The Last Trade E079: Onramp X Google Fiber in Nashville

Brian Cubellis (00:00.142) And it's my great pleasure to moderate today's discussion featuring esteemed panelists across the technological landscape, each with their own unique disciplines and ties to the great city of Nashville. So without further ado, let's begin with some brief intros. We can just go down the line here. Please introduce yourself to the folks and speak a bit about what you're focused on at your respective firms. Awesome. So Michael Tangu, CEO of OnRamp and partner also in Early Riders. Really excited to have you guys here. was trying to, we were walking over from our office. I was thinking about how do we get in the frame of mind? We've been talking about Bitcoin for so long. Thinking about like, do we make this exciting and engaging? And I went back to, I wasn't early by any means to the space, but early enough in 2018 in New York, I went to one of the first events like this and I was super excited. I left work and there was four people in that room. There was three panelists like this or something like this, but only four people in the room. And the price of Bitcoin at the time was like $3,500. And at the time, I felt like I wanted to pinch myself, like, my god, I know about this. The world doesn't know. And I promise you today, risk adjusted, whether somebody's building, allocating to the asset or companies in the space, is a much better time. There's been no shortage of regulation, risk, and everything that we'll talk about today. So really pumped to have this conversation. I'm Emily Japani. I'm the head of sales at Google Fiber. And I've been in Nashville a little over 10 years at Google Fiber. It'll be 10 years this year. Our 10 year anniversary of announcing that we are building in Nashville is coming up in February. So really exciting time for us. It feels like a nostalgic moment a little bit, but also to have seen all of this happen in the last 10 years. Tanguma was on the team with me when we first started. We were both on the sales team. But excited to talk today about Nashville being a place that you can build, where you can raise funds, raise your family. I had four kids in that time, in that 10 year period also, here in town. So I think my perspective today will be about Google Fiber in us building and growing, but also when we started our business, it was really anchored here. This is one of the first cities that we built. So continuing to expand and grow from here and what we've learned in Nashville, I think is really exciting. Brian Cubellis (02:13.166) My name is Cam Doody and I am, I guess I'm now a venture capitalist. started my career building a company called Bellhops and we started back in 2012, which is in moving relocation space. And then we sold part of our company right before COVID and my co-founder and I just had seen part of venture capital we really didn't like. Something we thought was really missing. We thought we were going to start another company, we ended up starting a venture firm called Brickyard. And so we invest in early stage companies and technology and precedency is really where we focus. But my personal affliction Is just wholly with Bitcoin, which is really funny because venture capital and Bitcoin are Almost diametrically opposed Things and go through life Not feeling Kind of feeling unsettled But hopefully we can kind of get into to some of reason why there but I think that what we'll talk about tonight Hopefully we can shed some light on how Bitcoin is going to start to permeate through capital allocators and how that is really going to change, actually change the world and not from a perspective of how everybody talks about, you we invest in world-changing companies. You can't back or fund enough world-changing companies if we maintain a positive inflation rate. And so Bitcoin's the key to all of that. So hopefully we can get into that tonight. Yeah, very well said. Thank you guys for that. So maybe to start, sort of core underlying thematic between all three of you is working in the technology space, emerging technology. So when people talk about emerging or disruptive technology, in my mind, really what they're talking about is some form of information asymmetry. Brian Cubellis (04:33.995) So if we think about technological adoption curves, it's really the innovators and the early movers to those new forms of technology that actually accrue the most value by building out key infrastructure and also backing founders that allow those new technologies to flourish. So this ability to really see around corners and see how new technologies will impact and influence society, culture, and the economy. is really what drives value creation and ultimately asymmetric returns over time. So this question is really for all of you. Maybe Cam, we'll start with you. Can you just share some perspectives on how your firm navigates and capitalizes on information asymmetries to really drive innovation and value creation? Well, I'd say Brickyard's pretty, we're investing so early. 