Transcript+
Let's be clear, Bitcoin is an international asset. We are spending like drunken sailors. Bitcoin is the only economic entity where the. Supply is unaffected by the demand. If you want to preserve your wealth, you have to convert. That currency into an asset that's scarce, desirable, portable, durable, and maintainable. We just recorded this episode with Tim Kotzman and Ethan Peck. And if you're wondering what the next wave of Bitcoin adoption looks like, this is the one to tune into. Ethan joins us as the Director of Bitcoin. What a title, right? At Shrive Asset Management, and we dig into how corporate adoption is accelerating from the inside out. We discuss shareholder proposals at Microsoft, Dell and Meta, the rise of dedicated Bitcoin treasury companies and the growing battle inside boardrooms, capital markets and public perception. The remarkable part though is we've all had a chance to front run the big boys, so let's not mess this up. If you're holding Bitcoin for the long term, consider on ramps. Multi institution custody, a secure vault solution that eliminates single points of failure. Includes insurance coverage through Woods of London and makes inheritance as simple as logging into your account and clicking a few buttons. Get your Bitcoin situated now so as the price marches higher and bigger pools of capital step in, you can enjoy it without having to stress about the what ifs. It's almost summertime, so don't worry about the Bitcoin head to on rampbitcoin.com. You can sign up in minutes or you can book a consultation with myself, Cam, Michael, whoever. I'll see you then. Enjoy the episode. All right, well, it's time for scarce assets. We have an interesting 1 today because if Tim Kotzman, Tim is usually on the last trade. We did record the last trade just yesterday. And the audience wanted to know, wanted to know where Tim was. And so my, my concern and the audience concern was last time that Tim was on the last trade. He allegedly was recording from the back of a taxi cab, but we weren't sure if it was actually a police car. And so I just assumed that Tim's been locked up for the past two weeks. So Tim, it's nice to see you're back to business as usual. You have the orange tie on. And then the guest of honor today is Ethan Peck. Ethan is the director of Bitcoin. We were just talking about how cool the title that is at Strive asset management and Ethan and I I guess we briefly encountered back at Poms event in New York in February, the Bitcoin investor week on rampant Strive Co hosted a lunch. So I had a brief opportunity to connect there. But Ethan, it's great to see you, really excited about all the work that you're doing and get to know you a little bit better on today's show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure. Good to see you again, Tim and Jackson. And yeah, there's a bunch of good companies in this space on ramp too, and a pleasure to be here. Excellent. Well, Ethan, why don't you just tell us a little bit more about your background? So director of Bitcoin, that's it's a big title, it's about as big as it gets. And so would love to just understand a little bit more about your background. How did you land at strive doing the work that you're doing? And then we'll, we'll go further from there, but let's just get people familiar with the your background and the work you're you're focused on and strive. Cool. Yeah. So first of all, I'm on the corporate governance team at Strive. So I'm on, I'm the director of Bitcoin on all matters relating to corporate governance more specifically. So it's not as broad of a title as it sounds, but that's because of my background, my backgrounds in shareholder activism. And so for three years, I was a shareholder activist at a non profit filing shareholder proposals. Most of those shareholder proposals dealt with ESG pushing back against ESG, specifically at the companies that took it too far. We're doing things against fiduciary duty, against the interest of their shareholders. And so I just tried to keep corporations honest. As part of that, last year, I submitted A shareholder proposal to Microsoft asking them to add Bitcoin to their balance sheet just because I thought that it fit within the frame of fiduciary duty and because corporations were ignoring their mismanagement of their treasury. So it didn't really come from a place of like rah rah Bitcoin, even though I am, but it was just for the best interest of Microsoft shareholders for the, you know, that's that's where it came from. And Strive saw that, Matt Cole, CEO Strive saw that. And as Strive's dedication to Bitcoin and being a responsible asset manager that really puts his clients first realized that we need to also include in our voting paradigm for directors for shareholder proposals and engagement with corporations a pro Bitcoin stance because that's in the best interest of shareholders and Stripes clients. And so that's how I got hired at Strive and I've been focused on engaging with corporations on all matters relating to Bitcoin. Very cool natural synergies here between you and Tim, host of the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast, which everyone should certainly check out. So Ethan, that's an interesting background. So right before we hit recording, just mentioned ESG briefly and I figured we'd save it for the conversation. So how did you end up in a role where you were, I guess on the other side of ESG? Not to say that I, I guess the, the bigger point there is like ESG was this very popular way of investing for the past like half a decade or so, perhaps longer. And everyone was on board with ESG and DEI. And then things kind of shifted over the past, call it year or so. And I know Strive was really loud about their advocacy for just doing things, let's say, the right way, focusing on the business, focusing on the shareholders and focusing less on these, like more subjective things around ESG. And so how did you end up in a role where you were doing that? And then I'm interested to hear how like Bitcoin kind of fits into this as well. Like, is this, were these like 2 totally separate interests of yours? Or was there any sort of overlap between the two before you joined? Strive there. Were two separate interests. So I actually got into it because I started getting interested in politics a couple years ago. I joined my former job, National Center of Public Policy Research as a shareholder activist a couple months before Strive became a company. So a lot of different organizations around that time like popped up and, and started pushing back against ESG because it got so loud and was really taking over the culture. And so I was kind of like reformed liberal. I used to be more on the left when I was younger and as part of my becoming conservative like a little bit before COVID and around COVID, I started getting interested in more of these ideas And I, I reached out to a conservative nonprofit because I saw their job listing and it was about shareholder relations and getting companies back to neutral. And I was like, that's something I could definitely get behind. And they asked for a writing sample. And actually at the time, the writing sample that I gave them was this like this 20 page paper on Bitcoin for my master's degree on cybersecurity. And that's what got me hired there. So it wasn't there were two separate interests, but I'm happy that it sort of started there like together and now it's it joined back. So came full circle. Very cool. So you must have a knack for writing then because you mentioned so. Yeah. So did I understand correctly, you mentioned you got on the radar of Matt Cole and strive by the shareholder proposal or letter that you wrote to Microsoft and was that toward the end of last year would maybe fill in some of the gaps around that? So Strive muster their credit because they're the best asset manager in