$150 Billion Later: The Truth About Bitcoin ETFs and Who’s Buying

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the. History of darkness. 1974. 1980790297. 2000 and whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same. Thing over and over we can't. Help ourselves. I say when we sell. Hey, OK. I say when we sell. All right, so this week we had James Seifert on the podcast. James is from Bloomberg Intelligence, he's an ETF analyst. We actually had Eric Balchunas on the show a few weeks ago. Who's James colleague? James and Eric, they both really made a name for themselves in the past two years with the really the pre approval of the Bitcoin ETFs by the SEC and then the launch of them in 2024. And since then, I mean, they've been really top of my list in terms of following fun flows, 13F filings and just the the magnitude of success that these products have had. So we talked quite a bit about the Bitcoin ETFs. We dug into a little bit of Q2 filings, discussed things such as the Harvard allocation to Bitcoin that was uncovered in Q2 of this year. And then also we discussed just why it's still early from understanding Bitcoin in the traditional wealth management space, how a lot of firms actually haven't participated yet and some that have participated are still quite restricted in terms of what they can recommend to their clients. So really supported the idea that while Bitcoin is maybe something that we understand deeply on the show, most of the investors, both retail and in the traditional finance space, the advisors, we're actually in many ways gatekeepers or allocators of capital are still coming up the curve. And it's incredibly early for actually trillions of trillions of dollars of capital be flowing into the space. And so that kind of ties into a broader thesis here at on Ramp that is adoption scales, price increases and individuals, businesses, institutional investors are just going to need better solutions, quite frankly, to secure the asset without compromise. And so that's what we do here at On Ramp where we provide our clients with really secure foundation and multi institution custody. But then you can access on top of that Bitcoin back loans, inheritance, Iras, trade, you name it, this product is also insured. We could talk about that if you want to reach out. But the way I see this personally is multi institution is really the standard for scaling Bitcoin adoption without having to trust a single institution, which is historically led to a lot of losses and failures, but also not having to be a technical expert. Your family doesn't have to be a technical expert. So it's really just bridging the gap, meeting people where they're at. And that's why I'm so excited about what we do here now. I hope you enjoyed the episode and let me know if you ever have any feedback you can reach out to me directly. Welcome back to The Last Trade. We're back to our standard programming this week. Last week, James, we had only three of us, Michael Bryan myself. This week we're joined by James Seyfert from Bloomberg. James, we just had your colleague on Eric Balchunas just a few weeks ago. We had a fun one with Eric and I'm excited for this one as well. And I know you guys work very closely together and so think we'll be able to go deeper on some of the topics we discussed with Eric and then also get your perspectives on a lot of the things that are going on in the market. We have the deadline tomorrow for the 13 F filings for the second quarter. So we'll be talking quite a bit about what we're seeing in terms of flows and appetite, you know, from the retail side, the institutional side, US global, etcetera. But James, thank you for joining us today. How are you doing? Yeah, happy to be here. I'm doing pretty well. There's a lot happening across the entire crypto ecosystem is a lot happening internally at Bloomberg actually too. But yeah, ready to dive in. I mean things are looking pretty optimistic as far as anyone with some sort, any sort of crypto allocation at the moment. Yeah. I mean I would say things were looking optimistic as long as you're not looking at the Bitcoin price from all time high since yesterday. If you have a little bit longer of a orientation to this asset class, things are looking great. But if you if you're just trying to trade the markets, maybe not on the top. Last night, yeah. Yeah, you jumped in at 124. You're not feeling good right now at 1:18. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for this conversation. Go ahead and get into it, James. Maybe the best place to start would just be if you could share a little bit more about your background. We'd love to hear how. I'd love to hear more about your background professionally at Bloomberg covering the ETF markets. And then if you could weave that into how you got interested in Bitcoin and the broader crypto space, that would be helpful because I did say this on the podcast with Eric, but you and Eric have been really the two go to voices as related to reliable coverage, let's say pre approval of the ETFs in 2023 and then leading up to the approval in 2024. And since then, the two of you have really put together a lot of great data analysis. And I would certainly recommend following James on X if you're not doing so already, if you do want to be, you know, go further into the conversation we have today. So James, I'll hand it over to you. If you could tell us more about your background. Yeah. Thank you for the kind words. I really do appreciate that. Yeah, let's dive in. So I started at Bloomberg in 2014 full time. I also interned there, but really I started in our data department basically doing any sort of back end infrastructure for anything in the asset management industry thing, mutual funds, ETFs, hedge funds actually was a big part of it. So anything along those lines I'm well versed in. I'm, I've got a couple of certs and stuff to back that up as well. But really the, my research background started in 2017 when I moved to the Bloomberg Intelligence department, which is essentially just Bloomberg's research. And we have like over well over 300 people, a lot of people from sell side and buy side on Wall Street covering anything from equity markets in general to specific stocks, specific credit, commodities, you name it. We have a lot of really smart people that I work with, including policy and litigation analysts, which were huge in covering, you know, the Grayscale lawsuit and things like that and what's going on with the Clarity Act and the genius, genius bill and all these different things that are happening. We have, I have like a large swath of people to lean on for things that are out of my expertise. So that brings me back, what is my expertise? Really it's the asset management industry. Think anybody that's launching funds, ETFs, mutual funds, you name it, we're looking at that from like a holistic point of view. Where's money going? What are people interested in? What's going on with flows? It's almost like a little bit of macro. We can get very mile wide, an inch deep. But then when you get to certain products, we also do tend to go mile deep as we have with like, you know, the Bitcoin types of products. But the stuff you guys really care about. I got involved in crypto personally in really if we if we got to go real far back technically I was mining Bitcoin in this in the spring of 2011 because of my floor mate in college wanted me to do it because he wanted to buy things on Silk Road. And I was just like whatever you can use my computer and that blew up my computer. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure Bitcoin mining software caused my laptop to implode. I lost like a 12 page paper and a bunch of other stuff, had to get extensions like I so I, my initial information was this is stupid fake Internet money and it destroyed it almost gave me like a bad grade. So I came into a really negative view. I'm like anyone else you went in, this is stupid. OK, sure, I'll do it. And then I'm just like, OK, it's definitely stupid. I'm not interested. I kind of got orange peeled and got interested in all of this. Ironically enough, I was at like trad Phi conference, ETFs, mutual funds run by Morningstar in Chicago. And Kathy Wood, who I had known and her and her right hand man Tom were basically in this side room at this conference. And they were talking about Bitcoin and how the the future of it. And they had written a white paper in 2016 with Arthur Laffer, which for those listening who don't know it is he's like a legendary economist, has been involved in many Republican administrations. He has a lot. He has something called the Laffer Curve that's like named after him because of like with stuff to do with taxes. Basically, the more you tax people, not necessarily the greater increase you're going to get in in tax receipts. So he's like this famous guy and he saw he's like in his 80s now, I think, or at least his 70s. And back then he was even a believer in Bitcoin to some extent. So she was speaking about this white paper. So technically it's Arc Kathy Wood and Arthur Laffer that got me to like, OK, maybe this fake Internet money was something real. And that was September of 2016. So that's when I personally started going down the rabbit hole, didn't really buy much. I didn't really buy go into the rabbit hole deeply enough to fully understand and become a full believer in this space until, you know, crypto was running up in the summer of 2017. And that's when I joined BI and I reported to Eric Belchinus, who you said was on the show already, obviously, and his side was the ETS and asset management. I also reported to Mike Mcglone, who's also kind of well known if you if you pay attention to crypto in this space, he's our commodities analyst. He was like, we need to cover crypto. Do you know anything about crypto? I was like, oh boy, do I like I'm trading these shit coins. I'm doing all this stuff in the side because at the time, our compliance didn't care, which unfortunately is no longer the case. So yeah, we started up our coverage and some of us like one O 1, what is a blockchain? What is mining? What is proof of work like all these really simple things. So yeah, I've been doing it professionally since then. And from there I kind of became like the expert on the Grayscale trusts. I was doing a lot of research because I covered closed end funds and the Grayscale trusts were very similar to that, discounts and efficiencies, premiums. And so I've been doing this professionally since 2017. But for the most part, as you mentioned, like most people don't know me until either what we called the Bitcoin futures getting approved in 2021. That's when we got, I started getting a bigger following. And the real following obviously came as we were very bullish and calling for one, Grayscale to win their lawsuit against the SEC and two, for the Bitcoin ETFs to launch. And that's basically what most people know me for. That was long winded. I apologize, but it's. It's a great summer. It also gives a lot of insights into Bloomberg being ahead of the game from a research and education perspective, because it's still like this today. But back in 2018 specifically that Bloomberg, I think was the only mainstream, you know, representation of understanding anywhere near what was happening in Bitcoin and and digital assets in general. I had this like previous life for a short stint at a firm called the block. This is when very early days when they started and that was the the angle. It was like, you know, research for institutional investors and we remember looking and then the