Why Morgan Stanley, Walmart, Rumble & Silicon Valley Are Betting BIG on Bitcoin

It all comes down to computers communicating. >> The information superighway can be a confusing mix of on-ramps and off-ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. >> Is it still rat poison? >> Probably rat poison squared. >> We need to get into the world of Okay, this is actually foundational technology. What the internet of money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roll of gun. The one thing that's missing but that will soon be developed is a reliable ecash. Alrighty, gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, January 12th, 2026, 11:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Gentlemen, how are we doing? We got Michael, we got Liam, we have a special guest, Nick, which uh we'll we'll get to a formal introduction for him a little later in the show. Uh but we've got a big show. Ton of links on the list. A lot has happened in the past week, the past few weeks. the world is changing quickly and um yeah, we're going to jump right into it. So, the the first uh first headline we wanted to get to, this actually dropped I think shortly after we recorded last week uh so we didn't get a chance to touch on it, but Morgan Stanley uh filed for their own Bitcoin ETF, also a Salon ETF, but we we'll ignore that for now. They registered for a Bitcoin ETF, and this is a big deal for a number of reasons. I'll sort of kick things off here and then and then get thoughts from the group. But this really stuck out to me as, you know, we've kind of become numb to a lot of the headlines around whether it's M&A activity, partnerships, uh, ETF filings, but this one is different in the sense that Morgan Stanley is not a, you know, historically a big ETF, uh, factory, uh, or shop necessarily. They have a handful of funds that they manage, uh, ETF funds that they manage. Um, and only two prior to this actually had the Morgan Stanley brand name on it. They have sort of subbrands like Calvert uh and Parametric that they manage ETFs for. But, um, in terms of the the very short list, uh, of Morgan Stanley branded ETFs, the Bitcoin one will be the third ever. Um, which is a pretty big deal. I think what it also tells us is that they've seen the success of IBIT and BlackRock um and realized that you know they can allow their clients to access IBIT but they're only earning a very uh dimminimous uh sort of revenue on that and if they really wanted to capture the economics of these massive inflows that we've seen to spot Bitcoin ETFs um then they should probably get into the issuer game and that's exactly what they're doing. So there's more to this too around sort of a broader Morgan Stanley push but um I'll kick it to you guys. What what do we make of this? Uh, how big of a deal is it? >> Yeah, I mean, I think I think this is huge. Um, we touched on it and and maybe I'll let Nick and Liam if they want to touch on the uh ETF flows and just how big of a a deal that is that Morgan Stanley launched or is going to be launching their own. Um, we did go pretty deep last week on the last trade here. Where I want to kind of focus, at least from my side, is a report that came out from Barren's. Um, I'll pull up my screen really quick because I'm not sure if you have it. You might. Uh, but it's really the Morgan Stanley uh, head of wealth management, Jed Finn, coming out. And I'll read a couple uh, quotes from there. One is it all fits together in a broader strategy of adapting to the change in the industry and in some cases driving the change in the industry. Um and it effectively brings out Wall Street announcing, you know, um one of the big things that they announced, they were investors in Zero Hash and then uh Erade is one of the platforms that says under the Morbid Stanley umbrella that I believe is either on or or it's going to be turning on uh the ability to buy Bitcoin, Ether, and Solano. Uh oh, I guess it's it's on track to go live the first half of this year. Um, but also Morgan Stanley's now rumored, and I don't think it's rumored. I think it's confirmed via this Baron's article that is planning to launch its own digital wallet. And it effectively says the company envisions its in-house offering as a platform to eventually handle transactions, not just involving coins, but also tokenized assets. With the exerb, this is really a recognition that the way the financial service infrastructure works is going to change over time. As our infrastructure develops, we'll be able to do more with blending of traditional finance or trady and decentralized finance or DeFi ecosystems. This could mean borrowing against crypto holdings to buy equities or vice versa. For example, making loans against crypto and cold storage. Uh, and I think that is just kind of a very uh incredible exerpt in in filing on what they're saying and what they're doing because it goes so much deeper than um passive inflows from private wealth into IBIT or an ETF shares into the recognition that the plumbing is fundamentally changing from stable coins, real world assets to the underlying Bitcoin. you can imagine some gold uh exposure will probably start to come about in 2026 as well. And then the realization that what people will want to do with those assets um from crossc collateralization to to birectional right so traditionally it'd be we've talked about individuals leveraging their um underlying BTC or IBIT holdings to get some dollars but you can see the other side of it where you can leverage your equity holdings to get you know margin to go and buy BTC or other shares and I think that um but you take that and then you t you take a digital native way for a giant like Morgan Stanley that manages trillions of dollars in assets. And it it effectively tells you that there's a race uh inside Wall Street to develop best-in-class solutions across the spectrum, not just for other institutional investors. Um, and I think that this is really kind of incredible, incredibly bullish to see that the market's understanding this just won't be in a ETF rapper because if if it was, this wouldn't be out. They wouldn't be working on this. They wouldn't have invested in Zero Hash. they wouldn't be implementing it via e uh errade. So yeah, I just thought that was probably one of the most incredible insights uh outside of obviously the the ETF filing. >> Yeah, it's a great point. And um do you guys know for sure if they will be custodying it themselves or if they're going to be outsourcing that to Coinbase via the S1 filing? Did they share that? >> I believe it says they're outsourcing it, but I don't know if they named in the S1 who the custodian will be. >> Interesting. qualified custodians. So, I'd imagine it's in the same realm of the Bitcoin bases, potentially Fidelities depending on the kind of competitive standing there. >> Yeah, for sure. Um, that makes a ton of sense. And I would imagine um just given whatever conversations that they had and and likely not um like doing their due diligence on Coinbase, Bitco etc., they realize that they can't uh fundamentally know exactly everything that's going on with their custody. Otherwise, there would be um you know, a point of failure with respect to how Coinbase or Fidelity or or whoever else is actually custodying their asset. And obviously, Morgan Stanley isn't going to be um you know, as sophisticated in custodying digital assets themselves. But that's likely an impetus for the reason why they're investing themselves and just the fact that they know um know that they need to have a solution for their customers. their customers are going to want something differentiated. Otherwise, they're just going to go to the ETF, whichever has the most volume so that they can get, you know, um just better pricing into the model themselves. Um yeah, this is this is uh really it can't be