the game. I'm not just saying that because I worked there. Thought that before too was the only like the only big asset manager shareholder to vote for that proposal. If you guys remember it only got .55% and Strive voted for it. So you know, big credit to strive as leading the way in at the responsible investment stewardship. And it was just from that that Matt saw me and podcast that I went on including one of 10 and with pomp and and he reached out and it's just a natural fit based on my background and been great. That's incredible. So today at Strive, are you focused predominantly on drafting proposals and letters to public companies? Is that the core focus of your role? And perhaps, if there's anything else, what else are you working on at Strive these days? Yeah. So it's a couple of different kinds of engagement. So there are proposals. It's right now not proposal season. So the the season for submitting proposals are in the fall and we're going to submit a few and look to submit a few. And then but for now, since it's the offseason of when you can submit, there have been a few different engagements. So you guys saw the letter to GameStop, you guys saw the letter to into it. Did you see that? So we we sent the letter to into it because into it was censoring MailChimp was censoring its users that were sending out emails that included Bitcoin in it. And so that's a completely first of all, it's a completely inappropriate policy to censorship users and customers. That way. It's, you know, runs against the interest of shareholders to have such a stringent anti free speech view. So from there, just from that standpoint alone, we sent them a letter and then we also asked them to add Bitcoin to their treasury in that letter because one of their flagship products, TurboTax, is at risk of AI disruption. Because, you know, we feel that a lot of companies that can be automated by AI will go away in the future, that there's going to be a lot of disruption in the next decade. And that a Bitcoin war chest is the best thing that you can do as a company to protect yourself against that, you know, these sorts of events. And so that that was our recommendation letter to them. We also had a couple of other engagements with other companies that have to remain private for now, But we're we're actively reaching out to companies and we're also considering different Bitcoin related things in the way that we folk. So there's, it's not just the, as an asset manager, it's not just we're not just like we're not a activist like in my former role, we also have to vote on these proposals on behalf of our clients. And so if we see a director that's particularly against Bitcoin or even AI is not forward-looking, that's something that we consider in our, in our voting paradigm. And definitely we're going to do that more going forward. So that's, that's what I'm focused on. And then other matters relating to our general Bitcoin strategy? Awesome. Yeah. It's incredible to hear that the there was only .55% vote in favor of Microsoft adopting a Bitcoin strategy. And so that just goes to show how early we are. And I'd also assume that it goes to show how challenging of a challenging of a role you're sitting in, right where it's still Bitcoins not still fully accepted within the traditional finance institutional investment space. It's starting to get there, but it's really still a long road ahead, even if people don't want to admit that the ETFs have only existed for a little over a year. It's creeping its way into portfolios. But for the most part, Bitcoin is still treated as as this like radioactive asset class that people don't understand it. It's, you know, anchoring back to its teeth. It's too volatile and so it's an uphill battle, but it's a really good battle to be fighting. And so I'm curious, like as you think about the strategy at Strive, first, could we answer the obvious question like how do you kind of position Bitcoin as part of a treasury strategy for a company? What like what are the leading talking points there to advocate for it? And then the second part, and I can reiterate, if you forget Bo, just be like what are the type of companies that you're going to focus on as part of this shareholder activism? Got it. So first of all, yes, it's a completely uphill battle, no doubt in my mind. But I was sitting in the same exact position in 2020, in 2021 and 2022 with ESG. And it was also you guys remember back then how you know in the culture and powerful like DEI was. And now it's on its last legs. And I remember submitting a proposal to Boeing asking them to get rid of DEI, and it got 5.6% of the vote. And then three months later, Boeing dropped the EI. So these things happen, you know, gradually and then suddenly. So I'm actually very excited and very hopeful for the future of Bitcoin treasuries. And I think it's actually happening faster than the death of ESG happened, but it still is an uphill battle. The kind of companies that we're targeting are ones that are susceptible to AI disruption, first of all, ones that have mismanagement of their balance sheet. So if they have like a large cash position relative to their market cap, that's something to consider as well. And companies that may have an interest in doing this already, because a big part of this is that there's such a resistance from like the boomer directors at a lot of these companies, They're just like this. The directors at these companies are such an echo chamber. They sit on multiple boards at the same time and they're so overlapping and they, they just have their view of the world and there's not a lot of heterodoxy. So any time we get a director at a company or ACEO of a company that has shown some, you know, positive views towards Bitcoin, we say, hey, you know, we try to open a conversation there. And so those are the different things that we're considering. And then the last thing, as you guys have seen with our recent announcement, I'm assuming, is that we thought that as we're, you know, advocating this on behalf, you know, for other companies, we looked at ourselves and we thought that we should also be a Bitcoin treasury company. And so we're very proud that we're moving towards that direction. And if anyone wants to see more on that, they can, they can't speak any more on that because it's, you know, private information. But anything that's publicly available, you can go on our website andstrive.com and and there's a bunch there. Yeah, that is exciting. I'm I'm looking forward to following that a bit closer. And so that's an interesting point. The last piece that you mentioned where it's looking for people who are within an organization that may have expressed some sort of inclination or interest or ownership in Bitcoin. Because at On Ramp, we help quite a bit on the private client side, the individual side, our clients are incredibly sophisticated and their understanding of Bitcoin in the value proposition of the business. But then when you go to the institutional side, it's more going back to that radioactive asset, right? And so typically on the institutional side of the business, you need to find people within those organizations who already own Bitcoin themselves, you know what maybe identify themselves as a Bitcoiner. And so it's interesting to hear that you're applying that same framework for some of these conversations because if you have that internal champion or advocate, I'd imagine you could really accelerate things versus trying to work only from the external. Yeah, absolutely. And Tim's interviewed like, I think more than anyone on earth, the most CE OS and directors that like have adopted a Bitcoin treasury. So I think he he could speak better than anyone on what's the who's the kind of person that would actually do this. What do you think, Tim? Yeah, I mean, certainly really comes down to, as Sailor would say, people who