Walled Garden Wars: Corporate Chains vs Open Money

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. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. It was a fun podcast covering uh all things that have happened the past, you know, week and a half in the digital asset space. Positives around Bitcoin adoption along with Altcoin Mania coming back. Um quick word and exciting announcement. You'll be one of the first to hear it. We just launched on Guardian. really excited to get this out because we've heard from the market all over the board as it comes to security with um clients of on-ramp and then prospective clients that are looking to leverage our solution but have certain aspects of giving up what they deem as control as a negative. It's something that I talk to clients a lot about. um have clients have come on from, you know, 50 to $250 million and really explaining this notion of a it's not all or nothing, but also where we're heading to. You're going to be praying for giving up that control um as the market starts to realize you don't want hundreds of millions of dollars or even tens of millions of dollars in your possession. And so what honor and guardian does is effectively uh brings out withdrawal delays, deep fake protection against AI, instant freeze functionality, and then obviously our Lloyds of London insurance. And then for private clients, it goes even deeper. really thinking through um different withdrawal freezes which has come up a lot you know up to 365 days custom velocity controls around the amount of capital that can move and then a real proprietary uh 3FA protocol where you have to leverage the blockchain specifically the Bitcoin blockchain to move UTXOs around to prove that it's verifiably you in an objective manner really excited about this if you want to learn more and if you're already a client you could just um you know activate it via the web platform and then if you're looking to To learn more, please feel free to book a consultation or shoot me a note. Always happy to hear from folks. michael@honoritbitcoin.com. Now, on to the rest of the show. >> All right, boys. We are back. It's another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, September 8th. It's 9:39 a.m. How we doing, gentlemen? Michael Liam? >> Good. 112. >> 112. Yeah, we're kind of just we're we're sitting in a range. Um, but we got a good show for you today. We got we got some good some good links in the pipe. Um, we're gonna start Mike, this was one of yours. Um, Stripe is is launching a stable coin chain. Um, seems like this is this is a trend. There's lots of people that are launching stable coin chains. Um, and there's a little bit of a a counter response from David Marcus Marcus that we'll get to, but um, want to start with the Stripe news. So, I'm just pulling up the link now, but uh, go ahead Mike. >> Yeah. So, um, there's a lot baked into this. I think the reason where it initially kind of really caught my attention um was because there's a lot of I don't know if belly aching is the right term but it probably is across the crypto and digital asset space around what Stripe's doing versus um what the existing crypto projects and and it's just a fascinating I think taking a step back notion when you think about different proponents of different parts of the digital asset industry will claim certain things around decentraliz ization sec, what's a security, what's a token, you know, all these different everyone talks their book based on like where they're coming from. And um we've all most individuals would understand that you know crypto is decentralized and kind of name only um and there's always a throat to choke including probably with the most the second largest cryptocurrency including Ethereum. So point being is um everyone came out. So that caught my eye. But the second part was Libra um the notion of Christian Catalini and then there's a David Marcus quote we'll probably play um who kind of have gone through the full gamut of crypto digital assets building a basket of currencies with uh Libra formerly at Meta. And I thought that was really interesting because I was actually at the block at the time they broke the news in 2019 when they got the white paper leaked. And it was it was fascinating because it had the consortium of all the u different companies that were in there and it mirrors very similarly what uh Tempo has done by you go and get a consortium and stripe obviously was it Sequoia ties um which was where Matt Hong came from before Paradigm and then Stripe uh I believe like Shopify's whole business is built on the back of Stripe. Um so there's a lot of deep connections there and that's ultimately what you've always needed in any kind of digital asset space. doesn't matter really about the underlying fundamentals in the short term. If you have distribution, you're going to really be able to exercise um some big influence. And so I thought it was just fascinating because Stripe Paradigm, they're insanely connected and you can kind of always know when somebody's up to something when people can't stop talking about them. And um so the thread is we'll link to it, but it's really great to know kind of the ills of what happened with Libra. Christian outlines who's a co-founder of um LightSpark. But what's fascinating is how it's very similar to Libro and what um Tempo's trying to do. But Christian references how you know he's obviously talking his book in Bitcoin and we do we'll talk about later on the show how you know open systems will win. But it's interesting, you know, Christian kind of gives this long thread, but it ultimately is like, yeah, it may work this time because uh the regulatory climate's different versus 2018 and 19. Uh, so I'll pause there because I think that's like the initial start of just like the the upcoming Trafi tech wars that I don't think the crypto natives, including the Bitcoin natives, were prepared for. Yeah, that's an interesting thought on on it might work this time because it does feel very much like the you know the six or seven years ago enterprise blockchain consortium deal um type structures. Um it feels all very similar. So that but that is a a valid sort of um theory that maybe it is different this time around and and a lot of this stuff get gets push pushed through with stuff like Genius Act and also just the general sentiment from this administration being so sort of you know let it all go green light on all this crypto stuff. Um so yeah maybe that is a possible path. Liam did you have thoughts on this one? Yeah, somebody's got to figure out how to make this work in the short term for sure and there will be a lot of different winners. Um, but yeah, as we'll get into a little bit later on, it's just built on the wrong foundations here. >> Yeah, let's So, let's play the uh the David Marcus clip. Um, see if you guys can hear. >> Hi everyone. I come from the future and I'm here to tell you corp chains are not the way. And I know because I started Libra and it failed. Most people thought it was killed because it was started at Meta, but that's wrong. It was killed because one corporate controlled network was about to control global payments at the scale of billions of people globally. You'll tell me times have changed. Regulation is clear now. We're in a different world. But I don't think so. If a centrally controlled corp chain was to control 30 or 40% of inbound and outbound payments to very big countries like Brazil or the European Union or India, do you think the central bankers and the regulators of that country would let an American controlled corp chain control that? No. They would go after it and they would be able to kill it because it's centrally controlled. And when one big company creates a court chain, what do you think rivals will do? They will all create their own chain. So we'll have dozens and dozens of core chains that won't be interoperable with one another, trapping liquidity, creating inefficiencies. This is not the way. It's pretty clear it's going to create a bunch of subscale fragmented networks that are just going to replace the setup of our current financial system and payment networks with new leaders that are going to be the new gatekeepers of a very similar system. And that's kind of not really inspirational to me. >> Not really inspirational. >> You want me to stop it there? >> Yeah. I think um you know he's he's salty which is which is a little sad because you would think you want to win on merit versus um I mean it is what it is but the reality is they're not going to stop it. They're going to allow it and then and and govern it in the same way we've been talking about with post 21 and 22. The collapse of these crypto firms ushered in a framework so you can have your fingerprint on everything being built in the space. And so if you're covering that much flow and you have that much oversight and visibility, you're going to be controlled. I mean, we've seen this with 21 and 20 um when it came to the tech space and the amount of censoring that happened on different social media platforms like the inner uh the the convergence or confluence of