The Last Trade E043: Bitcoin Fixes This with Larry Lepard & David Thayer

Brian Cubellis (00:00.622) You have a hard stop right at 10. I do 11 I think. 11 a .m. years. Yeah I got a calendar at 11. I got to go do something else. So I'm going to be up until then. We've got an hour and 18 minutes. We're talking private equity. Larry I completely agree with what you were just saying about private equity having worked at a third party private equity valuations firm that valued mid -market private equity portfolio companies. The way in which these companies are marked up, you essentially just take, you look back into a DCF, you put an IRR on it, and then boom, that's the valuation. Yeah, you call it the value or you sell your $25 ,000 cat in exchange for a $50 ,000 dog to your friend and he buys it yours and that becomes the mark, but that doesn't mean the company's really worth what that marginal transaction was done at. It's just a ton of that in that industry. I know because I was in that industry from 1980, early 1980s, 83 timeframe to 2004. And it was bad then and it's only gotten worse. And there's for each company, it's like, all right, let's look at this company and let's think of all the accounting tricks we can use to make it look as valuable as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and you know, You got zombie companies too. I mean, they kind of keep these things alive because they don't want to take the marks. They'd rather keep funneling money into them rather than take market to market and write it off. So there's a lot of embedded loss in that area, in my opinion. I mean, the thing I saw recently showed that there was between one and two trillion, probably close to $2 trillion worth of private equity out there. which the trade rate on that has gone down substantially. People are not buying and selling it anymore. And as a result of that, it's all missed marked. We know those values aren't real. Well, I'll hasten to add that as an executive advisor and retired partner at Blackstone, I have to plead the fifth on some of this, but nonetheless, and by the way, I should mention while we're at it that I'm speaking my own - Brian Cubellis (02:17.614) capacity not in theirs, but you may be aware of the cliff asness at AQR had called it liquidity laundering, rightly or wrongly. But the fact is too, Larry, you'll know this because you were in the industry, Marty, perhaps too, that some institutional investors would prefer not to see the volatility. And so, you know, they're sort of, you know, blind to it and perhaps willfully so. But And I think their constituents want that too. But that's just my personal opinion. I think that's right. I mean, and you know, some of it, I mean, in the olden days, some of it used to actually have underlying value. I mean, the structures have changed so much. I mean, when I was doing it, you know, we had preferred stock with a liquidation preference, sometimes redemption clauses, et cetera. And all we needed to do was have the company be worth more than the preferred stock or the amount we'd invested. And we knew we'd get our money back. And so we'd carry the investment at cost. And that was actually a pretty conservative thing to do because unless the company became worth less than the capital put into it, you were fine. But of course, that's all gone away. I mean, now everyone's buying common and there are no teeth, no clauses, no nothing. And this is how you get these enormous markdowns. I mean, we've seen some private deals in the crypto area coming around. I'm not going to say what or who that in the last round were valued at I think it was $11 billion. And the talk is that this, yeah, it rhymes with digital currency group. And there might be. By the way, I meant to say volatility laundering, which probably makes more sense. But nonetheless, the point remains that, and then by the way, while we're talking about it, of course, sometimes there'll be a reluctance to have it down around. And so you'll actually postpone a capital raise or engage in other sort of tricks of the trade to. sure that some of these rounds are down 60, 70, 80 % off the peak. It's difficult. One used to value companies based on revenue and cash flow and book value and so on and so forth. Those are still useful metrics to old school financial people. If we saw in the dot com area, it was based on eyeballs and Brian Cubellis (04:43.47) we're seeing a little bit of the same thing this time around. There are different metrics that people are using to value these things and they're, you know, they're pretty aggressive. The funny thing is, while we'd like to say, hopefully this time is different. Uh, we have like mean, I don't even know. I just hear it in the background. There's just like things that are just consistently like trying to like hit DDoS your brain. And so you're just like trying to, you know, stiff arm them in this like mean token just keeps like mean tokens keep going. And you see them on Twitter, the dashboard of all the people's different, like means meeting tokens. And this idea that we're still, you know, before the halving, we hit this price and we got like meme tokens taken off. Like God knows what's going to happen the next 12 months from evaluation and craziness. Yeah, there's always, there's always silly stuff being done. I mean, I, you know, it's, it's amazing to me, but we keep making the same mistakes over and over again in finance. Some people do it. And it really just kind of goes back to that all assets have become store of value. buckets, equities in particular, equities in real estate, we've started to treat as our savings. And you don't expect volatility. You don't expect down rounds when it's a savings mentality about an asset class. And I think, Larry, before we started, you talked about how there's going to have to be a hell of a repricing for equities when they convert to a Bitcoin standard eventually over time. And what matters then is your sat flow, bringing it back to the actual value investing principles of what matters is cash flow. And that changing philosophy is going to be quite something to live through. And we're at the very beginning of it with micro strategy. Yeah, no, that's right. Everything will be repriced. And And I think the price of everything in the world today is wrong. I mean, it's, you know, that, but that's what you would expect. I mean, if you, if you take fiat money and, you know, you hold interest rates at zero for long periods of time and you distort things as badly as we've distorted them, you know, you're going to get, you know, outrageous effects and you're going to get, you know, I mean, you're going to get the we works of the world, or you're going to get, you know, all the, all the silly shit that happened. Brian Cubellis (07:05.006) You know the FTX is etc. And you know, they need to get cleansed out and they will but it's we're not done You know, I think you can go on coin market cap and you can seal the Dogecoin is still a you multi -billion dollar Asset makes no sense to me, but there it is, you know And there are a lot of other things in them in the you know in the private equity world that have similar characteristics well addition to monkey around the cost of capital from the producer's perspective, consumer's perspective, people are kind of forced along and perhaps this goes without saying, the risk curve. And so they're going in to risk your investments and perhaps unnecessarily so, right? I mean, because if we had an interest rate, a cost of money that was arrived at naturally, then they wouldn't be forced to engage in risky behavior if you can earn 10 % of your cash. in the fiat world, then no need to go into junk bonds or whatever it might happen to be just to earn a yield. Yeah, that's absolutely right. That's a really great point that the way the system has been set up, we've all been forced to become kind of casino gamblers because holding a dollar or holding a bond is a hot potato. We know that year after year, relentlessly, it's losing value. It varies any given year how much it's going to lose, but it's definitely going to lose value every year. And so you've got to figure out where you're going to go to try and protect your purchasing power. And, you know, there are a lot of arguments for lots of different areas. I mean, you make arguments for real estate, but you can't move it and it's taxable. You know, Saylor makes an argument for, you know, kind of the equities of what he calls digital monopolies, which, you know, are Google and Facebook and, you know, Amazon and so forth. And I think there's an argument for that. I think they've protected you against debasement. But. Um, you know, they're not, those things aren't cheap, uh, on value metrics for sure. So, uh, but you know, it's, it's tough. I mean, everybody, I mean, that's, to me, that's the great tragedy of Fiat of the Fiat system. It's that nobody can really afford to retire because nobody really knows that they have enough money because the money is always losing value. And, um, and, and that's a, that's just a crime and it's sad. It's very sad. I mean, you can, you think you're rich, but. Brian Cubellis (09:27.982) But in reality, you're not necessarily rich because if the price level quadruples, what you have won't buy anything. So it's and you're constantly fighting that battle and you get taxed on it too. I mean, you go and you do it, you buy an asset to try and fight that battle. But then, you know, it's just protecting your loss and purchasing power. And yet when you go to sell it for a gain, you've got to pay a tax on the game. Right. I've been recently fascinated with the fire. movement, the financial independence, retire early people and their whole like, they're basing their entire life on the assumption that if you can get enough of a net worth that you're only spending 4 % of it per year, that's your safe withdrawal rate, that you're going to be fine. And that just totally ignores the possibility of inflation and debasement of that net worth, such that, you know, $10 million today. doesn't buy you $10 million worth of goods 20 years from now. And I have a feeling that there's going to be quite a few people who are retired now who have to tighten the belt or go back to work over the next couple of decades. Is it completely different or I don't even know if we want to go down the but I think like the fire thing, because I've seen it on the cursory field, like a very like fiat driven. I in general, like that people just generally don't like their work or what they do. So they want to retire early to do what? And I know it gets a lot of slack, but you know, 20, whatever 15, 18, Jordan Peterson, I think had a lot of very great things that he said. And one of them was like, so you retire and then you sit on it. So you, so you're good. And then you go sit on the beach and you drink five Pina coladas or whatever, two Pina coladas. And then you pass out and you're sunburned and you wake up the next day and it's like, well, then what do you do? It's like, There's a lot more to life than retiring. It's like, well, what is that? I don't know. But I think like when you have meaning and all the things that we're talking about with money start to come back to the world, you're not necessarily worried about retiring. You're more worried about how do you like take the gifts that you were given and get them back out into the world versus retiring and then sitting around. And the fire movements pretty funny because it's an outgrowth of influencer culture. It's basically a bunch of 25 to 30 year olds saying teach, teach my. Brian Cubellis (11:46.882) Yeah, fellow gen Z and millennials how to retire early. It's like, I don't know if you have it figured out yet. But like on the same point, too, like we're talking about retirement. That's a newsletter I wrote a couple of days ago, just randomly stumbled upon the state of state pensions a couple of days ago as of September end of Q3 2022. And at that point, state pensions across the US were They have a gap of $1 .2 trillion and that's only state pensions. We're not even talking about unfunded liabilities in terms of Medicaid, Social Security, private company pensions. And you think about the Herculean effort that's gonna be need to close that gap and there's very few things that can do that. And basically the conclusion I came to is you look at the demographics, all the boomers are retiring. A lot of those pension plans have shifted to an 80 -20 