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It all comes down to computers communicating. The information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of OK, this is actually foundational technology. What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing that that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. All righty boys, welcome back to Final Settlement. Today is Monday, March 31st, 2025. We're joining you on a Monday. This is we're recording on a Monday morning. It's going to come out on a Monday and this is a new format for the show. We're going to be doing a little bit more often. So we'll still have guests sort of every other week or every few weeks. But when we don't have a guest, it'll be us 3. So my Co host, Liam Nelson, Michael Tanguma partners at early riders, Bitcoin denominated venture fund operating with Bitcoin as a hurdle, right. And what we'll what we'll be doing with these sort of internal rips is just talking through sort of deals of the week, news items that we find relevant. And so we have a a big list to get through today. But Liam, anything else on this this new format? You've been sort of spearheading all the things we're going to talk about. You've built the list. We have a big list. Yeah, Liam, Liam is very excited and the reason why Brian and I are about to start, I think doing 3 shows a week across, you know, between these pods and with Brahm if if you, if you haven't checked out the new broadcast or, or broadcast as Brahm likes to call it a bi weekly show. But Liam was pumped because he's been looking at a lot of the deals, the conversation, seeing people interested in building this space coming to us, but also interested in investing and then working and realize that like every other week, if we have a notable person building or looking at an area of the market that covers like 1/2. But the reality is there's a lot happening every week when it comes to, you know, it's specifically with this new administration around Trad 5 insurance, just everyone coming into digital asset space. Stables are obviously a hot thing. And so there's a heavy influx of deals, momentum and activity happening. And so we figured a weekly would be good to to jam on all that. Yeah, 100%. I've been following the Bitcoin industry for a really long time here in in the digital assets industry as well and ultimately joined early riders because I thought that there was a little bit too much capital destruction happening in the space by a lot of firms out there denominating their investments in dollars and not aiming to return additional Bitcoin back to investors. And so the goal of this show was both to touch on the number of really great things happening in the space as well as other things that maybe don't have quite as much, you know, of a sound foundation behind them. So with that, wanted to touch on, you know, what we're seeing as the new ICO craze of 2025 now, which is the rise of Bitcoin treasury companies. So with that, this morning Hot 8 and Eric Trump launched American Bitcoin to set a new standard in Bitcoin mining. So Hot 8 is a high performance computing. Company. That also mines Bitcoin and they are moving their Bitcoin A6 mining into a separate subsidiary. HUD 8 owns 80% of it. It's not immediately clear who owns the remaining 20%, but the plan is to have two business lines separate and eventually have the American Bitcoin company go public and mine and stockpile as much Bitcoin as possible. Notably, Eric Trump joined as the chief strategy officer after recently joining the board of SO. Recently discovering what Bitcoin was. Exactly. So I'll turn it over to you guys. Any initial thoughts on, you know, this strategy, how you think this will turn out? We'd love to hear some some initial thoughts here. Yeah, I think, I think ultimately this stuff gets conflated and people just don't do it's, it's nuanced in the sense, A, everything's good for Bitcoin. B, every business will end up holding that coin. They'll use it at its hurt as its hurdle rate. They'll sweep productive cash flows into Bitcoin. The reality is that's not what's happening right now. What's happening is it's a very inorganic demand for Bitcoin, these corporate treasuries, because ultimately it's a sign of, it's a looting of the financial system. When you really break it down, there's free capital, there's excess capital. It can't get into Bitcoin and I don't even think I think it can get into Bitcoin. I just ultimately think people like buying things that they understand versus things that they don't understand. And equity like exposure on top of Bitcoin, it's a lot easier sell there's. Less friction too, like if you have a particular mandate. So point being and all that is where I think it's worth calling out and it's important to call out less because sure, Bitcoin price goes up. So everything's good for Bitcoin, but it's very bad for the individual that is trying to purchase more Bitcoin because ultimately that price going up again, being inorganic, they're going to ultimately own less Bitcoin in the future than they would. And then this, the other second order, and this could be even more importantly where you tied it into Liam, is on the ICO Stuff is, at the end of the day, like this stuff's a gateway for people to get exposure and interest in Bitcoin. So again, everything's good for Bitcoin. But it also means that these individuals will ultimately hold less Bitcoin than they would have had if they just would have bought the Bitcoin instead of the altcoin or the ticker GMEMSTR, whatever it is. Because the thing that most people forget is at some point when you're in the casino, you may be up, but generally when you're driving home, you don't have any money. And so people are up right now, but nobody you talk to has really realized again. And if they have, that's really great and amazing. But that's what we call top 2% of traders. In the same way top 2% of people play in the NBA or NFL. Those aren't people that need to be out there speculating. That's kind of what Bitcoin Souls for is that you can park your money in a form of currency that you don't have counterparty risk and you can have it sitting and cold storage. So anyway, I think it's just an important