like public private sector. Why would it be any different? Um especially in in the powers that be know this. There's a reason why they're they're letting come in. Um, so there there's that. I think >> I I hear what you're saying that, you know, he is he's obviously talking his own book and thinks all this stuff should be built on Bitcoin. And while I would agree with him over the long term, I think what you're getting at is, you know, maybe there isn't necessarily as much push back in the short term to something like this actually being stood up and used. I mean, I think what he's getting at is like why would other countries want to use stable coins that are issued and managed and centralized um with US corporates? And so I I kind of see what he's getting at there. I think really what he's getting at though at sort of a higher level is really getting at the heart of like this entire Bitcoin versus crypto dynamic, which is like what do you actually need decentralization for? And it's certainly applicable to creating a new form of money. That's that's all of the sort of elements that go into to Bitcoin's underlying mechanisms from proof of work to the difficulty adjustment to solving the double spend problem. Like all of that is very critical in creating a actually decentralized uh new form of money. if you're just going to like sort of upgrade the financial system, I think this is the question that he's getting at is like does that actually need to be decentralized? Like if you are putting stocks on chain for example, does that actually need to be fully decentralized? And I think the answer that broader broader crypto is getting towards is no because nobody actually cares about these things that are marginal improvements to the existing financial system. not talking about like the new creation of money, but just like marginally improving trading or these other things. Maybe that just doesn't need to be decentralized or people don't care enough for it to be. So, it's going to be on these corp chains basically. >> That that's exactly right. And I think that's why it's important for us to chat about and talk through because I think part of this show is and at least in our own framing and we've we've gone back and forth for over a year now on like the status of crypto and I thought I think that was important because those mental models for better or worse even though they're annoying help influence how you build and how you think about commercialization and the reality is as we were talking about earlier when you get into these rooms and it's the difference between a security and a token and a memecoin and and a scam. It's just like, you know, everyone's just talking their own book based on what, you know, their own grift is not grifty, but the next and it's very similar to what you just said is crypto is all screaming. Uh, let's take David Marcus out of it, but just in general, crypto and whoever's been building on these different layers, they've all screaming now, my tokens more decentralized than yours when they were all not decentralized and all built on faulty premises. So the point is well these guys being smart are like well why do we even care like there is value in a database that is intertwined right with your other payment partners and bypassing the visas and and interchange and then they have the distribution um and so they're just like screw it we'll we'll just you know go and and navigate it this way and so you have uh and I don't know if they're going to claim it's decentralized or Not um but I think that's the most fascinating part and the the thing to take away at least for me is in the same way we discussed and I think you're coming around how we have you know years before people recognize it's Bitcoin versus crypto because of the just traditional inertia. It's taking existing Bitcoin people to learn it's Bitcoin not crypto because a whole bunch of them are getting scammed with DATs and like you would have thought they would have never happened before. How many years will it be for people to recognize that Bitcoin not only has the store value properties but then also has all the permissionless properties that you would want and not in a form of government money that's decreed by law and it's just going to be a long burn and people will end up on the other side of it but in that period there's going to be a lot of winners losers way to commercialize way to focus and way to make uh money and so I think that's why this is all very fascinating because the incumbent or the the traditional crypto incumbents were never going to win this This was always my take for years to help set up venture firms in the space, help be in these rooms and people always get angry. It's like the best founders have not even heard of Bitcoin yet. And like what do you mean? It's like they're here. They're they're like doing on payments and lightning and like you know rewards. It's like no because when you get people from Silicon Valley and u Wall Street that are actually have not everyone but the people that have execution and operational chops to step in this space they're going to wipe the floor with of all the different companies that exist. And so you see this with like uh Coinbase and their MX card like it's the most perfect cohort. It's the kind of area you want to target. Not like a stacking sats card that you know is targeting a penny pincher that like you know there's just that's just not a demographic from an enterprise value. And similarly, when you think about payments, it was always going to be built around like a traditional um player that understood the space and was going to just leaprog the existing incumbents like a Visa, but also had the distribution. It wasn't going to be built by like, you know, a kid in a hoodie that came in and sold like merchants on you were going to download an app and pay for it. Like these things have been like told for a lot of people native to the space. And so, um, it's here now and we're going to get to see it play out and there's going to be obviously on a longer time horizon, a lot of this crypto and like stable coin stuff is all all noise, but it's it doesn't really matter because it's like saying the dollar's noise. It's like, well, it's actually the unit of account >> for for the next, you know, however long. So, we better figure out how to like uh manage it and make money from it and deal with it. Um, so yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Many people don't really realize that there's no token that's needed in order to just send money across borders and people would rather just use a dollar than anything else and it doesn't necessarily need to be decentralized. They just want to lower the friction in order to uh move this across borders and eventually on a uh like if this gets enough scale the corp chains become uh public private partnerships and there will be some instances of you know censorship of of money and in transactions. But that doesn't necessarily really apply or or matter to these people who are holding it because not everybody holds a a significant amount of capital in in just stable coins or dollars in general. And so in the short term, it doesn't really necessarily matter. This will and or maybe it's not this one in particular, but these types of um ideas and in companies will get a decent amount of traction. And um >> yeah, >> I completely agreed with everything you said. >> Yeah, it's it's all so fascinating. I think like having these conversations multiple times a week um really help with the thought process and like discussing cuz I went on Rizzo's pet pod last week and he made a call that he didn't believe we'd see another layer 1 blockchain and like frankly I hope we don't but I don't >> what is it what did he even mean by that >> like another one pop up like a salana and and and and it reminded me of like clown world take or no more crypto it's just like man the world's insane like how do we know you know like to and what made me think of this was um if JPMC, BNY, Fidelity or whoever you call want to set something up like they'll do it and kill distribution right off the bat. Um so it's like if they built a new chain or whatever that would mean. The other thing that's fascinating is um think about operation chokepoint and like all the people that have been debanked and still like use the dollar and go get banked. Like imagine somebody having their stable coin seized or locked. Like people wouldn't flood. They'd be like you jackass like why did you say that on Twitter? Like you should be quiet. you know, like the this the default state for individuals is not like I'm gonna go find a better form of money when my bank account gets closed down. You know, it's like, well, what were you doing? Um, obviously, you know, this I'm I'm I'm not being polarized. I'm just trying to take the other side of like all day long is you you have to deal with normies. You have to realize like this is the status of the world and if you want to make money, you have to figure out how to navigate it and u be commercial about it. And the reality is like these things are just going to eat a