70 % of our investments are pre-seed investments. which is really the earliest that you can possibly invest in a company. Normally, a company is, before we'll consider investment, we backed a few pre-revenue companies, but normally the companies that we back are like post-revenue in some small way, like five or seven K in monthly revenue kind of thing, where they have customers and they're now executing towards product market fit. We know that we're not category investors. We were curious about pretty much everything. We aren't evaluating business models, so to speak. When you're investing this early in companies, we know that almost 100 % of our companies are going to be wildly tweaked and adjusted over the next 12 to 18 months post investment. And so what we really look for is that sort of intrinsic drive that real founders have. our take in Brickyard is the Zerbara really broke a lot of the space in that there was too much money, not enough deals. So venture had to market itself as this like sexy pop culture thing. Brian Cubellis (06:51.821) with Forbes 30 under 30 and celebrity investors. You guys have said this trope so much, it's like the space had to attract founders in, which the beginning of venture capital was the opposite of that. Venture capital was just a financing option, the only option you had for a company that didn't cash flow. founders have changed a lot. have a lot of like probably 80 or 90 % of founders that are in the space today are in it for the wrong reasons. so we created, know, Brickyard is this thing where if you, we get to a chart sheet with you as a company, you have to move to the middle of nowhere, Chattanooga, Tennessee, with Star Tech, and put your head down for 18 to 24 months and just put the blinders on. And, founders are chasing the status of the acclaim or all the other kind of tangential reasons for why you would get an adventure capital that know a lot of it happens kind of everywhere in some of the tech hubs. You know you're not going to move to Chattanooga and put your head down for 18 months if you're in that category. So our edge is like how do find the founders that are ready to go to battle on the trenches for a decade because that's really what venture is. Michael, how about for you, obviously Bitcoin, there's certain information asymmetries just with the asset itself, but also with the business that we're building in terms of financial services on a Bitcoin standard. What does that look like? What are the information asymmetries that you're focused on? Yeah, think so. A couple things going back to Cam and Emily's point in the question. This reminds me of when I was cutting my teeth outside of school. worked randomly. It all ties back to this. I had a high end auction house and had to learn about value, the value of most things. And the reality is, the value most things, there is no value. You find a whole box of stuff, you bring it in. And the thing we would say is the definition of values you don't have, or definition of scarcity is you don't have it, right? Because it'd be very rare somebody would come in with a coin, Brian Cubellis (09:01.837) you know, jewelry that didn't need to be melted, things like that. And so when I think about what we discussed here in the definition of value and especially specifically value investing is it's not widely known because if it was widely known there wouldn't be value there. So today we're sitting at, know, whether it's, and so this ties back into this conversation. Everyone here has had some vision of the future that probably was most likely right in their own professional experience. With CAM, it may not fully, share what he does, like to signal what he's doing special today is because of zero interest rates and the cost of capital being relatively low, if not zero for very long time, what was a cottage industry required experts turned into just manifested as like effectively a beast that nobody recognizes and it's money chasing anything under the sun. Cam had the asymmetry of building brickyard with blood, sweat and tears and recognizable weight. there's actually value to understand not only the pain an entrepreneur goes through, but then ultimately what's the heuristic to know if they're real or not. It was setting them up with having them come out to Chattanooga. Chattanooga in my mind, maybe this isn't doing justice, but it could have been like any random place in the United States. It was showing that a founder was serious about building. And then so for Emily, I don't know full story, but we, to tie this back to going together, is that we worked together at Google about 10 years ago. And there was a vision of Emily leading her career at a well-known company, Sprint, I believe. And effectively building out infrastructure in, at the time, second and third tier cities, which again goes back to being right about things because now this is not a second or third tier city. I would make the case that this is a first tier city because people have woken up from the asymmetries that most markets globally still haven't recognized is that people don't need to sit in front of a computer. at a desk in an office space anywhere they can work anywhere and those who understand that best will benefit from a like a musical perspective. So all these things tie into effectively what we'll talk about today with Bitcoin. It's the same setup. Individuals with background having time looking at the space understanding whether the thing that's hard about Bitcoin and we'll tie it into you know Google and infrastructure and technology is Brian Cubellis (11:13.985) Bitcoin has two different properties. It's a technology. So there's a bunch of things being built similar to like fiber building out into a network and the things that will be built on a city, but then also has monetary value. And so it has this weird hybrid of almost like there's a lot of real estate investors in here. That's like getting a piece of real estate super early because the underlying is valuable, but then everything that goes up and everything around it becomes really valuable. And that's really, it's, it's an interesting paradox. And we'll do the Q and a. come into it is like real estate investors historically in my experience, and I do this for kind of well enough for my age, about half a decade, talking to people about it professionally is real estate investors are generally the last. And it's scary to me because when we look at global real estate when it comes to commercial, and I was at WeWork by the way, so I saw, I was lighting money on fire while I was learning about what money was. With Adam Newman, like I was sitting We've seen the documentary. Yeah, it was like that. So to round that out is that, It's like a door that's