understated how big this is. The fact that um they're really offering everything, not just exposure, but know that clients are going to cross collateralize across equities and other asset classes. And Bitcoin's uh a big one that's here to stay across likely a large number of clients. Like this this is something that I'm sure that they've been getting a lot of demand for because they were one of the first um firms to turn on the IBIT for their customers. They've had that going for almost two years and they've realized I'm sure just from feedback from their customers that they need to get into uh this game in a bigger way. So it's uh it's pretty big to see. Yeah, it seems like that was a natural sort of like factf finding exercise for them to offer I bit to their clients and then you know see how material the the flows actually were from their underlying clients and and just to put a little bit more context around I think what they saw in terms of the success. So, Black Rockck's IBID ETF, fastest growing ETF of all time, uh most, you know, quickly became Black Rockck's most profitable product, more so than their S&P 500, uh ETF. And, you know, they've amassed a a pretty large substantial sort of head start or lead. You know, I think at peak uh assets in IBIT uh broached, um 100 billion. And so if you're sitting in Morgan Stanley's seat like you're, you know, you did your factf finding, you realized there was a real underlying demand for this thing. It wasn't going away. The TAM was was very large. Um, you know, more than than most people in on Wall Street probably anticipated. And so despite sort of being a late entry to this, um, they are going to try to compete with BlackRock. And to your point, Liam, like the question then becomes, it's like, okay, well, why is it different? Why should someone buy Morgan Stanley's uh spot ETF as opposed to IBIT? Um if it's, you know, at current much smaller, um I'm sure they'll sort of ramp it up pretty quickly with some some anchor investors or whatnot. But um you know, that is an open question. How do they differentiate themselves? Do they pick a different uh single custodian than uh Coinbase? Uh do they go with someone else so they have a little bit of differentiation? Um that becomes a real question because this is basically a commoditized market at this point. like spot bitcoin ETFs, the way they're constructed, most of them outsourcing it to Coinbase. Um it'll be interesting to see how they actually plan to compete with IBET because again um they are sort of behind at this point. Two things to call out that I think are incredibly bullish is um to Liam's point that they've had ETF exposure turned on for call it two years. Um if I recall correctly when they first turned it on it was relatively low exposure. Maybe it was just for like private wealth uh investors over a certain um net worth or assets under management. And you think about like a firm like Morgan Stanley and how slow Trifi moves that you can bet that them turning that on um they already had plans for all this and it took two years to get it live if not longer. And so that should set a precedent for a lot of the undercurrent the things that we haven't seen that are being worked on. And then to the other point is um they more than likely know what their clients want more than their clients do, right? Like these are people at the top of their game. They this is how they make their money. And um we've been talking about how we've been in this kind of like quasi bare market where the demand has historically been for this price uptrend outside of any like sovereign bid. um that there had been for 17 years people like uh Morgan Stanley that had clients that were looking for exposure and the ETF allowed for simple exposure. So that's demand that had been sitting there on the sidelines um waiting. Point being is that they know that there's interest across these products and so that's why they're looking to go and develop them and it really ties into the interest and opportunity to build in the space and build differentiated solutions because these firms are fully not going to be able to bring the talent in and come up with innovative ways. And so there's going to be huge op as you go across whether it's lending, custody, financial services that have that Bitcoin feel. Um whether it's today or the price is $140,000 and then they have to look different than their competitor, it's going to come because they're playing to win and winning isn't going to be in an omnibus fashion holding hundreds of billions of dollars uh long term. >> Yeah, it's well said. Nick, any thoughts on this one or I can jump to the next? Yeah. No, I mean I think I think in terms of added flows, I mean, it's going to build on on what what we've already seen, right? Um, you already knew that they were going to turn this on. It's already starting to happen. I think they probably will look to to bundle some stuff with like some of their existing high net worth client base. They're probably going to say like, "Hey, they may bundle some things to try to compete with IBIT." Um, because again, I mean, they're basically the same product, right? >> Yeah. I think I'd say that's all I have on that one. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean the only other difference that I thought was somewhat interesting was like I I believe Black Rockck has an Ethereum ETF as well. And so it's interesting that Morgan Stanley decided to do a Salana ETF as sort of like their extra outside of Bitcoin and maybe that's how they think they're going to differentiate um in terms of those sort of flows on the margin uh outside of Bitcoin, but remains to be seen. Um we did the next day too uh Morgan Stanley did file for Ethereum ETF though. So, uh maybe it just took an extra day because of whatever staking. I don't necessarily have any deep uh insight there, too. But they also did file for that. >> Good to know. Uh we mentioned um wallet push from Morgan Stanley as well. Another uh wallet uh related news from last week was Rumble uh and Tether launched their crypto wallet. Liam, I'm going to hand this off to you. I know you've you've taken a look at this a bit and um what do you think the implications of this are? Yeah, it just shows how fundamentally broken money is. That anytime that you want to get payouts for, you know, providing value to society that like nobody actually wants to just use dollars in general um or or the fact that you need to pair dollars with so many other assets right into the platform itself versus just going out um and taking the dollars and and going to best-in-class financial services. I think uh is starting to almost be gamified or um you know almost uh there's going to be prediction markets in into a number of different asset classes everywhere. But um yeah, I mean Rumble has almost 50 million uh monthly active users. So um they're definitely not small. Incorporating stable coins, Bitcoin, and um Tether's tokenized gold um product in there is is pretty interesting, too. And um there it's definitely more of a you know I'll say libertarian type crowd on on Rumble. So it'll be interesting to see what type of traction they actually get. Um YouTube is obviously significantly bigger. Uh almost 3 billion users on there and they're just launching stable coins in itself. So um will be interesting to see what type of Bitcoin uh traction and flow they get on there before um others have to compete. But a a big portion of that that that makes it interesting for folks who are all across the world is just not having to um you know set up a bank account etc to actually get capital uh directly to them and and offboard it themselves. So um interesting to see to I am not sure how much traction they're going to get outside of uh a fairly narrow group of folks though. Yeah, I don't have much. I I personally I feel