thing to bring up because nobody's talking about it ever gets excited about this enterprise adoption. And it's just kind of like until like Apple and productive companies start stacking. I'm not. It's not really interesting to me. Yeah, I, I think 1 angle I, I agree with everything you said in terms of the longer term trajectory here. Is every Bitcoin's going to hold or every company's going to hold Bitcoin operate with it as their their hurdle rate? But there's, you know, I think we're a ways away from that being every company on earth recognizing that. But the, the one angle I find interesting with, you know, the proliferation of these, you know, quote, UN quote Bitcoin treasury companies is like, and, and maybe you guys disagree with this, but I think in a, in a particular jurisdiction, I do view the sort of premium around like the micro strategy playbook as somewhat of a winner take all in the sense that like you don't need to own 20 different companies that have a Bitcoin treasury strategy and be playing that for some sort of premium or like, you know, indirect leverage on Bitcoin. Because ultimately, like you just don't need that many different, you know, if we're actually relating them to all coins, like you don't need all these different altcoins, You just need the one that is, you know, specific to a jurisdiction. And so I think that's what you're seeing with like Metaplan in Japan, like you need one in each jurisdiction or in each sort of public market to be that, that friction free bridge for Trapfy Capital. And So what I think a lot of these companies that are getting, you know, into the fray now making these announcements are going to struggle with is like, why would someone own your stock as opposed to MSCR if they live in the United States, they're operating in US public markets. I just don't see the need for all of these different, you know, strategies basically. So that that's that's one thing that I sort of struggle with sort of medium term about how this plays out. The other component just about, you know, the the Trump party deal and Michael's going to get mad at me, but I think we have to give some flowers to our boy aboard Jason Lowry. This is, you know. I can't believe you own that book. I didn't even realize when you brought it up. It's. A collector's item, Michael. It's a collector. 'S item. It's a collector. I don't even think you can get this in hard copy anymore. I think this is a collector's item. It's a scarce asset, if you will. But no, I, I mean, I'm being somewhat facetious, but it is interesting to see, you know, not direct members of the administration. But yeah, the president's son is getting into mining, has some sort of ownership stake. We don't know the exact details, but this is early, early innings of of, you know, the software thesis playing out Mission State's getting into mining. Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit different because it's not KYC free. They know that it's in a specific company and you know, it's, I guess it's based here in the US, but you know, there, there are different ways, especially if the administration kind of changes that the company could be targeted. But I guess my point is like they, you know, if let's just assume a world in which software is real nations need to stack cash rate. This would be a a a sly roundabout way of doing so, as opposed to just like nationalizing ASICS and hash rate. I don't even understand what software is, but I guess that's the idea is that you're just what have done forever is accumulate energy. Yeah, and the infrastructure needed to mine. Yeah, but that's what they all do today. I. Mean. That's a thesis. It's not that crazy. People like to shit on on Lowry all the time, but it's that. Could be a thesis if that's what sovereigns already have always done forever. It's his thesis on this new technology. My favorite part about software is you know where people came in because if they cite it like, you know, they came in in like 2021, like nobody pre 2021, like whatever, bring up software because like the concepts are just there's I don't there's nothing normal. If that's the that, if that's the theory that like sovereigns will stack Bitcoin, well, that's just Bitcoin's thesis. And then if you need a mine, Bitcoin I think. The part that people struggle with and they contend the thesis is like he basically calls it, you know, a piece of weapons technology and in order to like protect cyberspace, it So it gets a little heady in terms of like the protocol securing all forms of digital information at some, you know, at some point. So I think that's that's what people contend and and take issue with. But I to your point, like the underlying sort of, you know, theory around just nation states are going to need to secure hash rate. Like, yeah, I think people aren't necessarily calling out that aspect of the thesis. You got to read the book, Michael. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, from the investable opportunity, if anybody's listening, thinking about hosting or getting in minors, that's like the pure reason we're not to get involved for, for being involved in the space for a while is, you know, folks on this podcast are like you talk to an individual that gets interested in the space and then you think, well, I can buy Bitcoin via energy production and hosting facilities at a price less than the spot price. And 9.5 times out of 10, that's not true. There's a lot of counterparty risk associated with it. But then I think within the past two plus years, the thesis not of software, but just that nation states want to accumulate Bitcoin and using their energy production from a sovereign level has taken place where it has been highly economical for anybody on the retail level to come in. And you can see this on the on rent terminal or any chart that shows the hash rate. And it via our understanding, you know, countries in the Middle East have been mining with nuclear for the past at least 12 to 24 months. And that's kind of again shown in the data when you look at the crazy hash rate, that's just kind of like on parabolic the past 24 months. Yeah. I mean the countries like that are in the Middle East or Bhutan using their own hydro