Bitcoin Is Down 50% and No One Knows Why

We're just getting started and Coinbase will be a blip and that's how we've always looked at this in the sense of for the 1st 15 years the asset was $1.10 dollars, $100. And so you could realistically have it on a hardware device or a third party custodian. Actually, you couldn't because most of the third party custodians don't exist anymore. So that's where a lot of the assets went into self custody. But it's the notion of outside money versus inside money. It's like it contradicts the value prop that if you're buying this asset to be outside of counterparty risk in the financial system that is over levered. We know there's too much debt and there's not enough dollars. I don't think there's anybody on the planet Earth that would wouldn't disagree with that. Then it makes zero sense to put a wrap around that and then insert it back into a counterparty that has too much debt and not enough dollars. Yeah. The other, the other big take away was basically like a lot of the reasons that gold failed as money was because of those the same centralization issues that we're seeing with large custodians in the in the Bitcoin and crypto space. And like the core difference with this highlights is that with multi sig and the ability to distribute keys, you can actually do something that you could never do with gold. Like gold is obviously physical, you can't put it in a multi sig vault. And so because the technology is superior and its monetary properties happen to be superior, you can do more innovative things. You can distribute the risk, you can distribute the control, which was never really possible for money basically. And so that design surface is extremely interesting. 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 198792972000 and whatever we're going to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we sell. I say when we sell. Welcome back to the last trade just stealing Jackson's Thunder. But you messed up the Yeah, you messed up the line. We are back. We are we. Are nice try, nice try. There was an insane amount of travel. The guys were at the Bitcoin conference in New York. I was driving around Texas. Just got back home to record this. Nick, we're going to introduce. He's been falling. Didn't even know he's been following the pod. But before we kick things off to keep everyone because we were talking like we got to bring the energy because everyone's a little tired. I got some swag. So this is the first piece. This is a nice, nice. What does it call 1/4 zip with on the on the arm? There's a bunch more. I got like vest bunch of cool stuff. Whoever's listening gets this that comes up with our new segment because we know we're going to be switching things up. And so if you tag us on Twitter with what segment that gets the most, it's not even most likes. We we want people to like it. We want people to retweet it, but we're going to come up with what the segment actually is. But whoever wins that. Segment. Whoever we're going to introduce to the pod and maybe even come on the pod, but for sure you get this piece of swag, it'll be shipped directly to you. And does that work, Jackson? Is that OK? Michael's going to drive it personally to your home. I mean, I have to, I have to drive it somewhere because it's here at my home. So I'm. Going to throw my hat into the ring for this. I I I want some swag. You might know of you might have ideas for the new segment if if you've been following all right, Jackson, well, is that is that bullish enough for you? I was expecting something more exciting. So come back next week, get us fired up, bring the energy, and we'll see what happens on the last trade. Thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you next week. All right, let's, let's get into it. So travel's been interesting, Nick, we'll get you introduced here in just a second. I had something top of mind. So Brian and I were meeting up yesterday for the Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. This is a conference that I think both of us have attended now three years in a row. I think it's a good one. I would recommend it, check it out next year. A lot of quality conversations, a number of people listening to the last trade. Thank you for your support. And but it's always interesting and I'll tell you a quick, quick anecdote and then we'll get into it. So last year people may remember that I had an interesting experience at the conference. I Thursday going into Friday night, I was staying at maybe not the most glamorous hotel in New York and Midtown. And I had an unexpected visitor at my hotel room about 2:00 in the morning. I wake up in a frantic, you know, I think I had some sweats from, from drinking a little bit too much. And next thing I know, I look through the peephole. It got someone banging on my door 2:00 in the morning. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm completely dazed. I'm not sure what's going on. Long story short, this individual proceeds to pee on the front of my hotel door and next thing you know, it becomes a whole situation. The police come, the hotel staff come, and this year didn't top that, fortunately. I'm glad, I'm glad we didn't top it. But I had an interesting experience. I tried to get back to Philadelphia last night and public transportation is just not reliable. You know, we, I was supposed to take the Amtrak at 7:50, delayed two hours, try to get over to New Jersey Transit train cancelled, get on the next 1-2 hour trip instead of a one hour train. And so it's always an interesting experience. But the conference is always high signal. And fortunately I did get to, you know, I made-up being able to spend some time with Brian, Liam and get to see a number of people that I get to see every year at this conference. It's a special 1. So that's my anecdote and I'm not sure if you guys have any thoughts on that, but otherwise, we'll have to introduce our guest of the week, Nick. No, I was just excited. And then you kind of put me to sleep. So I thought, I thought somebody was going to like do something crazy. I didn't realize that. We had some beers at Pub Key, that was fun. Brian's an Brian's an absolute animal. Shout out Pub Key. That's fake news. Yeah, no. Met some clients down at Pub Key and it was great to see Jackson in person every now and again. So Nick, you're a long time listener of the show, Allegedly, I didn't. I actually didn't know anyone at the company listened to the podcast to be honest. OK. That's that's nice to know. But yeah, Nick. So Nick Delozier, the COO of On Ramp. Nick, nice to have you on the show. What's going on? Yeah, you know, it's, it's great to be here. Before we started I was saying, you know, of course been following along and I, I think there's probably more internal team member listeners than you give your guys self credit for. So don't sell yourself short there, you know. But you know, I've been listening along for a while here. But yeah, excited to be here talking to you guys and maybe get a little look behind the scenes and on ramp. Yeah, we have some exciting stuff to chat about. There's a we'll get into some of the the topics and then some of the product announcements that'll be fun to discuss. One thing about this group, I think, I think here outside of Kevin, who is very early stages, Kevin Malkoan, who individuals know from building Lily wallet back in the day, this was like 20/18/19. This group here was some of the first individuals that's all multi institution. Brian and Jackson reached out around a similar time when we launched in the summer of 23. And then Nick, you know, we were figuring things out saw, you know, the vision multi institutions very interesting. And I liken it to Bitcoin where either people look at it, think it's crazy or they think it's for the, it's something, but it's not for them. Or others are like, how do I participate or get involved? And so the guys here saw this very early and we're three years, four years in and, you know, just getting, getting our stride so excited to chat and riff. And maybe before all that, we'll just talk about some of the craziness in the markets because I know there's a pretty big list of a bunch of exchanges and and doing weird things at weird times. What it yeah, I mean, what is even happening in the markets? I I genuinely don't know. Coinbase was down. Coinbase was down. Part of what? Michael's alluding to, I did just recheck their Twitter account. They are back, they're now back operational, but I think they were out for an hour or two, which just, it just feels like every time there's volatility in the market, people can't access their coins on Coinbase, They can't buy or sell, which is just not a great user experience. And, and we also know that you can't get someone on the phone there. And so it's, it's just a scary situation if you do have funds on on that platform at those times, well. What if you're just an industry participant Like you think about if it's a most firms, if they go down or don't have something right? Like you chalk it up to temporary whatever system update. Most people think that's the same with Coinbase, but there's the lagging. The thing that's hanging over everyone's head is that Coinbase is existential if somehow they actually had a breach. And so how many people are sitting there like wondering, did this market just all blow up overnight when you have something like that go down? So it's a, it's an interesting dynamic when you have a firm of that size holding, you know, what is it 5 to $700 billion not working as intended. Yeah, I mean that that's a huge problem. Should we start with a tweet and then we can get into some of the other topics? But this may be something that ties directly into what you guys were just talking about. And, and Brian and Michael, I think you had some reactions earlier this week. Do you want to, Brian, maybe speak to this first? And I think it ties directly into what you guys were just describing. It's pretty important for anyone who's participating in this industry. Yeah, this is a, a tweet from, I guess 2 days ago now in the evening. But Nick Sabo sort of a, very much a Bitcoin OG, you know, had some early writings even before Bitcoin existed that sort of predated, you know, the, the invention