like um the Tether barbell is is interesting because the Tether on the side of sovereign exposure and what they're doing across um dollarizing emerging markets and sweeping flows and really leading on that front I find really interesting. I think on the other side there's this um mosaic. It's kind of chaotic. they're trying to paint in how do they get to the distribution and utilization uh from day to day and I don't necessarily I think they're looking for something right because we look at Rumble and Tether and and what does that look like I know we've seen what YouTube's doing with stable coins I think there's a lot of TBD we talked about it last week or the week before that they're launching a wallet I think that utilization on the end side um everyone's fighting for like the use case there but I feel like they're very sophisticated one angle and the other side. It's like TBD to see how it plays out. And so you hear a lot of this stuff and Tether obviously has a big name. Um, but it's really kind of still theoretical on like how will creators uh in content interact with Tether and then it's still just it's going to be fascinating to watch what USDC and being closer to the US markets, right? try to feel like USC, Google, JPM, that's more of a like trad kind of experience. Um, and you think about like just Tether and Rumble in itself are more of like on the outsides of kind of like specifically Rumble and and what most people would associate that platform for and is. Um, so yeah, I think I think it's interesting to see the activity, but I don't necessarily know if it goes anywhere. Um >> well it's a it's an interesting point around the the distribution angle because you know a few months ago uh Tether did a big push around uh USAT like the US centric uh Genius Act compliant stable coin that they launched and they had some marketing some sort of commercials around it but it's like it's very difficult I think in my mind to get individuals to adopt and use something like USAT unless like you're doing like a UBI airdrop to them and and you know it's it's uh they're much more incentivized to use it. So in my mind like this Rumble deal is basically a different parallel path to get like distribution people using uh digital dollars um where you already have sort of an ingrained user base um that is familiar with uh you know a lot of the ethos of Rumble is like you know anti-censorship freedom of speech oriented type uh thinking. So it it's kind of a natural fit to to integrate these things into that existing user base. Um because you know there was some fanfare initially around USAT but I haven't really heard much about it since then. Um anything else on that one or we can jump to um the Walmart one pay deal. No, I think I think just one thing I would say is like it wouldn't surprise me if you see a lot of people that are like doing streaming like especially like pro gamers or like things like that, people that stream on Twitch and stuff like that. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those people picked this up. Also, like in terms of people who stream on YouTube and stuff like that, I know there have been a number of there were a number of people pretty well-known YouTube streamers and and creators who were banned off of the platform for various reasons because maybe they didn't post things that YouTube necessarily agreed with. Um, and so it wouldn't be it wouldn't surprise me if you see some of those folks use this. Uh, because this would be a pretty like instantaneous way to get like YouTube donations and like receive, you know, stuff through Twitch and stuff like that. It wouldn't surprise me. >> Yeah, I agree with that. Um, all right. Uh, switching gears a little bit here. So, Walmart Walmart backed super app one Pay hits a $4 billion valuation. Um, I'm going to pull up a different article here, but Michael, I was going to hand this to you. Uh, why is this a big deal? Yeah. So, I think the One Pay stuff is much bigger than um people have talked about. I think it kind of ties into the transition from the Rumble uh conversation that maybe there's going to be a lot if not future value on the margins, but today there really isn't. It reminds me a lot of like X and um not even so much Substack even though Substack has monetized. I think they just raised it like or they just raised $60 million maybe. maybe the value either the I think the valuation was much greater but I think it was 60 million that they raised point being is that most people still stay to act like the network effects where the conversation discourse is happening very similar to like YouTube and what's happening there and so when we transition over into like capital markets I think of it very similarly where US-entric market um you're going to look there for value capture first in distribution before you start to get into like uh the fringes where because again when you think about Tether in emerging markets and the amount of capital flow that would come in through a wallet or financial service there is just fundamentally different than a US uh individual and and their cohort and demographic in in capital spend. Um so where the one pay aspect gets interesting is because it came out you know a few weeks ago that they were turning on buy sell um into digital assets in Bitcoin. I think it was only a few cryptocurrencies. The thing that's really fascinating I really recognize is OnePay is uh top 12 finance apps. They're ahead of uh Robin Hood, MX, Schwab, Coinbase uh around a few among a few others notable that you just wouldn't expect and that it's like this one kind of like super app and that it offers kind of debit cards via Green Dot, Remittences, um banking by sell. And so I think this is interesting because not only does Walmart in a certain segment of the market that they're focused on via OnePay is a traditionally kind of fits into that like Square Cash App cohort that may not be able to get access to the best financial services and that digital asset rails offer the ability to build better financial technology, better uh banking apps and reduce a lot of the inherent friction that had traditionally occurred. And so I think one pay via its distribution and what they're working on is kind of a a signal where we will see other firms whether it's like um credit unions, challenger banks start to incorporate some of this tech because it's much easier to turn on pieces of um uh like other additional products. And then also just net new players come in to be able to offer banking services to individuals that either couldn't be underwritten in a traditional uh financial sense that didn't make economics because of the customer acquisition costs uh a traditional bank has to um incur when they want to win a client. And so I think that that's a big missing piece that we haven't really discussed in the market isn't focused on is when you disintermediate the ability to effectively be a bank. Where will the value acrue from existing players that have better distribution and segments of the market that have they haven't been able to acquire and win? And then net new players. Um so I think it's bullish in the sense of Bitcoin digital assets and net new players. I think it's somewhat bearish in either credit unions, old fintexs that are going to be a little slower in adopting uh some of this technology. A cousin of this or angle is like Revolute. Revolute, my understanding, they're like stable coin remittances and and stable in transactions have like blown through the roof the past call it 12 to 24 months where somebody like um uh Western Union or I forget what the other money um the there's the other uh remains firm. They've said they're coming into this game, but they haven't fully embraced or adopted it because their legacy businesses are kind of like predicated on the the slowness of money and the