Why Bitcoin Belongs in Every Portfolio | Glenn Cameron | TLT082

Jackson Mikalic (00:02.953) All right, welcome back to The Last Trade. This week we have my co-hosts Brian Cabellus and Michael Tanguma and we are honored to be joined by the newly announced global head of OnRamp Institutional, Glenn Cameron. Glenn, how are you doing? Glenn Cameron (00:19.243) Very good at new. Nice to be with you. Jackson Mikalic (00:20.875) Doing great. Yeah, excited about the news with the on-ramp institutional launch. How are you feeling this morning? Or guess afternoon for you. Glenn Cameron (00:25.547) Yeah, over the moon, Joining the world's leading Bitcoin asset management firm is a dream come true. Michael Tanguma (00:37.006) It's been a busy morning, long time coming for the announcement and I already know, think Brian leads a lot of these efforts. There was a family office report, Forbes wrote an article, we had Glenn's PR release and some other stuff. So very busy morning, looking forward to getting it all out. Brian Cubellis (00:55.531) And more to come. There's lots of interesting reports and other pieces of collateral in the hopper ready to go. So stay tuned on the OnRamp institutional front. Jackson Mikalic (01:06.869) Yeah, well, Glenn, really excited and, you know, congrats on the launch. I know there's been a ton of work for all parties involved in getting this to the finish line. So I'm really excited about today's podcast in particular, because you have a unique lens to the traditional finance and the Bitcoin investment management world. You're one of the few people that I think have really stuck their necks out there as someone who is sitting in the traditional asset allocator community and made it a point to push forward Bitcoin adoption in institutional portfolios. And so with that, I know you've been on the show, but it has been a while. I think the best place to start would just be letting the audience hear directly from you about your experiences, your career journey over the past 25 or so years in the asset management world, building portfolios, managing risk. So let's start there and then we can work our way into on-ramp institutional and Bitcoin. Glenn Cameron (02:04.427) So I decided I wanted to into finance and investment when I was about 16. I went to a golf tournament with my dad and the guys that caught my eyes there asked my dad what they did and he told me they were at a proprietary trading firm. And I went and kind of interned there during the holidays. and kind of fell in love with what they were doing. They had a whole trading floor and then went to university, studied finance and investment management. then day after I graduated, moved to London, got a job at a proprietary trading firm, trading a a German government bond futures and swaps and Euro dollar futures and swaps, doing kind of like duration spreads and stuff like that. did that for five years. It was a hairy existence, very exciting. And then while I was doing that, I studied to become a Chartered Financial Analyst, because I kind of knew traders, burn art. And I moved into the institutional investment consulting world to work for an American firm here in London called Wilshire Associates. And I was working mainly with European pension schemes and I worked with a couple of sovereign wealth funds and a couple of central banks, interestingly, given what we do. And then I became the head of investment consulting at a big sort of UK, South African hybrid firm called Old Mutual. And there was mainly defined contribution pension schemes, but also some interesting ones like mining, rehabilitation, trusts, also a couple of foundations. So doing, you know, creating investment strategies for them, you know, managing risk, all of that kind of stuff. And then I became a portfolio manager at a company called Sunlam International. Glenn Cameron (04:25.931) And we basically building again portfolios for pension schemes, but I was also involved in their wealth management division. So building portfolios for what in America called RIAs over there, they called IFAs. And for the firms building like ranges of portfolios and putting them on. what in the US are called TAMPs and other parts of the world they call DFMs. And then joined Cartwrights. while I was at Sunland, they basically asked for a volunteer to set up their kind of Bitcoin solution. And so did that for about 18 months. so then when I... applied at Cartwright. offered me a job previously and I hadn't taken it and I came back to them. And then when I did, they said to me, would I set up their Bitcoin kind of solution that when I offer it to pension schemes. So I was doing normal, trad-fi kind of investment consulting for defined benefit pension schemes solely. And then also the head of digital assets there. And then Yeah, so, and was there for two and a half years or whatever. And then I really wanted to go 100 % into the world of Bitcoin. It been a passion about mine for a long time. I think it is definitely the future of finance. I think most people in Tradfire still to figure that out. So I was looking for an opportunity and I'd already found OnRamp because we searched the globe looking for the best solution for our clients. And I found OnRamp and we kind of got to know each other. And one thing led to the next and here I am. Jackson Mikalic (06:36.863) Yeah, it's exciting to have you on board officially, Glenn. I love the journey that you just took us on because what you highlighted was experience in many different types of institutional portfolios spanning the gamut of pension schemes, foundations, endowments, family offices, and then DFMs and RIAs, as you mentioned, in the wealth space. And I believe you said the first time you started to take a look at Bitcoin within one of these types of firms was at Sandlem and then later at Cartwright. How did you identify the need for Bitcoin in institutional portfolios? Glenn Cameron (07:12.491) So it's quite interesting. sort of, think, so what really kind of took me over the edge and made me say, okay, I'm gonna really take a closer look at Bitcoin was, there was a fixed income manager who also had some fixed income arbitrage hedge funds and he was top of his game. And I had huge respect for him. And once I stayed behind after a meeting, And we were chatting and he confided in, I asked him because it was, I said to him, what are you doing in your personal portfolio? And he said to me, I'm loading up on Bitcoin. And he couldn't do that in the institutional portfolios, right? And so I was like, okay, hang on. What's going on here? And I thought, okay, I've got to have a look at this thing. And I said to him, what's the first thing I should read? And he put me onto the Bitcoin standard. And I read that and then that was just like a paradigm shift. It kind of challenged everything that I knew about finance. And then at Sunline, basically on the private well side of the business, like where they were managing high net worth individual, ultra high net worth individual portfolios, they were getting demand saying we want exposure and I was for a volunteer because they didn't know anything. And I put my hand up and so I'd already read the Bitcoin standard and then went deep, deep down the rabbit hole. And part of that was kind of figuring out how does this fit into a portfolio? And also how do you operationalize it? How do you implement it in portfolios? The trade far world isn't really necessarily set up for Bitcoin. There were no ETFs at the time. And so was how do we actually do this practically, but then also from an investment point of view, how does it fit into a portfolio? Yeah, and that was 18 months journey. Michael Tanguma (09:32.046) Yeah, I think there's a an interesting part in this journey that we've known from behind the scenes meeting yourself and Sam from Cartwright and the decisions to work with us where there's this disparate cohorts in the Bitcoin space of some institutional trad five folks may be interested in Bitcoin but never have seen a GFC. So they have certain and they've also never seen an accelerated crypto Bitcoin cycle to even understand what deleveraging looks like in this So they just this is like what we see where institutions end up being exit liquidity because they never make it to the other side to like actually see that and learn mistakes. And so it's fascinating through your lens or the lens that yourself couple with Cartwright, because I think that's the thing that people forget as institutions are made of individuals. And so it's a collective that has to make that decision. And that's where we focus a lot of our education, that you guys had this understanding of risk, counterparty risk. And when it happens, you don't know who is swimming naked when the tide goes out and you need to protect yourselves. And that's what we build these products being Bitcoin native, knowing you have to to think of that at all times if you're building anything because you can't get knocked out of a game by a single point of failure if your whole your personal wealth is there in the same way an institution shouldn't be but we haven't got there from that level yet in the market it was something that you guys picked up on which is very fascinating because that's what we built at our for that was a thesis that the sophisticated investors would find us first and then as the rest of the market gets educated that would catch up Glenn Cameron (11:08.393) Yeah, I so I mean, so I was working during the GFC. And I mean, things happened over that period. Just there were individual days that, you know, like how people