Why Institutions Still Don’t Get Bitcoin—And What Will Change That

[Music] Let's be clear, Bitcoin is an international asset. We are spending like drunken sailors. Bitcoin is the only economic entity where the supply is unaffected by the demand. If you want to preserve your wealth, you have to convert that currency into an asset that's scarce, desirable, portable, durable, and maintainable. Okay, welcome back to Scarce Assets. We have an interesting conversation lined up today because we are joined by Bob Griffin who is the founder of Cactus Peak Digital and a principle at 21 Peaks and I'm also joined by Michael Tanguma who's the CEO of On-Ramp as my co-host today. Gentlemen, nice to see you both. Bob, thank you for joining. How are you guys doing today? Doing great. Thanks for having us Jackson. Thank you. appreciate it. I'm excited to uh join Scarce Assets. The show's been running for like over a year and uh it's my first time joining, so excited for the conversation. Yeah, you managed to weasle your way into another on-ramp podcast, Michael. Yeah. And so, Bob, I know um I know we talked about this offline, but you said you weren't going to do this interview unless people rated the show five stars. That's exactly right. Okay. So, I just want to make sure everyone heard that. Unless we get some fivestar ratings on your favorite podcast player and you like and comment on the YouTube. Bob wasn't going to do the interview. So Bob, appreciate you carving out the time. Hopefully the other side honors uh that request for you or individuals individuals like Bob. we uh Bob and us and our team connected and Bob has a fascinating background what he's working on um pre in the digital asset space and then post in in the middle of it and anybody that's been close to the industry with this new administration scene um just the amount of traction and energy that's been focused on it and trying to figure out what are the products services and how do they educate their client base. So super excited and grateful for Bob to join and I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. you generally know they're going to be interesting when you get off calls and they're really fascinating from a personal perspective and you're like, "Well, [ __ ] maybe the market should be able to hear it as well." Uh, yeah. So, pumped for this one. Yeah, absolutely. And so, thanks again, Bob. Maybe just to tee things up before uh handing the mic over to you. So, you have over 20 years combined in traditional finance and digital asset experience. I think you'd mentioned about 17 years in traditional finance, a lot on the institutional allocator side as well. Yeah. And so really excited to dive into your background and what we're seeing because something we've talked about on the show is that Bitcoin and digital assets really are only say about a year into true institutional adoption. It was really hard. There were ver virtually no investment solutions for allocators to get access prior to the ETFs. The ETFs have changed things and then of course now with a change of tune with the Trump administration, more regulatory clarity. Yeah. It it's totally different environment. So maybe just to level set, Bob, could you walk us through your background over the past 20 or so years? You know, what were some of the key highlights? What was the path that you took that ultimately led you to the space that you're in now? Yeah, it's a great question and I I again, thank you for having me on the show. This is this is fun and um you know, hopefully we can have you know, a really good dialogue here. by way of level setting. Um, as you mentioned, I've been in the traditional space for a very long time. Um, you know, I I entered the space kind of late in my career. I think I was 30 uh when I first joined an investment bank in Chicago. And uh I was lucky enough that this particular investment bank um they they didn't want to hire existing finance folks because they felt that a lot of finance people coming out of you know New York schools and the Ivies uh were not trained properly ironically enough and so they wanted kind of a a blank slate and so I joined that firm uh middle market broker dealer investment bank in Chicago and you know I I was died and born in born and died in in fixed income. That's where I sort of cut my teeth and um from there you know it it was an interesting transition. You know, we went from gosh, a long time ago back in the day, you know, we would have, you know, bonds for sale basically and there was a bond of the day and we as salespeople would just take this bond and pound the phones and get anybody and everybody to look at it and buy it, right? And and that was a really inefficient way to build a portfolio, right? because we weren't selling things that could potentially impact the end buyer. We were we were doing it in a way that made us the most money. So the the alignment of interest was really was really sort of messed up while I was there. And this was this was pretty groundbreaking I would say. Uh we decided collectively to focus on the end user and build a platform by where we could take in their portfolio and their structure and their allocation and actually sell them things that matter uh into the portfolio. And that way it was sort of a a a a friendly relationship that added alpha to what they were doing on their end. Plus, we got to make a little money doing it as well. That turned into me leaving and going to a large pension fund. So, so when I was at the investment bank, I helped I helped a pension uh build a fairly substantial book of business and uh so I went to that pension, ended up managing those assets. I think it I think at the height of that was close to a billion dollars. I think we we hit I don't know I hit 950 million in that in that portfolio and those were assets really earmarked for illlquid investments that we were deploying in private equity infrastructure uh VC investments and things like that. And so from there um while I was at the pension fund we would hire outside managers to manage lots of different strategies as you can imagine. I mean we were 10 billion I think at the time. As a result of that I went and and joined uh Janice Henderson which is in Denver and I was part of their fixed income team. Spent 67 years with them. Traveled all over the world uh with Janice Henderson um and met with some of the largest if not the largest allocators globally and and that was a super fun experience. And you know, at this point, I'm 17 years into my my finance career. And um through a merger, I my number was up and I get I get let go. And so I'm I'm at an inflection point, right, in my career. And I, you know, I don't have a great taste in my mouth from traditional finance. I mean, it's it's it's enough that I'm considering leaving TRFI at this point. And at about the same time, I'm having coffee with somebody in Denver and I hear this conversation about Bitcoin behind me and I it sort of jogs this thing in my head and I'm like, I've got to call Buddy who's who's in Bitcoin. And I did. I didn't even leave the coffee shop. I called him directly from the coffee shop. We ended up having a two and a half hour conversation, I think it was, about Bitcoin. Uh they had just launched a digital assets hedge fund. I knew nothing about Bitcoin. I knew a little bit about Bitcoin. I had kind of followed it since 2017 or so. And um long story short, I ended up joining the hedge fund in uh July of 2019. And that's where my Bitcoin and crypto experience launched and I've been in the space ever since. And so I'll stop there and see if you guys have any follow-up questions. Yeah, thank you, Bob. Appreciate you running through that. I'm curious what what were they discussing at that coffee shop that got you to pick up the phone and call somebody about Bitcoin? Yeah. And I wish I would have met the guy. Um but it was it was a guy that was totally a Bitcoiner. Uh he from my my naive perspective, he really understood Bitcoin. Again, I wish I could go revisit that conversation in detail so I would I would know exactly what he was saying, but he was pitching a couple on owning Bitcoin. And I don't know if he had a fund. I don't know if he represented, you know, some exchange. I I have no idea what the context was, but it was just this very active sort of engaging discussion around Bitcoin. And again, it was enough to jog my memory to my buddy who is who is now a a partner of mine at at the hedge fund. And you know, we've been together ever since. So, yeah, it was it was just one of those random things where Bitcoin was being talked about in the in public. And do you remember the coffee shop? Uh, it was downtown Denver. I don't remember the name. We were sitting outside. So, it was a beautiful spring day and I was we were sitting outside, you know, enjoying coffee, you know, in the spring as you can in in Denver. So, yeah. Well, maybe somebody listening there I mean it realistically could there's not there's only so many of us uh that are out sitting uh you know at coffee shops you know trying to educate individuals especially back in 2019 but also Denver's just turned into a big hot bed uh yeah of activity in the Bitcoin space firm and and this firm we have a lot I had a lot of colleagues that lived there and there's the new Denver