Wall Street Meets Wild West: Stablecoins, Free Banking & The Next Digital Land Grab

It all comes down to computers communicating. >> The information superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. >> Is it still rat poison? >> Probably rat poison squared. >> We need to get into the world of okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash. >> Hi everybody. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. We had a fun and amazing podcast covering all things related to uh what happened this past week. No shortage of things happening with Tim Draper uh talking about or theorizing about a Bitcoin native fund denominated in Bitcoin, obviously something Early Writers does. Um but also looking at um the new uh Paul Atkins uh release that came out related to American leadership in the digital financial evolution. a lot of market mechanics and things changing in the space as well as stable coins and uh some of the pieces that have recently come out around free banking. Um quick word from on-ramp. We've had a lot of inbound and request uh booking via consultation and onboardings recently and sometimes folks necessarily uh may want to have some questions. They may have some thoughts around what does the insurance cover, is inheritance built in, is there additional cost, what does private client look like? Um, and so we have a new resource page. If you go to our website under deep dives, uh, you can find out a lot of this information including a lot more like, you know, who the key holders are. Um, the benefits of multi-institution and who holds the keys. There's a lot of questions that naturally come up. Um, I know there's a lot of listeners that have been listening and following us for a while and would love to help you make that leap or at least educate um, via a consultation or if you check out our website. So, you can go to honorbitcoin.com. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show. >> And we're live. Welcome back, gentlemen. My co-host, Liam Nelson, Michael Tanguma. This is Final Settlement. Today is Monday, August 4th, 10:20 a.m. Eastern time. How we doing, fellas? >> Another day in paradise. We got uh it looked like a little Bitcoin pump this morning. We >> pump after a dump. I don't know where we went. >> After dump, >> it's so sad, man. Like my wife was telling me over the weekend like, "Oh, Bitcoin's down." and and you know it's fundamentally like a different thing when it goes from like 10k to 3k or you know 64 to 17 but you know 122 to 113 and like >> we've dumped we've dumped all the way down to the low 110s. >> I think there's a good anecdote in that though that in the sense that like whatever volatility comes the the detractors or the people are going to come back out and say that this thing failed and it's too volatile. I mean, I saw it somewhere. It seems like satire, but somebody posted like store of value with the kind of like, you know, sat like, you know, u ironic uh text or letters trying to be like, "Yeah, it's not a store value." And it like moved like $3,000 and you're looking at 113,000 in Bitcoin. It's pretty It's going to be u it's just funny. >> Yeah, people uh try to find normies don't understand what store value really means. Uh but I will say I did have a uh just anecdotally a normie friend uh reach out over the weekend who's been buying Bitcoin for over a year or so uh reach out and say that they were buying the dip. So there is there's some learning going on understanding that uh not to get shaken out by a dip down to 112 uh and that's just a buying opportunity. >> If we're going to do normie anecdotes, I got a good one for you guys. Um like this is our version of hanging out, right? And then we get to share stuff that we don't usually get to is uh so I'll make it really like tight. Had a nice lady in Austin. Used to cut my hair. Um she left. Hadn't seen her in a while. She got stuck with the Asheville floods. Ended up in Nashville. I'm in Nashville right now. Found her and uh so she she between then and now so it's been a few years. I got a text one day and it was like, "Hey, u" because I used to pay her in Bitcoin for the haircut and eventually it was the price was like, you know, kind of like bleeding and so it was funny because I remember it was like literally the last you knew it was like the bottom signal cuz the last haircut before she left she's like don't um uh she's like you need to pay me in cash or like you know card. I was like oh And I was like I'm that guy just like selling her a Ponzi and um this is back in 21 22 right but but like 22 maybe. So, I get here and between then and now I had gotten a text about like, "Hey, do you want to invest in like suicide coin?" And it was like from her about my friend has like a crypto token. It was like suicide. I didn't respond. I was like, "Whatever." Um, so I find her in Nashville and I I was got her my haircut a month ago and I came back yesterday and I sit down and she was like, "Yeah, I never sold it." You know, the last time she was like, "It's gone up." But I didn't talk much about Bitcoin. And today she said, "Are you into those other bitcoins or like those other Bitcoin things?" And I was thinking about companies like are you interested? And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, oh, you know, like the other tokens. And she was like, yeah, my friend, you know, she doesn't remember. She had sent me this text. I was like, my friend uh got into uh the suicide token. It was suicide awareness, suicide pepe. I don't know. She just explained it. She's like, they sold it to the whole barber shop. And then um he came back one day and was like, you know, it's all gone. She's telling me she's like, they rugged me. But she but the whole notion of all this is just explaining like that people still just don't get it. It's just all this crazy nihilism, all the stuff that we know and they just assume everything is a different token and Bitcoin is no different than them all. Um and it's just going to take a long time. >> Yeah. No, it's unfortunate. The other bitcoins out there, you got to be careful for those other bitcoins. They'll get you. Um but top news story of the day, this is where we're going to start. Michael, you brought this. This was um our new uh chairman of the SEC, Paul Atkins, uh made a speech, I guess towards the end of last week. Uh this is titled American Leadership in the Digital Finance Revolution. Um so Mike, what were your uh key takeaways from this speech from Atkins? Yeah. So, I'll go to the key takeaways, but I think as you scroll down, if you just do slow. Um, so this was by Paul Atkins, the new SEC chair. First kind of bold bull uh headline is evolution of capital markets from Buttwood to block blockchain. So, he's referencing uh the New York Stock Exchange being enacted in 1792. So, just breaking down how like capital markets need to evolve. Um, if you keep going, just wanted to highlight a couple of the key themes that are in this. It's a it's a pretty incredible piece to see like where Gendler was to see Atkins come in forging the future America's leadership in the golden age of finance. Um, so really breaking down the Genius Act and the working group of Trump and recognizing a lot of this piece was effectively them saying, "Hey, we're going to work to get uh what Trump is wanting to do to make Bitco US crypto capital the world." Like that's my mission. Uh, onshoring crypto and you hit the SEC and so I'm sharing this like you know kind of objectively by saying I I believe on all of it but it's bringing back uh corporate structures around whether it's stable coins or token dumps or drops. Um, as part of that initial coin offerings, airdrops, you'll see here. And then enhancing freedom, choice among custodians and trading venues. I do think this is actually pretty interesting if you pause here because he references um, as I said before, the right to self-custody one's private property is a core American value. Um, I believe deeply in the right to use digital wallet to maintain personal crypto assets and participate in onchain activities. He also references choke point 2.0. Um, and then really ex there's a quote here, exemptive uh possible exemptive behavior or other relief in addition to changes the rules themselves. I think this is kind of important because there's been, we talked about it a lot on the last trade, just the notion of a qualified custodian and what you know has historically been in securities law doesn't necessarily apply to digital assets and commodities. Um, so it'll be interesting to see what they come back with. Um, but yeah, I thought that was interesting. And then um this one is also super fascinating, very Arwellian, but it says facilitating super apps horizontal integration of product offerings. We obviously know China's uh you know the state of affairs with what is it? WeChat and um and WhatsApp. And then here we know Alain and X is working on their integration. But there's also really bringing in uh securities into the