have a need to know. So yes, zombie companies, but also to your point, companies that are already being disrupted or otherwise need to hear from their shareholders about you're just like needlessly censoring free speech. That's just kind of crazy to even realize that that's happening in 2025 in, you know, globally. But in the United States it just is kind of is mind blowing. So I would say any company but the ones that are probably going to be last or maybe not a leverage strategy, but just putting someone on the balance sheet would probably be the mag 7 excluding strategy when they get into the S&P 500 because they have a business that is going to be probably right. We the buzzword this week is Moat, right? Do you have a Moat? How big is your Moat? Do you have a boat with your Moat like all these Moat type adjectives? But in all seriousness, if they have a cash flowing business, they they are either have they're either of a certain size or they are just so focused on their current operation that this is kind of the last thing that they would even be focused on. And then layer into that, if they don't have someone that's at all vocal about Bitcoin as a commodity, as an asset class in house, then that probably is an even tougher climb uphill. Yep. And I completely agree. And I also think that some of these like some of these directors or, or or CE OS that show a positive attitude towards Bitcoin, like in their personal lives, they're still hesitant to, to adopt it for their company. And that's, that has been the biggest frustration. Like Michael Dell, for example, I think you guys may have seen that the proposal at Dell, they requested that the company, the company requested that the proposal that I sent that Dell back a couple months ago be left off the ballot and not be even allowed to be voted on by shareholders. And they requested that at the SEC and the SEC granted them permission to do that, unfortunately. So that's a little bit of a set back and we can discuss that a little bit. But Michael Dell, someone that's shown a number of times like a positive view towards Bitcoin and still his company went against this proposal just asking for like a report on Bitcoin. And so that shows you the dichotomy between what a lot of these people are willing to do in their personal lives and what they're willing to do for their companies. And I think that a lot of that just comes down to nobody wants to, I think nobody wants to be held responsible if they make a mistake or they play it so safe. And it just gets back to like this like environment of quarterly capitalism that we live in, all these companies just going quarter to quarter, you know, playing with numbers, playing all these little tricks just to make the next 10 Q look good. And they're not thinking about the long term interest of their shareholders. And that's just the way that directors are put on boards, how people retain their jobs. And nobody's, you know, going out on a limb. It takes someone like a Michael Saylor to say I'll do it and. That a part of the theme at a Strategy World and I think that Tim, I think you guys talked about this on the last podcast that you had with Matt Cole and Ben and Jeff, shout out to hurdle rate Pine that courage is in scarcer supply than intelligence and that's really what it takes. Yeah, either be a disruptor or be disrupted and it might not happen overnight, but I think in the in the coming months and quarters, you're going to see it, right. Maybe not weeks, but definitely not years at this point. That's my personal view. Yeah, I saw that stat that Sailor included in one of his presentations in Orlando. About 96% of companies, I believe it was underperforming T-bills. Is that right? If one of you could correct me. Did you see that one? I think it was, I don't remember the exact stat. I, I, I think it was that 96% of the companies like underperform the S&P in the S&P underperform the S and Pi. Wasn't sure, but was it T-bills? I'll have to check it was one or the other. But it yeah, I guess, I guess the broader point is that the there's so much concentration in the S&P 500, Tim already called out the Max 7. I mean there that's probably what like 2530% of the index in terms of market cap and then it drives the outsize of the returns. And so if I'm one of these other 493 companies in the S&P 500, that is either whatever it is, whether they're struggling to beat the index itself or they're struggling to beat T-bills, I should know that stat will hopefully find it during this episode. But either way, I think I'd be looking at opportunities to potentially increase my shareholders return. And Bitcoin feels like an obvious place to go because you mentioned Bitcoin as a hurdle rate and something we focus on at early riders as well. Tim's an advisor to the venture fund, but every capital allocation decision is made with Bitcoin as the hurdle rate. And so, yeah. And so do you want to talk more about that at Strive, just in terms of how that informs your business decisions and maybe how you articulate that to companies that aren't as convinced about the merits of Bitcoin as we are? Yeah. Well, I can't speak more to our treasury strategy right now. I got to point you guys to the website, but Bitcoin is the hurdle rate for capital deployment. And you know, you've seen Matt has said this himself, he holds himself as the CEO to that same exact standard. And he said that anyone that deploys capital and doesn't beat Bitcoin should be fired. And we, we hold ourselves to that standard. And and that's the way that as we look to become a Bitcoin treasury company and that's the way that we're going to evaluate opportunities going forward against Bitcoin and that we believe that every company, especially the ones that have already adopted Bitcoin should do that. Yeah, I mean, it makes a ton of sense. I think it was Fidelity, Chris Kiper, head of research there, who was speaking about this idea, right? Where if you're in a, if you're deciding how to allocate capital within your organization, you really should be evaluating those decisions based on Bitcoin as a hurdle rate, which I think the number he pointed to, I forget the time frame was it probably was five years, 65% kegger. And so if you reorient your capital allocation decisions to Bitcoin, it totally changes the game, right? Like if you're sitting on a pile of cash and you have to beat a 65% kegger, well, there's very, very few ways to do that. It's just like it totally changes the game. It flips the script of capital allocation. Yeah. And what I think that it does the most is this gets to, you know, the idea of a Bitcoin standard compared to a Fiat standard. It cuts a lot of the nonsense. It cuts a lot of the waste. Having lived through a century of easy money, There's a lot of there's a lot of nonsense, there's a lot of waste, There's a lot of low quality products going around. And, you know, we believe that if you're stringent and you have to be really careful and, and, and in the way that you allocate your capital and, and really discriminate only for the best ideas and the best opportunities, it's going to lead to an era, not just success for your own company, but an era. The more that more companies do this and the more that this becomes a standard across many corporations and across countries and markets, this will raise the standard of the goods and services, I believe. How do you articulate that though to if you go back to Microsoft, right, just to use them as an example, not even a percent of shareholders wanted to approve that proposal to add Bitcoin. And so that just goes to show again the uphill battle that we talked about how early we are. And so it's probably really challenging to tell people that Bitcoin is a hurdle rate if they lack an understanding of what Bitcoin is, right? So what are what are some of like the more one O one types of conversations or positioning