uh Bitcoin space um so there's probably somebody that's tied to that network that was out there but it also was interesting because Um, we were talking internally about most people's hit rate on educating or getting somebody to see what you heard is non-existent. Like maybe one to two conversions, right? And so it really ties into you can't really explain this stuff to or like really get somebody past peak interest unless they're ready. Like they just have to from a so social, economic, or life position where they have the time to just think a little bit deeper around it. Because you can imagine being at the pension firm or another firm you were at, hearing that conversation means nothing because you're so busy thinking about all the things you have to do in your day-to-day, but you had some space to breathe. Yeah. So, I always find that interesting. And I'm curious like there was something I felt that was um insinuated in the fact that you didn't jump into trify until 30. So curious like what you were doing before then and then what were the good and bad parts of the pension experience because I feel like that's what's that primed you for that moment to be able to hear like well crap maybe this is something interesting because everything else before this wasn't as interesting. Yeah I have a really interesting so we'll we'll talk about 30 and frier and then we'll we'll jump into your your your other question there. You know I I grew up uh going to a Christian camp in upstate New York. um as a high schooler and as a college student and I I worked in yeah I guess it was eight summers I worked in their kitchen and I learned how to cook basically and even though I was getting a business degree you know I was up in the mountains of upstate New York loved it and when I graduated from college they they offered me a job and here I am a single guy love the mountains love being outdoors and I jumped on it and I actually became a chef so I went to um the American Culinary Federation's apprenticeship program and ended up managing an an inn in in upstate New York. And I spent the better part of my my 20s running a business, frankly. And I think that experience was invaluable. Um I didn't know enough to be scared, right? You you're in your 20s. And so I just I just went for it and you know it it taught me a lot about business, about being a human being, about taking care of others, about communication and and you know there was there was a lot of satisfaction in in taking care of people on vacation and giving them a good experience. Um, I don't know if I'm gonna answer this question, Michael, perfectly, so correct me if I'm wrong, but in terms of the institutional side, what I wanted to share is that what what I was taught early on was, and I'm I'm a curious person by nature. So, I think that helps. But when we at the pension fund, you know, institutional investments, pensions, endowments, you know, that side of the institutional space, it can it tends to be very copy, right? if if you've got a couple thought leaders in the space, they do something, everybody follows. And so we were challenged and [Music] um you we our our job was to go out literally globally and find unique and differentiated sources of alpha that the whole world was not participating in yet. And so, you know, when I when I was challenged post the coffee shop meeting, you know, and I talked to my buddy who was in Bitcoin and he's like, "I'll teach you everything you need to know." I took it upon myself to take a break and spend time. My wife thought I was crazy, by the way. Um, and I spent the better part of five months studying Bitcoin. And so it was that process, you know, I think that I learned in the institutional space that gave me not only did I take a breath myself, but it was the curiosity and that search for new and unique differentiating strategies that I that I grew up with at the pension fund that led me to Bitcoin. And I think you're exactly right, Michael. I was I was open and I was just enough jaded from Wall Street uh that there had to be a better there had to be a better paradigm and and that I believe Bitcoin is that that new paradigm. Yeah, it's super fascinating. I mean, being in the space for a while and talking to individuals, that 2020 moment was a lot for folks similar to yourself, and they usually liken it to the amount of dollars that were printed and all the different stimulus that hit the market, but the reality was it was because they had time because everyone got locked in a quasi box. And so, it was really the fact that they could jump off that. And then the other aspect that you referenced as being invaluable is really important. I think why institutional investors and traditional like Tradfi has been so lost in the sauce of crypto versus Bitcoin is you had to run a business. You had to touch the inputs and outputs. When you run a restaurant, it's the most dynamic. My wife was in hospitality works with restaurants. So kind of know like how much they feel the pain specifically today when it comes to inflation. And so that like intertwined is in your understanding of just like closest to the market. So independent of going to the pensions, you still had that there where most people let leave college, go directly into Tratify, go to the world that you were in. And so they never can like empathize with the end state of the market and that there's a true problem underlying. Um, so it's super fascinating to hear. I'll tell you another thing. You know what's interesting, and I I'm going to make light of this to some degree, but this is sincere on the other side of the coin, which is when you're an allocator of large large pools of capital, um you have to pay attention to the Fed, right? And and there's there's a meme, don't fight the Fed. And we used to say this all the time, right? You know, when we're making an investment, how close to the money spet is it? Right? because if the the closer you are to the money spet the better that investment is going to do and and that meme kind of has some truth to it and it's it's sort of a sad reality and so you know when I was looking at Bitcoin and trying to understand it I'm like man this is this is a paradigm shift because now you have an open distributed you know um free market asset that could disintermediate a lot of a lot of those those barriers to entry for Wall Street. Um and and that's why I think it was so interesting and and you know it's it's available to anybody with a smartphone and a Wi-Fi, right? And and so I I think that's still a big a big misunderstanding at on Wall Street. Wall Street's about creating new products and putting people into new products, right? Well, Bitcoin is the product. You don't need special access from Wall Street to get Bitcoin. And I I think, you know, we're early days of people understanding that that that narrative. Bob, could you walk us through a bit in terms of 2019 to present just in terms of how your understanding of Bitcoin compared to the broader digital asset space has evolved over time? because I know there's going to be people listening out there who are still trying to discern how does Bitcoin stand alone y from the rest of the digital asset space and then I think one of the big challenges that exists as we think about institutional adoption of Bitcoin is to your point Wall Street is always looking to create product right and so there's an extent to how much product you can create around Bitcoin so naturally these other products get developed around other cryptocurrencies or digital assets however you want to categorize them So, I'd be curious to hear how your understanding and thought process has evolved over time, Bitcoin versus digital assets, and then how should other allocators that are listening to this show maybe learn from your journey? Yeah, Jackson, great question. And I will admit, you know, my my philosophy around crypto non- Bitcoin is still evolving. So, let me let me kind of give you my trajectory. um started with Bitcoin as as well, I guess that's not a fair statement. I guess it doesn't always start with Bitcoin uh for people, but for me in particular, it started with Bitcoin. Um again, I thought this was a massive paradigm shift in in in finance. And and again, I have to say this, it wasn't because of price go up. It was because of its ability to disrupt Wall Street. And so with that vein in mind um and seeing firsthand how inefficient and frankly broken Wall Street is, you know, most of Wall Street is using 40-year-old tech that it was ripe for disruption. And you know, Bitcoin is is not necessarily built for for speed. And you know I you know in my sort of path thinking beyond Bitcoin I I thought you know Bitcoin is going to be a really a really important dynamic uh in this new financial paradigm. But there are probably going to be other solutions that emerge other protocols that emerge that can do things in a more efficient manner uh on Wall Street. And so I I started to sort of research this narrative, believe this narrative that, you know, some of the altcoin projects could could lead to a sensible DeFi kind of a platform where, you know, you could you could disrupt disrupt Wall Street. It's a little bit like the late 1990s, early 2000s in the tech bubble, right? I mean, everybody was just throwing stuff