or the discovery of Bitcoin. And, and so he's been in the space for a while. He was actually off Twitter for a number of years and he came back probably three to six months ago. And he's been putting out some pretty high signal stuff. But in this tweet, he's specifically talking about basically the market gaps that we often talk about around sort of like the parallels between gold and Bitcoin, these bearer assets and basically the trust assumptions that come with any form of custody for those bearer assets. And he's sort of insinuating or suggesting that, you know, there's still work to be done in terms of making Bitcoin custody more user friendly, but also more trust minimized. And so Michael and I, you know, both saw this late on, I guess Wednesday evening and said, you know, this, this directly applies to, to what we're doing at on ramp. We, we are solving a lot of the gaps that he's describing here in terms of basically, you know, larger entities, whether it's just high net worth folks or institutions needing some form of counterparty, but not being comfortable or able or willing to trust a single counterparty because they've seen the history of what's happened with exchange hacks and failures over the past 17 years. I go like I I I'm curious your thoughts as well, because I I know this struck you as pretty relevant too to to what we do and what we solve for. Yeah, I think the big overarching deal was that like that whole meme of this isn't the end of the beginning or beginning of the end or whatever it is. It's like he was basically the whole version was like, we're just getting started and Coinbase will be a blip. And that's how we've always looked at this in the sense of for the first 15 years, the asset was $1.10 dollars, $100. And so you could realistically have it on a hardware device or a third party custodian. Actually you couldn't because most of the third party custodians don't exist anymore. So that's where a lot of the assets went into self custody. And he's just recognizing in part of that tweet was about there's considerably less room to approve self custody validation cost for 6000 year old technology of gold. Not impossible, just less room for improvement. This means the current embarrassing centralization of Bitcoin at mega custodian Coinbase is temporary phase in Bitcoin's bumpy path to maturity, whereas centralization of golden bank vault is unlikely to change much. I think this is super relevant. What what comes to mind recently after discussing is there's a lot of different versions of when we talk with institutional investors, banks, other firms are like, well, why wouldn't somebody just rebuild on rampant. It's like, well, do you know how those firms work? Do you know how long it's taking them to get wrap their heads around Bitcoin? Their whole mental models and models are around holding the asset net interest margin, all the things they do. So they're still layering on these old ways. And it'd be insanity for them to just like out of the gate participate without the market pulling them through. This is what how innovation works in cycles. But the other ideas around the cousin to that question is, well, what about the ETFs? And what he's kind of describing is very similar to that. It's like you're telling somebody that asked that question is A, somebody that doesn't understand Bitcoin, but then B, the individuals buying Bitcoin also don't understand it. And that's OK because you can start in the ETF in the same way you started with like a small custodian or your cash app. But it's the notion of outside money versus inside money. It's like it contradicts the value prop that if you're buying this asset to be outside of counterparty risk in the financial system that is over levered. We know there's too much debt and there's not enough dollars. I don't think there's anybody on the planet earth would wouldn't disagree with that. Then it makes zero sense to put a wrap around that and then insert it back into a counterparty that has too much debt and not enough dollars. And so these are all just like themes that we understand and a lot of people do, but a lot of people in this ecosystem do, but we're in a bubble. So I thought he just like aptly, really, he has a way with words to be able to describe into Jackson's point. He had worked on a lot of precursors or things that worked on before Bitcoin. And so he's just looked at as somebody that deeply understands kind of the space and where we came from, where money came from, the centralization problems, and why Bitcoin needs to exist. So he naturally understands that there's this governance layer built into Bitcoin that can help protect what happened with gold in the centralization problem. Yeah, the other, the other big take away for me reading that and then, you know, responding to it was basically like he points out, basically the the a lot of the reasons that gold failed as money was because of those the same centralization issues that we're seeing with large custodians in the in the Bitcoin and crypto space. And like the core difference with this highlights is that with multi sig and the ability to distribute keys, you can actually do something that you could never do with gold. Like gold is obviously physical. You can't put it in a multi sig vault. And so because the technology is superior and its monetary properties happen to be superior, you can do more innovative things. You can distribute the risk, you can distribute the control, which was never really possible for money basically. And so that design service is extremely interesting and to our, you know, to our thesis and, and where we think this goes, that's where the market will head because it is more redundant, it's more fault tolerant and it allows you to do things that you weren't able to do with gold effectively. Well said. All right, It's 2026 and we have a new year ahead of us. It means it's a great time. It is an opportunity to take inventory, think about your Bitcoin custody, your inheritance plan, your broader ownership structure, and your goals. If you're looking for more Peace of Mind this year, get in touch with us here at On Ramp. We're working with individuals all over the world, people who've been in Bitcoin for a decade, people who got in for the first time last year. We're working with individuals who use self custody and have done so for a number of years or even over a decade. And likewise, we're working with people who never felt comfortable with self custody and have Bitcoin on an exchange. Either way, get in touch with us here at onramp. We have a private client type approach to our relationships. You have a dedicated account manager, always human support, multi institution custody with inheritance included, an IRA account included as well at no additional cost. Access to Bitcoin back loans, insurance is included, trading capabilities as well. And for a limited time, if you use the code TLT, you'll get 50% off your first month with on ramp. Now I will say it may be worth having a conversation. So when you speak with me or speak with someone and book that consultation on our homepage, you can just mention you heard of us through the last trade, mentioned TLT, and we'll still take care of that if you sign up. So hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Thanks for being here. Yeah, So look, I think everyone is, everyone's a little bit concerned about the price. I I definitely felt this yesterday at the conference. And it, it's weird because it's different than previous cycles. These draw downs are not something that we're unfamiliar with, but I think people are just struggling to find the catalyst or the narrative to explain it. And it also is at A at at it is at odds with expectations that people had, particularly how we're down about 50% from the all time highs when pretty much name your influencer, name your podcast. Even the last trade, we kind of were skeptical that we were going to have like a pretty material draw down into 2026. Like I, I at least thought that it was, it was possible that we're going to see volatility and choppiness in the markets like we typically would, but I didn't necessarily expect to be in the 60s and go lower than the all time highs of 2021. So definitely a little bit challenging across the board with sentiment. And I'm curious what you guys are like paying attention to right now, Brian, because we were discussing yesterday and we could talk about maybe some of the highlights or takeaways you had from what you heard at the conference. But I'd be curious like, you know, what are you, what are you hearing Brian? What did you hear from the speakers yesterday? It's hard to imagine a scenario where Bitcoin continues to go down from here. I mean, in, in a material way, right? Like, I, I just don't know what the downside catalyst would be. But it's also seems like the industry is having a hard time figuring out what the upside catalyst is, which could be a sign of the bottom as well. I mean, who, who knows at this point. I I I definitely won't pretend like I do. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a number of things going on. I think as you highlighted, like there's not one specific thing that people can reliably point to over the past, call it three to five months that specifically prompted this, this, you know, 50% correction. There are a number of different things that you could partially attribute it to, though. One that people like to talk about is basically the Clarity Act and this market structure bill, which has been out ahead. There's been debate back and forth, particularly around the stablecoin stuff, which we can talk about, but I think there was an expectation that that would even potentially, you know, at the earliest be signed sometimes sometime last year. And it keeps getting pushed and pushed and and debated. And so I think that that that is one thing. You could look at the other one, the kind of the biggest one in my mind is just sort of this self fulfilling nature of four year cycles. And I think, you know, if I was talking about this six months ago, I thought maybe that that was going to break into this year and it clearly hasn't. There's clearly some amount of cell pressure that is stemming just naturally from people thinking the price is scheduled to go down this year. And I think that's why last year was, you know, flat to down in the sense that people were basically front running that ahead of 2026, which they thought would be a down year. And so that's that's kind of the most natural sort of like Occam's razor explanation to me is that cycles still do exist. People still think in these four year frameworks and there was some self fulfilling nature to that. The quantum stuff I don't think is a is an actual material lever that is that is weighing on price in any material way. But a couple of other things. I mean, just general macro sentiment, like there's a ton of uncertainty in broader markets. You know stocks while they're at all time highs, there's extreme concentration as we've talked about in the past in. A handful of of companies, particularly on the AI side now that are are driving sort of index level returns. And that's sort of a precarious situation for any investor, anyone who's allocating capital when things are at all time highs. But there's a ton of concentration and there's also not a ton of clarity or sort of ability to see if all of this CapEx spend is going to pay off and be profitable for all these companies. And then you add on to that, like all the geopolitical risks, like, are we about to go to war with Iran potentially? You know, the the broader debasement trade that was sort of propagated last year? I think it's still a narrative. And while that hasn't been a boon to Bitcoin's price, it, you know, gold and silver, although they've corrected and again, this this uncertain macro environment, like they're still, you know, well off what they were a year, two years ago. So there is this broader recognition of, you know, the Fiat system, questioning it, questioning the debt and debasement, which just makes everyone a little bit risk off generally. And the, the problem is that like, even though we perceive Bitcoin as risk off and like the most risk off thing you could own in terms of its monetary policy and the predictability and transparency, the average market participant views it as risk on and they view it as a form of tech. You know, everyone sharing these charts would show some form of correlation between software indices and Bitcoin like tracking pretty closely over the past year to two years. So people are still viewing it as software, they're still viewing it as a tech play. And so that is also contributing to, I think a lot of this cell pressure. So it could be any number of those things. It could be the combination of those things, but I don't think it's like one specific thing necessarily. People want to point to the 1010 sort of blow up in the cryptosphere and like are there dead bodies that we haven't seen yet? Maybe that's possible. We had on the list this company block fills which which halt halted withdrawals earlier this week. Maybe there are some dead bodies that blew up over the past few months. But again, I don't think that that is purely attributable as like a single source of truth for what is causing this. Brian's end of saying, you know, it could be this, it could be the IT remind me of Chris Berneski. I don't know if you saw, I didn't read the full thing, but I'd send it to somebody because it was like if 50%, like basically the market's going to go. I'm just trying to find, I'm not going to find it, but it's like it could go up or it could go down. Basically. I think I think all that makes sense. There's a couple you're just going to. Say, that's not what I said. That's not what. I said. But it just reminded, it reminded me of it after explaining all that it could be some of these things, it could be none of these things, but there's a, there's a few things I want to, I want to, I want to touch on that Brian shared. And then I want to get Nick's thoughts on the quantum stuff because I don't, while I don't believe quantum is an issue, I do, I don't, I would carry, I think it carries some more gravity than we're giving it credit for from like ICS and institutional allocators, which I think is if I can take the tinfoil hat on around the some of you sell pressure to the market dynamics and the coordination between Epstein quantum, the cell pressure from the cycles, like all these things like are coming. I think a lot of it has to do with this preparation from clarity to the banks turning these things on that there's a lot happening behind the scenes that when this thing gets going to really get going. But right now it's not ready. What does that mean? I don't know. But I don't think that it's organic that we sit at this level. But with that said, Bitcoin is a small asset in which you tied on is relative to everything else is I've never experienced in talking to individuals like the level of uncertainty when it comes to financial assets because you reference like there's the equities, there's already the overpriced equities, but then there's looking at what AI is doing. And then just like the questions around that has a lot of uncertainty. There's people that were obviously late and they're still late to debasement and gold trade. And then those assets completely kind of, you know, fell 10 to 25%. So then it's like, well, what's happening there? And then bitcoins on its thing. So any other inflation and then are you parking assets in bonds? That is just there's no real like safe place right now. And this, I feel like encapsulates that. I don't even know who or what this is, but it's global and certainly hits all time high whoever runs this index, but it just shows the highest level surpassing 9/11, 2008 crash, euro debt crisis and COVID. And so it really is a, it seems like a precarious time for individuals and like, where do they park their capital? Where do they even park? You know, it's like the other side of all this is there's uncertainty into how to protect your wealth and there's even uncertainty how do you protect your professional and your time? Because there's no shortage of people that follow all this, right? Like, I think most blue collar people that are outside of the Twittersphere aren't feeling a lot of this include, I mean, they're feeling inflation, but they're not feeling, you know, the market corrections and they're probably not feeling, oh, is my job being replaced? But everyone that is glued to the, you know, from a general directional demographic is looking at this. They're blue collar people by definition of sitting in front of a computer most of the day. And then they go on Twitter and everyone's super uncertain, like, what the hell And where is my career going And is my job going to exist in the next 12 to 24 months? Because there's also all time highs across the board with layoffs. But with all that said, Nick, curious on any of that. But then specifically on the quantum stuff, how do you think about just from Normie Travi lens? Do you think that they're even considering it or it's a it's a nothing burger to them as well? Yeah, that, that's a great question. Yeah, before maybe touching on quantum, you know, kind of going back to, you know, how this draw down feels a little different maybe than, you know, historical price action has. There's really no smoking gun or there hasn't been a major, you know, exchange collapse of any sort here, you know, to point towards, to really get people, you know, concerned about, to your point, Michael, kind of managing their wealth, you know, so it, it's it's difficult to say, but I think in terms of, you know, what people are contending with more broadly, I mean, the rate of change of technology right now is only accelerating and it's like nothing we've ever seen. So the amount of uncertainty there, you know, for, you know, and we're closer to pieces of this, you know, in some ways than other people. But you know, there's so much outside of, you know, what we directly work with. I think, you know, AI quantum is definitely something, you know, that we're thinking a lot about as a company, you know, in terms of the tools maybe to touch on quantum, it's a, it's a risk we're very mindful of and we're monitoring. You know, I think it's, it's definitely still, you know, a ways out. But you know, again, the rate of things are moving. It's, it's definitely something we get a lot of questions about and, you know, we're, we're watching and advising clients on how they can, you know, work to improve quantum resistance and we're actively working to address that within, you know, our product and application itself. So I think it's too early to say, you know, if it's a when you know, but it's definitely something we're monitoring and definitely something that's on people's minds. So I think it just adds to, you know, the complexity of the, you know, the overall rate of change that people are trying to manage right now. Yeah. And the only, the only thing I'd add on the quantum stuff is like it's a very difficult sort of and I don't even want to call it FUD because I do perceive it as a potential long term real risk. But it's very difficult to quantify both in terms of the timeline and also like the seriousness of the current sort of stage of progress that we're at. Because a lot of the stuff that is being pushed around it is from people who are working in quantum who, who have an incentive to say, well, we're making a ton of progress. And part of that is because they need to like raise more money to keep doing research to keep making progress. So there's that sort of self feedback loop to some extent. And then I think the other thing is that a lot of the fear around it has stemmed from basically being like, oh, Bitcoin is like not even thinking about this, which is just fundamentally not the case. And so I, I've sort of come up to speed on over the past few months in terms of like, well, what is actually being worked on? Who's talking about it on in terms of like the development community? And there's a bunch of different groups from Chain Code Labs to Brink to Hunter Beast on Twitter, if you're familiar, who proposed BIP 360, which is now sort of merged into the the sort of BIP GitHub as like something that is being proposed and drafted and thought through. And that is that's just a preliminary step. To be clear, that's not like we fixed it, but it's a step in the right direction. So there