that you use at shrive as part of the shareholder activism strategy to convey the merits of Bitcoin? Like how, how do you get from we're a board, we don't really know anything about Bitcoin to eventually deciding that Bitcoin is a hurdle rate and it's worth deploying our cash into that until we can further allocate resources. Yeah, First of all, even though only like less than a percent voted for that proposal, we have to remember that it's not the actual ultimate shareholders that voted on that. It's the big three asset managers, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street and other big asset managers like Goldman and JP Morgan and Bank of America, They're the ones voting on behalf of their clients. And then you have the big two proxy advisory services, ISS and Glass Lewis. They're, they're recommending the votes on behalf of a lot of these pension funds and state pension funds. And so that Dom and a lot of retail investors, they don't, they don't vote their shares. And So what you end up with a situation with is over 90% of the vote, even higher maybe is coming from these large institutional asset managers. And that's why the votes are so lopsided. As soon as like BlackRock and Vanguard flip, all of a sudden the vote 40%. So it's like that. That's that's what we're really dealing with. If you actually pull the clients of the funds, you know, BlackRock and Vanguard funds, it's not going to be 1 less than 1%. So that's why these things can be such a lopsided votes, but it's also why they can flip very quickly. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is that when I'm discussing this with, with, with companies, when I discussed it with Amazon, with Dell, with McDonald's, with Microsoft, Meta, there's almost the same conversation every single time. The, the very first thing that they bring up and that their biggest concern by far is volatility. And so when you look at it, a lot of these companies, yes, they have a lot of cash. When you look at it as a, as a relative to their market cap, their treasuries are usually not that big in, in the 1st place. So, so their own, you know, their own credit, their treasuries, the, the amount of cash that they have really, and their short dated treasuries really only covers their short term expenses and a, and a little bit beyond that. So it's not like a lot of it is inflating away. And this is something that, you know, I learned having engaged with them a little bit more. But that's the problem that they're so short minded. They're only thinking about the next quarter. They're not thinking 5-10 years down the road. They're only thinking about the short, short term interest of shareholders when they need to be balancing the short term and long term interest of shareholders. Think about how many shareholders own Microsoft and or these funds for 20-30, forty years. Like do they not have an interest to, you know, to serve those in those interest for those shareholders too? Of course they do, but they're not considering that because they don't want to get fired. They don't want to rock the boat and they're just comfortable running their corporations in this quarter to quarter way. And what I found was that, you know it, what's really interesting is, is, is this quarterly capitalism is this mindset of short dated treasuries? Like is this the byproduct of Fiat? Like that's, that's really where my head's been going lately. So it's not like I think that once corporations adopt A Bitcoin standard or adopt Bitcoin, it's not just going to like adjust their hurdle rate. It'll also like be a solution. It's a hedge against inflation. It's it'll adjust their hurdle rate, but it'll also, it's also an answer like in a hedge against managerial myopia, against short termism. And it fixes their time preferences and it completely reorients companies I believe. Yeah, absolutely. No, that it's a fairpoint. And I think at the end of the day, this is more of a grassroots adoption that we've experienced in Bitcoin. And so I mean all these people are individuals within organizations, right? And so the the path of least resistance is to have more individuals understand the merits of Bitcoin for their own personal lives. And then to your point, Ethan, there needs to be an opportunity or a path towards more courage in corporate boardrooms and in institutional investor community to actually be some of the first people to adopt Bitcoin in a more meaningful way. And so that seems to be a challenge at the moment. Just when I look at Bitcoin treasuries, we have of course, strategy leading by a wide margin, but then the other largest treasuries are, call them Bitcoin or crypto native businesses. So you have some miners in there, you have exchanges, but then there's very few companies that are not in the industry that have adopted a Bitcoin treasury playbook. But it's exciting to hear that Strive is at the forefront of doing this and I am encouraged. I think it's just a matter of survival. I did look up the status we were talking through this. 96% of the companies have returns in line or below T-bills not, not S&P 500, right. So these companies are at pace or worse than what's perceived to be a risk free asset. Now does is it risk free? That's a topic of a different discussion. But at the same time it's like we all know if you're getting a 3% or 4% coupon on something, you're losing purchasing power over A1510 year horizon. And so there does become a point where these companies just adopted out of necessity. I mean, it at some point it doesn't become a choice anymore. It's like, all right, we either want to continue to exist as a business and to do so, we need to figure out ways to invest our capital that will outpace the basement or we don't exist anymore or we're required, right? I mean, isn't it that simple? It's just it's, it's a matter of survival. A lot of these companies also, when I engage with them, they're doing a lot of like the, the treasuries aside, right? If those cover their short term expenses, they're doing a lot of buybacks and a lot of dividends. And so like something that Amazon told me was that that the, you know, Bitcoin is too volatile, but then they're investing, they're buying back their own stock and Amazon stock this year. I believe I saw stat was more volatile than Bitcoin over the last 90 days. And so like it's, it's funny that Bitcoin is also still, you know, you're still seeing upside with it, but the volatility is going down especially. And we're in an era now where securities are also volatile. So and they're and they're not performing well. So this is makes Bitcoin more and more attractive. And I believe we'll eventually get to a point where even those that have already come around to Bitcoin but don't have the courage to implement it themselves for their company, you know, beyond their own personal lives, they're going to be forced to. And that's the sailor's point. Like people find Bitcoin when they have to. And so it looks like that's that is showing us that these companies very soon will have to. Yeah, it's like 2017 called. They want their line back. The volatility thing is just so tiresome. First of all, Bitcoin has more positive volatility than negative volatility, so there's more positively skewed days. So the returns are, if you look at the distribution curve of Bitcoin and perhaps gold might be this as well, there's more positive skew, meaning more days of volatility to the upside than downside. Whereas with equities and bonds, it's the opposite. There's more of a negative skew. So this environment of several past decades of modern portfolio theory and 6040 portfolio, they associate volatility with being an inherently bad thing because the traditional assets that we have invested in in a meaningful way have more downside volatility. So when you introduce something like Bitcoin, there's more upside volatility to the asset