notion. So tokenizing securities coupled with stable coins, Bitcoin, um that you naturally start to like have that all vertically integrated and then unleashing the US markets big beautiful onchain software systems um again going back to they want to bring everything onchain securities uh everything which is pretty interesting and then uh fostering innovation commercial viability is our true northstar. Um, so this was just a highlight. We ran through it. I think a couple quick notes. Um, bringing crypto assets uh and distributions and capital formation back to the United States is a key pillar. Insuring market participants have maximum choice when it comes to custody and trading solutions. Um, they want to allow for further innovation around super apps, specifically broker dealers. um should be able to offer traditional securities trading, crypto trading and then uh updated anti antiquated regulations to better support onchains, you know, and decentralized finance applications. So, basically getting more integrated between securities and uh tokens. >> Yeah, I I think um my my brain kind of goes in two different directions on this. I think the first um sort of on on the very positive side is is what we have pulled up here just around custody and and thinking about it from first principles from a more onchain or protocol native perspective. This is a line of thinking or or sort of line of commentary that was mirrored um at BPI's policy summit a few months ago uh with a fireside chat with Hester Pierce where she was effectively um you know just willing to have an open mind around there may be protocol native um ways to think about custody and security um in basically an an advantaged way relative to incumbent systems. And so I think that is one of the big takeaways for me uh for me to from this uh speech as well as broader commentary that we've started to see from the SEC is like we're just going to think about this uh from the foundation of of these protocols themselves and and be open-minded to the notion that there may be better ways to custody these assets than, you know, just labeling a a custodian a qualified uh custodian. Um, and so that that was super positive to me. The other side of where my brain goes with this is like sort of to to the conversation that we were just having prior to this around the conflation of Bitcoin and crypto. And it's like we're kind of cheerleading anything and everything under the sun here. We're going to tokenize everything. Um, and so that that's where my more uh cautious side of my mind goes is like this is kind of just um furthering or exacerbating the conflation in the market of of Bitcoin versus all these other things and really being like, you know, crypto forward. We want to be the crypto capital of the of the world, etc. Um that's where my like hesitation or caution would come around all of this is just like this does sort of exacerbate the the exact level of conflation that we were just just talking about. >> Yeah. my mind immediately goes to just this is going to increasingly just become the wild west. And um you saw a lot of those banks trying to write the regulations because they control or have a big say in the financial services of today and and tried to outline the uh you know with you know the past administration try to outline what the new rules of the road should be for crypto assets as well and and have tried to do that with this administration too. Um, you know, I think it will just in be increasingly clear that the regulations will be laxed and they're really um forwarding innovation and that's kind of any anything new under the sun and as we know with a lot of new things um they're not necessarily always going to land it right the first time. And so with that, I would just be cautious of um anything out there that it you should put your money in that will potentially uh be promising you the world and and uh isn't necessarily tested. >> Yeah. I mean, this is what we've been talking about. I've specifically been saying like we live in the Wild West. We're increasingly going to live in the Wild West. And it's kind of like by design. is it go it reminds me of the whole who's they and people uh it's not that there's like a whole orchestrated thing but there are frameworks you think about like co is a great example like how do they get everyone to just do one thing it's like there is a there is like factions and there are um there is inertia and part of the inertia comes to this well I'll say something you guys might not believe or align with but there are very senior people that believe Bitcoin if it credibly enforces a 21 million hardcap supply will become or could become money. Um, but they also recognize that that proposition is an insane proposition to most people. And what is more likely for them is to go and play in the in all of this stuff and and again lose in real terms while in nominal terms they get wealthier and they're more incentivized to do that because imagine a world where all of this was super segregated. You understood Bitcoin that was the only crypto asset. People could adopt it. Well, that is very uh disruptive to everything else that exists in the current system. So, it the conflation and all that is a natural like byproduct of how do we prop this thing up and let it stick for 10 to 30 years. And this is something Brian I think is coming further around to this is something Braum is really away from. It's like this is why gold is going to persist much longer than everyone expects because it's just been built into everybody's models and their um the way that their sovereigns have been storing wealth. And so to just like believe that they're just going to like bypass it and give it all up and everyone's going to go to Bitcoin like they're going to there's going to be this natural just like opaqueness that exists and people will slowly understand Bitcoin. They'll slowly realize okay I just store it. But there are certain people that just basically understand like that simple the simplicity of I just buy Bitcoin and I go back to my life is such an insane proposition to the state we're at that they get that and that's what like all this is about >> 100% that um this is bringing a lot of regulation and clarity to all those other bitcoins that your hairdresser is interested in. uh and this will be a great way for those other bitcoins to get some more regulatory clarity and uh that they have eventually look to market in their own different way and uh you know it's going to be something that is perceived to have value just like suicide awareness but in the end it just is a way to you know take money away from just hardworking people. >> Yeah. The core mental model of all of this, and I'll go down with the ship if I'm wrong, is 2022 was the dry run. FTX and all of that was the dry run for the level of shenanigans and losses that we're going to see. Don't know the year. Don't even care the year because just going to invest and build in the product. So, we already know. It's the beauty of like being early enough to see everything fall apart and also not ruining your credibility and not rugging anybody and then just building a conservative way. And we talk to people all day long that listen to us and they say, "Ah, I get it. I get what you're building. I'm ready to sign up." Um, and we'll just continue to do that. And there's a market for that. And it's a growing market as long as we believe we're right. Uh, and it's just fascinating because everyone's playing all these other games, including the everyone saying Bitcoin's the hurdle rate and then telling you to like buy their equity into some like crazy thing. It's just like, yeah, guys, you just don't get it yet. But you will. >> No, I agree with all that. And um, like you were talking around the the just the gold angle, Michael, like it is something that I've um certainly come around on just in terms of gold persisting longer than people think. In the other angle that I've also been iterating and thinking about is like just this this notion of like a sound money thesis and the the idea that Bitcoin is looped in with broader crypto is just is completely illogical in from the standpoint of like if you're assessing purely the um the investment thesis at hand. And so if you're thinking about Bitcoin relative to other crypto assets, I would charitably say other crypto assets are much more akin to venture tech uh exposure relative to hard money uh store of value type thesis which Bitcoin and gold represent. And so it's really you know in my mind been a disservice to Bitcoin over the past 10 year 10 plus years in the sense that it's been looped in from a technology standpoint and and that's that's why it is looped in, right? like there is a natural association by technology that people are making between Bitcoin and these other crypto assets, but from an actual investment thesis standpoint, they couldn't be more different. And so I think a a nice way to, you know, on a go forward basis articulate