always say, you know, where were you on 9-11 and people can always remember, right? There was a day like that, but there were a few days like that where you remember them like they were yesterday because things happened that people didn't realize could actually happen. mean, like, you know, six, seven standard deviation moves, know, global banks down 45 % in one day type of thing, just crazy things. know, so having lived through that, and at the time, I didn't really understand it. And also the kind of crazy things that went on top and QE and all of that kind of stuff. was like, You know, I think I've said before, you know, what I'd what I'd studied so hard to learn how to do and what I've been doing as a professional all of a sudden didn't make as much sense anymore. It's like, you know, playing a game of Monopoly and you stealing money out of the other board or something. You know what I mean? It's like. hang on a second, we're breaking the rules here. And all of a sudden, the game's not fun anymore if we're just going to cheat, right? And the entire banking system and financial system, the central banks basically just, you know, did a whole bunch of crazy stuff. So I think that kind of primed me for Bitcoin. But then, you know, in terms of like, does How do you factor that into a portfolio and all of that kind of stuff? Well, obviously, Bitcoin is part of that now. I think, obviously, people on the Triadfire side don't necessarily understand Bitcoin. The majority don't. A lot are beginning to. But then on the Bitcoin side, I think people don't understand the Triadfire world necessarily. Glenn Cameron (13:31.879) I mean, obviously, again, I'm generalizing here. And what the Bitcoins, I don't understand about the trade firewalls is that they've got all sorts of clients with all sorts of investment objectives, all sorts of risk tolerances. liquidity means they're drawing income from their portfolio. And there's also the investor behavior. kind of aspect to this. They can't have a portfolio that's too volatile. You're dealing with that kind of old gray hoed people or, and so it's constructing portfolios that will behave in certain ways depending on who you're building that portfolio for, right? But what I kind of realized at Sun and the deep dive that I did there and then sort of deepened that at Cartwright is that Bitcoin does belong in every single portfolio. It's just the position size that changes. And that position side is dependent on return objective, maximum risk. liquidity needs, investment horizon. There are number of factors that play into what am I trying to achieve with this portfolio. I feel like that's something that, not me exclusively, but there's a small number of people who can understand how Bitcoin fits into a portfolio, bring those two worlds together. Brian Cubellis (15:19.959) Yeah, you hit on a number of things there, Glenn, that I think are critical to sort of reiterate or point out. the first is, you know, there, think historically there has been this gap in the market, this bridge between the traditional finance world and sort of the Bitcoin native world. And from really day one of building this business at OnRamp, like that was core to our goals was let's actually be that connection, that bridge. And so, you we've cultivated a group of individuals who have expertise in both arenas effectively. And that's what allows us to, you know, help bridge that gap. critical to doing that is not just the differentiated and innovative products and services, but it really all stems, you know, it comes down to education, right? Because Michael, you sort of alluded to this before, like the institutional allocator who, you know, is being thrown a bunch of information about crypto and digital assets doesn't have a fundamental understanding of what is money and what Bitcoin actually represents. It's going to be very hard for them to see the value prop of what we're doing on the custody side specifically. And we've seen this anecdotally over time. And that's why I think with the sort of formal launch of OnRamp Institutional, a large part of that will be sort of... focused on advisory and really educating folks and getting them up to speed in a way that's tailored to their needs effectively. And so one of the first reports that we put out is geared specifically towards family offices and what they need to think about, what they historically have thought about and how Bitcoin aligns with the certain goals and objectives that they may have. And so I think that'll be a huge part of this because until someone has the actual correct high quality education to get up to speed, they'll probably be okay just going into an ETF and not recognizing that that is an inferior product for a number of reasons. Jackson Mikalic (17:19.433) Yeah, I'm excited to dig into the report a little bit later on in this episode because we were chatting a bit before we hit the record button. There's very little research out there that speaks to Bitcoin being a strategic asset for various types of asset allocators. the report that was recently authored by Brian Glenn and the team here on Ramp Institutional is an incredible one. And so we're going to dig into that more. Glenn, I want to just take a step back to the GFC as well. I think it's important to paint more of a picture there because Ultimately, what we saw in the great financial crisis is governments and central banks stepped in, as you alluded to, and papered over losses, right, and then created this new board game that the incentives were skewed very much in favor of those closest to creation of new credit and money. And what I think people are still coming up the curve on is that that type of system doesn't exist within Bitcoin. So in a system where you can just paper over losses, you can kind of forget about managing risk to some degree. Of course, you don't want to be exposed to the wrong counterparties at the wrong time if you can avoid it. But at the same time, there's kind of this ethos now within traditional finance that investment managers know that central banks are kind of stepping in behind them to bail them out. Whereas with Bitcoin, those losses are permanent. so counterparty risk is extremely important to be mindful of when you're an asset allocator stepping into the Bitcoin ecosystem. And naturally, I think this ties into the work that you did Previously at Cartwright doing a 12 plus month due diligence on over 70 asset managers that offer a Bitcoin investment product and really leading with the idea of managing risk, eliminating counterparty risk, because that is something that you can do with Bitcoin custody and financial services, which is unique to Bitcoin. And at the same time, you need to be paying, you need to be leading with custody in this environment, which is still, I think, a new idea to folks that are coming from traditional finance. Do you have any thoughts? on that idea and really tying that into leading the first UK pensions to allocate to Bitcoin. Glenn Cameron (19:21.963) So there's two, there's what people think the risk in Bitcoin is, right? The volatility, the short-term volatility, but there's another layer of risk, right? Which is, like you said, it's a bearer asset, right? If I own equity, like stocks in a brokerage account or, you know, government bonds in a brokerage account, right? I mean, if something goes wrong, there's a red just at a centralized custodian. They just kind of reallocate those things, Bitcoin is like physical gold coins. If you lose them, if they get stolen, they're gone. There's nobody you can call. It's a bear asset. So if you're going to do this at the institutional level, you have to be... 100 % sure that the custody is rock solid. Bitcoin's unique because it's impossible for three custodians to hold the same equities at the same time or any security at the same time. But because of the multi-signature technology with Bitcoin, you can have three private keys, right, controlling the same Bitcoin and form a quorum two of three. Right. And what that means is, is if something, there's some kind of operational failure, or if one of the custodian goes bankrupt or something like that, it's not a problem because it's one out of three and you need two of three to form a quorum and you've got two left and you continue as normal. And so when I started looking for how are we going to give pension schemes exposure to Bitcoin, I obviously knew about multi-signature technology. And I wanted that in the institutional space. So I also didn't like the fact that in a lot of the private placement funds and in the ETFs, Glenn Cameron (21:43.849) You know, they're also, if you read their, you know, S1 registration filings or their private placement memorandums or whatever, they're super interesting reads, right? And particularly if you focus on the risk disclosures and also the terms and conditions, right? They're all sorts of gating provisions, lockup periods, and the risk disclosures are, you know, like a... For an investment professional, it's a little bit like a horror movie. And you suddenly realize that, it's got this big fancy brand or name on the front. But this thing, they're kind of washing their hands and saying, listen, there are all these risks, and you just have to accept them if you want to invest here. And we were like, no, we're not doing that. We're a reputable investment consulting firm. And unless we can do it without these risks involved, we're not doing it at all. So basically created a list of 12 criteria. I know here at OnRamp, you guys put together a case study based on how we