against the wall to see what would stick. Well, after the crash, you know, we saw what the good projects were. My view has always been, you know, maybe there's a dozen interesting projects, maybe it's even less than that, beyond Bitcoin that could help shape sort of this new paradigm called Wall Street, and we do it in in a in a blockchain sort of distributed way. But the more I spend in that space, the less confident I am with that narrative. And it I I I try to find myself coming back. The pendulum is swinging back to sort of Bitcoin only. Um and maybe we get some layer twos on top of Bitcoin. And maybe we get some other solutions with Lightning and other other sort of protocols that that utilize Bitcoin in a different way. I don't know. I So I'll answer it. I'll end this way. I I do think there are still some opportunities to disrupt or make better traditional Wall Street using blockchain technologies that may not be capable on top of Bitcoin. So, stable coins would be kind of my first stab at that. Um, and you know, we'll see. We'll see. I think the I think the jury's out, but you know, for me right now, you know, it's it's Bitcoin and then there's everything else. And so I find myself, ironically, you know, having run a digital assets hedge fund where we were playing in that whole space, migrating people back to just Bitcoin, right? Because it's it's it's the thing that matters most and it's it's the thing that is the most decentralized and um open and you know, free of control. And so I I think I think that's a big deal. So hopefully that answers your question. Yeah, there's a thing to call out there that I think uh Jackson it's been lost on me coming into the space and kind of uh you know back in like 17 and luckily I came into altcoins but then very quickly you start to look and in the first month you're like wait if all this stuff's valuable then either none of it is or like try to understand what's happening. But I think something that we do with individuals that come go down this proverbial rabbit hole and you see Bitcoin for what it's worth. We forget that um there's the natural mental model of the world specifically mapping to technology that you saw technology grow and then you're always looking for bigger faster and you have the Silicon Valley take and we all kind of like know that that's where a lot of the uh energy starts to come. But what happens is and you just like really articulated well is when somebody's intellectually curious that makes sense. And so it goes that I had to look up it's Brandolini's law. It's easier to refute BS or expel BS than refute it. It's orders of magnitude. So if everybody's natural like precondition is well things get bigger faster technological innovations cuz while money is a technology um you you don't have like money is a different type of technology in the sense that you get it it's first mover it's you know trends to one all the things that we know about Bitcoin so you're not going to naturally it doesn't have to continue to grow and you're not thinking about this in money you're thinking about this in tech terms when net new people come into the space so the first individuals I usually hear from are individuals that are mapping to that, right? Blockchain and the different layers and the different ways is going to change finance and DeFi. So that's all that's like telling somebody the sky is gray. That's all they've ever heard. And then you go tell them it's blue. It's just going to take work because even if it's blue, you told everything they known it was it's gray. And so I think this is the standard of what we see with individuals that come into the space. And it takes somebody that's super intellectually uh honest and curious to take a step back and wonder what's happening. And I think that's just like a helpful framework for like what happens here. And it's not anybody's fault. It's just the way that the market has designed traditional tech and the framework for investing that you look at digital assets and it's tech. It's not money. And that's where you end up with uh the hard sell and having to go go back to where you're effectively at as Bitcoin's a store of value. These other things are venture bets at best. Yeah. You and I offline may have talked about this, maybe it was Jackson. You know, I find myself going back to sound money principles time and time again. And you know, I went to business school, took a lot of economics in school, worked on Wall Street for 17 plus years. I never learned sound money principles. And it wasn't until I got into Bitcoin that I understood things like scarcity and portability and, you know, fungeibility and those things. and and what makes something a store of value or what makes something a unit of account or a currency, right? And so, you know, I I find myself having to go back and re-educate folks on on some of these these principles and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way." And so, as you sort of overlay that on to the alt space, I'm like, they they don't check the box, right? And and so maybe maybe the alt space comes up with some interesting tech that solves some problems for Wall Street. Maybe. But in terms of store value and and those types of things that we really care about about money and unit of accounts, Bitcoin is the only answer. And you know, again, let me it's probably worth saying this, but I am I'm I'm a huge fan of the dollar. I don't want to see the US dollar be disrupted from you know its its uh reserve asset of the world status. Um I think you know and Sailor's talked about this and others have talked about this you know Bitcoin can make it stronger right competition is good and um the the other thing I want to say Michael too is is for for years I heard this almost every day uh from institutional investors as I talked to them they would say something like this I I love blockchain but I hate Bitcoin and so Clearly, they've heard the FUD, right? You know, the mainstream media forever was just, you know, braiding Bitcoin. And what's really interesting about that statement, if you really understand Bitcoin, it it is you can't have one without the other, right? It's it's a bit like saying, "I love flying on jets, but I hate jet engines." Right? You can't separate those two. You need one, you know, to go with the other. And so, you know, ju there's just this massive misunderstanding or lack of education around Bitcoin. And so, for me, bringing it back full circle, you know, starting with sound money principles has has really helped and it puts it in a framework that uh takes it out of price go up and and in a framework that I think people could kind of grasp and understand, especially as the US is just printing money, right? I mean, it's it's crazy. And so, um, yeah, I think that's been a really nice a really nice narrative. Yeah, I agree, Bob. One one thing we've talked about on this show is that it's a great way to contextualize the opportunity, Bitcoin versus digital assets, if you just say that Bitcoin is the digital asset market because it's 60% dominance. I think X stable coins, it's closer to 70%. Y and so you don't see this in other asset classes where there's one asset that is overwhelming majority of the asset class. I think the only parallel I could think of is in precious metals, gold is by far the largest portion of that asset class. And if you know in your background, a lot of institutional allocators don't touch precious metals. They may invest in gold on the margin like here and there, but it's really not an asset class that has been institutionally allocated to. And so you think of silver or palladium, these other precious metals, these are like retail markets and then they have industrial uses as well. I think it's a great way just in conversation to when you're speaking with or when I speak with allocators and we need to level set well it's like Bitcoin really is the market here and here's why. Um, one thing I wanted to get into, Bob, is the I want to dive more into the work that you're doing at Cactus Peak and your institutional background. I said at the start of the show, I really didn't think that Bitcoin was ready for prime time with institutional adoption until the past year or so. And that was because the administration wasn't friendly to it. It was still the media was attacking Bitcoin. There was all this obfiscation about what Bitcoin actually was. And then there were not really investment solutions to participate in the asset class. Investors really had to be intentional and seek them out and maybe work with a fund like yours, but on the margin it wasn't accessible to the public. You know, there were maybe some vehicles out there for accredited institutional investors, but we have only really scratched the surface. So I'm curious before getting into the work that you're doing, could you just level set in terms of where you think institutional adoption is today maybe versus where it was when you started in this business? Yeah. Yeah. When I started back in 2019, uh I would argue there were very little institutional investors. In fact, I don't even think the Ivy's weren't at that point if I remember correctly. Um, and so it was, you know, it was a pipe dream, you know, for those of us in the space in terms of of institutions deploying capital