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It all comes down to computers communicating. The information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the. World of OK, this is actually foundational. Technology. What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The Internet is going to. Be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing that that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. All righty, welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is July 1st, 2025. It's a Tuesday, beginning of Q3. What's going on in the world in markets? I'm joined as always by Liam Nelson and Michael Tanguma. And today, big show. We got a big show today. A lot of a lot of topics to get through. And we have a special guest as well, Clay Norris. Clay is a venture capitalist by day, a bitcoiner by night. Perhaps I'll, I'll let him sort of introduce his, his background and and how we got to know each other. But excited to have him on the show. Clay, how's it going, man? Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me excited to do this so I can get my quick elevator pitch here. I've so I've worked in venture now for the last seven years, work my way up from and I was associate to principal. I was most recently at a family office up in New York and now I'm spending on my own fund called Outlaw the GP of that. I've also been moonlighting a media business on the side for really the last six years called Confluence VC. That's given me a lot of access to interesting people in the venture world. Got connected to Liam while we were still in college so it's funny how things come full circle. And also say I'm a Bitcoin maxi and all of my all of my disposable income now goes back into Bitcoin. Everything that isn't required as the GP commit is going back into Bitcoin. So excited to be here. Awesome. Yeah. And this this kind of speaks to, you know, kind of where where we want to take the show from here. So, you know, historically we've talked a lot about Bitcoin, people building on Bitcoin news around Bitcoin, topics around Bitcoin, and we're going to sort of expand the the breadth of the show a little bit and get more into broader capital markets, broader venture. And so bringing on folks like Clay on a more recurring basis. You also folks like Cam Duty, which we've had on the show many times who sit in the traditional space, but also have a Bitcoin lens. And it's kind of indicative of just how we see the world moving in the sense of ventures changing and you need to have a sound money lens on capital allocation in general. And so this will be the first sort of instantiation of that. And so we have a number of topics to get through that are, you know, not necessarily Bitcoin specific, but we're going to be wide-ranging here. So excited to kick this off, Michael. I don't know if you had anything else to add to that. I think it was super well said. I think the thought for the past 15 years is Bitcoin will get closer to traditional markets where there's capital markets, tech culture. Ideally, we're not early. This feels like a very opportune time to really capitalize on that from the venture side, but also from the kind of just like content yesterday was interesting with the Robin Hood as an example, because Robin Hood is not only one of the largest technology companies, they're one of the largest fintechs, potentially one of the largest, you know, financial companies, as well as getting into the digital asset space. And so I think it's just the, there's a no pun intended confluence of events happening that kind of like lead to really bringing that together. And then the point you said, Brian, about sound capital or sound money, I think it ultimately will revert back to that being the alpha like that you actually have to think with constraints and you have to think with returning capital and just being efficient. And so naturally, if that's true, then that's going to bleed into all areas of the market that aren't really historically talking about that. It's usually been Abundance so excited with the new format, new topics we'll be covering, and guests that will be going down the rabbit hole that we'll get to have join us every other week. Yeah, very well said. And maybe we start there. Maybe we start with the the slew of news around Robin Hood. Michael, you'd shared this in the chat. Start here. Just the aesthetic overall of the of all the announcements that they made at the event yesterday was very Casino Royale, Bond Villainesque. They're going to be talking about crypto and they did it was a full onslaught of crypto related announcements. I'll pull up this tweet here. So they're going to be you know, they're going full of the tokenization and we've kind of seen this coming for a while. We've talked about it on the show in the past of this feels like the next crypto trend outside of stable coins, which I mean is a form of tokenization, right? But you know, tokenizing other real world assets. And so they had a number of announcements around not only tokenizing existing public equities. And you know, caveat, this is specifically for investors in the EU, not not in the United States, but also pre IPO private companies so that, you know, they announced open AI and and SpaceX as two companies that people would be able to trade on chain. They also announced their own chain. That is for my, from what I can gather, built on or based on Arbitron, which is an Ethereum layer 2. And so yeah, lots of announcements. I think you could also have, you know, seen this coming in some sense of, you know, over the past 12 months, Vlad has been talking more about crypto as everyone has. And I know that, you know, anecdotally, they had been hiring in the sort of crypto sphere for a number of months as well. So I think it was just a matter of time before they they made this larger push to any, any initial thoughts on on any of these topics? There's a few things I want to get into, but we'll take the broader thoughts first. One just always excited when it gets into the crypto stuff for Brian to be joining us because he can he can go deep on the multi chain world. But maybe Clay, we, you know, get guests being polite. Where what are your thoughts? How do you how do you think about this? I mean, yeah, I think just at a really high level, I think there's just more and more demand into these private assets. And I think the way that the venture world has been going over really the last call like 10 to 20 years is this idea that companies are staying private longer just means there's lower upside ability once they do become public. So I think from a retail investors perspective, like they're getting robbed with a lot of potential