kind of the selection criteria we used in looking for a vehicle for Bitcoin exposure. I went into the Bloomberg terminal. This was literally the first step. And I went to the fund research section and typed in the word Bitcoin. And there were 78 solutions around the world, everywhere from Australia to the United States. And I basically went through them one by one and kind of looked at, OK, who meets the criteria or who looks like they possibly meet the criteria. and kind of whittled the list down to a short list and then started contacting people. But once I sort of did a deeper dive and also people who were kind of willing to work with us to create something tailored and sort of take our input on what would need to be done to kind of allay concerns on all fronts. Glenn Cameron (24:03.147) It was pretty easy because eventually OnRamp were the only ones who could kind of meet the grade. But then even then we spent, I don't know, you guys will have to remind me, but it was like, I felt like a very long time, nine months or something doing deep, deep due diligence in partnership with a professional operational due diligence firm. I think by the end you guys didn't like us as much as when we started. And yeah, and we got very comfortable. the pension scheme was kind of ready to make the allocation. And we kind of made that. We actually got it on a day. We bought the debt on a particular day. We got it at like 64,000 late October. And yeah, it was. Michael Tanguma (24:59.096) Yeah. It's an amazing story. think to further contextualize this just a little bit, I want to pull up two screens. One is just the losses because I think ultimately pulling up a chart that has, you know, this might even be a little outdated. I think right now it's $600 billion. Maybe on this chart, I think it's closer to $650 billion in total crypto losses historically in digital assets history. I think whether it's implicit or explicit, this is what's embedded in a lot of the apprehension when you hear snake oil, rat poison, because you just wake up and it's all gone and you never really see that unless you get a GFC but it's still not all gone because you paper over and there were some companies that got rolled up or banks that got rolled up but naturally like you don't have people on the news you know people in jail all going to jail that were running effectively like Ponzi's so you take that and it's it's the basis of 22 seeing that and where on ramp was founded realizing that like wait we're gonna redo this all over because this underlying custody situation is a problem the individuals have figured it out The institutions have it and they have no incentive or reason to for a number of reasons. The main one is that they understand custody, net interest margin, doing things with the underlying asset. But to Glenn's point, this isn't just a ledger that you can reverse or halt, i.e. GameStop like there are no bailouts in Bitcoin. And so to contextualize it to today, because we've been talking about this for years, Brian had shared... I'm just gonna see if I can pull it up. Michael Tanguma (26:31.532) This post from our friend James who posted effectively, amount of leverage coming to cycle from retail to institutions is gonna be wild, still expected major correction at the end of this blow off top for BTC because this is based on CoinMates announcing that they're gonna reintroduce loans to users. And why I bring this up is because you can imagine what Glenn referenced, you have a deleveraging event, you have all of these assets sitting in these pooled vehicles, you have people at risk of going bankrupt and now you start to look at like, wait, what do I do? Can I move some coin here? Can I move some coin there? There's all the stories that happen with BlockFi and Celsius and we don't have to go into how they fully, you know, de-levered, but it's this point of the segregation in the traditional finance. It's SMAs and Bitcoin. It's just a wallet, but segregation coupled with taking out the ability for one counterparty to move the asset. It's just this thing that has been historically not available to an asset. but also nobody had a reason to do it. Well, the reason to do it is because it's just the way that a digital bearer asset that's decentralized should be custodyed. And so it's just fascinating to see it go full circle because we'll be sitting here talking about this and then we'll have an exchange hack and then we'll have the fires continue and all the other things and then we'll have the deleveraging and then you just watch that happen. This has happened in the past five years. Glenn Cameron (27:56.339) Yeah, and everybody's sitting now, you know, thinking that the players that are offering the custody now, it's all, you know, names that, you know, people are thinking, no, these players are rock solid, right? So there's nothing to worry about. It's with this one or it's with that one or whatever. But, you know, it's been like that before. right, where FTX was, you know, the flavor of the month. SBF was, you know, in Washington all the time, whining and dining with the politicians and, you know, and it was, you know, big names in investment management were investing in FTX and, you know, whatever. They didn't see what was coming, right. And it's like you say, it's and the thing is, that this shouldn't be the case at all because of multi-signature technology. You don't need to accept the risk of a single custodian when it comes to Bitcoin. And it's a catastrophic risk if it manifests. Brian Cubellis (29:20.011) Yeah, it's... Jackson Mikalic (29:20.053) I think a critical thing to mention here as well is it ties into both what you were saying Glenn and then Michael previously about the idea that there's really hasn't been an incentive for institutions to be thinking about more redundant custody solutions because on the other side of that the demand from investors is viewing Bitcoin in this broader cryptocurrency market where everything is just like a trade, right? It's all about how do I just get the next 2X, 5X, 10X? It's all risk on. It's all a small portion of the portfolio. And naturally then you don't really care about the custody of the underlying asset. Whereas what we're positioning here with OnRamp Institutional is the inverse of that. That Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument. It's a pristine form of collateral. And custody is paramount because investors want to consider Bitcoin as a part of their strategic asset allocation for the long term. And because of that, it's an asset that investors will benefit from for the long term. has properties that make it risk off. It's not a risk on asset. It's one of the few assets alongside gold and commodities that exist outside of the traditional system, right? And it plays by its own rules of the protocol. So I think that's the critical thing as well is that we're still really in the early innings of investors starting to discern the difference between Bitcoin and digital assets. I Bitcoin is the market. Anyone who disputes that would have to look at the numbers there, that 60 % of the cryptocurrency market is Bitcoin. so Glenn, is that kind of how you view it as well, where there's this divergence and people haven't cared about custody before just because of the framework in which they viewed Bitcoin? Glenn Cameron (31:00.863) Yeah, I mean, I think the large majority of the institutional world, you know, not even looking at Bitcoin and, you know, and the ones that are looking at digital assets are confused. I think that. I mean, you really. Bitcoin is, I would say, you know, at least as complicated actually in some ways more complicated to understand than even the most difficult asset classes to understand in the triad-fire world. It takes a lot of work to understand Bitcoin, to really understand. Because if you put yourself in the mind of somebody who all they know about Bitcoin is what they've seen in the newspaper, if you can try and delete everything you know about Bitcoin and look at it, all from that perspective, then it just all seems crazy. But you've got to understand how the technology works. You've got to understand what a halving is, what the difficulty adjustment is. You have to understand the history of money like Brian said. You have to understand how it fits into the macroeconomic picture. Only then, once you understand Bitcoin, are you going to start thinking about custody. And so that's, you and then you kind of, unless you've, you know, it's incumbent on us to make people aware that multi-institutional custody exists. Because I think the, you know, the small percentage of institutions who have gotten there just think, okay, well, And they look around at what everybody else is doing and they're like, OK. And anyway, it's huge names in the space now with ETFs. Right. And it seems like the obvious kind of solution. But they don't understand that those big names are not custodianing the Bitcoin. Right. So they should look at who the custodian is. Right. And in most cases, the custodian is Coinbase. Right. Glenn Cameron (33:26.003) And Coinbase is like a kind of a big version of where the previous problems have arisen. And so if things go wrong there, know, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. So, you know, I feel like a lot of education has been done in this space. Jackson Mikalic (33:45.729) That ties into it ties into what we're doing with on-ramp institutional. So actually we're recording on the 16th. This will be released tomorrow the 17th Today we're doing our first on-ramp institutional series with James