Bitcoin's thesis and value prop is associating it more with gold. And and that's also, you know, that's been a tactic in the Trady world for many years, but I think it's still conflated in the sense that you see Trady firms embracing crypto as a whole. And again, part of that is this administration speaking to to the entirety of it and not making as clear distinctions between the actual investment thesis at hand. Yes, the technologies are similar, but the actual investment thesis between Bitcoin and other crypto assets is very distinct. And I think instead looping Bitcoin in with gold can make that investment level distinction more clear to folks. So that that's something that we'll have more on uh to say from the early writer side um soon. But I think that that is just going to be in my mind a very important theme going forward is like this this sound money thesis idea um as opposed to the broader crypto venture tech sphere. >> And that that's where all the money is going to go either way. like you think about who's holding gold today and starting to you know um allocate I think one of the um there was multiple things I wanted to share but like one of the I guess the main components of all so what what generally happens in this space is like you end up in a bubble because you have the same people and and maybe it was always how it was supposed to be because you know early in Bitcoin you think people think you're crazy and so then you have to find your tribe and you have to find the people that are going to help reinforce. It's by the way why all the like uh podcast and and tweets and thumbnails get engagement when you talk about retiring on one bitcoin or whatever. It's like you kind of find a group that reinforces all of it. And the thing that reinforces reinforcing all of it doesn't do is talk about like the gold camp because generally people that were that early to Bitcoin didn't find gold. But when you are building businesses and you're out and about, you start to see the bit the gold thesis where these people are playing. And I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but they are going to do this because you already see Tether doing it and there's others where you're going to like tokenize gold. You're going to have it trade around. Obviously, you have problems with potential counterparty risk, but if you have reputable thesis and and like a lot of people will posit that I'm friends with in like tech, I'm trying to explain this like, well, gold has no fundamental value. And it's like, well, okay, what is Bitcoin's fundamental value? Like like it's the same trade in the sense that there there's a finite supply. they're uh have certain properties that make them good money, but like when you look at an abstract of a Bitcoin or you look at abstract of a gold and if you can move it like there's just it's a there's a lot of group think to be like well to your point the sound money thesis which ties into the second part which is a the majority of capital is not trying to 100x or 10x their money. are trying to preserve their wealth. And so that's where a sound money thesis comes into play and why it makes a logical sense for a lot of wealthy people to park more assets in gold than BTC to start. Whether it's liquidity profile, risk profile, whatever it might be, but then the other side is really like um where crypto and the pub codes and all this stuff comes into place. Like people just forgot about how to deliver value because think about it like if you guys were wanting to go start a business and you had x amount of money saved because that's what money does is it provides optionality. So you have x amount of money saved. Well, you wouldn't be in crypto or like some MSTR equivalent that can 10 to 100x because what you need is a steady base and then you're you have value to provide to the world. So you're going to go out and like maintain that. You're not going to deal with the volatility. It's the people that are like literally like have they forgot how to deliver value. So their only angle is like I need to 10x my wealth. This is where the nihilism of like Robin uh the Robin Hoodification world and the apps of everyone gambling. It's like it doesn't make sense to put all that capital at risk trying to get the next Bitcoin or better Bitcoin if you just have other ways to make money outside of like speculating on the thing. And there's just like this whole and so that sounding money thesis is going to um be where the winners play and it's ultimately going to be how people preserve their wealth. >> Well, and this is somewhat related, but that's why it's so funny to me to see these altcoin treasury companies crop up because it's like you're not even reading the room in terms of like the thesis or the play here. Like these other uh crypto assets are not reserve assets, right? like they're not risk mitigated um assets in the sense of being uh an asset without an issuer or you know having actual decentralized qualities that make them a credible uh or enforce a credible monetary policy um that that gives it those qualities of being more riskoff and a reserve asset. And so like it's funny to me that you see these things crop up because like if you look at Tether for example like what are they holding in their reserve? They're not holding Ethereum. They're not holding Tron even. They're holding US treasuries, Bitcoin, gold, I think some land. Um they're holding actual reserve assets um that have uh less counterparty risk, less execution risk, no management risks, etc. Those are the qualities that make a good reserve asset. And so I think there's just this massive misunderstanding. And part of it to your point is the the nihilism and the the searching for the 10 to 100x as opposed to the steadier you know 20 to 40% kagger uh over a long time horizon. Um so there's just a massive disconnect in in terms of um these different offerings and products in the market. But uh there was another um regulation related piece I wanted to bring up um uh around the SEC and a new rule instituted last week around the ETFs. Um so as I pull that up um this was the first headline here. Quiet SEC rule shift moves crypto ETFs closer to the mainstream. And then I have another uh link here. But um maybe Michael if you want to give like um just an overview of of kind of what this means, the misconceptions around it in terms of like you know your average Joe being able to contribute uh Bitcoin into an ETF or the reverse take it out. Um and why this is really for the um APS and institutional allocators to be able to to take advantage of this. But maybe just uh I want to give a a high level here. >> Yeah. I mean at the highest level my understanding um because there's an article from Eric Balkinus and Bloomberg it's articulating that the ETFs have been kind of like treated as second tier ETFs by uh Wall Street in terms of the create redeems from underlying versus having to go and cash cash in cash out. It's um it is uh it's inefficient and but also um not what traditional markets have. So the the reality is this only impacts broker dealers and the authorized participants when you're coming in um to bring in large lots of BTC rather than have to bring in cash, execute and then move into uh custody. You can be able to participate and bring in large lots of BTC and similar on the way out. Um again this only impacts u institutional investors specifically around the broker dealers and authorized participants. I think um what's interesting here is that there is been no shortage of demand and interest on the conflation of how this impacts individuals. And we've shared it a lot, but I'll share it again. It I'd make a bet we're at least 24 months, if not longer, away from individuals being able to deliver in kind and specifically take delivery in delivering in kind is a lot easier because it's a it's a one-way flow. But to take it back out, there's a logistical process because you have three levels of counterparties between the underlying custodian, the inter intermediary broker that you bought it from, and then obviously the sponsor, which would be Black Rockck for most people. And to take delivery of that is from an OFAC compliance, uh, OFAC sanction compliance KYC. It's just it's a it's a heavy process and these individuals want to be prepared for it. Um, but the other thing is that there's a lot of interest in it because there's a lot of interest in individuals feeling from a security perspective, among other things, they want to park their assets in a Bitcoin ETF, which is just like kind of crazy because if you think about it, um, I don't know. It's it's kind of shocking that there's a lot of notable people that have studied this space for a very long time and believe that like Black Rockck and Coinbase holding larger and larger positions in this asset is good for it. It's like they their whole thesis they didn't understand what gold is and then where gold failed because you can hold two ideas in the same vein and that like