Nvidia and and some others uh over the past year or two really since chat GBT launched I think there was some wild data that like 75% of S&P returns are driven by AI related stocks since then. Um so it's kind of you know the way he articulated it in that interview was kind of like you know music's on so you got to keep dancing. The the administration has been pretty clear like they're just going to run it hot. They're going to grow our way out of this debt which really means just you know debase people. Um, and so you better own you better own hard assets and you know quality equities while not as hard of an asset as as gold or bitcoin or even some areas of real estate um on a it's all a relative game right like so if if that is the trade for you know cuz most people are still in a 60/40 so there's a lot of capital and wealth tied up in the S&P and the NASDAQ and so if all this stuff is just going to melt up we're going to run it hot uh the money's going to you know be exponential debased. Um, you know, the NASDAQ's probably going to do pretty well, at least for a time. Um, maybe there's some bumps along the road when, you know, maybe the the productivity miracle doesn't materialize and people realize that all of this spend uh and capital deployment towards all of these AI related ventures. Um, a lot of that capital is going to be destroyed. Uh, is is probably a wakeup moment for at least equity markets at some point in the future. Um but yeah, I think that that is what he's saying is like that, you know, all this stuff is going to melt up as uh we just print more money, lower rates, etc. >> Yeah, people forgot that at the beginning of the year there was Doge and Trump was going to, you know, balance the budget by the end of the year and that was right before everybody pretty much recognized whether it's the debasement trade or hard money renaissance. Um that there there's just going to be more monetary units that come into the system. It's going to be whether it's here in the US a new Japanese prime minister who wants continually low rates like there's there's not going to be much that's going to um catalyze a real shift in sentiment or the uh the trade to shift. All right, quick break. If you're enjoying the episode, please leave us a like, a comment, rate five stars, subscribe depending on where you're listening. If you are on YouTube, a comment really helps. You could leave positive feedback on the show. You could leave constructive criticism. Any of that helps. So, please uh if you can just engage, take a few seconds, like, subscribe, comment. It helps a bunch. We spend a lot of time to record, edit, distribute the podcast. So, thank you very much in advance for doing so. I really appreciate it. Now, on with the show. >> I think there's one critical thing we can't leave out because we understand that there's a debasement. We understand there's been debasement. This trade is being put on. there's gold and bitcoin that are fundamentally different. The problem still exists. That's a gap in that um most people even if they want to get there, they don't feel confident in how do they get their exposure because for 15 years you've known not to trust a single custodian and so even if you absolutely love Coinbase and Black Rockck, are you really willing to park material capital there? And that's why most individuals are still severely underallocated to Bitcoin. And then the other side of it is ultimately leaving it on a ledger. We'll probably go into this later about IBIT's performance, but we were talking about it on a different podcast today about IBIT having a hundred billion dollars or close to it and inflows. Maybe it's already surpassed that today. um probably not given the the retrace, but point being is a testament to how screwed up self- custody is for the majority of the market because that inflow happened in 400 days and that wasn't you know there's institutions coming in but there's a lot of retail investors that have historically wanted exposure and they just want to click a button but we also know that that's not the best exposure for a number of reasons and so that's really where the focus has come on from here whether it's collaborative custody that me and Cam were building previously to this business that inherent Apparently, even collaborative custody has this scalability limit because you're putting the onus on the individual and the individual not only has to manage private keys but pl like the seed phrases. They have problems if they're traveling, if they're not traveling, if they have a config file, where do they park it? How do they make sure that they have their code right? Do they have a backup to do? There's just a whole slew. And as the price keeps ticking up, those problems become more and more acute. And then you have to think about bad actors, you have to think about dynasty trusts. Um, everything under the sun naturally has these limitations. And and again, we've played this out before. Like all these concepts are timeless in the sense that sound money is how the world um was, you know, created to this point in the same way that the reason why people ended up with goldsmiths and then banks was because enough people showed up at their house to kill their family for their money that they ultimately said, "Hey, I need to trust it with a safe guardian." Obviously, that failed with gold um because of centralization problems, but that's the beauty of Bitcoin. It has this ability to insert governance at the uh protocol layer. So I think that's just a huge component is you need the market structure to catch up and so it's not really even if you're listening to this and most people probably at best even on this listening to this are you know 2 to 10% allocated. I would make the case not financial advice but it's severely uh maybe it is financial advice I don't know um but you know or severely underallocated but it's not your fault it's because you haven't actually had the right product services separately managed you know wallet onchain insured everything that we do and will continue to do so it's it's you know the best time to buy Bitcoin as everyone says was yesterday and then the next best time is today um so don't hold yourself short if you didn't really get to this and it's the same thing with gold. Gold's a great trade, but then you still have to figure out what are you going to do with it. And