The Last Trade E058: Bringing Bitcoin Custody Out of The Dark Ages with Alex Saleh

Brian Cubellis (00:01.582) Yes, it is going to be weird. We're live ninjas, ninjas, Logan, the ninjas, ninja launching on us. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. What are we from the odds that the next time that we record, we'll be talking about the fact that Trump Trump announces his intent to put Bitcoin within the US Treasury somewhere. Marty, you just you blew my mind right before we pressed record. So I was like, we got to just get this into the podcast. That's a possibility now. And that is crazy. And I wonder if that is what the market has been pricing in the last week. Maybe people know that that's going to happen. It's possible. Yeah. these, so anybody listening is based on rumors on Twitter. They've been going around. I think I saw Dennis Porter tweet out that next week Trump is going to announce a strategic allocation to Bitcoin at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. It's just not possible. I don't believe it. That's all I'm gonna say. Think about what winning looks like. I'll butcher some of the timeline, but what was it three years ago? was like small country in Latin America, and then was like RFK, and then it's presidential candidate, likely winner, and discussions, Treasury Reserve, like, it's pretty crazy. And RFK was a year ago. That was the Bitcoin conference one year ago, was RFK this... this sort of fringe independent candidate coming out and making a big splash with like some sharp talking points about what Bitcoin is and what it means and why it's important, which just kind of was mind blowing at the time. And then now just one year later, you're talking about Trump not only making it part of his platform, but potentially part of his treasury strategy. That's insane. Yeah, you know what else is insane is that like we jumped straight into this and haven't even mentioned the fact that there was a assassination attempt on his life last week. It's like how quickly the news cycle it's like, all right, he's alive. He's going to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Let's Brian Cubellis (02:08.194) That, that a 3d model of, that somebody put out a little video of like his face and what it would have looked like from above as he turned his head to go, you know, look at the chart he was pointing at on the, on his right. And, and how that made it that bullets trajectory go rather than right through his head, just through the ear. And it was just the turn of the head that did it. It's unbelievable. Literally in between shots. Yeah, I watched that. I watched a little about 10 times. It's unreal. It's been a crazy week. Yeah, mean, unprecedented, not unprecedented, there's been assassination attempts and successful assassinations on US presidents in the past, but this is the first time in my lifetime that it's happened and completely changed the trajectory of what's going on. mean, as election odds went up to 70 % almost immediately and for the context of this show, is a Bitcoin show. It seems a bit uncouth to talk about the Bitcoin price reaction after an assassination attempt, but it did happen. The price reacted pretty positive positively as it became apparent that Trump is likely to win in the landslide now with the groundswell of support behind him after the failed assassination attempt. And like I said, new cycle is truly 24, 48 hours people completely not completely but already looking to the next thing which is the Bitcoin conference and What he's gonna do there Alex as somebody living outside the country looking in what has this been like for you? It's a yes, nothing if not entertaining honestly, I Mean we've just gone through our own little political journey over here right in the UK and Brian Cubellis (04:15.256) Compared to what's going on in the States right now, Brian Cubellis (04:25.338) That's an unfortunate freeze What are the things I was thinking about? Where it's been at, there we go. It's sort of back. Okay. I'll ask the question again, Logan, you can edit it. Alex, what has this been like living in the UK looking, looking at what's happening here in the US from the outside? Yeah, yeah. It's been, it's been really entertaining from the UK outside of perspective. look, we, we, we've just gone through our own political change here. I like seeing a Labour government. I'm just going to say like the stark differences that we have in our countries in the approach to Bitcoin from the government lens is like it's astounding, right? On both sides in the States, you've got major dialogue about how cryptocurrency and Bitcoin is going to change the economy. Over here, it barely features in government rhetoric, inside policies. It's non So as an outsider looking in, I'm a little bit jealous. You know, there's so many ways that the UK could be leading on this. I think I read earlier on that the UK is either the third or the fourth biggest nation holder of Bitcoin, and yet we're silent on it. And then over there, you've got, you know, the candidate that's likely to win going all in, totally all in on it. Brian Cubellis (05:57.518) I'm really excited to come over next week, be in Nashville, hopefully see Trump announce something big. yeah, it definitely feels like the US in that regard is pulling ahead from the rest of the world. Jesse, what do you think the conversation is in a room like that to get the president or the future president of the United States to galvanize around magic internet beans? It's incredible. I wonder. I I don't know if it's politically calculated because it could just be that. It could just be, hey, look, there's this disenfranchised group of young people that love crypto and they care a ton about and we can just win all their votes because the current administration has been kind of adversarial with that group. So if we just take a positive stance, then we win all those votes and that moves the needle. Maybe that's 1 % of the electorate. That's significant. Maybe it's 3%. So it could just be that. But it could also be Trump's a savvy business guy and know, if Larry Fink's coming around to it and he's talking to all these folks, know, down in Florida, big money who have been waking up to Bitcoin over the last few years, along with Wall Street, know, Florida money is kind of closely linked with Wall Street money. Maybe there's something here and also maybe, you know, We've heard that Barron is a crypto guy. And so maybe he's been getting a little bit of that from Barron. And Trump is savvy enough to recognize that this matters to the younger generation and that the younger generation tends to be right on things. So he should get smarter on that. Maybe there's some substance like that to it, but it is remarkable. Brian Cubellis (08:06.478) I can't help but think it is probably that he saw an opportunity here from an electorate point of view, electoral college point of view really, and is trying to turn it into a wedge issue that he and the Republicans are on the right side of because the Democrats have been on this losing, you know, the losing side of it from a popularity point of view. probably just seizing advantage of that. But hopefully there's more substance to it than that. You mentioned a fink in that article that came out two days ago or a day ago by Forbes. was looking at it, Logan, I dropped it. I thought it was just Jamie Dimon. There was Tim Cook, supposedly in this meeting, Citibank CEO, Bank of America CEO, among 80 other business executives, or Jamie Dimon's changing his stance on the asset, which is pretty And this quote at the top of that, Logan, if you want to put that back up, the quote at the top of it is Trump speaking saying Jamie Dimon was very negative and now all of a sudden he's changed his tune a little bit. A Trump quote about Jamie Dimon on Bitcoin. And to me that that's huge in itself. Michael, you're right that like this being more big name CEOs is also huge, It feels like there's some sort of sea change going on behind the scenes of Bitcoin is being incorporated into the Republican platform. And everyone who wants to curry favor with Trump is suddenly becoming a fan of Bitcoin. That's crazy. And that's huge. I also hope that personally, hope that the Democrats realize that they're going screw up big time if they allow this to happen without them following suit. Because personally, I don't want this in America to become a right versus left issue, know, Bitcoin and crypto and how you view it. Because I hope that we make Bitcoin a thing for everyone. You Bitcoin is for everyone. And if we turn it into a left versus Brian Cubellis (10:28.458) issue and the left loses out on seeing the value of Bitcoin because they associate it with Trump. then, you know, that could set back adoption of Bitcoin by the left for a half decade or even a decade. And, you know, that doesn't matter, but