mining. They're, they're just going to be able to out produce you and, and they don't necessarily, they don't have to be super cognizant of the marginal cost and they can continue the line at loss for any period of time. And so over just a longer time frame, individual mining or individual miners that try to get into that industry are just going to have a tough time. Yeah, that's a wild chart Brian pulled up. Yeah, hash. It's going crazy. There's a bit of a disconnect between price and hash hash rate right now. So yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I think you're right, Michael. I think it's, it's been happening behind the scenes for several years now of, of nation states securing hash rate. But I will say that like before Lowry started talking about it in depth, like I don't think many people were talking, you know, that publicly about nation states accumulating hash rate. Yeah, if you keep this up, I think that the reason where I just joke around the Lowry stuff is I've never really read it. And but like there was a lot of language in language and is important in how you phrase terms and and ultimately pre this administration, there was A and even post, you know, you never know where things can go. You have to use the right words and and calling things war related and and just like referencing it is always a delicate or you know, you just kind of look at what are the intentions. But what's interesting about this chart, it's you going to go back to 2020 and everything kind of gone parabolic, right? When you think about amount of like money being injected into the system, but then ultimately the amount of assets, commodities and the growth, right? So like you look at this and you can like overlay. So there's bitcoins price, there's the hash rate, which is a form of commodity energy. But then you look at gold's price. If you had to overlay that, gold would go parabolic like that. Also gold accumulation and all this stuff, everyone makes it really difficult from geopolitics and macro. And it's like just ultimately you have an abundance of currency, Fiat currency and then you ultimately are going from a pure sovereign all the way to the individual have to protect it by holding something that nobody can make more of. And, and, and that's all it is in like in because you have to transfer one good to another from a civilization perspective. If you want to interact, if you're a country and you have certain things you export, well, if you want to import, you know, you're going to need a form of money. In the same way, if you're an individual and you go out and produce value in the world, you don't want it, you know, debased. It's actually this whole thing's kind of simple. When you really like take a step back, we make it a little bit more difficult than it has to be. Yeah. The other component worth mentioning related to what you just described is like what our friend Bob Burnett often talks about, which is like in a future state, you want hash rate not only scare the network that you are denominating your savings in, but you also want access to block space because block space is also scarce. And so that that is a component of this as well as, you know, you're not just securing it to, you know, secure your investment, you're also securing block space in the future. I don't. Know if I buy into that it's a different conversation, maybe we can have Bob to come on because I think it's just a marketplace for block space. And so you don't have to secure the hash rate. You just have to be able to pay for it because somebody will insert your block in there. So you don't need the hash rate. Like, I think it's a fallacy built into that story of like, we have to secure the hash rate. Like somebody will always take it because if you have a form of borderless unsensible money, you can always deliver it to them to fill you in the block. You don't have to like become. A Yeah, it's fair. We'll have Bob on. Liam, what do you got? This is your show. What's going on in the industry? Where are the happenings? Where is the alpha? Where can we make money? Where are people losing money? Well, one other thing that you mentioned that I just wanted to double click on real fast too is essentially so many of these people coming into this place, coming into the space that are trying to acquire Bitcoin from the corporate perspective. And there really only needs to be a couple people in general that do this because essentially what these companies are is just like buying groups for very cheap debt in order to acquire Bitcoin. And so with that, naturally though, there's going to be a winner take all in terms of the company with the largest balance sheet, most amount of Bitcoin is going to be able to get the cheapest debt in order to acquire Bitcoin, right? And so there can be these other kind of zombie companies that can acquire Bitcoin and they can, you know, see their stock price go up relative to how they never purchased Bitcoin. But it is kind of a winner take all in, in the aspect that you need the cheapest rates and you know, 10100 companies trying to do this isn't necessarily going to offer significant advantages and the marginal improvements will continue to decline. But what we what we hopefully should see is just more companies that are really actually spitting out cash flow, recognizing that this is just the best aspect or the best asset in the world and not just going and trying to financially engineer the balance sheet. I mean the speculative attack does have merits, but it is mostly a winner take all game in that aspect. I'm, I'm really glad you brought that up because it goes back to the ICO stuff. Like, so I, I've had lots of conversations. It's kind of fun to be able to do this because then you can like without sharing the names you get to come back and talk about. I mean, the reality is like certain firms realize that they're like, maybe I don't have a Moat in the future, maybe realize that emerging technologies and deflationary technologies are going to change their business model. So right now, before the the jig is up, you can go raise money to go buy the Bitcoin and then see where it goes. And what you described is some form of that, but also going back to the parallels and