just like closing on individuals and people are waking up. thing that there's two tropes that have come to mind about real estate. is Bitcoin doesn't call you at 2 a.m. to complain about the leaky pipe. Jeff, who's in the room, who I lease a place here in Nashville. I won't call him at 2 a.m. but if there's a leaky pipe, he's gonna get a call. And then the other thing that's... to be less than $500. It has to be less than $500. I haven't looked at the lease. I should have called it at the end. The other thing about real estate is, I have a good friend, his dad was in real estate and said, you know, the thing about real estate is even though it's not very liquid, it's always there. And he deeply understands Bitcoin. He said, well, you know, the thing about Bitcoin is even though it's not really there, it's highly liquid, right? And most people looked at real estate and then COVID happened in 2020 and individuals recognized, well, wait, I should have underwritten risk in a different way when it comes to, you know, city hubs and the flea and the talent, all the things we know about. And Emily, how about for you, just in terms of sort of what you alluded to earlier around Google being very early mover to Nashville and sort of, Brian Cubellis (13:16.077) seeing what could become of a city like this. What kind of information asymmetry have you honed in on in past decade? Well, we don't want there be information asymmetry. We want there to be symmetrical speeds. Everybody get their information as quickly as possible. Obviously, we're talking about getting information as fast as you can. There's a currency to that. So I think that our part in that is enabling that for people, access to information speed. It's funny you said his company could happen anywhere because it probably couldn't. When you think about Chattanooga, the first gig city, like the sensibilities that go into a municipality starting a gig network, there's a sense of culture that has to be shared to even kind of prioritize something like that. So would think the thinkers and the doers and the dreamers that are in Chattanooga, when that was happening, all kind of share that sensibility. And so for Nashville, I think something that makes it so special, and this is, 10 years later, is you have a culture in a city where you've got like the top three healthcare companies globally, right? So got like lot of smart people here, right? 15 universities, I think. People who graduate from the school here, stay here, build their families here, build their businesses here. But then you've also got music row and people just that are like, I'm going to come here and like play the guitar in the corner and become the next Chris Stableton, so you've got crazy people, very talented people who are like a little bit crazy, right? So our culture is like very smart, highly intelligent, then very creative, but then also a little crazy. And I think that that is the recipe for a successful entrepreneur, a startup, any business, but also I think that's probably the Bitcoin recipe. Yeah. Right. Very well said. And a great transition to my next question, which is more specifically around Nashville as an innovative hub. So if we think about the early days of the internet, call it sort of 90s and early 2000s, local communities were very critical in cultivating innovation hubs. So really the hub of the internet was effectively Silicon Valley. And if we fast forward to today, I think you could make the argument that the technological nexus of the United States, at least, has really shifted and become almost more decentralized. So you're seeing founders and startups relocate to places like Austin, Denver, and of course, Nashville. Brian Cubellis (15:31.243) So question for everyone, why is Nashville, and by extension, Chattanooga, very well positioned to be one of these modern hubs of tech innovation and what has drawn your respective firms to focus on this region? So as a native Texan, it kind of pains me to say this, but Nashville is probably the best city in America, in my opinion. from what you just referenced from innovation to culture to the conservative ideals. Like what Emily's referencing goes back to like the founding of America. We kind of forget, I was thinking a lot about this independent of who anybody was signing for in the election of like America, why it's so innovative. We do a lot of business in the Middle East and there's this natural friction because we're progressive here, which they're naturally conservative, but they also really like the innovation that comes from the progressive nature. So they're always trying to court people out there. And reality is America is the best-run startup that's ever existed. When you think about it from just all the things you said, everything you described about Nashville is what America was founded on. Like you have to have entrepreneurial leverage, you to get on the ship, all the things associated. And we kind of like lost that a little bit when you think about incumbents. Incumbents in all the large sectors of the world naturally get stifled with bureaucracy and all the things that everybody probably knows about. And so there's this resurgence with technology and one of them is an open decentralized internet. And that allows for the dissemination of information companies to be built, all the things associated, but you need the infrastructure in place. so Nashville having that, or Google having the vision to go to these markets and Nashville just emerging. I kind of joke that everyone's afraid to go down to Texas, they ended up in Nashville. But there's just like some truth and I ended up here in, So anyway, it's a fantastic place and I think that's where Nashville embodies a lot of those spirits of like the conservative nature but also the ethos of entrepreneurship that a lot, and the friendliness of it. Because when I was in New York City, I moved