it would also be better from like a, I think it would be better from a societal adoption of Bitcoin thing if it doesn't get attached to like rancorous political dialect. I agree there. And I hope it doesn't get to that point. I could certainly see it getting there. But luckily, there's a lot of left leaning Bitcoiners who are out there who are all bought in and are beating the drum to try to convince people of their political persuasion that this is good for them to. Yeah. But there are more Bitcoiners on the right. I think that comes back to Bitcoin is anti -establishment and the right is a little more anti -establishment than the left at this point. Well, it's more anti -people taking your money from you. Well, yeah, objectively Bitcoin is seeped in the Austrian School of Economics, which is way more conservative than the liberal Keynesian view of the world, which has persisted for many decades. Back to this strategic allocation. Yeah. It begs the question, how's it going to happen? Because legally, it's not clear what would happen. I think it's important to walk through those. So Logan pulled up the Matthew Pines thread. Matthew Pines, he's an advisor at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, does some really good things on just geopolitical game planning and war gaming in DC. He sees two ways to do this. of which is instructing the Treasury Secretary to purchase Bitcoin using funds in the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The relevant statute constraining use of the ESF is the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. So they'd have to do something either there or the White House could draft an NSC executive order designated in suitable emergency conditions and presidential instructions and have the Treasury, OGC, draft a legal opinion. Brian Cubellis (12:53.197) designating either Bitcoin as foreign exchange, citing its wide use as a global medium of exchange and designation as a sovereign currency by El Salvador or restricts purchases to Bitcoin securities, for example, ETF shares. That's the first way that this would happen. The second and more of a stretch would be to instruct and pressure the Fed to use its 13 three emergency authorities for unusual and exigent circumstances to set up a special purpose vehicle and then lend that to the SPV for the purpose of making open market Bitcoin purchases. One route he doesn't mention, I don't believe, would just be announcing that all the Bitcoin that the government has seized to date, they're not going to auction off anymore. They're simply just going to hold it in the treasury. And I actually hope that doesn't happen because that creates a perverse incentive the government and the alphabet soup agencies to go seize a bunch of Bitcoin from people who may not be breaking the law. But if they're operating in gray areas, the government could say, it's ours now. So you have a executive order 6102 without explicitly needing to do it. in terms of getting it Bitcoin being it actually on the balance sheet, those are the avenues that are at the fingertips of an incoming administration. they feel compelled to, make that move. think one thing worth shouting out is Dave Bailey. I know he's kind of gone through, got some heat the past, you know, 12 months and probably some of it deserved, but it's not just us, like individuals across the industry recognize that he's played a big part. think, don't know how big a part this is, but it's still worth calling out the whole idea of how loud Bitcoiners are. for the past 15 years, the notion of crypto or Bitcoin and Twitter, that there's something to the engagement that anybody gets from adopting or we're talking about this asset that people can't help. We've seen it over the past, call it five years, where somebody gets involved or they tweet about it then it's no shortage of engagement farming right after that for probably ever. And so like just, it's obviously outside of just Twitter, but this whole idea, what Jesse brought up Brian Cubellis (15:17.239) picking a disenfranchised group, it's literally the largest like cohort you can think of from how loud or how the, the punch they, the punch they pack when it comes to engagement, calling their local representatives. And so, can't help but think that Trump and his team saw that and, and they just embellished or enjoyed it and, is playing a part in this as well. The dude loves attention. that's abundantly clear. And one thing I do think it's important to note, we should have probably mentioned it last week, but there was no natural point in the conversation to bring it up. But in the midst of all the chaos leading up to this election, I do think it is imperative that anybody cares about Bitcoin in the United States and particularly Bitcoin businesses in the United States is aware of the Senate Agricultural and Forestry Committee meeting that happened, I believe it was last week or the week before. with the CFTC and it seems like an attempt to react to Trump's embrace of Bitcoin. The left is trying to basically position themselves like, we're we're we like Bitcoin and crypto too. And in doing so, they're looking to push forward a bipartisan effort to bring the guys of spot Bitcoin operators under the CFTC. which would be unprecedented. Obviously the CFTC stands for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and historically and via their mandate, they have domain over futures and derivatives of commodities markets. And if they were to get domain over spot Bitcoin in the United States, would be an extension of their mandate and unprecedented and it would lead to a regulatory compliance hellscape for companies building. in the industry, they'd essentially have to go and get licensed with the CFTC and go through a bunch of paperwork and legal work. And since this is unprecedented, I imagine it would be extremely chaotic and detrimental to the proliferation and expansion of the Bitcoin industry in the United States. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Marty. It's a huge topic and a crazy development. Brian Cubellis (17:43.447) that would be awful. I guess to start, I wasn't super aware of this. And so I think most people listening probably won't be aware of this. But the CFTC, as you pointed out, is about futures. It's commodity futures. It's not actually the commodities themselves. So know, as we dug into the regulatory landscape while setting up OnRamp, we learned a lot about this. There's no regulatory body that has dominion over spot commodities, the actual commodities. Like, there's nobody that governs how you sell potatoes. That's not a regulatory body's dominion. And Bitcoin is a commodity. like a potato or like corn or anything that you think of as a typical commodity. And so having the CFTC grab this commodity out of that classification as a commodity that doesn't fall under the SEC or CFTC's purview would be unprecedented, exactly as Marty put it, and would would kind of break the classification of Bitcoin as a commodity. It would kind of change the role of government in governing how commodities are sold and who's allowed to do what when you're selling potatoes. know, like that's the kind of creep that is introduced here. And so that's a wild topic. And it's notable too that Marty's right. I think it's led by the left in an effort to try to get sharper on crypto. And it's either a sly way for them to grab more power over regulatory power over everything in our lives, or it's a bumbling mistake and a lack of understanding of commodities markets and Brian Cubellis (20:05.365) you know what this would mean for Bitcoin and other commodities as well if this precedent of what the CFTC scope is limited to was expanded to include raw commodities themselves. Yeah, and think the thing that gets under appreciated here is it makes it untenable for businesses in the space that are operating at scale because the grocery store example is probably the best in the sense that there's so many inputs and outputs, people coming in, all the things being bought, different points of transaction. where if you're selling like bars of gold, it's easier to manage from a compliance and regulatory perspective on what you need to do, the obligations you need to fulfill, but that's not all Bitcoin's use case. There's a lot of things that are being built. There's a lot of people doing different things with the asset, consumer, there's no shortage of miners. And this would basically put everyone under that scrutiny and it makes it untenable. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of like Kraken with the example in New York with the NYDFS and the bit license that the way they got around it. And again, they have a huge balance sheet and they can, they could have done this, but it's just not scalable is for the high net worth business entities. They require them. I don't know if this is publicly know, but I know by this point, probably it's over. They had them set up entities like LLCs to get exposure to, to crack in from that state. And that was one way to get around that. It just starts to introduce all of this kind bureaucratic layers that makes it not viable for businesses to operate anything related to spot Bitcoin. Brian Cubellis (21:39.413) And he's gone. We didn't, we didn't bring them into the conversation. Alex just left. There's too much U S there is the, a couple of things that here, Jesse to your point, like we don't want it to not be labeled as a commodity. Like I'm to push back on that. I think being labeled as a commodity and like pushing Bitcoin as property, like it does us a disservice in the long run. think. Parker and I have discussed this at length and he's given presentations. We've done a TFTC episode and I've written about it in the bend as well. I think we just need to own a Bitcoin as money. It's going to compete with the dollar and all these other fiat currencies. And it's similar to the battle I started with ESG like five years ago where in 2019 I saw everybody trying to position Bitcoin, particularly the Bitcoin mining industry as this ESG friendly industry, which in some ways it is, but in other ways as is laid out by ESG mandates and what they're pushing for, like some of the mining activity would not be labeled as ESG. I got a coffee delivery here. Thank you, baby. I love you. The, became apparent that despite the fact that miners were out there, some people in the mining industry were out there saying Bitcoin mining is going to use all renewables. There will be wind, solar, hydroelectric, and waste methane. It's simply not true. There's people mining behind coal plants. so back in 2019, that's why I was so passionate. Do not the knee to ESG because we're going to look up 10 years from now and there's going to be a material amount of hashrate that's mining at coal plants and natural gas plants, which aren't ESG. And it's important to just own it so when you get down the road and it becomes apparent that Bitcoin is in the mining industry using coal, natural gas, other forms of energy that the ESG's outlets don't like, that you have the truce on your side. It's like, yeah, we're going to use a lot of energy, the cheapest energy, no matter what raw input. It doesn't matter to us as long as it's cheap, we're going to use it. And I think similarly with Brian Cubellis (24:02.081) Conversation around commodities Bitcoin property like no we just need to own it bitcoins money it competes with the dollar and that's not necessarily bad for the United States or the interest of Americans in the long term I think we can make a strong case that the US dollar as it actually operates and design right now is more detrimental to average American citizens than Bitcoin the monetary good is and we just need to own that because if we don't we posture and tell the government, worry, it's just a commodity. It's just a store of value. Nobody's going to use it as money. It's just a replacement for store of value assets. And then we get down the line, the Lightning Network, these Chawmy and Mintz and just peer to peer Bitcoin transactions begin to become more prominent. The government's going to look at it like, whoa, you told us this is the money. This is just a commodity. Now you're competing with the dollar. And then you have to have the hard conversation down the road with Elizabeth Warren. in her elk where they're like, you told us it was something different and it's not. like, are you, is your industry filled with a bunch of liars? I don't think, I don't think it's a wise strategic decision to position Bitcoin in this way. Okay. I'll take the opposite of, I think that, you know, I think that Bitcoin evolves. think that we, as we move through the S curve of adoption, I think right now it's a monetizing store of value asset early in its monetization phase and that we are extremely early in the medium of exchange use case for Bitcoin. Yes, people can use it. For the most part, people aren't using it for their transactions on a day -to -day basis. For the most part, some people are. And I think that as time goes by, we start to make material progress through that, that's its own S curve of adoption. You know, there's the S curve of, of store value adoption. There's the S curve of medium of exchange adoption, and there's the S curve of unit of account adoption. And I think to be a Bitcoin maximalist is to, already have gone through that, the unit of account adoption. So, you know, we are that tiny percentage of people who have adopted Bitcoin as their unit of account, which is Brian Cubellis (26:26.613) the end all be all. But I think right now what Bitcoin is, is a commodity, property, one of those two, and not yet really used as money. think it can be, but I think it for clarity for people and if you had to pick one label, I think it's a commodity now. And then I think it grows in and evolves and becomes money. And at that point in time, I'm happy to have that conversation with Elizabeth Warren, you know, and say, look, it's become something bigger. It's money now. It was just a store of value. Now it's now it's money. No, where do you draw the line? Like, because I can show you like, look at this, like literally right now, like every minute of every day, there's people sending my podcast Bitcoin. That's somebody spending Bitcoin using it as money. And you're probably one of 10 ,000 people in the world. That's the point. Like, what does it take? it like one person using his money? 10 people, a million? Let me share what's happening here because everybody's right and everybody's wrong. This is like definition of nuance in the sense One, they're not mutually exclusive commodity money. that's what it is. Like money is a commodity, but independent of that Marty's right in the sense of, you don't want to always meet people where they're, they are because it may, it may get you dead. Like it just may not work out for you, but so that's like kind of quasi, you can make the case potentially for ESG framing fully on board. But to Jesse's point, I think he's fundamentally right. And what you were describing about you don't frame and you call it money is not correct at an early stage because if you compete with money, you may not make it to the point to actually compete with Elizabeth Warren when you get to that point. I .E. you don't have the amount of capital invested. You don't have Trump able to get there because now you're not able to go out. Michael Saylor doesn't have the overhead because he's now competing with money, not a commodity. And so this is Brian Cubellis (28:38.477) the crux of where we as Bitcoiners historically have failed at meeting people where they're at instead of saying, look, I'll just not try to be the smartest person in the room. It runs through the Bezos quote where he told it, it rings in my head where he was driving when he was younger, like 10 years old. His was smoking and he told her like a stat off the top of his head, what her likelihood to die or how long she wasn't going to live. Sadly enough, she died of cancer, I think. cancer or lung cancer. But point in this is his father or grandfather pulled because he raised by his grandparents, pulled him over and told him he thought he didn't know what was going to happen. because his grandfather is very tempered and told him, son and grandson, when you grow up, you're going to learn it's better to be kind than than wise or like a clever. And it's the idea of like, you don't have to be clever and wise and be smart to get them what you need. You need to know how to just keep stay alive and keep them moving with you until the point comes where you need to go and fight that battle or like get there on the money aspect. And so to hit it on the head, like when Bitcoin's in its infancy, it's money and it's the smart notion it's going to be used as money because you can make the case back in 2010 it was used as money and 2024 it's used as money. But that doesn't get you where you need to be, which is ultimately it uses money for all eight billion people or some derivative of it, if that makes sense. Brian Cubellis (30:07.959) Like what's being more clever? Yeah, I didn't, didn't land it. I didn't land analogy, but it more, it was mainly saying like, you don't have to always be right. Like is the point like it is right that it's money, but you don't necessarily have to be right that you don't want to have the nuance early. Like meeting them where they're at lets you win in the long run. So it's almost like losing the battle to win the war is what I'm trying to get at. And the idea is like, we always have to go because we're afraid that like they're going to position it there. We like, you want to at least be at that point. and then be like armed and ready with everything you have to be able to