it's just fun to talk about because it's spicy. It's like ICO stuff because you look at block one, whoever had the biggest team, the biggest narrative like these firms were able to go raise huge amounts of capital and then some that were smart, you know, put it into to Bitcoin. And if we take the parallel to its extreme, I think Brian's right. Like there's something to the notion of certain like capital markets getting the net new buyer for this, like in their local, whatever local stock market to give people exposure. But again, being spicy, that's like the Etherium in this ICO bridge. It's like it's everything's a derivative from Etherium in the ICO 17 bubble in the same way that everything's kind of derivative of like once that company comes in and shows people the playbook, everyone just goes and like copies it and then everyone has to get more kind of like on the longer end of risk. And so it's just, and then where does that company go? It also reminds me like the the thing that I anchor really back to is the lottery. Do you think that people that are able to take advantage of this arbitrage is like the form of of the lottery? Because ultimately it's somebody maybe not as fair as a lottery, but close enough where the money's not there. Somebody just helped like giving it to them. And over time, when you don't make the money or earn it, it just ends up leaving. It's fleeting because you give somebody knows how to make money money and they take it away, they'll make it back If somebody has never made money money and they'll end up losing it. And I think of like giving somebody a 10,000 BTC treasury in an accelerated fashion because they're able to arbitrage the Fiat system. Like they're probably not going to hold that for 10 years. I don't know what happened, I can't tell you. But when we look back at 10 years ago, Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense because they didn't actually earn the money. Agreed. Agreed on the topic of the lottery. Fracking acquires Ninja Trader for 1.5 billion. Wanted to share this is it just looks like Krakens looking to get more exposure across both the traditional and crypto markets. They offer futures contracts on, you know, both legacy assets as well as cryptocurrencies offering margin, essentially really trying to offer all the tools possible to understand where exactly the market is pretty much at this minute. And there are a ton of tools out there in order to give people what is perceived edges in the day trading aspect. And yeah, just wanted to open this up and see if you guys had any thoughts on this. And you know how this is going to actually help position crack into is it is kind of there are rumors circulating that they're planning to go public. Yeah, this one's interesting. I mean, there's a few things to call out. I think the first that comes to mind for me is sort of a continuation of what these exchange businesses have looked like. And specifically, what I mean is orienting their customers and investors to think short term, when in reality, they should be advising their their customers to buy and hold Bitcoin, but instead what they've angled towards and, and frankly, like, so this is coming from, you know, my experience. I spent a year at Coinbase before joining on ramp. And the one of my largest takeaways was just like realizing that the entire business is, is levered to short termism and getting people to move out the risk curve and trade all these other assets. And so this is just an extension of that. And now into, you know, whatever this ends up looking like in terms of tokenizing rural world assets and having, you know, blockchain enabled derivatives trading for every asset under the sun. All of that is the same story of short termism leverage and frankly like not thinking about the long term best interests of of customers or clients. And so that's, that's probably my biggest take away from this is, is just like this is more of the same, but now blending Tradfi and crypto. But it's, yeah, it's fundamentally what these these companies have have been doing since day one is, is enabling these short term casinos. Yeah. I think, I think there's a lot happening here in the like integration with Tradfi and crypto. We've seen this with E Toro going public and I think they're doing it on the backs of a lot of the momentum and digital assets. Coinbase, I think there is a rumor with acquisition of Darabit, but then also rumors of getting into equity trading, the securitization of equities and, and what that looks like. And so I think there's multiple things that can be true and false. Like 1 is these firms are going to be very lucrative and like from an acquisition perspective, because most people in the space can't really build. So they're going to have to buy, they're going to have to buy infrastructure, but they're going to have to buy the people. Because the thing that everyone doesn't really get, and it's what's really fascinating, what we're doing at Early Riders is we're, there's, there's like 2 funnels of people that want to break into space. There's the people that want to break into Web 3. And then there's people that want to build Bitcoin only long term infrastructure. And we generally take the latter because that's what we're we're building where the former is still quote, UN quote, important for BNY Mellon and State Street and other firms. And there's not really that many people that want to go work for those firms for this. So if you're going to build tokenization, defy whatever you're going to need to go get that infrastructure from and the people. And so crack in Coinbase, the bit goes, the world, I think are going to be really ripe for, you know, returns and if people have invested in them and even like potentially net new companies, because I think we, contrary to what Brian believes and we'll see how this plays out. I think it's still a lot longer to go when it comes to crypto and all that. The other side of that is not true in the sense of from a long term perspective, these won't be winners because they're effectively casinos and where this market goes and we'll have a long way. But if somebody's looking at investing or coming into the space, you want to, you know, do things with principal