The Last Trade E051: From Charles Schwab to Bitcoin with Rich Kerr

Brian Cubellis (00:02.542) We're live, gentlemen. Back for the last trade. I had to miss last week. Michael, you did too. Yeah. Nobody who's on the show right now was on last week. It's the range of the casting group with Onramp. Yeah, I just, I haven't, did you get a chance to listen yet with BitTeen? I have not. I have not. I recorded with him earlier this week for TFTC though. He's a legend in the space doing Satoshi's work at the Nakamoto Institute. Yeah, if you haven't seen, he has the redesign and then also I think there's maybe like 0 .3 BTC still left to raise. I know we participated. So if you're out there and want to contribute to archiving Satoshi's history, you're going to have to think about it. It's less than that. I think you need six million Sats to get over. yes, yeah. I got the decimal off one. To get over the hump, to redesign the site. Go support the Nakamoto Institute. If you're out there, you're listening. nakamotoinstitute .org donate. We need to preserve the information about the economic theory, the cryptography, the technology that led to Bitcoin. And then we need to preserve the canon of Bitcoin, Satoshi's emails, critical literature about the economic theory and technology that is Bitcoin. But you can go listen to last week's episode with Michael Goldstein to learn more about that. We are here with Rich Kerr. long time Charles Schwab veteran 30 plus years working for Charles Schwab Richard into Bitcoin. This is the first time that we're meeting so I'm extremely excited to hear your backstory and Why you've decided to focus on Bitcoin so I guess we can jump off there. What what have you been doing? Over the last few decades and why is Bitcoin tickling your fancy these days? Well, it's a It's a long story as you can... Brian Cubellis (02:06.286) I'll tell you, I am a former Schwab executive. I spent 31 years with Schwab. The journey was pretty amazing to be honest with you. It's a remarkable company that really puts clients first. And that's what kept me there. But I think along the way, one of my... I don't know. I guess my focus changed, right? I started coming along the journey in the RIA world and working with RIAs and also inside of Schwab's and building out our RIA. And one of the things that kind of was the epiphany, I think, was 2017 for me. Can we pause? Yes, sir. I'm off beat here. Hold on. Little nervous. I've never done a podcast before. No, be nervous. We are. I know we are friends. I know I usually flow, but I'm like, holy crap, I'm staring at myself and it's all right. I'll lead you in. We can just restart the Charles Schwab. So 31 years at Charles Schwab. Former exec. Yeah. that's it. So I guess, yeah, we can we can start. We can start there. We'll. Leave me in again because he's going to clip it. He's going to clip it. He's going to cut this out. Yeah. In the. We're actually we're going to we're going to put all this live. Yeah. OK. So Rich, you were 31 years at Charles Schwab. What was that experience like and what led you to Bitcoin? Tremendous experience. I think working inside of a company like Charles Schwab, as big as it is, it's pretty remarkable. I got to see us emerge from being a discount broker to developing advice offerings to developing a suite of solutions to support independent registered investment advisors and family offices. And that journey, I wouldn't change it. Brian Cubellis (04:32.078) I think one of the beautiful things about working with a company like Charles Schwab is everything passes through a lens. And that lens is all about what the client wants and what the client needs. And so when you have that level of client focus, you develop great products, you develop great solutions, you advocate for end clients and advisor clients and... really try to do what is right inside of an industry that has had its challenges in the way that it serves clients. And so a remarkable journey. And I have to say, that journey kind of evolved different for me. Most of my time has been in various leadership roles inside the firm. whether that be our Schwab wealth advisory or leading all of our fixed income, both institutional and retail, or focusing on serving independent investment advisors and helping them grow and compete and succeed in their marketplaces. And so, a good journey, something that I wouldn't change for the world, but as they always say, if you get to a place where you're... you know, you've got something in your mind and in your heart, you know, that is different. You've got to listen to it. And Bitcoin became that disruptive factor for me to finally, you know, walk away and, and, and spend my time focusing on that journey. And so that's what led me here. And so I'll share with you, it was, you know, 2017 and a, a very, you know, good friend and a person who was in my direct line of rapport came to me and he said, hey, look, you know, I know that you've got a lot of experience from an asset allocation standpoint, you know, how you think through the advice components. And I'm strongly considering, you know, making an allocation to Bitcoin. And I'd love to pick your brain and, you know, have that conversation with you because, Brian Cubellis (06:55.502) You know, he respected my point of view and I don't know what it was, to be honest with you, Marty. It was, you know, maybe it was that I was busy. Maybe it was that I just didn't know anything and I didn't want to look like I didn't know anything. And so there was that arrogance or that ego that maybe kind of lived a little bit there inside of the, the, the Tradfile world. And, you know, I remember saying to him, look, this stuff is coming on, right? He cash all this other stuff. It's coming on it. There's no way that it scales. This is an enormous industry that has a responsibility to protect investors and things on that nature. And I just gave this kind of canned response and it was really ill informed. And I think I recognized that, you know, after, a year or so and kind of reflected back, you know, this is a person that I valued, I cared about, I was, you know, an investment professional and, you know, my duty of care is actually to sit down and listen. And if I was outside of my domain of expertise, I should have just said so, but I didn't have that. You know, I kind of took the industry talking points and dismissed the conversation. And I regret that, you know, because it was a few years later that another person came to me and asked a similar question. And I sat down and I just said, you know what? I don't have an informed point of view on that. And I'll tell you what, I'm going to do a little bit of work on it. You know, 2020, I started really kind of digging in for a number of reasons, right? You know, I think that, you know, the world has been a bit wonky, you know. certainly from a political standpoint, geopolitical standpoint, and trying to make sense of what was happening, I think, with, you know, during the COVID period. And, you know, I had time to do some work and I went down that rabbit hole and I'm still going down that rabbit hole. I became absolutely amazed with how it aligned, how Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (09:20.91) I think in many ways aligned to many of my personal values and beliefs. And at the same point in time, it evolved many of my belief systems. And so it led me to challenge my thinking a little bit more. And to me, I think that that is incredibly inspiring to be able to feel like, okay, I'm 55 years old. still growing. I'm still learning and I'm recognizing more importantly, the tremendous opportunity that Bitcoin presents, not just clients of the US financial services firm, but globally and in meaningful ways. And so, I started studying, geez, Seyfa Dean and Jeff Booth and Robert Reedlove and all of these people that I think have come at Bitcoin with different points of view, different perspectives, and it evolves your thinking a little bit more broadly. And then I kind of realized, okay, this is the disruptor that we've all been wondering would finally come into the financial services world, I think. Oftentimes we think what's going to disrupt Wall Street. And you think Microsoft. You think Twitter or X or whomever, block, whatever, might be a disruptor to the traditional ways that we do finance and provide advice to clients. And it is something wholly different, in my opinion. think it's a corporation, I think it's Bitcoin that ends up ultimately disrupting the financial services world. And so the question becomes, how does traditional finance embrace Bitcoin? And to me, it's a remarkable story that will unfold in front of us. And we'll get to learn a little bit about just how