win that battle. But imagine being in 2011, it's money. You just get squashed because now you're competing with the U .S. dollar. Nobody wants to compete with the U .S. dollar. We know Gaddafi. know everyone that like that's not where you want to be at. You want to be big enough. You want to have enough of like groundswell globally that you do it. And that's why it's nuanced because people don't like like, oh, it's money. You got to get there. And for certain things that make sense, like ESG, because there's no question they would have come back and completely flipped And this is like the definition of like, got to have both sides of brain. like getting them both, but then like, what is the overarching goal? How do we get there? And it's not to go and just hit him right on the I don't know. feel the same. I feel the same as the SGA. No, well, you told me it wasn't money. It was just a store of value. Yeah. And the hard part about these is like, there's no real way to solve it or it's only in like retrospect. It's like the, the kind of reminds me of, again, it's not a good analogy was like Trump. What happens if something bad happened to him? It's like, what does the world look like in different respects? It's like, you will never know. It'll just be there, but it's just the notion The way we got here was via commodity. Nobody's competing with the dollar. And the second you start telling people that as the second that it doesn't end up good for anybody. Yeah, I'm kind of on board with the Michael Saylor approach of like, like it doesn't even compete with the dollar and Marty, I know you feel differently, but I kind of like that, like the Trojan horse approach. I embrace that identity here of Brian Cubellis (32:03.263) It's not a problem until it becomes a better asset to use his money. Cause then you get an ETF. Like imagine if the, if the decision point is like this, you compete with money and never gets to be an ETF. You, you don't compete with money. It becomes an ETF. It's too big to stop. And now you're competing with money. We'll see. We'll see how it plays out. Marty agrees. Marty, so would you rather go up to the fortress wall with a frontal army assault or would you rather go in with a Trojan horse? I don't think that's a correct, like, I don't think that's a fair frame. It's like a strong frame. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think there's a case to be made. think it's glaringly obvious. I everybody's talking about the national debt and we talked about that length last week, underfunded off balance sheet liabilities that exists. it's becoming abundantly clear. Like we mentioned Jamie diamond earlier, but did not mention why we were talking about him, which is the fact that he's being floated. for the treasury secretary of Trump gets into office and that's a signal to me. I don't know if you guys picked up on this, but it seems like Trump needs a war time treasury secretary who's been through some financial stress, and recessions and downturns. and he wants somebody experienced in that role. That's how I was reading that signal. which would precipitate that it seems. Like the Trump administration is privy to the fact that we may be heading into an economic downturn, which would precipitate that we need to print more money, which means that the dollar is going to become less valuable. And then you had JD Vance come out, Trump's vice presidential pick, say, openly say we're going to devalue the dollar. And so I think the opportunity is such, it's like, hey, if we recognize that we're going to debase the Brian Cubellis (34:03.105) the dollar significantly. Like we need a better currency for everyday Americans and Bitcoin is money. We should be pushing that money on the American people. Yeah, you're exactly right. And this is why it's this is why it's nuanced because today I do think if not maybe today, maybe it's a year for now. But I think you can make the case today from a check on fiscal policy. It's the time. because everything we know about inflation and debt is now like, 10 years ago, all these concepts or five years ago, right? It would have been looked at as crazy. That's the notion of like, when's the right time. And maybe this is a good transition for Alex because I think like we talked about or to hear a little bit from Alex on the Bitcoin side is Alex, I think he came on in October of last year and you know, we've developed a friendship. came down to Austin. So it would be great to hear about kind of like how that went. But one of the things I picked up on was, you your firm and its focus on digital assets and seeing the clientele that we're working with and talking with clients and we rolled out, you know, insurance and transaction protection, all these things that like individuals care about that are using this as a better form of money to store large amounts of wealth, which is fundamentally different than what most people are thinking about in crypto. Like, how do you think about it as money and like your guys' journey yourself and coin cover and like realizing like Bitcoin might different and not only its monetary properties, but then also how you think about custody. Yeah, I was, I was really enjoying watching that play out, which is why I didn't jump in. but my, my immediate reaction, said something that like really struck a chord with me was the groundswell, right? The groundswell of people required, so that we can see where this journey goes, right? Whether Bitcoin. you know, continues to evolve and becomes money, or whether it remains as the store of value. You know, personally, I think that will be driven by how people use it. Right now, it's really difficult to use. All of the stories I've got, I'll tell a few hopefully from Austin and the learnings that I've had recently is still that Bitcoin is very difficult to use. It's a bit tricky to understand. But once you wrap your head around it, it's like, cool, okay, I understand the fundamental concepts. Brian Cubellis (36:21.613) To actually use it day to day as a store of value is still pretty scary. Custodying your own assets is like, it's an insane ask on anyone if you're not used to looking after your own money. And then yet even using it in a way that has property similar to money today. So sending and receiving transactions, understanding how much money you have, understanding how to keep it safe. Like these are still very foreign concepts to people who are new to entirely. like to me, know, CoinCover's focus has always been abstracting away complexities when it comes to risk, managing risk. You know, if CoinCover is there, you no longer have to think about XYZ risk. You can just focus on using your money or using your crypto, using your Bitcoin, however you want to. Until we get to a point where that's the case for every single person in the United States or everyone globally in the West. who has the capital to allocate to Bitcoin and start using it as a store value and using it as money until it's really easy to understand how to custody it, send it, receive it, keep it safe, even when things go wrong. You're never going to get that groundswell to actually push it towards either of those goals. So, yeah, there's a great conversation to play out, but I think there are so many more things that we need to solve on a kind of personal user level before we actually see Yeah, coming what it is. Yeah, and you're, Alex, you're confirming. It's funny. I just went on that spiel and then I hear you talking like you're actually confirming something that I deeply believe, which is that there's an order of operations to all this. So maybe I'm, maybe I'm, I'm not backtracking. I think we should, we should frame that Bitcoin is money in the long run, but there is an order of operations. I think what you guys are building about the coin cover and an on -ramp is on the front order of that operations, which Bitcoin is a store value and a medium exchange store value has extreme upside potential in terms of how much value can actually be stored in this asset as more people adopt it. And if that value is going to go up, you need good ways to custody and secure that Bitcoin, which multi institution, multi SIG custody is, I would argue the best way to do that. So that's front over the operations. then to your point, Brian Cubellis (38:50.253) later in the operations, what really needs to be developed is these day to day wallets that make it intuitive and easy to use Bitcoin. that's a lot of our focus at 1031. There's great examples of these types of products coming to market. think one of the most unique and creative ways of doing this is something like Primal App, which is an interface to the Nostra ecosystem. It's a Nostra client, but it's Leveraging strikes back in to give people embedded Bitcoin wallets so they can use Apple Pay to buy Bitcoin and use it and not only on Nostr through the