and also know where the pucks going and where the pucks going is, people are going to wake up and realize, wait, why was they leveraged trading? Why was I doing all these derivatives? Why was I going and you know, whatever they going to start bringing in gain gambling into the thing. It's all just going to like start to mix together digital assets, gambling and you know, equity trading and why didn't I just like spot hold Bitcoin and and then take care of it, protect it and then get the best financial services. And I think the firms that do that over time, it's an accumulation game around the asset manager, the private digital bank, if you will, that is able to do that because then they're going to have be closest to the asset, closest to the money to build the financial products of the future. So it's just a maybe that's just giving an overarching view of the landscape and how to think about it. Like there's interesting opportunities, but they're ultimately short term trades. I wouldn't think of them as cracking as a long term business. The the other component of what you're describing, which just struck me as like doing the the sound long term, sort of more of a wealth management financial planning approach to this industry is way it's de risked in the sense that that's where all the wealth currently exists. Like individuals hold the mass, you know, the mass majority of Bitcoin, they are going to likely continue to hold that into the future and they're going to need financial services around it. They're going to need to be able to protect it into the future. What all these other things are betting on is basically fresh capital coming in because it's whether you know, you're going to go trade, you know, leverage derivatives around Tesla or Ethereum or just actually gamble on sports. Like all of that requires fresh capital to come in. Whereas like, if you're just planning around this existing growing pile of wealth, then it's it's de risked in that sense, because you're not, you're not betting on, you know, the new capital coming in basically is is how I would describe it. 100% I think Leishman kind of had a good point this weekend that resonated with me is like the moment that you add something that's not Bitcoin, you immediately have to turn into a casino because if you add something that's not Bitcoin and maybe you do think about it or do you think it's a long term valuable asset at first? But I think many of these people that you know, are at the Gemini's the crack into the world like all these and even coin bases, they, they all pretty much came out and said, OK, we should have a Bitcoin strategic reserve. We shouldn't have all these other assets in the Bitcoin strategic reserve despite selling them to your customers. And so at that point, they pretty much all realized that Bitcoin is the most valuable long term asset, but they also are trying to sell other products to their customers. And everybody knows that these big exchanges, like the people that run them, just want to acquire more Bitcoin but are willing to sell kind of gambling products in order to get there. And so kind of after you go and focus on assets that are not Bitcoin for a period of time, it ultimately just becomes a game of how can you put as many assets on the platform as possible and drive as much trading revenue as possible. Other than just focusing on Bitcoin, which ultimately will have the most value long term, just because the customers will be able to acquire more Bitcoin and be better off than if they just traded around 24/7. Yeah, I think some of the leashmen, I think that I don't know if it's fully it goes part of the brand of Bitcoin only like to be objective. I don't think you fully have to turn into a casino because like Fidelity started that needle pretty nicely and offered a couple of cryptocurrencies without and still carrying reputational, not damaging fully the reputation. But the point still stands of like, where do you draw it and how do you like have that line of demarcation something that maybe shocked you and it was on the list? I'm kind of bullish on stables. I'm. I'm not. On ramp USD coming soon TM I'm bullish on. Stables so there's a few things I think like this is also where the conflation of crypto and digital assets is going to like stables are the bridge right for dollars into like, you know, digital assets, whatever, But I think it's going to be the bridge in how it keeps and perpetuates digital assets further because it starts to like you start to conflate like Bitcoin to stables to altcoins to what's going to happen on like the tokenized money markets and all these like things that people are going to do is just like securitize that and like people need access to it. And so I think that's how you keep a crypto narrative going because like, where do those block chains, what are those stables run on? And then you can say, well, they're going to do these other things. I think there's just like a long, long way. This is kind of what Brian and I, you know, we chatted about months ago on the dominance. I think I just see how like that can go. But where I'm saying bullish on stables, it's not necessarily bullish. It's just like I can see where there's going to be a lot of opportunity on like both sides of those liquidity spectrum. Maybe going back to the institutional and banking side, it's just the notion of Tether still the dominant currency pair with BTC and when it comes to trading. And the reality is that happened because you have to have settlement of when you're market makers of like, you know, from an OTC perspective and moving capital around. So that's stable is such an important function. And in the US, if we're going to build capital markets around that, well then like naturally Fidelity, which came out last week and had a pilot that they announced or not, they announced it got leaked. But then we know banks and other firms are going to be doing this because naturally, if you're going to be able to custody asset, well, if you're going to offer trading, you're going to want to net settle within minutes. And and so there's a whole angle there being closest to the capital, if you're a financial institution to get in, redeem those units and then you have