fees they can transact and they may be in the back like the you know the net new firm trying to do something different because it benefits them like a Revolute may benefit uh tremendously. >> Yeah. All all great points. Maybe if we pull that through a little bit further. You'd shared um this tweet from Simon Taylor just talking about effectively the difference between having access to the distribution like you're talking about, but then also you know how that compares to like actual expertise and the ability to win like those are two different uh two different things effectively. So what is what is he talking about here in in that context? Yeah, I thought this was fascinating because it it was like ties into that meme that's been passed around after the new year that COVID or March 2020 crash was seven years ago when it feels like three years ago. This uh idea that he throws out or timeline, it feels like the JP Morgan Apple card was just uh launched, but it really was back in I think they said 2019. Um, it was really Goldman getting in uh or Goldman, if I said Jamie Morgan, Goldman getting into the Apple uh consumerbased products and consumer lending products with the Apple card. So, they partner with Apple. Um, he references they cost about $350 to win the uh client. uh but they started to really hit significant uh losses year-over-year because of the way that they were underwriting the loans and the type of borrowers that they were approving. And so it went from like I want to say two it says 2.93% uh in 22 jumps to 6.2% 2% loss rates in 23 and then they started to slowly migrate and look for uh somebody to absorb that credit and they had to absorb it at a discount which it ended up sitting in as JP Morgan because JP Morgan I believe they're the largest credit issuer for uh Amazon they understand how to underwrite that. They have the distribution but they also have the technical and um the economic expertise to be able to do this. And so Goldman really came in, had the distribution, but they were they're not consumer-based credit lenders. And so they suffered significant losses. And I thought this was fascinating just from a traditional market uh you know retrospective on like how you know you want to develop a product, you want to get into a new space, but just because you want to do that and have distribution, if you don't have the experience and expertise, you may not be able to be successful. And it reminds me very similar as we start thinking about Bitcoin custody, Bitcoin back lending and other financial products that unless you have the right taste, team uh and distribution and experience and expertise, we're going to see a lot of these firms get in this game, but again naturally not know where to play or how to play. And the the easiest angle to go to is Bitcoin back lending because I think it's easily forgotten that while Bitcoin is the best um you know asset when it comes to um superior uh like not only from custody but from the pristine collateral that you get thrown out a bunch. It doesn't really matter how pristine the collateral is if you don't know um these new primitives that exist. What are they? Well, it trades 24/7. It's more volatile than traditional markets. times that are liquid like where liquidity events happen usually happen in nights and weekends. This is empirically uh seen. I remember being back in the day running a lending buck and it would be like the the one that always comes to mind is Thanksgiving evening. Um and because there would always be these crazy deleveraging moments around there and Trafi is not prepared for that and then that's not even accounting for uh rehypothecation and the reality and Trafi always has uh that moral hazard that exists that if we blow up we will be bailed out because we matter too much. There are no bailouts in Bitcoin and so if you get off sides in your lending book there's nobody to step in. And we saw this happen in 2022. And so I think that's where this ties directly into um you know Trafi is going to come in. They're going to you know participate in this economy but the ones that are going to be prudent conservative are the ones that are going to survive to kind of be players in the space. And I think a lot may uh you know end up in the same example as uh Goldman Sachs and the credit rating or credit lending on consumer side. Yeah, I'd agree. I think that um a lot of this ultimately is going to come from the consumer too who is um who's been in the space and going to ask like they're going to come out with their V1s and it's going to be okay and um you know it's going to be not not have the assurances that many folks who have been uh who have token out loans the Bitcoin space before are really looking for um and they naturally won't necessarily all know the um stories of BlockFi Elius and um what essentially went wrong there. And um over time, the most sophisticated Bitcoin lenders who have uh who just have the most Bitcoin and have been in the space for the longest will just uh ask that they upgrade their products. Otherwise, they will only use it for a speculative amount and size their risk appropriately. Um and ultimately, that's just going to drive the market. Um, and I do think a lot of those folks are are more at like the Morgan Stanley side of the thing uh of the world than than One Pay. Um, and so it's it's great to have a like Bitcoin and and uh you know digital assets on there, but I think it's difficult to really make it a core part of your business or or um sell it um without all the education that goes into Bitcoin and uh just because there is so much confusion and conflation out there with uh digital assets in general and so without that I think it can be difficult to to get the consumer on board. It's it's uh you know just having Bitcoin and and digital assets out there is going to be a net positive um as long as they do everything like custody and uh making sure that the consumer is um is safe. But I could see it not getting quite as much traction within the broader app. Although it's still great to see um just given the the large amount of distribution. >> Yeah, that's very well said. Um expertise is going to be critical. you know, these these players, these incumbents, whether it's the banks or other fintexs, um, have certainly realized at this point that they need to do something. And so now we're kind of watching the scramble scramble mode period of a lot of M&A activity, partnerships. Um, but again, going back to the the broader point here, it's like you can have distribution uh, but having the expertise uh, the domain expertise really uh, around Bitcoin and digital assets is another thing. And the the issue there is that you know uh attracting that type of talent who has that expertise is difficult for those players because um you know what hardened Bitcoiner wants to go work for uh Morgan Stanley uh you know few and far between I would say and so that's why you've seen a lot of partnerships and and uh acquisition activity because um they know they know they're now in a time crunch to be able to offer things uh to their under underlying clients and they they don't have the expertise they don't have the infrastructure in Um so maybe that's a nice transition to talk a little bit about um early riders uh and the new year 2026 things we're focused on. Uh the team is growing. Uh so that's a nice segue to uh formally introduce a new member of the team principal at Early Riders Nick Johnson um who joined from uh Treadfi and and I'll I'll let him uh give a little bit more on his background. Maybe Nick, if you could speak to uh your prior experience and then um maybe how you got into Bitcoin and then more so, you know, what resonated with you about what we're doing at Early Riders um and our thesis here. >> Yeah. No, for sure. Thanks, Brian. Yeah. No, so super excited to be here