lavish and David Foley of the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund They do a hybrid approach to public and private markets within the Bitcoin ecosystem And so what investors who are listening to this could pay attention to is over the course of this year every month We'll be doing an on-ramp institutional series as Glenn mentioned. It's challenging asset class to come up the curve on and so naturally what we'll do is almost build out a syllabus of video content material where you can hear directly from those who are investing and participating, building in the space. So certainly would encourage people to check that out. I think this would be a natural point to maybe segue into the launch of OnRamp Institutional. I would hand it over maybe to Michael first if you just want to give some overarching thoughts on the launch of the business and then Brian Glenn we could have you join as well. Michael Tanguma (34:45.262) Yeah, think definitely, I think the key pillar or thing to think about that's really like crystallized for me is that like we, everyone knows the price is set at the margins and I would make the case that Bitcoin financial services best in class custody will be set at the margins with the individual Bitcoin holder. because they are by definition the most sophisticated because they've had the most time to look at the asset class and adopt the best standards. That's historically how they've held it for 15 years. And so this is like the thing that's been missed. It's in my opinion one of the greatest secrets. to date, from a pure entrepreneurial or capitalistic or investment perspective is that ultimately it's been looked at the wrong way, that traditionally in... In regular markets and financial markets, your institutions are setting the price, institutions are setting the standards, but we've all known Bitcoin has been the opposite when it comes to who has adopted it, but in the same way is the individuals will establish the standards. But the kicker is you can't just make them do what you do. You have to interweave the best practices with how, you have to meet them where they are effectively. You have to map it to there. That's where Glenn, Brian, Jackson and the team that have come from different areas of the Tri-Fi world. But to like add some weight to this, this is something that is river put out and I think it's foundational for institutions and folks that are looking at this space when they're building because until you see this, doesn't, it's not apparent or obvious that the market is the individual. So sure there's a billion or a million BTC in the ETFs. It's still a very small fraction institutions and corporates are coming in but the reality is 70%, 1.4 trillion of a two trillion dollar market Michael Tanguma (36:40.8) it's increasingly growing, sits with individuals that are at the margins of adopting better standards, which has been historically multi-state collaborative custody, now multi-institution custody. So in my opinion, it's just like Bitcoin's inevitability is the same way multi-institution ends up inevitable because it's just a fundamentally better product. Now, if individuals still are getting around holding a key, not giving up fully, there's an either or, we have a nice barbell strategy approach that we'll put out. But the reality is like California fires, south, east, floods, physical attack, like some portion of a stack should be in something that is redundant fault tolerance your family can get and then have financial products. And so if the individual sets that tone at the margin, then the institution's naturally start. So we're talking about some of the biggest because they're like, well wait, what if you're right? And if this is 1.4 trillion that we're leaving on the table because people don't want an ETF. you can naturally see how this integration starts to go into on-ramp institutional because we still have to bring the lens of the quality of research and products, but then at the end of the day, we have to infuse what Bitcoin's native properties are into that, or you just won't establish best-in-class products. So hopefully that kind of gives a lens of how at least I've built. infrastructure for about half a decade in the space, realize like there's been that mismatch of the individual not being able to get integrated into the institutional space. Brian Cubellis (38:06.517) It's a really good point on the individual sort of leading the charge in terms of adoption and setting the standard for what is the best way to secure this asset. I think it also ties into what Jackson said earlier, which I think was spot on around just the difference in time horizon and how that impacts incentives. and there's a couple of different flavors of this because if you think about sort of more incumbent traditional finance firms, part of their sort of incentive for, you know, just trying to map Bitcoin to what they know in terms of centralized custody, having a single point of failure, not really thinking it through long term. It's not overly surprising that they would take more of a how you articulated Jackson, like this is a trade. They're not thinking about it in terms of multi-generational wealth preservation as like we are. So on one hand, it's just sort of them just trying to repeat their processes and frameworks from other asset classes and map it to Bitcoin in a way that isn't fundamentally aligned with the ethos of the asset from a protocol perspective or even the correct time horizon on the allocation. so on the institutional side, think that's what you see. then, Michael, to your point, individuals are who adopted Multisig first. That's a critical learning. And the reason that occurred is because those individuals have a longer time horizon on the asset. It's because they've been around longer, they've understood it more deeply, and they know that they want to hold this for generations, pass it on to their kids, etc. So they know they can't just leave it on an exchange. Like that's the natural progression of an individual Bitcoiners. Like you buy some on Coinbase, you ultimately realize like that's not a great, you know, a great option for the long term. And so as you develop more of a long term thesis, you seek out those better solutions. And all of that is to say, we're still very early in the institutions and the allocators figuring out that this is a multi-generational wealth preservation store value asset. It's risk off, as you said, Jackson. And as they come up the curve on learning that, and I think everything that we're doing is hopefully going to catalyze that and make it happen faster. But they will then adopt those more secure and more reliable long-term solutions. Glenn Cameron (40:24.393) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (40:24.425) So for the financial advisor at a registered investment advisor or for the chief investment officer at a family office that's listening to this podcast currently, would one of you like to articulate what exactly OnRamp Institutional is? Because it's a very bespoke offering and it's anchored in research, education, content, and then bridging the gap to institutional investment solutions. But Glenn, maybe you could speak to specifically what is being offered there at a high level. Of course, if anyone ever wants to get in touch for a deeper conversation, they can reach out to us directly. But how would you categorize the main merits of what we're doing on the institutional side, Glenn? Glenn Cameron (41:05.035) Yeah. So like you said, it starts with education. I imagine, and in fact, I know, there a lot of investment professionals, investment consultants, portfolio managers, RIs and whatever, Bitcoin is so much in the atmosphere. It's sort of like that experience that I described to you with that fixed income portfolio manager where he told me how to hold out a bit. He was pumping his personal portfolio full of Bitcoin. I think there are a lot of people who are actually really interested in Bitcoin. those are the people that I would encourage. If you're working at a family office at a If you're an investment consultant, if you work at a sovereign wealth fund, who's somebody that is high caliber, they can talk to me in a way that kind of takes into account the way I see the world, right? Reach out to us and we can help you kind of get to the point where you really understand this asset. because that is kind of the first step, right? But then it's about operationalizing that, it's about custody, it's also about thinking about portfolio construction, rebalancing, trigger governance frameworks to do the rebalancing, all these kinds of things that when you're dealing with a new asset class, you have to rethink them. You have to rethink through how you do all of these things again. So, that's what we set up to do. We've obviously got the infrastructure. We've got the actual products and solutions. We've spot Bitcoin exposure through multi-institutional custody directly. We've also got the On-Ramp Bitcoin Trust, which is... Glenn Cameron (43:26.667) kind of a securitized version of what we do, where you can actually buy units in a trust, and each unit equals one Bitcoin, but you can buy fractional units. But then underlying it is the multi-institutional custody. So that multi-sig technology to ensure that the custodian is not where the risk lies, right? We've also got a Cayman Islands fund for offshore investors. So, and then we're providing, you know, more not so much on the institutional space yet, although we do have some ideas down the road of what we will be offering in terms