self-custody won't be the standard for every person on every part of the planet while at the same point Coinbase shouldn't be where all the assets sit and um that's this gap we play in and part of uh so anyway maybe I don't know if you wanted to touch on the honor Bitcoin trust or where we started that but we're just kind of like living in the future at this point and the market's naturally coming around But um yeah, it's just it's kind of sad to see that a lot of people want to just park their assets in the ETFs. They don't have to deal with like security risk or counterparty risk. >> Yeah, I mean this that's it's a notion that we've actually sort of heard anecdotally really ever since the the ETFs went live over a year ago. Um and just this past week in light of you know an unfortunate story where um a a couple lost uh over seven bitcoin that they were managing self- custody. They got scammed effectively by downloading a uh an app um scam app on on the iOS store which is is crazy to think. But um the the fallout from that was like this recognition that maybe it is kind of crazy that we've been dogmatic about self-custody in the Bitcoin space uh historically and maybe it's not for everyone and maybe it's not for your entire allocation. Um, and you know, even further along those lines have heard more calls for like, yeah, it would be great if I could just transfer my Bitcoin in kind to an ETF-l like structure. And you alluded to it, but funny enough, we have this product. This product exists. It's the on-ramp Bitcoin trust where you can contribute in kind to an ETF-ike structure. It's it's not an ETF per se, but it's a grantor trust model, which is what the ETFs are. They're just not exchange or our product is not exchangeraded as it's a private placement vehicle. But it is it is exactly what what clearly the there is market demand for if people are selling their Bitcoin to buy the ETF. Well, and obviously a tax advantage way of doing that would just be contributing the Bitcoin in kind to a vehicle like this. And so we're going to get louder about this, but the all that is to say that this product does exist. It's the on-ramp Bitcoin trust. But um one thing to touch on with that individual who sadly lost their Bitcoin is it's not the first time they actually yeah back in 2020 lost all of uh or a lot of their Bitcoin in the Voyager. Uh they had their assets parked there. And so you know it's naturally two things. You can't trust single custodians or um you know maybe you uh the majority of the market is thinking hey I can trust Coinbase or Fidelity. maybe they're a little bit less risky than Voyager. And then on the other side, okay, then I have to self-custody it myself. And because of that, um, you know, there there are challenges of people who, you know, think that they understand, um, how they're custodying their coins and using best practices, but ultimately um, aren't actually completely there. Um, and so there just isn't necessarily right now the middle ground for the majority of the people outside of products like on-ramp, unfortunately. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Brian, you were referencing the trust and you did a good job, but it was like it's only half the equation. The other half was literally the underlying custodian, right? Um, >> yeah. >> So, >> it's better it's better for multiple multiple angles. um tax implications and also the underlying custody. >> Yeah, it's truly fascinating. I mean this it really a lot of times it comes up is how early we are but this is visceral feeling of how early we are because it's not well understood like what bitcoin is the fact that it is just data right u and you don't want data at a centralized entity generally normally like for anything because we keep seeing all these hacks with people's PII but then if it's all your money and all your wealth you definitely don't want it at a single custodian like full stop independent of like the same with gold, but then the the alternative has always been just we'll park all the data at your house and it's like well that kind of becomes a problem if everyone knows that it's at my house. Um but somehow all of this is still taboo and that's again how early we are because like if you explain this to somebody like uh like a third grader like it'd be like well yeah that kind of makes sense but we just have too much tri like it's the same thing with Bitcoin's thesis versus tra you know other assets. Um but the price in the market will do do the work. >> Yeah. Um so maybe you want to switch gears a little bit. It would >> I actually want to want to go to my third link. Um it's it's related to the ETFs if we're um sticking on this topic. >> Yep. I got you pulling that out now. >> So this one uh I thought was fascinating. There are uh this is a really good article. There are about three good charts in here. Um one of them is it's highly unusual for an ETF to develop an option market of this magnitude uh let alone ever or let alone eight months after launch. Uh so IBIT is now the fifth most traded options market or uh options ETF outside of SPY, QQQ, IWM and GLD. um which is incre uh very notable as the ETFs allowed for inind um distributions and contributions. They also allowed a 10x increase in the amount of options volume um that participants can um have. And then number two, um if you scroll up just a little bit, it's the ETF uh US Bitcoin ETFs grab a bigger share in crypto trading. So the US uh Bitcoin ETFs over the total spot market volume is almost half of all the volume now. And then uh finally the the last chart which really drives home this point is just like the um the Bitcoin dollars trade more concentrated in US hours. And if you look at this chart, you know, back in 2021, the amount of, you know, volume that was traded right around the market open, which is when all hedge funds, etc. really trade because there's the most volume in the market, it was maybe 5 6%. Um, and now ever since the um the start of this year, it's almost 10%. Um, so that just tells us that there is increasingly more institutions that are interested in Bitcoin. uh the more options traded will just you know somewhat reduce its volatility and as you know kind of the increased liquidity and you know price all associated with these markets is just going to drive more market participants. It's just it's unfortunate that most of the trading um is increasingly going to the ETFs but um just thought I would flag this as it's a really interesting data point and article. >> Yeah, this is this is some fantastic data. I hadn't seen this. Um, but yeah, I think it's a a broader sign of of maturation, market structure, and and greater liquidity, etc. Um, and really the the broader point is like we haven't seen um we still haven't seen like what these ETFs can do to a market. I think would be my broader takeaway of like whether it's this data that continues to to trend upwards or it's you know if you just look at the banks, wirehouses, etc. who have actually turned on access to their underlying clients to these things like we're still in the very early innings there. So to me it's a broader signal of like we haven't even while these are the most successful product launches of all time um we still haven't even really seen um all that they can do uh from you know an options perspective as well as just a a broader access perspective. So all all very bullish for just the productization of the of the asset. One thing um this is an optimistic take but I think also likely is um we'll see flow outside of this once people realize what they have like the best mental model I have is like when you buy c when you bought bitcoin on cash app and then either built up a material balance and you knew you needed to get it off there or you just like you know uh get forced to understand what it is because the price moves or you're just naturally curious person and I think whether it's the market forces requiring certain ETFs via competitive nature to, you know, leverage some of the things Brian talked about on the honor and Bitcoin trust or just moving out. Um the the the other thing is that's the beauty it comes up a lot like well what happens when the it's always come up about like on-ramp is like what happens if the banks start custody it's like well what happens they're not like doing multi institution custody goes against everything that they would ever do and then also what happens if the ETF providers allow for income redemption it's like well yeah that's great too but where does it go like it's all set at Coinbase you're going to leave Coinbase and go back to Coinbase or you going to leave Fidelity and go back to Fidelity like people would be leaving because they're looking to level up the underlying and so that's where we naturally step in. Um, so all directions in my viewpoint to like Bitcoin, Bitcoin going up and then the natural version of people are going to want to diversify their custodial risk. Um, but not in a way where you split 