into into Bitcoin. Um, I let I think it's I think it's helpful to sort of carve up in the institutional investors for a second. I I kind of think of them in two major buckets. you have you have the endowments, the pensions, um the sovereigns in one bucket and then you have sort of the asset management side of things like um Micro Strategy for example or Black Rockck or you know other big institutional investors, fund managers allocating a portion of their hedge fund into Bitcoin, you know those types of institutional investors. I think I think that latter group has been involved for for a while now. Um but it's it's not it's not in big allocations. Um I think I think the former group you know the sovereigns the you know my old shop in Michigan um you know call state treasurers you know endowments the endowments some endowments are in. So maybe maybe it's 5% of the endowments are in. Maybe that's a big number. I don't know. Um they are I think they're going to be they're going to be late to the game. Um and it's it's it's it's not that they don't want to per se. Um, I think it's how they're structured and how their asset allocation models are built and the gatekeepers to those decision makers are not in my opinion fully embracing uh, Bitcoin yet. So those would be the consultants. So a lot of the institutional world is controlled by the consultant world because and and and oftent times these big institutions have multiple consultants, right? they'll have one for the investment board and then they'll have one for the investment team. So then you have sort of two competing sort of think tanks uh advising a particular pension and just to get anything new and exciting into those allocations you know basically takes an act of God. I mean, I lived that for a long time and and we were pretty good at it. But, you know, in our case, you know, from start to finish, if we got something done in six months, I mean, that was it was really fast. And so, you know, I think I think education helps stuff happen, especially on the institutions because they don't even they don't even know what Bitcoin is and or where to put it at in terms of an allocation inside their portfolio. And and typically that is a really hard math problem for them to solve. Do I put it in fixed income? Do I put it in cash? Do I put it in is it VC? Is it is it a commodity? Like that is kind of mind-blowing for people because they're used to having sort of this, you know, programmatic sort of it goes in this slot, it goes in this slot kind of an allocation model. And Bitcoin disrupts all that, right? And the joke is you could probably put Bitcoin in all those categories and be right and and justify it. So it's a it's a really hard decision for for institutions to do it sort of on that side. Uh back to kind of the Wall Street institutions. I think where that's going to grow is, you know, it's it's tough to create alpha, right? It's it's everybody's so benchmark dependent and it's it's really hard in an active strategy to differentiate yourself from everybody else that's running the same strategy. Bitcoin has become that differentiator. And so as people start to have ad allocations to their portfolios or their hedge funds or their fixed income products, right, Bitcoin is going to be that differentiator that helps them outperform their peer group and that will have a snowball effect. And so I think that's where you're going to see most of the institutional adoption first and then I think you know the the other guys will follow. I think that's a great recap. I appreciate you running through that. I think um there's a there is also a core notion of the interest in Bitcoin. It's like for the majority of the market there is some interest right they've heard of it they want they want to know but the reality is in their mind there's always that barrier. It will never reach outside of speculative interest. So then that's naturally going to put it on a priority list very short or very long because it's just like this is always going to be a speculative asset and there's certain areas of a portfolio that you would allocate to something like that and so to do all the work and the stigma the the you know the stigma that's been with it now it's starting to be destigmatized so then naturally you'll get more people interested. Yeah. But going to your um I'm curious before because I'm sure Jackson has some thoughts on what you shared is your relationship with the consultants because it's something that I think is um a fascinating but b enough of the market doesn't know that they're effectively gatekeepers. Uh I don't know if that's a fair attribution for endowments, pensions, and other uh institutional investors. And it was always fascinating to me because I likened it and maybe this isn't perfectly this isn't fair but it's I think directionally right in my mind it's like if Michael Jordan was giving a shooting coach the ability to play the game for him. Like it's just a very odd thing for you to sit and your benchmark your whole livelihood is tied to the pension and endowment success and hurdle rates that you're achieving and at the end of the day you have this third party right because it's not it's still not your money but you're a fiduciary. you're managing it. And we all know managing your money versus being a fiduciary is still different. When it's your pocket, like it's the thing we run into on third party custody. It's like when it's somebody else's money, you're fine with leaving it there. But for individuals, they really have to get to the brass tax of how they think about the underlying. The next layer to that is to take yourself out of that position or hand it off to a third party that's going to validate or bring things to you is something that I don't think the majority of the market knows sits in between institutional investors and making allocations. Yeah, it absolutely sits there and it's, you know, it's it's, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, intermediaries in Bitcoin, right? So, the the pensions um prefer to have an intermediary that sit between them and their investments because it's it's CYA, right? It's it's it's another layer of protection for the fiduciaries uh that sits in between them and and and their their end clients. And you I get it, right? I I get it. And so um you know, I can just talk about my own experience and and this was not the case. we were we were a little edgy uh which was a good thing in that if there was something that we wanted to do uh we could go to the consultant um and we didn't I guess the other thing I should say is we didn't use a broad-based consultant over the whole entire pension we just used it in certain asset classes like private equity for example so let's say that there was something inside private equity that we really wanted to do and the consultant was not on board you know we we could write a report and ask the consultant to review and approve and but again that's another layer of process that you have to go through an approval to get something done and so you know those are not cheap and they're not they're not timely and so you know that's why I think you know the pension that the the pension endowment maybe not the endowment side they're they're a little bit more free but the you know the pension and the sovereigns. It's a it's a very it can be a very copycat world because once somebody does the work um you never want to be the first mover or maybe even the second mover, but once you get sort of herd mentality going, everybody jumps in. And I do think that will happen with Bitcoin eventually. Um and maybe it starts with states the states maybe. I don't know. I mean, we've worked very closely with a with a state who wanted Bitcoin on their balance sheet. He's a Bitcoiner and through political reasons didn't get it done. And so there there is a desire to have this done. I just don't know which shoe is going to drop first. Um and then you're going to see multiple shoes drop and then I think you're going to see that copycat sort of program and then you're going to get the the consultants on board, right? And all of a sudden all the consultants are going to have an opinion and it it just that's how it goes. I mean this that's just the institutional uh space and so you know I'm optimistic Michael I have not spent any time getting in front of the consultants I've tried um they are again they have to be incentivized to look at Bitcoin and recommend it and that incentive generally comes from you know the institutional space that they serve and according to You know, this was as a couple years ago. According to them, that interest wasn't there. It's it's it's like Larry Think sitting on CNBC and saying, "No, there's no demand for Bitcoin. We're not seeing it." Right? We manage we manage over a trillion dollars and there's no demand for Bitcoin. Right? Like we all knew that was a lie. Um but it is what it is. At OnRamp, we believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset of the 21st century. The hard part is securing it right. There are shortcomings with keeping your coins on an exchange, but also with setting up your own self-custody arrangement. On-ramp solves for these concerns. Our multi-institution custody solution maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, ensuring