of financial ancillary financial services, more on the private client side. You know, various things like Bitcoin collateralized loans, you know, and other interesting things. reveal over time. we see ourselves as kind of a private bank slash financial services firm for this kind of new world of finance because yeah. Michael Tanguma (44:37.474) Yeah, sorry. One thing to add that I think is very relevant here is it's relatively a simple strategy, but nobody has really done it in the traditional finance space or in the institutional space is a going very deep and the asset as everyone here knows and we've talked about for years that Bitcoin is its own asset class. Jackson brought it up. There's a nice chart that he's put together. If anybody wants it to share with their network in the trade fight space, because these are like concepts when you hit them, they kind of knock you out because you're like wait, Bitcoin's total market cap in digital assets is, I think most recent is like 55 to 60%. And the reference point is that the Magnificent 7 are 35 % of the S&P 500. And that's only seven entities where one asset is the basic asset class. So when you look at that. And so if it's the asset class, well then you have to, and it's hard to understand because we've all agreed there, then you have to go really deep and it's multidisciplinary. There is no like silver bullet. Like nobody's figured out what is the angle to educate and go because everyone has their own biases. Everyone has their own like initiatives, incentives. So being really simple is just focusing on that one thing. But it's been hard. It's been hard to raise capital for people to do. It's been hard for people to get aligned. It's hard for, I like to joke, like Wall Street folks coming into Bitcoin, it's like they read the forwards of the Bitcoin standard, but they never actually read the book. Like, I got this, and now they have like everything under the sun, and they are launching, you know, Solana, ETPs, and whatever. And so the problem with that is then you can never really get confidence and conviction with the institutional investor, because you're basically selling them everything under the sun, and anybody that has any brains knows that everything can't be valuable. Michael Tanguma (46:17.326) So you just kind of like lose the credibility or you only get a risk exposure, which this is to the point we've talked about a risk off asset if you can get the education. So that's where all this stuff stems from. The funny part about education is multi-institution custody financial services are all commodities at the end of the day. We're first, we'll be best, but like there's still commodities. You can go get the keys. can go build the products. What's not the commodity and the hardest thing on the planet earth to do. And I feel confident saying this cause I can't do any of it. It's what the team here does is put together the research and education because you have to have a deep understanding of the traditional finance space but then you also have a deep understanding of Bitcoin and you have to know how to meet them where they're at so it is relevant and then you can dig deeper because I share all that from all the experience and I remember having a great conversation with the Cartwright folks and Sam Glenn, it's like, we didn't actually hire you guys or partner with you guys solely for institutional products. It was the team, the research, and confidence and conviction, because the price inevitably crashes, and everyone in this sector we're talking about has historically been exit liquidity, because when they go partner with these other firms, without naming any, that offer everything under the sun, they don't have a fundamental grasp of what's happening, so when the price cuts in half, they can't explain why it wasn't Bitcoin. and they just end up losing their shirts and then they get sold. But we just have such a large toll addressable market that those people can leave, be burned, and then net new people come in. But that notion of when the price cuts in half or draws down 80%, that's the best time to buy in this asset, because it wasn't the thesis, it was something else happening, is like where all the money's to be made. And I think that's something very fundamental. Everything else is downstream of that, because if you don't get that part, then all the products won't make sense, because they're like, why would you do it that way? This is a risk asset. So hopefully, I know Brian, you probably have some stuff to share on that. Brian Cubellis (48:07.849) Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that point because it's a critical element of why we're so focused on education is for when the price isn't going up and to the right momentarily. It's for that time period when it feels like the bottom is falling out. And honestly, I think there's a chance that that sort of dynamic is even more acute going forward than it has been in the sense that I expect any subsequent bear market, like the Bitcoin sort of max drawdown has steadily decreased over the past several cycles. I would expect that to occur again in the next quote unquote bear market. And I wouldn't expect necessarily that same dampening of the drawdown for all assets ex Bitcoin. And part of that is just the ETFs, the the legitimization of Bitcoin specifically relative to all these other assets, Bitcoin strategic reserves at both the state and federal level, geopolitical game theory, mountain mining Bitcoin, like all of that is specific to Bitcoin. And so I think a year, two, three years from now, whenever there is some sort of correction, it's going to be way larger for everything ex Bitcoin is my sort of thinking on it. And so what you're describing, Michael, becomes even more important because if you're working with a financial advisor or an institution who says they give you the buffet of cryptocurrencies and they have you in a market cap weighted basket, yeah, you have most of your exposure to Bitcoin, but you're exposed to all this other stuff that's going to fall way harder and faster than Bitcoin. What does that conversation look like after that? Because as an advisor who's putting someone into, again, that basket of crypto, how do you then articulate like why you did that and why Bitcoin has been more resilient. so you're just then in this position to your point, Michael, where you lose all credibility. And so I think that's obviously why we're ideologically focused on Bitcoin specifically and also thinking about the education on, again, a much longer timeframe and saying, yeah, it's important to learn about Bitcoin now so you can get confidence in getting exposure. But where the education is really important is when Bitcoin is falling in price. Brian Cubellis (50:30.899) and you should actually be stepping in in greater size and not effectively scared out of your position because the rest of the crypto in your portfolio is falling even faster. And so that's, think, what we've seen in the past. As you mentioned, Michael, like these latecomers to a bull market who end up being exit liquidity because they buy the top and then they end up selling the bottom because they don't fundamentally understand what they own. And so, all that is to say, to me, it comes back to the incentives and being Bitcoin only and also just the long term orientation. think that's something that we've tried to hit on since day one. Michael Tanguma (51:10.092) Jackson, I don't want to steer your thunder because I think you may be transitioning here, but on the RIA side specifically, I suspect that the advisory research will be the first core for a large swath of firms in the sector that we're referring to. That could utilize what we just talked about because we've talked with them recently and anecdotally, we've just seen that the folks that have taken the conviction and been emboldened to be a little louder about being not even favorable, but just not stigmatizing the asset, have seen capital flows from their traditional like AUM books grow, even if the client has 1 % allocation. And so our aim is to open source this information and have relationships and depending on what is the best for the client, opening up, whether it's wide label collaboration, there's a lot of things we're doing in the works already. And I think that ultimately helps everyone. helps Bitcoin from an education perspective. It helps the RA grow assets and have that hint that they are not only favorable, but educated and thought leaders. It ultimately helps us because we get the products educated because we're convinced that as long as the market's educated, then our products will ultimately be something that they adopt in some form because they're just rooted in the practicality of how you want to build something in the space. So yeah, think that's just a good call to action of all of our stuff's open and available, but then ultimately if you want to integrate it in your business, it costs nothing. We can help with that. Glenn Cameron (52:42.624) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (52:42.783) Yeah, well, Michael Michael did steal my thunder. So a little bit salty. No, but actually, I think it's a great point to call out because what we've seen, what Brian described is the inverse of what we see for RIAs that are adopting Bitcoin in the sense that those who are being distracted with other crypto assets and will have to pay the price due to the lack of conviction over the long term, especially in bear markets, the opposite is true. Michael Tanguma (52:45.486) Ha! Glenn Cameron (52:45.908) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (53:12.415) with RIAs that prioritize Bitcoin. For all the reasons we just discussed, because Bitcoin is held 70 % by individuals, those individuals have come into some pretty serious amount of money over the course of the past decade. And these are people that have no intention of selling at least sizable amounts of Bitcoin. Maybe they'll sell some to meet other financial goals or lifestyle goals that they have. But What this allows for is for businesses to tap into and be a partner to the individuals who hold the bulk sum of the Bitcoin at the moment. And so if you are able to speak the same language, if you're able to offer financial planning, portfolio management with a Bitcoin first or Bitcoin centric view of the asset class, you're going to do incredibly well over the long term as a registered investment advisor. We've already seen this, as Michael alluded to, we've been speaking to a handful of RAs since the year kicked off here. And one of them mentioned that their growth in 2024, I think was double all of what they had seen in the previous five years of their asset center management. And that was because they came out with a strong stance and favorability toward Bitcoin and they have and they're Bitcoiners themselves. And so they've had to navigate this asset for themselves and their families. And so that puts them in a very great position because most of the firms, at least here in the U.S., have taking a very passive approach to Bitcoin. They don't speak to it to their clients. They don't have conviction. They don't have education. They may only speak to it on an unsolicited basis when the clients bring it up to them and then they don't really know how to broach the topic. So there's a huge gap here, which means there's an immense opportunity. And so I really do encourage people. know how a lot of people in the Bitcoin space are. They're looking for ways to contribute to the space. And it doesn't necessarily mean you need to... start a company or join a Bitcoin only company, there are opportunities to push Bitcoin forward as an asset class within your organization, whether you're a registered investment advisor or you're at a broker dealer or you're a corporate treasury, family office, et cetera. There are plenty of ways to do this. And that's what we're focused on here at OnRamp. First and foremost is being your partner, helping you to have the education, the resources, the access to the team to put you in the best spot to succeed for the long term. And so Jackson Mikalic (55:29.225) I think that's really the Bitcoin growth story for RIAs. Glenn, if you want to add anything there, please feel free. But I also want to make sure that we touch on the family office report as well. We could maybe pull up the executive summary and chat through that if you think that might be a good idea. Glenn Cameron (55:44.533) Yeah, sure. I mean, I think sometimes for those less familiar with Bitcoin, it may sound like from an outside perspective that we're like sort of arguing over basketball teams or football teams. No, they're the best. No, they're the best. You know what I mean? But what people don't understand is that if you've done like, know, thousands of hours of research into this, right, and you really understand what this as it is, and then you compare it to these other things that are, you know, they're parading around as if they're the real thing, right? Then you know that that's, you know, it's fantasy land. you know, if you've got a financial advisor, right, and you've got... Bitcoin and Polkadot and Cardano and Solana and everything. You want a financial advisor who turns around to you and says, no, let me explain to you what's really going on here. You don't want a financial advisor who doesn't know anything about any of this. You know, we read a survey, think Bitwise put it out, where they surveyed 400 financial advisors. And they said that 70 % of their clients are asking them about cryptocurrency. And then I'd say it's a small percentage that can actually have a very knowledgeable conversation about what's going on here. But financial advisory firms are businesses after all. I think if people are looking for a way to understand what is going on here and why 70 % of their clients are asking them about this stuff, that's what OnRamp Institutional is set up to do is to get those people familiar with what's actually happening here. Brian Cubellis (58:02.261) Yeah, the other element that I think is interesting about what we can provide and offer on the advisory side from an education standpoint is, you know, similar to like, you know, Glenn was a Bitcoiner within his institution, within his firm. And this is true all across the country, all across the globe. There are Bitcoiners at institutions, at these entities who know they need to do something, but they need to convince whether it's an investment committee, a board of directors or even just a flat team and their CIO. They need to have some credible external source come basically verify everything they're saying and not come off as the crazy Bitcoin guy at their firm because to date, that's probably what they've been. They've been the crazy Bitcoin guy at their firm. I was this when I worked at a bank years ago. And so you need that external party to come in and provide basically that air cover to say, no, I'm not crazy. Here's some guys who are thinking about this in a very rational, practical way. have differentiated solutions and they're helping us. They're willing to help us get up the curve on this and give us all the resources we need. And so that's, I think, a very unique part of what we can offer is that sort of air cover as a service, as we like to call it, where if you are sitting at an institution or at a firm, and you understand Bitcoin and you know you need to do something, you need to get your firm up the curb, that's where we can help. We can help be that air cover, we can help be that trusted resource that you can lean on to help convince the other people at your firm. Michael Tanguma (59:40.524) Yeah, I guess one thing to call out because I think it's important like I was having discussion earlier this week there's a lot of people that want to jump in the space and it's really hard because there's not a lot of like It's it where there's principles integrity There's a lot of things that you can make money in crypto and digital assets But ultimately like it's it is a zero sum game in my mind because somebody and eventually it's like where does the yield come from? Where does the appreciation come from? Well somebody eventually like all these cycles. There's a different asset is a positive sum game. We all win. Asset appreciates, purchasing power increases, all the things we know. So I think it's important, the Bitcoin notion. And you mentioned Glenn, the bitwise stuff, and those guys have been cool to put out the notion of being a digital asset focused and all that, because that's what initially got them as differentiated before Wall Street jumped in. But what would you say, like if you're sitting in the driver's seat on a pension side and you talk to them, you're like, look, I'm looking at your firm, it's different, it's differentiated because you're native, but then you see somebody from a leadership perspective say, like, that they were okay not only to post this, but put somebody in 100 % allocation to Ethereum. Glenn Cameron (01:00:57.255) I mean, so you know what's interesting after we put the British pension scheme into Bitcoin the you know, the mainstream press went to town and wrote a whole lot of hit pieces saying essentially accusing us of gambling with people's pension money and all this kind of stuff, right? But when you know what you're talking about because those journalists don't know what they're talking about. They're you know, parrots for know, stuff they've heard somewhere, But then you see this, what you just pointed out, Michael, these people do not understand what they're doing. Because how can I say that with such conviction? Because I know what is actually going on here. I've done the work, I've done thousands of hours to get to the point where I understand what I'm talking about. I can explain in depth at the technology level. the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin, and why they are fundamentally different assets. And if you are, as a financial advisor, portfolio manager, or whatever, making a decision to ignore Bitcoin and go into 100 % Ethereum, it means you have not done the work, and therefore you are gambling. So if any of the journalists want to write a headpiece, that would be a good one. Brian Cubellis (01:02:20.519) They definitely haven't done the work and then it's also possible that they just personally own a bunch of Ethereum. So yeah, they're gonna make the allocation to Ethereum for their firm. Glenn Cameron (01:02:27.871) Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. mean... Michael Tanguma (01:02:31.148) Yeah, and think the main point there is there is value to not putting, I don't know the best analogy, it's like, do you want to put the buffet of sweets or do you want to just go to the place that has the rib eye and you know you're gonna get the good stuff and you're not gonna have to deal with the temptation of the rest? And historically that's what has existed is you have the way to get exposure but then you have everything else thrown on your website and then people see it and there's obviously unit bias. So I think it's just like there is this fun Glenn Cameron (01:02:32.501) Far