committed the TradFi world is to embracing Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (11:43.438) And it's an incredible journey. And one thing I'm curious to learn, and maybe could be productive for anybody listening to this, who's sitting in a position within the financial services industry that is a bit curious, was there something particular that you learned along your journey that provided an aha moment? Like, my gosh, I really need to lean into this and I get it now. Yeah, you know, I think it was in reading the Bitcoin standard. to be perfectly honest. Now, you know, I think we're all very familiar with Keynesian economics. Yeah, yeah, I got it right back here too. It's a tremendous book and everybody should read it. If nothing else, just to challenge their point of view of the world. And, you know, when I was reading that book, you know, he does a brilliant job of outlining, some of the flaws inside of Keynesian economics and the monetarists and Milton Friedman and kind of going back and dissecting that. And, and clear ways that it was actually the intervention that led to the significant problems and challenges that occurred in any major recession or depression. And so, you know, you have the people who are trying to fix the problem are the ones who created the problem. And it led me into you know, going into, you know, the, Austrian economics and, and, you know, to me, I thought it was a pretty powerful, aha moment that was worthy of further study and, and research. Yeah. What, what, I don't know if you guys hear me. Yeah, you're echoing that. Brian Cubellis (14:00.814) Did you figure out your mic? And I can go here. The Keynesians are arsonists, right? Riding around in fire trucks. This is a good way to to describe them. I think for me personally, I think it is just because I was at a young, impressionable age when I found Bitcoin 21, 22, I was working in finance, trading currencies, having to read central bank tea leaves. Maybe I was just young and dumb enough. reading the tea leaves and being like, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And then finding Bitcoin and saying, this actually makes more sense to me. So for me, learning about Bitcoin during Operation Twist and QE2 and the, I think it was just the arbitrariness with which the policies were being deployed back then in 2012, 2013, juxtaposing Bitcoin's very regimented supply schedule. to the chaos that was going on with the quantitative using is what was like, this just makes natural sense to me compared to this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. One thing I wanted to call out and curious to learn more about is, you know, we've been, you've shared the story with me personally and building a relationship the past few months and this idea of dedicating, you know, it's very foreign for even three years in today's world. to spend at an organization, let alone 30. And for somebody very skilled to spend 30 years, there has to be more than just profession. And what I took from that is that there was a lot of like fulfillment, altruistic fulfillment and helping people preserve their wealth. And there was things that as a, I kind of think like, I don't know, Bitcoin native, but like, I don't have assets outside of Bitcoin in the traditional sense, other than like, real estate and businesses. And this idea that, Schwab is an innovator in that space that they've been out at the forefront. They've been to the extent you can't in the traditional finance space. And that kept you there along with the altruism and helping people and RAs preserve their wealth and stay at the forefront of all the things associated with providing financial services done the right way. But then at the same time, you found Bitcoin and you realized that, my God, this is the thing. Brian Cubellis (16:18.99) And that was so impactful and so profound for yourself that that 30 years and all of that in this company started to become, okay, well, my time is now better suited somewhere else. And just be curious to learn about like Schwab and then how that is like impacted you because I do think it's important for the past few years of building this space. I've had conversations with a lot of individuals and it's like a conflict of an internal conflict because you have these like golden handcuffs, right? Where when you have a family and kids and in the car and the debt from school that you can't get out of the position as much as you want to. And I've seen some people make that leap. And I think that they're probably better off for it, even if they took a little bit of step back because they're like, feel a little better about their contributing and all the things that we do that lets us go to sleep at night while others, well, they kept the capital coming in. They're probably a little conflicted internally because they know they're building a system that is effectively like either a not the right system or B going to ultimately change. As we said, as the disruptor. So just curious like how you like progress through that and think through it. Obviously you're in a different stance than somebody that's 40 years old or 38 and you know, raising the kids versus a little bit older, but it's still the same process and you still have to be able to make that choice and hang your like hat on it, knowing that your peers and other individuals are walking, watching you do this after all of that reputation. It's a, it's just something that's worth calling out. Yeah. I don't know where to start on that. I'll share with you. You know, being in the industry, obviously, I practiced a number of things that that led to good financial health, and it put me in a position. So the risk was an enormous for me because I started stacking. And the more that I got convicted, the more that I stacked. And as you know, I, you know, I kind of, you know, chuckled because I remember it was. you know what, May of 2022 and the thing is diving below 17 ,000. And I'm just backing up the truck and my wife is thinking, what are you doing, right? And I'm like, this is the best thing I've ever had the opportunity to buy. Like I had no fear. I think conventionally, I probably would have said, boy, I'm catching a falling knife here in... Brian Cubellis (18:43.182) what would have been the traditional investment inside of my portfolio. And I was allocating well beyond, I was concentrating, which runs counter to everything that I was teaching and working with advisors and clients about. But I knew, I knew in my heart of hearts, right? And maybe, you know, Maybe we get proven wrong. I doubt it. I really significantly doubt it because I started really understanding my time preference components, right? And recognizing that Bitcoin was that disruptive. But I will share with you, to answer your question, Schwab, wonderful company, unbelievable company, because they, you know, to the point I said, right? Everything goes through, you know, what does clients, how do clients experience it and what do they want? And so if you take things through client's eyes, which is their corporate strategy, you tend to get more things right than wrong. And so Schwab does that with employees as well in many respects, right? Like as I needed more. you know, responsibility Schwab always seemed to meet me and it kept me in that place for a very long time. But the exit was interesting, right? Because in my heart, all I wanted to do was focus on Bitcoin. All I wanted to talk about to clients and to employees and to colleagues alike, right? I just wanted them to take the step, right? And generate a little intellectual curiosity. and challenge everything that they have learned along the way and just look at the principles of scarcity and what that really means and look at it in the context of currencies that are globally getting wrecked. And that's our fate in many respects. 