and and appreciate the the opportunity to be joining the pod. Um so Nick Johnson was born and raised in Dallas. Uh family's lived here my whole life. I worked at City. So, prior to to joining Early Writers, I worked at City in San Francisco doing exclusively technology M&A. Um, in terms of kind of my why Bitcoin, you know, in 2020, my dad and I were watching an interview uh with Michael Michael Sailor was on it and I heard him talking about it and and he kind of just gave his whole thesis on like, you know, why money is broken, why Bitcoin's the fix. Um, and I just immediately got enamored by it. Uh, I was like, "This is super interesting." Um, and I knew there was just something different about it. Uh, I'd never heard anything, you know, I had a finance degree, so I learned in school about inflation and how all that works, but you know, there was just when I learned about Bitcoin, it was just different. Um, and it seemed like the first asset that's ever really been invented that's truly the closest thing to perfect. Um, and so that really kind of won it over for me. So, I kind of went down the rabbit hole just like everyone else. Um, and kind of realized, you know, I was having a really good experience and and learning a ton uh in investment banking, but I just realized that that Bitcoin was just what I was super passionate about. And I always wanted to do the buy side uh in terms of private equity, venture, that kind of buyside world, but I really wanted to find a way to kind of intersect the buy side with Bitcoin because that's what I'm most passionate about. And so um when early writers or the opportunity kind of came about I was like this is perfect. I was like this perfectly combines my interest in the buy side, my interest in investing and also my you know beliefs in Bitcoin and and kind of my full thesis on that. So um yeah hopefully that's kind of helpful. But that that was kind of the key drivers for me. >> Yeah. No, thanks for thanks for walking through that. And I think, you know, uh I believe, you know, part of what what drew you in was, um our initial white paper that we published, um close to 2 years ago now. Um but I'm going to pull it up here and and we're going to be re-releasing this um this week. Uh little refresh version. Uh a little bit of a look back on on, you know, what we got right, what we got wrong, where we can improve. Uh but maybe Liam, if you want to talk through um a little bit about just the overall thesis and and where we're headed in 2026. >> Real quick, um sorry, just before we go into the white paper. Um, I just wanted to to share super excited about Nick joining. I think um 2026 is going to be a big year for Bitcoin early writers of portfolio companies and part of that is leveling up across um experience and expertise. I think that part of the themes we'll be talking about with the white paper in general is there really needs to be the the building of the bridge between Triadfi and digital assets. And a lot of that comes down to the commercial uh relevance and viability. And what that means is there's a lot of companies building great things in Bitcoin, whether it's slightly tweaking the product for the taste of mass market consumer demand or helping those companies. I think that's where will focus and Nick as well because Nick's worked on very large M&A. He's worked on very large deals and that's something that's just traditionally missing in the space. Like we know as people that have been listening to this podcast and following the Bitcoin space is that there's certain prudent pragmatic ways that make sense to build products long term. The reality is Trafy doesn't appreciate them yet and it's our job to get that there so it gets the right products with the right firms that are going to uh stay in for a long time. Um but it's not enough just to say it's the best product. You got to really be able to articulate it and then show that it benefits their end uh side. And so, um, excited there. Nick will be in Dallas. We are, it's not fully announced. If you're listening to this, you'll get a head start. We will have, uh, a Dallas satellite office for early riders and on-ramp. You'll be able to meet us and the team. Um, because Dallas is going to be a very key and pivotal market given the the current macro and and US setup, uh, and what's happening in Texas. Um, so super excited for Nick. and then we can kind of maybe go to Liam and and maybe Liam would when you shot share about the the white paper if you want to just give any highlights on what the purpose of the new white paper was before going into any of the the the particular themes. >> Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, thank uh super excited to have you on the team here, Nick. Yeah, I think um I think the the white paper is is a really um pivotable pivotal moment because it's uh to a lot of Michael's point too um there's so many principles uh that Bitcoin has right and that uh so many folks really have identified with and um have benefited significantly by adopting them themselves. anything from you know why understanding that Bitcoin is um you know more of a signal than all the other digital asset tokens out there um and why there is a need for you know cold storage Bitcoin segregated from the internet that um is you know not you know rehypothecated all the principles are exactly right and something that should be applied more broadly um to the world but also fact that many of the folks out there especially those who are listening uh probably have a a significant portion of their uh net worth in Bitcoin and and significant is relative to whatever um they've really identified with in the past. And then once uh the natural progression of that is um once you have a significant portion of your assets in Bitcoin, you really start to understand well I I at some point allocated to this or I uh made this personal expense expense over here and realized oh well especially earlier on like maybe I would have been better off just buying Bitcoin itself. And um that's kind of how we came to this whole conclusion of uh of early riders in general was both personally uh using Bitcoin as our per uh way to denominate our expenses and um you know return on and just ability to you know run circles around our peers who uh still were not living in that mindset and as well as just the insight of you know working at the Brown Brother Hermans and and 72s of the world to uh be able to come and and bridge the principles of um the traditional financial world and and what really has uh has gotten right there and then the uh on the other side applying the principles of um you know everything that we've done on the Bitcoin side of you know utilizing the right unit of account doing more with less and um building the bridge uh in order to create the right products and services for the market. Um, so I I'll take a pause there, but it's almost like a manifesto of how all capital formation will uh come out in the future really rooted in practice of being around this industry for a while and uh understanding what is been going right and then what uh potentially needs to be improved upon uh in order to kind of cross the chasm from being an industry just for hobbyists to uh essentially creating the best-in-class class products and services for folks like um at the Morgan Stanley's and the highest degrees of finance. >> Yeah, maybe Brian if you go to the top on some of the um the outline. I would encourage anybody listening uh check out this new white paper. I think the the core idea is um as Liam said that this serves as a a capital a manifesto for how capital formation will happen in the future and it really was rooted in two aspects. one is building uh with a Bitcoin standard whether it's a personal balance sheet or business balance sheet you end up coming out to the most efficient outcomes