app that can pay invoices and stuff like that and I think that's an example of UX that is really tight and intuitive but It's one of less than maybe a handful of companies that have brought wallets all for to market that is that intuitive so completely agree there we need to make it easier and I do think they're or other technologies like Xiaomi mints are still in the very nascent stages of being built out. I do actually think the UX that you described may materialize at that part of the ecosystem. And that's going to take some time. from what I'm seeing at 1031 and just observing the space, like the development around these use cases is happening pretty rapidly, which is encouraging to see. Yeah, of the... Go ahead. I'm just going to chime in with them. If you compare the UX of US dollars with Bitcoin today, if you're going to take an extreme example, it's very easy to understand USD. You know where to get it from, you know how to spend it, you know how to transfer it to other people. And that's because we've been using money in that way for millennia now. If you're going to disrupt that and basically get people unlearn everything they know about fiat money and what money is. Yeah, we just need to rapidly accelerate how we're educating people and making it easier and more familiar to people. But yeah, we'll get there. I think where Marty referenced on the order of operations is really like, think underappreciated from a individual side. And then obviously, like the institutional side, because everybody hears about the number of folks that are in crypto Brian Cubellis (41:13.697) We're increasingly having more and more, and this will be fascinating for you hear more. It's like we have, and you probably have similar conversations, but maybe the lens or the filter we've kind of distilled this to is, just been interesting. It happened this past week that we talked with more firms and, we talk about our custody solution and we go really deep into what multi -institution is. And the thing that we kind of jumped ahead and we're learning in real time is They can't actually appreciate it or curious because we're telling them a lot of the things that we all know on this call about counterparty risk that they haven't really thought through because their exposure is so immaterial that they think of it as a risk asset flyer. So they're okay with leaving it on a single exchange and having a single counterparty. And this ties into Alex and your conversations. You went to dinners, you met with Cam and clients and it's completely different on the other side where it's not a risk asset. It's a, It's the least riskiest asset if you're educated. But once you get educated, then to invest material wealth in that, you need to have a custodial solution that also doesn't have that risk. And by nature of risk, you need redundancy, right? You need full tolerance that if something happens, you have a backup plan. That's where insurance and all the other things come into any financial product. But the point being is like the market is still so uneducated, whether it's the individual or the institutional side, that they don't even why the custody would matter, let alone, because they haven't figured out that Bitcoin's different from crypto and that its return profile and the risk profile of it is completely different. So anyway, I don't know if you can hear that, there's like thunder going on here in Texas. Yeah, that's a loud one. Yeah, look, I am freaking out my dogs. I could just about see him in the corner down there. thing. Yeah, look, I, by the way, the trip out to Austin to see you guys on your home turf. Yeah, it's brilliant. Thanks for the hospitality. Thanks for the barbecue. Blew my bland UK taste buds to smithereens. But look, I'm just taking away from it. was just, I didn't realize this, right? When we partnered, was brilliant, really exciting. I understood the potential, but. Brian Cubellis (43:28.865) didn't really understand how personal this was to a lot of your clients until I saw them face to face, right? Like, talking about people who've saved their whole lives, worked really, really hard, are educated, recognize that Bitcoin is the superior way to preserve their wealth for their families, and then are burying, you know, devices that are holding keys literally in the dirt or hiding them or, you know, stuffing them under their bed. And it's just such a shame when you think about the things that could go wrong, right? You get 99 % of the way there, you work really, really hard, you recognise that there's a better way to provide for your family after you're gone. And then the best that we can currently come up with, prior to OnRamp is like, literally burying the way to access that money in the dirt. yeah, it made it, it was a very visceral experience, understanding you know, to see your value prop come to life like that, understand the impact it's going to have for people as, the asset continues to grow. Yeah. It was pretty, I'm not going to say emotional, but like it meant a lot to the people whose wealth is on the line here. and a very real problem they're facing. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about that is like joke around. It's OnRamp is a, it's not necessarily a five figure BTC business or solution. It's a six figure. It's like when it's six figures, when you're up to close to hundred K, it all starts making a lot more sense. And this is just from experience of building on chain and seeing going from no clients, nobody wanted to set up a two of three until once the price moves and everybody's like, my God, I got to like think about a different way. And the best way I think, I think about custody is it's polarizing because similar in a way of like I think of it like, again, going back to Bezos or Zuckerberg, they're like aliens in the sense that they start a business and they turn into these huge multinationals and they're still at the helm. Most firms have segmentation of when the life of the business outpaces the executive that's running it. And I think about Bitcoin in custody in that way, is that like Bitcoin from zero to $10 or zero to a hundred, it was different than 10 or a hundred to a thousand and then a thousand to Brian Cubellis (45:49.119) And I think that six figure barrier will look fundamentally different, i .e. multi -institution custody, along with all the different assurances that come with it to a hundred thousand to a million and a million. And I think that is the lens that we should look at the asset through because the numbers are much larger and then the risk profile becomes much larger. The attack vectors, we haven't talked about on this show, but I don't know if you saw Marty, like three weeks ago, there was like the DOJ sting for these guys that were like breaking into people's houses to. They effectively like all the data is out there too, which nobody talks about, but everybody CRM has effectively been hacked or will be hacked. They have all the metadata around every transaction that's effectively been bought. You can run it through an AI tool and pretty much discern how much Bitcoin or crypto assets somebody holds. then like, here's a secret. Most people don't have places to store them outside of their house. So it's at their home. Like all these things, most people don't talk about or care about because the price of Bitcoin has historically been under $20 ,000. But what happens when that asset's a hundred thousand plus, it's like fundamentally different gravity. And then you got to be able to build for that. And we're still like working our way through that. And most people are stuck in like hours. We're just to hold us on these plastic devices. And I'm just convinced after like building things on plastic devices, it's like, it's not to say that doesn't exist because we need those valves for people to take delivery and to prove that the assets sit there. But it's like, it's kind of crazy to believe this thing's going to be $10 trillion. And to Alex's point, the best we got is like putting them underneath our mattress. Yeah, or in the dirt, as Alex pointed out. Alex, I like that imagery you're using because it reminded me of this is what the Vikings used to do. You know, the way they would, you know, win their pillage, their treasures, and they would bury them in hordes, Viking hordes. you know, we're still making archaeological discoveries of Viking hordes that were forgotten about, you know, or that Viking never came back to collect their treasure and they buried it in the ground and they forgot about it and their family never got it because only they knew where it was or they forgot where it was. And that was like the best that you could do in terms of how to preserve your wealth. If you were a Viking, you you didn't have sophisticated options. You didn't have institutions to rely on. so that was the shelling point was to just bury