35 trillion, I mean, I think there's... Brian Cubellis (21:03.278) One could argue that we're essentially insolvent and you just don't come back from that as a country. And so my belief was we have absolutely wrecked the purchasing power of the US dollar. There is no such thing as scarcity with a fiat currency and we need to start rethinking. what money is. And so, you know, the Robert Breedlove conversations, I think, are really, really compelling to help open people's eyes and certainly, you know, helped support, you know, my newfound and new held belief. And so when I got to the point where I knew that Bitcoin was where I wanted to continue to focus my education, My learning, I wanted to go out and carry that second wave, right? That altruistic nature. I always felt that I could do the right thing for clients because I had the best products, the best people, the best service offerings, the best custodian, all wrapped in one. And I could speak with such conviction about helping them. My mission today is the same thing. It's just in a different vehicle, right? It's... How do you empower people to open their mind to something that is worthy of their consideration, right? Which is we've got an unsustainable debt load. We are printing currency at a remarkable level. There are flaws inside of the current monetary system and financial systems. And if those can't be rectified, which I believe that... they ultimately cannot by themselves, then you need to seek out true hard money and protect your family, protect your goals, empower your children and their children. And to me, that's the same mission that I set out on, you know, 33 years ago when I entered into the industry. And so we still have work to be done, I guess. Brian Cubellis (23:31.278) With this in mind, is that you, Michael? No, no, I think it's Rich. I think you gotta go on mute if you're not talking, Rich. I think it's the echo in this house. Okay. You're not gonna be on mute for long, Rich, because I'm about to ask a question. With this in mind, RIA is obviously still a massive part of managing wealth on behalf of individuals, companies, corporations, whatever it may be. What do you think? the opportunities and the threats are to RAs as it pertains to Bitcoin. How in your mind should RAs be approaching the conversation of Bitcoin and getting their clients exposure to it? And what is going to happen if they don't make the move to begin educating themselves and ultimately their clients about this asset and getting them exposure to it? Yeah, that's interesting. It's a good question in the sense that, you know, I think everybody is waiting for the RIAs. It seems to be the logical next step because they bring such scale of individual investors forward to Bitcoin. And, you know, I've shared this with Michael and Jackson. The RIA industry is a remarkable industry. It was a disruptor in many respects, right? You know, I think, They really started hitting critical mass in the 90s and early 2000s, and they continued to set the pace, taking market share from wire houses and winning, and doing it the right way. And what I mean by that is, they take a fiduciary standard. That matters. It's very different than a broker -dealer approach, and it puts them on the same side of the table as their client, that they need to put the right solutions in front of the client that are in their best interest. And that rises above their own personal outcomes. And so having a principle -based model is why they continue to win in the marketplace. And so it's my belief that they have a significant role, right? They... Brian Cubellis (25:59.822) Their phase one was remarkable. It was absolutely remarkable what they were able to do. But what's ended up happening is that the wirehouses have started to adapt and started to look a lot more like RIAs. And so the competitive advantage has somewhat closed or the gap. What I do believe is that they have a responsibility here. to actually lead the next phase and so it's my it's my take that that the RIAs will come and they are going to come in in in a significant way once they recognize the parallels of what Bitcoin is to what they stand for and and I think when when they start seeing the altruistic nature of what Bitcoin is I and they start seeing the independent, the disruptor, the what is in the best interest of clients, and they start putting all of these pieces together, they're going to see themselves in many respects, what they've built. And so the opportunities is enormous, right? Because they can be the voice, they can be the trusted advisor that educates the... the high net worth, ultra high net worth space or the mass market, and have a point of view and help people understand why Bitcoin not only deserves to be in the portfolio from a hedge perspective to protect all of the wealth that they've been able to build and the fruits of their labor, but actually, should have a more significant role in a portfolio over the long term. And so I think the RIAs have a tremendous growth story here if they start going down the rabbit hole and recognizing the similarities to what to in the industry and how it is. And they're gonna move slow. They're going to move slow to... Brian Cubellis (28:16.11) to this space, right? Broker dealers are rules -based. There's a lot of regulatory controls that kind of sit in front of them. And there's profit motive. And so how do they monetize it? They got to kind of go through all of those steps and hurdles. Whereas an independent RIA can sit down and say, okay, how do we custody? How do we properly control? What is the investment thesis around Bitcoin? And then how do we allocate and make certain that clients have not just a proxy to price performance, right, in ETF, but actually can control that the client has the ability to take possession and control their Bitcoin. And I think that those ownership assurances of Bitcoin, are meaningful. And so, you know, I think RIAs will start going down that path. I tend to view ETFs as a really, really positive thing for Bitcoin because it exposes people to the price appreciation and that's huge. But I do think that ultimately it's a gateway drug, right? That end clients will say, whoa. Whoa, what is this? And they're gonna start exploring it. And I think if anybody is similar to me, you put 10 hours in, 20 hours in, next thing you know, you're 30 hours in and you're like, my God, wait a second. My, okay. Next thing you know, you're on a podcast with Marty Bennett. Yeah, that's exactly what happens, right? Everybody gets in front of Marty and gets. tell their story, you know, whether or not it's worth listening to, who knows? But my belief is this. I think ultimately the ETFs are going to be very, very helpful in creating a mass awareness and embedding Bitcoin into the common, you know, conversation of our time. And that's a huge, wonderful thing. Yeah. And you're providing a great segue. Brian Cubellis (30:44.59) to bring Jackson into this conversation because whether we like it or not, humans are very social beings and some of us need validation from others to begin exploring new territory. And I think as you mentioned, ETF, I would agree, provides an incredible top of funnel marketing mechanism for Bitcoin, the asset, and obviously the Bitcoin ETFs launched earlier this year. And we've had a wave of 13 F filings come out over the last few weeks that are showing who is allocating to Bitcoin, which could be used as a validation point for RIAs internally saying, Hey, these guys are buying it. So with that mind Jackson, I know you want to walk through some of the data that's been coming out of the filings in recent weeks. What are you seeing? Yeah, thanks Marty. It's interesting. So maybe before getting into, the specifics of the data. Just so the four of us and all the listeners are on the same page here. So 13 F's, what are they? They're just a quarterly report that are filed by institutional investment managers. And that's a very broad scope. It includes hedge funds, broker dealers, RIAs, pensions. And you have to file this on a quarterly basis if you have over a hundred million in assets under management. So. With the Bitcoin ETFs going live in January, we really have our first, almost full quarter of data as it relates to who owns the spot Bitcoin ETFs and to what extent. And they had to be filed by March 15th. So this comprehensive data set has only been available for, call it about a week or so. One thing I think is interesting, we can start with retail adoption before we get into more of the institutional players. If you could pull up the chart from NYDIG that just shows like the breakdown of ownership, it's pretty interesting. So 80 % of owners are actually non -filers. And what that means is likely retail investors. So actually it's a little bit of a different story. And then Marty, I think it's just the other one from, from NYDIG here. The aggregate spot ETF one. Brian Cubellis (33:07.31) Yeah. But yeah, so it's interesting because you can see here now on the screen, if you're, if you're watching on video, 80 % of the ownership of the spot ETFs are non -filers, which likely just mean retail investors, right? Because they're not accounted for in the 13 F filings. And that's actually quite interesting because that accounts to about, be about $47 billion of assets under management from mostly retail investors. And Another thing I'd point out too is you have about 80 % ownership of retail investment in the spot ETFs, which compares to 43 % for SPY, which is the S &P 500. About 62 % I think for QQQ, which is the NASDAQ and then GLD, which