nobody would ever say park 100% of your wealth in gold and then put it underneath your mattress, your land. But for some reason, again, those local influencers uh that a lot of people listen to on the podcast channel will say, "Yeah, like just figure it out. It's not that hard. Put all your money uh on the the 12 words in the the seed phrase in your or the 12 words in the hardware device and you're go about your life." And it just doesn't work like that. That's not how society's going to adopt Bitcoin. And it's not because I want it to not happen that way. just because hundred billion dollars has flown into IVIT because that's not how they're going to do it. Yeah, 100%. That's well said. And it's also a it becomes more or less speculative when you actually like figure out and are comfortable with your custody setup and everybody's happy to take a NASDAQ like flyer on IBIT accounts in their retirement or um just in their Fidelity account having the Fidelity ETF or whatever it may be just because it's super easy and simple. But um obviously we know that's an improper product is people get out of that and try to you know hold and they're going to want actual Bitcoin. >> So I have a a quick little quip. Um so Cam I don't talk too bad I'll just do it. So Cam Cam and I have worked together for five plus years. He came down to uh Texas and helped uh early stages with me build out Unchained and you know came over to on-ramp and we've been growing this business like crazy. But it was still looked at like a lot of people listening and maybe us within our family circles of like are you nuts? Like you're going into this new niche industry. Uh you know it's speculative all the things that we know. And I found this like you know tweet that I think is a picture of Cam at the at the dinner table. Uh, and um, it's basically uh, is this is this how the conversation's going or how's the conver how's the conversation going right now with the family? >> You know, I got a positive article the other day from a close relative. And the ratio of the positive to negative articles is typically 10 to1 at best, maybe maybe worse. So, I I showed my wife like, "Look at this. Here we go. We got a positive one." But uh yeah, there have been plenty of Joe Peshy stairs over the years. >> Yeah, it turns out we might be we might be right, guys. We might we might be we might be on to something here. Um >> just maybe I I did want to highlight um you know, as it relates to the ETFs and these custody issues that you've articulated, Michael, like it's it's both sides of the spectrum, right? like the obvious issues that you just outlined with self custody, but then you know if you're just piling into the ETF, you have an issue as well because you know most of the ETFs I've been included are custody at Coinbase. And so this is a tweet from uh Sandy who uh put together timechain index.com says Coinbase Bitcoin under management surpassed 2.9 billion or million BTC after receiving uh around 800,000 BTC from Derabit uh following the acquisition by Coinbase. The honeypot is getting bigger and bigger. Um, and so this is this is what's in the back of people's minds either consciously or subconsciously in some instances of kind of what you described, Michael, of it limits people's exposure because if they have enough of an understanding of Bitcoin to recognize this is a digital bearer asset. If I have a single point of failure, it could go up in smoke. It could end up in the, you know, the UK landfill or in the hands of North Korean hackers. This is what limits people um because you don't have asurances, owners, real ownership asurances into the future that the Bitcoin that you are entrusting to a custodian or perhaps a group of custodians is actually yours. It's legally t titled to you. You have on train transparency to to see the coins there. That's not the case with any of these ETFs. It's omnibus structure, single point of failure, single custodian at Coinbase. Um, so just thought this was this was worth highlighting in terms of the context around both ends of the spectrum have issues. >> Yeah, this is a >> Oh, I just shared over an article. So I my own. So the barbell approach for custody that we recommend or that a lot of us use or clients use just kind of naturally is solely using self- custody for some amount of funds, typically a minority. It's up to everyone to decide. But then using multi-institution for most or all of BTC and everyone will get to that point eventually where it's like a less than 1% or 1% allocation in a treasure and 99 plus% is an MIC. But we'll help you along that journey. So you know I do the same thing for content. I'm on X, but then I'm also on the Wall Street Journal just to try to balance out some of the insane things I read on X. Uh, so but it's interesting when you read something like this from Wall Street Journal a few days ago. The best way to invest in Bitcoin without actually buying cryptocurrency, which just like kills me. It's like that's the last thing that this industry wants, right? Is just to have a complete paper market, multiple layers of counterparty risk, and Bitcoin is like a caged lion that's just controlled and never sees the light of day really. And that's really the future that we're heading toward if we're telling everybody you either you all have to self custody because uh not only just newer investors but plenty of uh longtime investors will hit a breaking point and say you know I'm just going to go on the ETFs. I can borrow against them. It's easier. Uh it's low fee. So this article was focused on you know which trusts or ETFs or other funds track uh the net asset value the most closely. But the the first sentence in there is scroll down Brian. Many investors want to hold the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin or Ether without the hassle of holding the crypto currency which can be lost or stolen. So like that truly is on the top of everyone's mind that even if you really do get excited and curious and have develop a thesis around this asset class, you have to worry about this whole other aspect of it being stolen. So >> something like the ETF >> this the beauty is um one of the big components was getting multi-institution out into the to the market and we know you know individuals we see it day in and day out. We end up working with some of the most sophisticated investors from some of the