back to Texas at the time because I saw a lot of bureaucracy in building and it was like, well, if you want to run a business, you're trying to give yourself the best chance to succeed and you go to places that allow for that. Brian Cubellis (17:39.116) Yeah, there's some stat, there's a lot of like e-commerce and space in Nashville. I think you can get to like 50 % of the US population within six hours of Nashville. So there's a lot of like kind of logistics from here. But there's also this connectiveness, not just like you're, you know, not too far from your mom, you can like drive home and see her whatever for holidays. But there's also just like this connectivity, I think in our culture and our community. And some of that, for the same reasons we were talking about, like you're really intelligent, you're really creative, you look crazy, but there's also this like cooperation, not competition, and when you look at healthcare, like any successful surgery, Everyone's working together in pursuit of a goal. You kind of have put your ego aside, even like surgeons, right? like, dial in on this collaboration that's happening. In the music industry, it's the same thing. And you would think it'd be more cutthroat and competitive, but it's actually, everyone is working together. Look at any recent top song, know, a TikTok song. There's like 10 co-writes. There's a lot of people in the same room, like working on the same thing. So our culture in Nashville comes from that. Even the sports scene here, know, everything is very much How can we work together to the point that if you're not like that, it's weird. know, it's like, if you see Reba when you're out at dinner and you ask her for an autograph, like that's weird. You would know like you're not from Nashville. And if someone's like, hey, do you want LinkedIn? Hey, my recent job, let's get lunch and chat about it. Like if you say no to something like that, that's weird. Like it's good that we have a culture where like when you're not behaving in the right way, like that stands out more so than like it's kind of expected that everybody would cooperate. So building a business here, whatever it is, is you have the assumption that people are gonna show up and be helpful and be collaborative and cooperate versus compete. So I think that's something that's very special, also fosters any kind of startup or new company, but then also when you're trying to scale, you have to be able to do that as well. Brian Cubellis (19:28.994) This was Emily's nice way saying she's not really sure about Bitcoin, she was down to collaborate. Right. Yeah. I was like, I don't want to. is it when you go those like timeshare things we're having lunch? He's like, tell me this presentation. Like, are you going to sell me some knives? What about Bitcoin? I learned a lot. You haven't sold me yet. Kim, how about you? Any Chattanooga specific thoughts? I I think about cities like I think about startups. So like Nashville, is great, it's awesome. But it's kind of like a pre-IPOC. Your best days are kind of behind you. I am like a heroin addict of the early days. I'm an early... Where are we going with this? So I like the acceleration. Like building bell house, for example, Going from zero to 200 employees was super exhilarating. Going from like 200 to 500 sucked. Like wasn't fun. And I think, know, what I'm drawn to, I'm gonna, know, shout out to Chattanooga, because I think it's the greatest place in the world, but it's not Nashville. It'll never be Nashville. We're like a seed stage city, you know, where like every day, You know, when we get a new great restaurant to town, like, that's awesome. Like, we feel that. That actually moves the needle for us. And so building a city like Chattanooga for us, being able to do what we do with Brickyard is, we've kind of figured out how to stay in a city like Chattanooga and also do what we do. I mean, it's conducive to early stage company builders to be in a place where you don't have a lot of distraction. And that's like a lot of value that we provide at Brickyard. It's like we're pulling your team to out of SF, out of New York, out of Boston, Austin, London, et cetera, putting them in this mid-sized city that's totally relevant to technology. But in that trough of sorrow in the early days, none of that stuff matters. It's like talking to customers and shipping code. Brian Cubellis (21:51.022) You know, one week to the next, you can like really move the needle. And I kind of feel the same way about Chattanooga is we're still small enough to where year to year, you can kind of look back and see, you can feel the acceleration of the city. And that's what I love about it. You're building this multi-million dollar asset, you should put Google Fiber in it. And our job 10 years ago was to explain why This is a brand new company that everyone was just hearing about for the first time. Why should this developer put our infrastructure in? Which was kind of the pain at the time. Because you're like under construction, we don't want to get in the way, or you just built this beautiful asset and we're like, yeah, we're going to do some construction after they just painted. So we were trying to find ways for them to say yes to this. And one of them was like, we'll help with your lease up. We'll do free moving. We hired them. Do you remember that? I don't remember. We put Google Fiber shirts on your bellhop guys. This was when we did Uber movers? Yes. This was in the same like... I did a deal with Uber a couple years ago. Same idea. But I was also laughing because your whole thing is like, let's get these founders not distracted, put them in a room for 18 months, like have them focus. And like my preferred... leadership style is like no walls, no focus, the more the merrier. Everybody overhearing everybody's other conversation because so much sparks and you like slam into each other and that