is gold is about the same, I think 60 % or so. So we're actually seeing more of a retail adoption of the ETFs thus far, which some... Some people may take as a negative, but I actually think it's quite positive and it's indicative of what we should expect the next couple of quarters because it actually is very bullish. I only expect this number of 80 % to trend downward as institutional investors really start to, you know, first they leg into a position, they make a small allocation, they do more research. And then like any of us, right? We've all gone through the process of, you know, maybe it starts with a 1 % allocation and five, 10, 20. Some of us might be at 90 % allocation of Bitcoin and that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen overnight really. So in terms of what I think we'll see going forward is that 80 % number will continue to decline quarter over quarter. We'll see the 20 % which is accounted for for hedge funds, RIAs, broker dealers, other types of institutions, including pensions. We'll get to that. We'll increase as we go forward. And one thing on the retail piece, that I think is interesting is, so Bitcoin's been around for 15 years. And as we all know, each cycle, there's been material growth of the ecosystem. So, you know, there's more solutions for people to buy, secure and spend their Bitcoin. But despite that, I think the 80 % adoption of the ETFs by retail really shows that there's still maybe a gap in the market for Bitcoin native services, because you would think that I would have thought that maybe, Brian Cubellis (35:32.366) there would be more institutional players purchasing the ETFs because they need a compliant, you know, security exposure to the asset. And I thought that individuals maybe would have had their fair share of opportunity to purchase Bitcoin over the past 15 years, but really the data is showing otherwise. So if anything, I think that speaks to a lot of capital already just being trapped in, you know, retirement accounts and the brokerage accounts. Maybe not everyone wants to open up a Coinbase account or, you know, a river account. These are great options. If you want to own the asset, you need to purchase it through some exchange, right? But then certainly not everyone wants to self custody, which I think all of us on this call, we've done self custody for a number of years now and we recognize there's a ton of merits to it. But at the end of the day, it may not be the end all be all for widespread adoption of the asset. So I think it's just interesting to think about, you know, all the different financial products that will be both Bitcoin native, but then also let's say more traditional finance native products and it'll be interesting to just watch how this develops over the next couple of quarters, specifically on the retail side. I could take a pause there before getting into any of the institutional stuff just to see what you guys think. All right. Intuitively to me, it makes sense as Rich mentioned earlier, there's a lot of internal process that needs to be worked through before a lot of these institutions are able to actually hit the buy button. So it would make sense to me that It's heavily driven by retail in the beginning as all these different wealth managers are learning about Bitcoin, educating their advisors about Bitcoin and giving them the playbook. Like, all right, here's how we're communicating it to our clients. And I mean, I just know anecdotally, I think I shared this on a show a couple of weeks ago, but my neighbor is a wealth manager at Morgan Stanley and he's expressed this to me. Like, yes, we can't. The only way we can buy the ETF for clients is if it's directly solicited, if they ask us to allocate to the ETF, we're in a pure non -solicitation. We're not in the non -solicitation phase where we can recommend it, but they are going through the process internally to get to the point where they will be able to recommend it to clients. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think we're all on the same page in terms of just the incremental allocations that happen by these. Brian Cubellis (37:54.542) advisors and fund managers. For the first quarter, there was about 800 firms on the advisor side that were represented and it was about $4 billion of capital. So just to really show how early we are, there's tens of trillions of dollars in the managed wealth space in the US alone. There's only $4 billion that have been allocated to the spot ETFs from this cohort. And like I said, there's 800 firms, but there's nearly 15 ,000 investment advisor and broker dealers. that are in the US. And there's one chart that really shows like the allocation. Yeah, this is it. So the number of entities by allocation size. This is fascinating because out of the 900 or so total firms that were captured in the filings, about half of them, the allocation is less than $500 ,000. So I really just think that at the end of the day, this validates what we're all speaking to in terms of this allocation will start small. It probably started first with the principles of the firm. and them having to get comfortable with Bitcoin. Maybe they owned its spot already, or maybe they allocated to the ETFs and did their due diligence before starting to recommend the ETFs to their clients to a very small extent. And this really just shows that there's a ton of room to grow here. Again, there's, I think, $150 trillion of wealth in the US. So to think that A, Bitcoin is still $1 .5 trillion as a global asset, And then B, that there's about 60 billion, I think, in AUM and the ETFs just shows how, even though we may think that the institutions are here, in reality, the data is going to look totally different in the next, call it 12 to 24 months. And again, I really just expect that the ETF ownership will start to shift away from retail into institutional hands. And speaking of which, we saw the state of Wisconsin pension board. make an allocation in the first quarter of $160 million. And that only represents a 10 basis point allocation of their total portfolio, which is $150 billion pension. I think they're the eighth or ninth largest pension in the country. And again, this is just very indicative of how this process goes. Initial allocation will be small, the due diligence needs to happen. There's still some Brian Cubellis (40:12.75) I think concerns as it relates to centralization of custody with the ETFs among other things, cash in, cash out, and not being able to redeem in kind. But this is how these things happen. And we're going to just see a much larger adoption among advisors. And Marty, to your point and to Rich's point earlier, a lot of these firms can't even solicit to their clients. So they have to only take inbound interest. And then I think even some larger wirehouses, like the largest wirehouses in the country. Some of them I don't think offer any product. So even if their client asks them for it, they still will not be able to put it into their portfolio. So there's still a lot of red tape as it relates to adopting these ETFs. One, Jackson, that was a great summary and recap of what's happened in the past, you know, I guess call it a little over a quarter. I'm curious, it's evident like, you know, the institutions aren't fully here and there's a process. I would... almost make the case it's similar for retail because when you broke that 80 % down and I'd be curious Rich, you being closest to this historically, how many of those retail buyers, A, were cycling out of or just traditionally already in like grayscale coupled with or were in proxies to Bitcoin like by way of, you know, miners as an example. And then also were Bitcoin holders that had money trapped in other Retirement accounts that allocated to the ETF that had been waiting and the reason why I say that is because Just anecdotally, I think everyone here doesn't know people buying this ETF at least personally I don't Going in and like from a net new retail buyer that's going and just buying ETF Bitcoin because they didn't couldn't get it on Coinbase or wherever And so that's just I guess an open question to everybody was specifically you richly How much do you think of that 80 % is net new buyers versus people cycling out of different positions? I? that were already like Bitcoin holders just looking to increase their position versus NetNew. Brian Cubellis (42:11.95) I don't have any data that would tell me one way or the other, to be perfectly honest. Me either. My instinct is actually you probably do have quite a bit of net new in here versus cycling out of a GBTC or something of that nature. I think there are plenty of roadblocks. that prevent people from actually going and opening a river account, opening a SWAN account, opening a on -ramp account, right, as an example, and just actually buying the Bitcoin. That's a big step because people don't fully understand necessarily what it is. They may not have done the work as a retail investor. They may have heard, hey, you've got to get some Bitcoin. and then they start hearing about FTX and, you know, all, you know, issues, exchanges and challenges. And, and so when you, when you say, okay, well, geez, where do I go, to get that is Coinbase going to be the next, I don't know. Right. You know, the retail buyer, there's a million things that would prevent them from doing that. What they do know is fidelity. Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, right? They know who their broker is. And so they may say, hey, look, I'd like to take a position in this. And think that they have owned Bitcoin when in fact they own a security that owns Bitcoin and they have a share in that fund. But that being said, I suspect that there's probably a reasonable amount of people that were feeling opportunistic. And, and, and, and, You know, the industry hasn't really done a great job, although it's evolving at a fairly, you know, aggressive clip of, you know, the retirement account scenario, right? I mean, I went through that myself, you know, trying to figure out, okay, I want to roll over a certain percentage of my, my 401k and, and how do you know, I know I knew what I needed to do, but I was kind of vetting the different IRA productized solutions in the way that different Brian Cubellis (44:37.262) You know, companies like a swan or river or on ramp or unchained were actually doing IRA accounts. And so you have to go through a due diligence process to say this is the right situation for me. And so the ease of actually putting Bitcoin into an IRA at a traditional custodian, You know, I bet you there's a pretty significant chunk that got allocated that was net new. That's no data, just an observation and an instinct. Yeah. And if it helps, I think there was about $26 billion in GPTC before the Spot ETFs. And now we're at about $60 billion across all the different products. And I agree with you, Rich. I think... I touched on it quickly as I was going through the retail data, but I think at the end of the day, there still are a lot of people out there that will not participate in Bitcoin beyond owning the products from traditional financial firms that they trust, right? And it takes a while for these new firms to establish themselves and build trust in the market. And I think that even though maybe between the four of us, we don't know a ton of people who are purchasing these products and Maybe they're just not in our circles, right? I think that there are a lot of people who maybe want to start with a very small allocation in their portfolio and they're not going to go through the trouble of going to Coinbase, you know, when they only read about people getting their accounts hacked and phished and they don't want to do self custody because they read about people diving through, you know, trash to try to recover their hard drive. So I do think that there's... a lot of bias towards convenience as it relates to early adoption of these products. But I agree with you as well that as people become more educated, they will seek out better vehicles. And I mean, ultimately that's, you know, that that's what we're working on it on ramp is we're betting that the market will become more educated over time and we'll seek out better ways to own. Brian Cubellis (46:49.87) Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, and I'm a good proxy for that, right? Like I would never have had a problem owning the ETF, you know, what, four years ago, I'd be like, okay, all right, I'll own the ETF. But once you kind of start to understand, you know, what Bitcoin is, you want those ownership assurances. And then you start thinking through, How do you properly secure? And I was so proud when I got my Trezor and I moved everything to cold storage. I thought, man, that's a big deal. And then my wife said to me, she's like, wait a second. How is Bitcoin ever going to scale to mass audiences around the globe on these little key fobs? I don't see it. And she's right. And she's right. That's one avenue. And it's a perfectly fine avenue, by the way. But you have to understand how to protect, how to secure, how to instruct others, you know, should something happen to you. And so it's fraught with its own challenges, right? And you know, the treasure maps and all of those types of things. And so it's not right, you know, for... probably 98 % of common everyday people. And so how do you get to a place where you can think through how to properly secure it and be able to enjoy all of the benefits of ownership assurances that come with Bitcoin? And so my thinking is that ultimately people will find that way because there may be a catalyst, right? There may be something that creates a level of urgency to wake up and actually get educated and recognize that there's been some really, really good thinking and evolution in the industry to help people solve this problem. And I think OnRamp is a good example of that, right? They've really thought through custodial implications and how important that is. Brian Cubellis (49:15.598) And they still stay true to, you know, the, you know, I think the trust minimization, you know, elements that I think are really, you know, core to, to Bitcoin as well. Do you, I'm curious, your thoughts on the market structure, because I just had this thought of referencing like the ETF is it's great, but it's actually really kind of like, as we know, like 10 years from now, we'll laugh at how the ETF is centralized, like, convinced, right? So it's like, we just took a wrapper, we parked it all at Coinbase. It's like, that doesn't seem very innovative when you really break it down. But if you think about the edges, and let's say vanguards over here that won't adopt anything right now, right? And that's that side, and they're having the problems. How do you, you know, generate revenue and all the things associated with Bitcoin? And then the other side is, complete other side is like, an exchange, a Bitcoin only exchange that would not even let you, they won't even custody it. They just send it to you directly. Like they're that tied to the fundamental ethos. that starts to like move merge together, right? Just over time naturally, or they have to like, I don't want to say merge together, but this idea of all traditional financial services have to play ball or go away. If they don't do something in Bitcoin would have been crazy to say six months ago, but now it's like kind of evident, right? We saw the Vanguard CEO get replaced. Like this natural, you mentioned disruption is coming. And there's a lot of things traditional finance got right. And you know, the market structure, understanding client services, all that. And there's things that the Bitcoin companies have gotten right. How do you think about how that market structure starts to get intertwined to deliver products and services as you've seen at scale? How like how and this is I don't have a thought. I'm just more curious, like given your background, you've played in both lenses now you've had to go down the rabbit hole and figure out how to use a treasurer. And you've also worked in onboarded, you know, thousands of larger RAs and millions of probably clients. How do you see that starting to like merge? Because we're still very early in this whole story. I love your guys' thoughts on this as well. To be honest with you, I almost think it's going to be one of two things, either a melt your face off kind of upward movement in this fifth epoch, then all of a sudden everybody starts paying attention and going holy cow, right? And that fear of missing out moment is going to come either for institutions or custodians or... Brian Cubellis (51:41.678) individual investors and it may all hit simultaneously and force a closing of that gap, if you will. Or it could be something more significant, right? I think that there's been concerns of black swan events and boy, you could just throw a dart anywhere in the world and recognize that there's some significant challenges and... And that could be, you know, currency collapsing, devaluation, inflation going through the roof, you know, missteps by, you know, central bankers that cause, you know, significant disruption in an economy. Any of those types of scenarios could play out, right? I mean, it's pretty chaotic right now. And so knowing... that you've got wars happening all over the place and threats of wars happening all over the place and a very tricky needle to thread for central bankers to