that your Bitcoin remains securely in your possession and provides built-in inheritance planning to ensure your family is protected as well. On-ramp provides peace of mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it as a complement to your existing self-custody setup. For more information, check us out at on-rampbitcoin.com. Just something to call out because I think you'll find fascinating. We haven't spent a ton of time, but we have had our fair share of conversations. We worked with the first UK pensions on an allocation and then had the conversations not go as favorable in here in the US. And it's like a chicken or egg thing and it ties back to the beginning of the conversation around generally individuals intermediaries conflate Bitcoin and digital assets. We see this in the RAIA space when you outsource compliance and everyone thinks everything's a security when Bitcoin's clearly a commodity and then that opens up whole can of worms on why they have to jump through hoops when in reality they don't on the RAA side. Similarly with the pensions and consultants everything looks like effectively a potential volatile Ponzi. So they're not able to differentiate Bitcoin versus the rest. And then that's the that's the the preclude or like the uh thing that keeps you from the table. Then once you get to the table is the opposite that happens where you naturally because we've had both circumstances where now you see where I'm going with this like you have a conversation and you're telling them Bitcoin's the thing and they're like wait no no no we know all diversification but like it makes zero sense because everyone there is selling them everything under the sun in baskets to your point. ETF products that have 10 top 10 market weighted. So it's this inertia that pushes from each side that keeps a lot of this uh adoption and understanding from really reaching the surface level. Yeah, I think that's completely fair. And the UK has always been well not always around Bitcoin and digital assets. The UK has been ahead of the curve relative to DU in my opinion. Um and maybe and maybe with the Trump administration that's changing, right? like I I fully believe we are going to get reasonable regulation this year and it probably starts with stable coins and so you know I think that will be a huge boon to institutional investors coming into the space because here's the reality guys like if as institutions they're not going to do anything unless they know what the playbook is right so you know you're standing on the sidelines and you've got a you've got a playbook and it's blank I'm not going to do anything. What does Wall Street hate more than anything? It's uncertainty. And so, you know, Wall Street's not going to do anything unless they know what the rules are. And so, just a just a a reasonable framework of regulation in terms of how to operate is going to release, I think, a a huge wave of of education and interest in in Bitcoin and and stables. So, we'll see if we get that. But, I'm I'm optimistic. Bob, when we were talking a little bit about your background earlier, we talked about the experience you had within the pension fund and you mentioned how there was a lot of allocations to alternative investments, illlquid investments and as I understand it, there's a need for that because the liabilities in some cases at some pensions are growing faster than the assets. Correct. So naturally then they're looking further out into the risk curve to find opportunities to invest their capital into asset classes that will hopefully outpace those liabilities. Yeah. And so pensions will have to adopt Bitcoin as as far as I'm concerned or understand it because Bitcoin is one of the few asset classes that actually outpaces the rate of debasement. Do you think that do you a do you agree with that and then b how would you think about articulating this to pensions endowments foundations let's maybe stick to pensions but how would you think about articulating this concept if they want to actually preserve and have the capital available for the obligations down the road. Yeah, and I love I love that discussion because if you you know if you think about a pension and you know their hurdle rate of seven and a half 8% so collectively their portfolio has to hit that on an annual basis otherwise their unfunded liability decreases right if if they can do a 10 or a 12 you know their unfunded liability improves um most of those most of those allocators most of those pensions probably live in an unfunded situation. And as rates are low, it gets really really difficult for a pension, which typically is 60/40 traditional, you know, equity, the fixed income allocation, when when rates are at zero, you know, you're basically getting zero out of 40% of your portfolio. And so what's happened over the last 5 10 years is that you've re as a pension you really have to chase return i.e. increased risk and uh it's at the expense of the liquidity of your portfolio. So you see this shift to illquid assets, private equity, real estate, VC, you know, all of those things. Um, and you know the problem with that is you know liquidity always rules, right? And so so what's really interesting about Bitcoin is that you could have an extremely liquid asset on the portfolio on your on your balance sheet and your portfolio allocation and it's I mean what's its 10-year average return? It's like one it's in the 120 140 range, right? I mean, and I think that continues. Maybe those returns come down a little bit over time, but that's going to have to be the math problem or the solution to the math problem is going to have to be some sort of Bitcoin allocation that helps you improve liquidity and give you an asset as Larry Fin I don't know if I believe Larry, you know, completely here, but it's it's more of a riskoff asset, but yet it performs really well and serves as a really interesting balance to your portfolio. We've just got to get the institutional space there. I just I just don't think they're there yet. So, it it'll come. I mean, we need guys like, you know, the three of us continuing to pound the table and and having these conversations with folks. Um, and it it'll happen over time, but I think it's going to be, you know, Bitcoin is so hard to understand, right? It's it's like learning a new language and and for somebody [Music] to, you know, I live this, there's career risk, right? It's if if you screw it up, you get fired, right? And if you're making, you know, you're not making Wall Street money when you're at a pension. And so your obligation is to not screw things up. And so right now, Bitcoin feels a little edgy for a lot of people when actually it's probably the safe play. So we've just got to change that narrative in people's minds and continue to sort of pound the table on what Bitcoin is and how it can serve a portfolio. Yeah. I I totally agree. It's all about liquidity. It was something that was eyeopening for me in 2020 and um we could save the details of that. But one thing I'm curious to hear your thoughts on is you we mentioned the money spiggot and the idea of not wanting to fight the Fed in an institutional portfolio. And so is that component sounds like it was widely under understood among your colleagues and peer group in terms of don't fight the Fed, you know, be long asset classes, etc. But it seems that there's still a gap in fully understanding just the importance of global liquidity and zero interest rate policy in how that drives asset classes across the board. Why why is that the case? Like if you can understand the first part, why don't you think more people understand that liquidity is driving things here and Bitcoin is is really the best investment in that uh paradigm? Yeah. And and the boomers weren't geniuses from holding 20 uh you know, rental houses and they all went up every year. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's baffling to me, frankly, and maybe it's because I'm a Bitcoiner that I I can understand it to some degree, but I don't think many people connect M2 supply, USD to basement, and connect that to how risk assets do andor the equity market does, right? It's it's sort of a false it's it it it's it creates a false narrative in that but my housing price is going up you know 10% a year. Well maybe but your your currency that you live off of is going down 8% a year. Like they don't for whatever reason there's just this disconnect between two sides of the same coin. And you know I I have a I use a chart M2 you know supply like a lot of people do and you know the correlation with risk assets and it's and the the dollar debasement right it's and it's going to continue and I think you know this is this is a fair number was about 30 35% of our LPs at the hedge fund at the time got into Bitcoin and they couldn't really articulate it so I'm gonna I'm this is conjecture on my part, but but it basically went like this. I don't I just know I need to be in Bitcoin because I want to get a out or away or hedge sort of this broken system and I can't quite identify why it's broken. All I know is I feel like I'm a high netw worth individual, but I feel poorer every year. And that's a real feeling that a lot of people have and it's because their purchasing power is continually getting eroded, right? And so