portfolio stock bond split towards the end of those life cycles for those individuals. TLT is down 25 % over the last five years. They're going to have to sell all those assets. As you were mentioning, the only way you're going to be able to fill this gap is to print money and backstop it, which is essentially default in another way. Hiller mean, the bottom line is we are heading for a monetary default. You know, the system is completely broken and, you know, as you say, Marty, you know, fix the money, fix the world. I mean, the money is broken and it's going to if you think it's broken now, just wait, it's going to get worse, sadly. And, you know, everyone will get paid in nominal terms, but what's it going to buy him? You know, I think the answer is not much unless you're protecting yourself with investments and assets that address this issue. Well, what's even worse mentioning or referencing what you mentioned earlier, Larry, is that, yeah, you get cap that you get taxed on the capital gains once you're monetizing your investments. And of course, he get taxed a couple of times if you're receiving dividends. But the other thing, too, is that as you know, as everyone on this call knows, there's a movement afoot now that tax unrealized gains. I saw that. I mean, it was a bit more after wealthy people. And, and of course, Brian Cubellis (14:11.566) you know, what's wealthy will get defined downward. I mean, it's you know, you guys probably know this and you know, when the income tax came out in 1913, I mean, it was meant for just like the very, very wealthiest people. Right. And of course, that quickly changed. And it's a very slippery slope. Right. I mean, if they're able to get that through, you know, look out, nothing's going to be safe. You know, so. Yeah. better figure out how to remember 12 words in your head. It's the only way you're gonna save your money. I think that really, we all know what the solution is to this problem. And the reason we're all doing this, I think, is because we're trying to educate the rest of the world to protect themselves because it's gonna be very difficult for those who don't learn this, rather sadly. I think the positive, ideally the positive here is just the game theory around. attracting capital and talent that we're seeing. We know these regions are trying to attract via ETF, but then also we see what's happening in the UAE. We've seen Florida, Texas, like other places. Ideally, we don't have to leave the United States to make this work and there's enough. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. I think I very much believe that the US is worth saving and will be saved and we will save it. But, you know, it's also going to, there's going to be a lot of tumult in this whole thing for sure. Sadly. There is, but. A positive note we were discussing before we hit record record Ron Paul was on Tucker Carlson earlier this week and I think a lot of what he started back in his 2008 presidential campaign the seeds of that campaign and the ideas he planted in the minds of many young people myself included are beginning to birth flowers in the movement of liberty. in terms of people really waking up to these systemic problems. It's a combination of the ideas that he put forth over 15 years ago and the fact that more and more individuals are confronted with reality of inflation and it's an effect on their everyday life. So, while things are insane, I do have confidence that people are waking up. Obviously we have this show. I've got a couple other shows. We're all doing what we're doing for very specific reasons, I think. Brian Cubellis (16:36.31) beginning to pick up the ball and basically lead people to to the light if you will. Yeah that's right. I mean there's gonna be a tipping point here. I mean it's you know all the country the entire country knows we've got an inflation problem. You know the other side has managed to think get the country to think that they're gonna solve it but that's gonna be it's gonna come obvious I think in the next year or two they can't solve it and then it's really gonna get interesting right. I think. Yesterday on the different podcast. You know, it used to be that libertarian nerds like us were the only ones who ever talked about Austrian economics. And now it's like really getting currency, certainly within the Bitcoin movement, but but elsewhere as well. I mean, this used to be sort of rarefied air. And now everybody seems to be breathing it in. I mean, that's safer than his book and. Yeah, I mean, I've said many times it's really great. It was great for me when your generation showed up. You know, it's like the reinforcements arrived, right? Yeah, I mean, I got 20 year olds talking to me about Von Mises and I mean, and then, you know, and telling me I'm an old fashioned guy because I like gold. I'm like, you know, look, dude, you know, I was into hard money before you were born. Don't lecture my ass. All right. That's a good t -shirt there, Larry. That's really a great point from like independent of Bitcoin. I think there's a return to first principles thinking into the random thing to bring up, but the seed oil deal like people in Bitcoin are talking about like for years and we're seeing this like back to cleaner eating, but this goes to like medical treatments and we don't get too political, but there's a resurgence of like how do we actually think about what did thing? How were things done forever? And then where did we like? insert where things started to maybe not make sense. And let's actually like go back to first principles. And I think the money is just one part of that. Oh, yeah. I mean, look at look at health care on the diet, you know, look at the way that that guy at Harvard was able to convince everybody that, you know, that the fat was bad for you. Right. That's the bottom was bad for you. And the beef was bad for that fat in it, we should all be eating carbohydrates and sugar. I mean, you know, that's more damage title cost. Brian Cubellis (18:52.75) Yeah, that did more damage to the overall health of the United States population than anything, you know, I think in the last 50 years. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, we've got we've got fiat medicine, we've got fiat food, we've got fiat jobs, the whole damn thing is just a complete, you know, it's just it's built on, you know, mistruths in a lot of cases that mistruths that serve to somebody, you know, to make a profit. I mean, you know, that guy was paid by General Mills, right. other big food companies. So, you know, it's you see it everywhere. Guy Bono, right? And the but you know, once once you develop the critical thinking skills to get to the origins of money, you can see it in the Bitcoin movement. I mean, you know, that's why I think so many people tend to be enlightened when it comes to their diet. And as you said, I think was Marty or maybe it's Jesse. getting back to first principles when it comes to medicine and across the board. It's really interesting to me that independently it seems like we're all arriving at the same conclusions. Yeah, well that's right. I mean, first principles on government, right? I mean, it's like everybody used to trust the government. I've seen surveys now that 80 % of the people do not trust the government. Probably the other 20 % are employed by the government. Brian Cubellis (20:18.478) They're a little biased in their view, right? I mean, it's fascinating to me, for example, to watch the way the Overton window has shifted on the murder of Kennedy, right? I mean, I knew 20 years ago that the CIA killed Kennedy. There's no fucking doubt in my mind. I mean, it's indisputable beyond, you know, I mean, the proof is just so obvious, it's ridiculous. And yet, you know, I used to say that to people and they thought I had three heads or I was as good as their as a nutshell, you know, whatever. And now, I mean, just yesterday, Jack Dorsey was tweeting about it. I mean, you've got billionaires and, I mean, you asked my kids, you asked people their generation, who killed Ken, oh, the CIA did, everybody knows that. And so, what you're beginning to see is this whole facade that this fiat government built up of how we should trust them and how powerful they are and how great they are. It's crumbling. And... you know it's a very very much the way you know i i look at the way you know russia was before russia fell you know i mean they they you know i got to the point where everybody knew they were lying to you about everything and that's kind of where we're going i think in the united states and as a result of that i mean we haven't figured out the mechanisms to fix it yet you know with the voting doesn't seem to work because every elections and a lot of issues but but but the point is we're you know slowly but surely the pieces are getting put into place to dismantle that broken system you know you've got carlson's you've got to rogans you've got you know networks that are being listened to except for so uh... you know it's it's all it's all of the same thing which i think is a trend towards decentralization and you know and and a trend towards critical thinking uh... which is not to say that all of our fellow citizens get it many of them do not but uh... but more and more waking up all the time and that's that's a good thing and and by the way when that one of you know the pain of inflation gets to the point where it's unbearable which i think it's got is going to happen in the next cycle here uh... you know you're going to find more more people asking how the hell did this happen what's going on why is this broken and demanding that we change uh... you know the system we got and that'll be a very good thing and it's all accelerating uh... Brian Cubellis (22:33.472) whether it's monetarily, socially, from a healthcare perspective, like you look at what's happening with the squatters in New York or San Francisco or Portland, wherever it may be. I mean, that was a big story. This week, particularly in New York, a woman in Staten Island went to basically kick squatters out of her house and got arrested for doing that. And not only are the powers that be not respecting the... Purchasing power of individuals by preserving the monetary system. They're completely abusing it. They're now leaking into social issues whether it be property rights or The whole conversation around illegal immigration and then on top of that They're really attacking the productive class of the government being the unproductive class Really trying to browbeat the productive class and that's why you see the Jack Dorsey's the Elon Musk of the world Really beginning to retaliate and say hey you people are systemically breaking this country that we've been building over the last 250 years. Well, I'm starting to ring the alarm bells. And you see brave specific groups taking action. I mean, you know, truckers in Canada is an example, et cetera. I you know, people will only put up with so much and, you know, and I think people know who's doing it to them. And it's becoming, they're becoming increasingly aware of who's doing it to them. And so. Um, you know, the, the, the, the other side of our trade is playing a losing hand. Uh, just no doubt. Um, and our job is to try and make that, you know, make them lose faster because we all have limited lifespans and we want our kids to live in a better world. So, well, on that point. Like as fast as possible because it has become abundantly clear to me that we're in the looting the Treasury phase of late stage Empire where they're literally just stealing and trying to Make everybody believe no we need to do this we need to do this and they're literally stealing at everybody's pocket as they're holding them at bay Yeah, literally stealing property stealing purchasing power stealing Lifespan in terms of pushing this bad health care system this bad food system on people and then pushing drugs on people as well Brian Cubellis (24:52.942) I think there's a moral imperative and that's something that Dr. Paul talked about with Tucker Carlson. There's a moral imperative to speak out aggressively against this because they're literally looting the Treasury right now, stealing people's... Absolutely. And you know, it goes to so many different areas. I mean, you know, the fiat money funds the wars, right? I mean, without fiat money, we wouldn't have blown six trillion dollars and you know... useless stuff in the Middle East, trying to gain control of oil. Without