the deposits to do other things with them. But then on the flip side of it, really tying into the bridge acquisition, it's this notion of just like interchange, right? Because you used to have these other rails where dollars had to pass through. When you think about, you know, Visa, MasterCard, Amex and it's we're still a ways away. And it's in my mind, Mary is similar with like Bitcoin usage from a buying coffee or buying anything like you have to find the killer, not only application, but just making that experience so seamless that it's better than everything we have today, which is still, I think far in advance because it's pretty easy to click your phone and just pay. But where I'm going with this is you can imagine in your bank account if this is all coming to fruition in your bank account, you have BTC and you're able to get into USD and then you're able to move to pay your mortgage and bypass all the fees associated and still save in an inflationary environment, right? Or you're able to go send it via Venmo when like Venmo has lock in and the cash app has its lock in. But imagine now you have there is interoperable, I can start to see how this like naturally just like merges, which is very bullish for Bitcoin when you think about it, because it goes back to the tether use case for the past 10 years is like the closer you can get to a digital dollars, the closer you can get to a digital gold. So that flow just starts to like work through And I think it's pretty, it's pretty positive for BTC and just adoption of digital like Bitcoin. Basically does everyone need a stable coin though? Like I guess that's the part I struggle with is like does each how many issuers do we need or do do eventually we just adopt various? I like it because I think it just goes back to free banking and everyone is trying to vie for those assets and the custody of those units, right? Like everyone's fighting for deposits, whether it's BTC or dollars, whether they know it or not. Like that's what a bank is. And so the integrity of the brand coupled with the integrity of the balance sheet and how they back it, that's why I'm like convinced independent of any regulatory requirement, stables are going to eventually have to offer some form of yield on them. They'll probably happen offshore first or it is happening offshore and then and then they'll be backed by BTC and that's like the end state. I can't believe I'm talking about stables right now. I hadn't really thought much of what cared about them, but I've just been hearing like I've been in these rooms now with these bankers and all these people that are building and interested. And then you see what Fidelity is doing and you see like ultimately what tethers doing in the amount of treasury demand. And you have to kind of like look and see what's happening there. And well, it's like unsexy, you know, private public key cryptography on a dollar. There's a reality of those flows of capital matter tremendously. And if that's going to unlock that, you want to see like where the winners illusions are, Yeah. I, I mean, I think the just like thinking through gaming out what a competitive landscape looks like for that. If, if we just assume they're all pretty much ubiquitous and the same in terms of transaction speed and like low cost, then like how do you actually compete? And it's probably what you're referring to is like, you know, what are, what are the yield opportunities? Is it backed by Bitcoin? Can you get SAT's based yield on the on the stable, etcetera. And that's when it's like gets really interesting with like, well, the sailor eventually launches unstable because I think that would be a a logical sort of medium term strategy for them to to pursue because they could out compete most other stables who wouldn't have the, you know, amount of Bitcoin to actually, you know, back their stable. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not really being demanded by the consumer here in the US And so it's ultimately just going to be who can create the best, the best solution where the consumer doesn't even know that they're interacting with staples and being able to switch it from, you know, Venmo coin, Venmo USD or, you know, Fidelity USD. I, I do think your point is pretty persuasive. I don't know that there's a lot of retail demand for this, but it will marginally cut costs. I don't think that the consumer cares that much about costs, but their institutions will be able to lower the costs on their side. So it doesn't make sense, even though it's not really that much of A benefit to the consumer other than in trading USD payers. But I guess like even with that, the liquidity is going to be fragmented between, you know, USDT Bitcoin versus Fidelity USD Bitcoin versus any other dollar stable coin. Yeah, I think it's super fair. I think the the thing that there's two ifs that are like assumptions in this, but I think we probably all agree that you're going to play out and I always be careful like there's stuff we're working on or I think of and then like we could share here, but whatever, like this is the point of showing what we're thinking about early riders and and people were talking or investing in it is like it ties into the reality is we'll have multifaceted adoption of Bitcoin. But one of the big drivers I don't think everyone talks about is just ultimately like the persistent like like feeling of just getting like robbed and ultimately people are going to like fall. I think that's going to be a big driver of the storage of somebody's value, even if it's in a shorter time frame in BTC versus dollars, like inflation has to run. And I think that narrative is, is is going to pick up and imagine a seamless experience that a banking relationship offers where you're able to hold a large percentage in BTC and then ultimately convert. Well, you need a natural stable for that. Like you can't do that in a, you know, in AUS dollar. So like that version of maybe you need to get out of it to go buy or you're just seamlessly there's an experience that seamlessly like goes and lets you pay out of that BTC. That's like pretty valuable experience. So like that's one angle, Liam on that. The other thing that's just randomly interesting is I