class. That's a good thing. I mean, volatility is an opportunity. If you're strategic as a company and you're sitting on a stockpile of cash, you can strategically deploy that cash into Bitcoin and it take advantage of the downside volatility and enjoy the upside volatility, right. So I think there's just like a lack of critical thinking or maybe it is just the human nature to not want to go against the grain or against the herd and wait for more people to step out and push the frontier forward before entering this. What's still perceived to be risky asset class because of its volatility. But for the reasons we just talked about, that doesn't make it a risky asset. It's good. It's just like it's, it's ridiculous. Absolutely. I agree completely. And then we'll just also add that like as soon as you adjust your time preference beyond the scope of like 3-4, five years, even four years, you know, bitcoins never had a negative return over I think even three years. So as soon as you adjust your time preference beyond three years, then the volatility doesn't matter. So. Yeah. What can you speak at all to? Just what one thing you mentioned I think is interesting is the votes are concentrated with the largest asset managers, right? And so how does that relate to a strategy of shareholder activism where maybe there's only so much you can do to move the needle by going to a company directly versus trying to partner or collaborate with the largest shareholders, BlackRock, Vanguard to push things forward? I mean, I know it seems that Larry Fink, who was a very staunch critic of Bitcoin five years ago, is now in favour of Bitcoin. Who's to say how much he understands it? I, I don't know. It honestly doesn't even matter. But he's in the business of making money and their firm had the most successful ETF of all time last year with IBIT. And so he sees this while it's still a small percentage of their revenue, it's a growing percentage of the revenue. And so I'm just curious like how do you think about from Stripes perspective working with these large shareholders to push forward a Bitcoin treasury strategy rather than trying to go direct? Well, I wouldn't say working with them, like first of all, you have to remember that BlackRock voted against that Microsoft proposal. So they might be like, so there's a, there's a disconnect between the investment stewardship departments that some of these asset managers and then how they behave outside of those investment stewardship departments. What I'm very proud of its strive is that we don't have that disconnect. You know, we actually practice what we preach, which is why we're becoming a Bitcoin treasury company and why we vote consistently with that. I think that that's what gives us the edge and what corporate governance is something that matters. If you have a pro shareholder, pro fiduciary corporate governance and you're the only asset manager that does that, then you're going to attract clients because you because you do that and because that will make a difference in the way that companies are run. And so I, I believe that Strive has, you know, a positive future ahead of it also with his asset management. Business understood. Yeah, I guess it's less about collaborating, but it's more so just recognizing that these companies do have majority, in many cases majority of the voting interest. And so it's like there's a lot of opportunity for you guys to go direct and and push things forward. But it seems like to some extent, at least for some companies, you want to work with these other firms need to be on board. Right. Well, I spoke, I spoke with BlackRock about the Microsoft proposal back in November and they sounded just like Microsoft. They sounded like like, well, the company says it's volatile. It's like, OK, now you trust the company, but when you push these other ESG stuff on them, like then it's then you don't trust the company. So it seems like BlackRock has their own agenda and they're just going to do what they do, and that's not within our control. We're just going to make the best pitch possible that we can for Bitcoin, and we believe that eventually more people than not will see it. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, there's been a lot of Bitcoin treasury companies that have been launched and announced. And so I'd be curious, Tim, I would welcome your thoughts on this topic as well. But what do you both just make of this? So Ethan, you mentioned strive becoming or is however you want to categorize it, Bitcoin asset management company. Then you have other firms that have been announced and launched in the past couple weeks, I think of 21 with Jack and Tether and Cantor. And so there seems to be more competition entering the space from a Pureplay Bitcoin treasury company or Pureplay Bitcoin asset management company. So this is a space that I don't follow as closely and I would really enjoy to hear from either one of you, just your thoughts. As this landscape evolves and more players enter the space, how do you think about the competitive environment? Want to go first time? Sure. I mean, I think it's certainly a net positive to have additional entrance in the space. I mean, Michael Saylor has said there's room for dozens of companies to be leverage Bitcoin equities or whatever term you want to use to really describe the micro strategy playbook of engaging with the capital markets to sell additional shares, issue debt, issue preferred shares, use these different strategies to really tap these different pools of capital to build Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Certainly some of these companies are going to thrive. Some of them are going to be OK. Some of them are going to make some strategic mistakes, whether it's a leverage ratio or just going down some other path that or or in my view, making it more complicated than it needs to be. I don't think that you need to follow one strategy to a tee and not have any outside or critical thinking of your own involved in it. But it's very obvious now that strategy is the gold standard of doing things in a measured, thoughtful, constructive, but in a way that gains scale and is innovative. I mean, part of the talks in Orlando walk through how the strategy team used the deep research function of AI to come up with these preferred products. I mean, talk about shaving years off of iterating ideas. That's that's really interesting and and forward-looking to just use, use all this technology. But you know, will some of these companies outperform on a certain time frame the strategies of the world? Sure. Will some of them crash and burn? Sure. That's why none of this is ever financial advice. But you know, for the longest time, and by longest time, I mean the last seven months since I started the Bitcoin Treasuries pod, it's really at least, and I focus on this a lot, right? I like wake up in the morning, talk about Bitcoin, go to sleep. That's pretty much my life. And really the household names have been MicroStrategy, now, Strategy, similar Scientific and Metaplanet, and there have been others, but not in a way that's like a household name. So I think it's a super interesting time. I mean, there's only ever going to be a company like 21 that comes to market with Cantor, Tether and SoftBank all being involved. That's only going to happen once in like humanity, at least for the United States. I mean, those are just such massive and unique organizations that we could spend an hour just talking about that project. And then you have other names in the industry, right? With Nakamoto, with David Bailey, I mean, he literally coordinated orange peeling President Trump. Like, it doesn't get much better than that as far as leaders in the industry that are coming to market with some of these projects. So I think it's going to be super interesting to see how it all develops on so many fronts, not