largest firms that have custody solutions because ultimately they recognize like this is a better way. That's the important zero to one moment in the sense that I don't fear of this happening long term simply because just like Bitcoin will win based on its own valition in properties multi-institution on a long enough time horizon will because very astute prudent investors once they get material balances in these constructs will ultimately understand about the risk and the risk will come from their own diligence or they'll just naturally happen as the market grows that it doesn't happen in a vacuum and as more liquidity comes in more risk comes in and there'll naturally be more de deleveraging and losses. So, it's less around I'm less it's a good thing to be concerned and think about centralization, but it's more about like your assets where some people either don't feel they're you know Bitcoin being asymmetric trade. If you're not in Bitcoin, you're losing purchasing power or if it appreciates and you get worried about concentration risk, you're reducing it or you're putting yourself in a position for your family to be kidnapped, hacked, house fires, not sleeping well at night. Um, so we haven't actually publicly announced this, but just for folks listening that we are going to be rolling out, uh, you know, we've gotten to a certain scale where we can actually increase our purchasing power with custodians to lower our cost. And that's probably been our biggest thing because a lot of people listening are like, "Okay, we get it all the time. You guys are the Rolls-Royce of custody, but I'm not ready yet because I don't have X, Y, and Z stack, or I'm just not ready to, you know, participate because of the fee structure." We won't share it here, but if you reach out, we'll have some exciting things that we're going to formally announce either later this year or early next that will make this a lot more achievable. Because at the end of the day, if the rest of the world is still severely underallocated to Bitcoin, then it's our job to continue to reduce that cost to make it uh more appealing to them for them to get a better custody solution and then along with the financial services we offer. So, uh yeah, a lot more coming from what we're doing there. >> Yep, great uh great plug there. More to come. Um can we go back to Japan Liam? You had brought this link because I think it's um just to to sort of frame the segue like you know we we're talking about this debasement trade but what are the ripple effects effectively uh really at the sovereign level as people wake up to um you know effectively this administration wanting to quote unquote run it hot debase the currency um and what what are the knock-on effects um sort of at the sovereign level in terms of what we're seeing there in in Japan. Let's start there. >> No, I was just going to say um they're going to run it hot too. They have inflation that's above target. They're uh they're you know have had negative yielding bonds for a very long time and um you know their new PM is has the same exact economic philosophy and they have massive amounts of debt to GDP. I think it's something like 270%. And so they're going to want to continue to have artificially low interest rates in order to um you know grow their way out of the massive amount of debt that they have. It's it's Japan is uh you know just going to be another one of these countries who doesn't want to really face the problems. I mean I don't envy any of these politicians who has to you know come in and be the bad guy. Um, and so I don't think that, you know, any of them have any real incentive to at this point. It's going to be uh I mean to segue into one other thing that's going to be interesting too is I think it's just going to be uh a matter of um competitive forces that end up causing governments to um you know actually show some austerity and uh keep you know interest rates at the rate that they actually should be in the market demands just because there's going to be more and more competition for stable coins especially those um you know that enter into other um other markets too and and they're going to be able to pass yield to investors too. So if you know uh investors in Japan or or just everyday normal people are insufficient and unhappy with the amount of um debt and dollars that are going or yen whatever currency they have over there that are going into their system. They're going to have the ability to opt out for to dollars. Um and the at the whole time um you know gold and bitcoin are going to be there as well. uh those are going to be a little bit more of a leap um especially Bitcoin um early on, but we're going to be going into a world in which people know that, you know, all across the world the um the debasement trade is is on until further notice and they're going to be looking for better options in order to store their capital. >> Yeah. And um there was another uh link that I'm pulling up now. Michael, I think you brought this one um somewhat related to what Liam was just walking through in terms of sovereign reactions to this. So I think India has been an interesting one sort of historically in terms of their their stance on on Bitcoin specifically. Um, but you know, I think just last week when you when you first added this to list, Michael, I actually thought it was the headline I saw last week, which is that was that similar to what we've seen in China over the past several months and years. Uh, India um has been stacking gold. So, there's been a spike in inventories of gold in India. Um, so playing into the debasement trade as well. But what is this article specifically talking about with respect to CBDC's? Yeah, I mean I think like India historically uh has kind of been on the wrong side of history when it comes to reserve assets. I believe India and China were the last to go to the gold standard and they kind of paid the price. Um I think that there's like a 2D there's a 2D version of how to play what's happening if you're a sovereign and there's a 3D version. I think the US is playing a 3D version, meaning like they have plans for Bitcoin that go back to what Cam was alluding to and and you know coring it and creating constructs. Um, but they're at least bringing the assets on shore. This looks like a 2D version which is like, hey, we're freaked out about this. We don't want capital flight. And