I think is very much, it's a Google thing, but it's also a Nashville thing. Everyone here, probably this whole audience, there's like a slash. Like when my husband got, we moved here 10 years ago, 11 years ago almost. He was just in medical school, just graduated his first year outside of medical school and then got a record deal. So his backup plan was to be a doctor, which by the way, it's not the worst backup plan in Nashville. But the idea is like you move here, you're pursuing this music career, but you have something else, you're maybe doing something else at the same time. This year was the first year that he stopped working in the hospital and is doing, we have a music studio now full time and it took 10 years to kind of get the... Brian Cubellis (23:48.312) Plus there's kids, know, we have children. So get everything in order to make that leap. But here, everybody has a slash in their bio. You're a finance person, but slash, you're singing karaoke on Friday trying to get your record deal or whatever it is. Or you're doing a podcast while also working your nine to five, or you've got your five to nine, your nine to five, and then your five to nine. So I like that about Nashville because there's this, maybe that's part of what drives people to be helping each other, but not, kind of catering to like the focus and rather having that distraction. There's like magic that kind of comes from those different parts of people kind of bumping into each other, I think. Yeah, I think, yeah. Change your business, Miles. Well, to be fair to Cam, I think part of... his format, what he's built is exactly to spark what you're referencing. Because all of his teams that he funds are in the same room effectively. And so they are bouncing ideas off of each other. And so you do get that collaborative effect. And if I go back to the apples and oranges, what you're describing is conducive. Part of Nashville is a part of remote work. There was a study that just recently came out. Now it's like 33 % of people have two jobs that work remote. Because it's just a function of the side. for if you are in the fight for your life, like that's what effectively it is when you're starting a business and especially when you're taking on external capital because now you're fighting for other people's lives too, right? They're investing. You don't want any of what you're describing. You want them literally like he references a burn the ships and I love it. It's because like you're just like saying like I'm taking my stand. I'm going to try to make my impact in the world and it's the only thing I can Yeah. Well, you don't want to back up plan, right? You eliminate the option for a B. doing anything like extraordinary or different, it's like they know that their sacrifices have to be made. Brian Cubellis (25:36.268) And so there's just a natural balance and then post that they don't like maybe some people stay in Chattanooga but others go to these cities and go get to indulge and they become successful but there's always that sacrifice and that's why I look back at like what Cam's doing is special because as special as Chattanooga is it's still for most people just a random place in the middle of the city. I mean most of our teams are not gonna stay in Chattanooga and they shouldn't. I hope a lot of our teams come to Nashville because Nashville has the talent density. has like, you know, it's a city that you can recruit to really well. And I think that's going to happen. We've already had a couple teams open offices in both in Chattanooga and are looking to open offices. Usually it's like a customer service or product. But Nashville is, I'm hoping we can funnel a ton of teams here. There's a couple of real estate investors in here. They were talking about, You know, some of this stuff that's been used about infusing a loan in the real estate with some Bitcoin. maybe Cam, that picks up, we'll... OnRAM's going to need an Thanks for collab. And then we'll get some 8GIG Google Fiber. You mentioned people working from home. thought it was like during the pandemic everybody kind of had to work from home or they you know it shifted how people work and so if given the chance to work anywhere a lot of people chose Nashville. There was a ton of Googlers like there's we had like a listserv of how many people chose to move to Nashville and it was shocking where When given the choice, nothing else, this is where people chose to be. So now with the return back to office and a lot of companies are mandating it or going to a hybrid schedule, it used to be that you would recruit companies to move to Nashville. You'd go to the C-suite and get them to kind of invest here, create a headquarters here. Now it's kind of like, Brian Cubellis (27:27.438) This opposite is happening where people who chose to move here don't want to move back to wherever. So now those companies are like, the talent is there. They already live there. Now we're going to build a second office there or a satellite office. So it's going to be led by the will of the employer, the choice of the employee, which I think is fascinating. I haven't heard of that happening in any other cities, probably not many, besides Nashville. I mean, I think this ties into the theme we're talking about is like the market's changed and the market gets to decide what the incumbents will do. And some larger will be able to hold off longer. But your point, I which you to be fair, like this happens in Austin and Atlanta and others just in their different scale. People moved to get from Austin during the pandemic. I mean, I'm gonna take You did. I mean, have, I still live there. Let's talk about their culture. What I didn't want to share is that people, well, this will tie into my point. So people leave the cities because They can work anywhere, they're not going to come back and other talent will take them. In the same way people