finally found the first like explanation of where lightning and stables ends up being. I don't know if it's true, but it's probably just worth bringing up. These are curious your guys thoughts on like ultimately how the fact that like all these light, all these stables will end up settling on lightning just has to do with the architecture of that versus like whatever other blockchain that would be used because they all have to. They have a single state. And when you have a single state, you're naturally there's no, it doesn't matter how fast it is. Like if you have all these transactions happening, they don't like settling on that blockchain or having to build other layers on a blockchain for stables doesn't make any sense versus the way that kind of mirrors banking today. It's like if lightning is set up within these nodes, then you can have the peer-to-peer relationship on a settlement perspective. So you don't actually have to go back to the single state. I don't know if that's true, but it was just a very compelling way that it was explained on. That's where like all stables will end up settling on light specifically. Also with like AI and things like that. Like before we get to Bitcoin and AI talking to each other, the notion of like stables and AI and like compute, you know, with like ChatGPT instances or whatever. If you have to do micro transactions, if it has to be that fast, doing it on the like layer one Solana or whatever wouldn't make sense. But Lightning, if you had the channel set up, would make more sense. Yeah, I need to think about that a little bit deeper. No immediate opinions there unless you do Brian. But on the, on the getting persistently robbed of inflation side of things, I, I also thought it was not necessarily related to digital assets or Bitcoin at all. But seeing Dollar Tree sell Family Dollar, which they bought back in 2015 for $9 billion, now for $1 billion just a week ago. I mean, the companies had issues just with their own internal store remodeling, but and just like the lack of traffic there. But it's to a larger point here that essentially having persistent monetary inflation either declines the product by, you know, outsourcing to worse quality goods, worse input materials, poor labor that actually is producing the products or just not reinvesting as well as just like a degradation of service just at the actual stores themselves. Lack of remodeling, lack of just clean stores that's just going to give consumers a worse experience. It's there's a real big parallel here to five and dime stores in the 1950s and 60s that essentially just, you know, you would pay a nickel and a dime for everything back in the day. And maybe I just sound like an absolute boomer here, but it's it's really just you can't have these types of business models and retail experience and just shows that the. Inflation and monetary inflation is really much higher than they actually say just because it's not going to be possible to have specific just like anything sell for a dollar and actually bring you value to life. So I was just curious if you guys had any thoughts on that one too. Yeah, In hindsight, it's just an insane business model to to try to pursue if you assume there's any amount of inflation over time. And that compounds, you know, even if even if you're just going by government reported CPI statistics, which we know are undershooting real monetary inflation. Like it's just, yeah, how, how could you, how could you anchor prices of of goods to, you know, a singular dollar amount? It just doesn't make any sense. I think when you brought this up, put it on the list where my mind went was like, you know, how could you, how could you, you know, insert Bitcoin into this, this business model in a way. And what came to mind was like, you know, what if you had still, you know, the dollar store concept, but call it, you know, goods are anywhere from 1 to $10 in price, but you know, on all the shelves and what not, you have it denominated in sats. So like you actually see the price in sats of these goods go down over time. And then you could offer discounts if the the customers pay in sats. So like 10% off if you pay in sats. Just thinking through like, because I mean, it's it's the reason this business has existed for so long, these Dollar Tree businesses is because it, it does fill a gap where like people need cheap goods that are like sort of a lifestyle essential or, you know, life essentials, whether it's like a toothbrush or toothpaste or anything like that. They do need to exist at these low price points, But it's like if you can incentivize people to denominate their savings in a better form of money and actually, you know, display that in terms of prices going down for them. If they are thinking in terms of SAT's could be an interesting model to sort of inject Bitcoin into this business model, which like, like I, you know, I started by saying it's an insane business model, but like it does fill a gap to some extent for people who need access to low cost goods. I really like maybe we stumbled on a segment about a business opportunity or like thinking about, because I like that idea and I've been thinking about something that ties into that. And I'll just share here because I haven't been able to share with you guys in a meeting is a, there needs to be just like a, you know, stacking like a small startup to onboard users to Bitcoin. But in SAT's like just let's just get the numbers down to SAT's so you can buy your dollar, whatever, $10 and understand how many sats you're buying. But here's where it gets a little interesting is we've had some folks on our team that have come from the private wealth side and on ramp and have talked about like individual wealth and child education around finances is important, right? And I've just started thinking about it, even for like my son and stuff. And you want to like incentivize that. And the piggy bank's gone. I was at a bank the other day and they give you free piggy banks. And like he, he loved the Piggy Bank, but they're gone, right? Like what you would even put, there's no change. So I was talking to somebody else who were talking about how he was trying to educate their child about Bitcoin and like treasures