because once you have the best form of money um you start to root everything into that which is very valuable to know that money doesn't grow on trees in your decision-m and then on the other side of that once individuals if we believe that the majority if not all individuals will have to come to that conclusion well then the logical progression is they have to be credibly they have to credibly understand how they will get more Bitcoin if they're going to participate in an economic IC endeavor. And so this white paper we initially put out uh in 23 and we decided to add to it um this new white paper because it really exemplified there was a lot of things that we understood early that are starting to play out whether it's the notion the biggest one I would say and then I' love to hear Brian's thoughts is um the debate de the basement trade right we're still early in this theme but the notion that the denominator is broken being early people hear it they hear gold they understand it still tradfi at the very margins may start to think about how do they underwrite their return profile in some other um unit whether it's the S&P 500 gold bitcoin but it's still very small but the logical progression is once people start to question that then they start to still start the journey on like well what are the other denominators that I should be looking at and then as they go through like what makes a good form of money what's the best uh investment you know profile when it comes to all the aspects of bitcoin you end up in this logical conclusion whether it's gold or bitcoin you want to sound money to benchmark any returns against because everything else is effectively a derivative of that and then that's really where this uh white paper goes deeper into like why would you uh raise deploy and return in there what is bitcoin as a hurdle rate how does it change capital stacks when you think about a company that uses uh sound money as its denominator and it goes into like the next steps in that because once you get that you have a better form of money on your balance sheet well that form of money is working in your favor So you don't spend in the same way as value that's depreciating. So you start to do more with less. Um so we're really excited about this. We really encourage everyone to take a look at it uh because it really gives the clarity of thought um that comes into how this firm came about and it's really helped us get a lot on both the um investor side because this is what they've been looking for but then also um on the builder side because builders out there deeply understand these concepts but they haven't had them articulated and once they do they find kind of like that that team that version that they want to work and build with and we've really attracted some of uh cornerstone folk portfolios uh based on this white paper that's come out. >> Yeah. Well, that's very well said. I would say um you know the the this notion of the denominator being broken is core to everything we do uh core to the thesis and to your point the a version of that story really entered the zeitgeist this year with gold running with silver running really all precious metals commodities. Um people are waking up to the realities of inevitable fiat debasement. Um and while in sort of mainstream circles uh it's still viewed as you know quote unquote the debasement trade um you know I would say we we view it slightly differently in that this is a structural long-term shift. This isn't just something that you trade in and out of. Um because these uh these trends, these uh the debasement realities um happen slowly over time, but they're not, you know, there's no really going back from it, right? Like as Lyn Alden says, there's nothing stopping this train. There's nothing stopping the inevitable fiat in the basement. And so you need to be positioned in a way um where you can capture uh or or really preserve value into the future in this world where, you know, AI is making everything abundant. uh you need a sound asset to absorb a lot of that. Um and and the other thing I would say is that um you know uh as we've looked at you know one of the themes in here that we talk about is is doing more with less. And the way I would posit that that theme or that part of the thesis is is goes back back to a um a quote from Michael Dell uh that he had a few years ago around um constraints breeding creativity. Um, and that's really the essence of of what we mean when we say Bitcoin is the hurdle rate. It's the opportunity cost. it it by using a sound unit as your denominator, as your benchmark, um you're naturally going to be more disciplined, more prudent in your decision-m because you're assessing everything against a uh a benchmark, a form of money that's actually going to appreciate in value as opposed to the opposite, which most of traditional VC has been sort of stuck in this loop for decades of, you know, raising as much money as possible, deploying as much, you know, spending as much as you can, trying to show uh topline growth, revenue, new numbers by, you know, via that spending. Um, and ultimately it comes back to chasing the wrong unit and then distorting how capital is deployed, distorting, uh, proper price signals in the market. Um, because again, the the unit itself that is being chased typically is is not sound. And so you're constantly on the the hamster wheel of of trying to show growth, um, redeploy cap capital, you know, raise at a higher valuation, etc. Whereas if you were just more disciplined and and held a better form of money, you wouldn't have to worry about um you know that that sort of vicious cycle or that loop of of deployment, re-raising, uh you know, getting a higher valuation, etc. Um so so it's it it really cuts across various themes in this in this white paper. So implore everyone to to read through this. Um and like we said, we're releasing a sort of refreshed version of this, but um any other thoughts on on this, guys? Yeah, maybe um it's a good transition and then we can go wherever is u the the last link with the AI because I think AI is a key component of this AI is acceleration and what Brian just did is exemplified into um the notion of everyone's building these vibe coded apps. Uh there's a theme that's been uh building for the past couple years is like there will be the first billion-dollar company but with by one individual and I've always had um this vision that that person it will happen but it'll be somebody that deeply understands these concepts and ethos uh because ultimately if you're competing with somebody else that has access to the same tools to buy code an app and obviously like there is execution and the entrepreneur entrepreneurial taste for distribution of the hit. But let's say those both existed pretty similarly. Well, it all comes down to how are you sweeping your capital into and what are you chasing? Because if you're holding a better form of money, it's appreciating in value. You're going to have a sharper lens in how you build. And so, uh, sorry, was it was the last one where why the latest craze of PE and VC rollups won't work. this video. >> Uh yeah, you don't have to click the video, but just if you pull it up because it'll show um well Liam's or Brian's pulling it up. I thought this was super fascinating because this was a recent podcast um that was I guess it had to do with allin interview which was McKenzie and General uh Catalyst uh senior exe execs if not the CEO of General Catalyst. But the point being is there's a craze going on right now. It includes these firms, includes like ABC and others that are doing these rollups around uh and like it's like venture kind of migrating because they're realizing that like the venture model doesn't won't historically work in this new world. Um, and what they're looking at is like cash flow positive