it in the ground. Brian Cubellis (48:13.259) That's so medieval, right? And that's what we're doing or have been doing with Bitcoin. We've been burying it in the ground. And it comes with all the same problems that Viking hordes dealt with and failed to deal with. And multi -institution custody allows for us to progress out of the Middle Ages and into a more sophisticated way of dealing with Bitcoin savings when it becomes a material or majority part of your family's net worth. that talk about order of operations. mean, that's what's necessary for Bitcoin to emerge as the preferred savings vehicle for a huge portion of the population. Something that people can trust with the majority of their life savings. You just you need to have something better than Viking hoards. and multi -institution custody allows for Brian Cubellis (49:15.085) Marty, got a nice analogy to share with you is like multi -SIG is like the advent of the wheel. But it's like for Bitcoin, because a joke that like the difference between Bitcoin and gold is multi -SIG because you have multiple institutions that can hold it and where gold failed was effectively what Coinbase would ultimately become if Coinbase held all the Bitcoin. But the wheel for 500 years was spun the wrong way. It was spun upside down for like raw materials making. And it took, I think 500 years for it to go upside, like right for it to do everything that we know it does. And it makes the case that multi -stakes been used incorrectly, not incorrectly, but because it had still a utility, right? The, the wheel analogy, but it was used in a way that doesn't have as much impact as what we're talking about now, where you're basically having institutions, individuals, and this is effectively like the EECash set up too, which is a different conversation, the e -cash I'm convinced ends up in the same format and offline, not via DNS and all the situations that issues that are having there because there's the amount of capital stored, but that's how you build the governance in. And I don't think it's talked about enough. And I'm convinced six figure Bitcoin, everyone talks about it because it's just realistic and self you're trying to preserve your wealth. And there's no other way to do it unless you're just going to trust single entities or single families, which effectively just doesn't scale Decent points like gold like there's a reason why we don't put all our gold under our mattress either Brian Cubellis (50:50.177) Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about this for years. Like I think for large amounts of Bitcoin, like this multi -institution model makes sense. And it's not only for individuals or families. mean, even these institutions that are holding all their Bitcoin exposure at Coinbase, like they need to really help create their security setup. And they need to introduce that fault tolerance that you mentioned earlier. And then if you talk about order of operations too, like not only for individuals storing their wealth or using it as an asset to grow their wealth, like once we get to a certain point of adoption and you're facilitating international trade, you're going to need these multi -institution, multi -sig setups with credit lines and escrow wallets that basically you deliver the goods, the bitcoins in an escrow wallet once the goods are delivered. you send the Bitcoin to the next address of the person who delivered the goods and that's a whole ecosystem and user experience that is open water right now in terms of nobody's actually built anything and it hasn't been explored in great detail outside of maybe companies like Fireblocks but obviously they're using MPC. Not really thinking about it correctly I would argue. Yeah, that's the order of operations as you see it, right? So I sent that article to you guys prior to this where like really interestingly, Abra, large exchange and custody provider have decided they want to Brian Cubellis (52:38.477) Companies who want to hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset. that order of operations, does it include like disasters happening again and again so that people learn how to custody assets properly? Because when I see a service like that being launched, and by the way, love Abra, I think they're awesome as a crypto company, know, CoinCover is also a crypto company, but... You can't help but think, wow, we're just going to repeat the mistakes of the past when it comes to stashing all of your Bitcoin with a single entity. And all of operations, how many times does that need to happen? And when do people start to wake up? Yeah, those are the questions that I think about. And to be fair, we're speedrunning the lessons of gold, basically. accrued over 6 ,000 years of becoming the preferred money of the world. And Bitcoin is 15 years in and we're, you know, we're still learning. Everybody learns from mistakes and from failures. And that's really the only way we learn. And so we're, you know, some people are going to keep making the mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket and watching that basket implode like FTX. You know, that that's going to happen to more people. But eventually the learning from that will get absorbed that, you can't trust this asset with a single institution or you can, but you run a risk that is uncomfortably high. And you don't need to run that risk because one, there's self custody where you can take control of your assets Brian Cubellis (54:29.717) In many cases, you know, if you're good enough at setting up that technical arrangement, your risk of trusting yourself can be lower than the risk inherent in trusting an institution. But multi -institution custody takes it a step further and reduces the risk involved in trusting yourself and also reduces the risk involved in trusting institutions. And so this is something that gold didn't have the benefit of because it couldn't be held in a multi -sig way because of its physicality. yeah, so the lessons will keep accruing. only 15 years in. And maybe it takes 30 years for us to collectively learn 6 ,000 years worth of gold's lessons and appropriately modify them for this new asset. The thought experiment is like, does the US put their Bitcoin via the treasury, their treasury reserve strategy? Is it Coinbase? As they're suing them. I'll make it easy just to take it all. It's already in that bucket. It's all mine now. It's getting awfully easy to get all of Coinbase's assets in one place if you're a government that decides too late that, we should have been accumulating Bitcoin and it's an existential threat and we need to get our hands on a lot of it quick. It's becoming a material risk. Well, it actually begs an interesting question, is, what is the legal obligation in terms of fiduciary responsibility of the US government? Would it be too big of a Even with multi -sig, multi -institutional setups, is the US government going to have to hold a key? Is the Federal Reserve going to have to hold a key to give assurances that? Brian Cubellis (56:37.719) their counterparties won't steal the coin, but that would be a terrible move by the counterparties. it reminds me of something that Drew Bonsall talks about quite frequently is like that unchained building for the idea of trillion dollar wallets existing in the future. Like that should be your goal when you're building a company, around multi -sig is creating the fault tolerance and the security set up to envision a period of time where you're helping facilitate the custody and security of wallets that have trillions of dollars of USD wealth in the form of Bitcoin being held. And like, what does that look like? And I think multi institution, multi -sig custody will be the final form of what secures those trillion dollar wallets. But when comes to the government, like, I don't think it's wise at all to take that single point of failure risk you're putting a considerable amount of Bitcoin in your treasury. Yeah, I think the thing that happens with the government or what you're describing is it's multi institution, but it's the balance sheets that cumulatively make it work. Right? Because the idea is people go to Fidelity or BlackRock because of perceived balance sheet risk or non risk if there's a loss. And so ultimately if the US government were to do something like this, you know, if there was a collusion or whatever, there's a balance sheets, there's whether it's, you know, you can make the case, can't ensure the whole thing, but if it's denominated, but you at least have additional institutions that can make you whole because effectively you're, basically trying to mitigate one single one or even two or two of three knocking you out of the game or being knocked out of the game and collusion, all the things associated. And that's where I think it's not, it's, it's nuanced because it's not just a technical problem because the