just the regulatory aspects that we focused on a lot over the past year for all the obvious reasons, but from a marketing standpoint, right? Like you can double down on the capital side of it, but are you going to double down on the culture side of it and the social side of it because strategy is just leading the way and and put the numbers aside. I mean, if you look on social media over the past week, they have podcasters and influencers in their offices playing pool, drinking beer, interviewing the Ceoi mean, that's being innovative and that's connecting with. I mean, last night on True North, LA Dozier joined, joined us and he said, you know, he said, I see people in the chat right now on this live stream that are strategy employees. He said, I know for a fact that strategy employees watch True North videos as part of their training. I mean, it's really this confluence of really bringing together your employees in the case of strategy, their investors, and just really the community at large. Like putting that out there and not dismissing traditional media, but not relying on only traditional media, right? That we have all this new media and we could go down the list. There's a lot of what I've been posting about over the past week is like 1 meme a day, one podcast a day, you know, one event every month, one conference a year. I mean, yeah, is I, I just think we're entering this whole new world where not every company needs to, you know, do all of these things. But I think if people are not thoughtful about embracing what Ethan's talking about on the AI front and the Bitcoin front and, and wherever all this technology is going, not for technology's sake, but for productivity sake, for the shareholders, for, for everyone that's a stakeholder in these, in these firms, in these projects, in these companies, we need, especially when the Bitcoin treasury company front, you know, I, I really think there's going to be a lot of positions like a director of Bitcoin, but I think you're going to see like a Bitcoin treasury strategist, which is maybe just a different name for investor relations and community outreach. But my 1 take away from Orlando and being invited to the speaker's dinner with Fong and Sailor and, and all the speakers on the last night is, you know, it's a small room, but you still have 4 tables with 30 or 40 some people there. We need the next level of leadership in the Bitcoin space, specifically in the Bitcoin treasury space. I mean, it's going to get to the point where it's not scalable that any company that wants to pursue this strategy is going to be able to get on a call with Dylan or Sailor, right? Like it's just not really scalable. And there's great service providers that are coming into the space to to help with that. But I think you're going to see a Bitcoin treasury strategist at every Bitcoin treasury company and they're going to be really engaging in the traditional media and on the social side. In addition to I mean, this is all kind of investor relations and and community outreach. You're going to see a director of Bitcoin strategy some more to like a Dylan Leclair. And then you're going to see an executive like a Fong Lee or Sale or write a CEOACFOACIOA chairman and executive chairman that they're really, you know, doing a lot. But one of their primary functions is exactly what Sailor has been doing for half a decade, believe it or not, right? It's almost like, wow, five years is half a decade and he's been just pounding the table on Bitcoin, the Bitcoin story, managing his Twitter account and doing phone calls. I mean, that's a full time job. So I just think this entire ecosystem is at this really interesting inflection point. Tim, you're you're an excellent case study too. I mean, you just launched the podcast in October, November. I forget the story you told me one time, but you just kind of like did it right. And you didn't even have an expectation of making a business or career out of it. You just did the podcast. For some reason I forget. And then whatever it is, nine months later, maybe not even you're on stage with Michael Saylor at the conference. I mean, what is that? Like, what is that? What is that a lesson for people listening there? Because people want to get involved in the space. Yeah, people think it that it's that it's just kind of like a funny saying or a meme that you can just do things or it's just a meme. But like the reality is Ellie Dozier created digital art that had Michael Saylor wearing an orange tie and then Michael Saylor wore an orange tie on CNBC. And then Ryan and Jeff and myself saw that and I was actually pretty upset because they came out with their men in orange or whatever episode of Quant Bros. The day that I put on the orange tie in the studio, which was October 5th. Not that I'm keeping track or anything, but so like Sailor wore like Ellie Dozier literally create a meme, Then Sailor wore an orange tie, then Ryan and Jeff wore an orange tie, and then I wore an orange tie. So like 4th, unless you want to count digital sale or maybe I'm 5th to wear an orange tie. But this all is part of that social aspect that, you know, Eric Semler has has talked about he as an activist investor, as an LP, He doesn't really he kind of shies away from companies that are like a little too bombastic, right, a little too showy. And I totally understand that from that activist or investor LP standpoint, but look at what Michael Saylor is doing it. It doesn't have to be, it's not necessarily showy. It's just putting a spotlight on Bitcoin. And I think just all this is so unique because Bitcoin is a commodity. So you can talk about Bitcoin all day long, right? Senators and Congress people can talk about Bitcoin because it's a commodity. It's not a security. So like when you pair that with a equity, right? And there's regulations out there that you shouldn't be out there like necessarily like promoting and, and trying to pump your stock. But bitcoins just this interesting commodity when, when you can put it all into all these different wrappers. And, you know, I think I share some other of people, prominent people's views in the space that I'm surprised there are not more structured products on top of Bitcoin yet. They're coming, right. But you see all these products that I mean, that's just a nice clean wrapper that people like go, right, whether it's a product like a preferred product from strategy or it's some sort of ETF product. I mean, these are all doorways into Bitcoin. Like I'll just speak for myself. I don't really care how people get to Bitcoin. I just want them to get there and, and, and really accelerate that story. And I'm, I'm pretty positive on Bitcoin treasury companies and nation state adoption being able to, you know, I think it's going to feel like you're pulling the future forward a little bit, even though the reality will probably be closer to, you know, sailors forecast of 30 to 60% appreciation a year for the next, you know, 21 years. All right, just a quick break. 