news that coming out, it was either coin desk, the block and then everyone else would talk about digital assets. But it would be anybody knowing that the sector would be like this is all just like garbage. But Bloomberg really had kind of a deep understanding of the the market and then it's naturally grown since there are from there. I would also say like that's from people pushing it internally top down. They didn't, they were like, OK to cover it from a news perspective. But like really even still to this day, Bloomberg isn't really a huge believer in this space. They're kind of just covering it because it's, it's a huge demand source and clients are asking for it. But for the most part, it's not from like in many cases, Bloomberg obviously responding to client demand, but also they're like trying to predict what's happening and trying to get in front of it and invest in spaces. And like, this is not a space that Bloomberg has invested in at all. We have like trading volume, not even trading volume. We have prices that are really awesome. Like we can see intraday pricing across like a whole bunch of exchanges. We have great stuff like that. But when you start getting like metrics like actually understanding a blockchain, active addresses, revenues, fees, you name it, what we don't have any of that on there. There is no investment whatsoever in doing that aside from allowing third party people to put their stuff on the terminal. So it was kind of like from a media news perspective, they're going to cover it, but they never there was number real investment from like the actual terminal side of things. For the most part, there's like been bits and starts. So like, oh, we're going to do it. And then oh, we're not doing this at all. And it's funny, like usually when they lean in over the last three years, they leaned in pretty heavy. Like in end of 2017, early 2018, they're like, oh, we need to start doing this. And then they did the same thing in 2021, but they leaned out in like 20/22/23. And now what they're starting to like, oh, maybe we should do this again. So if you ever see Bloomberg hiring a bunch of crypto specific people and stuff, that might be a sign of the top is, is what I would say. Sell all the corn if you see that happen. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting, James. And, and I think to be fair to your firm and to many of the other traditional finance firms out there, I'm of the mindset that there really weren't many options to get involved. I mean, your business is a little bit different on like the market intelligence news research side. But for the firms that are actually offering product prior to the space that you cover with the ETFs launching in 2024, there were very few avenues for people to get exposure through traditional rails. And so I almost just think of like 2024 to present, call it 18 months or so have really been just the start of the unlock for traditional finance to start bridging the gap into, you know, Bitcoin and digital assets. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I do want to get into this quarter in particular because people like to hear topical and what's going on. But I would just love to hear your perspective since you were at the forefront of it from pre approval to the approval in 2024. And particularly if you could just walk us through kind of your expectations covering the space for a while prior to the approval and launch in January 2024 to where we are today. Have things exceeded expectations, met them, you know not met them. Just would love to hear your thoughts on the demand that we've seen and interest in the past 18 months. Yeah, I mean, anybody saying that they didn't exceed their demands is a liar or just a crazy Uber Bitcoin bulls psychopath. I guess this is what I would say like we were very bullish. We were very bullish even before they were getting approved, they were going to be approved and had the potential to be the biggest launch of all time. And I can't tell you how many trad fi people who like there's a lot of people that just hate this entire space. They hate everything about it. They don't like a lot of the people, they don't like what it stands for. They don't believe in anything that's happening. And so the, every time we were putting out bullish pieces on our, what we saw for demand, which again vastly exceeded anything we were saying. I mean, this is, these are the, this is the most successful launch of all time. I mean, these products have 130 plus billion dollars in them. They have taken in $55 billion. The Bitcoin ETFs alone, I mean, they're, they're like in a world all their own, no matter how you slice this. So one, we had very high expectations and the ETFs exceeded them both from a volume perspective and assets perspective, a flows perspective. Like no matter how you look at this, these things have done exceptionally well. Part of that has to do with, you know, the they launched, a lot of demand came in, the price went up. So that's more about the asset side of things. But price doesn't matter for flows. I mean, theoretically higher price and momentum could bring in more money. But like when you think about assets in a fund, a lot of people don't realize this, but there's two things that go into the AUM of the fund, right? It's new money coming in that's flows, but it's also the value, the underlying. So like $54 billion has come into the space on a net basis since the launch in January of 2024. But again, these have over $130 billion in assets, right? So the difference there is one money that was already in there from the Grayscale products to some extent, but also the other difference is the price appreciation of Bitcoin. So, yeah, I mean, no matter how you select this is this has been a massive success. And I think we're like basically I think we accelerated things a lot faster because I always saw a lot of demand coming from the advisor space and the hedge fund space, but more so from the advisor. I think that's the next big leg up. And I think we're kind of rather early innings in that, in that part of things. That's what makes this conversation interesting and just the market in general. And you probably feel this in what I mean, this conversation is a lot of our clientele and listeners and growing or somewhat native to the space and they understand kind of the different ways to get exposure, why they would make those trade-offs. But historically, this asset class had been bottoms up. And so there's a strong reason where different financial firms or legacy firms kind of hated it because it's like, how do I make money? I thought it was a Ponzi forever. I still think it's a Ponzi, but my clients want it and it's growing like crazy. It's the best performing asset of all time. So what do I do and then how do I make money? And the ETF's to your point, I think surpassed everyone's thought, but it also showed because forgot who it was, it was somebody very senior at BlackRock referencing that they kind of went in a roundabout way of like why would somebody want an ETF? Because you could just buy Bitcoin and Cash app. But then the recognition that most people don't feel confident in doing that the ETF and BlackRock and these other names gave that air cover for real material exposure. But then the other side of it, as you referenced before the pod, we'll we'll talk about here is like the basket of goods like the basket of good mirror is what Tratify loves to make money basket of you know, the other all coins. But you can go back test for 15 years they've done this. Bitwise is probably the most prominent and if you look at that versus Bitcoin, Bitcoin always just outpaces. So it's going to be an interesting dynamic to see how Tratify tries to create structure products. But traditionally the the structure product, that one was just spot Bitcoin exposure or an ETF like Grayscale versus a basket. We're just curious how you how you think about that. And then like there's just natural inherent friction going to be built in today and then growing forward. But the market's still so early, they don't know, they don't know this. So they'll go into the XRP top 10 weighted and then on a long enough people will look at it and be like, wait, what was I buying? When the next cycle, if we're still in cycles wakes up and is like what was ton coin for good for? Yeah, I mean, so the, the main thing I would pull out of what you just said is, is really like this gave cover. Like if you look at Bitwise was doing surveys, there was a bunch of other places doing surveys of advisors and investors of like, do you want to invest in crypto? Do you want to invest in Bitcoin? If you're not investing now, what would you need to see? And almost every single time it was 1 regulatory clarity, they were concerned about whether or not the government was going to go after it, and they viewed that as a downside risk. But the other one that sometimes actually I'll beat that regulatory clarity side was they wanted an ETF essentially, they wanted a wrapper that they felt comfortable getting exposure to. And that's what the ETF did really, right. So it basically took this D Phi decentralized crypto asset in Bitcoin and wrapped in an ETF, a structure that advisors love, investors love. It's like the ETF itself is a technology. It's an extremely successful wrapper for providing asset management because it basically takes in everyone. So like most other fun wrappers or structures before this, they kind of differentiated things out. So you had like the high net worth, people could get certain aspects and the the retail investors had to pay up a little bit and they got other things. An ETF like your grandmother, a hedge fund, an institution, an endowment. We all are dealing with the same thing. And it basically brings everyone together and it creates like this flywheel of liquidity and benefits and low cost and like, although everyone playing in the same pool has a lot of benefits. So that's what the ETF wrapper did for Bitcoin itself. And if you look at it, it's actually kind of impacting spot Bitcoin to an extent because that's where a lot of institutions are using to get their exposure because in many cases, those institutions are not allowed to touch a commodity like Bitcoin. So by wrapping it in an ETF, it becomes a security that a lot of other institutions are allowed to touch. And the other thing you said that I think it's critical that a lot of people, normies in the Bitcoin world and crypto world don't understand Larry Fink and BlackRock launching a Bitcoin ETF, you know, Invesco, that gives a lot of cover for these advisors and investors to allocators to like actually allocate to the space. They were full throated endorsers of this. We always thought BlackRock was going to launch one of these things at some point. But if you had asked us before BlackRock filed, I would have told you they're not going to be in the first wave. They're going to wait and then they're going to jump in and they're going to launch their own product. I did not. I was not, I was shocked when Larry Fink that summer that they filed. Basically went on in a full throated rigging endorsement of Bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement. A store value asset like that was not on my bingo card. So I think all of that kind of gives cover for other people to allocate to the space. And as more and more really smart, well respected individuals are taking this more seriously, I think it's forcing other people to be like, OK, maybe those preconceived notions from 20/16/2017, even 20/19 were not the right notions and they're