lot of finance and tech. Yeah, I think that's that's all right. But to a certain extent, it's it's going to be all theater to like decentralized decentralization theater is going to continue with these things. Um, and maybe a nice transition uh with respect to that and like sort of sort of just narrowing in on like why these things aren't actually decentralized and why it is theater. Uh this was a story from a few days ago. So World Li World Liberty Financial um Trump's sort of crypto DeFi company uh who had previously I guess partnered with Justin Sun in some way um locked his World Liberty World Liberty FI tokens. Um we'll click into this. Locking 540 million in unlocked tokens and 2.4 billion in lock tokens. Um they say they believe an exchange has been using their user tokens to sell and push down the price. So basically they're they were sort of accusing Justin Sun of um offloading some of his position that he had received uh through his deal or partnership with them. And so they just froze all of his his wallet addresses that that hold those coins. Um so basically stopped him from selling by just freezing the account. And you can do this stuff on Ethereum because it's not decentralized. Um, go ahead Mike. >> Yeah, I think um there's there's an an interesting aspect we'll come back on this one when we start when we talk Salana and DATs because there's some crazy mechanics happening with locked tokens and but before we go into that something that I woke up um to and it'll put this on my laundry list of pieces articles that I need to write is um that there's uh great lies in every truth and then there's truths in every lie. And I don't even know if this has ever been said, but it would it reminded me of like what we're talking about here. Because the reason why all this stuff persists is because in the form of the lie, there's truth and that it's on a blockchain because it is on a blockchain and there's some scarcity because there is some like, you know, relative scarcity they make up. And so people go into these things believing that they're one thing and um but they're all built on, you know, false false premises. And then this reminds me of the other side which is like all the we don't talk about here. It was like in one of the YouTube comments. It actually doesn't really even matter, but the core versus not BS. That is all BS. It's actually all positive because it's adversarial thinking that's what you want in any system. But either way, um the conversation around uh there's truths in every or there's there's lies in every truth. Meaning like Bitcoin's going to be money on a long enough time horizon, but like the notion of peer-to-peer cash. Yeah, sure it also have peer-to-peer cash, but it doesn't mean that it has to be on the to like the unit level. And so many people go and use that uh on the UTXO level. people go and use that for a reason to go build all this stuff. And so I think like if people just understood the different dynamics of both of them, they would get like what's happening, but each one just kind of like hide within the other to like push their own um push their own point. And we're still so early people can hide under all this like kind of like smok and mirrors which is goes back to the stable coin and all the things we were talking about before is you'll consistently be able to do this because digital assets tokenization are rwas are all the like lies in the truth that is this thing that's distributed and decentralized >> and then people never got back to the first principle of like oh what's happening here why did that coin have value and so they just built everything else from it and there's a lot of alpha and money to be though because like that's the point of these discussions and what we're doing is it may seem like shortsighted but that's like most things in life. You don't really look smart for a while in doing something, but you know what's going on. And then eventually it's like, oh, even the Tempo guys and Stripe like not Stripe, but there's other firms. Oh, the the Kawashi and Poly Market people. While I don't agree and don't necessarily like prediction markets and gambling, those guys have been grinding on that for like six years. Like they've like actually been working, you know. Um, so anyway, sorry. >> Yeah. No, I mean it's a good it's a very good point in terms of um the theater versus actual value created and the and the truth that is sort of residual is like kind of what I referred to earlier around like those marginal improvements like that's the truth is like there are slight efficiencies from like a corporate or a B2B perspective uh for a lot of these things and so that's the sort of grain of truth that people can sell these much larger promises and visions on. But just I guess one other thing on what we have on the screen here, this world liberty. The other irony here was like you know the the Trump family, the Trump sons who are involved in this like you know their whole come to Jesus around crypto was themselves being debanked um by the US government and they are effectively debanking someone on their own blockchain or platform. So just some irony there. Um but perhaps >> yeah Liam, do you have anything on that before we switch switch gears? >> The the whole thing um that everybody's doing with World Liberty 5 token and all of these other tokens that are associated with different stable coins is the stripes and the JP Morgans, all the big banks of the world, they're not going to necessarily do that. And thus, um, because they're already have enough cash, they're not going to, um, risk messing up their golden goose in order to make a a few hundred million or or billion dollars on some random token that's going to be associated with their stable coin. Um it's just there's there's a false premise that everything in crypto has been funded by uh you know launching your own token and that's the only way in order to make a commercial project that just isn't necessarily going to be applicable to all of these other um to all these net new entrance into the space who already have distribution and enough capital in order to drive better payments networks too. >> Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the podcast and uh it wasn't too doom and gloom. uh really just try to share what's currently happening in the markets, how we see it. The altcoin craze is something that sadly will persist. Um but I believe if you're listening to this podcast, you probably understand that and um think deeply about Bitcoin custody. And just a quick word from On-Ramp. Um I'm sure a lot of listeners know of the different offerings that we have whether it's you know multi-institution custody the ability for our our trade desk lending inheritance um and then the dynasty trust which we are really excited about. We have no shortage of exciting things coming out this fall. Really uh I think industry shaking things across the the landscape. We have a lot that we've been working on. The one that I just want to go a little deeper on is uh Guardian that we announced today and specifically the proprietary uh and I don't even want to call it proprietary but the 3FA um 3FA we're really excited about that because ultimately it's something that severers the internet connection uh from the movement of your Bitcoin. So whether it is you know video verification, multiple institutions verifying that 2FA logic uh time withdrawals those are all put in place to protect client assets but at the end of the day they leverage uh the internet connection specifically from a subjective view. How do you interact with humans and the logic? 3FA takes that a step further and really uh relies on public public private key cryptography specifically around Bitcoin wallets and the movement of certain UTXOs for a certain client specific PIN. This is something I've been thinking about deeply. Um it might be overkill for somebody with call it 1 to10 million even though it's still open for them. But for clients that we work with that have tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, this is something that I think they're going to be really excited about because ultimately it takes it a step further and leverages either a hardware device that we would ship them or another way that they generated a private and public key. Um, so if you want to learn more about that, you can look at the blog post or you can feel free to book a consultation if you want to talk with me directly. Again, michael@honorbitcoin.com. And uh, hope you enjoy the rest of the show. two two quick things to call out. One is the World Liberty deal is I'm pretty confident is like a complete grift. Um it like there's no this is something that with a very senior official uh and from a government side of like crypto they were breaking down how like crypto's innovative whatever and I was like it's actually not and it's like if you go back because it would really felt I felt it viscerally um because you tell these stories but then the market goes into a bare market and there's no volume and you're like this stuff has no use. if it didn't have use, like it's just speculation. And