33% per custodian. You just split it across, you know, multiple custodians and if somebody goes down, your assets are 100% secured. Yeah, this is um what I view as the Mount Gaus of you know institutional trading um adoption, right? Like Mount Gaus back in the day I think had 80% of total Bitcoin traded volume and this probably for institutional players has at least 80% if not more. Um, and I think it's just because that's, you know, Mount Gaus was what retail investors could really understand, wrap their head around, uh, back in 2014. And, you know, now this is just like how what institutional investors can wrap their head around. Um, Brian, there's another tweet that that was, uh, the link right ahead of this, too. um which I thought was really telling as well that you know this is the first iteration of what will be many different um institutional Wall Street products which was um it's hard to be a needle mover for Black Rockck at over 12 trillion in total assets but digital assets have been the story and it essentially goes into an amazing stat 75% of the investors who bought IBIT um were firsttime customers of Black Rockck and Black Rockck is the the number one player in the ETF that game. So, one, if you launch um a Bitcoin product, even if you are number one in your total field, you're going to level up. Um and then number two, it's it's not just like uh Bitcoin in its own unique um unique world like uh 27% of them went off went on to buy another share uh or went on to buy another Eyesshares ETF. So it's just like how Black Rockck increasingly gained share outside of their Bitcoin product. And I think this is just the key data point that every single bank financial institution is really looking at because you know all the banks know that they have the data that their customers at least younger demographic like us are um increasingly allocating out of their um bank account to go into Coinbase, Cash App, whatever it is. as well as um just looking at the stat that you can grow not just revenue from having uh IBIT as the most profitable product that Black Rockck offers but also grow your revenue across all of your other products. And lastly, this is not just like Black Rockck and financial institutions in particular, but we've seen Bitcoin be kind of a hack for every single uh company that really adopts it and ingrains it in everything they do, whether it's, you know, PE Lane from uh accepting Bitcoin and really, you know, making that a core part of their business model um to, you know, ETF issuers like Black Rockck. >> Yeah, there that's that's a great point. uh randomly other you can attach it to anything like uh uh good friend Peter McCormack in and is it real Bedford? Is that is it just real? It's real Bedford. >> Um but real Bedford or um whatever happened recently with the Shake Shack or hey you know Bitcoin can make you know security is cool again and you can you know launch treasury companies. Um but the other thing not to bring it back I mean I I just feel compelled to is bringing it back to gold is this is where we've seen a lot and we're making we'll be have some interesting investments announced on the um there's just a natural thing whether it's Robin Hood uh aggregators fintex banks ETF providers that are looking for new clients and new uh trading vehicles new ways to take spreads and to your point Liam um like so the market's saturated ated across uh the traditional 6040. You've seen alternatives pop up, but if there's a growing theme around this sound money strategy and debasement and the the price is the ultimate arbiter, right? Because if gold trades at $1,800 a troy ounce instead of 34 or 5,000, nobody cares. But if it's moving and people understand and know of gold, they're going to demand the same thing from um their financial service partner. And so that's where you see a lot of these fintexs have been tapped out and they're trying to differentiate. And that's where uh integrating Bitcoin and then also specifically gold will start to bring us different client demographic. And then again it goes back to how it's kind of like nonsensical to believe that somebody's just going to like leaprog like everyone's just going to leaprog the thing that's been around for 5,000 years and ape all into BTC if it's the same trade. Like if the tra if they're going directional through sound money, it's going to partially go through gold. Um and so that's the reason again why as the markets get repriced for you know Bitcoin and gold and everything being credit you're going to just naturally see gold get inserted along with Bitcoin into basically every financial institution and product uh across the world. >> Yeah. And the other component there too not to gloss over is like the demographic or age distinction. Like I think that that is what a lot of people miss when they think about this transitionary period of of Bitcoin becoming money. Um for the you know where the vast majority of capital sits today is with people that are are older older in age and so the the the chasm or the gap for them to deeply understand Bitcoin to the point where they want you know 90% plus Bitcoin exposure is is just a much larger gap. And so there's going to be this time where there's a transition happening and it's this sound money thesis playing out and that it there's going to be an interplay between gold and bitcoin and whether it's you know 75 gold 25 bitcoin uh for a little extra upside but less volatility like these products are are just beginning to to exist and hit the market. I think um we covered on the show a few weeks ago but Caner made an announcement around a gold Bitcoin product. I think there was one or two others. Um, and so we're just, I think, early innings of people realizing, um, what this transitionary period is going to look like. Hey >> everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast. There's no shortage of content to cover all things related to investments and uh, Bitcoin infrastructure being currently built. I did want to give a quick uh, shout out to a piece of research that Early Writers um, announced this morning. um early writers reckoning with the uh cost of the new cost of capital and it really highlights uh a really great tweet from Luke Goman referencing the reason why Farcoin has value is fundamentally because the underlying risk-free rate of uh treasuries being insolvent. I think it's a really great piece that explains um where we're heading with Bitcoin as the true corporate rate for any kind of capital investment and then how early riders are really pioneering and leading the space in that way. um encourage you to check it out earlywriters.com research as well as reach out and please uh don't forget to subscribe, like, and leave us comments. We appreciate any notes, feedback, or thoughts on how we can uh be better, incorporate different segments into the show. All right, have a good rest of your week. We'll be back uh with some big announcements later this week um on Thursday and Friday. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show. >> I was going to switch gears to uh our other favorite topic, stable coins. We haven't even talked stables yet on this pod, which is a a rarity for us. But um Nick Carter put out a a good piece uh late last week talking about stables and and free banking and and Nick's been on this beat for many years. I would I would say he's sort of a quasi stable coinar of sorts, unofficial. Um, and what he's talking about specifically in this piece was I think for a while there's been, you know, people that are anti-crypto or anti-stable coins in general have landed on this thesis of like, oh, it's going to be a disaster because it's akin to free banking in the US. Um what Nick is walking through here is like that comparison is not actually rational now that we have the Genius Act in the sense that there's very clear rules and regulations for how these stable coins need to work. they need to be backed by US treasuries. Whereas in the, you know, the wildcat banking era of the US, which people often cite, um that wasn't the case at all, right? Like there was no rules in terms of what needed to back uh a given um form of money that any any wildcat bank could issue. Um and so he's just drawing a distinction in terms of particularly now that we have the Genius Act, like it's actually not very akin to a free banking area era. Um there are very stringent rules and regulations around what these stable coins need to look like. That being said, related to this um a tweet from Nick the other day around Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead there and then we can go to the yield. >> Yeah. Maybe going back to that piece. Did you read the whole thing? >> Yeah. >> So I I encourage everyone if you want to see how this world's going to play out. It's not direct, but it because I I was going to reach out to see if Nick wants to come on here last trade to talk about this. Um I think Nick doesn't fully believe Bitcoin can become money. Um and