either sink an economy or to let runaway inflation happen. And it's an interesting dynamic in my mind. And I think that that could cause a very quick closing of gap. The question becomes, is TradFi in its traditional finance companies, are they prepared, are RIAs prepared to think about how to integrate Bitcoin into their offering? Do they have a strong point of view? Are they steeped and educated? Can they bring that education forward to the client? And this kind of goes back to Marty's question. What's the risk for RIAs not having this thought through, right? In my opinion is the massive risk because they are the trusted advisor to their clients. And if they don't have a point of view and some kind of risk element enters into the fray that, you know, maybe a black swan event or it may be something that, you know, is pretty obvious. If they miss that, Brian Cubellis (54:08.59) that client is gone, right? That client is gone and you lose either they're going to make a decision independent of that RIA, which means that, you know, that trusted advisor just got, you know, is now just advisor and not necessarily trusted advisor. And there's a big difference. And so, you know, my concern is, you know, especially in the RIA space, I do worry about my friends and, that are in that space and have they thought through what does a business model look like? What does an operating model look like? What type of research and tools and who are the trusted voices in the space? Because you gotta go through a vetting process and really understand who is trusted to educate you if you're going to educate your end clients. And so to me, those pieces need to close very quickly. or ultimately they lose market share. Either that the client does something independent, right? And opens up that on -ramp account or whatever. Or they go to an advisor who has a defined point of view and can really help answer the questions that they have as it relates to Bitcoin. And I think that that's what happens. Yeah. Completely great and sorry if I look distracted I was looking for a tweet from yesterday so that I could directly Read the tweet verbatim, but I'm not to paraphrase it, but I think Jack Dorsey Spoke at a JP Morgan digital summit or something yesterday the day before And to this this point this line of thinking he made that clear Made this clear on that conference call and they asked him like how why are you? Focusing on Bitcoin and why are you building all these products and he says we need to disrupt ourselves bitcoins gonna happen Whether we like it or not and we want to be at the forefront of disrupting ourselves And I think block is a great example of an incumbent not necessarily wealth management Maybe some would consider wealth management for retail investors via something like cash app, but their whole umbrella of companies would it be square cash app? Brian Cubellis (56:34.638) Now what they're doing is spiral and block working on Bitcoin, mining products, custody products, lightning products. I think it's a great example of a first mover incumbent recognizing this threat of if we don't react to the fact that Bitcoin exists and is going to continue to exist and increase in adoption and cater to the market, we're going to get left behind. And to your point, Rich, I think in the wealth management space, there's needs to be conversations like this happening behind closed doors that they haven't already happened aren't happening right now. You got to start having these conversations because as Square has proven, like if you are a first mover and you actually do leverage the native properties of Bitcoin and can provide good end services and for Cash App now via their Square terminals, you can automatically turn some of your profits into Bitcoin and hold it within Square. cash app you can send, receive, buy Bitcoin in many different ways, on -chain, Lightning. And I think that's a great example of an incumbent company that disrupted themselves and is well positioned moving into a phase of continued Bitcoin adoption where they will not only be able to survive, but probably thrive since they're on the cutting edge. And when it comes to wealth management, yeah, all these companies should be figuring out how do we do custody? How do we do reporting? How do we do... inheritance protocols, tax advantage accounts, and again, leveraging Bitcoin's native properties to make sure that you're not concentrating risk with one custodian particularly. Well, yeah, and complacency is a killer right now. And I think people are disrupting themselves in their own let alone company. And put that to the side and actually say, I want to be something more sustainable over the long period because you're right, Bitcoin is not going to slow down or wait for them. I'm sorry, Michael. No, I was going to allude to that. Marty's example of Square is really important because of the Bitcoin only focus, because it's only one part to adopt like digital assets or go into this realm, which is the jump. But then it's understanding the signal of Bitcoin because I think maybe it's part of the segue for like Brian Cubellis (58:58.638) the regulatory landscape in this opening up potentially a Pandora's box of, you know, Solana, ETS, I think yesterday we're on CNBC and we were on a call before this and explaining like this notion of maybe it's quick money or it's money quick in the short term, but you're damaging not only reputation and all the, the, the, from a wealth management and the altruism and all the things we talked about preservation of wealth that we know that these things do not have fundamental underlying value. And so if you come in with the wrong approach, not only are you selling your brand and reputation, you're also like hurting the end client, which is ultimately going to leave. And I think this is just an important facet of like, this is not a casino chip, all the things, it's very serious. And when you focus on it at the core and to Marty's point, going very deeply, like vertically integrated, then you can actually, and anybody with serious money wants to work with somebody that's specialized because when you're specialized and you start to focus on, okay, well, Let's talk about custody. Well, custody, obviously we all know multi -SIG is native to the protocol, but if you're supporting a long tail of crypto assets, you have to use inferior custody solutions, which ultimately leaves your investment at risk. And this is very straightforward and simple. And if people hear this, that for the first time, it's pretty straight. It's pretty like, it's pretty obvious, but the thing is nobody tells a story because they're not incentivized to say it for all the reasons that we know. And it's just important from a consumer behavior risk factors because. we're going to see if this Pandora's box opens and it looks like it's opening, this importance of education and all the things that we've been talking about are just going to become that more important. But it's also going to be a large opportunity size for people building in Bitcoin only and understanding it because over time we've seen this is that every cycle people disappear. And then those people that are still building the right way are still there taking more and more market share. So it's always going to be a longer game, but that's where that time preference comes in. Yeah, I've thought on that. I think, Michael, you made a lot of great points. First and foremost, for my personal experience in the fund manager world, when I did manager research, I'd cover hedge funds and then private assets. So private equity and venture credit, real estate. We were always looking for managers that were specialists. Like we pretty much never allocated or approved generalists onto the platform. It was always looking for Brian Cubellis (01:01:20.494) fund managers that really do like, you know, drilling down from one industry to a sub industry to like a very small niche. Like we would always pursue those types of opportunities because that's where the real conviction is. And that's where the, the, the alpha is at the end of the day. And I think to your point, Michael, like there's just such a lack of incentive as it exists today for people or for firms from the traditional world or. crypto or Bitcoin native companies to focus specifically on Bitcoin because there's just a lot more money, quite frankly, to be made at the moment in creating all types of securities and financial products and always trying to find the next sexy thing with all the bells and whistles. And I think I'd be curious if you guys agree or not, but I think it might come back to just like how we've been in a long cycle of securitization and more and more financial products