so I think a lot of smart people figured out the playbook because there's certain like meme coins and you dump them and then everyone just like rugs versus where world liberty, you go out and you launch the token. I think there's a lending aspect that's supposed to like rival uh whatever coin AVA or I don't know. But like you see what I'm saying? Like you build a story and a narrative and then they just get super loud about it. So I'm pretty confident that's just like a large grift and there's a playbook. Um the other quick thing to call out is I do sadly or sadly or not um there's going to be a lot of success from the I don't want to say incumbents like the Visas but potentially but like really that middle stripe I think of Coinbase. Coinbase is the example, right? Because while we know Coinbase um you know has its flaws, the reality is this notion of like supporting crypto and something I'm still wrestling with, but the notion of supporting crypto the mo most of the market can't understand why somebody would be Bitcoin only. And so if you if you go Bitcoin only, you have to really find a like world-class product and then really like an area of the market that is like not only on address but like has like a a TAM that's growing but also can sustain a business, right? And so um Coin Bean is like Coinbase built this business and we know they're not the best in class but they they're they're best-in-class regarded and so nobody everyone goes to Coinbase we know the whole situation them being blessed and I think we're going to see that happen. um with like payments in the incumbents because there's this intersection happening with like stable coins, native assets being put on chain um and because they support so many things and the reality is they already had the relationships with all the big banking partners, they're going to go there and so the short order they're there's a lack of focus that's obviously going to keep them from winning long term, but they will like stumble towards success in the same way that Coinbase doesn't focus on coin on Bitcoin, but they have all the Bitcoin, you know, and I don't think that's fully like appreciated. And so when you when you win and out compete, you have to play a different game. If you try to play their game, you're probably not going to be able to win. Um, and I thought that's just fascinating because when you look at all of this, uh, >> and maybe this is kind of a perfect example of what you're saying. So this was just from this morning, NASDAQ filing to allow tokenization and blockchain listing of stocks, it's like, yeah, the crypto the cryptonative firm is not going to like get US stocks listed uh, on blockchains. It's going to be NASDAQ who makes the move and does this >> unless it's hyperlquid. Unless it's hyperlquid. Nice transition to what you really wanted to talk about today, Michael. You've been hyper liquid pill. Can you can you give can you give us the investment thesis on hyperlquid, please? >> I definitely haven't been hyper liquid pill. I think um I think and somebody that shared with me I think listen so they'll probably get an appreciation. I sat down with a lunch for an hour to talk about Bitcoin and then I end up hearing about Hyperlid because everyone hears about hype and all this stuff and um what was interesting was the guy was very I wouldn't look about anything with price although like it's probably is going to pump um they just I think this past week uh uh A16Z just you know I think there was like yesterday on one of those like well hunters on Twitter um saw like you know 1.6 six million of the token like 60 million just went into like A6Z's wallet or whatever. Um but I mean before even going into H I'm not at home so my screen's a little bit different but um I'll pull it up here. So just some quick stats. Uh Hyperlid 700 million in total locked value. Um more protocol revenue than Ethereum and Salana. 5.5 billion in stable coin sitting in there. I think um my understanding of this, it's obviously not like decentralized. It's decentralized the name only, but it was um I guess interesting in the crypto space because the founders didn't take any VC capital. They were I think working at a previous crypto exchange um before everything fell apart. And um the the one big innovation and this is where I find it like the most interesting is perks that we all agree like perpetual futures um couldn't be present until you had stable coins because you needed the rolling uh fund rate and to be able to stream that that collateral or deposit and liquidation and so per had historically been um out of the US and then they definitely had been away from US equities and it's my understanding to get them out of trigger but peril's futures are much better derivative than options for a number of reasons. And so because they're offshore is one thing, but the other thing my understanding is that their technology it has like three big things that I thought were were interesting. One is it trades spot BTC which most of these like altcoins indexes weren't. It has to do with like again I'm not technical on this and but there's like a layer between whatever blockchain that that they created and then how they receive the assets. So the person that was telling me about this like will move their Bitcoin in and out from just like a complete like privacy perspective just to clean it. Um so there's um the three aspects are the per spot trading are like flawless. Um so it's not um automated market makers. Again I had to do some research on just so you could talk about this because I don't like trade or do any of it just and I have no hyperlquid token by the way. Um but my understanding is generally on decentralized exchanges there is limited volume but also uh limited spot trading. So they're not very deep and liquid and that's where you've seen some of this news with different you know people uh showing up and and re reverting um whatever revolving getting into Ethereum and like other assets from their spot BTC and it's it's deep enough to do that. So the spot trading, the perpetual trading, but perpetual trading of stocks I believe is either on there or planned to be on there. Um and then um the derivatives the perpetual there was one other um but the core notion was that they've already found an insane amount of liquidity and I guess the way that it's constructed is that you can effectively like spin up your own node to validate. So the idea it's similar to like bitcoins. I still believe there's a throat to choke and all this stuff will be shut down in a long enough time horizon or co-opted. But I thought it was fascinating because they basically figured out the two-sided market problem of when you have a decentralized quotequote decentralized exchange, you have all this fragmentation on all the products and that's why you go to the centralized exchange. And a lot of volume has effectively moved from Binance and other platforms to this uh this place Hyperlid. And if that's all like sounds like BS, well, yesterday it just came out that they put out I guess there's again 5.5 billion sitting there and those are sitting in T bills, right? So somebody's making money on that 5.5 billion. So somebody there's a big bounty to be the stable coin that's native to uh Hyperlid. They put out a bounty and I think it was part of it for um marketing, but now everybody's out there um trying to circles talking about it. uh pack says everybody wants to be the native stable coin issuer for this this new token um or this new chain and so anyway I thought it was super fascinating just because it's something that we don't generally talk about um and I think the the the reason why it's relevant here is if it has any validity to have an actual somewhat decentralized exchange and order book and marketplace it'll over a long enough time horizon and be built around Bitcoin and so that was like the way I posed it to the individuals like well if this is all right because it sounds very interesting. This will just all net to Bitcoin like a fees um the way it's like you know managed even on nodes. So yeah. >> Yeah, there's a lot there but there's your there's your hyperlquid thesis for the day. Um, I think where my mind goes with this and and to be honest, I don't know how it plays out because the points you make around, you know, even if it's there is some vector of control and these things aren't truly decentralized, like maybe it's better than the CFI version, right? And so that's really how hyperl was born. It was born out of people trading per on Binance most predominantly. And then this was, you know, the more decentralized version of that. uh you don't have to log on to a centralized exchange. Um you can just do it from your own your own wallets, etc. Um that's where they found a lot of product market fit. But the I guess the c the potential counter to that is well what if you know Coinbase is able to just do this better and provide more liquid uh per markets and so that's something that they've talked about doing for a long time. And I I don't know, these are not available in the United States still, but yeah, see this is uh