so they're doubling down on the negative or um uh yeah, negative stance on crypto and Bitcoin. And then it looks like they're also heavily invested in kind of like CBDC's. So um yeah, the India's been historically antagonistic to Bitcoin. It sounds like they're continuing to um but I think we're going to see these different versions there and you know there's a 2D 3D and maybe there's an additional dimension that some sovereigns will recognize, hey, let's just let this thing freely roam and that'll be bring on economic prosperity. But that's a maybe hopeful wishful thinking because it's a lot to give up control of um the sovereign currency. >> Yeah. And then I I also found this interesting related um Tether which you know I think frankly just based on their their holdings of reserve assets alone. So you know Bitcoin, gold, all the treasuries they own I think they own land as well. you know, they're they're effectively sort of a quasi sovereign themselves, like a digital nation state of sorts that has all of these uh massive reserve holdings and they this came out the other day that they bought 19 tons of gold in Q2 alone, which is about what China's central bank bought over the same period. Um and so we don't have Q3 numbers yet yet, but um I thought this was pretty stunning like like Tether is it basically its own nation state acquiring gold. Yeah, Tether is easily like just one of the most sophisticated entities on the planet Earth and it's just indicated by its portfolio like the thing that's existed for thousands of years. They've been you know uh ice not uh rotating into between land um gold BTC uh so just consider that one like sound hard assets and then their business that you know generates an insane amount of Bitcoin, gold or cash flow, however you want to refer to it. Um, so yeah, it's just astonishing to see how long they've been playing the gold trade. And it came out today, I think, um, for the first time, tokenized gold surpassed uh, $3 billion. And again, not saying it's good or bad. It's just is that the market, it's the same thing that's probably going to get push back maybe here, but also just externally around gold is going to run. It's going to run for a long time. is going to go past $10,000 an ounce and then naturally people are going to want to uh leverage it in a way that looks like Bitcoin because it has properties that make it mobile. And so you're going to see the tokenization of gold. You're going to see these trading pools that happen. Um and it's going to be TBD on what that looks like because naturally you're going to have counterparties that you know get completely rug you or they get rugged. Sovereigns may start to close their borders on what bullion reserve is being uh deposited. Maybe it gets lent out. There's a lot of things we're going to have to learn through it, but it will be coming because again, it's a much easier leak to understand tokenized gold versus I'm going to park all my money in uh magic internet beans. >> Did you see that Tether is partnering with another company, Antela, to raise 200 million for a DAT strategy with uh their gold token as the core asset? >> I didn't, but I I think I said this in a private chat. I've been thinking about this for a few weeks like we're going to start to see as gold and silver go and I think somebody already kind of is doing this but we're going to see the DAT strategy around uh around gold which is already kind of exists with gold miners because gold miners historically have gotten a monetary premium uh on their equity value outside of the underlying because they're effectively being able you know they have like an actual business that pulls gold out of the ground. It's similar to Bitcoin miners right there's seen a nice uptick. So, I think if you're producing some kind of like cash revenue, it's not really a D that strategy. I'm not saying that's what they're doing, but we've talked about this forever. Like, businesses that just h produce value and then park their money in a harder form of money should naturally get a premium because they're just going to out compete the other businesses. But that's kind of completely different than the other thing. I don't know which one they're doing. >> Yeah. Um other side of the coin, no pun intended, of um you know acquiring sound money for your nation state is uh Germany who if you remember about a year ago sold 50,000 bitcoin at a price of around I want to say like 56k. Um so not looking too hot on that. And then you know they are announcing or I I think there's a working group within um sort of related to the German government that has proposed raising the retirement age to 73 to prevent the collapse of the pension system. Um and so this is pretty startling um just in the sense that you know I think just the fact that they are now saying this should be of concern to you because I think the reality on the ground is that pensions have been cooked for probably over a decade. Um, and you know, it probably would have helped if they had held on to that Bitcoin um or even bought more, but um any any takes on on this? It's sort of a sad state of affairs, but this is, you know, not not um an isolated incident to Germany by any means. Um all pretty much all pension systems are are underwater and cooked. >> I just don't know how they get out of it. Um I don't think that there's a great answer either way. I think the, you know, older generations are the most v uh most motivated to vote and um they have all the capital and political power too. And so nobody that's, you know, 18, 19, 20 uh or even 30 is going to be, you know, paying the lobbyists anything. And that's how Germany or I'm I'm assuming this is how Germany works, too, just because it's how the US works. And so, uh I don't think this is actually going to happen. uh just because the they're not going to cook all of their, you know, taxpaying and lobbying um citizens. But I I don't see a solution either way. This is how you get your friends and family, by the way. um in the sense of like you know we talked about this a little bit uh but we're this plot's going to come out before and it's the point is still pressing because there'll be overlap of like it's a moral imperative to discuss these things across the board because ultimately everyone's purchasing power is being reduced. So even if you did, if they didn't raise this, anybody that's