technicals are there. It's That's actually the funny part is the technicals have been there since whenever bell she had the first implementation, who I think is the first person that's been talking about trilling wallets, at least from my understanding. But I think it has to do with more of the legal governance and the way that the keys are used, with the key holder being an agent of the entity, which is how we set this up and you know, bit go and they're qualified trust team having a key. But then the other side of it is big as a, Brian Cubellis (58:59.437) is a 10 plus billion dollar business. They secure 50 to 100 billion dollars in assets. That's who you want as a counterparty because now if something happens, only are they backing it or procedures backing it for the sake of their business, but they also are in the business. That's their sole business to fulfill, right? It'd be the equivalent of like a bank not giving you your money. Well, the second they don't do that, now you have a big problem. Oh, there's a run on Bicco. And that's what makes the whole thing. So it's a mix between game theory, balance sheets, and then the technicals that all have to come together and what make this thing work. And I think that's what ties into how the U S government effect eventually would get there. And this is how I think the ETFs get there. Because we talk to people all over the world. They don't want all their Bitcoin sitting on Coinbase. They don't want to sit in San Francisco. Like after you saw what happened, you know, U S treasuries and Russian treasuries. So I think that's the part all these pieces have been out there. They just have to be put together. Brian Cubellis (59:58.229) Yeah. Yeah. I was just reflecting. It's crazy that we're even having this. I mean, I think we've had these discussions in the past just and they were theoretical, but now it's more tangible. Like there's rumors that the US government's going to put Bitcoin in the treasury as a strategic asset. And this conversation is not theoretical. Maybe it is, but by the end of next week, it may not be. And it's pretty crazy that we're here already. And the crazier part is this aspect of people putting like insane amounts of Bitcoin will happen sooner than we expect because the game theory of what we just described is happening. So a sailor or a larger firm buying are going to go to whether it's the financial service firm or the crypto firm and say, if you don't do this, I'm taking my assets off. Cause that was always how it happened. It's just how fast it's happening because it's like, what else do you do? Like a great example, largest publicly minor, one of the largest miners, like how do they cuss to the assets? anybody in the know knows that it's like, there's no solution. The best that you do is spread it around. It's like FDIC for crypto. You just like keep it on and then you hope only 20 % of your losses happen, which is not a good way to store wealth. And so like, we're just right on the cusp of it's there. You get a little more Lindy and you get a little larger balance sheets. You may have some, some updates and in a future state of keys from other qualified custodians participating. And now you're like, oh wait, it's there. Now I can buy my billion dollars from whoever in world. Yeah. And Alex, to your earlier point of like, do we need to keep relearning the lesson of third party custody risk, centralized third party custody risk? I don't think so. And I think the way in which we avoid having to relearn that lesson is simply companies like on ramp, on chain, Bitco, coin cover, going out there and getting these big clients and those big clients signaling to the market. Like we're using solution because it's superior to the incumbent solutions in the industry. And that'll be a tipping point domino effect where it becomes clear to everybody that if you're not doing it this way, you're doing it wrong. Marty, what about corporate treasuries? I listened to the Eric Semmler pod and it was interesting that she did with him. it was interesting about his take. It's kind of like a little, I was hoping for more in the sense that his thesis, he was just like, felt like he just appreciated being a contrarian thinker and took Brian Cubellis (01:02:25.109) His swing. Very, chat allocation of Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah. That came away and which I appreciate. Like, and that's also a good signal. It's like, just have these investor like Eric's backstory. I didn't realize what he had done at TCS Capital in the early 2000s to today until I started doing research for that episode. And I mean, for anybody who hasn't listened, look up the Eric similar episode on tftc .tv. But the, he's basically made his career on making these contrarian bets. and that he's simply just using that, that theme that's made him extremely successful over the last three decades, just sees Bitcoin as a contrarian bet at this point in time. And I think he touched on it at the end, like he's still learning about the nuances of the protocol and the asset and how it can operate. I don't think we talked about security much at all or if at all. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's just one of those things where it's like, all right, it's contrary bet. I need to get in. And like all of us, over time, you learn more about it and you become wiser. But yeah, corporate treasuries, I think it applies to everything we've been discussing as well. Alex, to your point, like the fireblocks, it's cool for crypto firms to use fireblocks because you're just like, that's what's native to you. But imagine you're a corporate treasury. You're basically effective like a small sovereign. Like you're just going to trust like, know, they have a controls in place for a reason when it comes to moving financial capital, like the aspect that's where like this stuff comes in. Um, which is worse sailor. Like I always go back to like, how good can you sleep having $20 billion sitting on multiple exchanges? Cause we wake up one day and it's just not there. And like, what do you do? Like, obviously, you know, you have a lot of recourse, but it's just not there. We've seen this happen with Mount Gox. We've seen this happen with quadriga. It's just We talk a lot. I say a lot of stuff about self custody. I'd much rather have a ledger with 12 words than anything else on a single counterparty that you wake up and they're like, Oh, your, your access is denied. Brian Cubellis (01:04:37.869) Yeah, it's not a situation I would want to be in personally. And I still have it to this day. Whenever I Bitcoin on an exchange, I take it off immediately. just like exchanges that I trust and don't think are going to go unsolved. it's just a practice that has been beaten into my head over the last 11 What's around it? think it's worth mentioning, right, Michael, that thinking, like it goes to the very core of what coin cover is. think the coin cover built business around disaster recovery, backup and recovery, key backup. you know, the scenario that people think about is like, okay, if I lose my keys, what's the worst that can happen? when you really get into it with customers, what they're looking for is assurance that you can custody on various different kinds of tech platforms, Fireblocks, other NPC wallets. The unspoken fear that comes out in these conversations is like, but what if there is some sort of way that Fireblocks or anyone else can get rid of our access? Fireblocks wouldn't mind us talking about this. The reason why we partner, right, is to give customers that confidence that there is always a way out. And so that really goes to the heart of why CoinCover delivers these services to market participants. It's to give them an option. When shit really hits the fan and, like you wake up tomorrow and the service that you've been relying on for the past five years to run your business is gone, it's disappeared. You have an escape route, essentially. So yeah, it really resonates with me. Brian Cubellis (01:06:30.113) that kind of mission. And of course, that's the role coin cover play, you know, in our recovery signing in the multi -institutional setup as well. It's resonate so much that Alex in coin cover, is this your first Bitcoin only conference next week? So believe it or not, where was it? Bitcoin Miami. What year was that? Twenty -two. There's multiple years. Twenty -one. That was the first, yeah. That was my first kind of exposure to some really, you know, heavy Bitcoin crowd. think it'll be very different this time around. There were a lot of, there's a lot of degenerate behavior at that conference. think this time it's going to be, you know, a few more people who are suited and booted. Yeah. It's going to be weird. Like, how do you guys feel about, you know, 65 ,000 or whatever? dollar Bitcoin conference. It's never been, I think any Miami