are people thinking about this. Bitmex has also been putting out some great research reports on this. And we're going to be putting out some research on this as well in the coming weeks because I think part of this too is just like, you know, it is a thing that's out there, it's an idea and the zeitgeist that this could be a risk. So that does have some sort of overhang effect. Whether it's a material effect on the price specifically is another question, but it is something that people have questions about. We've we've been getting them all the time. And so I think just having a level of discourse and basically putting the work that is being done sort of behind the scenes more in the forefront so that people know what what the status is of these things, how developers are thinking about it, the different routes that we can go down. I think that that does help sort of a swayed fears around this stuff. So I think that that is in progress. It's, it's getting better, it's getting more out in the open and, and people are, are becoming more aware of the actual work that is being done. So I think it's a thing that will continue to improve. And I, I don't think that it's going to, I don't think the fear is going to get worse from here. I think we're on, I think we're on a trajectory where people are going to get more comfortable with the potential risk and what the Bitcoin development community is doing to be proactive about it. Quantum reminds me of like volatility FUD in the sense of like, we'll just like size it appropriately. Because if you think about it, it actually even the volatility issue doesn't make sense because based on what we know, most the people that really bring up volatility is institutions and it prevents them from allocating, but they were never allocating a material amount either way. So why did that volatility really make a difference in the same way of quantum is an issue? Like I don't think anybody's saying it's a likely existential risk to Bitcoin in the next two to five years. And so then if it's not, then size your allocation appropriately. And if you're already going to put .1%, put .9% or point whatever .09%. Like it's a, it's more, but that doesn't discount that it's relevant in the sense that these institutions in these firms, it goes back to like when people ask, well, how do I buck it Bitcoin and where do I put it in a portfolio? They just follow the momentum of like the debasement trade has been a thing that basement trades existed for any gold bug or any person holding that coin, but it just happened to be some research somebody put out and then that gained steam. It's the same concept here. And it'll flip like a dime when the price switches. And then somebody put something out that people are working on quantum to Brian's point, they'll be like, oh, this is being taken care of now we can go up. So these these constructs just exist in people's models as they follow kind of like where the market goes. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think, you know, like Brian mentioned, you know, we, we get a lot of questions about this and I think it's, you know, there's a lot of risks, you know, Bitcoin holders need to be thinking about. I think that, you know, quantum could be one of them. I think that's probably not the the the highest priority risk. They need to be thinking about managing, you know, whether that's custodial risk or, you know, I think we, we just meant we were just talking about the rate of AI, you know, acceleration here, you know, and in terms of, you know, the acceleration of deepfake, you know, that's definitely something we think a lot about and are actively working to mitigate those type of threats to clients. So I think, you know, there's a lot of things to be mindful of. You know, of course, we're here to try to help people navigate and manage as much of that on their behalf as we can. But I think, you know, education goes a long way. So I think it's important to make sure you kind of have your priorities straight in terms of where you need to focus your time and attention. That's right. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's risk and uncertainty in everything, isn't there? So I agree with all the points you guys made just across the board. Size it accordingly. If it's something you're concerned about, then you know, you figure that out for your portfolio. Brian, I like some of the points you made because the end of the day, it's not something to be ignored, it's something to be addressed and it's good to hear that there's progress. I need to dig into some of the bit 360 stuff you mentioned because I haven't had the chance to do so yet. I did, we kind of glossed over Brian, but I want to make sure before we get into some of the things we're going to talk about with Nick as well on some of the information we published on the website, on the newsletter today. What were some of the main takeaways? Just because like I think people appreciate getting to hear what's being discussed behind closed doors. What is what, what are people thinking about that are in leadership positions at some of the more influential companies in this space? We don't need to spend a ton of time there. But generally just give us a sense, especially in the context we just discussed where like there's a lot of uncertainty, not just some Bitcoin, but in all markets, in the workforce, technology, etcetera. So I'm curious, just what were some of the core themes if you could run us through in just a few minutes from from yesterday? Yeah, as Jackson mentioned, we were at Pomps Bitcoin Investor Week yesterday. You know, I'll be honest, like a lot of it is somewhat repetitive if you're in the Bitcoin space. So there was a number of panels and speakers that were sort of like having therapy sessions about the price. To some extent, you know, part of that is necessary because there's people in that room who are newer to the space, whether they, you know, work for some institution or they're just curious about the space and they're trying to learn more. So to hear from people who, you know, this is their 4th or 5th material drawdown and hear from them and, and say like, why it doesn't scare them, why they're not panicking, that is helpful. So I, I think that, you know, that is that type of talk and, and discussion is, is to be expected. The one, the one discussion that stuck out to me the most was was actually Bo Hines, who was formerly sort of the the director of the Presidential Working Group and the Crypto Council, whatever it was called. And then over the summer last year took a job at tether. And I think in September, he was named actual CEO of Tethers US arm and it was just him talking with pomp and he had a few things that I thought were pretty interesting and relevant. So I'll, I'll just run through some of them now. He started off by talking about, you know, the Clarity Act, this market structure bill that I mentioned earlier, and he was pretty confident that the Clarity Act will pass. He put the odds sort of significant, significantly higher than like what Polymarket or or Cal she is, is estimating right now. He put it at like 80 to 90% that he thinks it passes. He mentioned that, you know, it's really down to a few small details and you know, the, the detail that most people are talking about is the stablecoin yield deal where, you know, the banking lobby is very against basically giving up their monopoly on deposits and allowing stablecoin issuers to pass interest yield to stable coin holders. But he kind of had it, he had an interesting frame around that, which it's less about like the actual, because I think everyone agrees basically that like if you hold dollars, like you should be able to earn whatever the rate is. Like if it's 3 1/2 percent, like why are you, why are you only getting .15% from your bank? Like that doesn't seem fair to the end consumer. Everyone kind of agrees with that, but it's the mechanics. And as he framed it, it's kind of like aux structure question. And so he said everyone in the media is talking about this yield debate between banks and crypto natives. I don't really think it's a yield debate. It's more of a UX debate, meaning do you have to be in OCC charter Bank and do you have to be a separate platform in order to pass that yield along to your customers? And so as we know, like the thorn in the side of a lot of these debates is kind of Coinbase, because they've been blessed with this sort of work around via the Genius Act, that even though they are not the issuer, they're the exchange, they can pass along the interest to their clients. And so it remains to be seen how that's going to shake out. I mean, I think there are there is an area for compromise where basically even it's not directly from the issuer and it's on a platform like an exchange, there's some mechanism where you know, it's a reward, it's not a direct interest pass through. Maybe there's activities that are required of the user in order to earn that reward. So I think they come to a middle ground negotiation around that. The other interesting things he said were just around like Tethers massive scale of their Business Today. He he had a few quotes in there that said we have about 530 million customers today. We're growing at about a clip of about 30 million a quarter. They only have 300 employees, a billion in profit in 2025. He also said this year, I think we'll end up being a top 10 purchaser of T-bills. We're, we've already been the 17th largest holder of T-bills in the world and that's sort of, you know, ranked against other sovereign states. And then he had one very interesting comment around like stablecoin adoption. And we've talked about this on the show in the past around like why stablecoin proliferation is actually very bullish for Bitcoin. And so he said stablecoins are going to be the first introduction to the digital asset ecosystem that people have. And with that, they are starting to get comfortable with how things move across chain. And obviously Bitcoin being the granddaddy of them all, I think it'll be an invitation for people to actually use that as an investment vehicle choice. And this is something we've been talking about for what feels like over a year now that, you know, I think the