have problems with capital flight. So you see this whether it's more prevalent on a nation state perspective and the UAE has been big for this where, you know, the welcome from a tax perspective Singapore where the countries start to like operate like, you know, companies and they have to create the most advantageous environment for the quote unquote employee. It's not like somebody who just tax and you have to, this is what we're still seeing like legacy. quote, states or cities like San Francisco or New York not get. And that's why you have this like fleeing of capital. The point being is it used to be very hard to move your money because you have real estate and you had all this physical infrastructure and all of these different assets that you have to move and go into the Bitcoin. There's no shortage of value problems, but one of them is that point about it's not always there. It's not there. It's not tangible, but it's highly liquid and it's easily moveable. And so it goes to what Emily's describing is as the market wakes up, they just realize they have to compete for talent from not only a job. Brian Cubellis (29:28.27) real estate perspective, but then also how do you actually treat from taxes and all the other things that you would want in a place to live, or the money will just leave because you don't have the legacy ways of, you're going to sell all this. I mean, obviously family, there's some still things that hold us down, but it's changing drastically. Most places don't really pick up that yet. I that's very well said. And I'm going pull us back. I'm going pull us back to the thread of the internet analogy with respect to Bitcoin. you know, similar to the internet, which emerged via a set of open protocols, Bitcoin is very simply just an open protocol for value. So if the internet, you know, if you look at the internet as the digitization of information, Bitcoin really represents the digitization of value. And the key difference here is that, you know, between the early 90s and now is that owning a piece of the underlying infrastructure is actually possible with Bitcoin. you know, owning Bitcoin today, buying Bitcoin today is as if you were able to purchase a piece of the internet back then. So, Michael, maybe we can start with you, but can you speak to, you know, at a high level, the innovation that is Bitcoin and specifically why now more than ever it's important to understand what's happening and really why Bitcoin is currently having, you know, sort of its mainstream moment with you know, the likes of various corporations and also now nation states considering adopting Bitcoin as a reserve asset. Yeah, so it's mainstream for us. It's still it's so insanely early. We talked to so many people about all this stuff, and it's just like you really have to get know your audience and be careful how you describe these things. There's two components of this. So the nation state adoption, personal account adoption, there's only 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. And if you can come to that conclusion and why that's credible. Well, then you start to underwrite, well, what's the value of it? So there's the monetary aspect of it. And we can go into that or we can have separate conversations about that. Our firm helps with the education. There's the other aspect that Brian's referencing is that it's a piece of technology and allows for transfer of value. So there's a lot of folks that will think about gold or like we'll go back to like interchange with Amex and credit cards, like all those things. Brian Cubellis (31:42.432) In an internet world, your Tesla's going across tolls or you need to do microtransactions, it just cannot be done because the intermediary problem, that's the problem. If you have an intermediary that has to facilitate the transaction and it's not economical to move. This goes back to how browsers were set up. I forget, I'll butcher it, but there's like the 402 or whatever the error code is that you actually get. There's an error code where you were going to put micropayments, but you just couldn't figure it out. The way you figure it out is why I started with there's only 21 million because if you can derive there's only 21 million and some value from it and then all the value stems from it. Now you can actually associate when you're online while you would want more of that. You can't do the other version. You can't create a technology and make people value it. You have to have the underlying properties make sense. And so very often again been doing this for a long time that We get on the defensive and this is to Emily because she doesn't know yet what's happening. It's very often people will go back and done this for years and they'll go it's three thousand, twenty thousand, sixty thousand, get back to twenty. All the numbers and individuals will come up and say, well why is it, explain Bitcoin, why is it going, why is it a hundred, why is it going to be a million, why is it at zero and all this is like look. If you want to have a conversation about value, what gives things value, there's objective things that give things value. When it comes to, all know why scarcity, that's why we like these guitars behind us and other things like that. And then it needs to be divisible, you need to be able to transfer it up, needs to be able to teleport across time, right? And space, because if you can't send it to you, then what's the value of it? So we can have that conversation. But the way I like to frame it now, because it's just, it's been working for 15 years and it only goes one thing up and to the right. is why isn't it, it's a $2 trillion asset today, why isn't it $10 trillion asset? And the reason why it's not a $10 trillion asset is because there hasn't been historically a good way to store it. So everybody here, no matter what they know about Bitcoin, they know two things. Either it ends