that's what this piece is missing and and like to to really bring it because I think in my opinion this is like 70% of the way there and explaining not only was because I've been using free ranking loosely when it comes to digital asset firms uh specifically like uh Binance because it's more reput it's reputationbased driven more than anything. Because not only does it has to do with Genius Act, but the majority of free banking when it worked um had not only like a very small percentage of actual assets sitting there. you had or a small percentage of like liquid assets, you had other liabilities, um whether it was like gold, equities, uh homes, u u land that sat there, but then you also had the system. He references Scotland and Canada as the two examples because you needed natural clearing houses because it's all competitive forces. really a beautiful system when you when you read this piece and understand that the clearing houses ultimately allowed for um other banks to redeem the claims uh if somebody got too far out of their position and kept everyone effectively honest. That's kind of like the multi-institution format of of of that. It's like if you start to look like you're exposed or may not be able to re fulfill the obligation, your jurisdiction may have problems, you can naturally take those assets out and it's also what keeps that part not having those problems because you can't ever take the assets from a custodian in multi-institution. Um, but he also broke down uh why I didn't work in the US which I didn't know and it explained that there's a lot more embedded in here um that's to be read separately about just the different states. it was actually never had a fighting chance to succeed in free banking because there was a lot of problems whether it was like post civil war and obligations from southern states to um the fragmentation from each state and then the wildcat banking as Brian said referencing that a lot of these banks were just stood up um to to fail ultimately to rug the the the counterparty and so point in all of that is that this is where I think this all goes on a long enough time horizon is that the uh central points will have reputations along with um liabilities and assets that will be trusted by the market. The market will have clearing houses to uh accept or redeem those assets to make sure that you know if there was a bank run that people are solvent. If they're not solvent, the market will clear them um in a fast and transparent way. And so I thought this was a real fascinating piece. And then I think his main point was just to uh there's a conflation around against stable coins and free banking which is just fundamentally different because stable coins are just backed even pre Genius Act they were they're pretty much backed by treasuries. Um and you know now we have a different thing. I guess the Luna stuff is kind of where he references you can really exist now post Luna or post Genius with like a Luna type product or business. >> I uh I haven't read this whole thing um but I kind of disagree. I kind of think that we're going to go not towards free banking but just money warehouses meaning you know you have a place where you can park your gold back in the day and uh all of your gold is held there. It's not necessarily relent out and there is just a you know fee that you're willing to pay in order to hold your gold. Uh and that's kind of similar to to um you know where we're going to go in the future of you know all of your Bitcoin is there and uh you know it's just held by multiple different institutions and uh can be go uh can trade in and out of that but won't be rehypothecated or lent away. >> Well, we won't go there. Uh I'm sorry to share because people are going to naturally need like the reason why we won't go there is because whether it's gold or bitcoin you won't be able to transact whether it's 10 to 30 years on chain in that. So you're naturally going to have whether it's like it'll ultimately be a confluence of different things but think about ecash as an example. you'll have certain claim on the underlying the same way the gold will naturally have some proxy that will be traded and the note will be recognized and then on a long enough time horizon um as the price right now people pay for custody multi-institution because the price of bitcoin still has 10 to 100x to run as that price naturally goes and financial products come about people will demand some kind of uh actual yield because it'll determine there'll be more market structure more things more businesses on the balance sheet and so that's why you get to it it's an inefficient way to manage an economy if all the assets got to sit sit there because what's the claim on it? What are people using? >> Yeah, that's that's fair. Maybe it would be a very niche thing that uh is is essentially like holding your uh gold in a Swiss vault. >> Yeah. Well, the other component of this that I wanted to bring up um was was sort of related to what you're saying, Michael, around reputation and trust building and um well, how do you differentiate in this world where everyone has these stringent rules on what backs a stable coin? And I think we we talked about this maybe a month or two ago around like, well, they can't offer yield per se, there's going to be workarounds for this. And so this is what um Nick has a tweet here. It's pretty funny that the bank lobby tried to make stable coins an inferior product by legally prohibiting yields and the issuers immediately found a way around that. Um and so he's quote tweeting a headline from PayPal. Um this quarter we added the ability to earn rewards for our stable coin on PayPal and Bemo and announced the expanded availability of PYUSD on seller and blockchain. So I think this is early stages of of these workarounds that you're going to see around going back to just the differentiation and the reputation around these things. That's what I think will will at least to some extent mirror the free banking world of like well how are you going to differentiate? How are you going to pay your rewards or your quasi yield uh to your holders of your stable coin? >> Can you scroll down a little bit? It's funny uh on this there's a Brian Armstrong uh tweet. I think it was here. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's on the if you go back up um >> if you click on that one. Yeah. And then scroll down. Uh it's the same thing, but he breaks down how they can offer like scroll down to I think it's like the uh maybe it's not there, but it's effectively like Brian Armstrong saying the same thing. It's like we don't pass rewards uh or the rewards because we use Circle. Circle can't pass the yield. So, Coinbase can pass the rewards. Um but this was the theme I think we've been talking about for a while and that the market for forces are just going to and competitive forces are going to require these these entities to figure out ways uh to differentiate. And um to Brian's point like the clearing house ultimately is this is all digitally native. Now, if you like read Nick's piece, you can see how the missing gap because they talked about um is just effectively like that this is all digital. So, now it's the same kind of concept of SVB and like having a bank run almost instant instantly is uh you'll you're going to naturally see these companies start to do certain things like this. They're going to be free floating um assets that will trade. Everything being tokenized is just going to like extremely accelerate all this because then a bank's going to have those assets on it balance sheet. it's going to get like again to the Wild West. Um, and then that's really where the free banking comes in because it comes back to reputations and assets uh and liabilities and then ultimately being able to clear if they can make whole on whatever notes that they lent out um that are claims against their underlying balance sheet. >> Yeah. Is Ethereum Wall Street's invisible backbone? BM, I think you shared this link, but we're gonna tokenize everything, but is this already the case? Is Ethereum Wall Street's backbone? >> I just thought it was uh I I had to put out these uh you know, unfortunate it it go it all ties back to Michael's hairdresser, too. And uh you know, don't don't buy Ethereum, don't buy whatever uh else out there. But right now, I think there was like a USA Today piece like why XRP is the most valuable asset that you should put your money in, why Ethereum uh this Ethereum piece is like why it's Wall Street's invis invisible backbone uh was the on the front page of CNBC. And then there was another one that was the front page of the Wall Street Journal just kind of going into tequila drugs and torture the uh entire the spending binge of two crypto bros that ended in uh jail. So essentially um what you see from continued the the mainstream is just um the conflation of Bitcoin with all those other bitcoins out there as well as just the fact that um Bitcoin is the same thing as crypto