quote tweeting Coinbase International Exchange leveling up uh basically just allowing more leverage. Um so it was previously capped at 20x leverage, now you can go up to 50x. Um I forget what the old uh limits on Binance were, but I believe it was like, you know, 50 to 100 type stuff. And Hyperlid's like even more than that. you can pretty much do whatever you want on Hyperlid. So, I do think that there's going to be some back and forth between the I guess like the CFI and the quote unquote DeFi versions of who's going to win um per futures basically. And and I I still kind of think it's an open question because I do think there is a world in which Coinbase just does this better um than Hyperlid, but I'm not going to profess to be an expert on this stuff. >> Yeah. I mean, I think the two aspects, at least in the short order, where where Coinbase is kind of like wrecked, is if they go to 50, we'll whatever is not regulated, we'll just go to 60 and then 100 and 120. >> And then when they can't trade public equities, then they will, and then when they can't trade private equities, then they will. So, there's always just like you're trying to be a deeper bucket shop. Um the other side of it is it's my understanding that the fees are much lower than Coinbase or or any other platform because the idea is that it's almost like a protocol in the sense that anybody can plug in and use it from a front end or backend. So you can place your own um ask and just put your own assets there and then it's just finding on the other side. So the idea is in theory like if there is soundness to this it should be able to get best execution from the amount of participants plugging in um especially because it's not necessarily a business per se that has to you know justify keeping its revenue like I don't necessarily know how it plays out. My main I think takeaway in all of this is that all these things that find value um will ultimately end up in some aspect tied to Bitcoin because there will be that throat to choke when the like the one that comes to mind is uh the prediction markets which are another kind of cousin of what's hot right now and everyone's funding them and you have you have these different platforms but they're all eventually if they pick up enough steam are going to come under the eyes of any regulator any participants to tax them and do whatever or just like you can only place certain things um within the platform to bet on and you're naturally going to get people further and further on the curve. But then as people get further and further out, it gets sketchier when it comes to what's the token, what are you using, what platform, and what's the ultimate asset to settle on um that's interest resistant, you know, that's unseasable and ends up being BTC. So, I think these are just all like kind of precursors on the the framework for how it'll end up. Um, I think that's probably why I'm most fascinated with all of this because it's kind of a glimpse into an actual decentralized future. If you can find product market fitting crypto, well, then you're pretty much going to be able to put it on Bitcoin in some respect, whether it's other layers or it's the native token that's powering it. >> Yeah. No, that's I I like that sort of the last part of what you said there. there is an optimistic spin for all of this where where you know week after week we come back and we talk about all this noise but like the if you want to take a silver lining from it it it goes back to you know over a decade ago when basically it was just Bitcoin um and people started thinking about other applications of blockchain technology like the the thought was always sure go test it out build whatever you want to build and and if it works if it has product market fit if it makes sense, then we try to, you know, graft it onto Bitcoin in some way. Um, graft it onto that sound foundation. And so, I think over a long enough time horizon, that is basically what's going to happen with a lot of this stuff to your point. Um, is what works, what sticks, um, will be built on on Bitcoin. We're already seeing that with stable coins. Um, there's multiple different efforts and angles of bringing stable coins and and even other assets to to Bitcoin natively. Um and so I think you know it just it works on a slower time timeline obviously um than all these other blockchain networks which can move that move move faster just given sort of the um rate of development and consensus required to make any changes to the protocol. So, um, >> yeah, the the hyperlquid stuff is really interesting to me because I mean, uh, I've never really traded or done any of that stuff. And so, uh, I'm not I'm definitely no expert in this, but information tends to be free and, uh, therefore on a long enough time horizon, it makes sense that there will be publicly available order books just because that just brings more liquidity and ends up being outside of an exchange. as long as um the execution is actually right and can uh have validity and essentially be sure that your assets won't go away and and that um there will be no way for somebody to um to mess up your money because that's that's really important. Um but it does make sense that over a long time horizon that all of this will be around different uh you know on Bitcoin itself or or related to it just because I I did a little bit of digging on Hyperlquid and uh you know 6 months ago they had these tiny uh memecoin or whatever that uh there was some somebody who was essentially able to manipulate a very illlquid market and uh the hyperlquid market makers were rolled back the chain and got all the validators together in order to um essentially take back the actual capital that um was was lost by the actual hyperlquid protocol. Um and eventually it won't go to if there is some sort of decentralized type exchange that just will happen over time because uh all information tends to be free. It's not going to necessarily be the hype token that is going to acrue all the value. It's going to be um either distributed back to everybody who is participating based on the value that they provide in and it uh the native token in which the capital will go back will be under Bitcoin itself. >> Yeah, I hope so. I think that's the medium to long-term play. But I I think for a while there's going to be all these other these other avenues that get more traction as we were sort of talking about earlier that the you know the NASDAQs of the world are going to be the ones that tokenize stocks. Like it just it it's logical. Um all right, switching gears here a little bit. Mike, I think this was yours. Uh we talked about this maybe a week or two ago, but it looks like there's maybe more information on uh the UAE stacking some Bitcoin. Uh a look into the UAE's $700 million Bitcoin holdings. So what what do you have here, Mike? >> Yeah, I think um one of the uh the the chain sleuths. I forget which one. It's it's titled somewhere in here. Oh, yeah. It even says sleuths. Arkham Research. Um it's kind of interesting. Here's a screenshot uh for anybody that's listening to the the uh data center in the UAE, believe in Abu Dhabi. I think most in the industry have known um in the Middle East, specifically in the UAE, they've been mining for a while. I think it's been rumored um that they've been mining with nuclear energy. And it's been my like assumption this is part of the uh not just the UAE but globally sovereigns have been mining with um facilities you know in their jurisdiction but also stacking their own um kind of treasury and this ties into the hash rate being just like it kind of I think it was like 18 months ago just kind of went completely parabolic and a little bit of inorganically and I think the main reason we're put this where it's the most interesting is the discussion around um SB and you know where do we play out in the cycle and how much longer does it go and do we go to high you know highs that we're not expecting and the base case has always been if sovereigns are accumulating because that's just a different buyer and um we know Bhutan there was a Russia and then UAE and it was just interesting to see they have close to a billion dollars um yeah I think that was look at I mean just look at that chart It looks like the money printer, right? If you go back um and you you kind of see this is actually how like M2 looks as well where if you always an interesting chart for me if you went back to like 71 to08 it doesn't really look like anything when you look at it in like um going back for 30 or looking at it from a 30-year horizon. But if you just look at that mark you can see it steadily increasing because money was just being inserted into the system. And so similar here like hash rate was slowly coming in and then in that 22 it just kind of like has gone completely parabolic and those reminders have been suffering at least in the US and other places. Um but yeah I think that's probably the most interesting part is that sovereigns are accumulating and um yeah I mean some are selling but I think some are this is their back door into their own uh strategic Bitcoin reserve. Yeah, they