getting social security or thinking about retirement, whatever that stipen is going to be is going to buy them less and less year-over-year, even for what they initially planned. And this is like a backended way on how I kind of got my mother-in-law to like spitecoin into Bitcoin because she retired. And it was basically sitting around one day and I was like, "Look, you may be fine, but whatever your you thought how far this was going to go or what you're going to leave your kids or ultimately because you start to feel it, right?" Like you pay for family vacations and you look at and you see year-over-year, you're like, "Well, this is like increasing in my like, you know, my my um my retirement with my financial adviser has me in, you know, bonds, you know, doing whatever they're doing." It just that really gets to people is like, "Oh, shit." because it becomes very visceral to understand that like everything I ever work for is effectively up for grabs now. The world is inherently more volatile. And so the point or the net if take anything from any of this is like share any info even from the local podcasters that may not know much. It's still better than anything or this podcast uh refer them over. Cam will take hand, you know, handhold them. We will all handhold them. But it's just really important because um there's not many solutions. And what Liam was saying earlier, they're going to obiscate a lot of this stuff from the debasement trade by offering like some nominal yield on top of other things to say like, oh, you can outpace inflation by trying to get it, but it just doesn't work. The math doesn't add up. And this exists for everyone on the planet Earth when it comes to how do you like protect your future if you're just stuck in this system where they can continue to create more dollars. >> We recently launched on ramp guardian. This is a feature designed to protect you and your Bitcoin against physical and digital threats. This is included on all on-ramp accounts. And so if you are thinking about social engineering attacks, $5 wrench attacks, people accessing your account with through credentials, 2FA, etc. If you're just generally concerned about the security of your Bitcoin long term, whether it is a digital risk, a physical risk, or it's both, get in touch. Like I said, this is included in all on-ramp accounts, on-ramp guardian, and there are a lot of different ways that this can protect you against the increasing sophisticated attacks that we are seeing every single day. So, get in touch with us on rampbitcoin.com. Book a consultation if you're interested and I would be happy to share more about what on-ramp guardian means for you. Thank you. >> Yeah, that is the other scary part is that this is multifaceted, right? like this is raising the retirement age. That's one of many aspects of life that will become more and more difficult. Like so back in Minnesota now in the metro area, a lot of cities from and counties are proposing you 10% increases on property taxes for 2026. Like so if you're on fixed income, you're retired, you're receiving your social security, um that is not only worth less as it's been debased, but every cost of good, every aspect of your living is is increasing. So yeah, whether it's gold or bitcoin, we need to we need to get this out there that these are your life rafts. Yes, it's well said. Uh where do you guys want to go from here? You want to talk a little i bit? Um, Michael, I can pull up your your tweet from the other day. Um, now we just sort of uh, you know, we've roused on ETFs a bit. Um, you know, as as you may be accustomed with, uh, you know, our solution, we think there's a better way to own the asset. But that being said, uh, IBIT has been the most successful product launch of all time in financial markets. Full stop. um nearing 100 billion in assets uh set to smash the previously set record of uh a little over 2,000 days uh for VO. IBIT's going to do it in 435. Um even more staggering, IBIT is now Black Rockck's most profitable ETF by a good margin. Um it's also in the top 20 ETFs by assets just globally. Um, and this is all against a backdrop of very early innings in terms of actual access and uh ability for folks to get exposure to these things. Now, we know um certain banks, warehouses, sort of incumbent firms have opened up access to these things, but there's a number who still haven't. Um, and even the ones who have approved it on the platform, there's often restrictions in place in terms of can uh advisors actually solicit clients on getting Bitcoin exposure. We're still very early days in that respect. So, that's the exciting thing about all this to me is it's it's nice that these um these products are a solid easy button for folks to get off zero in terms of at least price exposure. Um but we really I don't think have seen the full breadth of what these products are going to do over the coming years. Um because again the access is still you know the access and the plumbing and the solicitation is still not you know anywhere where where near where it will be in you know another 12 months or so. >> Yeah we don't have to go hard on the the custody setup. I think maybe the one big takeaway I think about this is um we're so early in all of this that like the exposure to IBIT reminds me the best analogy and it's not apples to apples is if you thought this was the endgame. It'd be like if you were using a computer or the internet to send an email and you thought that this that was all you're going to be able to do. Like there was a lot of value in being able to send digital communication, but it was severely u understated or or didn't have the foresight to know how influential or um how much value this would bring. And again, I think we we just naturally look at things in either a two-dimensional way or in a vacuum. But the price appreciation doesn't happen that way. And what that means is as more and people adopt and buy this thing, then more people start to recognize its value and then more people will want to, as an easy example, accept it. You can't use it for anything if it's stuck there. And it's still tied into the existing traditional system that has we've discussed and everyone understands if they're playing this trade that um the system's fragile. There's counterparty risk everywhere. There's going to be insolvenies and you don't want to be mixed up in that along