The Last Trade E056: Dollar Uncertainty & the Remedy of Bitcoin with Mark Connors

Brian Cubellis (00:02.798) We're live. excited to chat about today. Thank you. We could just redo with Marty now if we want to. We don't have to. We got 30 seconds. Your intro sounded great. I'm sorry. I'm on a remote island where the Wi -Fi isn't perfect down here. So I've been troubleshooting. Sorry for intro. All good. No, it's all good. I'm happy to go either direction. I think we just jump into it, Mark. I mean, I saw you on the Charles Schwab. network, you and one other gentleman. Yeah. And you're forced to talk about Ethereum for a little bit, I think. Yeah. So when I was at Craze Swiss, we did some media training and we call that touch and go. You don't avoid it. You say, yes, Ethereum does exist back to Bitcoin. We all need to listen to that. The BIS does love Ethereum. They're going to put all the system on it later on. Yeah. And then there's Bitcoin. We can go back to that. Ethereum seems like a project that is a bit aimless right now. Did you guys see that thread? Maybe we can start with this. I'm sorry for completely bombarding this and coming up with my own thoughts. But did you see the thread of the gentleman, some crypto bro? He wrote like a long, I think it was like a 30 tweet thread, basically explaining the big problem. in crypto and why prices aren't pumping, which is the fact that everybody keeps releasing new coins and then unlocking supply of pre -existing coins. So the amount of supply coming on to the market is such that it's hard to drive up prices. And he was acting like there's an existential crisis that nobody understood before. But this is something that Bitcoin has been opining about for well over a decade. A breakthrough insight there. Marty. Brian Cubellis (02:28.43) It's too, I did read that and I was looking through for him to say, and folks, this is why we can't get out of our own way. Let's change it. Let's he's like, no, he's like, no, I found the reason why it's like, it's going to happen again, son. Yeah. Follow my newsletter and I'll tell you the coins that are, are going to avoid this problem. It's essentially the solution he came up with. that's right. It's truly amazing. Like with the amount of. you know, clown world amount of liquidity gets pumped in a system that the nuttier the narrative gets like Marty that that tweet I sent you and we can name the coins or we don't but the about the like to infighting with the crypto bros where the like there were certain guys that are you know, like 2020 2021 camp and now it's gotten crazy where you have meme coins and so the guys go and like partner with like actresses and people and then they launch these coins. And so then the people from 2021 have the fundamentals. So those are the ones with the right coins, but the mean coins are the ones that don't have the right fundamentals and they're the, the, the like, you know, biggest shit coiners in their world. And it's just this interesting like dynamic where they haven't understood that they're both basically have no fundamentals. There's no value tied to either one. No, I mean, this is a tale as old as Bitcoin, which is all the old coins come and say, we've got a better Bitcoin. We We figured out we solved all the problems and they derived Bitcoin, called Bitcoiners stupid maxis and that they're the MySpace and our coin solved it. And then one cycle later, there's a coin that comes out and it's like, no, we actually solved this coin's problems. And then they find themselves in positions that Bitcoiners have been in perennially for 15 years now, which is like, no, like people, if they have access to the button, that's going to create more supply, create a new. flashy altcoin, they're going to hit the button, they're going to drive narrative around it and people are going to jump from your altcoin to the other. That's why if you're listening to this, it's not about the tech. I mean, the tech is an enabling force within this. It's about the monetary properties. All these altcoins, all these cryptocurrencies compete on monetary properties and none of them can compete with Bitcoin's monetary properties. Brian Cubellis (04:43.566) meme coins are fun. I mean, they, I hear, I think someone had, they trade at least in May, they were trading 18 billion a day, more than the S and P, you know, more than any kind of. So there's, there's, there's engagement. And so, you know, have at it, but as you said about monetary properties and, you know, I call it being fit for purpose. Remember once when I got my boys out and my dad wanted to take us on the water. And I had never, I didn't take a boat out once in high school, but I'm like, I'm ready, let's go. We go to the place, guy behind the counter says, great, there are just three words you need to tell me before you take the boat out. So, you know, it's like, be back early. He's like, nope, that's not it. And went through it. My dad shuffled his feet, kind of going, all right, dad, what is it? He said red, right return. Keys came over the counter. And when it comes to tokens and tokenomics and Bitcoin versus others, you have to look at three things. The degree of decentralization, degree of security and degree of utility or scale. And once you put that down, the first two that have to be nailed down are decentralization and security. And if you don't enter the game, you know, I was at a broader firm. We looked at a lot of different tokens. And that's one reason why I came here is because I thought the alpha was in the beta. If you want to look at the market, the market is Bitcoin. Everything else is obviously marginalized on the decentralization side, like what you were talking about, Marty, or if you brought up that, the guy talking about, geez, all these unlocks. When do they come? How much are they? And it really does hurt price. It's like, yes. Why? because there's a switch and someone can pull it. Brian Cubellis (06:44.43) We did take the boat out. I just wasn't behind the helm that day just to close the loop there on that one. Now you can see there's, there's people, you can't see it because of the glare on the window, but there's a babe right behind me and there's people doing red, right return right now. That's it proper life in a harbor. I've never heard this phrase. You have red and green, I guess you call them buoys and they sort of dictate where the traffic flows. in the water in the back base. We've got a lot to talk about. There's a lot going on in the incumbent financial world, but we'll ease into it with the intersection of the equities markets and Bitcoin, which is micro strategy. They announced, I believe last week or the week before that they were going to raise a $500 million convertible note. I believe it was a convertible note. And they announced this morning, that was oversubscribed by 60%. They ultimately raised $800 million. I don't think they bought the Bitcoin yet, but they plan to use those proceeds. I believe they did it this morning. 11 ,900 Bitcoin. So yeah, almost 12 ,000 Bitcoin, which gets them, were they already at 1 % of the total supply? Okay, so. It's 1 .07 % now of the total supply. 1 .07%, wow. Yeah, I wish my entire stack was just a fraction of what MicroStrategy's DCA stacks seem to be. I can't imagine Sailor Sleeps good at night with that much Bitcoin. like at this current custody because like it's just sitting on these exchanges and he knows like you know it's sitting on a bunch of exchanges which is a problem. Brian Cubellis (08:39.726) Got it. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't know. Yeah. So you're talking, you're looking through price. Cause I was like, I think he's okay with the price part. You're talking to finality. You're talking to cut. Cause you wake up one day and it's like, Hey, we just lost the fourth of your stack. I'm sorry. Like that's a possibility. it's not, it's not a likely one, but it's just, it's just a hard pill to swallow. that exists. I think everybody here probably has a different model that exists that that can't happen to them. And you sleep a little bit better than that. And imagine. a little over 1 % of the supply knowing that somebody can call and do that. It's just, it's just, anyway, it's just something I think about like with power comes responsibility and a lot of responsibility there. We're going right to the core of the topic today. Aren't we right? We know I was just thinking that was just the first thing that no, always top of mind. Yeah. Better custody is always top of mind. Huh? I think about it. It's, it's funny that I, I don't worry so much for micro strategy, but like, probably should. I think about like the OGs. There's that story of the guy who hacked the Silk Road. The guy went by the pseudonym Loaded. Yeah. And so he stole from Silk Road. So, you know, legal, moral, ethical gray area there to start with. But he had a, what was it, Marty, like 50 ,000 Bitcoin that he got from that. And he put for the last decade, he had stashed away in a popcorn tin buried in his basement in his home in Georgia. And then he made some sort of slip up that got the FBI on his tail. That was probably three, four years ago. And then they caught him and recovered this computer, this motherboard, I think. out of a popcorn tin buried in this guy's basement that had a few billion dollars of Bitcoin on it. Just sitting on an exposed computer. It was a Raspberry Pi. Just a fragile piece of hardware. And that was how this guy had determined to store this insane amount of Bitcoin. And to me, that story Brian Cubellis (11:06.67) is first of all, a crazy wild absurd story on in its own right. But it also sort of speaks to what are the other OGs doing? You know, what sort of practices did they adopt in 2011 that they've been too afraid to update in terms of how they're storing their Bitcoin? There's probably quite a few Raspberry Pis out there with 10 ,000 Bitcoin on them or, you know, similar sort of story of some dedicated computer just with an encrypted file sitting on it. with 10 ,000 Bitcoin in it. And if I was in their shoes, I'd be extremely fearful of a bit rot or a flood or a fire in my house. And I wonder how many people are in that position. It's not a single digit number. It's probably 100 people or more who have that sort of situation. And I would not sleep well in their shoes. I wonder if they take the idea of the Lindy effect, which worked well for their stack on the price front and have applied it to their tech stack, which may not be the right. Yeah, right. I don't know what kind of morphine, but that probably doesn't translate well to technology, which moves a little bit faster on the deflationary front. Right. You always get more for less. So yeah, I don't know the number, but You know, the I see it in different ways with just comfort. People won't make changes. I mean, we got, you know, I play golf periodically, not a lot anymore, but I remember going out like every fifth round, you'll see a guy who still has his driver that's made of wood. He has a three wood that he calls a spoon because it's cute. He got it in high school or something, and he still likes it. stays with it, even though he gives up, you know, 30 to 50 yards, doesn't care, just loves having it. So I think, you know, that sentimentality or that familiarity costs you. And some people don't care until it's too late. Yeah. And you're surrounded and have to pay money. Mark, I feel bad. We're going to the markets and get excited and kind of like dovetailed it into Saylor and his custody set up. But I know you're ready to go. Brian Cubellis (13:36.974) curious your thoughts on, you know, Saylor and just the strategy and what's the, what's the play the next 18 months with other publicly traded firms? so what he's, what he has been doing, people say, he's just swapping fiat for Bitcoin. He's, he's not, what he has done is he has, it's not hacked, but he has figured out what Wall Street loves. Wall Street loves volatility and arbitrage. And what he's been able to do is to say, well, Bitcoin's volatile and let me monetize it. So let me take a step back. I was in the convert market in the early nineties and actually had ran a cap structure ARB fund that used convertibles. And it worked very well because a company was courted by all the banks to say, hey, listen, you're a high, you're a high vol company. You're Your credit spreads are like 12 % and your volatility is 60. You know, your cost of capital is too big, but let me do something. Let me turn it on its head and let me sell a bond with equity embedded. You're not selling your equity today because no tech person, even in the 90s, wanted to sell their tech cheap. We're going to sell it 50 % higher, maybe 60%. So we're going to sell a bond with a low coupon, give them some love on the income and they're also getting a call on this very volatile stock. And that worked very well. Merrill Lynch made a load of money and they even sold these things called Liquid Yield Option Notes, Lions, you know, they made a name for it. Zero coupon convertibles, which impute, you know, had imputed interest over time. They didn't even pay out cash. It worked very well because companies could sell their stock higher. So the, my point is this game's been played for decades. And what Sailor's doing is he's inserting not a tech company, but he's inserting Bitcoin into it, which we know has a higher vol, although decreasing. And Wall Street loves it and it's a way to monetize it. And he also is able to put out his liabilities for what, five to seven years on the term structure of the bond. It's absolutely brilliant. It'll keep coming. And as we saw with our friend Dylan LeClair, there are more companies Brian Cubellis (16:00.686) that are doing this type of transaction. And there will be more. I bet a couple of sats that we'll see dozens of companies in the next 12 months with market caps definitely north of a billion and the order of probably a couple hundred billion doing this type of trade. Wow. How big is the untapped reservoir for demand for this kind of product? I mean, how much capital can be used deployed into this kind of strategy. The convert market would be one animal that would go into it. And if memory serves, it's a couple hundred billion, I believe. I'll have friends ping me on Bloomberg to tell me I'm off by a non -order of magnitude by a little bit. But I think that's about right. And then the high yield market is one plus trillion. So it's a big market, Jesse. It's a big untapped market. And you also have equity people. who will get involved as well. And we know that markets, you know, US equities are 47 trillion, let alone the derivative of market is multiples more than that. So it's big. We're in earlier innings in this trade than we are in Bitcoin adoption by multiples. That's how big this opportunity is. That's a good way to think about that. It's sort of we're in the early it's an adoption curve for that strategy. And the same way that adopting Bitcoin as a as a treasury asset is is is an adoption curve in its own right. And yet I still don't fully understand what micro strategy is doing or how they're specifically how they're able to keep doing it and and why there's so much demand for what they're doing. That's the part that's still kind of mystifies me. Brian Cubellis (18:00.686) speaks to how early we are in that trade. I mean, he's able to do it because nobody else has really joined them in size like he has. And then from what I understand, building on what you just said, Mark, there's a lot of pent up demand for yield out there. And these convertible notes have proven to provide good yield. I mean, they convert pretty quickly as the price and micro strategy reacts to more Bitcoin. on the balance sheet and people just piling into the stock, it converts and you've got a good yield on that trade. It's a proven trade over the last two, three years at least. And you've got a growing depth of option markets on this growing market cap. So it is a flywheel. And what we think Bitcoin is, as far as expanding footprint of market value, like think it'd be a beast. And it has grown. It has surprised the upside. So he's taken what we know about Bitcoin and solving problems. And then he said, well, let me go into TradFi and let me leverage some of the arbitrage and outright strategies that love volatility, especially if there's more upside than downside vol, which is the best kept secret of Bitcoin. And He's tapped it. You're going to see more people doing this. And again, I mentioned Dylan because that guy can sniff it out like nobody. And he was picked up to help advance this strategy with a firm or two. Brian Cubellis (19:38.99) I love that you said the best kept secret in Bitcoin because it's like everybody talks about volatility like if it's in your favor What's the concern? What's the problem? It's only a problem if it's if it's not in your favor no, I agree. I think there will be more, whether it's via the convert market. My gosh, I saw you share an early riders piece of material yesterday. I mean, you just look at Apple, Microsoft, all these giant Fortune 500 companies sitting on literally trillions of dollars of cash and they're just buying back stock. They could diversify that strategy. and just buy Bitcoin and put it on the balance sheet as well. Brian Cubellis (20:26.702) Yeah, I'm going to think about I was texting you last week. I didn't share it. I don't know. I don't think I shared it publicly. But in like the span of like two hours, there was three random things that happened