Bitcoin preserves that and protects against that. And I just don't think Jackson people are connecting those dots in terms of of, you know, asset growth in portfolios. Bob, I think you'll appreciate this because I think this is how I finally got my mother-in-law, uh, was after years and years of these conversations, she had retired and it was exactly that. It's that your retirement, whatever you thought you had when you retired two or three years ago, you feel it every year when you pay for vacations and you're paying for all these things, it's it's increasing while your return profile, which your financial advisor is providing is not keeping up with it. So, whatever you thought you're going to have in 20 to 30 years, may not actually be that. And I think that scared that scared her. Yeah. Um, and it ties into the scarce assets component of this podcast because there's a notion of equities, bonds, and a lot of things, a lot of assets inflated for monetary properties or their proxy monetary properties. And going back to I think as individuals that have a long Bitcoin bias, I think we sometimes underestimate that that gold as well will be sitting next to Bitcoin for much longer than we all thought for a number of reasons. And so I just think that that's uh inherent into this. It's like when you look at the value of these assets and see the multiples on them bas versus their like utility value. Real estate's a great one, but also equities, you can start to like go back to first principles of like what gives things value and the scarcity component of gold and Bitcoin. I think we're going to see a renaissance of like individuals starting and it won't be like gold bars. It'll be like third parties that build digital type solutions that can give reduce the counterparty risk while also letting individuals not DCA but get their access to maybe 10 to 30% of their portfolio in a way that they know is sound and not paper but also uh shields them from the volatility with the equity and bond market. Yeah. No, I agree. And Jackson, you brought this up earlier. You know, the gold bugs, you know, in the institutional space kind of get laughed at and it's it's always been baffling. I've always been a gold bug. So maybe that was that was that helped me in terms of understanding Bitcoin to some degree when I when I started researching it, you know, in 2018, early 19. And and so but you're right, like most institutional investors do not do not own physical gold. And so uh in fact one of the things that we did at the hedge fund in our in our perspectus is we allowed ourselves to buy physical gold vaulted physical gold because we wanted an off-ramp like if the world literally fell apart it was Bitcoin and just in case Bitcoin's liquidity drew dries up or drew you know went away we were like we're going to buy gold physical gold and you know that just makes sense to me. So, um, but yeah, I I agree with you, Michael. I think there's going to be a shift to gold as well, especially if you know, again, I what's what's the gold market cap? Do we even know? I mean, I think estimates are what 18 trillion somewhere between 18 and 20 trillion today. But we don't know the answer to that, right? So, you know, if if Trump gets his way and we start audit auditing gold reserves around the world, you know, it better come come up on the screws of between 18 and 20 million or we're going to have a problem in gold. And I think there's going to be, you know, I think we all know intuitively there's way more paper gold out there than there is physical gold. And that that dynamic could be very problematic for all those people that hold paper gold, right? So, um, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I think the market I think it go it all goes back to first principles and when it go when it comes down to a sovereign if you have certain exports, right, that you produce and you naturally need to sell them for something to import what you need, you're going to need something that can't be debased, right? That's that's ultimately where sovereigns are made up of individuals. Individuals also have to protect their purchasing power. Um, I can see how gold was missed for longer than Bitcoin just because gold you've it has been kind of historically the wrong trade for for long enough. Like you could be in equities and bonds and outperform. Now I think that narrative is changing. One one thing that's super fascinating and it's ironic is um what you said in the beginning and said throughout this about fighting the Fed. If you really think about it, like not actually buying Bitcoin is fighting the Fed because if we agree that all assets are a proxy for M2 and Bitcoin is the fastest horse. Well, that if they're not going to stop printing Bitcoin, start printing stop printing dollars, then Bitcoin is the fastest horse. And it ties into like I think most institutional investors don't even know there's only 21 million. Yeah. Like most people don't even know there's 21 million Bitcoin. And so like once that scarcity component lives up, then you can actually start to like underwrite it. But it's just fascinating that like what key has kept them away is also the value prop. I think that's right. I think that's right. And and you know again I have I'm almost embarrassed these guy these days when I talk to somebody and you know I I've been doing this for a long time. I've done thousands of meetings on Bitcoin and and you you understand pretty quickly when somebody does not understand Bitcoin's foundational principles. And I'm always embarrassed, and I should not be embarrassed, but I'm always embarrassed to take people back and just explain what Bitcoin is because they don't even know it's a protocol layer of the internet and what a protocol layer is. Like, they don't understand that the that the magic of Bitcoin is peer-to-peer exchange of value through this protocol. They don't they don't get that. And and of 99% of the time, people are like, "Oh, I had no idea." Like no idea. and they think the other thing that they always think is you have to buy one Bitcoin. And so there's, you know, I feel like as somebody who's been in the space for six years, like I've made a lot of progress. Um, but collectively we've made a lot of progress. I don't know if we've made a I don't know if we've made all that much progress. You know, what is global adoption? I don't know if you guys have a number on that. Is it is it 20%. Is it less than 20%. you know, I I fully believe, you know, you know, Bitcoin is riding on the internet adoption curve. So, that's going to take us to 85 90% adoption at some point in the in the future. Um, so yeah, but we're I guess my point is we're early. I know to solve for this, we need to establish a crypto exchange and what we do is we just sell SATs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine like if somebody spun up a DCA and it was just like you're buying SATs? Um anyway, Jackson, I you want to jump in? Yeah. Um yeah, Bob, one thing I was curious about is this is like are we making progress? Are we not? I would argue, you know, as a whole we're trending in the right direction, but I totally agree with you just with conversations with institutional investors. We're still very early in terms of them developing a thesis and understanding of the asset class, but then you do have on the margins very sophisticated people uh within registered investment advisors, family offices on the traditional institutional side as well. I am curious like what you found to resonate or maybe not resonate in those conversations as you're looking to position Bitcoin as part of a portfolio. You'd mentioned you go to the M2 graph in some cases. You'd mentioned the challenges with trying to fit Bitcoin into one of these existing buckets. I mean, I think the three of us would agree that Bitcoin is its own bucket, right? You know, it should it should stand alone in terms of how to think about it from an allocation perspective, but like what is working in these conversations that you have and what's not? And then maybe if you could provide context too on who are you mostly speaking with these days with Cactus Peak? Where are you focusing your time? Yeah, so our our focus so let me let me Yeah, we didn't answer that question before. I'm sorry, Jackson. So, so Cactus Peak, my idea around Cactus Peak is here's the premise. The premise is that there's this massive gap that sits between traditional finance. So, let's let's include everybody in in traditional finance, all the institutional investors. So, RAAS, wealth managers, everybody, and Bitcoiners, right? And the gap is super wide. And you know, we've been talking about this for the whole show. So my idea was to be sort of an evangelist, step into that gap, fill it, educate people, and and basically solve the problems that they're trying to solve for, which is as of January of last year, sorry, year and a half ago or January of last year, um, when the ETFs emerged, I think even though that it was forecast and we knew they were coming for a while, most raas were still trashing it because they they didn't know how to they didn't have it to sell, right? They didn't have a product that they could sell to their clients. And so they they picked up on the FUD narrative and you know, because their clients are asking