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So your friends and family, even you if you want to buy more Bitcoin got a check coming in. You just sold all your chairs in your house and you want to buy some more Bitcoin and now you can do it. No trading fees and you get 50% off of account fees and you get 50 to $150.00 in Bitcoin for every person you refer. So listen, your friends and family, they might have made fun of you before, but you should help them out if you're a good person and maybe you want to buy some more Bitcoin yourself. So head over to on rampbitcoin.com. You can open an account in minutes or you can also speak with Cam myself, whoever Michael even you want to talk to Michael, you want to hear Michael yell. So book a consultation online or just sign up on our website. Enjoy the rest of the episode for for both of you. I'm curious like looking through the rest of the year. So it's mid-May when we're recording. Tim, you mentioned structure products. So maybe my umbrella question would be just thoughts on adoption or announcements. So adoption of Bitcoin within corporate treasuries is let's say just like vanilla strategy starting to move some cash or some T-bills and parking in Bitcoin to just buffer the balance sheet, grow the the company. The next piece would be pureplay companies. So we saw a few that have been announced. Tim, you mentioned Nakamoto, totally forgot about that. 121 thoughts on more pureplay companies entering the space and then structured products. I mean, I hear of all these structured products. I actually have not spent much time learning about them just yet. But to my understanding, there's only a few that exist. I mean, ETFs aside, let's talk about like, you know, strategy products, Tim, that you probably know better. What are your thoughts? Just in terms of the remainder of this year where we see the most growth? Is it pureplay companies? Is it vanilla? Are there more structured products announced? You're just like, tell me what, what excites you guys and, and where do you where are you paying attention? Yeah. I think that the first of all, strike and strike are very unique products and I think that there are going to be more similar products coming from strategy and others as this space grows. Bitcoins really becoming an asset class, not just an asset. You have ETFs, you have Bitcoin treasury companies. I think those are going to be different kinds of Bitcoin treasury companies, pureplay ones, you know, micro strategy copies, companies that do things more innovative than strategy and take it to the next level. You're going to have companies that just use Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, like a Tesla. There's going to be all different kinds of ways to gain exposure to Bitcoin. And I think that that's a good thing. It's not that not just that it's a good thing. If you look back and you think about, you know, what would the game theory look like of Bitcoin becoming the money of the world? Like it would have to happen in steps. It would have to infiltrate, you know, the little bit of governments, a little bit of corporations, some, you know, retail, some countries are going to start using it where they don't have a stable currency and it's just going to take time. And so I think that these are the first iterations of that happening. That's what I believe is going on. And so there's going to be a lot of different products and corporate approaches and nation state approaches, whether it's just buying Bitcoin, whether it's, you know, buying Bitcoin and dips, dollar cost averaging, mining Bitcoin, trading in Bitcoin, Steak and Shake is now accepting Bitcoin. There's a There's a lot of different ways. Yeah, when I posted a few days ago, I said what what Bitcoin treasury company should I consider going to work for or one of the comments was Steak and Shake. And I, I was on a phone call with a guy and I said, you know, I like steaks and I like shakes. So maybe that's the play. But yeah, I there's just this proliferation of companies and products. I think we'll see more of that as the year goes on. And I think as you see call them the MicroStrategy copycats continuing to iterate that playbook meaning or just follow that playbook, not just on the equity and the depth of the preferreds. I think that is a huge unlock because you know, when you have products that have an 8% coupon with upside to conversion of the equity or you have a preferred product that's just a 10% perpetual yield forever. How many people are buying rental properties just trying to get 10%? They're doing all that work. And that's an example that Fong used during the one talk in Orlando. It's like, yeah, when the word hits the street and people actually like start to understand and, and, and there's an awareness level of these products. I think that, you know, to Ethan's point, that's why they're so unique and, and even just these pools of capital in the fixed income space, if the best product prior to strategy launching A preferred stock was giving you 600 basis points and you can get 800 basis points. I mean the math maths. So I, I think we're at a really interesting time to see all of these markets being built. And Jeff Walton actually did a great job last night on the True North Call kind of talking about creating a market. When he was in the reinsurance industry. He literally flew to London, flew to New York, flew to Bermuda, had 30 to 50 meetings, had one person say yes. And he like literally created a market for a product. But it's, it's a slow start. So like he did, he told that story. Then he went back the next year, did the same meetings, New York, London, Bermuda, and got four people to sign up. So it's like, I think I'm, I'm mentioning it because I'm guilty of it as much as maybe some other people have like, OK, well, you launched this ticker. One of them has AATM facility on it. Why aren't you cranking out a billion dollars a week of Bitcoin buys from it? Right? What's taking so long? We live in this like attention society and ADD Society of like, well, it's digital. Like I just sent a tweet and now it's done. Why can't you do the same of the capital markets? And it's not going to take forever. It might not even take that long, but it, you know, might take a few months or quarters or or a year to really ramp up from 0 from like not even an, an idea to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a week worth of capital out of these markets. I mean, it's happening fast. But again, I think I'm as guilty as the next person of like, why isn't it happening faster? And so some of those stories I think are really helpful. Yeah, for my vantage point, because I don't follow the strategy space as closely as the two of you do. Just one day these products existed. I, I guess I didn't, I don't know how much of the development of the products was actually done in public to maybe you could expand a bit further on that, but I just logged in on X1 day, which I'm even trying to be on X even less. So anyways, I just log in one day and these products exist, right? And so then I'm like, well, now I need to spend a little bit time to learn about them. But it's remarkable just how technology allowed for just the rapid acceleration of creating new financial product structure products. And I guess it was Sailor and Fong right, talking about how they just used AI to essentially design most of these new products. So I don't know like Tim from your vantage point, was there was there any public awareness about these being developed or just one day there was an announcement of the products and go ahead on that first? Yeah, there, there was no public awareness until they were launched, but it was just super cool to have executives opening up and and kind of letting you peer behind the curtain and speaking to that process of, hey, we, we, we iterated on deep research. And then once, right, they had amalgamated all this information, then they put it in front of their legal team and said, OK, this is what we want to do. Here's all the information, go make it happen, right? Which started the process of the legal team telling them why they couldn't do it. So but yeah, just the the transparency. And again, the probably also speaks to the cooperative competition, right? I mean, Bitcoin has a finite supply. It's the only game that I'm aware of where everybody is kind of right. You're buying some Bitcoin, I'm buying some Bitcoin. And at some point, if there's more buyers than sellers, the price is going to go up. So it's a, it's a unique space. Yeah, No, certainly is. I know we're coming up on time, Ethan. I wanted to just hear a little bit more about before we wrap up, a little bit more about Dell. And so it's interesting because when I read about the news at