and all that. Imagine a digital like a Piggy Bank. So like you see where this is going, Like you have the bank. Like an open an open dime Piggy Bank. Yeah, it has like the, it has the digital, it looks like a Piggy Bank, but it's more digital. So it's connected like ideal like probably Wi-Fi. So it has the unit so it can tell you how much you've been stacking and then maybe like the parent can go there and either do it or on the computer and say, OK, you did this chore. Maybe put something that's like analogous with like money into the piggy banker. Doesn't have to, but the idea is that you get incentivized education capital. This is a great idea. Somebody's going to do this where we should do this because it'll put us to either go find the person or we'll invest. If you're interested, you should reach out. But it's the notion of it ties both sides. So like the person can go by, but then the child will learn not only what sound money is, but how to accumulate because there's no more dollars or coins anymore. So it can even have the sound of like putting it. And then you can just buy through that and then just tie back to that SAT exchange and it just shows you. But here's the clever part, or the cool part is that you put $10 in, it's not $10, right? So like a year from now, that might be $25.00 in U.S. dollar terms. The stats are the same, but it's actually going up in dollar terms. So the person's actually more incentivized to hold the money versus go spend it on the car, the toy. Like it's a. And then, and I think it ties into the Family Dollar thing, because ultimately once people start realizing you're saving in SATS, well then like the SATS idea goes back because then it's like, OK, well of course I can keep it static because that just keeps buying me more. Yeah, it's like the the family Family Dollar idea that I just walked through. It's like it's kind of what you often refer to, Michael. It's like the, you know, one of the strongest ways to onboard someone to the, the idea of Bitcoin is like, you know, your eggs get cheaper. So this would be like a visceral way to tie it to someone's shopping experience where like they would even see the dollar price like going up over time. Like, you know, this chocolate bar was $1.50 last year. It's $2.00 now. But actually in SAT's, it's cheaper than it was a year ago. And that would just, that would be like this visceral learning moment for someone shopping in a in a dollar store. Yep, that's exactly right. And I, I can promise you this will exist because I've been in space for a while. And when you have a good idea, it means it's a great idea in Bitcoin in the regular world. It's not because somebody's already thought about it, but like in Bitcoin, this is kind of where we're at and like pioneering this whole hurdle rate aspect of Bitcoin investing. Like there's so many ideas, there's so many things we talked to all day long because this idea kind of came from somebody building a space and from some other conversation just like building. And then it's like, Oh yeah, that needs to exist. And the reality is with all the different tooling now, it doesn't actually cost that much to spin up in exchange via like B2B2C partnerships, whether it's with Bit Go or other third party providers, This is a super investable opportunity that can be spun up with like less than 1,000,000 bucks, even less than probably like 500K. So anyway, if anybody has an idea or does it let us know how it's going because I think this can happen in every region as well. Like you don't have to be in the US, it can be literally in any country. Agreed. Well, that might be a good place for us to end it. Any other final thoughts boys? I'm. Going to send, I'm going to send Michael. I'm going to send Michael. This my copy. But you got to be careful with it because this is a, this is a collector's item. There's not many of these that exist. I think only thing to call out is two things. One is the, oh, was I supposed to acknowledge that I'm going to burn that book if you send it to me, you're going to put me on a list. Probably that's, that's the original reason for the book. I think two things to call out is this came up last night. We'll figure out our segments for this, but it's just worth pulling up if you're holding Bitcoin in your house or with your family. It was a woman accidentally threw away £3,000,000. She call it she's calling it the worst mistake ever. It was in a USB flash drive. I've, we've heard this multiple times from family members that are just cleaning out saves destroyer. I think this lady, she was going through her husband's destroyer just throwing things out. Obviously it's probably kind of crazy just to throw anything out in somebody's destroyer. But the reality is like it happens. It happens with people on their CD phrases. And then and so it's just, it's a notion of as this asset, you know, you think about the the framing, I think the guy came in in like 10 years ago. And this is what's so important about what we do it on ramp is that we think about how does this asset class mature and ultimately have to build for products, financial and services that are different. And for 15 years, we've effectively used these little plastic devices to secure it. And ultimately that starts to like fall apart when instances like this have been or physical. And Brian, you're asking about the, the so there's a little plastic device behind me as my my Easter egg just for if we own client calls and explain, because most people don't get that 1.4 trillion of the total market cap of Bitcoin sits on a plastic device. So I think calling that out is important. Just if anybody's thinking about it, like even just checking or double checking or letting their family, the problem is you can't let your family member know because now they know we're all your money is. So it's something worth looking at. And if you ever want to chat with us at On Ramp, we can talk to you about what we do and also how we can help protect your wealth. All right. Well, we'll see you all next week. Thank you. Later, boys. 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 Onramp 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.
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