with all these other issues. And so, um, I think that's the core angle here. And I don't think it actually matters how much education that happens there. The market's going to get educated because as the price appreciates, the market will naturally sort itself out of liquidity and risk coming in and then people will start to question their underlying counterparty issues. Again, why I speak so confidently about this is back to uh Cam and my experience like 21 and 22. You told the stories in 21 about BlockFi and the nominal cost uh that was more expensive in nominal terms, but in riskadjusted terms, it was much cheaper to park it in a decentralized way with uh no rehypothecation and over collateralized. is very similar here that it may even seem and I don't even think it's cheaper than what we do but this the point still remains that it may uh even if you just hold it in self custody like nominally it may be cheaper but risk adjusted the amount of risk you're exposing yourself to on a long enough time horizon is undue and that will just happen as the price appreciates everyone will just realize this >> yeah that's a big um it's a big disconnect for folks when they think about custody and they think about the cost of it um you know if you're holding coins on Coinbase, you think you're hold you think you're paying nothing for custody effectively, but you're really um you are paying something in effect for that tail risk of having a zero at at some point into the future. Um and you know because of that there's sort of been this subsid subsid sub subsidy for custody generally speaking in digital assets where you think you're paying nothing but you're actually on a riskadjusted b basis paying something in terms of your actual allocation potentially going to zero and it's the same idea with self custody. Um, if you yourself are the single point of failure, that is the tail risk uh that you need to be assigning some amount of value to. And if you if you can wrap your mind around there being some value to protecting against that tail risk, then the costs of superior and more robust fault tolerant custody start to make a lot of sense. Yeah, I would say it's even greater. Like there there's that part, but there's the the one that's probably even more prevalent and it's crazy when we talk with, you know, clients when we catch up is the peace of mind because what you're really paying for it is the be worrying about this underlying asset. It's really kind of crazy. We got to $2 trillion with nobody really knowing if the next day their house burns down, they mess up, they get hit by a bus, their family can't get it, or the third party exchange for whatever reason just doesn't give them their Bitcoin because of something they tweeted. The point being is that that peace of mind disruption uh costs a lot and will only increase. Um so anyway, Cam, sorry. No, I I had a vivid memory of you and I being back in the Unchained offices. I can't remember it was a team meeting or something where we're kind of walking out of that main office uh boardroom and you're like, "Guys, how are we going to hold Bitcoin when it's $500,000?" and and we just, you know, just kind of like classic Michael style, just uh a little bit abrasive and just to the nose, but so truthful. And I think there's kind of a general sense or a different mix of like, well, just like we are now, like you do your key checks, you've got your keys in cold storage. But the bigger point there was we're there's cognitive dissonance that exists because we're all convinced that Bitcoin almost assuredly is going to go to $500,000, $5 million, maybe much more than that within our lifetimes very probably. Uh but then practically that feels so much different. It's it's hard to uh understand the ramifications of that until you're there. So there really is that lack of peace of mind. Like functionally, you could still do your key checks and replace the devices when they break and um check your seed phrases and your wallet configuration files and test your backups and uh review your inheritance plan if you have one with your loved ones. But in all the time in between mentally, uh all those those tail risks are now now there were tail risks now they're much more probable and now they're consuming more of someone's mental energy. So, it is a totally different exercise, but just there's something about human nature where it's so hard for us to appreciate that before we're there, which is why I saw NVK tweeting recently the classic trope of protect your Bitcoin like it's worth 10x. That's still some of the best advice out there. >> Yeah. My favorite mental model is to go to is like, all right, let's go to we're all holding our keys. Like, now what? uh let's pretend like from a uh UTXO perspective everyone can hold their keys which is pos impossible and then from a socioeconomic perspective like let's say we all want to be our own bank which I would say is more impossible because at least technology you can manipulate uh from a UTXO perspective from humans humans are are humans but let's say we got past that and everyone wants to be our own bank or grandmas and every individual is just sitting with a ledger you know uh up a personal crevice or hidden somewhere in a personal crevice in their house Um now now what like play that world out from how do you coordinate economic activity if we want to like flourish as a society? How do you actually uh manage you know your house not getting completely ransacked and if you have a big citadel well then how do you know that the next neighboring citadel doesn't come for your underlying like there's a hundred reasons where that just naturally doesn't play out in the same reason gold didn't. Um, but to your point, it's just like we're very early stages in this industry. And so, um, and it also, you know, it's not to be said like the first 15 years, self-custody really was the only option because you couldn't leave it on a third party exchange. And even today, as long as you're not 95 years old, I would still say if you had to pick, it's 100 out of 100 times you want to self custody over leave it on Coinbase or Black Rockck because at least the control or messing it up is up to you in your situation versus a third party just you waking up the next day. We're going to increasingly see that. Um, but again, there's no perfect trade-offs. There's just perfect solutions