fiat money, we'd probably have a big and intelligent nuclear power program because it's the most efficient power generation source ever invented. Notice that China is going crazy and building a ton of nuclear reactors. Of course, we're not building or decommissioning nuclear reactors. I found it interesting though. I thought my sailor is so brilliant and I... I listened to him when I was in Madeira and he made the statement that, you know, don't worry about nuclear. It's going to come because what's going to happen is AI, the amount of power that AI consumes is so large compared to, you know, even Bitcoin mining or just general, you know, compute power that the only way we're able, we're going to be able to move AI forward is with nuclear power. And therefore what's going to happen is, you know, the apples, then videos and the big corporations that are pushing AI. are going to demand nuclear because there's just no way to do it without nuclear. So I thought, no, that's kind of interesting. Maybe we don't have to work at it on the grassroots level. It's just going to come from the top down because these people are going to demand it. And it is so obvious that we need it. I mean, in terms of the return on energy invested, it's just so far ahead of everything else. It has to be ridiculous, right? Well, getting back also to a point you just made, Larry, I think it's the Fiat funding of wars that really gets under my skin more so than even some other things because here we are sort of underwriting the murder of other people. And if instead we went door to door to each taxpayer's house and said, hey, would you contribute $10 ,000 to this war in the Middle East? Nobody would say yes. Because we can print the money. We do it instead. And we kill a bunch of Americans, not to mention countless others for these wars that accomplish virtually nothing, in my opinion. Make things worse, actually. Brian Cubellis (27:14.734) Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, we need to really reimagine government as a much smaller entity, you know, the way it was envisioned by the founding fathers, you know. I mean, the way I envision government, I think government ought to be a referee. I mean, we need, in my opinion, we need a government to, you know, put criminals in jail and have a court system and enforce the rule of law. Other than that, I don't think there's much government needs to do. You know, the whole, the whole, you know, Social Security, all the other stuff they do, I think, is a boondoggle and would be better done privately. But, you know, sadly we're just a long ways away from that kind of a world and it's going to take failure of big government on a spectacular scale, which I think is coming to get to the world that I envision. But I think if you look at, I mean, there are bad actors in the world and there are criminals in the world, but I think in general, you know, at a state level that, you know, that there don't need to be criminals. I mean, it was, you know, World War II allowed, you know, criminals to get a hold of big powerful states, you know, most notably, you know, Hitler in Germany. But I don't think, you know, we don't need these big powerful states anymore. We can have a much more decentralized world. And, you know, the average healthy human being doesn't want to kill other human beings. It doesn't, I don't have any. and animus against people in Iraq or China or Russia or anywhere else. I mean, they're the people just like we are. And most of them just want to live their lives and raise their families. And they're within that group. They're obviously criminals. Criminals need to be prosecuted. And that's why government should exist. But to me, that's about it. Yeah, this is where the one area where I feel like I never the Ron Paul stuff never made sense to me. or occupy Wall Street never made sense to me because the assumption in there, Larry, is that we can self -impose austerity or cut the fat, trim back through conscious, deliberate reevaluation of what makes sense in government spending and what doesn't. And that special interests won't prevail in that debate. And I've always had, you know, Brian Cubellis (29:37.23) had no faith in that and believed that it was a lost cause as a result until Bitcoin, until this sort of sly roundabout way of reimposing sanity, fiscal sanity and austerity in a time when there's too much, when there's excess. Bitcoin doesn't allow for excess. So it imposes austerity because it aligns with the interests of all levels. whether that's the most powerful industries in the world or the individuals, people and companies and governments are going to want Bitcoin and are going to choose Bitcoin over the unsustainable excesses of fiat and that that's the only way that rational sanity is restored. I would agree. I mean, it's a level playing field and that's the big difference, right? I mean, You know, the contillionaires now, you know, they get to borrow at low rates and, you know, let me borrow at low rates and invest at 10%. I'll be rich too. Um, and that's, that's really the system that we've got today is set up to benefit a small group of people. And, uh, that's just got to change. Um, but I mean, I, you know, I think it will. And I'm, I'm currently reading Mary Rothbard's a history of banking and money, money banking in the United States. And it's really. makes me very optimistic about where we are now because if you go and read what the colonies had to do to erupt their own monetary systems, it was completely convoluted in the sense that they didn't need to get physical specie within the borders of the colonies, typically the Spanish silver dollar and some gold. But the physical nature of that made it very hard. And I think the opportunity that we have today to really fix this system, because again, The system's broken at the core because money is the most important tool and we've broken the money and that's something that makes me extremely optimistic anchoring back to what the colonies went through when they were trying to figure out money is that it was hard because they were living in this physical world. Now we do have these massive problems as a global society but we have this digital open permissionless network that anybody can plug into and it makes solving that problem of money much easier on a global scale. Brian Cubellis (32:00.462) I totally agree. I mean, we've got the perfect tool. It's absolutely the perfect tool. And it's clear as day to me that everything will be priced in sats at some point. It's a better form of money. And therefore, it will be the base layer of everything. And people will look back on this whole central bank era. I saw there was a great tweet the other day. Somebody called it like it would be like bloodletting. I think it was Alex Leishman from Riverside. That's what it was, yeah. we're going to look back at central banking and compare it to the bloodletting of the doctors of the Middle Ages. And I think that's right. I mean, you can't, you know, how can a committee of bureaucrats, unelected bureaucrats set the most important price in the world, which is the price of time and the price of money? They can't. Let's go a little further on that though, because it's actually relevant. It was shared on the Ethereum and the ETF and this thing happening right now with BlackRock and the other institutions and then. You mentioned small consortium, you have the ETH foundation. Like I think of them as the same thing as the dollar, right? You have people messing with the monetary policy, but this direct path is obviously not a direct line. And you've talked about this a lot, Larry, and you know, your history and what happened around the GFC and how the games and the rules were shifted. And there's been this conversation around BlackRock and, you know, good actor, bad actor, what do they mean? But this notion of permissionless money going into a centralized entity is obviously an issue, but then also, this idea that we're going to like tokenize a bunch of other assets and also, you know, that's what my mind and ETF is a tokenization, a tokenized asset on Bitcoin. But then you have an ETF and that opens up that aperture into digital assets. Like there's something there that we've talked about for the past year that doesn't, doesn't feel or seem right as far as the direction we want this to go. And curious if you guys think about it in a similar light, or if you have any kind of thoughts on it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think about ETH too much. I mean, I think BlackRock getting into like ETH and like what do they position the institutional investors and how is that like the thought of that asset and that's your proxy for how you get into digital assets is via these ETFs. I mean, ETH doesn't pass the Howey test, right? I mean, ETH is a security and you know, I don't know. I don't know how they're going to let it be, you know, Brian Cubellis (34:25.262) whether they're going to approve an ETF or not, I don't really follow that. I mean, I try to be somewhat charitable and accept that there are shit coins like ETH and all the others that actually may be doing something technologically that is worthwhile. But because they're flawed at the fundamental premise level of not being proof of work, I think that whatever they're doing should be built on top of Bitcoin because you've got to start with a sound based layer. So. You know, I've had a lot of people kind of attack me for being a maxi and hating shit coiners and you know, I think it's, excuse me, I think it's fair to hate shit coiners in general because a lot of them are just in it for the grift. But to be fair to them, there are some people in the digital asset space that are trying to actually tokenize and build applications that will have value. And, you know, I'm not opposed to building things that will have value. I just think that building them on coins other than Bitcoin is a fool's errand because the monetary policy of those coins is flawed. So that's kind of how I see shit coin land. Well, there's a general principle with which I think we're all well acquainted, which is decentralization is the answer. And Larry referenced it earlier when it comes to political economy, but it's true just in general. So this open source nature of Bitcoin, I think, is the secret sauce. Anything that's centralized, and I know that we all know this, but anything that's centralized is inherently flawed. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the whole point of also the, we talked about the information and all the things that are, kind of co -opted how we think Jesse before the pod was referencing the Ron Paul stuff and the news and the media back then and how vilified and all the things, the connotations that were given to him and the incentive model Bitcoin has people adopting it. But I think that there's a natural thing of the internet and a lot of these concepts. To your point, David is the most decentralized form of information. Brian Cubellis (36:29.442) delivery mechanism we've ever seen. And so you get to like, it was almost inevitable in my mind, independent of Bitcoin, that a lot of these concepts were going to come out because they were just fundamentally true, but we only had centralized versions of how it was given to us, whether it was via certain books or three news channels or whatever existed for the past pre -internet. So a lot of this stuff ties directly into your point, decentralization and getting the information out to the broadest way within most number of people. I think Marty's, TFTC is a great example of that. Yeah, I mean, I think in the when the history of this era is written, the two biggest developments, I'm not sure which is bigger in order will be, but will be the development of the Internet and the development of Bitcoin. Because the Internet basically decentralized information communications. I mean, anyone could be the New York Times. Now you can get on the Internet and have your own pod, look at Marty and you can exceed and do better quality work than big networks. Right. And then. and anyone can communicate with anyone, it's all decentralized. And then of course, Bitcoin is just the monetary version of that. So I think when it's all said and done, people are gonna look back and say that was the beginning of what fixed the world. I we reached peak centralization in World War II. We killed 50 million people in seven years or something. And it showed the dangers of centralization, because you get a big powerful country like Germany, you get an idiot running it. And you go murder six million Jews. I mean, that... Centralization is dangerous inherently as long as evil people exist and evil people will always exist. So decentralization addresses it. Right, because the people sorry, Marty, but it's often the very people who seek high office who are the ones you don't necessarily want in office and Hitler sort of the the the the almost a perfect correlation between the people who want these jobs and the people we don't want in them. I mean, I've often said we'd be better off picking our elected representatives out of the phone book. I mean, I didn't say that. Yeah, I would trust my stupid neighbors over the people we lack. Brian Cubellis (38:39.246) They're not evil. You know what I mean? They're good hearted. They're just not very polite in cases. Have you ever been to an HOA meeting? I'm not so sure about that. Oh, that's it's the sociopath on a micro scale. Plenty of them. And yeah, I know what you're talking about though. Yeah, like and it's going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole really highlights. That centralization is not only a problem of money, it's a problem everywhere else. It's like a big point in our lives. My wife and I is really on the food side. We were talking about that earlier. My wife has gone full down the rabbit hole of making sure we're eating as cleanly as possible. And one of the ways in which we do that is we go to basically a farm stand around the corner called Local Pastures. And they have a bunch of beef and milk and cheese from local farms all around the Austin area. And it highlights that this distributed nature of food delivery is much better. The food that we eat is insanely more healthy, tastes better. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's worth it. But going back to the main point of centralization, you can't have the Federal Reserve Board run a monetary system. You can't have four major slaughterhouses run a food system. In the health care system, you can't have three major pharma companies run the solutions for... for medical ailments and it's crazy, peak centralization Larry, you said World War II, like I would argue like maybe in the last two decades we'll look back and say like this was peak, peak centralization outside of force and money. It sort of metastasized into every point of our life, whether it be food, healthcare, the university system. Yeah, you might be right. The fiat world really got. you know, very centralized in the last year. You gotta be careful on the -in tops. Be careful on the call -in on V .O .T. World because it just gets worse. Yeah, that's true. I feel like, you know, once the USSR was no longer keeping us honest in terms of like, like, like high school fitness, you know, back when the USSR was a threat was taken seriously. Like we were cultivating fighting ready men. Brian Cubellis (41:01.23) and making sure that that was part of what we were doing in high school. And, you know, that comes with like a, a hardness and, you know, like tough life principles and values being instilled in our younger generations. And then, you know, that threat goes out the window and everybody relaxes kicks their feet up and opens a bag of potato chips. And, and, you know, 30 years later, it's not looking so good. It's a great point because generally somebody would say like, how do you get from those two, but they're direct in the same way. Generally people haven't been worried about the border. They're like, let people in, but then they don't care about the border of your own house anymore. Well, Marta is referencing on the squatter and that's like 12 months, right? You're like incepting in this idea that borders don't matter. It's like, well, of course, you're like, it's okay over there because it's not in my city or state, but now they're in your home and you're like, how do we get here? And to Jesse's point, it's like we like took away like fitness and health. And now it's like, well, no, you send somebody off or you're trying to. You know, build a society that is strong and you're like, how do we get here? It's like, well, you started over here. Well, it's a slippery slope. I mean, property rights don't matter in California and go into any store and steal less than a thousand dollars and they won't even prosecute you. They don't have time. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's a very, very slippery slope. Once you decide that the standards are, are loosey goosey, right? It's, it, this is an interesting theme. Um, I heard something today, Jesse, or this week that was like really. transformative and just like how I think about what we're doing here is there's a guy that's joining us that became a client. Great guy, holds his keys, probably majority holds his keys and we're in a marketing meeting. He says, I like OnRant because it's a version of, I want to believe in a world where we still trust institutions. And it hit me very hard simply because I started to think, and I'd be curious because I know this is going to be like polarizing thought, but this version of if we all hold our keys and don't trust anybody that inherently, whether it's explicitly known or not, is baking in that we can't actually trust anybody. And like, that's not like, I think it's almost like seems like a, I don't know if cognitive distance is the right word, but like, and it's the opposite of building a more prosperous world because in reality, just like from coordinating economic activity, like you have to work with other people and you have to like cooperate. But I think this ties into what we're talking about here is like, we want to build a better world. We have to like think about it in that way. And like some of these ideas around. Yeah, I think. Brian Cubellis (43:22.83) I think you're always going to have to trust people. I mean, I have to trust that the farmer is not giving me bad food that's going to kill me. And reputation is always going to matter. And I like Reagan's line towards the Soviet Union back in the 80s where he said, trust but verify. Right. And I think that's really where Bitcoiners are. I mean, we can trust. I you're not going to trust Sam Beckman Fried. I mean, we all knew he was a bad guy from day one. But, you know, certainly there are. I mean, Trust and reputation are built up over time and that's a good thing and that's absolutely essential to a functioning society. I mean you can't, you know, I don't want to have to test my food every time before I eat it to make sure the food producer hasn't poisoned me. I mean, you know, that's ridiculous. I've got to buy it from people I trust. Yeah, and that's one of the bad memes that's permeated in some Bitcoin circles is this idea of trustlessness, which is not the case. Bitcoin provides us with a way to... have a trust minimized money system where you can always fall back to holding and securing your own private keys yourself and minimize the trust you need. But in that relationship, you still need trust and you trust that you're going to be able to competently access and utilize your private keys. And so it works on a scale from there. I think that's the beauty of Bitcoin is that you can always fall back to that extreme trust minimized position. But from there, you do want to build trust. And I think that creates an incentive system where, as you're operating throughout the account economy, your counterparties always understand that you have that trust minimized fallback option of falling back to holding your own private keys. And so they're incentivized to provide a good service and gain your trust in that economic interaction. And it's like the small details of that trust minimized base that we're all working from that can really build a flourishing economy. imbued with a lot of trust between individual actors in that economy. Well, and I was just saying, in a centralized world with instant communication, you know, a breach of trust is like instantly, you know, broadcast, right? I mean, so that a bad actor can't live for long, right? I mean, that's, and that's a good thing. And Marty, that's such a profound. Brian Cubellis (45:44.078) way you put it because that's like was baked in and I think some of the stuff was known but the first trust we did was the idea that like A, you shouldn't have a centralized custodian holding the keys but then B, the mechanism to be able to take delivery is very important because the underlying properties of that are what give Bitcoin value and this at the time was pre -ETF and now we're post -ETF and we still have the same problem around you know whatever came out this week it's like 90 % of all the ETF assets that were Coinbase but then the notion that you also can't have that point to what you drove on is like keeping people honest and knowing that your Bitcoin is there. Which I think that's where like we feel confident and I think everyone is podcasting if we're going to be successful in all of this, the right things need to be built because the way they're being built today don't feel like sustainable if this thing actually is successful. Yeah. Marty and Michael there nailed this Bitcoin crisis, this shift in the landscape of trust that Marty beautifully said how it pairs it back to like, you can fall back to trust, a trust minimized stance, but then we have to build from there. We have to build the sort of economy, the industry, the landscape that we want to see that works for how humans are set up. You know, we're set up to place trust in individuals and entities that have earned trust. and have a good reputation in order to do things that would be hard for us to do ourselves, whether that's growing your own food or financial services that are built on Bitcoin, where you're trusting the company to do something that you could do yourself, it would be very, very hard to do. And the ethos that OnRamp has been built with versus an ETF where it's cash, creates and redeems. So for everyone listening, if you have a friend or family member who's thinking about getting a Bitcoin position and they're just going to buy the ETF, they should know that currently it is cash create and cash redeems. So if they want to ever take control of their Bitcoin, if they ever want to graduate to self custody, they have a taxable event when they sell their coin, their ETF position, and then use those proceeds to Brian Cubellis (48:11.95) buy real Bitcoin, that's a taxable event because they're not allowed to withdraw Bitcoin from an ETF as it currently stands. But the OnRamp Bitcoin Trust, we set up with that specific first principle in mind that people should be able to withdraw their Bitcoin without a taxable event. That should be a part of how any of these vehicles operate. And so we made it that way. So, you know, let your friends and family know that if they're thinking about taking a position in an ETF that maybe they should talk to OnRamp instead and see if that's a better fit, especially with our approach to custody with a multi -institution custody where we're not giving our coins to Coinbase. We are holding those coins in a multi -sig fashion where three institutions, each hold one key and none have unilateral control over the assets. And so those are the two big differences versus the ETFs that we designed this vehicle the way it should be done and the way that Bitcoin should be advanced and this should become the standard. And so we're making it that way at OnRamp. So just a little pitch there for everyone out there who's wondering what the differences between the ETFs and on Bitcoin trust. We don't have to go far there, but this is organic, you know, something I always respected and Marty and Matt from the pods is talking business on air. I think it was always fun to hear. And part of what Jesse just described was this last night in Slack was thinking about the ETFs and all the stuff going on and realizing like just how bad a products and what we created and was like, we should really create a narrative for our network, the network on this. podcast, the network listens to podcasts and people just know fundamentally that people will maybe not go by spot to start, but are going to go to the ETF. And how do we like build what Jesse just described, what Marty described of like into the models of people's brains that are known, they're going to ask about where should I get Bitcoin of all the underlying reasons that Jesse just explained, why we