that exist in the fiat world. as a result of debasement and all of the issues that we know. And people have kind of forgotten that financial services could be very straightforward in the sense of you need to be able to first build around custody and then, you know, inheritance and potentially some sort of active strategies and, you know, checking accounts, saving accounts, like all this fundamental stuff that really there's no money in it anymore. It's all been kind of compressed to zero. So everything is moving toward the most exotic financialization possible. And I think that kind of comes back to our job as well in terms of helping the market understand that we need to first focus on building a strong foundation when it comes to custody, because there's been like a half a trillion dollars of Bitcoin and crypto losses due to poor custody and whether it's, you know, just lost, stolen, hacked, etc. When it's that when you're building on the foundation of sand. and people aren't used to paying for custody, I think all these other things just pop up and it's just like a confluence of perverse incentives that exist in the industry. And aligns with something I say quite often, which is there's an order of operations to the ultimate success of Bitcoin, the way in which we think could be successful. And most people looking at this, again, probably driven by a life lived. Brian Cubellis (01:03:38.798) in the fiat system is, yeah, number's gonna go up, you just buy this thing, it's gonna go up and that's all I have to do. It's like, no, there's actually hard work that needs to be done, like you alluded to, Jackson, on the front end to make sure that the system is robust enough and you don't have as many mines as we've had in the past with Mt. Gox, FTX, Celsius, whatever it may be. Like these are examples of companies that have done it wrong, but they're, for every example of a company that's done terribly wrong and exploded, there's plenty of companies and I think they're beginning to outnumber the terrible companies now that are doing it right and understand these core principles and to the point that was made earlier, like it's just doing our best to get out in front, educate and make sure that the companies that are doing it right are getting access to the people that are looking to get Bitcoin and it is, I would argue, our moralistic duty to do that so that people don't lose their wealth. Yeah. And I love this conversation. We've had a lot the past year and this was in my mind always part of the vision for on ramp in this is we know all the Bitcoin holders, like they're, they're self custody. It's like, you know, we say these concepts and some of it's to them, but the reality is like the idea is there's so many people that don't hold Bitcoin outside of the cohort that does and all the money and these concepts have to be disseminated and get get to them in like a faster timeframe. But then also to take it further is allocators. And we've had these conversations behind the scenes that this compression is zero is real in the traditional finance space. And it puts people out on the risk curve. And it also works because compression zero on custody and other assets is because ultimately like in my mind, if something bad happens, you can reverse it. Somebody hacks your account. It's all good. But we know that's different here and there's no bailouts. The problem is when you start building on that foundation that things compress to zero and that's baked in when you're a large incumbent institution looking at how do you make money in Bitcoin, you just assume that custody goes to zero. And even the exchanges that are in the system assume custody is zero, even though they spent all the money on it, because they're looking for trading fees, because that's the only way we've determined how to make money in Bitcoin. So then you Brian Cubellis (01:05:57.87) have to, if you charge for custody, which you want to, because you invested all that money and you diluted yourself, because you had to go raise the money and invest the infrastructure, you can't because you lose the trading fees. And so then you naturally inherently have a less secure solution, maybe not always, but we've seen it historically with centralization of exchanges, as a matter of it's Bitcoin only or not, still centralization of an asset that is very distributed. It's kind of antithetical to the model. Point going is now you're an incumbent, you're looking at the system, you're like, well, there's no money in custody. So I got to go figure out something else when that's fundamentally, I believe a fallacy. It's just that we haven't seen differentiated custody and you should pay for custody because ultimately it's been the difference in somebody holding Bitcoin or not holding it into the longevity or seeing its growth. And so this idea and part of our plan, there's you go back to the market and you actually say there's room for margin, there's room for custody. And the end story is great for a client because it's do you want Bitcoin at 60k and to get to 600k, you have to pay some basis points for that and it's required because nobody's told that story and that's where we keep seeing people get burned and the capital gets lost. So anyway, that's a long way of saying like this, I think episode and going forward, a lot of things we do is really like, how do we bring the existing system to understand that they can actually make money and provide better services than it historically been thought of and it's not a race to zero charging 15 basis points on an ETF. because everybody knows there's no such thing as a free lunch and you get what you pay for. And if you're not paying much for it, then at the end of the day, something will happen at some point. I love the idea of just really honing in on digital bearer asset at the end of the day, like that fact in and of itself is the reason why paying for custody makes sense. It might not make sense in the traditional world where everything can just be reversed, but in a world where we have a $1 .5 trillion global asset and Historically, I think it's the numbers $400 billion of crypto and Bitcoin losses to date. That's pretty considerable and it's worth paying whatever it is, you know, however many BIPs if you're going to have exposure to an investment or savings, however you want to categorize it, that will appreciate potentially 25, 50, 75 % in a given year, right? Like it's, it's kind of de minimis when you compare Brian Cubellis (01:08:18.51) what you're paying for custody, what you could potentially have as a return over the next 10 or 20 or 50 years in Bitcoin as this monetizes. Marty, I haven't shared this with you, but I just really controversial take as it hit me when I was driving. Maybe not controversial, but it's that the more successful Coinbase is, the more destined they are to fail. Like the more the more assets that they bring on is whether it's honey pot or just the obvious, you know, why would, you know, holding too much Bitcoin not be a good thing. You know, but people don't generally think in that way. So they're assuming like it's the larger gets the Lindy all the things, but it's actually it's like the larger the more assets that are accumulating every year, the more ETFs that are housed there, ultimately, the more likely it is to not end well for the people having the assets custody there. Well, I mean, the rest is. increases significantly for them and Like if they have one slip up anywhere in their business particularly on the custody side, maybe it doesn't materially affect a Majority of their clients but it affects and that sends a signal to the rest of their clients like crap We need to get out of this. I mean we've seen this in the Bitcoin industry particularly in the Bitcoin mining pool sector with G hash in 2015 when they got 60 % of the network hashrate, they were running a good business. They were running such a good business that everybody wanted to put their hashrate at this mining pool. But since they accumulated so much hashrate, it scared the crap out of the market because of the threat of a 51 % attack from this pool. And even though they were running an incredible business, everybody left because they just didn't want that concentration risk at the mining pool level. And you could see something happening here similarly. And I've already heard behind the scenes that a lot of people working at these ETF issuers are already acutely aware of this concentration risk of everybody putting their Bitcoin with Coinbase and are scrambling to find other custodians to diversify their holdings between. And so I think if they slip up, it's going to send a signal or everybody's like, all right, we need to get the hell