or I'm sorry, there's no perfect uh solutions, just, you know, perfect trade-offs for you and everyone has their own individual preference. But the world ends up in a pretty pareto distributed fashion and ultimately we think of what we're building here and it's the beauty is it scales proportionately to the amount of assets. So I've talked to the SEC commissioners about this that over long enough time whereas in I fully expect multi-institution to proliferate on the public treasury side we're on boarding some of the biggest ones as well as for the ETFs it's just a consumer protection thing when you have five different custodians and you have a 405 305 whatever it is protecting you know trillion dollars plus in assets. We're just so early that we're going to have to see some carnage in the system before the market recognizes, oh wait, the thing that makes Bitcoin different than gold is that there's governance that can be inserted at the protocol layer. Yeah. And the that learning specifically, I I would characterize it almost as like unlearning the the historical trust in financial systems and in institutions generally like that I think is the success of IBIT and the ETFs I think is indicative of you know largely to to an extent the fiat mindset of trusting institutions um and thinking that everything's going to be okay because the big boys are here now. um and they've got everything figured out when in reality like Black Rockck just outsourced it to Coinbase which should raise some red flags in in your mind. Um but yeah, that was all that was all well said, Mike. Brian, can you pull up the um the Fortune article because I think that's pretty interesting for a number of reasons about the central banks. So, this is funny because this report came up like two weeks ago from Deutsche Bank around um that Bitcoin will and gold end up as reserve assets for sovereigns. Um but fortune picked it up a week later and says central banks will end up holding Bitcoin in their reserves even though it's backed by nothing Deutsch Bank predicts. Uh and I thought this was interesting for a number of reasons. One of the big ones is less around the headline, which we can, you know, make fun of them for that if we want here, but I think it's the notion that um it's this it's this idea that super cycle is not a good word, but we got to come with a better one of like we're just in a secular change, right? like this sound money renaissance like the notion that this isn't what Bitcoin I think we can probably safely say has moved from pure risk um on and it still sits as risk on but it also has been playing for a lot of people risk off will increasingly with the debasement trade becoming understood will be more and more risk off specifically for sovereigns and if that's true that completely changes the market structure for how long this goes, how high we go, and ultimately how low uh or how high we retrace. And so, I think this is probably worth talking about because this is the thing, and it's hanging over our head with the whole um US SPR thing that I still think is very much in play that nobody's talking about. >> Yeah. Well, uh Christine Lagarde also was asked this week about Bitcoin again. Um and she once again said it's backed by nothing. It has no intrinsic value despite it being only I think maybe five or so years younger than the euro um which you know was also created just by a bunch of people sitting in a room and doesn't have um any you know things securing it. There's only one node uh for the European Central Bank. Um and so ultimately it's just it's just a time game too with all these people and uh getting them more educated. I think that many central bankers likely understand that this is or at least some people within the large central banks uh understand that this is a reserve asset or um you know some likely still think of it as a risk on trade. Um and so they're not going to you know put anything that they inherently think is a risk on in their uh in their central bank reserves. But it naturally will have a few people uh advocating for Bitcoin within pretty much all of these central banks over time just as time proliferates. >> Quick question for the group like um let's because you can make the case like you know gold's backed by nothing, right? Like it's like what's the fundamental value or whatever. um if they didn't have this to say about Bitcoin, there would be something else that would step in because let's say there was physical bitcoins that existed uh that they could say they're at like what would be there's something else that would be the prominent thing. I can't think of it. I'm just curious because that's effectively where we're at at this point is it's just cope of like it's backway nothing because I can't touch it and then everyone listens and and says that same talking point and then they just go about their day. I think it would move to something along the lines of like it's too u concentrated so that we're going to end up in the same place as fiat theoretically. Now I don't believe that to be the case. I think there's a natural distribution that's occurring over the past 16 years that will continue. Um but I think that would be a a line of thinking of well we still can't support Bitcoin because it's just going to enrich this group of insiders that were earlier than us to the thing. And that might happen anyway at some point um in terms of you know the the spite and the anger towards Bitcoiners accelerating into the future as the price appreciates and and you know for those who opt to stay on zero. I think that'll be um that'll be part of their their coping mechanism to say um well, we can never transition to that system because it's also unfair um to us because we don't own any like that that would be I think maybe the the track they would take. >> Anybody else have ideas that I don't have any? I just was thinking about it. Oh, >> and so back you say like if if Bitcoin didn't exist and outside of gold like what other asset would people be to in this debase and trade or >> No, it's more of like if there was because they're saying it's not backed by anything like that there's no like there generally when people say it's not backed by anything there's no physical manifestation in the real world. So it's like well what what what backs it what is it? Um, and so I'm saying like if let's just say there was physical