just kind of breaking down where money's breaking down. There was a picket in South for Southwest Airlines in Dallas for 17 % increase. So that ruined a whole day of whoever was flying through those routes. Stop by a coffee shop that was smaller new was closed down after six months and then I'd heard from another person anecdotally that their other, their flight was supposed to go to Tahiti for the honeymoon. They de -boarded and onboarded three times. They sat on the tarmac in Miami for eight hours. And then they ultimately, their luggage ended up there. You just had that, that was just in like a couple hours on last Friday morning. And I was just thinking about this whole notion of the money's broken. So then coordinating economic activity and what people need to actually feed themselves and pick it. And then the. the degradation of services, it all starts to tie in and the way you offset it is by holding a better form of money because if you hold a better form of money, you don't actually, you don't necessarily have to increase your prices. These increases in your prices effectively or theoretically should lower margins and reduce the amount of people that can purchase, which is a negative feedback loop. And to the point you just made, Marty, is if margins are compressing and inflation's running and you hold a better form of money, now that helps offset that. So there's like the arbitrage play that I think is on the financial side. And there's the natural like self preservation play that I don't think most have woken up to. And it's almost existential at this point, because I think everybody here agrees that inflation is probably 10 to 20 % annualized since COVID with a lot of money printed. And so it just feels like businesses have to adopt it or they're just going backwards until they kind of have to close it up. Yeah. No, we've seen this within our portfolio 1031. over the last couple of years where it's been really hard to raise capital, just not for Bitcoin companies, but for any company that doesn't have AI attached to their business plan due to where interest rates are and liquidity or lack of liquidity in venture markets specifically, but because all of our portfolio companies at 1031 have the drive to build as much Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (22:50.67) on their balance sheet as possible. Despite the fact that capital markets were pretty restrictive over the last two years, luckily the price of Bitcoin went up. So we've actually seen a lot of company runways extend just by having that Bitcoin treasury cushion. So it prevents them from having to go to the market to try to raise more capital. It's an incredible tool for businesses, whether you're a startup or a publicly traded company. And that's something that I know Michael's touched on with the cost of capital, which I'd love you guys to go into if we had the time. But back to Marty, what you were saying on raising money in AI is I have one of my two my boys are in a startup and they're looking to raise capital. And the feedback has been that people want to have a quick to they want to make money quicker. And they're in a sustainability business. And, you know, it's probably got a, you know, a normal runway, not an, not an accelerated runway. So when you say AI, are people saying that because they want productivity gains or they think it's going to be an, an Nvidia hop take and they'll be able to turn around, you know, six, 12 months and make a return. Well, I think the hope is that the end product of an AI company will lead to better productivity for companies and individuals more broadly. But I think. We're in a hype cycle and the relative nascence of consumer ready AI is such that venture capitalists, whether it's rightly or wrongly, is to be debated but believe that there's high asymmetric returns to be wrought by allocating AI at this particular stage of its nascent. That's what I would say. Michael, do you have any thoughts on this? I know we talked about this quite a lot. Well, I mean, I think it goes back to the notion of like people buying BlackRock ETF aren't buying BlackRock, they're buying a mean stock. It just happens to be Bitcoin labeled or IB, whatever the IBIT or whatever the ticker is. It's the same with AI. It's like last cycle, it was crypto in 2021. And now it's no different in my mind than like the Iggy Azalea coin or whatever. It's like you're just like picking up momentum on different Brian Cubellis (25:16.494) for areas of the market graph to what somebody's like selling. And then you have the narrative or the overhang to like go into that market. Cause I think it's like over 50%, some crazy number amount of venture that's gone into AI and all the way and up and down the stack is like, you can't from your LP get in trouble for allocating there because to Marty's point, it's the next thing and, and everything that goes along with it. The companies are raising larger rounds. There's all this infinite liquidity to chase. And then if it's only going to AI companies, it gets bit up. so just reminds me of a similar thing. It's just in a different liquidity pool, different, sophisticated, quote unquote, sophisticated area of the market that says, we're on the ventures side and, you know, we're going to allocate to the next Amazon or we're looking for the next Amazon. But obviously like that's just capital destruction. We've seen it for, for decades. It's just going to, I think it happens at an accelerated pace because of just how far along we are in the same way it's happened at accelerated pace today. in the mean coin thing, because that was the point earlier, Marty, when you referenced, we've seen it with like the next better Bitcoin or the idea that it can be done. At least people were faking trying that they were trying to make a better Bitcoin. Like it's not even a fake. Like nobody's saying that this is like a cryptocurrency is a better or doing anything compared to Bitcoin or even like these other tokens that are supposed to do other stuff. They're literally just saying it's a memetic token that is you're trying to pick up steam like some of the Trump coin that launched. They're just it's a There's no, they're not even going to pretend there's fundamentals. It's not, it has no utility other than the mimetic nature. Yeah, and Joe, Joe Weisenthal, he actually wrote in his newsletter this morning, he sent a tweet out tweet out earlier this week, but it looks like he followed up with the newsletter, but he had this great tweet. The big change in crypto culture in today's market newsletter. I wrote about how crypto libertarianism went from building systems that were robust against outside interference to influencing politics in order to protect the right to gamble on meme coins. So to your point, Michael, like I remember Brian Cubellis (27:19.406) in 2017 to 2021, when Ethereum was proclaiming that they were going to flip in Bitcoin and they were talking about all this esoteric governance and the world computer virtual machines. And it was really focused on tech innovation and changing meat space governance interactions with a virtual machine. And it's completely just evolved or devolved I would argue into let's attach a name to this coin and see how high it can pump. Yeah. It sure feels like in the sideways times for crypto, for Bitcoin specifically and crypto in general, people create narratives. They try, they're trying to find some way to like push adoption to the next level. And, and then these things get, get ahead of steam of like, okay, well we can do this and we can, or we can lobby and we can try to get Trump to talk about. NFTs or whatever. And then you create a whole culture, a whole movement around some red herring, some aspect of this technology that doesn't matter. But people are pushing it as a way to try to drive adoption, to try to make something matter. And at the end of the day, all you have to do is just wait for the economic reality of Bitcoin to play out, but we're so impatient, we can't help ourselves. We're trying to, you know, people end up trying to latch on to something that's going to move the needle. And in the process, we create the next wave of noise. And it's against human nature to do the hard thing of just sit and wait and let Bitcoin's supply schedule play out. But, you know, it's funny that Brian Cubellis (29:21.39) that we have all this problem of the constant cycles of what's the next wave of bullshit in crypto. But it's because crypto people are so impatient that they create the next wave of bullshit as it starts off as maybe a good idea and then and snowballs into something that is a true distraction and an impediment to Bitcoin adoption for the next slice of the adoption curve. It's actually a great point. It's kind of