would explain it to them or why they would refer somebody. And so did David and Brian Cubellis (50:30.254) Marty who advisors and close to what we're doing. I'm curious, like, how do you guys feel about that from just like the messaging standpoint and how we should drive because historically we haven't had a singular like focus on a certain product that we're doing and also like a cohort. And this is also a cohort that we're just not generally like seeing right now, just because I mean, we do see some, but it's not like a concerted focus. We see a lot of like on the custody side because people naturally want a better form of custody. But curious to like that, that pitch that Jesse said and how you guys would feel about us. getting behind that in a heavy way and if we can like mobilize the people that understand what's happening and that there's a better solution out there. Well, I might say that ETFs may be useful and an interesting sort tip of the spear moment for folks who haven't yet been exposed to Bitcoin. And in, for instance, a donor advice fund or a non -self -directed IRA, it can be a way to at least be introduced to Bitcoin. However, I think we're all well acquainted with the merits, as previously discussed, of doing it in a more pure and secure fashion. And so I think that's where OnRamp comes in because you are using more than one custodian. And by the way, you can also do what I did, which is to create a self -directed IRA. And then you do as you please. You're not sort of locked into whatever Charles Schwab or somebody else wants you to do. And so I think there's room for both. But on ramp is probably the next step in the evolution within at least my demographic. I'm not sure by the way how Larry feels about this, but within my peer group, I think it's still, even now a heavier lift is becoming less of a heavy lift, but it's not sort of understood, let alone embraced within this group. However, given... Brian Cubellis (52:31.224) this age bracket, this is kind of where the money is. And furthermore, a lot of us work for big institutions, so that too can be a point of entry. But that's, I guess, kind of where I stand. I want to anchor back to trust minimized. I I'm not going to go to Marty Jones here, but it's like you mentioned earlier, a lot of the ETF. Bitcoin is held with a single custodian. That's a lot of trust. Right now, that's hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin worth of trust in one institution, which just doesn't make sense. And if you're thinking about making an allocation of Bitcoin and you're thinking of the potential worst case scenarios in the future, I mean, I think that's a pretty low hanging fruit is like you have the centralized entity and there's many ways in which. that centralized entity could be attacked, or not even attacked, could mess up. I don't think it's going to happen, but certainly within the realm of possibility, lose access to the private keys that secure all that Bitcoin. It's a big honeypot for governments to point at, and that's one institution that a government would have to go to and say, hey, you need to sign the private key and move the Bitcoin to this address that we control. And so again, going back to the anchor of trust minimization, it's in this model, this multi -institution, multi -SIG. It's less trust in a single institution a trust is distributed amongst many institutions which Increases the bar At which an attacker would need to get at your Bitcoin. So just from a first principal security perspective Knowing that you can wake up in a decade and the probability of you being able to access your Bitcoin via multi -institution multi -sig setup versus a single institution single SIG setup. It's just a no brainer in my mind, but obviously I've been in this industry for 11 years and understand the nuances to all of this and I think that's the big hurdle that anybody pushing this multi SIG, multi institution model needs to overcome is helping people understand that these properties exist in the first place and they are superior to a single SIG, single custodian setup. Brian Cubellis (54:48.43) Yeah, it's all education. I feel like this is a big part of we've kind of meaned Bukele and El Salvador taking delivery of their assets, right? Because I think that was like a narrative like, wait, you're sitting here, you know, everybody hates you as far as like the, you know, UN or the IMF. And then you're putting your Bitcoin, I think it was rumored or it was known that it was at Coinbase. And so this angle of like, just natural education around centralization, the ability, it doesn't have to be like anything crazy. It's literally we hear it all day long, people just get hacked between their phone. in Coinbase and they don't insure that they say they insure it. Nobody gets paid out because your phone you press the wrong button. Yeah. And on the I guess when it comes to Coinbase, I feel like this is many people won't feel this way, but I feel that there is a greater risk than most people realize or think possible that Coinbase is Bitcoin is at some point seized. by the US government. And I say that because if we are dealing with what we think we're dealing with here, which is the shaping of the new monetary world order that will last for a very, very long time, the stakes are incredibly high. And going back to what we were talking about earlier, if you believe that... the US government, the CIA was capable of killing the sitting president, which have K then what's what's one more cardinal sin here of just seizing the coins held by one company, nationalizing one company and seizing those assets that currently aren't worth a ton in the grand scheme of the world, but would secure a government. a couple million Bitcoin. Yeah, to take it a step further, it's completely logical to believe that people if Coinbase was a solution that Bitcoin works. Like, it's like the greatest level of cognitive dissonance and the understanding of like what happened to gold that it can't hold all the assets. Like, and so we talk about, you know, multi -institution, all these things like just take possession of your keys in any way you can if you want this thing to be successful is like literally that I think anybody is worth their salt will say and then you figure it out from there. But Brian Cubellis (57:11.886) even on a ledger, I would could be more convinced and I'd be scared to wake up and realize that I just can't get access. And that's all they can do. It's like literally just say no, because we didn't like that you logged on to Twitter and said one thing. Yeah, we make a couple of points. I mean, one, I just I've watched Coinbase since inception. And I know I wouldn't be comfortable having coins stored there based on, you know, the way they crash all the time and behavior, etc. And and so, you know, unfortunately, I have some coins. unfortunately, unfortunately, it's it's a fact that I have some retirement accounts that I can't free up. And so I have some coins that I purchased through retirement accounts. And I like Fidelity's custody solution much better than Coinbase's. So I'm in FBTC and we recommend all our clients that you select that, you know, over the black product. But let's go to what Jesse was talking about, because I think that's a very interesting question. And I find it interesting. I think Sailor is doing a very nice job of talking about digital property. I mean, he's smart enough to know, we're all smart enough to know that ultimately, Sats are going to kill the dollar, that the dollar is going to hyperinflate and we're going to be on a Sat -based standard. He knows that. But he also knows that politically, you know, that doesn't serve our interest to say that and to lead with that spear. And he's taking the Jeff Booth piece of let's co -op the other side as much as possible and just call this digital property. And yeah, the dollar can coexist, no problem. Turns out it's very very inferior as a form of money, but you know we'll deal with that later Well, here's the thing once it gets critical I mean and and by the way what just happened with the ETFs is an enormously positive thing because the big pools of money obviously could not go into this asset because they weren't going to buy treasures or ledgers or cold cards and Self -custody, you know for their boomer clients. They just weren't going to do it But now it's a ticker symbol and they can get 20 bits on it. And so they just you know put in the order Although ironically, I heard yesterday, if you're a Morgan Stanley brokerage account client, you can't buy a Bitcoin ETF. What they're trying to do is push you into their managed Bitcoin product where they will try and dampen the volatility and they want to charge you 100 basis points to be in that. Isn't that amazing? And the same is true actually of Edward, a similar thing is true at Edward Jones. It's a big brokerage firm and Edward Jones is not letting their clients buy these ETFs. Brian Cubellis (59:39.246) I'm just like, I'm stunned by that. But, but you know, bottom line is these ETFs created the ability for the average financial advisor to say, yeah, we'll get you some Bitcoin. And of course, as we all know, that's a huge deal. And it removed the notion that the government hates this thing and they're going to shut it down. I mean, a lot of my normie boomer friends who have money, they were like, yeah, okay, you may be right, but it doesn't matter. The government's going to shut it down. Well, suddenly that argument's not so relevant with these ETFs and ETFs. And so to be honest with you, I was kind of shocked that they did it. And I think the three judges that approved, that ruled in favor of GBTC, I think those guys are going to go down as heroes because they're the guys who kind of more or less pushed the SEC into taking this position. But let me keep going. So we get further down the road. And this is existential for them, right? We are playing for all of the fiat and the money marbles. And... You know, we get down the road and the dollar really is kind of failing and you know, bitcoins at, you know, 600 ,000, you know, go into a million and, you know, gold's at four or $5 ,000 an ounce and inflation is raging. And within the U .S. government kind of realized, you know, holy shit, we're losing control of this entire monetary system. And the reason is these alternative assets are, you know, they're exits that we're letting people get on and... The more they get on it, the more aggressive law kicks in and sooner or later, ultimately, all going to lose their jobs, be wiped out, and the currency is going to be worthless. And so in order to protect the union, protect the country, protect the dollar, protect all of us, we got to stop this shit. And it's pretty simple. We're going to tax gold and silver and Bitcoin at 80 % a year. And maybe we're going to seize these ETFs and just make it illegal. And of course, there'll be a huge constituents of us that'll cry foul. But... you know, there'll be a big difference between the people who have their own keys and the 12 words and the ability to go anywhere in the world and protect their wealth and the people who have their money siloed in their system where, you know, Coinbase can one day wake up and say, yeah, I know Bitcoin's trading in a million dollars, but the last price pre that was 200 ,000 and we're going to cat settle you out at 200 ,000. We'll send you 200 ,000 for each of your coins. We don't care that it's trading in a million tough shit. And I mean, Brian Cubellis (01:01:58.478) Because the same thing could happen in gold too. I I think that the natural gold price today, if you compare it to the 1971 standard, would be 80 ,000 an ounce. Because there are all kinds of paper gold derivatives that have been created to hold the price down. And so when the shit hits the fan for the federal government, and I think it will at some point, I think we can expect, or we have to at least game theory out that they might take actions which are, in our view, completely illegal. completely wrong. I it's, you know, I mean, it's my grandfather was enraged by FDR in 6102. And yet, you know, he packed the Supreme Court and they supported him on it. I mean, it's, you the government, remember that the job of the government is to keep the people in the government in power. It's not to do what's best for the rest of us. It's to protect themselves. And so when this gets to the point of being serious and existential, I think, you know, those