Bitcoin uh like what would be the the FUD, you know, you can make the case that illicit activity, centralization like uh Brian was sharing, but there's some other angle that I just thought it's not important. It's just more of >> think it was just a thought experiment because there would be another reason ultimately they wouldn't come to the conclusion that it could uh be a store of value just because it had a physical um construct. >> Yeah. I mean we >> Yeah. It's not created by the government, you know, like so it's illegitimate for that reason because so much we we've been a hundred years of that view. Like how could government how how could a bunny be emergent but uh and non-government but also legitimate. Yeah, it's uh I think we're past the Satashi can come back and create additional bitcoins too. Um but I guess not if if c uh she still thinks it's backed by nothing. Yeah. So it'll be um the centralization and um you know everybody says like oh well it's you know outside money not controlled by the government but black rockck holds a bunch as if like you know other people can't still hold it too. Yeah, that was an interesting part that I'm sure Brian you felt when we had Jeff Booth on because there's a notion that like Bitcoin is just this like panacea for everything. And the reality is like there's like so like uh humanity is like exist in a fractal of like increasingly decentralization from like power but it ultimately still is very much centralized. It's more centralized than we'd like to admit in the existing construct. And even if Bitcoin proliferates as a store of value, it's still going to have a notion of centralization. It's just less uh in that fractal. And then there's the component that you referred to of everyone still has access to a money that can be debased. And it's not completely apples to apples, but it's close enough to like gold and where gold was for thousands of years. Now more people have access to it. But I think like Jeff will posit that it's a completely new paradigm and it's a positive some game for everyone. And I think there's some notion to that, but it's still closer to gold than it is to like this completely new thing that like way of thinking. Uh >> yeah, and I've heard so many times that um you know there's not enough space on the chain in order to process as many transactions as as Visa and Mastercard. Not with any understanding that there will be additional L2s and they can have off-chain credit and uh settlement as well. Maybe last thing um before we go, I don't know if Brian had something, but this one I had missed this. I don't know if you saw it. Um it was a few a few days ago where it says a story simple. Trump said America can grow its way out of debt. What it really means is debasement shutdowns highlight the erosion of trust in US instit in US institutions. Bitcoin is the pressure valve. That's not bearish S&P. That's bearish the dollar. This is from Goldman Sachs. Yeah, I mean that that's a perfect summary of of of really the entire discussion that that puts it quite quite succinctly and it's from Goldman. So, um the only other thing I had was uh we are recording this a little early in the week because we're traveling. Uh the group of us will be in Dallas uh the next few days for Tex Cap and uh the North American Blockchain Summit conferences in Dallas. Um so if you're in Dallas, reach out to to any one of us if you'd uh like to meet in person uh and chat. We'll be uh also hoping hosting a happy hour on Thursday. So uh check our Twitter feed for info on that if you'd like to be involved. The only other thing I was going to say because it's earlier in the week, can I get some uh some end of week price predictions so that people in the comments can make fun of us on uh on Friday? >> Well, we're sitting at $120,000. So >> yeah, we're at like 120. Yeah, a little under 121 right now. >> The real question is, do we like ninja launch this tomorrow and miss uh Jackson's Friday dead? uh Jackson likes to run a tight ship and have it consistent, but you know, >> I don't know. I I've gone back and forth on it to be to be honest. Like I I do like the uh the consistency of of Friday morning TLTs, but >> I do have an idea to what to for Friday. So, well, we could talk about that offline. Um we'll make the call, but I don't I say we were teetering around between 123 and 125 at the end of the week. >> I'll take the over. I think we're going to be at a little under 130 by the end of the end of the week. >> What was that? 250. What did you say? >> No, that's next week. >> No, but if we do if we do ninja launch this, reach out because Cam has uh very uh big plans for nights out in Dallas. And so if you'd like to participate and join and hear what we talk about after having, you know, a few drinks, uh, you know, you definitely want to to reach out and we'll we'll get you. Uh, I I've, uh, seen the work Cam's done on on, you know, peers the next morning walking in and seeing certain individuals that won't name. Um, so just be very careful if Cam's out and wants to buy you a drink. He's really looking for a mark. Uh, because there's only so many days he gets to travel for business and, you know, he likes to take advantage of stuff. >> Very well said. >> So much innuendo there. If you come out, hang with me, it'll feel like 150k Bitcoin plus easily. So, it doesn't even matter what the price is or price prediction. But, uh, you got to work hard and play hard. >> You'll feel like a million dollar Bitcoin the next day. >> No, you'll feel like you'll feel like ETH. You'll feel like ETH. >> Wait. Yeah. Wait. One great tweet from Kobe today. >> I knew that was going to I got to I mean, it was just a great tweet. He was like, "What if uh something to the effect of, what if gold reaches 5K before ETH?" Just hilarious. also very possible. We'll see. Um, all right, boys. I think that's a good that's a good rip for today. Thanks for joining me. >> In the comments, let us know if if you like uh the pod with with or without Jackson because we can always make changes. We're very flexible uh unit at onramp. We like to be iterative. That's how we move so fast. So, if this is a new format that you guys like, let us know. But if you also love to see Jackson, >> if you miss Jackson, sound off in the comments. >> Let us know as well. >> All right. Thanks, guys. 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