much confusing. Michael Tanguma (01:03:01.072) notion of the focus to your point helps from credibility, but then it also helps from just like not letting people get, because we're all human and we, if you don't haven't done the thousand hours, it's very easy to get a headline or something else that comes out. And there's gonna be a lot of it this next cycle. And then you chase the shiny object. And that's part of like, you know, financial services and Bitcoin, you're almost like guardians of the individual's Bitcoin for better or worse. And it's not just the custodial relationship, it's providing signal to protect the assets, whether it's how you lend against it. in the collateral to principal ratios and how you need to have segregated accounts or if they're gonna go into some other trade that looks like Bitcoin denominated but it's know, ARB that's gonna smooth out the volatility. There's all these sneaky ways since the beginning of Bitcoin that takes your dollars that would have gone into Bitcoin or your actual Bitcoin and gives you less. Glenn Cameron (01:03:58.411) Yeah. Michael Tanguma (01:03:58.414) And that's something that's important to think through when you have an asset manager because I promise you people will be focused and then it's very easy to get distracted from Bitcoin's return profile. Glenn Cameron (01:04:08.511) Yeah, even, well your point there, it even ties back to the custody, right? Because if you're, know, the buffet of sweets, like you mentioned, right? Then you're not trying to custody 38 different assets, right? And so you're gonna take shortcuts and you're gonna use, you know, like when we were searching for vehicle to get Bitcoin exposure. And I mentioned I was looking for multi-sig. We came across asset managers who looked like they had multi-sig, but when you buried a bit deeper, they were using multi-party computation. So they're not three keys, there's one key. They're that key. And there are all these sort of vulnerabilities in the technology, right? And so it goes to your point, Michael, about you're focused on one thing. You have deep, deep expertise. You're not trying to be everything to everyone and basically charge fees on everything. You are solely focused and you're an expert in one area. You're like in the Tradfire equivalent, you're a mid-market private equity buyout firm. You're a specialist. You're not, and we also do bonds and we do bit of venture capital and by the way, we do a bit of digital assets and everything that anybody wants to buy, you've got a bit of something to sell them. So, yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:05:47.519) Yeah, and people want to work with specialists as well. I I saw this in the diligence seat vetting managers on the private asset side, the hedge fund side. Generalists are a thing of the past. People want to work with folks who specialize very deeply on one thing. And so naturally that's what we do here at OnRamp with Bitcoin. I want to make sure we cover, because we said that we would earlier in the episode, just the family office report. I also do think it ties into Michael, what you spoke to just about being a guardian for capital family offices, whether they're managing their own family's capital or they're an investment team to protect another family's capital, they are in a position of guarding and preserving wealth and helping to grow it for the long term. so Glenn, I know the report is exhaustive. There's 40 pages and then there's an executive summary, which funny enough is still 14 pages long. So there's a lot of meat on the bone there, but Glenn Cameron (01:06:41.813) Yeah. Jackson Mikalic (01:06:44.821) Maybe what you can do, and Brian, I you helped out as well, we'd love to hear both of your thoughts, just very high level about what folks could expect to see in there if they were curious and wanted to check out the full report. Glenn Cameron (01:07:00.203) So, mean, so it goes back to what we discussed earlier. Every different type of investor has particular investment objectives and constraints, right? So a family office is a good example, They essentially, in many cases, wanna leave the money in the family office. to their great-great-grandchildren. That is very different to somebody, an individual, say, who is 60 and is going to retire next year and is likely going to live to the mid-80s. So 24 years versus potentially hundreds of years. Also, family offices tend to be people who've already made a lot of money. So there's a focus on preservation, right? Although, you know, they're looking for balance between, probably the balance is kind of skewed towards preservation, but in real terms. So inflation adjusted. And then, you know, they will have, to varying extents, a skew towards growth and capital appreciation, right? At the same time, the family is living off those assets, so they need some amount of liquidity and it's going to be different for every family. What percentage of the portfolio they want to draw down. There'll be unique circumstances in each family office and the report is really trying to look at the, sort of generalize about certain things that. family offices will be trying to achieve and the way they think about the world. But then you kind of put that sort of idealized family office in the macroeconomic environment we find ourselves in. Credit spreads are at historic lows. So we've got the tightest credit spreads in history right now. We've got equities. Glenn Cameron (01:09:27.497) that are at their richest valuations in history, I mean, way more expensive than 1929, right? Only been expensive once in history was at the peak of the dark-com bubble. And I'm using the cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio, because that's kind of a nice stable valuation metric to make this point. You know, every asset in the traditional finance space is overvalued. And then you look at the fiscal situation that governments around the world, particularly in advanced economies, find themselves. Just, I mean, more debt in the system than at the end of the Second World War. And history tells us, right, I mean not just the last 50 years, the last 500 years, tells us when the system gets to this point, what happens next, right? And the way it happens is through currency debasement, Financial repression and currency debasement, right? So to hedge against that, what have you got on your menu? a whole lot of overvalued assets, right? And then the hardest money the world has ever seen, right? But now you've also got these constraints and objectives and whatever, and it's like, how do you think about putting a portfolio together, right? Where you get to take advantage of this generational asset, right? But at the same time, meet all the objectives and constraints of the family office. So that's kind of what we try to do in the report is kind of give some insight to family officers that are, you know, thinking about the asset. You know, if you Google Bitcoin and family officers, you're not going to find a lot of stuff. So we thought it was about time that somebody put all of that thinking together. Brian Cubellis (01:11:43.531) Yes, it's really well said, Glenn. Not a whole lot to add to that other than, as I mentioned at the top, we're going to be doing these types of reports or sort of guides, if you will, for all different distinct cohorts of institutional allocators. And part of the reason we started with family offices, that was purposeful in the sense that, generally speaking, family offices can move a little bit quicker than some other institutional allocators. The diligence sort of cycle tends to be a little bit shorter just given more majority control over the decision making. And so we thought it was logical to start with family offices. But stay tuned, we're gonna be dripping out these reports over the next several weeks and months. And really excited about this first one. Jackson Mikalic (01:12:32.745) Yeah, excellent work there on the report. For people who do want to just follow along with reports as we continue to publish them, I would encourage you to check out the OnRamp Research newsletter, or you can subscribe on our homepage. So I think we're coming to a close here. There's maybe two things, and if the group wants to add more, we could do that. But two things I wanted to call out would be first, we have the inauguration of President Trump next week on Monday. So First, I would like to start there and hear from the group. What do we think about Trump coming into office and implications for not only the US, but for the globe? we don't need to go too deep on it. I'm sure we'll cover quite a bit next week as well. But any bold predictions or anything that investors and entrepreneurs should be thinking about as we head into next week? Michael Tanguma (01:13:27.362) I think the biggest one, at least on, it's an extension of what we've talked about here is the integration of more Bitcoin into traditional finance. saw the rumors, I think executive order from first day around repealing the SAB 121 rule around the liabilities for banks that have kept them from custody in the asset. I think that's important here because There was also in parallel that same week, the FDIC whistleblower coming out where they have basically kneecapped all banks to, they've wanted to adopt this. know NYDIG was integrated with FIS and a few others to adopt Bicel and Custody, which they basically again kneecapped. So we know there's the demand there. So now we get a friendly administration and not only is it all let's go, but it's also now these conversations that all these