out of here. And even if they don't slip up, I think the concentration risk is always in the back of everybody's minds. It may have just been. Brian Cubellis (01:10:30.222) the most convenient option to get these ETFs off the ground. And so people took the path of least resistance. But I think once the doors are open, everybody's through the gate. Now they're thinking, okay, how do we reduce this concentration risk? What's your take on the regulatory reversal and the opening of the Pitter's box? I saw you guys had fit 21 on the list and the only I haven't read the bill. I've seen clips. I saw Tom Emmer really putting forth an argument that the bill is going to enable not only financial institutions to custody Bitcoin, but it's going to preserve the right of individuals to custody their own Bitcoin and transact in a peer -to -peer fashion, which sounds great in a speech form on the Senate floor. But I've heard rumblings this morning that there's some stuff in the bill that may not be great. And so, I mean, we're from like the ETH side, like the ETH potential ETF and this, the SAB like, more of just like a directional changing, less of the fit bill. I've learned in 11 years in to like as much as you want to say like this is stupid. I don't think people should be doing this. They're going to do it anyway. They're going to find a way. And I've become more convinced than ever that if anything for Bitcoin specifically, I actually think it's a good thing in the sense that it creates so much confusion on the regulatory front that. these altcoins act as like a diversion tactic while we can go build out Bitcoin infrastructure the right way. Would not recommend it. And has it even been approved? Wasn't supposed to be approved yesterday? Yeah, I think I think it was supposed to. To your point, it's a real interesting catch 22 with like, it gives the overhang to build. It's just an interesting like, change in sentiment, I guess. That's been so different historically. Yeah. I think one thing's clear, whether I agree with the tactics or not, I think it has been fun to watch the shifting of sentiment on Capitol Hill around. It seems like who knows how much of this is just pronounced, not pronounced, but like, what's the word? Brian Cubellis (01:12:54.374) a very small group making a very big noise and it's affecting people in Capitol Hill. It does seem like the politicians are scared of pissing off people in the crypto industry, which could work to our benefit. I just find it funny if it's all like that simple that you just need Trump to say crypto once on a video and everything just shifts. Like, if it's that easy, I mean, I think we're gonna have a... It'll be easier decade than we expect. Didn't I, didn't I say that he's taking campaign con Bitcoin? So I think he, I think he's starting to, to bring some of that forward. But that being said, I don't. The quick question for you, Marty, how much of that is, you know, the crypto community applying pressure on Capitol Hill versus Wall Street recognizing how much money can be made in creating product, regardless of the quality of what that product may bring to the end client. They see the wreck. The. The flows, the enormous success of the flows and the asset management fees. And, you know, I, I tend to think that it's, you know, those phone calls that may have swayed it. Michael and I were chatting about this. I don't know that I trust, you know, the, the political class, the career political class at all. you know, and so they can be easily swayed and when they are easily swayed. makes me wonder if there's not deeper pockets that may be causing that versus massive population. That's a very good point, Rich. Maybe it's a case of Wall Street making calls behind the background like, yeah, let the crypto bros think they did this. And going back to like the FIT21 bill, that's, I mean, the problem is I have to dial it. I haven't done it yet. Brian Cubellis (01:15:05.998) It was like a diversion tactic like yeah, you guys are gonna get a good bill pass it passes and it's like no actually like Wall Street can actually only handle this so Good luck with self -custody Who knows? What the bill actually said versus what the politicians were saying it was going to enable I have to dig into that but very good point I Find it hard to believe that The politicians were like, the crypto bros make a lot of sense now, let's just pass this so People are like, hey, do you want your next campaign funded? Let us get these flows. Yeah. I mean, that ties into the banks being able to cut through this stuff, right? It's all connected together. Yeah. That's an interesting time. Great time to be alive. That's for sure. It is. We're coming up on time here, Rich. Is there anything else on your mind that you think we should bring up, whether it be in the context of... how the wealth management industry should be approaching this, where you think we're going just more broadly over the next one to three years? I think this is the scenario, right? If you think about how Bitcoin evolved, it came so organically. It was really driven by individual investors, people that step forward and hit a level of critical mass. And then you saw the El Salvador's of the world. That brought a lot of validation. It's hard to think that an entire country would stake their economy to something if there wasn't something there worthy of investigation. And then you have the corporate side, right? There's always these toe dips that happen. You've got a nation state, and then you have a corporate treasury and some really interesting things that Saylor has done from a finance perspective and how he's educating the world on that. And you just need that second mover and third mover, and then all of a sudden things start to explode. And I do believe in many respects, you know, Brian Cubellis (01:17:28.398) Bitcoin is kind of sitting there going, okay, RIAs, let's go. You know, family offices have certainly moved. I saw the graphic that Jackson had put up, but that's just, that's ETF, right? Family offices probably moved years ago to Bitcoin and have that in cold storage. But RIAs are inevitable. And I think it's an enormous force. And it comes from a credible source, right? RIAs have stood in a higher and more principled plane. And so it stands to reason that they will be the ones who lead the charge. And that's my thesis. I just think that they need to have the right education throughout their firm. They have to think about their culture. and how it integrates into their culture and how they speak to it. They have to have the right research and tools and build it into the way that they serve clients. And once they've got all of those kind of pieces figured out and the custody and all of that, I think you have this really, really wonderful story that will start emerging on the bridge between traditional finance and the Bitcoin. There's nothing but enthusiasm on my side because I see you know largely that you know all of all of the you know all of the things are lining up correctly but the question is is who will be the survivors in that story and and Recognize the opportunity that the threat Certainly provides rich hit me with the best Pitch is at what price does your client deserve Bitcoin mr. Advisor? Well, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it's a, that's a pretty powerful thing, right? When you think about it, you know, they say that everybody gets Bitcoin at the price that they deserve. The question for an RIA is what price do your clients deserve? And, and when they start thinking about that, they're going to be like, man, let's move. My clients deserve everything because they build everything. So, yeah. Brian Cubellis (01:19:51.694) And I think more examples of yourself, Rich, somebody who's been in the industry for decades and steps out and signals something is undeniably going to turn heads from what's in the industry. Like, wait a second, Rich just went over there. What's going on? Like, maybe I should be paying attention to this. And so I think every rich car out there that plants the flag and says, no, Bitcoin's here, you should be focusing on it just accelerates this process a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah, and there are some really wonderful people inside of traditional finance, to be honest with you. Very, very good people that have meaningful and purposeful missions to really help one another. And I think that as they wake up and recognize what Bitcoin can represent, and hopefully they hear the same call that maybe I heard. Awesome. Well, Rich. I really thank you for your time. Michael Jackson, it's a pleasure as always. This was an incredible conversation. We'll be back next week. Thanks guys.