fundamentally shocking. We know like how much money has come into crypto and all the things. But Mark, to your point about AI, it kind of sounds very cynical to say like most people have no idea what they're doing or talking about specifically in venture or AI. But then when you go back and break down all the capital that's come into crypto over the course of the past three to five years, looking for the narratives, like they genuinely believe it. Like they didn't, I was joking to say it's like they read the Ford to the Bitcoin standard and then, or they opened the book and they never like even read the Ford, they just like closed it. In the sense or worse or worse Michael some of these folks Cut out the forward for the big paper and put it on their deck and then had all the other garbage behind it Yeah, I mean it's exactly right because like to Marty's point earlier like somebody's mad about whatever they're doing and then the Ethereum people are mad at salon and the salon of people are mad at the next one and it's like all this money and all this sophisticated people I couldn't understand that there's only finite scarcity once, you can't be behind it. And so if they can't do that, then what those are the same people running the AI people, they're no better. It's like it's all the same allocation strategies, all the same first principle thinking. So the whole the whole thing is like how is muffin loss of signal. And then the tokens are just the fastest to go up and down. So you just get to see it quicker. felt like Bitcoin is the ultimate canary in the coal mining global markets, because it's just like the first thing people are going to run with and this first thing people are going to sell off. Yeah. I mean, and to this point, we can transition to the topic we have on the list, which is the fact that Nvidia, not really transition, but continue this conversation with Nvidia at the center of it. Logan, pull up the tweet. I had James Chek, also known as ChekMatey on TFTC earlier this week, just in passing during our conversation brought up Nvidia. Brian Cubellis (31:40.974) And I hadn't looked at the chart in a while and I just sent this tweet out yesterday because we basically went, we admitted on the show, like we have no idea what's going on. The video is legit. Is this price appreciation, is there actual behind it? So I tweeted this out. There's genuinely looking for people's opinions. This looked like a healthy chart. And as you can see, it's completely parabolic. It's up 339 ,500%. since, since 2000 and most of those returns within the last eight years. And the response to this tweet was mixed. It was a bunch of people like put it on log scale. Like it looks good. AI is the future and a bunch of others. Like this is late stage meltup behavior. And it begs the question, like going back to the discussion about AI and all the venture capital that's been allocated to it, like Ken, NVIDIA. hold up this performance. I'm a bit skeptical, especially if you consider, I believe they're trading at like 48, a 48X multiple on the revenue, which is the revenue is certainly increasing by a lot, but even so, the multiple they're trading at is pretty high at 48X. I believe if I did my math correctly the other day, and then on top of that, yes, all this venture capital has been allocated putting... Money in the pockets of these startups, which are able to then go out and buy the chips that Nvidia produces. But unless a lot of these companies find product market fit and are able to monetize, it's very expensive to buy these computers or buy compute from hosting providers. And so what do you guys think about Nvidia? Is there juice behind this? Should we put this on log scale? Is this a step function improvement? on the price of the company because AI is truly here and is going to change the world or is this dot com bubble era activity that we're witnessing right now. Brian Cubellis (33:45.422) I think that's the question. Is it dot com era? You know, is this today? It's just today's Cisco. And I think it's I would say I'm going to split it and be the median, you know, for the middle child I am and say that I think it's somewhere between a dot com and a and a mid 2000s Amazon. So so Nvidia's stock price mean their numbers were crazy. Good. Beat everybody. But instead of what you see with maybe emerging companies where they get the low, not low hanging fruit, but they get the smaller companies to buy in and then they get the larger companies over time that are resistant. This was flipped. Nvidia sold to the large caps. Let's look at the top five companies with 30 % of market cap. If they have to make the next sale, it's gonna be an incrementally lower ticket. So they have to spend more time and more efforts to get I think incremental sales from the non -Googles and non -Microsoft, et cetera. So I do think it tamps down a bit, but it's not going away. I mean, anyone who has friends who are lawyers, God bless them, you know, the old model was to have your junior lawyers bill out at, you know, 300 bucks an hour. And then you'd bill out at five, you know, at 700, a thousand if you're in New York. But technology took out that layer and clients would no longer allow that. So their margins got compressed because of technology. So AI is an advancement of what the internet provided by just making things more productive. It's going to rip out margin companies are going to continue to adopt AI. But like what you said, Marty, the product market fit, we're all still figuring out how to use it. So there'll be a bit of a hiccup soon enough. Yeah, I love the Cisco comparison. I don't know enough about AI in general and certainly not Nvidia's business model and balance sheet and forecast, but it sure does remind me of like, what kind of hardware company really ever has like the killer lasting dominant position the way that a Google or an Amazon Brian Cubellis (36:11.118) has had, I guess you could say Apple, but that's because of the network effects of people using that hardware. And if it's a commodity hardware like GPUs are, then I have such trouble seeing it remaining the largest company in the world. And it feels like the mimetic investing has crept into the stock market in a big way. on a bigger and bigger scale over the last decade. What makes you say that, Jesse? Right. It's not new to crypto people, but the sort of mimetic investing that we saw in 2017 turned into Zoom and Peloton booming in the narrative environment we were thrust into during COVID. And now the narrative environment is AI is going to change the world. and, you know, so here's, here's two prior examples, the COVID climate, and then also the dot com climate of, over hype, causing, you know, particular companies to be parabolic the way that Nvidia currently is. And it's just not sustainable. once the narrative shifts after enough time has passed, I feel like we're in that sort of pattern here. Even though, you know, it's the Gartner hype cycle where AI will change the world, but perhaps not as much as people currently think it will. And perhaps 10 years from now rather than next year. Yeah, I can't say anything that the guys haven't shared except for my favorite part about Nvidia is the tweet from this past week that you said like the main tweet was the boomers got the gains of Nvidia or like the gains of Bitcoin without having to suffer from all the volatility and sleepless nights. And then below that was they can't keep getting away with it. Yeah, and I think I'm going to throw my hat in the ring here too, is genuinely. Brian Cubellis (38:20.558) don't know how is it going to play out. I do have my leanings. It does seem a bit hypey to me, but could be wrong. There could be massive product market fit. I mean, I use AI every day at TFTC is that the killer app is going to lead to insane revenues for the companies leveraging. NVIDIA's GPUs is yet to be determined. This is a very capital intensive businesses and can these companies produce the revenues and cash flows necessary to to pay for everything. But generally speaking, like just outside of product market fit headwinds, I think you have to look at energy supply headwinds as well. You have to plug these GPUs in and that's a big trend and theme this year is the highlighted lack of energy infrastructure that exists today to actually supply this market. So could that put a bit of a damper on this run potentially? Then obviously you have the key man risk of TSMC and saber rattling beginning to heat up around that small island in the Asian Pacific. And yeah, I don't know. There's cautiously optimistic. I mean, I would like to see AI increase productivity. Of course, there will be some externalities that come with that, but I think overall in the long run it'll be good for humanity, but whether or not... that is happening right now is questionable, I would say, at the very least. Brian Cubellis (40:01.71) What isn't questionable? So we have a debt problem here, gentlemen. We have a massive debt problem. Another big headline of this week is the interest expense on the US federal debt has officially surpassed the annual national defense spending, well over a trillion dollars annualized. And so as of right now, that makes the interest that we're paying on the debt the fourth largest expenditure behind Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid. So we've got four. An image of that from the daily shot in the chat. Yeah, we've got four overt Ponzi's leading the top of the charts for expenses here in the United States. What are they? What are the first two, I guess? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Okay. And then interest expense? Yeah, on the debt that's never going to be paid back. That's quite a roster. There's your four horsemen right there. It's interesting. Time what Marty was referencing with Nvidia to the debt and just money being broken. I remember when we first met or when you were, you came on probably six plus months ago on your LinkedIn, you had a Credit Swiss was like, it was your title, which you're working on, but it, the end was it had stuck with me managing alpha decay. And it's like this notion of you're looking at the markets and you recognize that monetary policy and all the things associated with it, we're just making it harder and harder to return capital. And then now you're focused all your time on Bitcoin because it's the thing. It's just something that hit me. I don't know if you have thoughts on that, on how everything against, whether it's the debt coupled with this late stage exactly, the fiat meltup, how you basically dedicated the rest of your career to this asset class. because of everything you've learned. Yeah. It's like, you know, know thyself. I was working at Credit Suisse where we all knew what the stock was not going to do, which is go up for reasons that became evident. And I was working with hedge funds, very bright people, tremendous information resources, and they couldn't beat the S &P and even risk adjusted. They weren't that great except for maybe four or five of them. So Brian Cubellis (42:30.254) I knew the problem of inability to make money on the hedge fund side. I was at a hedge fund. We did close it because we did underperform and I missed something which was a move higher and the Fed overtaking the market, you know, off the 02 bottom. I'll still fundamentally bearish. So I stepped back and started to look at things kind of like not to the degree maybe that Luke Roman does, but from a market standpoint. referencing that slide that you just put up there. And it became evident that there was a centralization of liquidity. And what hedge funds love is accessing liquidity. And the banks were no longer a warehousing of risk. They were like, it was like poop through a goose. They no longer had the balance sheet to absorb any shock. It was all at the mothership of the Fed. And we do have a slide in one of our you know, if you call up or hit us on our website, we'll share it with you on the terminal or one of our sales reps. The Fed and money supply. So we all know the money supply has gone up. We printed, you know, we talked about the debt issue, but it's like, well, where's it coming from? The treasury? Yes. But it's also coming from the Fed. The Fed has stepped in the shoes of the banks. They accounted for something like 10 to 12 % of M2 prior to the 08 crisis. They would get open market operations. They would buy bonds, flood the market, or, you know, and then give cash back through a simply book entry back to the banks. And the banks would either lend it or buttress their, their cap ratios. However, they want to deal with the cash 10, 12%. But since then, It's been as high as 40%. There's basically instead of the Fed being the lender of last resort, they are now the lender of only resort. They are providing almost 40 % of all the money supply in the U S we are centralized. And when that happens, not everyone has a, has a line into the Fed to get cash and capital. So that's why back to like alpha decay, when you were talking about it, Brian Cubellis (44:53.454) Maybe hedge funds shouldn't be around, maybe they should be, but I'll tell you right now, they're gonna be fewer of them because liquidity is dear and not every hedge fund has access. And yes, I saw Bitcoin as being outside the system, a term that people have used, but we can talk about what that means and back to trying to nail it back to AI and not AI, but Nvidia, and it's loop higher. What's great about Bitcoin is Bitcoin knows it can't go to the moon in a day. It has four year cycles where almost by design, not almost by design, circles up like a Zamboni across the ice and it covers up its tracks and works its way up in a spiral. Like it's really magnificent, the structure of this in order to play the long game of growth, adoption and service. Hopefully I landed that plane on, on, on alpha decay, where it came from and what's going to win coming out of it. yeah. I mean, we have more slides to show, but let's keep talking. Well, that's it. That's a good one, Marty. I think you'll appreciate we've been talking with a lot of pensions and some are positive. And then some are a lot of emails about, you know, naturally aversion to it. And, Mark put together with Jackson, a really nice slide on one. I think one, either two or three and five year returns and basically just like a nice cordial response of maybe Mark, if you curious like walking through this, but then also just your peer group with your transition. And this is quasi your peer group, much more your peer group that are sitting on the other side of these emails than us curious, like what's going through their mind and how they're having to navigate this because they see SWIB coming in, but they're still apprehensive. They're still thinking we need to see more. If you could just walk us through some of the thoughts there. Yeah, it is bias and familiarity. Back to what Jeffsey was talking about with the OGs, are there 10? Are there a hundred people that are still storing their hundreds and maybe billions dollars worth of corn on a raspberry pie and a popcorn can? Maybe. And why aren't they changing it? Because it's worked. Investing in tech stocks has worked for many people. Brian Cubellis (47:14.958) So we showed that slide to say, yeah, it has worked. But within the SFINT, that subsegment, that's done pretty well and definitely outpaced the S &P. There are only a few names doing it. So you are buying an index just to get long one or two names. Bitcoin is a single name that consistently, five, three, one year, has outperformed what you have hung your hat on. And we're thinking that the problems that are with the federal government and with monetary policy now governing everything really, or dominating the scene that maybe there could be even risk to some of the economic benefits or tailwinds that have benefited these companies. So you're right, Michael, they basically still say, all right, I know why you're shoving this in my puss. I'm like, I'm not shoving your puss. I'm just showing you that. that this animal is not a Ponzi. It is not a tulip. The tulip craze was three years. This is 15 years and really 45 years in the making because of the technological innovations that underpin it. And so then they say, okay, and it basically doesn't change them, but it gets a second meeting to have the discussion advanced. So yeah, that slide has helped. Because at the end of the day, people know that Capital is permanent at these endowments, but employment is not. So they need to deliver and allow them to run their funding. And so Mark, I feel like putting my hat on from before I was a Bitcoiner, a common defense, I think, or like a justification for it all, an explanation would be, well, there's going to be reversion to the mean. Brian Cubellis (49:19.406) So you got lucky so far with Bitcoin. You got the good stuff. And now there's bound to be some reversion to the mean and it's going to underperform. And then you'll end up kind of in line with other assets. What are your thoughts on that? Or how do you respond to that kind of natural objection? Well, Jackson's already responded. He said, Now there are two questions that come up when we show this slide of one, three and five year. You know, what about longer? So actually three questions. And we say, we don't show a seven or 10 year because it just would blow off. It would look like an Nvidia chart because the base would be, the basis is so low. If we look at any four year rolling period, the worst return is I think in the