for it, they're like, "No, no, no, no. It's rat poison." And so we don't we don't like Bitcoin. All of a sudden there's 11 ETFs and they're like, "Uh oh, we've been trashing this asset for years. Now we have to completely shift our dynamic to now we like it and now we're selling it into your portfolio and this is why they haven't figured that out yet." And and so what's happening and I and I've talked to a lot of RAAS where this is the case. Their clients are the ones forcing the issue. And so I've I've got a good friend who's an RAA and he's like, "No, I Bob, I have to be proactive. I have to talk about it to everybody because what I don't want to do is I don't want to lose my client to some other registered investment advisor who has a Bitcoin solution and I didn't provide them access." And so, but that's that's only the first decision. And so they don't even know how to educate their clients. And so, you know, education is key. And then how do I get Bitcoin is is the next big hurdle that I'm trying to solve for. And you know, I think on this podcast we probably all would agree that the ETFs are not the greatest structure for Bitcoin, but it it can be a really good and interesting first option for people. But I think as they get involved in Bitcoin through the ETF, they quickly realize, oh wait, this is a bare asset. I only have price exposure. I want to own the thing and control the thing because that's that's that's why you Bitcoin, right? Like you know it's it's a bare asset. You want to hold and control it. So helping people through that trajectory or that path, that roadmap to own and control Bitcoin and then as various capabilities emerge, help help family offices, wealth managers, single family offices participate in um you know like a one of the new products that you guys are offering which is you know borrowing and and lending off your Bitcoin, right? That's a that's a great transition to having somebody own an asset and then use that asset. And and so that's kind of what I'm trying to do at Captive Speak is step in that gap and help people through that life cycle. Um, and so our target audience really is wealth managers, single family offices, multif family offices, the wealth space because I think they're the ones that are feeling the most pressure post the adoption of the 11 Bitcoin ETFs. And so, um, just to get them comfortable talking about the space is is battle number one and where I spend a lot of my time. Did I answer your question, Jackson? Sorry. You did. Yeah. No, that was that was a great answer, Bob. I we we see a lot of that at on-ramp as well where the clients are forcing the issue and for any rais or any folks that participate in the wealth industry, one thing to pay attention to and Bob this will be relevant for your discussions too is that 70% of the Bitcoin is held with individuals and so naturally those individuals they become wealthier over time as Bitcoin appreciates. A lot of them may have financial planners that are not really cutting it as it relates to Bitcoin planning and investment management as part of their broader portfolio. A lot and probably even more so of these people do not have relationships with financial adviserss today and will likely need them in some capacity in the future. And so there's such an opportunity and yeah, Michael pulled up the slide here. 70% of Bitcoin held by individuals. incredible opportunity for traditional financial planning shops, RAAS to be experts on Bitcoin and understand from a first principles basis how you can help your clients that already own it but then increasingly want to purchase it as well. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much embedded um sophistication and market knowledge in what Bob shared and what his goals of his firm to do and it's why we had him on the pod and where we hit it off on the conversation because there's a lot of things that he relayed there in the sense of we all know if you hold the underlying why the ETF is not the most sophisticated product in the market but at the same point to hold the other side of that in your head that it's still valuable to get people as a as an on-ramp their first exposure let them go down and but then through that knowledge going to the market and being able to explain that and articulate it to RAAS and banks and other third parties because they have multiple things that they're battling or trying to figure out when risk is one of the main ones. Everyone's seen the ICOs and the bubbles and the ponzies happen. So they're concerned with that but they're also concerned with differentiation not being disintermediation disintermediated by the large institutions which they've historically been done. And then also um Jackson's point is is probably the biggest opportunity in asymmetry is that the market specifically tradi institutions are building products for other institutions not for the individuals and because this was an emerging asset class and the individuals uh not only hold the majority of Bitcoin but will continue to hold a large percentage of it because by just the nature of they can move faster than everyone else because it's a consensus of one versus every all these other institutions having to go through the bureaucr Y around exposure, how do they go from an ETF to multi-institution custody or a different type of fund? They're always going to be able to move first and they're around the longest. So, they're going to drive the market and what's needed. There's a huge opportunity for a land grab and it's not everyone's going to get an equal portion because we've seen this anecdotally from the the RA specifically that say the second they put a favorable tent towards Bitcoin. Just saying that like, hey, it's okay. we have some education whatever it might be they've increased their aum in the first 12 to 24 months from anywhere from 2 to 5x and that's the same opportunity from the challenger community bank side of things but the reality is not enough people are telling the story and explaining it because the right people when they hear it they're like oh my god like this is right I can take away all the risk that's embedded in digital assets by not like opening up to serving all these different products I can think about third party risk in the right way and have a singular view on a singular asset, i.e. Bitcoin as a proxy for the digital asset space. And now you can start to take away the risk while also giving the opportunity uh and taking it away from speculative to store a value. And so we're incredibly early, but also you can start to see like through the fog how this all plays out. And the people that stay down the narrow path and really focus on a singular view are going because this has happened the past 15 years. People have gotten blown up and they're like people pick up the scraps. That's where Bitco's really done things the right way and yeah had a lot of market consolidation my previous firm um it's what we're aiming to do here is have a a dedicated voice and view on Bitcoin and then go very deep on that asset. Yeah that's really well said Michael and I and let me let me rephrase it this way. There's there's a there's a huge gap between understanding Bitcoin to buying the ETF. Then there's another huge gap between, oh wait, I need to own and control this Bitcoin. How do I custody it? Right? That's a whole another topic of conversation. It's very complex and there's not a real good straightforward answer, right? There's a lot of variables that you can go through a matrix if you will to sort of how am I going to custody this this asset. Where I found you guys is, you know, because of your your multi-institutional custody product and, you know, this is not a commercial for you guys, but it's it's a product that is needed, especially for guys like me because I don't want to be a signatory on, you know, a multi-IG structure for, you know, a bunch of clients, right? I I want to offsource that to a third party who's built a better mousetrap than I can provide. And so, you know, to your point, Michael, these products, these solutions are coming to the market now. We're maturing in in such a way that I have a lot of confidence to put clients in own and control Bitcoin through a particular structure that's protected and distributed. That's a big deal, right? And that gives a lot of people comfort because think about as we think about institutions, what is their default mechanism around custody? It's I want to give it all to Northern Trust. I want to give it all to Bank of New York Melon. I want to give it all to Fidelity, right? It's a scale game and I trust these firms to aggregate all my all my assets, not only my assets, but everybody else's assets. So, they're costing trillions of dollars of assets. So, there's some there's some security around that. Well, in Bitcoin, it's the opposite, right? You don't want to create honeypotss by scaling everybody into Coinbase, for example. And and people just don't understand that. And so, you know, the gap between I want to own and control my own Bitcoin and then how should I custody it is is a big one. And it takes a lot of people time to get there. And frankly, I don't even know if they're fully there yet. And so, you know, yeah, well said by you and and I I think congrats on on what you guys are