hardcore bitcoiner is like, you know, why are we excited about a new form of, of Fiat? But at the end of the day, it's digital rails, it's blockchain technology. Whether you know, those are masquerading as decentralized or not, it kind of doesn't really matter at this stage of the game. I think the broader crypto space is sort of coalesced around like doesn't really matter if these things are centralized, like they are faster, cheaper databases at the end of the day. And so they are going to be adopted by banks and fintechs and governments, obviously. And so I thought that that was a very sort of high signal comment around, you know, something we've been saying for a while that stablecoin proliferation is a massive Trojan horse for Bitcoin adoption over the medium to long term. Because people get comfortable with the idea of digital assets thing things moving on on blockchain rails. And it becomes very easy to get to the mental model of you spend in your your stable coin and you save in your Bitcoin. And those things are going to be tighter and tighter serve integrated from a UX the perspective over time. And I think that that's just hugely positive for Bitcoin. One one other thing before he chatted like just on sort of general sentiment towards the end, I think he had a good frame around. He said, like, if you've been in the space for some time, these cycles aren't as scary as people make them. We're just in the infancy of what this looks like long term. So it was just, you know, again, back to that sort of the the therapeutic voices in the room being like, you know, this is this is the volatility that everyone talks about. But if you have a long term thesis on this thing like this is just kind of how it goes. And so if you have conviction and and belief in this thing long term like these are, these are bumps in the road, but it gets easier over time basically. Yeah, I think that all tracks. I think that's where I've had like, I think there's a component of the Clarity Act and some of this is, you know, wishful thinking, but also reality of Clarity Act supports in bitcoins price from Claire, like actual clarity from institutional investors either at trying to allocate to the space or invest in infrastructure and then the stablecoin stuff. Yeah, I mean that that was why I was so bullish just seeing that the there's really that like inertia from the government really needing somebody to buy our debt. And so the reality is you need the proliferation of stable coins and that further goes into treasuries. And then it makes sense that if you're going to incentivize more distributors, because if you're just passing, yes, there's a user experience benefit if you're going to bring in a bank like account. But then it changes the dynamic if you're a platform and you can pass back some of that interest versus a bank. And so that's where I think like it's kind of stuck, but ultimately ends up with something happening clarity where you are going to be able to pass this rewards back because it's in the best, it's in the best interest of the the US government to push that. It's not apples to apples, but like the analogy of Bitcoin and stablecoins reminds me of like, it's kind of like if you were long rule real estate and basically Starlink like was invented and you were like, I don't get it. Or I don't understand why this is bullish for the real estate. It's like, well, if you look on a long on a time horizon, traditionally, you know, as people like there's natural city centers from work, but that's already kind of moved where people work remote. And then if you take it a step further, the reason people don't live in rural areas is ultimately because, yeah, you have to work, you have to commute, and then you need access to Internet and telecommunications just doesn't go there at the speed that you need. But the design surface of like what is capable now completely changes. We can't even fathom where different places of civilization will, you know, aggregate, whether it's globally or just in the United States. And so that's a very similar concept of like stable coins and money movement and the ability to now take Fiat. Tether obviously has taken other Fiats outside of the US, but then any country outside of the US, inside the US, different companies being able to transfer and convert those currencies into stable coins. That's their first participation in movement of funds, private keys, blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, it's the rational thing that you would have Bitcoin. I mean, we see this today came out with like Coinbase is launching 4-O2 wallets and then Stripes doing stuff around stable coins. Like stable coins will also proliferate in the AI world because of just the stringing in the ability that everyone understands a dollar and the token model is kind of clunky with API hits and then having to credit all the deals. So that naturally will go there. But then you still have process around KYC and clunkiness there that you'll start to like pull that through and Bitcoin will come into that and people will be like, OK, well, this app needs Bitcoin because certain apps just won't. It's the same thesis of Bitcoin will monetize because people will require you to pay them in Bitcoin because if you have goods or services and you say you have to pay in Bitcoin, well then that's going to make other people need to get it. In the same way. If your AI model requires you or your app that requires you to pay in Lightning or whatever Satoshi's, you're going to need it. And if you already have stablecoins, it's just a click of a button versus having to go figure out how to get on an exchange, how to figure out how to buy it. So yeah, that that all tracks. And I think is is really bullish because a lot of that framework and kind of like infrastructure is being laid right now. I would say that's a. It's a great analogy, Michael. Well done, Sir. Thank you, Jackson. You're welcome. So no, I was being serious though. That's a that's a good one. Sometimes they don't all land like that, so I'm just letting you know, but. Jackson wants a raise. I don't know. I don't know about that. I'm just, you know, what I'm actually trying to do here is since we were talking about the topic of just AI coming for us all, I don't know, man. I'm just trying to be unpredictable because Claude, Claude can't do that quite yet. I guess I could, you know, it's trying to take over the world here and there, but got to throw some wrench, throw some wrenches in the podcast here and there. In case you missed it earlier, we are offering a limited time opportunity to sign up. Use code TLT for 50% off your first month with on ramp. I just want to reiterate, stakes are high and this is an important decision to think through. So I would fully expect that you'd want to have a conversation with someone on our team. To speak with Cam, myself, Michael, go to our homepage, book a consultation. You can speak with us for 15 minutes, thirty minutes, no obligation beyond that. You can just ask us questions, learn about the solution. And I just want to make sure that as you as a listener, whether it's for you, your friends or family, I just want to make sure you have Peace of Mind and you feel good about this year ahead of us as it relates to Bitcoin ownership, custody and inheritance. So again, limited time offer 50% off your first month use code TLT. You can just mention that during the consultation. Or if you do end up just going direct to sign up, mention that code on the website and you'll be all set. So thanks for being here and hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. To do a nice smooth transition. Now there's a great piece that was authored by our honorary guest Nick of today's show. And I know it was a topic we wanted to make sure we covered in detail. And so in the interest of time, I think it's a great time to tee it up. The title of the piece is called the Architecture of Trust. And Nick, I think it's, I don't want to steal your Thunder, but I, I think you should maybe tee up just the, the motivation for publishing this and then we could actually get into the contents of what's discussed. But if you, if I could hand it over to you, could you explain just high level why now what's, what are the core concepts that were being discussed in this report? And why would this ultimately be something that the audience should check out and and why it would be of interest to them? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think this really ties well together with the previous discussion. And, you know, I think trust came up in a few pieces of that. And even around that last quote I think Brian shared around, you know, cycles maybe not being as scary for, you know, participants that have been around for multiple cycles. You know, one thing, you know, that I think really, you know, that we wanted to touch on and this is that, you know, we're very keen on, you know, building a solution that's, you know, meeting our clients and potential clients, you know, where they're at today, earning their trust and building for the future. You know, and there's, you know, speaking to that. I, I think, you know, historically a lot of these draw downs have been, you know, the result of major exchange collapses, loss of trust, which creates so much uncertainty or really effects people's ability to hold or secure Bitcoin for the long term. So, you know, at the heart of everything we do is, is finding ways to put people in the best position to navigate that uncertainty while giving them the best user experience that we can, you know, whether that's onboarding in our application or other features and functions that we, you know, look to implement. So really it was trying to articulate what we've been working on, our internal philosophy and then also starting to share a little bit about some of our, you know, internal teams and what's been going on there and exciting things that we have coming up for 2026. Yeah, maybe to add a little bit. So there's a lot that's happening behind the scenes. You know, Nick has a background if you want to talk about any of the relevance there and and jump joining our firm, but working with other exchanges and firms and realizing the fragility around centralized custody. But