kind of reconsidering it. But again, as I said, I hinted desert, there's plenty of other people that are still stuck in like FTX is a fraud, it's all a scam. This is just a Ponzi scheme and they have not done any due diligence to understand how these blockchains work or consensus protocols. They they have. There's there's no deeper dive. Yeah, that James, I was going to be part of my follow up question was like you sort of you referenced this, this natural version from the the traditional finance person. And I sort of feel this viscerally from my prior life and private banking where there's I think there's a few different components. But I'm curious like what you attribute it most to? Is it the lack of education and actually taking the time to understand what these things are? Is it the conflation with broader crypto and, you know, people calling this a Ponzi? Or is it is it sort of this another element of like this error sophistication of like a person who's, you know, made a lot of money in Tradfy, done their own research and investments in various other asset classes. And because they missed it, like they've heard about Bitcoin a few different times, but they've never actually allocated. And so there's this natural bias to to think it's still going to fail because you have no exposure. I'm curious, like which of those elements do you attribute much most of the sort of tradfy normie brain aversion to to Bitcoin generally? So I think it's all of those things. The one that you didn't say that I think is critical here is kind of the Vanguard reasoning, which there's a lot of investors. If you're a CFA, like you value something based on its cash flows and its earnings and ability to produce, you know, cash flow producing assets, like that's how you value things. Dividends is it have, does it have earnings? And Bitcoin has none of that. So a lot of people like there's also plenty of people out there that don't believe in gold as an investment, like fine, use it as jewelry, use it in technology, what have you, but they don't believe it as an investment. A lot of those types of trad Phi traditional investors. I used to be one of those people. That was my view for a long time because like I'm focused on things that are producing value and cash flow and income and Bitcoin doesn't do that. So it requires like, if you don't believe in gold and you would not put gold in your portfolio, you are way less subject to adding something like Bitcoin to your portfolio. But like, the, the, the facts of like, currency debasement that have happened, what gold's performance, it, it doesn't meant there's nothing that gets through to them. And I think the other part of it is like, let's be real. There is a lot of fraud and BS. And like, negative people, when you have an asset that returns and as strong as it had, this has been over the last few years, you're gonna attract some pretty bad people, people that are trying to scam people out of money. And when you have a preconceived notion that this place is filled with fraud and manipulation, and then you see stories about fraud and manipulation, your initial reaction is like, see, you're on my fire. Yeah, my theories are confirmed. And then to your other point, I I think this is, this isn't, I'm not the first person to say this by any chance, But if you were somebody on the news side or research side that covered this early and maybe you didn't dismiss it or you did dismiss it and said it was stupid. It was Beanie Babies, what have you. And then you watch it go up from $1000 or under $1000 to $124,000, you are like more inclined to hate it even more. Like you're just like, I had the chance to buy this thing. I thought it was stupid. So I can't be wrong. It's a lot harder to do what Larry Fink did. Larry Fink called Bitcoin an index of money laundering in 2018. And like, was this negative on crypto in general as recently as 20/20? He was kind of one of those blockchain, not Bitcoin or blockchain not crypto type of people. And he did the work and he had the frame of reference to kind of change his mind. It's a lot harder to do that. And if you talk to a lot of people that are full throated believers in Bitcoin, myself included, they go from this is a joke, this is stupid, it's a Ponzi scheme, whatever reason you come up with. And then like they come back to it and they're like, actually maybe this kind of makes sense and they kind of rewire some things. And that's, I think that's how a lot of people are. So there's probably a lot of people right now that were on that initial path that are rethinking it again, in my point of view. So I mean, there's a whole host of reasons and also like, let's just be clear, crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin, it's it, it goes after Wall Street and a lot of these people's livelihoods and how they've lived their lives and stuff like that. So the kind of to what you were talking about, people have had success in the environment that we've had over the last 5050 ish years and they think that's the right way to do things and anything new, you know, I don't like it. Yeah. Just just really quickly on that topic because you hit on two things that I don't think it gets talked about enough. And to the extent you can share, because we don't know for certain, but like how much letter of Inc actually believes in it versus talking the book of an asset that has, you know, potential to grow and having a big market because we saw the ESG, you know, quick pivot. And similar to what you just said, what Larry Fink says has a lot of undertones. To your point, if you go down long enough rabbit hole, when you think about eating into other passive funds and just natural referencing, you know, a debase currency changes the cost of capital or the return on capital. So a lot of the traditional investments BlackRock would be pushing in front. If you go down that progression, it don't make any don't make much sense. Just curious, like, do you think he's thought that far through or these are just the talking points? Because he knows that's the the the sentiment where we're going and that's how you're going to get the flows and show black rocks fully behind those. Yeah, I mean black. I mean, I don't know this for sure. I've never met Larry in person, but he would not have gone on Fox business or news shows and said those things in full throated ringing endorsement of Bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement and a hedge against inflation and things like that. If he didn't believe them, like there's no way he he, there's plenty of products he's launched that he's not an investor in or a buyer of and he's he's not he, he would say, we want to put pride these for our clients. There's a lot of clients that want this demand. There were many ways for him to go about saying we launched this because there's a lot of demand. We see a lot of growth here. Again, ESG is like the the the caveat here, like you said, he there, he's very full. Third, I think he really does believe in the ESG principles. He's just realized that it's like it's too much of 1/3 reel topic for for BlackRock as a company. They have plenty of people who are against some of the ESG ideals that are massive clients of theirs and I think he's stepped away from that. So I guess like I think he really did change his mind. I, I've talked to people inside BlackRock. There was a, this was not like a everyone agreed that that we were going to do this. There was factions, there was people fighting that people don't like this, didn't like this within BlackRock. And believe me, if Larry Fink did not believe the stuff he was saying or did not believe in Bitcoin, they would not have been filed. When they did, they could have waited until these things and saw what the demand looked like and then jumped in and tried to compete. They went in early. So I'm, I'm fully in the camp that Larry believes what he's saying and I think a lot of people at BlackRock believe in it too. Is it also beneficial that it's a huge growing part of their revenue stream? Is it one of the most successful ETFs they've ever had? Is that make it even more endorsement from them internally? Probably. But it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. I would, I would heavily bet on the fact that he believes what he's saying. It's not just a gimmick. I think it's, it obviously is helpful to his bottom line that they have a growing asset base and, and fee revenue from this thing. But I I don't think it's just solely from that. Hope you're enjoying the episode. If you are, if you could please leave a like, I'd really appreciate it. If you're on YouTube, subscribe, leave a comment, listen to the comments. I really enjoy reading them. So if you can leave a comment, good or bad, I would appreciate it. You know, I would always improve the show. And so if you leave constructive criticism, that helps to inform better episodes going forward. And if you like the show, I always appreciate reading that you did like it. And so if you can leave a comment, that's great. And then on Spotify, Apple, if you could just leave a five star review, that really helps. I mean, we're trying to get this message out here. We show up every single week. We're booking guests, we're editing the show, we're preparing for the show, we're distributing it. We're doing all these things. And it does take a lot of time, but we enjoy doing it and we do it because we know people find value in it. And if you can please just show a token of your appreciation, a, like comment please, goes a long way. And, you know, I it makes my day. I like to respond to those comments. So thank you in advance for doing that. And I hope you enjoyed the rest of the episode. Yeah, I mean, James, I love that you're fired up right now because I'm kind of fired up myself. And there are a lot of things you said in the past five minutes that I wanted to riff on for a little bit. And I was just. I was thinking about this last night actually, because it is remarkable to me that every time I post on LinkedIn, I have pretty much the entire if the post makes it out of escape velocity and gets like more than a few thousand impressions. Everyone in the comments section is just telling me how much of an idiot I am and it's it's honestly hilarious. And I've been thinking more about this. I posted something on my personal newsletter because Michael doesn't want me to take the spicy takes of the business newsletter. But the whole idea that Bitcoin's a Ponzi scheme is actually just of the fact that the US dollar debt based system is a Ponzi scheme and Bitcoin is merely a reflection of that. And so I want to go on record and say that because if you look at the chart of the federal debt, that is clearly the Ponzi scheme. And then if you juxtapose that to Bitcoins price over time, a lot of bitcoins price and clearly the demand for a scarce asset like Bitcoin exists for the most part, I'm not going to say only, but for the most part because of government irresponsibility and the fact that the dollar needs to be continuously debased. So I just challenge people on the fact that perhaps the system you're already living in is the Ponzi scheme and Bitcoin is merely just a way to kind of step outside of that. And you don't necessarily need to react on that. But it's just kind of frustrating to me that we're still in 2025 and the same, the same, you know, the same discourse is happening that was happening like 7-8 years ago. The other thing to that as well is I wanted to touch on the gold and the, the Bitcoin thing. It was something we wanted to talk about. And I came from