firms are folks like us that get this and they're gonna go to their stakeholders and say, like, let's pause real quick before we go do this MPC fire blocks, whatever, it all looks the same. Maybe we can have something differentiated. Obviously we're not gonna get all of that. We're gonna get a very small sliver, but that's the start of a process in developing a standard. So that's one of the most exciting things is just more total, larger total addressable market to adopt better standards to start. And then ultimately when the counterparty risk and all the things Glenn talked about end up happening, that's when it'll become apparent why you do things the right way. Yeah. Glenn Cameron (01:14:52.479) Yeah. I was just going to say, it's worth mentioning that we actually wrote a paper on all of this called Sovereign Game Theory. So, you know, have a look around for that and we explain essentially what our thesis on what this new administration plans to do around stable coins and Jackson Mikalic (01:14:53.695) I was just going to say as well, go ahead Glen, you got it. Brian Cubellis (01:15:19.947) Yeah, we'll put that one in the show notes for sure. To answer your question, Jackson, I think, I don't know, the past few weeks and the next few days kind of feels like this calm before the storm. Cynthia Lamas had a tweet I think earlier today or yesterday that was something to the effect of like, shit's about to get wild. And then she kind of walked that back afterwards being like, guys, calm down. Like, you know, just take one, you know, one step at a time. And then the other interesting headline. Glenn Cameron (01:15:40.639) you Brian Cubellis (01:15:48.545) from this week was, forget, I don't know where it came from specifically, but there was a report that the US government is now signaling that they would return the 120,000 Bitcoin seized from Bitfinex to Bitfinex. And that's kind of a, I was surprised to see that development because I think. Michael Tanguma (01:16:07.938) We'll seize from BiffinEx hackers, not from BiffinEx. Brian Cubellis (01:16:11.073) Correct, yes. Meaning it's rightfully Bitfinex's Bitcoin would be the takeaway there. But it's interesting because I think up until this point, the way the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has been talked about, we've just been quoting this 200k number of Bitcoin that the US quote unquote has already. And so now if you're decreasing that by 120,000 Bitcoin. Michael Tanguma (01:16:14.478) Yeah, yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:16:36.699) In my mind, that sort of accelerates the likelihood or increases the likelihood that we actually do get an SBR pretty early on in the administration and likely buying more Bitcoin to basically recoup back to that number that everyone was quoting. So just an interesting development that I I genuinely didn't expect that to happen. I thought we would just keep those. But yeah, we'll see what happens. Glenn Cameron (01:16:58.795) Do you think it's the outgoing administration who's putting that out there? Brian Cubellis (01:17:05.975) I don't know. I couldn't find exactly where it came from. So, unclear. Michael Tanguma (01:17:12.578) I think the bigger theme from like this past week and what came out was just all the banks stepping in. Because at the end of the day, the banks are the window into the individual's finances. And we had Signum in Switzerland come out with a big valuation and raise. There was the largest bank in Italy. I think doing two things here was testing out their proprietary trading desk, but also I think purchasing a million on their own. We obviously are all closer to seeing infrastructure in larger TradFi firms since last year. Start to place their chips on the table when it comes to the bets they're gonna make with infrastructure partners. So I think that's the most fascinating is like now when you have the extension of the person's relationship and pockets and funnel of where dollars come from turn on. and a friendly regulatory administration in the leading capital markets of the world, you know, what does that look like? It's gonna be fun. Glenn Cameron (01:18:11.349) Yeah, and just free up the industry, right? To innovate and to, you know, I mean, it's the next four years, think, I mean, obviously, the next four years, we're gonna see amazing things. Yeah, it's guaranteed and, know. Jackson Mikalic (01:18:31.007) Yeah, my left side of the bell curve take is that Trump said that we were going to have fun playing with our bitcoins at the conference in Nashville. So the article I had pulled up earlier from Bitcoin News had him with two thumbs up, which is encouraging for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. But in all seriousness, it's exciting to see. Michael, I was trying to pull some of these articles up while we were talking about them, but my computer was just crapping out. Glenn Cameron (01:18:39.051) you Glenn Cameron (01:18:47.061) you Jackson Mikalic (01:19:00.393) Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do so. But it's encouraging to see that we are really just at the start of traditional finance stepping into the ring here. The million dollar initial allocation by that Italian bank, the name is escaping me right now, I think was just part of their broader like hundred billion dollar securities portfolio. So we're really just starting to scratch the surface and this will be happening globally. And so really excited for what's to come this year. It's only the 16th of January, so we have just about the entire year ahead of us. It's going to be a big one. And then maybe to close the episode out, I know we got a hard stop here. We have to do a single point of failure of the week. I did see something, yeah, did see something earlier. I'm not gonna try to pull it up because of technical issues, but it's the idea that the... Michael Tanguma (01:19:44.43) Do you have one? I Jackson Mikalic (01:19:54.571) hackers are getting much more sophisticated with particularly Google authenticator. So now people are calling out, you got this one too. Yeah, real quick. One thing is like hackers and social engineering attacks are getting much more sophisticated. So what people are advocating for are all these like really convoluted and technical ways to manage your Bitcoin assets. But in reality, most people who Michael Tanguma (01:20:01.774) I don't know if it's the same one, but maybe we're close. Jackson Mikalic (01:20:19.425) have chose to leave their Bitcoin on an exchange have done so probably because they are intimidated by the alternative of managing their own assets and messing something up. So really a call to action for anyone who has a sizable allocation for them on an exchange, that is a single point of failure. These attacks are getting increasingly sophisticated. Like the attackers were using Google domains and really making it look like they were reaching out from Google is actually very impressive. And so you can imagine if you're someone who's not that tech savvy and you're getting bombarded with alerts and you have 5, 10, 20 Bitcoin on an exchange, you may act to protect that without really thinking it through. So just be vigilant. There's a lot of risks out there. Michael Tanguma (01:21:02.51) and This is really sad to be honest because we talked about asymmetry and information like the hard part is boomers have all the wealth they're going to step in the names that they know are for better or worse or Coinbase they're going to go to Coinbase they're going to make the allocation and then everyone knows that their mother their mother-in-law is horrible with credentials and passwords and they just type things in especially when they get the call we talk to people all day long they get this so we get like you know self-custody all the things that everyone deals with for their personal that's perfectly fine, we'll... plan to work with you at some point. But for the family members that you're concerned with, like we're going to have a lot of interesting things that roll out that they don't necessarily, if they want their first exposure to buy Bitcoin, they want multi-institution custody, like we'll happily chat with them to at least get them on pace. And even if they end up with Coinbase, there's a lot of things that Jackson just referred to where you can set up to prevent the fact, because it's not that Coinbase will get hacked. That's obviously an issue. It's that you potentially get social engineer or hacked and there is no recourse. losses and it happens all day long. Jackson Mikalic (01:22:09.129) Yeah. And so as the number goes up, these risks will just continue to increase as well. So just pay attention, be vigilant, seek out more redundant solutions, whether it's for family or for yourself. We're here to help you. We'll close the loop on OnRamp Institutional for this week. Congrats again to the team here on the launch. Glenn, it's great to officially have you on board here. For anyone who does want to get in touch on our institutional side of the business, you can just reach out directly to any of us for that matter. whether it's email or LinkedIn, but you can also just hit the website, schedule a consultation or send us a note and we'll be happy to get in touch with you. anything else I missed before I wrap it up here, I think we covered the bases. Brian Cubellis (01:22:51.531) That was good. Yeah, welcome Glenn. Michael Tanguma (01:22:51.586) Glenn. Glenn Cameron (01:22:51.883) Excellent. Thank you. Jackson Mikalic (01:22:52.757) All right. Thanks, everyone. Brian Cubellis (01:22:56.087) Thanks, boys.