there there's also like we're doing a lot of internal kind of soul searching on how do we actually market and represent ourselves because at the end of the day, we operate as a financial institution. I look at ourselves as the gateways for our clients wealth, right? It's not only just a safeguarding of the underlying from a architecture perspective, but it's also from all the noise that's exists out there from public treasury companies to using leverage to quantum and, and everything that goes around that. Like we're not fiduciaries, but we can provide frameworks that are time tested before Bitcoin and then specifically with Bitcoin, because every cycle there's always something that's out there. So you take that and then you take the the questions that naturally come up of like, you know, there's a lot. And when I say soul searching is because we speak in a very like, I don't want to say sophisticated, but a very nuanced way, because our clients today are coming from third party collaborative custody providers. They understand multi save very deeply, but for us to really scale and get to mass market, we really need to simplify these things in the sense of, you know, tongue in cheek, but there's something there is 3 is better than one because when you have to start real, you know, breaking out how multi sig works and sharding and keys, he starts to lose a lot of that. But with that said, our clients are sophisticated and one of the things has has come up since our inception is, well, are you just leveraging back or are you just a wrapper around that? And so there was a key component to in this blog piece going through in sequential order. One of the largest ones is are from a Nick's leadership with our engineering team and product team just the feed around onboarding the notion that in what used to take us weeks to onboard to multi sig takes minutes to be able to onboard to multi institution where you still retain control from a legal perspective. These are segregated accounts. And then it's just this new user experience in general where you can manage the permissions, you can manage financial services, you can actually even manage the wallet configuration file. For those that are familiar that use multi sig, where the reason why most people use third parties on their multi sig, even if they're controlling majority of the keys, right, two of three of them is because it's really daunting to roll your own multi sig because not only do you need 3 of the keys in the X pubs, you have to manage the backups, the wallet config, There's a lot of complexity. So that's where third party providers have come up. And one of the questions is often come up, well, I want to export this and validate it via a third party like open source tools. There's Caravan, there's Sparrow. We actually have one that we're rolling out. And so that was a big part of this release is showing that if you come into a certain quorum, you can actually download that and view it because a lot of our large clients naturally want to do that. And then another big component that was tying into all this is really just the maturing across the board because there's a lot of this new design and dashboard. There's a lot more functionality exists today from security to permissions, but then you can start to squint and see, I don't want to reveal too much, but we have a lot more functionality to include in the coming weeks and months that will allow clients just to manage more of their finances. Because at the end of the day, we've been in still the early stages of what's like the Internet and that everyone's had to have. It's very clunky of multiple vendors versus having a unified experience. And then part of that is going through sock and a lot of the natural things that are regulated, you know a well run oiled financial institutions going through and Nick's leading the efforts there. Yeah, go ahead. Jackson, I was just going to say, you know, I, I, I'm a big fan of all the work that you guys have done over the past couple years because I remember those early days bringing on some of the first clients. And it was probably Cam in particular having to work through weeks of onboarding, right? Like the first couple of people that worked with us here at Onramp, they had a ton of patience because it was just such a grueling process, the coordination of multiple independent institutions. It was not one unified flow. It was different links out to different places. And to think that you and the team on the engineering and operation side have been able to in just a few years time, make that something that could be completed in five to 10 minutes is, is really impressive. And I think people are just blown away by that, quite frankly, on the client side now it's, you know, there's all this idea of uncertainty of, oh, well, how long is it going to take? Is it going to be complicated for me? And then they're pleasantly surprised that it's actually a very smooth process. Yeah, it's a, it's definitely we, we, we've come a long way as you guys know. And it's, it's, but it's a, you know, part of the product that we're we're really proud of. I mean, definitely shout out to, you know, our engineering product and operations teams, you know, that have made that happen and, you know, continue to keep that functioning on a day-to-day basis. But I do think it's important to point out one comment that Michael made, you know, that we, we talked a little bit about this in the article is, you know, from day one, you know, a, a strategic approach that we've really adhered to it on ramp. You know, especially on the engineering side of the houses that, you know, when it comes to the, the onboarding creation and management of, you know, our, our MIC vaults, you know, that is all infrastructure that, that we have built and managed. And it is put us into the position to be able to implement these types of enhancements over this last year based on, you know, a lot of, you know, great feedback from the internal teams, but also from our clients. You know, we listen to every piece of feedback we get and we take that very seriously. Like Michael was saying, we have some very sophisticated clients and they're often eager to provide us with very meaningful feedback. And we take all of that and, and, and that has contributed to everything that's really highlighted in this article. But you know, that, that the onboarding journey I think has been been greatly improved. We'll continue to optimize that. You know, we, we're really excited of where that's gone for individuals. And yeah, we have some similar exciting plans to continue to optimize how we onboard businesses, which is, you know, another core part of, of what we've been doing with the launch of on ramp business here this last fall. So a lot of more exciting things on the onboarding front to come here in the near future. Yeah, maybe one just thing to call out because it's top of mind. This is really like for anybody listening, you know, you know, it sounds like we're talking our book, but this is really like ground level infrastructure for like bitcoins longevity. It's why I focused on this. It's where I saw a huge gap in credit to the guys seeing it early. But like to call it one exact example is there's no shortage of them, but the dynasty trusts, right? Our largest clients are coming in with hundreds of millions of dollars and they have had this aching problem of they need to get the asset out of their estate so they don't have to give Uncle Sam 40% of it when they pass away. Because most holders are planning to give a lot of this wealth to their family and there are no solutions for that. You end up in a paradox because you held it that long because you never trusted an entity. But then the way to get access to these tax advantage products is to trust someone. And so the architecture around being able to let them have access to view investment directives with our partner First Covenant, we're just seeing it first hand, the difference it's making in people's lives. And they they talk about it how they wanted to do the dynasty trust at 10K15K20K and that price just ran away from them. And so now they're able to park less capital into that because there's only there's limits the amount of gifts, tax exemption you can get from your estate, from a personal or if you're if you're married. And so when you think about this, like when you're wealthy and you're somebody's worth hundreds of millions of billions of dollars in traditional Fiat terms and you want to allocate a material size of this, but you need the, you need the market structure to coalesce around that if you're going to size it appropriately. I used to run into this all the time with high net worth people that wanted to allocate significantly but they knew they couldn't trust a third party custodian and all they had was 2 hardware devices they had to manage. And the thing that they brought up was like what happens if we go down and in our plane and we go down together? Like our family's going to kill us because we just allocated X amount of percentage. So that's just a small blip. It sounds like maybe it's a rich people problem, but the reality is you need wealthy people to allocate to the space for the liquidity and the price to go up. But then there's a whole other slew of things we're working on, whether it's from the lending perspective to being able to get a mortgage and hold your BTC so you can get a bank loan that just needs to exist. And the alternative is just trusting Coinbase or another third party that tomorrow may turn down like a multi institution. God forbid if one of the custodians was just unresponsive or had to halt. It does not change any dynamic in your asset. It still sits there on chain. You can move it tomorrow with the other two custodians, and it's just very widely underappreciated, but it's picking up steam. And so that's why we're excited about this. And that's where I'm glad Nick wrote that piece because it really gives like a precursor to where we're heading for the rest of this year and beyond. Yeah, I'll maybe add a couple things there, maybe tying back to, you know, some of the previous conversation around the the Clarity Act. You know, I think of course, you know, our approach to how we've