and everybody that uses it is just uh a financial nihilist and is just you know not a reputable person. Um, we're just going to see kind of more of this is Bitcoin kind of comes back into the mainstream again. And that's kind of what what we do here is try to educate a little bit more on uh what Bitcoin actually is. It's Sound Money Properties and uh how it's just completely different than everything else. >> Yeah. And some people are taking note. We have this uh post from from Tim Draper um proclaiming his hopes to raise a fund all in Bitcoin invested in Bitcoin and have startups pay their employees and suppliers in Bitcoin with all the accounting done on the blockchain with smart contracts is in sight. Um, Michael Orliam, I don't know which one of you saw this one first, but just uh interesting parallels with with what we've already pioneered at Early Riders, raising a fund in Bitcoin, uh, denominating everything we do in Bitcoin, which is also now been, uh, popularized via, uh, Bitcoin being the hurdle rate. Um, any any thoughts on on this announcement from Tim? >> Yeah, this was shared I think uh, it was credit to Chase. you see that first tag uh popped on my radar this morning or yesterday morning. I think there's a lot embedded in here ultimately. Um you know, it's just kind of like he's probably coming at it from different angles thinking about everything on chain because he started really strong and then finishes with everything being on the blockchain with smart contracts and auditing. >> Um I think there's two aspects that stand out to me. one is most people think like if you think about Bitcoin denominator Bitcoin as a hurdle rate um from a venture perspective it's it's not tenable or it can't be done because of Bitcoin's Kager and I've been putting together like thoughts um because I eventually have to write something and like this is one of them is ultimately like it the reason why people shouldn't and just hold spot Bitcoin or try to don't believe you can uh make more Bitcoin in an investment perspective is is fundamentally just a lack of a imagine ination, but a lack of like being able to deliver and think about value. And that's okay. They should just hold the spot Bitcoin. But from a very first principal perspective, like the way you make more Bitcoin is by delivering more value to the world. And so we talk about it a lot of like we're value investors in the truest sense that we invest in things that deliver value to the world because they will naturally accrete more Bitcoin via different formats. And this is how on earth was built, spending my own personal capital on the business because I believe that I would make more Bitcoin via equity and enterprise value, but then also returning dividends back to myself and anybody that had equity in the business. And so that's the second part is like, well, how do you spot gaps that can grow that way? And fundamentally believe that unless you're a builder, you can't necessarily you can't actually be an allocator. That's kind of like taboo today. But you can go back and look at like the best entrepreneurs and there was a natural version of allocation that existed while they were building the business because when you're building, you're spotting gaps and you're iterating and learning. And this doesn't get talked about enough, but there's great examples. The most recent one I've been reading about is like Steve Jobs and Pixar. You know, Steve Jobs like uh acquired Pixar, sold it one of the like largest company to the large one of the largest companies, Disney's. It's a cornerstone. He had one of the largest positions. I think he had the largest position when he sold that stake to to Disney. But it's like how do you spot something like that? Well, you naturally have to be building and allocating in the space via your time and then you get to see computer graphics and those things. And you've seen this with U. Bezos had a very material position in Google uh exited for billions of dollars um early in the 2000s. Uh who else is out there? There was a couple there's a there's a lot of anecdotes like this, but I think it just gets fundamentally misunderstood that like if everyone's looking at the same things, well then it looks impossible to be able to deliver more capital or Bitcoin back. But if you're actively building and growing as the markets growing, you start to see and this is part of the discussion we've been talking about gold uh and some investments we're going to be announcing publicly, you start to be like, "Oh, aha." like I see what they saw because they were in the middle of it working with their partners, seeing the market develop versus people just coming and pitching all these things that everyone's looking at. It's kind of like the definition of um the what's obvious is obviously wrong. Uh that's what everyone's playing in this world right now because they're obvious they're just obviously sitting there uh and they're I think of it as playing defense versus playing offense, which is what we're doing. >> I would uh second that as well. And um this ties out to a piece that we put out this morning, reckoning with the new cost of capital. Um diving into exactly this. So uh kind of taking a step back, Tim Draper is well known for buying almost 30,000 Bitcoin at around $632 per coin after the Silk Road uh Bitcoin was seized. Um today that would be worth I think like almost $3 billion. So, uh, you know, that's naturally one of the best investments that has been made. Um, he viscerally feels that he's invested over $2 billion into the venture ecosystem. Um, and he naturally feels that, okay, Bitcoin is this thing. It's it's unclear if he still holds it today or not. That has increased significantly. And and that's never to say like you don't ever put your Bitcoin to use because as Michael just went into um if you have a good idea, vision, know how to execute, there is a way to outperform Bitcoin. But it's just understanding that you know uh unless you actually see and feel that opportunity viscerally that uh you have the chance to outperform Bitcoin, you can just you know keep that as your hurdle rate. Um and so accordingly I I think that he probably has is feeling that all of his investments that underperformed Bitcoin um likely he should have just held that and at least incorporated Bitcoin as a you know reserve asset for his uh companies or uh etc is to you know ways to better perform bit uh better outperform Bitcoin and then naturally his investors will also feel the fact that um a lot of them likely are deciding you know do I go into Tim Draper's fund with Coinbase and maybe other uh you know he calls them web 3 and crypto companies or do do I just hold it myself and so we're increasingly seeing this just from the business perspective as Michael mentioned of you know you don't get out of bed to create on-ramp or whatever other business if you don't actually think you can get yourself more Bitcoin because otherwise naturally you would be better off just holding the Bitcoin and then the the LPs in his fund I I don't know if they've already started to do it or or if they will, but they will just not understand like why would I allocate to a fund like this if if it's not going to actually outperform Bitcoin. Uh, you know, there's there's everything that's related to both the US treasuries that are fundamentally um no longer risk-free and just the fact that Bitcoin only has a a scarce finite amount. But ultimately this is kind of how all capital formation is going to occur that uh you know either just maintaining your cost of capital as Bitcoin itself or trying to outperform it will only be the the two natural angles that um you know every business and capital allocator will move towards. >> Yeah. And a and a correlary to this is um you know a concept that we've talked about a bunch is is doing more with less leveraging deflationary tools. So this was um I think Mike you brought this uh tweet from Greg Eisenberg that that speaks to sort of this other element of of this new world of building not only leveraging Bitcoin as your hurdle rate and your um capital asset but also leveraging deflationary tools to do more with less. So, I thought that that was a nice nice tiein to everything in the report that Liam just shared. >> Yeah, it's a great call. Um, the example of when you like break it down to make it simple and dependent of Bitcoin, it just the notion of increasing the cost of capital increases um the the or increasing the efficiency and the allocation strategy on anybody because now the capital cost is higher i.e. Bitcoin's Kager and then ultimately when an entrepreneur so then who gets the entrepreneur is fewer and far between. So you're more discerning there and then when the entrepreneur gets that capital their risk-free rate whatever it might be has to be more careful and discerning. So then it ties into this part which is completely on the other side but this is all like you know integrated into how we think about early writers is