people who've moved into this, I I try and get my clients to get into Bitcoin, but if they're not ready to buy a Trezor, you know, the second best solution is to be in an ETF, is at least they'll get the price appreciation. Then I start working on them about how they got to get out of there and get into it, get into holding their own coins and sell sovereignty. But I think this, I think Jesse, you're right. I believe this is going to become, excuse me, a very important issue. as what we're talking about here develops. Yeah, it was very well put and kind of like the roadmap because I think we often say why it's a problem, but breaking down exactly why it's a logical problem is helpful. So I appreciate you going through that later. And it's the dynamics of Bitcoin are very interesting too, because we're lucky today that most Bitcoin is held in self custody and keys that people control. And it's really a race against time and price because if the price of Bitcoin goes up, like thinking about how powerful the government is and what it can do to try to force Bitcoiners into a corner. They're in a race against time in regards to the price going up. We had a really interesting event here at the Commons last week, Bitcoin Urbanism, led by Ture Demeester, Kelly Landon, Austin Tanel. And Ture gave a great presentation. And so if you look at the top 1 % right now, in terms of high net worth individuals, individuals that own more than $50 million worth of work, Brian Cubellis (01:04:22.51) wealth in the world, Bitcoiners make up about, I believe, one to 10 % of that right now. But as the price goes up, we take a larger share of the high net worth individuals in the world. And at some point, there's a flipping where, as we know, money talks in this world. And if the price of Bitcoin gets to a certain point, Bitcoiners will be extremely wealthy, at which point you begin to use that wealth to effect change in the political economy, whether that be making the government smaller or just investing in private enterprise to compete with government government programs. And I think that's something that the government is highly aware of is whether they admit it or not as they're looking at the price of Bitcoin and they have to intuitively understand if this gets to a certain point there's going to be a bunch of freedom loving extremely wealthy people that are competing with us on the market. And I think that will factor into their decisions about what they do with these ETFs. Well, the beauty is they hold custodians. They hold Bitcoin as well, right? Like they have to at a certain point, like Senator Warren or whoever is the, you know, token person of the week or month that hates Bitcoin is probably having to pump their pack their bags just in case it takes off. Marty, what you said it means anyway, we have limited time and it's a segue or part of like what you just mentioned for Larry is quote the Raven. Well, I don't know like how many people listen and I know Marty, you know of them. I thought it was Philia. Oh, so Philly guy. Oh, yes. That's very cool because I think like he's an interesting angle for a number of reasons. One, what Marty just tied into of an existing, you know, call it TradFi, you know, person that's looking at the macro trad traditional markets hated Bitcoin. He came at it from a number of the reason I'm bringing it up is because I like heard him talk. The only time I listened to his pod, Larry, is because you were on it, I think multiple times. And I heard how like much he just. He hated Bitcoin and how crazy he crazy was. It was actually an opposite signal for me where I was like, and if this guy doesn't get it, how can I listen to anything else that he talks about? But then to see that like 180 shift and then I had a guy reference that I should listen to the pod that he did with Peter McCormick. And he talks about, you know, just how he couldn't get in the have fun, stay in port, kept him out for so long. But then he finally sees it and how the mobilization of the GameStop and all this stuff and people's like mental and. Brian Cubellis (01:06:49.038) emotional capital and human capital has been targeted the wrong way. Anyway, I thought it was a compelling version of what Marty just described of like at a certain point, the just narrative is shifting slower and slower from people that were didn't believe this to get there and were and he seems like just as this interesting point in that because he was so against it. Well, if I could interject here too, I think Chris says the name of the quaternary publicly, Chris Irons is his name, but David, he's from Fishtown, Philadelphia. You said he's TradFi, Michael, but he's really trying to bring like a blue collar perspective to TradFi. If you understand where he's from in Philly, like Fishtown, that part of the Philadelphia area is very blue collar. A lot of union workers and he's trying to like put forward a voice for this blue collar demographic. And David, like being from Philadelphia and coming from a family of union men myself, like these are the types of people that should be getting into Bitcoin because they feel beaten down by the system. having supported it, particularly union workers have voted for a lot of Democrats historically who have inevitably made their life worse with their fiscal monetary policies. But that's what Chris said on what Bitcoin did is really encouraging in terms of really lighting a fire under the blue collar class who may participate in Occupy Wall Street but really didn't understand the solutions, the problems in the first place, let alone the solutions that would solve these problems. That is a really good signal that Chris is on this and pitching this message to the union workers of fish down Philadelphia who are looking for a solution to these problems. He's a smart guy and I've been on a show a few times because he's a gold guy and I always kind of thought to myself, you know, this guy's going to get it eventually. I just got to keep working on it. And he's just too smart not to and he's open minded. He any, you know, to his own credit, I mean, he says, you know, I'm just an idiot, you know, trying to. make it in the investment world. I think, you know, to me, the humility is always the issue that stops people from getting it. I mean, you've got to have a certain amount of humility to, you know, to accept it and to understand it. And the people who don't accept it and understand it tend to be, you know, kind of arrogant people. You know, I think of Rickards or I think of, I don't know. Well, it's been, you know, his piece on his conversion to Bitcoin, I thought was really interesting. And Brian Cubellis (01:09:12.878) we Bitcoiners, as has been said before, need to be careful about doing victory laps and stomping on people's faces when they finally come around and instead kind of like welcome them with open arms instead because it's an act of humility to come around and say, hey, look, Sailor thought it was bullshit. And we've all, and I know my conviction on it has grown over time. I I started with some conviction and now I'm got raging conviction. But, but I you know, it took it took time to go down that path. Because, you know, there are risks and you want to understand them fully and you want to see things, you know, develop in the fashion that you would expect. Jesse, you'd love this, like on the potty explains, you know, they have fun saying poor kept him out. And then he's like, once I got in, they're like, fuck you, you idiot, you're only in 10%. You can't win until you're 100 % all in 100 % in yeah, and then 100 % You know, you gotta remember 100 % is not the appropriate allocation for some people I mean it's in your 20s and 30s. That's fine I mean, you know if you're if you're not in that's a nice meaningful wealth your boomer in your 60 70 80 I mean, it's I mean, you know, it's rough to be a hundred percent I mean the thing does have to run out. That's right. Yeah Yeah, and I mean this harkens back to the beginning the conversation. We're talking about the gap in Exists in the pensions right now. I don't think anybody expects These pensions to ape in and put a hundred percent of their allocation and the Bitcoin would be insane but I think on this tip like it is important for Bitcoiners to Have some humility ourselves and say all right, we have to recognize that not everything to ape in like we have and thinking the pension specifically like I think It is, again, going back to moral imperatives. It is a moral imperative that we try to give the people who believe they're going to have some funds of retirement to be able to enjoy their lives on the back end of it to actually do that. And I think it's a moral imperative to convince these pensions, like, yeah, you don't have to buy a 15, 20, 50 % Bitcoin allocation, but you should seriously consider getting some allocation to make sure that you can provide your pensioners with a retirement fund. Brian Cubellis (01:11:29.902) at the end of the It's it's it's meeting people where they're at. I've always deeply respected Marty from like we were forged when you think about being around and Marty even before in the fire of like all the craziness that happened. And so I think we generally have like tough skin when we want to go and meet people and hit them over the head. But the reality is like people just don't respond to that. And if we want to bring in the people with capital, we have to and part of this pod and a lot of the things we work on aren't necessarily built and they just hardcore ethos of somebody if you went on Bitcoin Twitter. But the reality is all the money sits outside of the system. And so we have to bring it into this system. We have to start with like, how do we meet them there? And the ETF is the greatest example. Cause we said everything about Coinbase, but at the same time, we need the ETF to get to the other side, even though it's the thing that will lead itself. Absolutely. Yeah. No, the ETF is not the end point solution, but it's an enormously positive thing. Um, because you know, people put money into it, they'll see it go up and they start to wonder why. I mean, it's like everybody's journey, I think starts with a modest allocation. as you learn more and get greater conviction, your weighting goes up. I mean, well, the other thing that happens is your weighting goes up naturally because it appreciates so damn much. I mean, I'm well over 60 % now and part of that, maybe approaching 70, and part of that's because the gold shit I hold hasn't really moved much and the Bitcoin has gone up 150 % this year. So, I mean, eventually without even selling any gold, Bitcoin could eventually become 90 % of my assets because it's just gone up so damn much. What a terrible problem to have. Yeah, right. It would really suck. Well, it is kind of annoying because I'd like the gold at least keep some pace with it. I mean, gold appears to have broken out here. And I think the whole notion that gold is not going to perform in nominal terms is wrong. Bitcoin is stealing share from gold, there's no doubt. And it's a much better vehicle and it's a faster racehorse. But I think that in a fiat world, I mean, we're talking about this in another call I did yesterday where do they compete with one another? And the answer is, of course, they do. But really, you're still talking. Bitcoin at 1 .3 trillion, gold at 12 trillion, and Fiat assets, financial assets at 350 trillion. I mean, that's the elephant, right? I mean, the elephant is the 350, and where the hell is that going to go? Not whether a little bit more of it goes to gold or a little bit more of it goes to Bitcoin. I mean, these are still a pimple on the ass of the elephant. And that's why they both have so much optionality and upside. Brian Cubellis (01:13:55.448) you know i i fully expect the queen of the million dollars is you know a coin and you know i probably expect gold to be you know five thousand out to maybe ten which is you know nice performance from here but nothing close to a big question And I know entry point I've been suggesting to people, you know, like, why not just especially like smaller endowments and so forth, but also just friends. Why not start with a low double a low single digit amount? Absolutely. Right? Yeah, that's what I always say. I mean, the only wrong allocation is zero. And I said, look, you can't afford to, you know, you've got investment assets, you can't afford to lose 2 % of your assets. Come on. You know, assume