traditional finance background as well, James. And I remember in the investment strategy calls, I worked on the alternative side of the business, but there was an investment strategy call for all the advisors to listen into and gold was rarely ever mentioned. And this is back, let's call it 2020-2021 gold was barely mentioned outside of if you had a bearish view on something or if you had a bullish view on another thing, you may want to have like a 1% allocation, 2% allocation. But what I think is happening, and I'm curious if you, if you see this the same way is that we're getting disconnected from the fundamentals, right? So asset prices are all time highs across the board. And it's because we've, the past five years in particular, we've driven into more of a macro focus market versus micro. And so gold and Bitcoin really stand as macro assets in that context. And this is the first year ever that Bitcoin and gold sit at #1 and #2 compared to all asset classes across the board. And so I just wonder if we're kind of at an inflection point here. I wonder if you see the same, if you want to step into like the precious metals ring for a second, if you have similar thoughts around precious metals, maybe making it more into, you know, the traditional portfolio allocation or if you maybe disagree on that and think that Bitcoin and digital assets kind of eat away at that demand. Yeah, I mean, so first thing I'd say on, on what you started with is like the problem, like can you talk to certain people like just admit you were wrong? Like people have been calling for the collapse. Like if people have been calling for the collapse of Bitcoin and crypto since Bitcoin was under $1000, right. Like at some point, like if you've been bearish and negative, these people still calling it a Ponzi scheme, still calling it a joke, said multiple 80% corrections and they're doing touchdown dances when that happens. And like, yet the trajectory is one way. So like the same thing happens with analysts covering different markets, equity analysts and stuff in, in my world. Like you called for one thing and you were wrong and they just kind of changed their call or like alter their argument rather than like, OK, I was wrong about this. I got XY and Z wrong. But I still think blah, blah, blah. But that's not what most people do. They just kind of like move on and act like they were right. I mean, Peter Schiff is a clear example. He'll highlight the fact that gold is outperforming Bitcoin over whatever time period recently. And then like, OK, add three years to that. Like it's not even comparable. So yeah, I think more people would benefit from just like admitting they were wrong, which is impossible for people to do because when you're very publicly anti and think this is stupid and don't really do your due diligence to understand exactly how this works. I find that very many people that are super bearish or negative and think this whole place is a joke, have no idea what a blockchain is, have no idea what goes into it, have no idea all the research that went into this in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s. Like they have no idea. They just think it's somebody made-up this thing in the Internet and it's stupid. They don't understand the value adds from what's been created. So that's the first part. As far as gold and silver and precious metals and and Bitcoin, I think part of it is that people are, look, let's be honest, people have been worried about that. You can go back to the 1970s and 1980s and people are complaining about the debt and the trajectory we were on. They're adding the debt double s every 10 years roughly. Like it kind of has always been a problem. I think this is one thing that Bitcoiners over index on. Like people like to point out debt to GDP, right? We're at 130% right now and we're worried about inflation. I mean, look at Japan, Japan's too. I don't even know what the number is. It's way higher than whatever our thing is. And like, if you look at debt as like in the asset base underlying it, like we're OK, it's not that bad. The debt isn't good. The trajectory you're on is pretty bad. I will not say we're like super healthy, but we're also not like about to go through hyperinflation in my opinion. And if you talk to a lot of economists, is the way they do it, Like if you look at it like debt to GDP is a stock to flow ratio, right? You're looking at something from the balance sheet comparing to the income statement. So a better comparison would be like, what are the assets of the US economy and private industry and US individuals? And like, if you look at it like that, OK, the debt is really high, but so are our assets, which is like, I feel like you need to always kind of put a denominator on there. And obviously, again, trajectory is not right, but I think that is kind of over indexed still. People are getting more concerned. I think Bitcoin itself has brought this up to the front more so all the printing of money that we saw in 2020 and 2021 has livened up people's ability to understand what's going on with inflation. So I don't know what puts that genie back in the bottle, but I think the topic of Bitcoin and Bitcoiners talking about this has driven up people's interest in, you know, hedging against currency debasement, hedge against inflation, types of risks. And yeah, so I think they go kind of hand in hand. I think they're kind of, they're part of the same trade. I view them as complementary assets in a portfolio. A lot of people like to think they're supplementary. You need to have one or the other. I think like gold is way more stable, like it's going to hold value a much longer time period. Theoretically, it's not going to go through these massive ups and downs that Bitcoin is bitcoins, more like gold as a teenager will often say, or like I view it as a call option on store value asset. It could go down like a lot, even to 0, maybe not to zero anymore. But that was my argument in 2017. If it's like a call option on a store value asset, so there is a lot more risk, there's a lot of volatility, but that risk and that volatility is coming down over time. The problem is like as that volatility comes down, like theoretically lower risk, lower reward. So we shouldn't see the same sort of like massive upside returns over that time period. So I'm not somebody that thinks like we're going for the collapse of the US dollar and the US economy. I know some people, very prominent Bitcoiners do. I also am an American, so I really hope that doesn't happen. I'd much prefer like a slow grind up. They continue debasing things at 2 to 4% a year with inflation and and money printing. And I if you're holding Bitcoin or gold jerk and you're not going to be subject to that. And honestly, the other part of it is a lot of Bitcoiners miss like they talk about holding the dollar. Like if you just held treasuries, you'd be ahead like over any time period for the most part. That's again, using CPI, which I know some people have problems with CPI is maybe understated versus like what real inflation is. But the other part of it is like I maybe it's because I'm from, I have an understanding of finance, but like I never thought I would keep money in dollars in a checking account. Like I put my excess savings into something that is going to earn assets and take a risk, S&P 500, things like that. So like, it's not like you couldn't avoid the debasement in any way whatsoever. It's just that a lot of people just don't understand what's happened to the dollar and aren't putting their money in, in, you know, cash flowing assets. Yeah, there there's a couple things there. I think there's a different lines of the curve on coming from finance and then some of those conceived notion because with in a kind way what you shared is a little bit of a fallacy because not everyone a understands finance has access to S&P and shouldn't actually have it. You don't, you shouldn't have to become, if you're a doctor, physician or a firefighter, have to understand that your money that you already put at risk needs to be put. That's like the definition of money and why gold is money for hundreds and thousands of years. Which ties back to some of the colleagues and peers you referenced where their antagonistic nature to Bitcoin is perceived or comes from gold because you reference they don't even believe in gold. And like you said, they're the same. It's the same thing. It's bitcoins, gold with wings. But going back to what Jackson said about debt, debt and inflation are the same or different sides of the same coin. And the debt, to your point, is almost worthless talking about because all people have heard about is forever and it's ephemeral. It's out there and the numbers go from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. The thing that isn't ephemeral is not being able to either buy your jet, buy the vacation more expensive, your retirement being reduced because of inflation, or ultimately not being able to buy eggs for your family. And that's the key part of the other side of the debt because at the end of the debt day, the debt doesn't, it doesn't exist in a vacuum that as the debt increases, you have to service more debt to keep it from delevering. And then that's where inflation rears its head. And ultimately we're at escape velocity there. And that's where the, the, the debasement trade comes in. And if you look at, yes, the, we talked about this a lot like the CPI, I'll hedge and say it's, it's carefully gas lighting. I will, I will. You know, if you look at anything you buy, it's definitely over 2 1/2% year over year anything that you want to buy. And the point being is you can start to make the case that prior to post 2020, real versus nominal returns from like the S&P or now you're in the in the block or you're in the negative because of inflation post 2020, the amount of money supply that the S&P, if it's eight to 10%. And this is where the gold Bitcoin trade in the past five years, gold and Bitcoin have outperformed the S&P. And specifically that even just this year that that's that like narrative of moving back to sound assets that just have a reduced inflation, right? Gold to what 2 1/2 percent Bitcoin, wherever inflation year over year is what we're seeing sovereigns go to. And then specifically just this past week was Harvard with $100 million plus position sizing. I think that's the narrative we end up going back to is just you just hold a better form of money. And the the interesting thing is all the people in finance, he said referencing don't even understand or believe in gold. And gold is money for hundreds or if not thousands of years. That's just a very like broken structure to build your whole financial career on that. Like I don't believe in gold is anything other than like a a pet rock. Yep, I mean, we would Eric spoke with this last time where we're writing a book and we're like saying gold is a pet rock is like saying a church is just a building. Like there's a lot more to it. And I would make the same argument for Bitcoin as well. The other part I would argue is like the people you're talking, they're very much Keynesian economics believer. I don't know what my the economics framework really is, but even if you had like John Maynard Keynes on here and he looked at what was happening, like the theory with Keynesianism is like, you're going to run a deficit, run it hot to help support the economy. When times are bad, right, the government's going to support the economy. And then when times are good, you're going to go back, you're going to do a little austerity. You're not