managed our infrastructure, you know, has put us in a good position, but also, you know, our kind of regulatory and compliance approach, you know, always taking a compliance first approach has put us in a position to partner, you know, with some of our, you know, like first covenant, you know, put us in a position to offer those types of products. But additionally, looking ahead to what we're seeing evolve in the Clarity Act, you know, as we look maybe towards things around some type of, you know, custody standards starting to evolve there, you know, we're very excited about how well aligned we are already with what we see coming together there. So we think that's going to be another, you know, mechanism for us to build trust, you know, with partners, clients, both individuals and businesses. You know, and you know, also Michael mentioned, you know, we're excited to be, you know, working towards, you know, our, our SoC compliance, you know, which will be another core piece of that here in the, in the very near future. So I think, you know, there's a few other core building blocks there that I think you know, is really just laying the foundation for some very exciting products here in the in the very near future. I couldn't agree more. Brian, any thoughts from you on this topic? Yeah, I mean, kudos to the team. It is. It's magical. Like what happens in a few minutes, Like you know, you mentioned in the early days it took a while, but even back then, like that was still pretty magical even even if it took a week. Like what was actually happening in the background is pretty astounding when you think about 3 distinct entities participating in a quorum that is visible on chain, titled to the end client. Like none of that existed prior to on ramp existing. And we've gotten it. We've optimized optimized it to a place where someone can get truly best in class US Bitcoin custody in a matter of minutes. They don't even need to talk to us if they don't want to. They can go through the self-service onboarding flow, which has been super streamlined and and made super simple and easy. So it is, it is pretty magical and, and that can get lost because it's like, you know, the, the dashboard itself kind of does look and feel like any other brokerage platform, which is purposeful to some extent, because that is what that is what people are familiar and comfortable with. That's how you build trust with folks over time. But what's actually happening on the back end is super unique and super innovative and, and a lot of work obviously has has gone, gone into making that super, super seamless and, and easy to use. Yeah, I'll, I'll add there. I mean, I think in terms of the dashboard, which a lot of great work, you know, from the team went in there and you know, that's one area where we received and collect, you know, just collected a lot of feedback from clients here, you know, or this last year that I think was very instrumental in some of the changes that that we implemented there. And I think, you know, it's important to point out, you know, of course there's the, you know, the aesthetics of it, but you know, underneath some of these changes, there's some very deliberate changes that we've implemented targeted at inspiring confidence through all parts of the workflows, particularly withdrawals. You know, we see that as really one of the kind of the core functions of our application. And and because that's such a critical component of security, you know, as we talked about some of the evolving threats of some of our our, our newest features and functions in their target at the withdrawal workflow. For instance, liveliness checks now is kind of an integrated part of the withdrawal workflow are are there, you know, to specifically address threats that we see evolving, you know, within the space. So, but we've managed to do them in a way that really provides A seamless experience for clients. So we've already had a lot of great feedback there, you know, and we've got a lot of other things planned, but you know, there's more than just, you know, cosmetic changes to the dashboard. There's a lot of features and functions that that came with it. So we're excited to to get that in front of the users. Yeah, we have no shortage of road map. You know, if you I have like a wish list. So anybody tag Nick and show them that there's interest is, you know, at some point I won't give the time horizon so I don't get killed by our team. But I think it logically makes sense. If you're a private client and you're holding substantial wealth in multi institution, naturally you're going to want to hold some of that in, you know, keys you control and probably a two of three or participate. So TBD when that rolls out. But you know, you can maybe accelerate that if you just keep tagging Nick and some some of our team on Twitter. But I I mean that in in jest, but seriousness in the sense of like, we're clients of this, right, We're building the things that we need. We want to see in the market and it's rational that if you have all your Bitcoin, all your capital in Bitcoin that you naturally are going to want to have some that you can always control and you have some that sits in multi institution custody and you can oscillate through that. And so, yeah, those are some of the things that we're thinking about. Those aren't necessarily in production. We have some other things that are like closer to the market. But yeah, it's fun. I think about like we talked about this, we just ship Macbooks. That's at the end of the day, like all we do before, like the computer and the PC existed. Everyone was trying to duct tape this thing and it was hobbyist and people. Once computers were ubiquitous, think about the amount of GDP and growth and value that they brought to people's lives. And that's just a computer. Like what happens when you can protect your wealth? Most people don't have access to protecting their wealth because it's just too much legwork headache to figure out. Do I trust this third party custodian? And then does Mount Gox FTX else has blocked by Genesis down the list or do I figure out this whole like hardware device 12 words that keeps a lot of people out and most people don't recognize it because it's like this unknown, unknown. And so if you can just effectively ship the the computer that has no virus and you can just get to work and then close it and be done with it and not have to become a quote UN quote bitcoiner, that's how you can really cross the chasm. And so that's really our goal is to, how do you bring more value to to more people? Wow. Am I 2 for T Jackson? Yeah, you actually did. I, I will say you did. You did well today. Sometimes I'm like, what the hell, Like what? What are these analogies you're throwing out there? But today I was. I try to leave the show, Nick one week. I don't know if you listen to it, but I I try to leave. And I said if the comments, I was just hoping there's gonna be assholes in the comments saying like, look, we don't really like Michael, let's go. And then I could point to Jackson and Brian say, like, look, we got to fill it, find the spot. It didn't happen. We. Didn't have you on last week with Eric Balchunas and it was true. Phenomenal episode it was. I don't know if it was a coincidence, but. Erics, a good Erics, a big, big personality. So that worked out well. And then the market was, you know, crashing from 90 to 60. And so there was just a little other couple things to make sure we're tightened up. While the well. Well, the market is, you know, a little volatile. Meanwhile, like right now, silver just went down another 10% and then I guess there's a trillion dollars that have been knocked off the stock market for the day, so. Don't you have it before we wrap? No, no one really needs to care about that. Like everything, it's a melt up. It always has been a melt up. The volatility is bullshit across the board. Everything goes up on a long enough time horizon. Besides like bonds, besides bonds and Fiat currencies, everything goes up. I mean, I guess if we're, we're, we're riffing like, should we call out your your post? What was the theme? I read it. I read it but I don't remember when viral. Last week. Yeah, well, you want to pull it up? Yeah, and I, I had. Like 1,000,000 views. Did you see this name Honor and paid me $1,000,000 just like the X competition for that one. Your creator. Your creator bonus. How do I get to that? Jackson is our local our local influencer. Yeah, we're, you know what's interesting though? The the fact that. So the fact. 1.3 million. It only has 800 likes though so listen, this is for the on ramp team and for anyone who's listening who wants to try to get some of the viral juices flowing. For whatever reason the X articles are being juiced heavily. I I don't know why I think. I guess it's just wanting to keep more people on the platform for longer and not link out to other things like sub stack, which just gets totally to boosted. But yeah, I mean, I, I published this. I might have been on the day everything was the floor was falling out. And really the the core idea behind it is and it's painful, right? There's no deny. If you're someone who actually has like a good amount of wealth in Bitcoin, there's no denying that watching your, your, your wealth go down 15% in a day, it it hurts, it's not fun, right? But the point I tried to make here is that it really isn't about the volatility. Anyone who has secure Bitcoin, whether it's in self custody, whether it's with on ramp, whether it's otherwise, as long as you still have your Bitcoin and that core position, you're in good shape. And I try to put that perspective out there because when the market is totally tanking and everyone is freaking out about how much lower are we going to go, this sucks. Like it's important to just remember there's been hundreds of billions of dollars of permanent losses in this space. So if you're not in that category, you're doing pretty well. And So what I was trying to just pull out here was you're in good shape if you have secure Bitcoin. And now is really a good opportunity to re evaluate and think about where could I improve my setup. And so I gave actually a number of questions to think through, essentially an audit for people to think through