it's going to zero, you know, you can put 2 % into it. and then just give me some time and let's see what happens. Because you're going to, I mean, investing is about not experiencing regret. And if I tell you about it, explain it to you, and you kind of intellectually get it. If it goes up 200, 100X, and you knew about it, you're going to, I mean, if you didn't know about it, that's one thing, but if you knew about it and decided not to do it, and it goes up 100X, you're going to experience regret. I can assure you. Exactly. David, we have to wrap in a few minutes, but I'm curious if... and you can take time either one is on the gold side and getting gold people involved because I know that's been a discussion. But the other side is the plug. I think you're going to be at the Bitcoin John with Lin and if you want to share that because this Philly thing keeps growing stronger. I didn't even know Quoth was from there. We got to have him come and we'll reach out to him to join. But if you want to talk about that before we wrap up, I'm already sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's April 1, right, Marty in Philadelphia. And, and what's funny about Philadelphia is we have like this locus of hardcore Bitcoiners there. And, and so yeah, Lynn Alden will be speaking and for those who aren't acquainted with the term John, it means like thing in. So yeah, Marty's a native as a my so it should be a great gathering and and. Brian Cubellis (01:15:59.694) I hope I'm not speaking on a turn and mentioning that Thomas at Pubkey and some other folks are hoping to maybe establish an outpost in Philadelphia. So in any event, look for that as a new competitor to the likes of Nashville and Austin, some other Bitcoin epicenters. Jackson from the team, I think he's going to meet me in existence. He wants he needs an outpost in PA. So it's it's happening. Philly. Again, we've talked about this many times on this show, it gets a lot of flack, but that spirit of freedom still lives on in many of the citizens of Philadelphia. And honestly, like where I'm from, originally from Philadelphia, but most of Delaware County, a suburb, like a lot of the blue collar workers there get it and are allocating to Bitcoin a lot of... I'd say it's easier to orange pill blue collar people than it is some of these fiat, you know, trade guys. I mean, they're just, they think they're smarter than they are. I mean, the average blue collar guy gets it. If you ever go talk to the ATM owners, like the largest ones, the Bitcoin ATMs, they'll tell you exactly that. Like from just a, like they see the videos because they explain how these things are just biometric machines, right? Cause you're always making sure you're not getting games. So they see the people coming up, truck drivers, all the things with dollars to convert into Bitcoin. It's a whole world that we don't even like know about. This actually goes back historically too. I've got a lot of, you know, just kind of blue collar workers who've done work at one of my houses as an example, you know, painters and plumbers and that kind of stuff. It's a main before Bitcoin exists. Amazing. I talked about cause I was a sound money guy and I'd say, how do you, you how do you save? Oh, I buy silver coins. You know, I, I, you know, I, I know the government screwing up the money. I just, I buy silver, I buy gold. I'm kind of like, wow, you know, this guy's a plumber, but he gets it. He totally gets it. And, uh, and it makes sense cause he's. not completely disconnected from the world. He sees. Real work. Yeah, he does a lot of work and he understands that the government prints money and dilutes the value of his work. And so he's like, yeah, they can't print silver. I'm buying that. Yeah, I can get it. The blue collar guys have a distrust of government and the system in general. And the white collars have the trust in the system. Yes, that's your model. Yeah, exactly. We've got a lot of high trust. Well, pull up the chart. Brian Cubellis (01:18:20.718) from earlier, Logan, we can end on this. This is why they have a lot of trust in that system because they're incentivized to. There you go. Nice. It's been very good to them. Yeah, it's been very good to them. It has. So this is... So yeah, their network exactly tracks the M2 supply. It's just an absolutely amazing chart. Yeah. And it's really sad because that's like inverted productivity. Like it's the opposite of how it should be. You guys should keep going without me. I've made another commitment to another guy to do a call at 11. So I've, I got to hop off. It's really been great. They were good to see everybody else. Great to be a part of this and happy to do it anytime. But I got to hop. Okay. Thanks guys. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. Brian Cubellis (01:19:08.494) Whoo. Should we talk about it? I'm kidding. What's that morning? So should we talk shit on Larry now? I'm kidding. Yes, that last topic and and you're having mentioned Andrew, who's running for Congress down in Florida, Andrew Gubin. You know, there is a more benign path forward rather than sort of accelerating the the decline of our. the good old USA, which is, you know, if we can get people into office who understand money, and it could happen, we already have a few, you know, we could see a flippening of sort of the political attitudes toward Bitcoin. So it's not necessarily the case that we'll have this sort of government protects its own kind of outcome. It feels like Trump's kind of there, right? Like just some of the narrative, some of the things he's been saying. Four years ago, remember it was such a big deal when he tweeted about it and he was like, I don't like any of this stuff or whatever. And then the past couple of quotes they've gotten from him is like, oh yeah, it's a currency, people use it, I'm cool, it's cool, it's cool. Yeah. We've been talking about this for a while of like, I think like Senator Lummis sort of proved that if you harness the power, of this community, people who care about Bitcoin or digital assets more broadly, like that can be a powerful ally for you and help you get into office and stay in office through fundraising and, and, and, and votes. And then, so, you know, that kind of established this precedent. And then we saw RFK make his big splash at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami coming out like with great, very sharp talking points in favor of Bitcoin written by some Bitcoin handler behind the scenes. But that made a big splash. And then Vivek also sort of aligned himself with Bitcoin and Bitcoin interests. And in that way, all elected representatives or candidates see how the Bitcoin voting bloc and donors can help them. Brian Cubellis (01:21:34.702) And so, you know, politicians are fundamentally interested in that and they will adopt what helps them and they will stand behind that because it matters to the people that are funding them and voting for them. And so that's how, you know, even Trump is having to recognize that the winds are shifting and maybe it's in his interest to soften his stance and then potentially even embrace. crypto, you know, he won't get Bitcoin. He'll just adopt, you know, yeah, I'm friendly on crypto if it suits him. But, you know, pretty soon that'll be just a boilerplate standard for any serious political candidate that if they want to get the votes of the millennials in particular and also across the demographic spectrum, but I think probably disproportionately with the millennials, they should talk this up. and stand behind it. And so, you know, I think David's right that like, it's not that it's the incumbent Washington positions versus the disruptive Bitcoin positions. It's that politicians will adopt whatever is winning and whatever helps them win. And we eat, you know, we eat DC from the inside in that way. Well, and if you think about it, too, if a politician were actually really smart and wanted to leave a mark, they would embrace it. Wholeheartedly because it's like the path of least resistance of this fixing the systemic problems that lie before them like if you look at The national debt you look at the monetary situation and look at what's going on in the energy sector Like Bitcoin fixes a lot of these problems naturally if you just let it proliferate So if you if I were a politician thinking smartly about this and I wanted the path of least resistance to fix all these problems I would open up the floodgates and have examples of that look what's happened in El Salvador over the last couple years liquid happened in other parts of the world where Bitcoin has been embraced. And so I think that's what would be really encouraging to see as a politician recognizes that it's like, I've got a lot of massive problems to fix. And I'm just going to pick the path of least resistance, which is embracing Bitcoin. Which makes sense, like that that's how it would play out. Simply because if we believe Bitcoin is the most beautiful alignment of incentives and how it works, it would makes it would follow that it would. Brian Cubellis (01:24:00.43) have a transition. It's not popular to talk about because it feels too nice. It sounds like too great to be true. But like where this actually does play out with Jesse describe what we're talking about here actually does work out, which would be very bullish for kind of like humanity and like where we're heading over the next couple decades. Well, Marty and I have talked about this a little bit, but I think too, as Bitcoin goes up in value and Bitcoiners enjoy higher net worths, that we ought to in anticipation of that moment, think about how we might support in this case, political candidates who kind of get it. And then also freedom friendly organizations, Marty is aware of them and involved in something called the Global Liberty Institute. But there are plenty of others too that, well, Students for Liberty is one, Human Rights Foundation, obviously, that are doing great work, whether or not they're directly involved in Bitcoin as Students for Liberty and Human Rights Foundation are. We can use our wealth to support organizations that are pointing humanity in the right direction. Yeah. It's an interesting Trojan horse has come up a few times. It's something we have to work on. It's like helping even, you know, larger organizations just take the donations from wealthy individuals that have become wealthy in Bitcoin from a taxable perspective as the way you start that process, right? Because they naturally see its appreciation. So I think there's a lot there where capital starts to form and move and aligning those incentives into your point. If the right people have the right money, then you can actually affect the right change. Yep. It is the path of least resistance. It's a dream of the day. The political class wakes up, they look at everybody pissed off about the immigration situation, the energy situation, the private property rights situation, and they're like, oh god, this is an all -consuming, all -encompassing problem that we have no way, we're not gonna fix it the traditional route of printing more debts and issuing more dollars. Like, let's pick the path of least resistance, let's just embrace Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (01:26:10.414) This is why I'm going take care of it. And this is why I'm really genuinely excited about the Philly PA stuff, because you can see like the inkling of it. We saw this in Texas. You just need the seed and then it starts to grow and grow and the meetup grows larger and then you have advocacy groups and people start there. And then obviously you guys are friends. And so like you guys are tied. That's your home. Like you want it to be successful. And so it's just like literally starting there. And so I think it's going to be one of the biggest or we're definitely probably the biggest for this month. But ideally it grows on that. Somebody else wants to go. somebody else comes in, a politician shows up and this is literally how it happens. It has to start with like that individual. I think Kida is a big part of that. Matt, good friend, who started the John meetup and took that stance of like, hey, I'm gonna put a, you know, show up to a pub, show up under a tree. That's how the Houston meetup started. We literally showed up under an oak tree and then people started to come. And I think like per capita, the Houston meetup probably still is the biggest meetup in the country just because there's 7 million people