have a pretty holistic digital asset strategy going on at the moment. Back in 2023, Marathon uh it was public the Marathon teamed up with Abu Dhabi's 02 for Middle East um first large scale emergent Bitcoin cold mining um and deployed a decent amount of um hash into that. Um, then there's this the uh the UAE Sovereign Wealth Fund owns I think last quarter it was something around $600 million in Bitcoin ETFs and they made that $2 billion investment into Binance um which was I think their largest investment that they've made at that point. So they're they're looking at this space very deeply from a bunch of different angles. Um, and I would imagine that they continue to make more investments both into Bitcoin itself as well as all of the companies around it just as they get more exposure cuz it it seems like they they at least had a um a lot of what you see is net new entrance into the space have very poor experiences because they buy the top when everybody's super interested. But these guys um started mining back in 2023, made the Binance investment, hold ETFs that are, you know, flat to up. And so I would imagine that they have a decent taste in their mouth and only just lean further in here. >> Yep. It's super logical. You think about a country like the UAE or really any Middle Eastern country or any country with access to um natural resources or forms of of energy, it makes total sense to start mining Bitcoin. If you have effectively a zerocost uh energy resource, so expect to see more of this. And yeah, keep an eye on hash rate as a a really great barometer. I've always sort of leaned on in terms of just thinking about sort of non-pric non-pric indicators for Bitcoin demand, Bitcoin adoption, etc. Hash rate's a great one in the sense that it shows demand for basically building out mining infrastructure and accumulating Bitcoin through mining. And that's just incredibly bullish because basically the the most bullish uh op some of the most bullish operators in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem are miners. Um, and so it's just a generally uh positive indicator. And and on that chart that we had up previously, you can see as Michael said, like it's just been ripping over the past few years. There was the the China migration uh which basically cut hash rate in half. And ever since that point, it's really been on just an upward rip. Um and I think that is reflective of nation state involvement because that that like I said is the logical move uh if you have access to effectively zero cost energy um make makes a lot of sense to mine Bitcoin. Um, >> yeah. And then it's it's really important to note too just because all pretty much all Bitcoin adoption is defensive of if somebody else who is a perceived competitor to you uh seems to be acquiring more Bitcoin uh and potentially outperforming you in in whatever way possible. Many people will look at that and understand that they need to um do a somewhat similar strategy otherwise they're going to see their their capital flow away. Um, and so I would imagine that many other, you know, perceived competitive countries are taking a close look at what exactly they're doing and how they're benefiting from it as well as, uh, starting to think about how they can implement a somewhat similar strategy themselves. >> Yep. Well said. Uh, more global news, Mike, this one is you as well. India leads global crypto adoption. APAC emerges as the fastest growing market according to chain analysis. >> Yeah, I thought this was interesting. um because I didn't expect that. I think the common consensus has been India is very antagonistic to the space. Obviously, India is a big gold country. Um but yeah, I didn't go deep here, but this was according to the the chain analysis report. Um, I think it ties into the UAE conversation in that sovereigns are slowly recognizing um, your pro crypto, your pro digital asset, pro Bitcoin stance really is going to matter. It's going to matter from are you storing a hard asset on your balance sheet to Liam's point. Are you getting the um, tribal and and knowledge from operating there? because you can only if you have a first mover then you're going to be able to efficiently grow that uh operation ahead of others and then naturally you want your constituents and your citizens to be able to preserve and hold their wealth because that's what they're going to be able to reinvest and so it makes sense. Um India and Asia Pacific has generally been pretty antagonistic to Bitcoin outside of like Singapore and maybe even Hong Kong kind of. Um so I thought this was just really fascinating to see. The other thing that um the other thing that's interesting is this really ties into just like the Bitcoin thesis on you know you hear a lot of noise the the not stuff and and just in general the you you want to hear the adversarial nature and the contentious nature of this space because it means that people there's so much economic value to protect that that people will figure out solutions and that's where I've never really held um not that uh quantum won't ever be a threat, but it's the notion of whether it's forking the UTXO set, changing the algorithm, and the just different things that come up is there's so much capital to Brian's point, investors at all different shapes and sizes from a home miner all the way to a sovereign are investing their own personal capital, which is material to them, to figure out um how to make this thing keep working. And that doesn't really get priced in effectively where people think that this thing's very fragile and you know past uh results aren't indicative of future returns. It's like well no they kind of are because all this capital coming in is forward leading into faking into where the market is going. Um and so I think this is just another piece with a whole uh section of the world, you know, getting getting bullish on the underlying asset. >> Yeah. No, it's interesting. I I'd be curious like I it doesn't look like there's a a detailed breakdown here but like you know what percentage of this is broader crypto versus Bitcoin because to your point India does uh appreciate gold um and so would be logical for them to appreciate digital gold and see the the merit and the value of of Bitcoin specifically in that context. Um but I'm not sure on that on that breakdown. Um Liam, do you have anything there or you want to move on? No, that's well said. >> Um, I mentioned gold. Some more gold news. Tether uh is going to invest in some gold miners. The real the real reason I loved this uh report was that Tether apparently internally calls gold natural Bitcoin, which I I just love. Um, and yeah, we've talked about Tether a bunch on the show the past several months. Uh but all the moves they're making are extremely logical. They're going to own gold. They're going to own Bitcoin. They're going to own some land. Um and they're going to own US treasuries and just print cash. Um any thoughts on this? >> Yeah, there was um there was another there was a few things that came out that this week. I think one was a little older where um Tether CEO referenced that if a global reset were to occur, it would happen in gold. Um, which I think this is kind of a different side to uh the discussion in the beginning of there's just you know when you first come into this space and even for a while you really listen to common narratives and it's it's it's really akin to life like the more you uh the more you grow the more you realize you don't know and it's very similar to like okay you read the Bitcoin standard you see Bitcoin 21 million all right global money but like the time horizon and the implementation is like where all the money gets made and it's the it's the uh where everyone's hands get dirty and it doesn't get talked about enough how gold a was going to play such a vital role and is playing a vital role when you think of the sovereign accumulation what we we've talked about on the last trade with um what's happened in the Shanghai gold markets and some of the trade happening there and Tether one of the most sophisticated players in this space are insanely long gold um to the point that you know their they have their their different packs or um their their stable coin that's on gold on gold um stacking gold and then just being you know forthright that if any kind of uh I think that's probably one of the big reasons is you don't know the time horizon for a lot of these things you just know the direction and you don't want to get caught off sides and so a reality is you know currencies hyperinflate Bitcoin rips but the market has so much you know inertia in gold, you're going to naturally see that um rip and a lot of like market structure will ultimately be around that first. I think very few people would disagree that, you know, bricks countries and others are going to set up different currencies backed by gold. You know, obviously storage, delivery, all of those things are going to come to the forefront over a long enough time horizon and then people will realize that there's a better way to do this. Um but it's just something that doesn't get talked about