order of 28 % compounded, the worst four year return. So it does have a reversion to a mean, but the mean does lift over a four year period. The mean can be low in a one year. We saw that last year. So if you're trying to fund liabilities out five and 10 years, then this is how you look at things with that long range view. The other question is. I was just going to re rephrase that as so, so in your mind, the mean for Bitcoin is skewed to the right. There is a sort of a mean, but it's already like highly positive Kager territory. And because of the inherent structure or properties of Bitcoin and where we are in adoption. Yes, because of the problem in traditional finance and people, you know, looking over their shoulder. Let's talk about behavior. Economics is really about behavior, study behavior and how it impacts wealth creation, storage and transfer. And people's behavior is changing. For the first time in suburban Chicago, New York, LA, parents are saying, you got into UCLA? Yeah, $68 ,000, $75 ,000 a year and you don't get to go to graduation. Brian Cubellis (51:35.786) you also got into University of South Carolina and you got some money. Guess where you're going, honey. I know no one in our community knows about USC, South Carolina, not Southern California. You're going there because it's half the price and it's a smaller school and we think it delivers a value. So people are making, everyone knows that wages aren't going to grow into the moon, but costs are going higher and they're going to value. They're not going to what has worked for people. So I think I mention that because people are open to the idea that the way their parents made money and had stores of wealth, that may not be the case. And when you talk about education and people making changes to maybe go into a city college for a few years or to a non -named school, even though they have the money or a better known school, I think, Jesse, that's why the four -year mean has persisted because Bitcoin survives based on its decentralization and security. And it's been rewarded by having people wake up and realize that it is a better store of value than what they've looked at otherwise. And then lastly, the question that Jackson put out to the team or to the endowments was the next question we get is will it persist? And then we said, Give us a call. We'll go over the reasons why we think it will persist. This is what has me super excited about six figure Bitcoin because when I hear Jesse say reversion to the mean, I think of what would cause it or why wouldn't it still go to zero? And when I think of six figure Bitcoin, I think it's flipped from, wait, can it go to zero to wait, where can this go? Where is the ceiling? And then that changes the whole dynamic of obviously price and I think that's the real IPO moment or the quote unquote IPO moment. That's like the change in step function of like this thing isn't going away and now Apple and these firms can step in because there's 1 million in the top. Is it 10 million? Like is there no top? I think it's still in the realm of like this thing can go backwards and that's the reversion. The true version mean is zero. It's such a good point that like the general mainstream market probably views like the ceiling of what's possible as 100 ,000. Brian Cubellis (53:58.638) for Bitcoin and then suddenly, you know, when you get to 130, 150, then all that sort of prior assumption of like, this thing could only ever possibly go to a hundred thousand gets thrown out. And then Wall Street finance in general is forced to think, how big could this thing get? And only then will we start getting the, you know, people outside of Bitcoin making comparisons to. to gold or something like that and saying, actually to get to parity with gold, this thing would have to be a six, seven, $800 ,000 a coin asset class. And actually it could be higher than that. And I think you're right, Michael, that there will be a sea change there, a paradigm shift in terms of how people think about what's possible for Bitcoin once we get north of 100 ,000. Well, Jesse, I think that by Bitcoin, poster that the guy held up behind yelling went on auction. Yep. I think your asset map will be similar to that when Bitcoin flips gold on that value assumption that's going to happen when, you know, we kept having to making it from 500 million, billion remember when you first came out, I think, and it kept growing. So in the chat, we can share that with people. But back to price, you know. Marty, you showed Nvidia. Can you show that? I don't know if you can show that again. The chart going up, or probably still in our minds eye. Is it a weekly corner of Mark's prediction? Here we go. Brian Cubellis (55:47.246) Okay, we'll roll it out. Thanks for the cue, Michael. So look at this. I was like, wait a minute, 135, are they using, like, what type of scales is this? I forgot about the stock split. So the question is, when will Bitcoin be split? And that is a huge hurdle with people's heads. How can only Berkshire Hathaway can have five figures or something or six figures. And once a regular stock does that, they bring it right back down to two or three figures so people can be more comfortable buying it. It is a perfect example about how non -economic factors come into per consumer behavior. And they're not necessarily ones that lead to good outcomes. But Michael, go ahead, kick me off in the direction that you were talking about when I came in on two wheels in the Schwab network on my first day and laid out some price predictions. Mark was very bullish on Bitcoin post -having. That's as much as I got. That's exciting. So I've been on some media outlets and one was Schwab Network with Nicole Pettidelis and people love price. So at my former firm, I did it and I re -upped the numbers, penned a paper and had a 110, 2024 a low case and a 2025 high case of 450 ,000 for Bitcoin at the end of 2025, which I consider the end of the peak cycle. And so that got a few calls from folks, including Michael, saying, hey, Mark, that's great. We're glad you joined today for your first day. We'd love to have a heads up on that. Brian Cubellis (57:56.43) on a price target. And so we went through it. But talking on the call before this. when I would speak to investors about how do you get to 110? How do you get, you know, where is it like that? I said, well, let's take a step back. Why is my mid case closer to the base case? Why is, you know, say for 2024 was 110, I think 140 and 180 something or 130 and 180. Why is the mid case slope closer to the base case? It's because Bitcoin's, which is a question we want. It's like the hidden It's like in Willy Wonka when, you know, Charlie returns the wrapper at the end and says, here you go. You know, you show integrity, you show you've done the work. The reason why we don't have an evenly distributed, like most stocks are, low, mid and high, is because Bitcoin doesn't behave that way. Its return distribution is skewed far to the right. So that when you look at its distribution of equities, and bonds, they're kind of normally distributed, you know, call a bell curve. Actually, they have a slightly negative skew. Bitcoin, Bitcoin looks like one of those logarithmic, it bounces and punches far to the right. Like it's, I think in the last five years, its average quarterly rolling returns or a 63 day return, it's like 23 % on average. Its best quarter, I think is like 220%. Its worst is 60. a four to one ratio. No other asset has that. You have to basically buy an options portfolio to get that kind of skew. And that's why the institutions are coming. So I'm getting around trying to switch it from saying who cares about the nominal value? Most people do. 450 is a big number in 18 months. 