building because I think I think it's going to open some doors for some some people who have larger pools of capital that will require third party custody like what you guys have built. Yeah. And the reason where we get really excited about it is we talked about this offline about um like at the end of the day our goal is to democratize ability to get meaningful exposure to Bitcoin because it's historically been very hard for individuals everyone and it goes to your question about the amount of adoption. This is like going to first principles again if custody isn't figured out and we'd make the case that it hasn't historically been figured out by the loss of assets in the past 15 years. It's embedded in people's um uh it's embedded in an individual's apprehension to ever looking at this asset. Even if they say one thing because everyone knows in sales, right, what the first objection is really isn't the true one. There's one behind it. And so when people say Ponzi or whatever snake oil, what they're really insinuating is, I don't even know how I would do this because it would end up by North Korean hackers or it end up in a UK landfill on a zip drive. Y and so once you can take that out in the same way if somebody was trying to get online to send an email that I have to set up a server and do all this and you just know it's going to work i.e. the browser in 1995 and the amount of users that were able to come in or I just know it's bulletproof via not only the underlying custodian but the counterparty and insurance then you take that away and now you can start to get individuals step in and then once people step in that's the first step into earnestly looking at like well what is this because now I'm in favor because I have a little bit of exposure and we all know from there it just increases that amount of uh but the the other side of increasing is you have to know the fundamentals are always going around the asset won't you won't wake up and the asset's gone. And so that's where we get really excited about this model. Our our chief strategy officer says until multi-institution existed, there was never not a single point of failure because whether it was a third party custodian or yourself managing the keys, you were the single point of failure. Now that doesn't exist. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. If I get hit by a bus today, I've got problems, right? And so um you know solutions that solve that that problem are going to be very valuable. Hey Bob to wrap up here I have a question for you. Could you give maybe one thing you're paying attention to on the investment side? I.e. what are some metrics or data that you're paying attention to to kind of inform your outlook for Bitcoin in 2025 and beyond on the investment side? And then on like the regulatory political side, just any thoughts, we didn't cover it a bunch. Just any thoughts on like the SPR action or things that you'd want to pay attention to for the rest of the year, good or bad? Yeah. You know, I you know, I'm going to I'm going to be very simple as it as it relates to Bitcoin on the investment side. I think people should just be dollar cost averaging in period and story. And and I think I think a lot of people can get, especially if you're on X, right? you can get tied into all the technical traders who are looking at, you know, you know, the EMA ribbon or the 200 day moving average or the 200WE moving average or whatever it's doing on a technical basis. That's not for everybody. You know, I I think about my dad. You know, my dad is in his 80s and he's been DCAing into Bitcoin for seven years now and it's just it's religious. It's every Monday, boom, he's buying Bitcoin, right? that is really the best way to do it. Um, we didn't talk about cyclicality around Bitcoin. You know, you could, if you were a professional investor or an allocator, try to do something around the cyclicality, but I I still think I still think that's a bit of semantics and it's just better to dollar cost average in in terms of Jackson sort of the macro stuff. I think I'm actually conflicted. Maybe we should have talked about this. I'm actually somewhat conflicted about the strategic Bitcoin reserve. Um I think it's a good idea. I think I think the US should do it. Um I kind of view Bitcoin as people's money, not government money. So I have a I have a little bit of a conflict with government buying the people's money. But it will be good for price. It'll be good for adoption. And it will be good that the US is the leader in Bitcoin because I think that will help adoption globally. Um I Michael I watched Michael Sailor's recent address at the Bitcoin Institute. You know we were talking about things that don't help institutional investors. Jackson, I don't think it helps to trash the dollar and I don't think it helps to be overly dramatic and boastful about what Bitcoin is and like a lot of the things that like Michael Sailor does, right? That institutional investors are like, "What is this guy smoking, right?" Like, and I love Michael Sailor, but there's a lot of things I don't think that's the right path for institutional adoption. Um, and you know, so listen, Bitcoin is all about adoption, right? It's it's exponential growth of a network. And so what matters to me is that exponential growth curve. And if we as long as we start seeing that continue to go up, which I think it will, you know, we're, you know, this is web 3.0, right? We have three dimensions of the internet now. And we've got Bitcoin. And as long as that exponential growth continues and we get adoption, just like we saw the internet, you know, Bitcoin is going to be the best trade for the next 25, 30, 40 years. I sometimes think we overthink it, I guess, is the way that I would sum that up. I totally agree. Yeah, we had a I won't name him, but a gentleman that um spent his whole career in in Tradfi, sold his hedge fund to a large financial service firm and he would reference to your point um they would say, "What bucket do you put this in this product you have?" And he got to a point, I think this was after they really scaled to billions of vum. He's like, "I don't give I don't care what bucket. You figure it out. Don't make it." Yeah. It's not It's not my problem. And I think it ties to your point of like there's only 21 million um and if there's an infinite amount of dollars then there's some value to it and then you can determine what you can underwrite what the total adjustable market for that is. Yeah. But it's not a hard trade. Uh it's call it a common sense test, not an IQ test going to your simple simplifying it. Um yeah, it's it's economics 101, right? you're you're dealing with an asset that has a finite supply and you know almost 90% of that supply is in circulation today. You know in 10 years we're going to be at 90%. You know and it's going to take what another 130 yearsish 140 years for that last 1% to come out. And if adoption continues to grow you know that should that should mean that that's positive for price and I think the trend continues. Um, I guess I'll end it with this. You know, I don't do price predictions, but you know, I think I think Bitcoin is par pursue with gold at some point. Um, you know, so what that's a 10x from here. Uh, assuming gold's 18 to 20 trillion. Bob, don't do that. I can't let you do that. You get That's the No, no. It's the It's the trap. It's the trap. The It's the trap. Well, no, no. puts the trap in the sense that like gold will move much higher as Bitcoin moves much higher. So like we had this conversation. I do I do think gold will go higher too. So maybe that's Yeah, I I Yeah, your point's well taken, Michael. But my point is I'll say it this way. Bitcoin will be at, you know, 20 trillion in the next 10 to 15 years, you know, something like that. Gold's going to do what gold's going to do. I do think they go up in tandem. I was smiling uh Bobby because you know he's gonna call me out on it, didn't you, Jackson? And I know I Michael said that his price prediction on the last trade a couple weeks ago and it was like 750k. Yeah, I've never done a I've never done a never done a price prediction. Uh after 21 and 22, you know, if anybody was around then you look at the market and you're hoping for things and you realize you're always going to be let down. So, you just got to Yeah, for sure. And and you know what I I would say most of our most of the people that I talk to some are in it for price but that's a very few people as a percentage. Most are are thinking about Bitcoin the right way in terms of being a lifeboat you know being a a hedge being a currency you know crossber payment rail you know all those types of things that we know. Um and so yeah that makes that makes sense. Awesome. Well, Bob, where should people reach out to you if they want to get in touch? Yeah, so you can email me at info@cactispeak.io. Um, I'm also on LinkedIn. I think it's Robert Griffin on LinkedIn. And then I'm not a big I'm not a big user of X. I'm trying to get better at that. But it's it's two the number two Bobby G. B O B Y G. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Bob. Yeah, I really appreciate guys. Thanks for having me. This is great. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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