up in a landfill in the UK in some hard drive, or some North Korean takes it and you wake up and all your Bitcoins are gone. That's what grandballs now. Brian Cubellis (33:44.766) And so this notion of wool, okay, so somebody has exposure. A couple people I know in here probably have exposure. Everybody has like some exposure, if not like maybe zero or a little bit. But they're drastically under allocated because of the gravity of what we're talking about, whether it's from. There's 450 roughly trillion dollars in assets that are all like what Bitcoin's competing with and it all competes with them head on and just completely crushes it when you really break it down. So there's that aspect. But then there's a secondary part on the technology side and that's the easy part to anchor to because it's just like when Brian was referencing technology companies adopted. Every technology company's gonna hold Bitcoin. Every business is gonna hold Bitcoin. Every individual's gonna hold Bitcoin in the same way everybody uses the internet. And at the time everybody was like are you gonna be an internet company and you have the dot com bubble and all those things In the same way today everybody's like are you a Bitcoin company? Well, it's just if it's money and it's a form of value that people hold everyone will just be utilizing it whether it's part of their technologies technology stack or part of their Savings, they're not mutual exclusive and that ultimately leads it to be intertwined in everything So yeah, yeah, there's no such thing as a internet company today, right? You're just a company and obviously you're leveraging the internet. Well, except for mine. You know, it's all we do. Google Fiber, internet company, the internet. Maybe an exception. But the point being like, you know, was, you know, companies in the early 2000s that that was their whole thing. They just add internet to their name. And we saw this even with Bitcoin and blockchain to some extent in prior cycles where it's, you know, a company adds blockchain to their name and stock price jumps. It's like, that won't exist in a world where, to Michael's point, Bitcoin is just globally recognized as a form of money. Well, then obviously, if you're a company and you're operating with money, which most companies do, then you're going to be leveraging Bitcoin in some way. Ken, did you have any thoughts along these lines, sort of the internet analogy? I mean, I'm going to block and bridge here because I have a very Brian Cubellis (35:46.894) I have a pretty narrow beat on Bitcoin. It's not what I do for a living. What I do for a living is I'm a capital allocator. But because I'm a capital allocator and I also understand Bitcoin, The thing that I feel compelled to say, if I tweeted something out recently, was like, this is when Bitcoin was going from like 60 to 90. And I tweeted something like, if I've spent five minutes with you in the last two years, you are in my iMessage thread right now. People are just texting me constantly like, holy shit, what's happening? Thank you so much for giving me in to Bitcoin. For me, the thing that matters most for folks in the crowd that don't fully understand what Bitcoin is, is you have AI, is Moore's law. It's a train that will not stop. There's nothing that can stop this thing. Our productivity is right at the precipice of the J curve, where we're going to get it. way more productive faster than we've ever been, faster than has ever happened in human history. We're 4 % more productive every year in the US. That's about to go to 10. It's about to go to 15. It's about to go to 20 % per year over the next 20, 25 years. We're at the point where stuff is going to be moving so fast, no one can keep up. That's the power production side of the economy. These are like these nuclear power plants that do everything better for less inputs. Like more outputs, less inputs. And that's what productivity is. And these companies, they're building on top of this modern technology, know, AKA AI. You know, the cost of all things should be dropping, but it's not. Why is it not? Brian Cubellis (37:55.022) How are we in a position here where we're better at everything and accelerated pace and yet all our shit costs more every single year? Like everything should be costing less and less and less. What's happening is the US has $36.5 trillion in debt. And the Fed has one job, and that job is don't default. With technology accelerating its pace of productivity, we're ramming more economic energy into the same number of units. Okay, so if the Fed never printed another dollar, we would default. Because paying back that 36.5 trillion would be way harder, because each unit buys more. So if each unit buys more, you have to do more work to pay off each unit. And so for every gain that we have on the productivity side, the Fed has to offset by printing money just to avoid default. how that is manifesting in all of our lives is our eggs that should be getting 4 to 6 % cheaper every year are getting 2 to 3%. more expensive every year. And so what's actually happening is the Fed is stealing the 45 % production gains that we have earned plus 3 4%. So inflation is not stuff's getting 4 % more expensive, it should be getting 5 % cheaper, but it's actually 4 % more. So what's going to happen over the next decade is AI is about to accelerate the pace of deflation. And the Fed is going to have to print like no tomorrow to offset it, just to avoid default. So we're going to go from 4 % to 5 % to 7 % to 10%. Brian Cubellis (39:53.582) stuff should be getting 10 % cheaper for us every year. But really, all they have to do is maintain a 2 % inflation rate. But now they're stealing 12%, right? The 10 % of gains that we've earned in the economy plus 2 % on the other side. so AI and Bitcoin are two sides of the same coin. You have the power production side that's ramming energy into our