uh businesses that are pretty like unsexy that they can either invest in businesses that will roll them up or roll them up or funds and then integrate and infuse like best practices and AI. And at first glance it sounds great. I expect a lot of capital to flow into these themes. But when you really start to peel back the layers as an entrepreneur, you realize that that is one approach, but it's an approach that won't be the most efficient because you're effectively having to rearchitect a foundation that is just fundamentally broken when it comes to the inefficiencies and the people that have been hired and the processes that are part of the uh totality of the culture versus if it's just embedded from day one. Meaning that you're going to be utilizing these tools. your team is going to be utilizing the tools from a mindset and also from a productivity perspective and I think that's really embodies like we are focused on Bitcoin returns doesn't mean we only focus on Bitcoin infrastructure because there is a much more value that's been delivered to the world that has a lot of fat and inefficiencies but once you have somebody that understands these concepts and themes and wants to effectively infuse them into building net new companies that compete with the incumbents that are historically fatire with inflation with turnover over bad unit economics. This is how we'll rebuild the world to be more efficient and net new value to be delivered. Uh and so I just thought this was interesting because I was always like fascinated by this concept and I thought it would go somewhere and I still think it will but it it will be like a migration point not the end state to basically net new companies building what this will be the category winners. Uh and that's super exciting for what we're working on and who we're looking for to get involved with what we build. >> Yeah, that's a great point. Oh, and uh as soon as I heard about Bitcoin denominated BM while I was still at my old private equity shop, I it initially clicked like, oh, uh we're cooked. Um if if this has any credible way to actually outperform or or even denominate returns in Bitcoin, um it's just so much superior to um the existing status quo that over time um capital all capital allocation will need to come this way. It's just like how over time better um better money will drive out bad money and you know it it definitely takes time and there's the entrenched bureaucracies and status quo that will limit um adoption especially by the um the established funds who you know probably know that this is how they should be operating but can't because it admits that um how they were previously doing business is um you know generally not the right way. Um, but on the other side of things too, I think it's important to call out that, you know, some folks just literally have no uh they're like, well, all these concepts are 100% right, and I agree with, but there's just no way to outperform Bitcoin. And that's just essentially saying that the world will look exactly as it does in the future, which I uh generally don't agree with. I think that it will change significantly. uh you know every day we're seeing like more and better opportunities come through the door in terms of um just the acceleration of kind of human progress and technology and so I would say it's never been a more exciting time in both venture and and uh to be thinking about capital allocation this way. >> Yeah, just to maybe put a a a loop around this discussion, I this tweet caught my eye over the weekend uh from Akos Gupta. he um started a company called Product Growth. But what he's saying here is the basically the the broken traditional VC and and founder math. Um and we've talked about this in the past of like um the way traditional VC works is you know effectively uh you assume that you know nine out of 10 bets are going to go to zero and you really need to hit a home run uh with one or two of those bets. So this says VCs need 3x fund returns to stay in business. $100 million fund needs to return 300 million. and if they own 20% of their company at exit, you need to sell for 1.5. So basically saying, you know, there's a there's a misalignment of incentives here between these mega funds and founders effectively where uh it says here the incentive structures are pointed in the opposite direction. VCs optimize for portfolio returns, founders optimize for personal outcomes. These only align at $500 million plus exits. And really the the takeaway from this to me was like the this misalignment of incentives traces back to again chasing the wrong unit. So bec the these dynamics that are being described here are effectively a function of broken money and the you know broken denominator that we referenced and the need to basically um chase hyperrowth uh outcomes for you know uh 10% or less of of a fund. And so, you know, the the way that you combat this is you you use a better form of money and you don't have to effectively um be on that hamster wheel of trying to achieve these um outsiz exits and and just assuming that the rest of your portfolio goes to zero. Like that is not um a prudent or efficient way of doing things. And so um I think people are starting to wake up to a lot of these uh sort of misalignments. They're they're still missing the broader solution of of tying it back to the money being broken. But um I thought this was interesting in sort of the context of this discussion that um you know most people are still missing this uh but they are you know at least somewhat waking up to um the the misaligned incentives that are sort of pervasive throughout the traditional VC space. What do you guys think on this? >> Yeah, I mean it's a great um it's a great call out. I mean, what we're talking about here reminds me very similar of um sometimes we talk past each other when it comes to Bitcoin and where it sits in a portfolio because for vast majority of people that are interested in Bitcoin, they don't necessarily underwrite it based on like where gold at for hundreds if not thousands of years and specifically around capital formation. So, it it doesn't end up as an end state. It ends up as like um a sleeve in a portfolio. And it's very similar here when you talk about like VC math and the insanity of the VC industry that's grown over the past 50 years to really understand how it's a Frankenstein aberration whatever you want to call it uh construct you really have to go back to how venture started the purpose of it and then the reality of whether it's institutional family offices put in any bucket have to go further and further out on the risk curve to uh hit their return profile and benchm mark and then ultimately looking at these like outliers that have provided air cover for everyone to raise a fund because the vast majority of funds underperform uh the S&P when he looks at look at cortiles there's very few venture funds that hit their targets and so this will only increase because of the amount of monetary units um and it really gives like a negative connotation to like venture in it in itself because the notion of capitalizing somebody to return you know more capital is pretty straightforward, has existed for forever since money's existed. It's the notion that um you need to go for home runs, that nine out of 10 bets fail. These are all concepts of a fiat system and that they can exist because you can do the the the mental um model of in a Bitcoin world, well, what what sane person would give up their capital to know that 90% of it is going to be evaporated? And like what sane person would get out of bed if they had they knew that a 90% chance they would fail? It doesn't make any sense. Um but we fund these concepts when they're theoretical and that we can go for the home runs because the money's broken. So yeah, this uh I hadn't fully looked at this, but