um his quote about this is a generational moment to start a company and steal market share from billion-dollar incumbents. most billion-dollar companies are adding AI the same way Blockbuster added streaming slowly defensively committee approved baby steps and and there's a great tweet here um ideally we'll link to it in the show notes but the core here is just thinking about um whether you're searching on like you know social and you see like you know a piece of clothing or wherever how people buy like think about how crazy and archaic like big box stores are now to go and to buy anything like it's just the the future's here it's not evenly distributed and these companies are are basically dead and they don't know it yet because the best people don't even want to work at these companies because ultimately they're moving the fastest uh they're moving the fastest independently. the company can't c keep up and now it costs effectively nothing to start a business via like SASbased tools AI especially if you either hold some Bitcoin or take a small percentage of Bitcoin to like R&D and and do a V1 of a product doesn't take a million dollars preede maybe it takes a Bitcoin total if that and so it's just a fundamental different landscape and um that's goes back into the whole name of like the early riders it's at the end of the day it's going to be the early riders that are going to like win rebuild the world, not the incumbents because the incumbents are the incumbents for a reason and there's too much inertia to move that battleship and so ultimately the best people are going to be the early adopters that kind of leave. Um so it's just a it's truly an exciting time and I think when we go to some of these other themes uh I was hoping we finish on the optimistic note but there will be some pessimism in the in the status of society as well that we'll share. Yeah, this this line from the tweet stuck out to me because you could really just swap in Bitcoin here for AI. Like the prime windows 12 to 18 months, eventually incumbents will be Bitcoin first from a a treasury or capital preservation perspective in the same way desktop companies became mobile first and it'll be harder to compete. And so the longer you wait to adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset, the harder it will be for you to compete against your peers that do decide to do that. Um, >> and it's worth calling out just to say like Bitcoin's just a tool because it's a part of the whole toolkit because I would much rather give somebody that understands what is written here doll and they were going to have a dollar treasury and go and build a worldass business and accrete more dollars that can eventually get swept into Bitcoin. Um, or just be held in dollars if it's good enough. So if the allocator is the ultimate, the entrepreneur is the ultimate allocator versus somebody that says I, you know, love Bitcoin, hold it forever, and then don't necessarily understand how to use these uh tools, understand how to execute, have a great idea. So it's just a component that's added into the confluence of these other tailwinds like AI, um the notion of just all these other deflationary tools like SASbased technology where you can spin up businesses, you can live globally, you don't have to put everybody in San Francisco and pay insane real estate and insane salaries. It's just another aspect uh of it and it this really reminds me of like we talked about uh last week on the last trade with Arch. It's a complete fallacy and please don't get uh bought into it because I'm 100% confident of this is just because you build a big Bitcoin treasury doesn't mean you're going to build worldclass businesses or you're going to be able to go acquire worldass businesses. You have to have a brain. You have to have operational chops. And if you're saying like well we're going to build Bitcoin native financial services. Historically, nobody comes out the gate and builds innovative financial services without blowing themselves up uh in Bitcoin. So, like you need both. You need the Bitcoin war chest and balance sheet and the great ideas. And if you have to pick one, you have to have the great ideas and be able to execute because money's relatively uh cheap, even Bitcoin capital. There's no shortage of people that will invest that understand Bitcoin. And so, again, super early, similar to reminds me of the ETF stuff. Um but if you have the vision and ability like to al allocate right now is a is a crucial time. >> Yeah, well said. And uh you said you wanted to end positively, but we're going to end uh we're going to end on this this chart which went a little viral over the weekend. Um estimated percentage of 30-year-olds who are both married and homeowners from 1950 to 2025. >> Can you start on the bottom one first? I feel like it would this one got the the the virality, but this is where it all starts, right? Like what we're looking at is a chart says US medium household income versus medium home price and it's just one of the most insane charts. If this this may have taken the top except for the next one that that Brian was talking about will is it shows 1970 and the disparity between um income and then price. You know, there was something there, but it was it wasn't an insane gap. And from 70 to where we sit today, it's just kind of like insane. It it goes any if you have any boomer friends, family, I try to gaslight you that everything is the same for us as it was for them is just an absolute line. This is the easiest way. It's like wages have not kept up with everything that the cost of any asset um and specifically real estate. And real estate, for better or worse, just happens to be uh directly correlated to security of um you know, from a societal perspective, the security of a family, security to feel like you have optionality to have children, to not move. And so that ties into the chart that Brian was was bringing up, which is ultimately um a chart showing the estimated percentage of 30-year-olds were both married and homeowners from 1950 to 2025. And this looks like an Ethereum chart against Bitcoin. And it's like absolutely insane where it shows a little bit over 50% in 1950 uh were 50% a little over were 30-year-olds that were both married and homeowners. And today where it shows it looks like 12 and a half% maybe less. Um which is just insane. >> Staggering staggering stuff. And and to your point like strikes at the the core issue here. So don't be don't be gaslit into thinking like, oh yeah, everything's just, you know, the same as it was 50 years ago. You guys need to work harder, etc. Um, no, the the playing field has has fundamentally shifted as a result of continued debasement of the money. >> Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Liam, if you have anything. The the the thing that's kind of like I guess sickening here is there's two parts. One is that you don't just reverse this. There was a tweet by I forgot where it was but it's like there's no it takes a black swan to reverse this is like built into the like fabric of society at this point and then that ties into the u antagonistic view and the problem I see with the treasury companies is the way you get out of this is you got to dig yourself out like there's no there's no shortcuts you have to be able to find what you can preserve your wealth and you have to be able to produce value into the world and then you have to you know continue forward you don't there's not no there's not a one shot that'll get you out for maybe one out of a hundred, one out of a thousand or a million. Somebody's gonna go buy the next Pubco and get the next 100x or cryptocoin or, you know, Super Bowl uh odds. But the reality is that it's it's a slow and steady um preserve your wealth. And there's one thing that can do that we all agree on. And it's not buying some super volatile asset and then hoping to god you get there because that ties into the whole nihilism. It ties into why these things develop communities and have picked up so much steam. And so, um, yeah, it's pretty sad. >> Liam, anything? >> Liam's rich. He doesn't give Liam's rich. He doesn't give a >> Nobody's coming to save you. You just have to You just got to work hard yourself. >> Liam's in the Hamptons right now just hanging out, you know? Like, he's he's not worried about percentage of homeowners. He's like he gots his home. He's married. Like, he's good to go. He He does not care about the the common man. macho. Otherwise, I I wouldn't be doing this podcast. >> I know. I'm just I'm just joking around, but Liam does always have a nice background. >> Well, Jents, I think that's uh it's a good place to leave it. Work hard, produce value, preserve your value in a harder form of money. It's really simple when you lay it out like that. Um but, uh thanks for joining us and uh we'll see you guys again next week. >> Later, boys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onramp Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.