going to run as hot of a deficit. And like we've just blown that up since 2008. Like we're, we're still like even he would be like we're running at 7% deficit when the economy is ripping. The stocks are great, like all these things, right? So there's plenty to be concerned about with the way things are running. I just also think like people, we, we, people get up and go to work every single day, right? They're they're busting their ass to get ahead in life and like investing in stocks in the broader economy is a way to bet on the US economy to continue doing. It's a bet on people doing stuff and getting up and going to work everyday. And like, I think a lot of bitcoiners like discount, like what that means for a portfolio in the growth over time, right. So I think we, we have this joke. It's like very easy to get orange pill, but it's not easy to get like, I don't know, 7030 pilled like people who are it's like you go down this rabbit hole and it's like once you go there, it's hard to come back and realize there actually is value in holding some of these cash producing assets or earnings producing assets. So yeah, I think it's more complex than a lot of people tend to make it out to be, I guess is what I would say. Yeah, I mean, those are all fair points. And I come from that same world, so I understand. I'm kind of like somewhere in the middle. Personally, I'm far above what any normal person would allocate to Bitcoin. I'm just about all in between working in the space and having my savings in it. But I think maybe I'm a little bit more open to the idea that that's not the right choice for a lot of people for many reasons. And the fact is, well, I will agree with you, James, like I do think net, net even since 2020, the if you were dollar cost averaging into the S&P 500, I think you're still net real inflation, but not by much, not by like to the extent people's advisors tell them that they are, not to the extent if they're a self-directed investor, they think that they are. But net net, I still think they're making like marginally a little bit of growth there. But it's just a little bit deceptive in the sense and maybe not intentionally. I think, you know, we're still early in the sense of like advisors even exploring Bitcoin or even gold for that matter within portfolios, right? So they're still, they're in many cases still working from a framework of you do the safe thing, which is you have SBY exposure and you have some amount of fixed income exposure. And then maybe you have some alternative investments as well for if you're like an accredited investor or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I just think that there's still so much misunderstanding about what Bitcoin is. I even saw, it was actually Eric's podcast this week, I saw a clip about the head of JP Morgan Asset Management and he cited a lot of the same things we've already discussed, right? There's no cash flows, it's volatile. I don't think we're going to be offering any asset management products for Bitcoin. So that's one of the largest firms in in the country. So it's still like, you know, first inning or so of people actually coming to terms with what is actually going on here. Yeah. So a few things on that. The wait, I forgot my train of thought. Where was I going with that? You you talked about the first thing you said when you said like you're over indexed. So we're doing a lot of interviews for a book and we're talking a lot of people and like, what is the right allocation to Bitcoin, right? Like asking the question like, OK, you've been orange peeled. Have you ever had have you ever 6040 peeled somebody? You know, do you ever get people to come back to like fully believe in stocks and whatnot? But what we find, I can't think of a single person, every single person we ask, like, what do you think is a good allocation to invest? The people who answer it will say, you know, 5 percent, 10%. Maybe some people will go much higher. But like Rick Edelman went went pretty high. He's very famous for saying, you know, up to 40% depending on your allocation. But for the most part, people were saying 5 percent, 10%. And then you follow up the question with like, what is your allocation? And they're like, oh, way higher. Like the lowest we heard from people in this space was like 30%. They're recommending clients 5%. A lot of them are even higher than that, like well over 50. Like some of the people Bitcoin podcasters we've interviewed are like basically at 100%. And then they're also levered, if you think about it, because their income is tied to this asset doing well. Like you guys, you're, you're kind of tied to the industry. So even whatever your portfolio allocation is, like your earnings worth and net worth is, it's going to be tied to what this asset does. And like, it's funny, it's like, OK, you're recommending people do this, but you are like way over index because everyone who's in this space is an extremely strong believer. And if you believe Bitcoin could become what a lot of Bitcoiners believe it will be, I mean, you'd be stupid not to be over allocated to this for something else on a, on a market cap basis. The other thing I would say is like people don't realize like the, the, the default allocation to crypto and Bitcoin at this point isn't 0. So like by not allocating at all at this point, I mean it's a 3 trillion plus dollar asset class. Bitcoin itself is over 2 trillion. Like if you're, if you're like, or somebody who's an index fund investor, you're just investing in total markets and you're investing in the bond market and equities like the correct allocation. Like if you're just neutral, like the neutral allocation is something so like if you're at zero, you're making an active decision not to participate in this whatsoever. And anything above that is, is also an active decision obviously. And I feel like that also is that that conversation isn't happening yet. Like for the most part people are like, no, we're not off 0, but really like global markets. If you believe in market market cap based investing, you should probably have some sort of allocation to the space. Yeah, I think that's a, a critical point and it, it relates to the Harvard news, right. Because their, their allocation is roughly a in, in my mind, like a market neutral weight, 0.2% of their portfolio. And if you take Bitcoins market cap as a percentage of the 900 trillion of global asset value, it's right around 0.2%. So I think that that that is a very strong signal of, to exactly your point, the, the default allocation is like at least a market neutral weight. And, and if you're, if you're going to be at zero, you, you better be ready to defend why. And and in reality, like I don't think people have many good reasons as to why they'd still be on zero, at least it with respect to Bitcoin. Yeah, completely agreed. The other thing I would say if we want to get to some of the 13 F stuff, we have to be careful because like there have been situations with endowments or pension funds that have allocated and like that wasn't just like a net long, they were also short futures. It was a basis trade in many instances of other institutions that have invested over time that had big names. And I mean the basis trade is huge in Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's also going to be huge in these other coins, Solana, XRP, like the yields on and just simply doing a basis trade, which for listeners who don't know, you're basically selling the futures contract, whether it's a month out or two months out and you're buying the spot asset. And most institutions can't touch the inlying assets. So to touch the spot asset, they're just buying the underlying ETF. And the annualized yield on these things like for, for Bitcoin at one point in December earlier this year after Trump was elected was like up near 20%. So like there's a lot of institutions that will throw a ton of money. So that's why we saw a ton of money come in and then come back out earlier this year. For the most part, it hasn't really picked up too much for Bitcoin. Again, Ethereum, there is a huge base, a decent basis trade. And like there's other assets I talked about. But like if you look at the 13 F holdings one, the vast majority of holders of these Bitcoin ETFs are retail investors. We, we, we have less than 30% of the holders known right now. Again, you hinted before we don't have the full response yet. I'm going to be writing a note next week that looks at like, OK, what is the what is the breakdown of the holders of the Bitcoin ETFs now here in the US? But for a while, the first few, the first year essentially of these Bitcoin ETFs launching the number one holder type outside of retail, because we only had like, you know, a certain subset of people that filed holding it was hedge funds. And some of them I'm sure we're long only to Bitcoin. They believe in Bitcoin, but for the vast majority of them, they don't give a SH. They could care less what Bitcoin is like. They are doing an ARB trade, they're doing the basis trade, they're doing some sort of volatility trading and but that has changed now. So hedge funds are the second largest holder investment advisors, which are the biggest holders of ETFs in general over any time period. The investment advisors love ETFs. They are now and still are the largest holders of the Bitcoin ETFs. Which also maps to bitcoins history, right? It's on a larger scale, but individuals often you, you know, during your interview series, I imagine you talk to a lot of people that were trading early on and then we're like, what am I holding? And then they became that believers in long term holders part of I think James, you and Eric are insanely fascinating in the most positive way that you guys are open to these different concepts. And you have two like feet in different worlds that you're interviewing and, and coming on podcasts like this and talking to folks holding over 50% while also referencing the basis trade. And also, you know, peers that think this is kind of like rat poison squared. And because you, because we did this with Eric where the beginning was like, Coinbase is fine. And if they have any kind of mishap, the government bail them out. Towards the end, he left. Like, wait, tell me more about, you know, either what you guys do or like, maybe that is a problem. And you kind of said two things in the the past discussion where you are referencing 6040 lives and, and people. I wonder who goes backwards. But then you also reference anybody that's been net long, this long enough realizes it just continues the increase in price, which are like basically contradictory to the, to the position over a long enough time horizon. And it's kind of ties into this podcast called the last trade because the, the belief is once you look long enough at this asset, you, you look at it from its properties and the specific properties of like reducing counterparty risk. And you know, the, the fixed supply is really the big deal. And the notion of, OK, well, maybe this is the last trade for a bit. It's not to say that equity market doesn't exist. It's just once you go far enough, you start to realize, well, if I'm going to give up my Bitcoin for equities, then I need to outperform Bitcoin. And so the idea is that most equity, specifically private or public are just from deflationary tech like SAS based tools. AI is the big buzzword, but just think about software as a service and how many corporates and publicly traded companies don't even aren't even running efficiently on that level. I mean, without speaking about your firm, I'm