enough. everyone's focus on tokenizing real world assets and you know stable coins and there's just uh the the real pair for the next you know call it 20 to 40 years is going to be gold BTC and then uh whatever USD you know chain's going to be ripping. Hi guys, thanks for listening. I hope you're enjoying the pod. Uh just wanted to get a quick word uh from On-Ramp and Early Riders. You're probably familiar with um our venture fund. We operate and we will be having um some very exciting um meeting of the minds over the next few months in Nashville around a few events happening um at the Bitcoin Park as well as in Dallas around the North American Blockchain Summit. We'll be having one-on-one meetings, private roundtable um sessions discussing the status of the market, some of the exciting investments that we haven't publicly announced, as well as other ways for individuals to get more involved with everything we're building across the ecosystem. If you're interested in learning more, you can reach out to us directly. Um you can book time or you can just subscribe to our research. We're going to be uh publishing a lot of these dates as well as ways to get in touch via um the early writers newsletter. You can be at early riders.com. We're always excited to hear from individuals. Um, we have some of the most sophisticated listeners and clients and investors in Early Writers. And I really mean that. We're working on kind of the bleeding edges of this space. And so it usually takes individuals that have had to think deeply and follow the space for a while to kind of pick up what we're putting down. But we love hearing from you folks. Um, and also hearing about ideas or ways to get involved. There's no shortage of really amazing talent out there trying to kind of uh either take a one step out of the traditional space and figure out what their next move is. And we love hearing from individuals like that because we're working on a lot of things and it's really our job between the guild network on ramp and early writers and some of our other portfolio companies to figure out how to help there. So I'd encourage you to reach out. If it's not this week, please keep it in mind as you navigate the space. We'd love to speak with you. All right, have a great rest of your week and we'll be back with uh the last trade with a very big guest uh that we're super excited about. I don't know if Jackson will like that I share it here. So, if you want to know, tag him on Twitter and maybe he'll share it on Twitter. I don't want to steal his thunder. All right, have a great week. >> Yeah, it's um it's interesting and it's something that my own thinking has evolved on this. I think I used to be not fully in the camp but at least more in the camp of basically some sort of like leaprog thesis where we do just move to a Bitcoin standard but I've I've come around to this notion of again the inertia of gold thousand plus year history like there's going to be just an interim period where you know it's it's moving back towards uh neutral reserve assets and predominantly that at least in you know this initial phase is going to be gold uh for most central banks. um with maybe just you know a little sliver of Bitcoin here or there but like and and maybe over time that transition but we're talking you know multiple multiple decades that you know it would transition more towards Bitcoin actually demonetizing gold to to a certain extent I think we're very long long ways away from that. Um, and I think to your point, Michael, like this is a blind spot, I think, for a lot of Bitcoiners who who are still in that camp of like why would you care about the the yellow shiny rock? Like it's, you know, it's so inferior. Uh, we're going to find the asteroid with all the gold on it. Um those types of tropes. Like I do think it is it it is just a little bit misguided um with respect to again that that inertia, that trajectory, the sound money trade that's emerging. It's not just going to be Bitcoin like it is it is neutral reserve assets and the the one that is far more ingrained uh and well understood is gold. Um so there's going to be this interplay for you know probably a good amount of time probably multiple decades. >> Yeah. Unless people know exactly what's going to be the next reserve asset we probably get a basket of diversified assets in there. meaning gold, probably a little bit of silver, Swiss Franks or whatever the best of the poor fiat currencies are, as well as um the dollar and Bitcoin. Um it's not going to necessarily just going to be a straight Bitcoin standard over the near term unless there's some sort of summit like there was uh you know to to get on a dollar standard backed by gold like back in the 1940s. Um it's just not necessarily how it's going to work, unfortunately, despite my my wishes. >> Yeah. And I think the thing is it goes further than that. It's like I don't want to say Bitcoin can't succeed without gold, but it's its friend because it's very hard. I I can't imagine most people will come to Bitcoin being money and 100% allocation without going through gold and understanding how gold is money because it I I can't rationally understand how somebody would say okay well I'm all in to the end state without understanding the story uh how the story was formed to be like this is the end of the story right like is gold is money you have to understand where um sound money fit into the kind of like past hundred to you know thousand years and so gold doing what it does is not only important for um older generations and individuals that understand it. It's also key to like the market structure and how you will built out the bit the the most simple framing is you can't print more gold. It you know it's called alchemy like it's never been done before. You know they talk about it and it's the same thing as quantum people will say oh you can like make it in a lab but it's not economically viable. in the same way that counterparty risk is important with gold where it sits and people will recognize that and all the different like constructs of like where gold failed and so I think that's important because everything else not only has um these uh inferior qualities to it as far as kind of the uh supply um but then ultimately people will start to wake up to everything outside of gold and BTC But even gold and Bitcoin from a price perspective are derivatives of how much money is injected into the system. So everyone's trading around S&P, bonds, private equity, private credit, land, everything else. But the wrong base currency is either gold or bitcoin because both of them have outperformed every other asset. And once individuals start recognizing that, they'll get to see everything we talked about in the beginning of the show and in general uh portfolio construction as inferior because none of it stacks up. But that's the whole like that's basically the gap where we have for the next x number of years is is most people still look at gold and bitcoin as investments versus savings. And it's not until the mental mind shaft uh mindset shifts and I think it will happen sooner than we believe at least from a savings perspective because inflation will continue to persist. Um it's structural that it has to only accelerate. Um and so that's also ties into the blind spot. It's le the blind spot's necessarily not necessarily important for an individual if they just want to stack a bunch of Bitcoin and go about their their life unless maybe something crazy happens. You want a little bit in gold. But I think it matters if you're building or if you want to talk about where we're going. Like it's very hard to be taken seriously if you can't recognize that gold will will play a very serious position in the same way that we won't get to where we're going where everyone holding a plastic device with their money on it. Like these are just like tropes that were built into people that didn't fully understand kind of like how the world works and how finance works. And um I'm bullish like this next cycle people just recognizing that it's not that one is you know super it's not that one's superior to the other. It's just that people have different preferences and there's different types of market structure that require different things and um yeah because the alternative has been like the crypto people leading the way and they don't understand anything with gold and bitcoin >> and that's also not a viable path. I mean the other the other flavor of this transition in my mind is like you know moving from being a perceived as a hedge and moving towards like becoming a core allocation. So like historically gold in trady circles was you know with with some exceptions obviously but like by and large you know my my prior firm didn't have any gold exposure. Um, and if you did, it was a very small amount and it was perceived as this like hedge, like almost this doomer hedge that if the world blows up, you want to have a little bit of gold. Um, and I think people perceive Bitcoin in a similar light, um, as a hedge. I think the real transition over the next decade or so is you know as complation persists and you