money. And then you have our batteries that are storing the monetary energy that we produce. I'll just wrap it all up to say money always converges on the best money. so USD is the best fiat money in the world. And what we're about to experience over the next 15 years, people are going to realize there is a better money than the best money on earth. And people are going to start jumping ship. And the entire world is going to be repriced in Bitcoin. you know the things that offset that is this is the thing you talk about you know does this change the dynamic of the world reserve currency you know if we implement a strategic bitcoin reserve and if we start actually hedging you know the debt that we have not trying to grow our way out of try to grow our way out of our debt but also allocate our capital and our resources into something that's going to hedge the debt that we carry we will we will retain the world reserve currency, bitcoin will bolster the US dollar, we will save in bitcoin, and we will spend in US dollars. because more monetary energy is being stored in this pristine asset, the prices of all things are going to fall. The Fed is likely to go away. Like the world gets repriced in a fixed monetary policy where we all benefit from the gains of the hard work and innovation that we produce every single year. So that's what Bitcoin is. It's the perfect battery. There's no intrinsic value to Bitcoin. Bitcoin without AI would never live up to what it was capable of. AI without Bitcoin would never live up to what it is capable of in terms of benefiting humanity. So that's my beat. What you about that, Emily? Brian Cubellis (42:19.854) I mean, we haven't changed our price on our one gig product in 10 years. That's what I was thinking. Eggs are more expensive. Everything's more expensive. Our price is the same 10 years ago. Google is the money printer. No, no, no, no. No. But I think one of the, maybe a problem or opportunity you have is that reminds me of 10 years ago is when we were first out trying to tell people you need a gig or you should, it's like why, what am gonna do with that? And we didn't really have, we didn't know, we didn't have the best answer for it. So at the time we went to the creators, the doers, the people that, the crazy people I keep referencing, and we were like, here, we're gonna give you this resource. and then you tell us what you do with it. And it was like the most exciting time because we heard from our users what this meant. And there's one story in Nashville that I wouldn't have been able to think up until after it happened, which was we went to Music Row, it was like RCA Studio A, I think is who we sold. And they finally had a gig in the studio and before that, you're building a song, right? So you do your parts, your stems, whatever it is. Maybe you're laying a track with some guitars, okay? What they would do is record it, download it to an external hard drive, get a courier on a bicycle, come pick this thing up, which by the way, jostling around is a little risky. Okay, so you've got like your precious cargo and they would drive it to the next studio, plug it in and lay the next track, drums or whatever. And this would happen over a period of weeks, whatever to build a song. It was like a physical thing that you had to move around. Once you have a gig, now all of sudden, and this is a music producer that told me this story, he's laying a track recording with another person collaborating with him who is in Paris. And now we're doing this in real time. And this was 10 years ago. So you can imagine, this takes somebody who's like a music row producer, obviously very successful, and suddenly they are now a global business collaborating internationally and can finish a song quickly, like in real time. So imagine like having that capability when you go into the pandemic, it gives you like a superpower. Brian Cubellis (44:18.796) So now, we were talking about this recently, we just launched a couple weeks ago, 8GIG in Nashville. I'm having the same conversations and it feels so nostalgic, because I'm like, don't know what you're gonna do with this. And I can't even imagine to dream it up, but I'm gonna find the people who are the dreamers who are gonna figure it out, and then they'll tell me. So we're going to the podcasters and the creatives, and music are the same, it's the same people we went to 10 years ago. Often the same person. and saying like, hey, we now have this resource, like test it out, you tell us what this means to your business. And I feel like you have a similar opportunity with Bitcoin where you're saying like, there's a million things we can't even imagine what this is gonna unlock or the potential that it has, but it's getting it into the hands of the people who are able to think that way in the abstract and they can start to build it. And this is probably a lot of the entrepreneurs that you work with, but once you, that's the early phases. It's like finding those people, giving them the resource and then just kind of waiting. for them what feels like the magic kinda happen yet it's it's a fantastic way to title and i don't know if you're going be to do it can refer to the dollar i can't believe it's a i can do it i want to bring it to the earlier right like so back to the capital allocation piece the thing that is really interesting to me about bitcoin is when you denominate your world in bitcoin your capital allocation strategy totally changes because you realize The hurdle is not the S &P, okay, 7 % a year. That's not the hurdle rate to beat. The hurdle rate is a 60 % for your CAGRASA called Bitcoin. And so how you allocate capital, do I hire this person for $100,000 a year? Well, do I think, would I rather have this person or would I rather have Bitcoin? And so talk about early writers, like how you're thinking about how companies should be thinking about allocating capital.