sure you see some efficiencies you guys can have. Think about AI and how many people are gonna miss that boat. And the idea is effectively that these companies are kind of propped up by this false, you know, signal, which is the money supply. And ultimately, until that gets corrected and fixed and we're seeing this like you're starting to see glimpses of the notion of bit bonds or the pub Co, the Treasury, the Treasury. I think we, at least us three, agree that the Treasury shell company is a is a kind of like, you know, a glimpse into, you know, what could potentially be the downfall of this cycle. But the notion of a business, a productive business holding a better unit to reserve its cash flows and be able to take opportunistic bets makes a lot of sense. And you can see how this starts to enter insert into a lot of assets and then people will invest in them when they start producing more Bitcoin than is invested. That's how you kind of like get back to, you know, the market being a a less distorted version of it. I don't know, I said a lot there, but that's kind of like just going back to a few conversations ago about the notion of 64. And it's not to say that these things don't exist specifically equities and that you should invest in American capitalism. It's just the reality that those price earnings multiples, we all know we're a little bit distorted. And where do you know those signals are and who's actually has a viable business in this new world where deflationary technology is just going to like RIP to shreds a lot of business models? Yeah, I mean on the on the price, like on a long enough time frame, if you are fully a Bitcoin believer like these, these companies are going to adopt some level of Bitcoin or you know, they're they're going to get involved in this some way no matter what. If it really gets to the full end game that a Bitcoin maxi would believe it would get to right. So at the end of the day, you're still investing in a income producing asset or earnings producing asset or cash flow producing asset, whatever you want to say. The other thing I would say is like people have been saying the PE on these things is way too high for as long as I've been in finance. And if you look at some of these like the Mag Sevens, like their earnings growth has proved it right. Like and if you look at Google, it's at the lowest PE it's ever had. So like the market isn't as crazy or stupid as people make it out to be. I mean, obviously there's also one thing that I wanted to go back to that we didn't touch on is like the difference between price inflation, CPI versus like money printing and like the, the actual level of M2 in the market. So like some people are like, CPI is not really inflation. Inflation is like how much dollars are created in the inflation of the money supply, which also like you, you were talking before about nominal versus real returns. Like you talk to a normie on the street, like 99% of people have no, have no clue what the hell a nominal versus real return is. And I think that that really, I think finally started to change in 2020 because I mean, all of us are probably around the same age. Like inflation was not anything like most people really were concerned about. Like you need to keep it low enough that people don't notice it, but you want it to be slightly positive in, in the current economic world view. Like that's the goal, right? And like that was blown out of the water. And one thing I would say, like going back, like talking about the denominator on the debt, the thing that really does matter is like government spending as a percent of like total spending. And like if you look at a chart of what that actually looks like over time, I can see if I can find it. Like that is what really caused the inflation number. So like in 2020 into 2021, those numbers went absolutely bonkers. And that's when you saw inflation RIP. And I don't think they're going to make that same mistake again if they ever do that. That's it. That's all I'll say on that front, I guess, Sorry. So it's all good. I was trying to find that chart, but we can move on. Yeah, I was also looking for a chart. It was the one that I'm sure you guys saw the IT went viral like a week ago. Which of the 30 age 30 from like the 1950s I think it was 50s or 70 from it dropped from like 50%. I believe that. Homeowner, Homeowners and married. Married from 30 but underneath it. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. But underneath it was the one that kind of ties in to like everything we're talking about. It shows 1970 and real earnings or earnings versus the price of a house. And it was basically like a parody. And then you see over the 50 years that Delta, and I think that's the embedded real versus nominal, while people's wages have increased at a couple percentage points per year, the real cost of the home, you know, the natural good that everyone needs has just like come completely run past that. I think that's like the crux to your point post 2020 people feel. Yeah, yeah, No, think the housing market is so freaking out of whack right now. Like if there's anything that's broken in the economy right now, it's that's the it's the housing market is frozen. If you bought a house before 2020, mid 20/20/20, like 21 and before they started hiking rates like that is the haves and have nots. So like we were talking about inflation before. Like one thing I like to point out to people is like if you owned a home and you have a low interest rate, like you did not suffer anywhere near the level of inflation as anyone who is renting or was trying to buy a home. Like if you had a fixed rate mortgage, you were sitting pretty. Not only did your expenses not go up, but your balance sheet actually went up over that time period because houses went through the roof. And like 60 something percent of people in the US own their home. So like that's the other part. Like a lot of things on inflation, like people like focus on stuff. But like yes, a lot of people were hurt, particularly younger generation like we were just talking about. But there's plenty of people who are older boomers who who own their house or have a mortgage, who own the house outright or have a have a fixed rate mortgage sub 3%. And like they don't give a shit that rates went up. They don't care about any of this. All they see is their house out value went up and they're sitting pretty. Yeah. No, it's interesting because James, you mentioned two things. One on the equity markets with P multiples. I hear you. People have been talking about that for a long time and some people have come on the show before and, you know, said there's a crash imminent in equity markets and I just don't buy it. I feel like I I index to the side that everything goes up because there's just, you know, the denominator is expanding, right? You just have more liquidity entering the system. You have this post GFC low interest rate for a while, 0 interest rate policy. You had Trump talking this week. He he's like, but he said something like with a pen stroke, we can get rid of a trillion dollars of spending because he just wants rates to be as low as possible. So it's like we're going to get back to lower rates at some point. I just can't imagine a scenario. Maybe I'm naive, but I just can't imagine a scenario where we see like a significant equity market crash. You have so much passive flows going in there. To your point, people, most people are just like setting up the four O 1K match or they, you know, put money into an IRA each year. They put it into the market and they forget about it and move on with their lives. They don't really care what PE multiple they're buying at. And they just know that it's better than leaving their their dollars in a checking account earning 0%. So I agree with you there. I think, you know, PE multiples, while they're stretched historically, I don't really see like a big equity crash happening. And then the second piece on the home ownership, yeah, a lot of people have been pointing out that home prices are falling, but it's very regional. Regional, I mean here where I'm in the Philadelphia area, Michael likes to make fun of me. I'm just getting like Max bid by boomers. We're going to put a hold on. We're going to put a hold on the home purchase for now. We're going to be renting out of the city. But yeah, I mean these homes just like fly off the market. They're under contract and you know, like same day, sometimes two or three days later and gone to a couple of open houses over the past like several months. And a lot of times the buyers are the people that are interested in buying are in there and they're like 50-60, seventy years old and they're just like all cash offers, no inspection. So the housing market is cooked. Unfortunately I'm I'm on that chart with the the declining home ownership and guess it'll be like that for a little bit. Yeah, so few things. One, I'm going to share my screen because I did find that chart I wanted to share, if that's OK. So this this, this shout out to Colin Roche, who is he runs his own ETF. He's like a economics guy. But like that chart, this is the federal government expenditures as a percent of gross GDP like this, this is the, this is like if this happens again, if we ever get levels like that, like that's what causes like, I think the severe levels of inflation. And then going back to what you were talking about with the, the housing market, I mean, people are like, we need to cut rates and, you know, save all these things and we're going to save money. Like one it take doesn't take into account that like a decent amount of the debt is already like revalued, like it's, it's not really going to be affected too much. Like it's already like recycled every year, what have you. The other part of it is like we cut rates a bunch of times last fall and you know what happened to mortgage rates over that time period, they went up. Like we cut rates and mortgage rates went up. So if we're expecting inflation, like things aren't necessarily going to get better. And then the final thing I wanted to say is like, if you look at PES, the other part of it is like these companies are unlike any other company we were seeing for the mag Sevens, the growth, the amount of money that they're pulling out, the low required of investments. Like if you compare it to historical PES, like you're looking at like. Manufacturing firms like these softwares, the service companies have like very little overhead besides like office buildings and paying their employees and then they're just like charging insane margins on what they're building. So you look at the mag 7 it's like they're just like also like it's in finance. You never say this time is different, but really like these companies are this time is different. Like nothing is. People have been saying this since like 2010, right? 