know uh more people recognize it for what it really is. as the the fiscal situation continues to deteriorate, the shift is going to be, you know, or that that transition is really going to be people moving away from like, oh, this is just a nice little hedge in the portfolio to like, no, this is this is just sound money. And you want that to be the bedrock of your portfolio, you know, at least 40%, like something along those lines. Um, and so that that's like the real sort of monetary order shift that's playing out at a higher level is like, well, what is money? How do you actually save to your point, Michael? Um, and like what how should you conceive, you know, a port a well-rounded quote unquote portfolio? Um, it shouldn't just have 1% in this this hedge. It should be predominantly in that uh as as the core of it. >> Yeah. And I think that it's while while I think that that may happen, I think it's more likely that the founders and operators of the businesses just understand that Bitcoin or or gold um is actually the unit of account that they should be chasing rather than more dollars and like a Figma just start allocating a part of their treasury and savings into that harder asset rather than people just out moving completely away from stocks and um going totally to to the gold and Bitcoin. Uh I just see that as slightly a more realistic path. Um but I could be wrong there. >> Yeah. No, that's fair. Um maybe they happen together as well. >> Yeah. >> Uh Mike, any other thoughts on that? Or I did want to go to um that Gwart tweet that you had shared about AI. >> Yeah, let's do it. So, I had I had seen this original headline from Vlad and like literally laughed out loud at it. But basically, this is a tweet in response to that headline from Robin Robin Hood CEO Vlad Tennv says, "Investing for a living could replace labor in a post AI world." And the uh the quote tweet says, "This is extremely bizarre. There is some weird illogical belief that once uh in parenthesis if AI can perform the vast majority of jobs, all of a sudden the only place real humans will have an edge is in financial markets. Does that sound rational? Like AI will be a better plumber and Uber driver and brain surgeon than any human, but you'll you'll be able to invest better than AI. That will be your new job. You're an investor now. You just sit around and invest in all day. Uh it goes on, but but you get the gist. Uh Michael, what were your thoughts on this? I mean, I just thought like it doesn't obviously I don't think anybody listening or us surprises from blood and and the notion of uh investing for a living could replace labor in a post world because of course you could just create value from nothing. Um I think I think that the core notion is um it's really just this understanding of all the faulty assumptions based on everything that's being delivered to us. um whether it's the tempo stuff or what we've been talking about the traditional markets um that that it's just crept so much into the the amount of um inorganic uh capital the cost of capital but the amount of monetary units has been directly correlated to effectively clown world and I think we like it goes back to where I have um a problem with taking like the fed speak and all the things we know like you just close your eyes. You know they have to print more. You should be long hard assets. It's this notion of all this other stuff is noise surrounded based on the underlying fundamentals are completely broken. And um this is just a symptom of it right here. And this is like what's they're preparing for. And it's where the proliferation of gambling and there's it's it's not a uh u coincidence that tra um the uh poly markets and the calcies of the world and now that's the hot VC trade was um in the prediction markets and then there's the perpetual futures which is the new innovation. It's just more gambling, more spend. And uh it's just really keep that lens when you look at all this stuff because there is signal, there is opportunity, but it's not from Fortune and it's not from the Robin Hood CEO. >> Yeah, this was um pretty like bleak dystopian outlook. Like if you truly believe what Vlad is saying here, like that well it it doesn't make any sense on its face, but like if it were to be true, like that's super dystopian. a very sad environment if like everyone's just in their pods, you know, on their Robin Hood app dgen trading like the this nihilist future of like it's completely illogical and that it would like replace labor. Like I don't even know what he means by that. >> There's a there's a theme that we've been discussing a bunch or before and it tied into what you were sharing about uh gold and it's the notion of it never sat right for 15 years. the market wouldn't uh talk about or reconcile that Bitcoin was the best performing asset in the same way that for the past x number of years anybody with a brain has known bonds have been negative yielding and underperforming but nobody talks about either one and it and it kind of stems from there is a a a function a like a a substrate of culture the zeitgeist that shapes these things and my base case was when sovereigns because sovereigns really dictating a lot of this in what they do. Um, and so when you see them stacking gold and the gold price move out of the bands that it's been kind of held in for for decades, that that would be the canary in the coal mine of the the, you know, showing that the emperor has no clothes in sort of speak that Bitcoin, gold, hard assets are the thing like it'll take time. But point being is these narratives with AI and trade and AI is another example why I'm bringing this up because the amount of capital spent on AI and data centers has has been incredible. >> Yes. No, I I I know what you're getting at. Um >> I had a podcast guest. >> We got a we got a new guest on the show. Um Liam, did you have any any thoughts on >> But anyway, that was the basic premise was the AI stuff. Like AI is another example of I think everyone's talking about how it was like this nice vacuum in 21 as the market and interest rates crept up um for PE or 22 for people there was all these pockets that needed to move around get marked up because when you think about portfolios and the amount of markups and valuations these companies have had I think there's no shortage of jokes with open AI and the amount of money they raise and they don't even know to like reconcile and forecast amount of depreciating losses they have whether it's in the data centers they investing in and then what we've seen what like DeepSeek and others are going to naturally do. I don't think it's common consensus that these type of large LLMs will be the uh long-standing winner when it comes to like AI, but all nobody talks about it. They're just like, "Oh, it's cool. We're we're doing hundreds of billions of dollars in investment." But I think the market understands like that's going to be destroyed capital and whose money is that? Nobody talks about it the same way anybody talks about negative yielding bonds yet fully in gold and Bitcoin being the the trades of the future. Yeah, I think this is kind of related, but have you guys seen this chart of of OpenAI chat GBT usage and basically just showing as right when schools and college ended like usage just dropped off the cliff like I it's it's sort of aligned with what you're saying like there's all this spend but what is the real value being created? I think that's still very up in the air if the vast majority of usage for you know chat GBT is just people using it for school and you know writing papers like that that doesn't seem like super value ad it actually seems like value destructive if like people aren't learning and they're just using the tools like that's the the primary use case is is homework like that's not great. >> Yeah. It's just sad because I mean a lot of the things that we've talked about today are just value destructive whether it's trading perpetual futures or the Robin or the Koshi or you know options trading on Robin Hood etc. Um but those right now are where a lot of the capital is going rather than just ignoring just the sound money thesis that that we know is is going on at the same time but uh it's just not necessarily where all the capital is chasing right now. >> Yeah. Well said. All right, boys. Might be a good place to wrap. Uh, any final thoughts? >> Um, no. Outside of next week, we'll all be in Nashville. So, if anybody's listening, wants to uh get together, we'll be meeting with clients, investors face to face, and then having a few events. So, shoot us a note, reach out. Uh, the Tuesday to Saturday. There's a bunch of things going on. Bitcoin Park's throwing a a summit and then there's an imagine if conference they're throwing with ARC. Uh we will all be there. Actually have a random uh amount of uh on-ramp hats from Bitcoin 2024. Um that are really nice retro. >> So if anybody's around uh shoot us a note, we'll we'll save a hat for you. I think I have like 20 or 30. Um so yeah. >> All righty. Thanks, gentlemen. See you next week. Thanks guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.