conference while the price had appreciated it, it like the highest was like maybe 30 or 40 ,000. I remember, I remember the first Bitcoin conference thrown by Bitcoin magazine in 2019. We were on the roof telling everybody to smash by and that was the 2019 bull trap. It was like 14K. We're like, we're going to the moon. We're going straight to 100K. then commensurately fell over the course of the year 3 ,500 bucks, but, nah, it's going to be crazy. I mean, with the, with all the politicians that are going to be there, obviously Trump going to be there. Um, all the side events, it's going to be a long week. I'm mentally preparing. and to your point, Alex, I will not, I'm doing my best not to participate in any degenerate behavior. Um, as I get older. Go ahead, Alex. No, I was just going to say, I'll wait to see if that holds true. It will. will. I'm luckily for me, I'm too busy to, we do have the live RRH event. it's going to coincide with the, the on -ramp institutional day. to the listeners, you got to pick your favorite host, for, next Thursday in Nashville. I know was very sad. I, we couldn't, I couldn't even send you an invite because you were, you had a conflict that I knew about. Brian Cubellis (01:08:51.949) Yeah. R H R, uh, there's still, is there still tickets? Uh, there's a few left, think, but going fast. thing is you can actually do both. It can be the, the, the what's like the mullet deal where you can have business in the front. You can start with the panels. I think they started three 30 and then you can get the party in the back, right? Like smooth right into Marty and Matt right there. I think, uh, Alex is actually doing that. He's going to the first panel at 3 .30 and then he's gonna ease in. told him we had to be out by four to go to, know, HRF is sponsoring so you can't miss it. Nice. It's gonna be a crazy week. It's gonna be a fun week. A lot of security if you're going. I'm gonna try to travel light. Don't fill your pockets up with a bunch of stuff. There's, from my understanding. The Secret Service had a bit of a hiccup last week and it looks like they're gonna beef in an attempt to make up for that. So be prepared for that. Don't pick up devices and plug them into your computer. Anything. Yeah, I may not bring my laptop and may buy a burner phone for this conference. And for anyone who's listening, who's planning to be at the conference next week, hit us up. Let the OnRamp team know we'll be having events. You can stop by and talk with us about about Bitcoin, about OnRamp, about multi -institution custody, about whatever. You can just come meet us in person. So yeah, drop us a line, whether on Twitter or you can message hello at onrampbitcoin .com to get in touch with all of us at the same time. Funny enough, we have one more rip. We're recording early next week before the conference. So we'll have that. yeah, Alex will be there. Eleanor from CoinCover, I think maybe one other partner. We'll have to figure out where we meet up with Marty at night and get to hear the real stories. We don't get to talk about on this, you know, polished button up show that we have every week. Yeah. Get that sweet alpha. As I get older, my children get older, becoming much more reserved, you know. It's just who you go to lunch with. It's like, if we go ahead and we start having lunches regularly again, I can, I can pull the Marty out. can, can. Brian Cubellis (01:11:16.621) Marty, you're one full moon away from coming out. We'll be fun. Can't wait to see everybody in person. Anything else we should wrap up with? All right, let's do, let's make a bet. Does he announce Bitcoin as a strategic asset on the balance sheet next week? How about this? it's part of that is Bailey put on Twitter, Bitcoin will be, it wouldn't surprise him. It's not like a big proclamation, Bitcoin be $100 ,000 by September 1. I mean, if that gets announced that I mean, no, that's what I'm saying. It's embedded into this. Explain the gravity of the game theoretical scenario that is set in motion. If that's announced, it is quite crazy to think about. Boy, just even announced, not even done. Just announced. There's gradations of announcement, right? Like he could say, I will commit to putting 10 ,000 Bitcoin on the balance sheet day one or, know, like that would be a hell of a bold statement of intention. But he could also say, I will plan on incorporating Bitcoin into our treasury strategy, which would mean nothing. Right. But like, so you do have some uncertainty. But if he says anything, I think the what's what does get set in motion is the speculation from market participants as they try to. incorporate this new information into their valuation of Bitcoin and also trend projection about what happens next. There's a ton of traders in crypto markets who, if they were to hear that news, they'd say, well, that's bullish for Bitcoin. I'm in a front run and they're going to buy. going to load up on leverage. There's going be a lot of bidding happening that minute and for the next few weeks too and all through election season. So I think that's probably the big effect is like, what does that precipitate in terms of market participant activity and trend direction? It would be incredibly bullish as everybody piled in trying to front run this event of the Trump administration Bitcoin treasury strategy being implemented in January, ostensibly. So I think, yeah, it'd be unbelievably bullish. Brian Cubellis (01:13:43.031) Who knows how far that could take Bitcoin over the next six months. You could see 100K pretty easily. It could also be more muted if, in particular, if the Trump approach is vague in what he's claiming he'll do. Brian Cubellis (01:14:05.645) I'm going to go contrain here. I don't think he says anything about it just because everybody's getting their hopes up. And if I've learned anything in this industry over the last 11 years is that when you get your hopes up, you get kicked in the dick. I'm going to, I would love to be pleasantly surprised. I'm going to say it's a rumor and people are going to be disappointed. I bet he goes with a vague statement about like, I'm going to make Bitcoin a part of my presidency. Doesn't mean anything. Brian Cubellis (01:14:39.607) The institutions were coming for a decade and Bitcoin as a treasury asset on the US government and US government strategic reserves is probably, I would imagine something that happens. Who knows? It could be wrong. This is why I think like we actually are underprepared for what's going to happen is because we keep getting wait, keep waiting, get kicked in the dick. It's just going to be like, it's going be smooth sailing. Nobody's going to kick us. It's just going to run. Day one Bitcoin is money. No capital gains taxes. You can spend it. It's legal tender that way. That would that would send us to Yeah, well, yeah, maybe it will be for next week's discussion, but the whole Peter Thiel involvement with all of the stuff and he was early to Bitcoin and just the game theory around there is game theory around. He's poopooing Bitcoin now, though. It's like, JD Vance holds Bitcoin. But everybody poopoo's it before they they announce they got Brian Cubellis (01:15:45.409) We'll see. Exciting times. My favorite is that China, that China is part of the narrative. It's like China was going to out stack us. So we had to compete. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're in the mix boys. We're in the mix now. That's the crazy part is being in the mix because we know this happens, whether it's six days, six weeks, six months. And there's only so many places to go for any of this stuff. There's only so many brains. There's only so many engineers. There's only so many custodians. There's only so many people with a live multi -institution product. Like it's only so many places you go. And so to your point, you're like, once this thing becomes legit, everybody has to have a like strategy. have to figure out who their partners are and how they're going to go figure it out. There's only a few venture firms, like the whole thing. It's insane. So yeah, this is like what you, this is what you play for. just like get set up the whole time. You just, keep getting kicked in the Dick and then one day you just don't. you're like, this is what I was practicing for. Yeah. We're in the mix. Well, Marty's wearing a cup. doesn't need to be wearing the cup anymore. that wear a cup. We've had incidences in our family where somebody did not wear a cup. They got a lacrosse to the gonads and had to a little surgery. Okay, so wear your cup if you're playing sports and if you're in the Bitcoin world, wear your cup, be prepared to get kicked in the dick and if you do, you're protected. Amazing that that's how we ended up here. All right. We'll see everybody in Nashville. I'll see you two gentlemen on Monday. And we're in the mix. Love Showtime. We're in the mix.