2011 when things really started heating up. People are like, oh, this is it. It can't keep going. And these guys just keep producing numbers. And now we have the AI boom and maybe that'll finally be, you know, the top of it. Like it's the the CapEx expenditure on AI isn't going to be justified by the future earnings. Who knows? But things are like kind of softening a little bit. But yeah, I the housing market is the one area that I'm like, I don't know, man. Like things are just not right. It's just it's, it's unfair to anyone who's trying to buy a home. All right, so check this out. We just launched Bitcoin Dynasty Trust Services here at Onramp. I'm excited about this. It's really blending the best of both worlds on the custody side and with South Dakota trust law. If you come to our homepage here on rampbitcoin.com, you can read more about it just launched. You click that banner and then here's some things you quickly call out. No, 40% of state tax at the federal level if you set up a trust, perpetual asset protection against creditors maintaining privacy. I know that's a big one for Bitcoin owners and then other things as well. You can tap in with Bitcoin back loans without having to sell your Bitcoin and really just a nice sleek solution. We launched it just last week. We released a podcast to go into detail. And so if you're looking for just a better way to plan for inheritance, protect your assets from creditors and optimize for taxes, great solution here. You can reach out to us directly on the homepage and book a consultation or you can reach out to me, Jackson, at on rampbitcoin.com. Be happy to speak to you and tell you a little bit more about the product here. Yeah, now I hear you there for sure. So a couple of the things I know we have a little bit of time left here, maybe a throw it over to the group, see if there's any strong inclination of where we go. But James, I was curious if there were anything or anything else worth mentioning. We briefly touched on the 13 FS, but I'm more so curious if like anything stood out to you. Brian brought up the Harvard allocation and you said, you know, could be spot long, could be basis trade, but I'm curious if like anything else stood out so far. I know the deadline's tomorrow. So we haven't seen every everything yet. And you can also maybe pair that in with just like general thoughts on demand going forward, you know, through the end of the year if you want to. And then one other topic I think could be interesting if you want to get into it is just ETF demand versus let's say Bitcoin treasury companies or what the new term, the DATS, the digital asset treasuries. Yeah, if you want to talk about that as well, I'd be curious like any thoughts on appetite there? But yeah, maybe just start on the 13 F stuff. Yeah, let's start on the 13 F stuff. I mean, like you said, we don't have everything. We probably won't have everything or I won't be able to see everything until like after market closes tomorrow. So realistically next week, and I'm actually off next week, but we're going to be covering this a bit, but there's a few big names in there. The only really big one that's new that like stands out has already been mentioned at Harvard. Again, we don't know exactly what the position is. The one thing the trend is continued advisors are increasing their allocations, which makes sense. It's what we've been calling for to happen. It's been our biggest bull case for ETF demand this year. I don't know if I necessarily expected the amount of demand to come from Bitcoin treasury companies as has come. So I cover ETFs, you know, but like that's been a huge part of it. And they're also the etherium Datcos are going crazy. So are the sole salon. There's Datcos for everything essentially, and it's getting a little bit out of hand. I'm fully with you guys. Like right now, this is a flywheel spinning in a positive direction for the underlying asset prices. There's no, there's I, I, I, I don't know how much or any way to better, but some of these, at least one, if not multiple of these firms in some world are going to cause the flywheel to spin the opposite direction and what they're doing, they're going to, it's not going to be pretty. But going back to the advisor side of things on the 13 FS, the one thing that a lot of people don't understand about advisor networks, wealth platforms, brokerage platforms, like an ETF is launched and it's not that everyone can buy it immediately. What you guys are familiar with this already? There's like a process for getting approved on the platform. And the way I've been liked, I've liked to describe to different people is it's almost like a stoplight. There's three different levels. There's red, nobody can buy this, walk away. Stop. I don't care what your reasoning is, you can't buy it on a platform. There's a bunch of people like that, including Vanguard, which is very strange to me, which you can go down that rabbit hole if we want. There's plenty of other huge platforms with trillions of dollars in assets and wealth on them. Or you just cannot buy it underneath circumstance. The vast majority of these wealth platforms where advisors are for the most part is in this middle range where it's either A, they need to meet all these requirements, whether it's like some level of wealth, some level of income, some willingness and ability to take risk needs to be met before you can say they can buy this. Or the client needs to come to you specifically and say like, OK, I want exposure to Bitcoin, you know, give me exposure to Bitcoin solicited versus unsolicited. So that's the middle ground. And then the final green light, if you will, is like, I can just recommend it to my client in a 3% allocation. And like, I think this process of moving things from red to yellow, yellow to green over the next year plus is what's going to drive a lot of the demand for the ETFs. Obviously, the price performance right now has also brought in retail, but we're still seeing growing demand from those investment advisors and those those platforms come in. And a lot of the biggest platforms in the world still are not allowing their advisors to buy it. And you talk to a lot of these advisors, in many cases, they're like, yeah, I own it, but I don't recommend it to my clients. Exactly. I love this chart. This is this. This stable is so good. Yeah, exactly. This is from Tougher Digital and we've pulled this up on the show a few times in the past few months, but this is a perfect encapsulation of everything you're talking about, like the just building out the plumbing and giving people that green light column goes slower, but it just goes slower than you would anticipate like. And so this is the their most recent one, which is a week or so ago and they've been doing it sort of quarterly and the only changes over the past quarter were those Gray shaded boxes. So like there was no new entrance to like the fully unrestricted exposure area, but just people slowly sort of moving in that direction. Yeah, it's, it's, it's positive. The direction of flow is positive. It's just this is stratified. These are, you know, massive oil tanker ships like it's, they don't move quick. Yeah. And that's where I think we're on the same side of the belief of we end up in this naturally elongated cycle because the flows are still in process of getting turned on from the FAA side, but also the banking side. When you think about credit unions all the way into the big four, what's their game plan, who they're going to use for custody, sub custody building, Maybe a little bit of fun stuff to chat about because it doesn't get talked about enough. And I'm sure you'll have deep thoughts is a like you and Eric who ends up more further down the orange filling and just like believe where it goes because he shared a little bit of interesting insights into part of the the book you guys are working on on like what let's play this out post ETF world. And what if Bitcoin becomes money or it takes a further like a bigger piece of what people are expecting? Because this is uncharted territories when you think about it, right, like the chart that shows the Black Rock ETF and exposure is just an insane chart. And it's like, well, where does that go? What's the top? And part of that is OK, well, how does custody play out? Is this all set on Coinbase? Because there's already heartburn in small circles about 800 billion sitting at Coinbase, right. Well, what is it 1.2? Is it 1.8? Like where do banks end up sitting? How do individuals like, how do you think about as this asset grows, it just starts to insert itself in the kind of like traditional space? And you know that that I don't call it asking for a top, but like everyone would believe there's it's kind of an interesting proposition because you either have to your point, the hardcore Bitcoin maximus believe this thing becomes money. And that's already like somebody, somebody put their flag in the ground there and then everyone else hasn't actually said anything about like what the hell is happening? And where does this go? Because you can look at Amazon and be like, OK, this is where it goes. You can look at Google, Microsoft, but there's actually no way to like underwrite Bitcoin except for it becomes money or it's just a speculative asset. I can make a little bit of money on when you really like bring it down. Yeah, so I mean it they're they're absolutely massive. So one thing I do want to point out, as I was talking about, I said over 130 billion, these things now have over 150 billion in assets. So as of today, it's like 150 three 1:00-ish. And then as far as how much they own, the ETFs alone own 1.3 million Bitcoin. So, and then as you mentioned, a huge chunk of that is actually custody by Coinbase. So one of the things I've been saying and I thought was going to happen is there was going to be diversified custodians. We've seen that some of the filers have basically said they're going to use multiple custodians, which usually you, you don't have to worry about in traditional assets. The only example where we've seen this happen is gold. And honestly, that makes complete sense, right? Like there are ETS out there that use multiple custodians or there's ETFs in gold that compete because there's their vault is in Switzerland where your vault is in New York or London. Most of them are technically in London. There was even one that was in Perth, Australia for a little while. So yeah, these things have $1.3 million, one point 3,000,000 Bitcoin. And at what point is too big, right? I mean, I don't know, my my view is kind of like the protocol is built in such a way that this isn't going to matter for the underlying Bitcoin, but maybe it does at some point. And I would argue that like Coinbase is to bring a term from Tradfi, it's a a sippy, it's a systemically important financial institution for the crypto and ETF world, I mean for the crypto and Bitcoin world. But yeah, I think people are cognizant of it. I think they're planning to to move these things around, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, this ties some some into that where you're referencing them out. So you see iShares, this is our own version of the the Bloomberg Terminal, the on ramp terminal just kind of breaks down analytics specifically to Bitcoin. But this is the key thing. We're doing something the other day for a different show and I was looking at the numbers. So this is top 100, it's including MSTR and the ETFs. But what's interesting is it shows 15% of total BTC, but it's actually 20% because it takes into account that, you know, by estimates whether it's Satoshi's coins and then lost coins, there's roughly 4 million out of the 19.6 that I believe are, you know, available today. So there's 20% already. We're only at 120 K and we just talked about banks and ETF's are barely online. This narrative will only pick up and you know, we focus some stuff on that on our side of the business, but it's just an interesting dynamic to see play out and how it'll how it'll naturally grow. Our thesis is like over time, as individuals get more exposure, they start to just like understand the underlying and they're going to seek out better solutions. In the same way that maybe when you or another individual starting a cash app and then a different third party exchange, they naturally take