some point the past couple days, the way it was framed at least online by people or their perception of it was this is a positive thing or like, you know, the shareholders don't need to vote on it, but you obviously have a far more knowledgeable take and nuance take. So I'm curious, like, what do you actually make of this decision to, you know, to bypass a vote? And you know, just like, how can you break that down for us? Yeah, it's not a positive thing, but. Which is hilarious because, like, everyone's like, all fired up about it. And it's like, yeah, what? But I do think it's something we're going to recover from. So when I first submitted these proposals, and they're basically the same from one company the next, I was very careful in the way that I worded it. I remember when people first saw the Microsoft proposal, they were like, oh, this is lame. It's not even asking them to buy Bitcoin. It's asking them to do a report analyzing if they should buy Bitcoin. And the reason I did that was because I thought even this might not make it past the SEC because the SEC is so biased against shareholders, sometimes for good reason, because you don't want a situation in which a small group of activist shareholders can completely change a company, you know what I mean? So there has to be some protection in place for companies against, you know, bad acting shareholders. That being said, you have a biased SEC. Yes, it's changing. Yes, it's more pro Bitcoin than it was before, but it's not that quick to change. And a lot of these processes to evaluate these proposals started before Trump took office. And so I think that in the future you're going to see a more friendly SEC that's not going to discriminate so hard against proposals. That being said, once you set a precedent that one of these companies that which is why I was so careful in the first place and I was as careful as I could be, but that wasn't good enough. You had now the SEC decide this proposal cannot be voted on. And so if you submit the same proposal now to another company, they're just going to say, hey, look, there's president at Dell to leave this off the ballot. And So what we're I'm going to have to do and we're going to have to do it strives, we're going to have to reword these proposals in different ways more broadly that addresses things perhaps beyond just the treasury strategy. And I believe that with a more friendly SEC and different worded proposals, we'll be able to get these proposals in front of companies. But it is a small set back that. So if I'm being honest with you, but these exactly the same setbacks that I had with the EI going back to 2021, the SEC voted against a lot of our proposals and a lot of companies are you know my former employer, a lot of my proposal that is submitted. And as the time changed, as the SEC became more aware that there are true risks, the shareholder, the shareholders of the companies for implementing ADEI process, they became a little bit more lenient especially after that Supreme Court ruling SFA. And so I think the same thing is going to happen here. Now we have a strategic Bitcoin reserve that's a federal, you know, policy. So if the federal government policy is, yeah, let's, you know, let's stack Bitcoin, but the SEC is saying that, you know, shareholders can't ask corporations to do that as well. That changes the game. These decision at Dell actually started first at Amazon prior to the strategic Bitcoin Reserve and then for the sake of consistency, the SEC has to be give the same ruling at Dell as well. So small set back, but I think we're going to recover and there still will be a lot of shareholder engagement with corporations regarding Bitcoin and Bitcoin in their balance sheet. Yeah, appreciate you breaking that down. It's just, it's funny because you mentioned it earlier in the show about it being not a good thing. But then when I logged into X earlier this week, everyone's all fired up because their perception, I guess, is, oh, they're just going to do it now. They don't need to, you know, they don't need to ask for permission. But it's, I guess, reality. Yeah, but it's a little bit more nuanced as you just broke down. So to wrap things up here. One more thing on that on that front though, yeah, yeah, there is still a proposal at Meadow, so that one will be on the ballot. So look out for that. Oh nice, can you? When is that? You guys will see it. I want to start yeah. Cool. So to wrap things up then I wanted to just touch on something. Give me give me something bullish, give me something to fire some people up because we just talked on also Meta is exciting. So we'll keep an eye on that. But Dell maybe not so much. You said earlier in the show that the Bitcoin treasury adoption accelerating or happening faster than the DEI stuff kind of came to a halt. So there's probably a lot of bullish things going on, some of what you can't share, but what could you share, Ethan? And then Tim want to hear your, your quick thoughts as well. Just what, what are you guys excited about? Give the audience something to be fired up about as we close out this episode. Yeah, I just the fact that we've seen, you know, so many new Bitcoin treasury companies just in the last announced just in the last month and there's going to be a lot more I believe in the coming months. And I think that we're at the stage in the the happening cycle where we're at the beginning of a bull market. I'm just very excited about the direction that Bitcoins going in and both in terms of, you know, number go up and, and in terms of just general adoption. I, I'm, I'm very bullish about the next year and I think that we're going to keep seeing good news. Yeah. I mean from strategy having 40 billion or more of Bitcoin on their balance sheet and they started with converting their cash $250 million into Bitcoin just five years ago to now seeing other entrants with from public filings looking to enter the market with, you know, 5-6, seven $100 million to start or with like 21 right, 4042 thousand Bitcoin to start. What's that 4 billion some dollars. I mean, these are numbers that if you just extrapolate that out over the next couple quarters, if you have fast followers or you just have a couple of companies that continue to iterate. I think it's for me, it looks like the writing's on the wall that between Bitcoin being decentralized and AI and technology just pulling us forward faster and faster that the the guys and gals that are really leading from the front are speeding up. They're not slowing down and super bullish on that. Yeah, but you frame it that way, Tim. It's pretty wild. Two 250 million to $40 billion war chest and just getting started. Well, awesome stuff. Appreciate both of your time, Ethan. Anywhere you want to hand off folks to just learn more about either your work or strive as a whole. I would say go to strive.com, check out our recent, recent death that we published and on on becoming a Bitcoin treasury company. And then, yeah, stay tuned for for more announcements from us. And you know, check out Strive on Twitter, check out Matt on his podcast with Tim and yeah, good things for coming. Good things to check out. Awesome. And Tim, how about you? You have how many podcasts these days? Where do you want people to go? You can just search on YouTube for Bitcoin treasuries. You can search on YouTube for scarce assets. The last trade. I already said Bitcoin treasuries, the hurdle rate, MSTR true north. I think that's it for now, maybe four or five. Tim is the crown for most Bitcoin podcasts, and you're just getting started. I hope. I hope we're at a dozen by the end of this year, Tim. We're going higher. 21 podcasts. Yeah, there we go. Now we're talking. Well, gentlemen, thank you. Appreciate both of your time. Good chat. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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