as we kind of have this period of consolidation and chopping around. You don't want to be in a situation where you're trying to make, you're rushing to make changes to your setup when the price is really ripping, because then you're rushing and that's when mistakes happen. So look, use this, use this time as an opportunity to re evaluate what you're currently doing. Think about the gaps that you have, think about where maybe you're really strong AT and proceed accordingly. I had a number of people reach out to me over X, like just total strangers because they read this and it resonated with them, but they don't really know what options are out there. So I took a number of I was literally just giving my cell phone out to, to random people on acts and had a number of conversations. And people are just unaware of like what the solutions are out there. And so look, if you haven't seen this, check it out. Maybe it's valuable, maybe it's not. I think it's valuable, Jackson. I think it was a good piece and and the sort of core take away to me was to to your point, like the volatility is temporary. But what's really painful, like the only way it could be worse is if like you actually lose the Bitcoin and in some manner, whether an exchange hack or, you know, missing a seed phrase, messing up a transaction, etcetera. So if you get your house in order that allows you to withstand the volatility a bit like if you can have Peace of Mind and how you're securing the asset, then you can just you know, you can withstand the volatility, know it's temporary, know the long term trajectory is unchanged. The fundamentals are unchanged but that you're secure and and you have Peace of Mind and when when you sleep at night. Jackson, you just, I was on mute talking business, talking business on air. You just gave me an idea and I'm I'm going to say it out loud. So it has to manifest in one of us doing it is we need like bitcoincustodyfaq.com, whatever the URL is and you just go there and you just ask your questions and we'll just load it with, you know, the stuff can be built in an hour with all the questions, all the thoughts, all the everything you put in that doc. We're going deep and it'll just be a resource for somebody. It doesn't have to push it to any one thing. It's just thinking about the trade-offs. Because I think where the thought came from is, you know, when you look at this stuff for so long, it starts to just become like the example is what's everyone's end game? Like what's everyone's end game? You're going to hold this device and it's $1,000,000 and everything's going to be OK or the institutions are going to be, you're going to trust them with your Bitcoin and holding trillions of dollars because $1,000,000 Bitcoin means that Coinbase has like 5 to $10 trillion. And so naturally, if that's the solution will then people will end up or that's the outcome. Then people will go through the questions and in the end game becomes clear of like what we do. But it's really that people don't even know the questions to ask and the risk associated because you see all these bots going out and there's like the the claw bot, they're like 49,000 kind of like what is it? What is the term a prompt tax or whatever we're like they're just have the blog that has like code in it or whatever the the prompt is. So like if you're out crawling and then you could just basically take over a computer put being is there's all these like vulnerabilities that exists on the web and then they're like it, they're, they're, they're multiplying from like agents to be able to go and like suss out wallets. And if they get access to a computer, there's, it's crazy how many people store seed phrases in like password managers. And like we've known, I've talked to clients that like take half the C phrase and put it in a Google doc, But like they know what to look for or the image as well, because you can search like via Google images. And so if you get access to somebody's Gmail and then you can like search, that's just going to be so much easier. And so this reality of AI proliferating, it's in, in the deep fake stuff, like it's just going to continue to grow. And so if you have those like kind of questions and then the understanding of like, well, these are the trade-offs in your solution and naturally pulls people through because there's no real place for people to talk about. And it's partially why there's no one, nobody talks about what we talked about because they have no incentive to. That's very like it's a it's a mental model I use when explaining multi institution in the same way explaining Bitcoin, because if you just explain Bitcoin, the rational thing I think is, well, why me? Why now? It sounds like a get rich quick scheme, But then when you start to break down, well, there's volatility, there's, you know, 50% drawdowns, there's custody issues. It starts to make sense and then it can get somebody to understand. Well, oh, now I get why there's asymmetry. It's because nobody's explaining this way. It's the same thing with multi institutions like, well, why should you exist? And then when you break down all the intricacies and friction with self custody and then third party for all your wealth, it's not to say 1's wrong or the other, but if you have something that can walk people through in an objective way that these are the things you think about the rational decision if we're right, is that some portion of those individual would come. So Jackson, you, you gave him to build that for us. Yeah, man, I don't have enough to work on, so that sounds great. That's why I figured. Thank you. We'll just have the we'll have the Droid Army build it. Thank you. Sir, a couple hours. There's enough data out there for the Droid army to build it. It's pretty straightforward on, you know, there's a lot of the data with. Hasib, I would like to, I would like to hear in the comments, would listeners of the last trade prefer if we just had our AI avatars do this podcast every week or do they actually like to hear directly from us? There's enough of transcripts for us to to, yeah. Definitely. We should pick we one one episode. We should just like create bots and see if anyone notices and then we'll see in six months. That might be like an actual possibility. I think we can get it tomorrow, next week and then they'll, but they'll like talk, we'll talk to each other. So like. Reminder before we before we wrap reminder, what is the what is the ask for commenters either on YouTube or on Twitter for swag new segment best best new segment idea is that is that the ask Michael? Yeah, I mean, I guess it was comments. I thought I really wanted to be at tagged on ramp and like what the the new segment is. But I mean, we won't if you end up on YouTube and it's the best one, there's going to be something out there. We know there's a lot of awesome segments we can we can include to really kind of break the the themes up. And we've been thinking about some, but I feel like, you know, there'll be an obvious one that comes out and then depending how good it is, maybe we get the person to join Because there's been a lot of, you know, listeners that want to come on and just talk about, you know, Bitcoin. It's lonely out there right now. It's 65K. Everyone thinks you're an idiot. So we won't. We don't think you're an idiot. And you are. No, you and you are. You totally are. Wow. I have to give a shout out to our buddy Jeff. You know our I guess I won't dox him because I was going to say his handle because he's always there. So I don't dox, but he knows he is. He always listens and I always see him comment all over. Jeff's probably going to have some good ideas with segments in the show, so I'll I'll look forward to your tags. All right, cool. Well, Nick, thank you for joining. Thank you, Nick. Thank you for listening to the show. I did not know that you did that. And yeah, that's cool, man. A lot. Of the team members, listen in guys, I told you don't sell yourself short, you know, but I also know there's a lot of team members that are going to be interested in that swag. So you might actually, you know, you might see some engagement here from from the team. That stuff's hard to come by. That's a good point. You know what's interesting is Michael just has a new a piece of on ramp apparel every day it seems and. I've been noticing. Yeah, it is interesting. Isn't it? I like the one you're wearing, that's pretty nice. Maybe we'll do like a shirt switch while I'll give you mine and you switch. Hey. It wasn't Kellen's original contract and he never received his swag and he has his big beef with you now. He's upset, he's upset. It's great, though, because Kellen's like, I think the youngest on the team, so he can just deal with not getting swagged for a while where you kind of push him out. Well, Kellen doesn't listen to the podcast, so he's not going to hear. This. That's definitely. That's why he's not getting anything. That's on him. But. It is worth calling out if anybody has any issues across the board with a firm. Reach out to Nick at on rent.com. On rentbitcoin.com. Not on rent.com because I won't go to Nick, but on rentbitcoin.com he will. Gladly. I'm partially joking, but I'm partially not if. You're here for it. We. We get a lot of, no, we get really a lot of good notes. There was comments on last week, we were on the broadcast in Brom and they got one of the, the guys, he's a client was referencing our classiness for not using the F word, which I like, appreciated. And then there was somebody yesterday because we, we, we've been riffing on this AI stuff and the guys were asking for or whatever about the like onboarding to not rug themselves with Clawbot. And so I put it together and then reference, I'll send it to anybody else that asked for it. And so we had some people ask on final settlement. So anyway, if you have some ideas or options or you actually want to hold 2 keys next to your multi institution, I'll reach out to Nick there too because. We'd love to hear from people interested in any of that. So yeah, happy, happy to field those. I'm just going to set up an e-mail forward or all of my clients. So I'll just go to Nick. All right. See you guys, boys. All right, 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.