this is kind of a common thread and really the understanding that if you're going to build a better firm uh and that last into the future into perpetuity ideally um it's that you have to start with the right foundation and then bet that the rest of the market is going to naturally come this way because that's the one of the most exciting things from an institutional perspective is when people start to just wake up and realize, well, why am I doing any of this? why don't I just hold this money that has a venture-like return but has the safety of bonds and and then that's the first step and that's what on-ramp and other portfolio companies solve for. But then over time as you get there as the price appreciates and the return profile starts to diminish and also as you start to think about uh diversification specifically from an institutional or even an individual that wants to invest uh their Bitcoin well the natural progression is well are you going to give me more Bitcoin uh than I gave you uh which is a very rational thing to say and do. 100%. Yeah, that that's that's a piece that uh most of the sort of traditional market is still missing. It's like why would I why would I want to receive more dollars 10 years from now? You have no uh anchor to know what those dollars are going to be worth 10 years from now. Um and so it's it's completely irrational to to lock up capital for that amount of time um with the hope of, you know, outperforming the S&P effectively in dollar terms, nominal terms. Um, so Brian was referencing, you know, we're coming up on an hour, but one thing we did want to call out was the launch. Um, this will be released on Tuesday. Today's Monday. Uh, honoring for everyone. Um, we're really excited about this on the on-ramp side because ultimately one of the concepts we just talked about around understanding Bitcoin as your unit of account and savings vehicle is that's still a farreaching for vast majority of individuals because ultimately they don't know how to credibly custody it which is impedes uh the ability to really get material exposure and so we've been called you know at on-ramp the Rolls-Royce of custody we work with institutions endowments uh pub codes but a lot of individuals don't feel that they can work with us whether it's because of our marketing needs to improve or the cost structure so on for everyone uh includes an IRA account individual self onboarding we still do white glove onboarding but then really uh a flat fee structure which has been asked for by a lot of individuals um one thing that we're going to do to upgrade you know this year is final settlement doing more kind of just uh engagement with the audience one thing is if you sign up if you want to check out on ramp you can actually get 50% off your first a month using FAS. So if you go through get set up, you'll get 50% out if you've been meaning to try on ramp and you felt whether all those things that we talked about you needed an IRA account to be included the fee structure or um you just didn't know if we worked with you as an individual. So we're super pumped to have that out. Um Brian, do you have any thoughts on honoring for everyone? >> Oh yeah. Um this is um this is going to be a big big deal for us uh heading into this new year. I think historically there's been a perception that um on-ramp only works with super high net worth folks or institutional allocators. And while we do service uh those those cohorts as well, we wanted to re-emphasize uh the individual because frankly that makes up um the core of of our existing client base today is individuals uh many of whom who have been uh holding Bitcoin for a long time uh predominantly in some form of self-custody. Um and they realize that at a certain point um when that uh portion of your net worth becomes so material um that the burden of of self-custody and and uh whether it's the physical or digital attack risks um or even just thinking about long-term planning like inheritance uh and estate planning um it it you don't have to be on an island effectively. uh you can uh use on-ramp and also be confident and know that um you know you're not seating unilateral control to any one particular custodian which has been uh basically the the pitfall and why a lot of folks have been in self-custody for years is because they know um it's not prudent to just keep coins on an exchange and you know an omnibus pool where you don't actually have clear visibility or transparency into your bitcoin. So, you know, the way on-ramp works is you have a segregated multi-IG vault where three institutions are are coordinating on your behalf. You're sort of quarterbacking the quorum. Um, and it's really a fantastic solution for individuals of all kind, whether you're new to the space, um, and don't want to have to go down the path of of learning self-custody, um, or you've been in for a while and you recognize, uh, the the value prop of of what we've built and how it can be a creative to your existing setup. You know, none of this is meant to fully replace, uh, self custody. We we believe in self- custody and think it's critically important uh really to the network. The ability to um hold your own keys is is massively important. But um you know we think mic and what on provides can be an increative uh element of someone's setup and uh just being able to know that um a certain amount of of your Bitcoin wealth is going to be passed on to your your uh spouse or your kids for example with a proper inheritance plan with legal titling. Um you can set up all of that stuff easily in app. So, this is a big deal for us. But, um, anything else on that, Mike? >> No, I think we covered it. Super excited. Um, as mentioned, you can use FS if you want to get 50% off your first month to try it out. And then, um, like we talked about, we're just going to be doing a lot more with the audience as in relates to um, special incentives, swag, you'll be able to meet us in market. Um, and then, yeah, I don't know if I want to leave it to Nick and Liam to leave. The one thing I I'll share with the audience is uh we're constantly looking to improve the segments and what we're looking at. We've had no shortage of real high quality inbound from uh company building. So would encourage anybody that's thinking about opportunities, we'd love to chat with them. And then also uh just in the YouTube comments, if you have any other thoughts around segments, opportunities, things we should be focusing on, we're always looking for feedback. So please uh it's always nice to to hear from the audience. But uh Nick and Liam, anything before we wrap? No, I'd just say um yeah, please check out the white paper if you haven't seen it yet. Um it's a it's really phenomenal work. Um and would would also please uh reach out and give us comments on the white paper too in addition to um just the segments in general. But then uh yeah lastly we're going to be trying to do a lot more with you know building the bridge uh across not just you know Bitcoin and and Trii uh on the early rider side but yeah with all the portfolio companies too like uh on-ramp for everybody kind of bridging all the principles of self custody such as uh proof of reserves built in uh no single point of failure and and the experience that everybody is used to at traditional um financial US at uh banks and fintex. Um, so yeah, excited for for a great 2026 and uh can't wait to get after it. Nick, anything else? >> Yeah, no, I think you I think you hit the nail on the head. I think all I would say is is obviously super excited to be a part of the team. I think 2026 is going to be a big year. Um, and you know, I think I think we're pretty well positioned to to take advantage of that. So, I think I would leave you with that. >> Awesome. Thanks, guys. >> Thank y'all. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.