those assets off because they heard about, you know, Mount Gox or Celsius or Block Fire FTX. And I think that's just going to be a big thing that in my personal opinion, watching what happened in 2022, I think very a lot of people specifically in traffic, I had no idea how bad it was. And the, the concepts are going to like effectively repeat itself because you have this digital bearer asset, which is effectively just data the private keys to secure them. And we all know that, you know, the PII is out from everyone. Fidelity is the worst to pick on because it's Fidelity and they lost all their clients, PII. And so like nobody is absolved of that risk of losing the data and it's going to take another massive swing for enough of the market to understand, well, maybe we should centralized this asset. The problem is nobody's gotten fired for going to Coinbase. And that's why you have these ETFs there and institutional investors just, you know, basically defaulting to Coinbase without asking anything. Yeah, I mean, you, you said nobody gets fired for going to Coinbase. That's kind of like in in the ETF world, no one gets fired for bringing a BlackRock or Vanguard ETF. Like it's just like easy to do it. So I think by having BlackRock in this space was extremely helpful for the space overall because they are like arguably the only other person that would have I, I don't even think they would have been as big of a deal. But the only other, yeah, the, the biggest person to get in the space to help it from an ETF and asset management point of view did it when BlackRock and Larry Fink did it. So yeah, I think that's absolutely completely massive. So I, I was going to say something else, but I lost my train of thought, thinking about the Larry Fink side of things. What? What were you saying just before that talking about? Some of the banks and just exposure. No, this is what I remember. Yeah, if if, if the banking system went through what the blockchain, crypto, Bitcoin system went through in 20/22/2021 like it never, it wouldn't have been able to recover like the. Which is the, which is the key point I referenced to Eric where like, if you listen, that was where he kind of like was going in a full circle because it's like, well, what happens to Coinbase? He's like, well, the, the, the government would step in and I referenced, will they print more Bitcoin? And he said yes, because that is so like built into our DNA that that's why to go back to that point where you show 2020 and that we'll never do there by definition of doing that, we will do it again. Because when you insert that number of monetary units, it doesn't all go to productive assets. So naturally it either D levers because the debt isn't, you know, productive or sustainable, or you have to insert more debt. That's why this is just a self fulfilling like continue of debasement. And that's the concept of there are no bailouts. And that you probably haven't seen this chart, which will probably be fascinating because you see most charts is the total Bitcoin supply. And we're a vast percentage of it, like call it 50% sits in these little plastic devices. And it's not because people are Luddites or ideological. It's because this was a bottoms up industry and all the people had to understand if you trusted a third party, you ultimately were going to get rugged on a long enough time horizon. And everyone's saying this time is different when the hardcore people are saying I don't know about that. And the funny part is you've never seen it being bottoms up or the most sophisticated. But by nature of being longest in the market, you are the most sophisticated because you've had the most time to look at the problem. It's why those people you interviewed are over 50%. It's not that they're just crazy, it's that they've just looked at it and their life got a lot easier by being over allocated to the asset. The other part to that over allocation is a lot of them were early or at least relatively early. And rather than it's not necessarily maybe that they're they're allocating still a bunch of money to it. It's that they bought early and just haven't sold and it's outperformed and crushed every other asset in their portfolio, which was another huge part of it. It was like, look, I haven't really been buying Bitcoin as much over the last few years. I don't really buy it, but I also haven't sold it. So it's now 30% of My Portfolio or more, 30% of my net worth, you name it. So I think that's another huge part of it is like people who buy this again, they don't turn back. Like it's, there are plenty of examples of people buying and selling at a top because they don't believe in it. But there's plenty of people who buy it and just hold it forever in one of those wallets or, or actually on an exchange like Coinbase or what have you. But yeah. Yeah, there's nowhere else to go. The only downside is I can't live in my Bitcoin, so we got to do something about that at some point. But yeah, no, I hear you. And people like to hear that they're still early. So if you're listening to this, don't worry, you're still early to Bitcoin. But seriously though, it kind of is like it certainly is early. And it's even justified, James, by some of the points you made earlier that a lot of firms are not even participating in this and would love to hear your thoughts. I know we're wrapping soon, but Vanguard, you said you might have some takes on Vanguard. Why are they not? Why are they not on board yet? Are they are they coming around to it soon or are they going to lose business because of that? What are your thoughts? I mean, they've unquestionably lost some business because of it. Like if you held so for example, I can tell you, I'll be frank, I had GBTC in an IRA on Vanguard and in order to like rotate out of GPTCI had to move my IRA from them. So I had to move a bunch of my money from being a Vanguard client. And I've talked to plenty of other people who have done something similar. Look, Vanguard's going to be fine. They are the most successful asset management company in the world, bar none. They own like 30% of the US market. They are taking in billions of dollars every single day. Like it dwarfs what's happening in in Bitcoin for the most part. So they are going to be fine. That's what I want to say that up front, but I think this whole crypto, Bitcoin, not allowing them to trade on their platform was a huge own goal. Like the platform is self-directed. So if somebody's if you want to go out and like not allow people to invest in like a triple leverage ETF or something along those lines, you want to make sure people understand what they're investing in. They're playing with the power tool. They could chop their hand off something along those lines, but to outright disallow it is like it in my view. It went too far. I think they'll walk it back at some point. Do I think they'll ever launch a Bitcoin ETF or I do not? They don't believe in gold. They don't have a gold ETF. They do allow you to invest in gold ETF on their platform, but they are very much like the Bogle heads. The Jack Bogle view of things is cash flows and creating earnings and that's the way that you value an asset. And I like I said, I used to be 100% in that camp. I'm still mostly in that camp, but I also believe in a way to hedge against currency debasement. But yeah, so the like the ethos of Vanguard is such that they would never really do that. That said, they've done plenty of things that are against the ethos. They've kind of got into PEA little bit because they're trying to become an advisory business in in many regards. And like I think ultimately they're going to allow people to buy and trade Bitcoin ETFs and other digital asset ETFs on their platform at some point. When is it going to happen? I don't know, but I just view it as, you know, I think it was an own goal for them to, you know, say nobody can buy this on our platform. Yeah, the game theory ties into everyone having to opt in at some format. I know we won't have time here, but it's just worth pointing out like the capital market specifically on being able to lend against the asset and cross collateralization is just going to allow for a lot more liquidity to enter the space. Whether it's the cost of capital from banks never really being in the space to not have to sell your Bitcoin to having an in an equity like exposure via an ETF. And then using some of that lift and growth into investing in other equities. Like it makes zero sense to not let your clients have access to that because that growth is just going to go somewhere else. Yeah. I mean, Jackson, good for you. I mean, Bill Pulte made that announcement about basically saying that you should you should consider crypto and digital assets on your as a part of the client's balance. I mean, you can't exactly get a loan against it, but it should be considered when when getting a loan, which I guess is like one step forward at least. And I mean, there's plenty of other platforms out there now that are allowing you to, you know, borrow on an over collateralized basis to use it. So you can't live in it, but you can use it to get exposure to Fiat if you want to actually buy A to buy a house with it. One day, James, thanks for the kind words man. It's going to get me through the rest of the day. My wife will be happy to hear that. I'll have to clip that and send it to her. It's going to be OK. We're going to have a house one day, don't worry. We basically have a segment of Jackson's ills and being a millennial in trying to afford a home and and housing in in 2025. Whether or not to lever up. In whether or not to lever up. Or hey dude, I have. I have so many friends that are in a similar camp where they just been outbid repeatedly. Like no matter what they do it's funny. Like if you were in any part of the country you'd probably be fine though. Like if you were not in like the Northeast or like every other part of the country, the housing market is either shitting the bed or like at least not doing super hot. So you just happen to live in like the worst spot right now. Everyone else wants to live where you want to live, pretty much. Yeah, Michael wants us to move to Texas, but Michael's actually going to move to the Northeast. He just doesn't know that yet. But it was a fun one. I know you got to run. I want to be respectful of your time. But yeah, James, thanks a bunch. We'll include your Twitter X handle in bio for people to check you out there. Anywhere else you want people to get in touch with you? Really it's just if, if anybody hears a, if anybody listening is a Bloomberg Terminal client, that's where like 90 plus percent of anything I do is going to be. I share a decent amount of it on Twitter. I interact on Twitter pretty frequently. But like my real in depth analysis and research and tools that I'm building are all going to be available for anyone who has a Bloomberg Terminal. So that's where you can find me. And then I'm also, I'm on Bloomer TV and radio a decent bit, but you won't be able to find me there. But I'm also, I'm a regular recurring guest on Laura Shin's Unchained. Where do we do a show called Bits and Bits? But really it's Twitter for the average person. What you said it's at the start is where you can find me. Awesome, man. We'll have to meet up sometime in the Philadelphia area. When you wake, make your way down here. Yeah, sounds good, love. I love Philly. All right, man. Philly, the city. Thank you, Sarah, this is bum. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Rat Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private client advisors.