110 would be welcome. That's what I put in the paper in the low case. But it's how you get there. And that is Brian Cubellis (01:00:02.062) where we get some invitations to explore that, Michael, is the performance character of Bitcoin is so different that it takes a little bit of understanding about, well, why does it operate that way? How does it have that distribution difference? Brian Cubellis (01:00:22.062) Did I cover myself pretty well? Did I cover my... No, you just got me excited. I just feel grateful over... It's really grateful like we get to build all this stuff knowing that it comes there. I think Marty's seen the most cycles, but everybody's not talking about it. And you just get to like focus on the thing. And then the market takes off and it's like Christmas and you knew it was coming and you put yourself in a good position and then it does the rest. Yeah. Well, and tying this back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of... national interest expense surpassing defense spending. Logan, if you pull up the TFTC article that I wrote this morning again, I think I wrote it at the end of the news. We're going to get to the point where people have to be aware of this, but go back up to the Luke Roman tweet. I think we were talking about it, not flippantly, but just in passing, interest expense is now bigger than the defense budget. But if you look at historically, over the course of millennia's, anytime this has happened to any large empire throughout history, it has marked the end of the empire. So like once you have the amount that you're paying to cover the interest on your debts or passing defense spending, like that is a critical moment. And I think most famously in ancient Rome, when they debased the currency, the Daenerys to such a point where the military began to recognize that it wasn't worth anything, they stopped. defending Rome and the barbarians were able to come and sack this city and it had a very slow and painful decline into the dark ages, the middle ages. And we've reached that point, American Logan, if you pull up the article again, and there are sort of soft metrics, metrics of despair. Luke Roman was citing Niall Ferguson. It's his index or his law. that he coined after writing many books on the subjects. And you can see that despite what many people in DC would lead you to believe in terms of the strength of the American economy or America at large, things are not going as well. We have the sixth largest incarceration rate per capita in the world. Again, this next chart is interest expense going over the debt spending keep going down, but you just go down the Brian Cubellis (01:02:47.022) The list, China's far surpassing the amount of naval ships they're building compared to the US. If you look at the average age of a politician in the US compared to the median age of the population, we are a large outlier. It basically says that our politicians are extremely old and out of touch. Keep going down. Confidence in these institutions is at all time loads. over the course of the last five decades, the percentage of high school girls who are experiencing persistent fields of sadness, hopelessness, thinking about attempting suicide, or even attempted suicide. These numbers are going up. the, we can keep going. I don't want to get too depressing here, but like statistics of despair are melting up alongside, the debt and the debt expense going up in. It's because we've completely corrupted the pricing mechanism of the global economy, which is money. And all of these problems, I strongly believe stem from this inherent corruption of the most important pricing mechanism in the world, which is money. And until we fix that, none of these problems are going to abate. They're going to continue to get worse. And as it pertains to the debt situation and tying this back to why I went on this long run is all these allocators, individuals, businesses, endowments, institutions, state governments, federal governments, you're going to have to wake up to the fact that the money's broken. They're going to need a solution to that problem. Bitcoin is going to be there. And so whether it's the psychological effect of Bitcoin going over a hundred thousand or the psychological effect of people coming to grips with the fact that the dollar and the debt system is fundamentally broken, it's going to be a reality that people are going to have to confront sooner or later. And the sooner the better. And the later is going to lead to more pain for people. Yeah, Marty, I jumped in with it with a little quip, but I also and I fully agree with you. The one reason in 08, I was very negative on the markets and Gower. And the part I like about Bitcoin is that it actually Brian Cubellis (01:05:12.942) is a way, it's a remedy for all the things you talked about. And you know, I agree with you, the mental health issues that are going on in this country, Jonathan Haidt, excellent resource in case anyone has ever, not doesn't know him, he does wonderful work. He was part of Coddling the American Mind. He's a social scientist out of UVA, now NYU. He talks a lot about what you brought up, Marty, empirical support, no agenda. And we don't either. We're just pointing out the facts. We're making the tie to the fact that money height doesn't do this. He basically he says it's parenting among other socioeconomic dynamics going on or parenting, as he calls it. I think it I agree with you. And that's hard to find. I think people in this call maybe who don't that, you know, unsound money, you know, drives it. And and I was I'll end with this one point. People say when was a moment that you got involved in Bitcoin? It was a few things, but one that was latent. And I'm not the smartest, sharpest pencil in the box. I sometimes take time to come around. In 07, I brought my family, my wife and I and our four boys, oldest was maybe 12, 11, to the Met. And there was an exhibit called Glitter and Doom. And it was the artwork. of the Weimar Republic. And it was kind of behind these stalls, had a sign. No one under age of 14 should enter. I'm like, it's art. Forget it, guys. Let's go in. I took one turn, saw a few paintings, and whipped the boys back out. It was the most disturbing artwork that came out of that era because hope was lost. And I know that sounds hyperbolic. It may not, you know, I'm not a prude, but I'll tell you. You had to be experiencing some things that we haven't experienced in quite a while to draw that artwork. And a lot's been written about it. So, Marty, I fully echo we don't talk a lot about it, but we're living it. There's something going on. Wow. Glitter and Doom, was that the name of the the exhibit? That is fascinating. It was. And obviously, it really hit me. And then it when Bitcoin started to come up and I started to see the alpha decay, you know, that Brian Cubellis (01:07:39.854) that Michael was talking about that I messaged and saw things break down in the markets and then listening to hype and then witnessing myself about mental health breakdowns. I'm like, I've seen this before. And it really was an impactful and you can't really tell as much in the, you can Google it and look it up online man seen it live. It is eerie. Yeah. And again, And on some optimistic positive notes, that's the beauty. One of the beauties of Bitcoin too, is I think for the first time in human history, we have a viable off -ramp way to manufacture a soft landing outside the purview of the government and central banks, which has never existed before. And obviously individuals like us and many others around the world who are building the infrastructure to make it easier for individuals, companies. whoever wants to onboard to Bitcoin are creating the conditions where we can opt out of that system of despair into an accretive system that sort of raises everybody's boat because you have better money. And we can work our way out of the problem. And I think what we're doing right now is perfectly evident of that. We're communicating from four different parts of the country over the internet to get this message out there. And so on the communication side, the message is getting out there. People are waking up to the fact. For anybody who's listening, I would go read the gold money annual investor letter that came out this week, Roy Sabag. He's a friend of mine, used to sit on a board with him. That annual letter had a really good section on the change in discourse around economics. And he asserted, and I would agree, that the Keynesians have certainly lost the stronghold on economic thought and the the Austrians are are rising up in terms of really asserting themselves on the battlefield of economic debate and I think convincing individuals winning hearts and minds to steward us towards a more sane global monetary order. Marty, before we wrap, just curious on that same note of like Trump, the election and the the populist side of this plane and like, how does that Brian Cubellis (01:10:06.702) tie in because I hadn't heard Bailey talk about this stuff and I heard this week he went on one of the pods and you could see an angle of like there's a lot of people competing for his attention and we've gotten loud enough that if you can put some dollars up and get in the ear and so he's kind of a dance he says one thing you show up he referenced it to like dating I kind of for the first time I'm not I'm still very skeptical but first I'm seeing like how that it would benefit him and then he could these concepts we're talking about actually like matter specifically from like a platform that Trump would, you know, raise on. So just curious, like how you think about the, how this plays out over the next six months. I think Trump's going to continue leaning in. I think it's good for him and his campaign. what happens if and when he gets elected and, push 450, 450, 450 K Bitcoin per mark will happen if I'm convinced of it, if Trump's elected. I mean, I wouldn't be shocked either. But I mean, I think that's a bold prediction. 