in Houston. But I think this is a broader point, like in any city or market, like, You just have to like put a flag out, throw it out there and people will start there everywhere. I was in Palm beach meeting folks, won't mention who, and it's funny because there's a lot of high net worth, TradFi individuals that made a lot of money in Wall Street and they all live like literally a joke and feel like they're like can throw a rock and hit each other's houses, but they don't talk to each other simply because the old world ostracized or would like put them as, you know, not basically talk to them if they ever brought up Bitcoin. So there's just this version in the meat space world of like somebody has to take a chance or put it out there that they're available to meet or build that community. And then it just starts to snowball from there. Well, that was actually a beautiful thing. Justin Moon from FETI gave a presentation. He's known here in Austin as the godfather of the BitDev's Meetup. He moved down here, I believe in 2019. And like you said, Michael didn't meet on our tree, but met at the library here in Austin. There was three people. the first meetup, then there were seven people, then there was 12 people, then Unchained stepped up and said, come to our offices. And that eventually led to the Commons. And he was explaining how like just planting that seed and building this community really helped him start, come to the idea to start FETI. And then in this office and the Commons and the community that he built in Austin, eventually he and the Mutiny guys did the first ever lightning transaction between two different FETI mints. Brian Cubellis (01:28:31.102) which I think will be looked back as like a profound innovation in Bitcoin and so point being is like you start small three people in a library ten people under a tree and five years after Justin did that he's got a whole company he's got a whole we've got a whole community here in Austin building different companies and pushing Bitcoin forward and it literally started with four people at the Austin library. Well, the other constructive thing about these sort of organic communities is that, you as maybe this is too strong word, I'm not sure, but nonetheless, as rage builds because people serve sense that something's wrong, you know, just tearing down statues and setting fire to buildings is not going to be the solution. And so if we can build these communities and explain to them why a lot of these social phenomena have happened. and that at its root, it's about sort of the flow of money. We can direct our energies in productive fashion instead of sort of this unbridled and misdirected anger that we've seen over the course of the last several years. And it's positive sum. This is the creative part. Like this whole world, generally, everybody's taking from somebody else at the benefit. Like the more we all figure out how to get everybody else involved in doing everything we're talking about, we all win. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Are we gonna win Marty? We're winning. We are gonna win. No, it's positive. You see it within the industry too. I mean we don't have to go too much deeper into this conversation because I know we all have time but I think that's the beauty of this open permissionless network as we see it at 1031 with the portfolio companies. Like you can be building a company in a particular vertical and highly focused on that but you can benefit from what other people are doing. I mean mempool .space is embedded in most companies. within the portfolio or using them for block explorer or backend enterprise solutions. You'd think about what you guys are doing at on ramp and all these other multi -sig. They benefit from the hardware wallets and the PSPT standards that are set. Talking about integrations with the Lightning Network, you don't have to go build that yourself. You can leverage the hard work that other companies have done in the mining space. Companies like Upstream Data are benefiting from that. Brian Cubellis (01:30:51.374) prop miners who don't want to build the infrastructure. So there's this like big positive sum symbiotic relationship just between the companies building the space as well. It's a great point why like altcoins are always in my mind like part of the reason why you shouldn't have a value prop is like the interoperability is what you're describing from like open networks where we know how the internet works. It's very similar like from a custodial perspective, right? You shouldn't take it's pretty simple. Don't take centralized or decentralized asset park. It was central custodian. But the natural ability for multisig to be an interoperable lets you build on these different webs of trust. And I like to think of them as like daisy chaining, like the integrity of the custodial solution, because if one goes out or is under, historically, you're basically have zero. You know, you have a goose egg, FTX block five Celsius, we can go forever. But the idea is you take that trust out of there. And so that's why I like, I think just from like a pure just first principle, like you can't even custody any crypto asset in this way, because every Custodian has its own proprietary implementation of multi -party computation. So you're literally have to trust one entity or you're going to take delivery. And just from a like network perspective, it's always flawed just at that base level. And so this interoperability just on the custody level and if any men's play directly into this as well, when it comes to multi -sig and who's holding those keys and the interoperability between the e -cash tokens and lightning are very similar. It's just a more resilient, robust network. If you care nothing about money, but just look at it from a network perspective, like One is naturally flawed because of that. And the other one has like the open ability to continue to grow. And guys, so while I have a moment speaking of private companies, I know that at least one of us on this call is co -founder of VC fund and I work for a firm that has involved private equity. And so, and by the way, as an LP and a few VC funds and advisor to one and an investor in a whole bunch of private equity vehicles, my stance on PE is probably not quite as harsh as maybe Larry's is. Brian Cubellis (01:32:56.526) I mean, I think we can all comfortably say that the people on this call are invested in and involved in funds that, you know, mark their underlying portfolio companies in ways that reflect their honesty and their honest as the day is long. But, you know, the incentives are there to acknowledge the earlier point to do otherwise. But I think it's really dependent upon the firm and thankfully, the firms with which we're involved do it correctly. That was a very nice disclaimer, David. I appreciate it. That was a... I want to clear that up for everyone. I think for, it was joking. I think like the reality is it's just like everything we're talking in generalizations. There's a lot of people doing a lot of things the right way from across the board. It's just from an overarching level. There's incentives that are misaligned that we're recognizing. So. Yeah. And Bitcoin in the venture space within Bitcoin, like I think, outside of 1031 even, like with all these companies, like the ethos and the permissionless nature of Bitcoin really is imbued in these companies as well. Not only that, like the recognition that we're moving to this Bitcoin standard. And so when you're allocating money from a venture perspective, like you want to give it to companies who aren't just gonna, you don't give companies money for growth at all costs. It's like, no, we live in a Bitcoin standard. Now you. run with the assumption that you live in a Bitcoin standard. You need to get revenue, get profitable, run as lean as possible, and provide extreme utility to your end users. And I think that flipping of the approach to venture capital with the Bitcoin standard lens is going to have profound effects on company formation and fundamental value for consumers at the end of the day. Brian Cubellis (01:34:48.558) You throw an AI too, it makes a lot easier. It's not a lot easier, but it adds a whole nother dynamic to it. Yeah, sure. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys this summer. Marty and I have chatted for multiple years about, because I have to go, you know, I don't have to. My in -laws are in the Northeast, so I go out there in the summers and have it made. And I realize it's just a thing in PA. Like I guess everybody has a shore house. So I know Jackson. down there I think Eric from Bitcoin Talent Co you guys Kida and so I think there's even some rumblings of a maybe a John ending up at the beach over the summer so I don't know if I'm talking at a turn now but you know I don't think Matt would mind so I don't know I don't think I don't think this Texas boy can handle the Jersey Shore I probably can't but you know I'll figure of a culture shock for you Marty sent me photos. I think if the photos of, you know, it seems very familial and it seems like a good time. And, you know, the idea is if we can get like a little group there and we can start to like, accept the minor virus that is Bitcoin. I think the angle that Matt's coming at is very smart to have more of like personal finance versus like macro or like tradfied. It's like, how do you just think about your own personal wealth and how can this, I think is a very nice, you know, nice summer, summer white wine and a conversation about protecting your wealth. is a nice way to spend wine and Ocean City and South Jersey. Generally, Marty, I'm not sure. It's spiked spiked iced tea is here. Actually, Marty's wearing a service supplies cap right now. So he's representing Ocean City. Yeah. Great surf shop. It's great small business example of a great small business that we need to protect. Yeah, that's right. But I like that idea, Michael. So let's see if we can bring that to fruition. Yeah, maybe Pubkey will be there. I'll just, you're gonna, you're gonna hit, look, Bitcoin's already looking and getting into PA. It's all over. I would sort of missed you in South Florida. That is ripe for the plucking. That whole area is just, I mean, everybody down there ought to be a Bitcoiner. Yep. It's crazy. It reminds me of California. When we'd go out there from like North LA. Brian Cubellis (01:37:03.438) or Jesse would know better, but like when I grew up from a client perspective, it was like from Northern LA all the way down to like San Diego. It was just prime like Bitcoin people that didn't talk to each other, knew each other. And I remember going down this past month and it was like Miami all the way up to like West Palm. It was people all like, they're like reaching out and I met them, but they didn't know each other at all. Like nobody talks to each other because they don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a world defined by how do you protect your property? And and your wealth and and Bitcoin answers that and so it is prime Right for the picking. Yeah, and I don't I don't think you I think you're too humble to do this yourself David But I think what you're doing to really get people who are Liberty focused and freedom minded that should get Bitcoin but have not Have not stepped over the ledge yet to really get them to notice like hey everything you're saying would be a lot easier to It would be a lot easier to affect change in the way in which you want to see change affected if you Add a Bitcoin to to your strategy and I think that's gonna be extremely high leverage and powerful moving forward is really getting these Liberty minded movements to understand that if you actually want to Bring liberty liberty to the world in the digital age. You need a Bitcoin strategy Yeah, well, thanks for saying so the There are a few opportunities in life, maybe only one when you can actually affect positive social change and also perhaps make a lot of money. So this is it. Climb aboard. It's a great way to finish it off. It's so true. Yeah. Gentlemen, this was a fun, a fun rep. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, David, Larry. You're not here, but thank you. If you listen to this and posterity, I'm going to give it official. Thanks. I was joking earlier. Talk shit on you. Yeah, can't wait to do it again. And we're gonna win. We're gonna win. We're winning. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you, David. See ya.