450 K Bitcoin if Trump is elected. I think the thing rips. I think there's no I think I mean, that's effective. He doesn't even happen what he says he's going to do in the in the way that the infrastructure everything that's kept this like lid on all of this is basically like, nobody knows what's going to happen where regular regulations all the banks, right, you basically get the green light. I would imagine that this industry is like, ready to play in the US. And it would ensure that it becomes like a partisan wedge in our society of like, Bitcoin is right wing and not for everyone, which would be the downside of that. But potentially, unless Biden picks up the next six months as well. Yeah. I mean, I think. I mean, I've been saying this And I had Matthew Pines on TFTC a couple of weeks ago and he echoed this. Like I think the way Trump's positioning it makes a lot of sense and is actually the right way to position it. Like the best thing he could do if he gets an office is nothing. Maybe like, he can make it legal tender and eliminate cap gains tax. That would be something he could do that would really accelerate things, but just get out of the way. Like I was in Texas earlier this week talking with some individuals that, that are Brian Cubellis (01:12:32.366) in contact with the states and they were mentioning that the state has all these stranded wells, abandoned wells that they have nothing to do with. And like that is a low hanging fruit where maybe as an individual state like Texas, you don't want to take the risk of allocating treasury dollars directly into Bitcoin and making that overt investment. But there's just pick the low hanging fruit, these stranded wells you partner with private miner. allow them access to these wells and you mine Bitcoin with them, do a rev split. Maybe that's how you accumulate Bitcoin. You mine Bitcoin and roll it into a Bitcoin mining permanent fund that the state manages. You can apply that at the federal level too. I don't think many Bitcoiners are going to do this, but you can accept Bitcoin for taxes, accumulate Bitcoin that way. I think the way Trump's positioning right now is positive in my mind in terms of it seems like he's going to make a concerted effort to ensure that Bitcoin and the industry around it are feel safe in Bitcoin in the United States, excuse me, and Bitcoiners as individuals feel safe. And I think once, as you mentioned, Michael, people get the peace of mind that they can operate without the fear of the federal government coming down and throwing them in a cage. It's just going to be gangbusters for. for what's created, whether it's in the mining industry, the custody industry, the credit system built on top of Bitcoin using Bitcoin as super collateral. I think it's going to really explode in a good way. And I think that'll have positive externalities on the health of the American economy overall. It may not be clear to everybody how that ends up in... an overall positive for the American economy, but it's crystal clear to me. We just got to start pushing Bitcoin into every nook and cranny that we can. And then we'll look up one day and be like, that actually provided a nice floor for the economy and actually helped people pull themselves up from their bootstraps during these dire economic times. Yeah. Jesse and Mark, if you haven't listened or anybody listening, that was probably the high, one of the highest signal pods I've heard in a very long time. Brian Cubellis (01:14:48.654) Marty and Matthew Heinz, because it broke down the geopolitical situation, everybody vying for talent from just the sovereign nature of allocating now to go from an LP perspective and get access to the best talent where it used to be the actual government entities. It was just incredible. And I think that impacted her influence also listening to the Trump situation, because it's an actual... On that, Paul, they were describing, Marty, you'll be able to fill this in, they're describing how we're behind in certain things, but then brought up the amount of Bitcoin that's stored in the US or mine, but also the amount of Bitcoin holders is the largest in the world in the United States. And there's natural things that we're ahead at if we want to maintain that relevance, we need to be able to have the right people waiting. And that angle with Trump was a big one. And Marty mentioned infrastructure that like... Once people understand they can build here, it's a very large leg up on other actors that are trying to basically bring AI and other tooling to their markets. Yeah, we're going to win. Things are, things are a lot of desperation out there. We're not going to sugar coat it. You have to identify and recognize the problem, admit that it exists and then go work on solutions, which is what we're trying to do here. And you should too. That's the beauty of Bitcoin. You can work on the solution. It could be a small act, the small of an act as buying $5 worth something like Cash App or River. It's a vote of confidence in a system that is external to the insane system that we've all been subjected to for our whole lives and is getting out of control. Like the newsletter I wrote this morning, I was writing in a haste. I really wish I could expand on it, but like we live in the era of exponentials, like debts going up exponentially, all the spending, whether it's social security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense is going up exponentially. That Nvidia chart is exponential. Brian Cubellis (01:16:55.79) And it feels like, I mean, you held up When Money Dies, Jesse, it feels like parts of that book where the stock market and everything was going up and everybody thought they were rich, but they didn't realize that their money was losing value extremely quickly. Glitter and doom. Yeah. Don't look at it late at night before bed. I'll do a sunny day. I've already pulled it up. It's some really interesting, you know, it's exactly as you say, it's, it's some warped and grim. There's a malaise in all of, in all of these, self portraits in particular of like roaring twenties, but with a darkness. And I kind of feel as reminiscent of where we are right now. Everything's great, but everyone's sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. About our humanity, kind of what a topic at G7 about what AI or really the money can do to our humanity, which is what Marty was going through the slides. When you see it in artwork and coming from other people who maybe don't know about money, it's just manifesting in different spots. Worst is in our youth, you know, is in the kids on that. And that's why I like, I love how David Bailey's getting a giving free tickets out to people to Bitcoin Nashville, who will be babysitters so that parents can have time to do what they want and the kids, and the kids will come and be in a different environment than where they normally are. So pretty, pretty cool option for anyone out there looking for a free ticket to Nashville, I don't know if they'll do it, but just tell them, I told him he should still do it. Brian Cubellis (01:18:44.814) Yeah. Thank goodness for the bright orange future, bright orange future in a time when it could otherwise be rather dark. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. All right. And it looks like the dog behind me is saying, all right, gentlemen, it's time to, time to get to the beach. I mean, I've got, I wish I could, I've got another podcast, a few more calls today, but I'm going to enjoy, the good weather, the good vibes, the good company. You can take a boat out now. Yeah. Maybe next week I'll get a next week. I'll get one of those floating Tiki bars. I'll record from there. It's some Wi -Fi. I'll be the dad. I love that. All right. Interest in expense, debt expenses going up. The video is pumping. People are still sleeping on Bitcoin. If you're here listening, you have an edge. You're still early. Gosh. So, I mean, Michael's throwing out 450k 2025 price prediction. So that's the case. I was just quoting Mark. I was just quoting Mark. Mike, put that off. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, I don't. I joke. I joke about it. Million dollars, whatever the number is. They're just, I think they're, they're mental models for people to understand that this thing, it can go anywhere. We don't know. Yeah. When you, when you don't have token splits, that's what happens to price folks. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. Thanks for joining us Mark. Thanks everybody. Thanks for organizing. See you guys next week.