gains that otherwise they'd be given access to. I mean, like when Google, Apple and some of these other notable tech companies today, when they went public, they were only a few billion dollars in market cap. Now they're multi trillion dollars. Like everybody in the retail world was able to ride that wave. So I think there's there's just demand for these companies, but they're locked up in the private markets. And I think this idea of tokenizing some of those assets and making them available to retail investors is, it's interesting. I mean, I don't have really strong opinions about what happens from here because I think a lot of it is untested and unproven. But I'm, I'm interested to see what happens with the, with the, the Robin Hood test here. Yeah. I think that's very well said. I think that there's also a significant demand for exit from some of these privately held companies to even like this Spacex's that have done extremely well. There's just like different time frames that many of the LP's were not expecting when they got into any of these super large funds that haven't really returned capital quite as quickly as they were anticipating. And so there's just different time frames where you know, employees are looking to monetize their shares as well as some existing LP's of different time frames need to rotate into different assets. We know that there are a bunch of different endowments who need to return capital back to their investors or just to the school because they have different obligations now. And so I also think this is interesting as well because we've seen much of crypto not really having any value accrual narrative and other than, you know, Bitcoin being a stable store value and then you are stable coins being tied to the US dollar. And so I think I'm unsure what's going to happen with their own chain. We'll see maybe that's like AB and B type token. But on on the underlying asset, I think that there's massive questions about the compliance and legal aspects, but it's an interesting trend that I think we're only going to see more of moving forward. Yeah, I think there's two different topics. I know Brian probably wants to get into the token of cruel side, but like more structurally or no, I've been seriously like there's there's validity to discussing how it kind of well, I won't still stand her because I think I know where he's going to go with it and we can talk about that. But I think before getting into that, I think just like from a very like first principle perspective, I think all of this stuff and I know it sounds cynical, but I believe it to be true, just takes advantage of the financial illiterate. And mainly because so there's a notion of we're exporting the US dollar like that's understood to the rest of the world. They're going to offset our debt. It's the same thing with we're exporting the capital markets, the rest of the world. And then you're effectively allowing to your point, there's a lot of investors that have been illiquid. The other component of just structurally where from investment banking and all the process to IPO and all the amount of capital in private markets, there's been the ability to just keep people locked up for various reasons. Because also, if you're unprofitable, it's probably really nice to not have your people go through your books on a quarterly basis. But then the other aspect, the one that like most people just miss is this notion of private markets, like venture capital as an example, exists because of all the money that that's created. When you hear of like alts and the term alts has grown over the past, call it five years and private credit. Most people don't have the acumen to go and discern, especially retail investors already in the, you know, the C and BI can't get their play will know for when it comes to like investment, when you come into a fund, the exact 5O6B and C when it comes to being able to solicit and market those securities. There's a reason for that. And so now like bringing this all out, it reminds me a lot of kind of crypto in the sense that remember when like a six and Z would get into these tokens, get in early and then kind of dump on retail and it was a lot more liquid and easier to get out. And so I think this is the world we're heading to if it's not good or I mean, I guess it's kind of bad, but it's just the reality of it. And there's a better way to like store capital. And I think the market's just going to slowly come around to that. So I think that's the interesting thing for me is that everything's going to get digitized, everything's going to get securitized and people are going to love the high volatility and leverage. They announced perpetuals. I don't know if you covered that as well, but it's really just going to. I don't think people end up storing wealth or value in there is basically the genesis or the the summary. Yeah, I think that's all fair. It's, it's part part of a broader trend of access democratization of of access to various things. And whether or not the investors on the other end are discerning enough to know what they're investing in is a is a totally another discussion. But I think it's clear that the trajectory is more access versus less. You were right, Michael, in that where I wanted to take this was the value accrual component. Yeah, real quick, just before going. I guess I left out one of the missing pieces is that a lot of these are the majority of the companies lack fundamentals like they traded in saying riches like. So that's the core point like if the, if the market wasn't what it is and everyone had access to companies and we're producing dividends and returning the capital and had like sound. That's like I think the the missing part is most people don't understand that these companies are traded on vibes is the. Yeah, they, I mean, they they announced space action open AI who are, you know, like vibes possibly being entities. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's a massive part of it as well as just like it unlocks massive liquidity premium for these companies that they wouldn't have access to otherwise, which is, you know, massive big benefit to these privately held companies and they don't have to go through the M and A process IPO process as well. It reminds me like a great example of this is Weworks IPO. So when we work, Long story short, you know, at we work, they were supposed to, you know, IPO at 48 billion. They were doing tender offers like 6 to 12 months before to buy back shares from client or employees as like this thing the Ponzi get I'm getting out of here, sold, sold the shares. But in that world, if they didn't have to go through the scrutiny of the S1 and everything related, they'd be trading in an insane amount because it was all vibes in the, in the like the market side, the marketing side. And so it's a very similar example here is like everyone on the inside of these companies knows they're not worth what the market's saying. I mean, anybody that has like a head on their shoulders, because a lot of people just smell their own farts and think that they like, everything's great there. But there's people that get it anyway. It's yeah. Yeah. So, so back to value accrual, I think this, this is what's most interesting about all this to me is there's sort of a, a parallel to you know, what we saw yesterday with Robin Hood building on Arbitrum and also the stablecoin side of you know, USDC is multi chain. But like the economic value, where is it accruing? Where is it flowing? At least in the near term, the value seems to be accruing to the issuers or the corporate entities that are behind building on these chains. And the chains themselves seem to be more commodity like infrastructure. And so the, you know, example from yesterday is, is Robin Hood is, you know, making new all time highs. The stock is ripping. They announced they're building on Arbitrum and Arbitrum is basically flat. Like it had a little little pop, but you know, it's still 9080 to 90% down from its all time highs like 2 years ago and similar. Similarly on the stablecoin side, it's like genius bill passes, we're going to proliferate stablecoins and Ethereum hasn't really reacted to that in a material way. And so I think this is this is kind of something I've thought for a long time in terms of people building on these other block chains outside of Bitcoin. The question always was, you know, does the value accrue to the native token if people are building on these things using stable coins, trading U.S. stocks on Arbitron, Like does the value actually flow to the native token? And, and, and to be fair, like I could be totally wrong about this. And in six months, you know, these assets could be much higher. And that could be a reflection of people, you know, placing their bets and seeing the activity on these chains. But right now it's flowing to Circle and Robin Hood. And so this speaks to, you know, if you're familiar with the show, Michael and I have had arguments or disagreements around Bitcoin dominance, whether it continues to grind up from here or go down. I think in order for it to go down, you would need to see value accrual to the native tokens because of this usage, whether it's stable coins or stocks being traded on on chain. And so I think that's the big question as we move forward, that's what we'll have that that's what would necessarily have to happen in order for Bitcoin dominance to come down in my mind dots. I mean, I don't think ever it was about the usage for like the asset like if Solana and whatever is happening there on chain to trade stocks, like the usage of it isn't the reason the price goes up. It's the speculative like acknowledgement that this might be, you know, stored and so like. Where is the speculative acknowledgement going? Is it going to the corporate entities issuing the things or is it going to the native token? I think that's the question. Well, so I think, I think it goes both because 1 like this just came out. I think this week Solana is having their ETF approved. So people are naturally going to buy Solana and they're going to do whatever they they do. And so I do think tokens are going to naturally get locked up for various reasons. But then to your point, I think long term in today, it really comes down to the company, which is the issuer. Because again, going back to first principles, if we realize we don't need tokens for all this, well then it probably ends up being like the independent company that's creating the value and orchestrating between the different market participants. And then they're just going to be making money. And then that will be the equity that's valuable in business. So I think it makes complete sense that circle is generating the revenue if they're playing in the middle and they're issuing and they manage both sides of the demand and the liquidity side. And then because the the one that came to mind is like Polymarket, I was thinking, I don't know if you had if we're going to go there, but you know, like Polymarket and Kelsey and those deals have been like top, big top of top of mind. And a lot of people probably reflect that. Eventually you'll need to be in like sensualist borderless form of money because you know you can there's a lot of things you can do when you can start to like if these things got the prediction markets got big enough and there was enough like reason to want to shut them down, you probably can on most chains. And so that naturally makes sense that you want to go to a permissionless, permissionless form of money. But then also if we agree that direction, well then it's ultimately going to and they're going to settle in BTC where you're going to derive the value around the infrastructure, which is my understanding. Cal, she's a little bit more like infrastructure as a service versus like polymarket is more of both sides of the marketplace. Either way, like you're going to go to the the highest liquid market, which would be Bitcoin. And so where's the token? There's no token there. It is all derives from the actual company building the business and that's the underlying equity. So I think that's a line. I'm agreeing that like I think the business will, it makes sense the business to generate the revenue. I think that these just probably aren't the winners over a long time horizon. Yeah, No, I I agree with that. And I think it's interesting like if you just think about polymarket like that is to my understanding that's built on Polygon, which is like a chain no one cares about. And so I think that just again speaks to like the actual users don't care what the underlying chain is. And you also see, you know, signs of this on the stablecoin side, which is, I would say more mature in the sense that USDC runs on a bunch of different block chains. So then as the issuer and the user like don't really care about where it's running as long as they can get get access to whatever is being issued. Leah, did you have thoughts on the, we can, we can sort of pivot to the, the prediction market stuff? So I know you had some thoughts around all that. Yeah, maybe I'll kick it to clay first, I guess. Like what? What is more interesting to you? Being focused on the user experience and actually getting the users to use your site or being primarily infrastructure as a service that's going out to, you know, the Robin Hoods of the world, etcetera. Or do you want one or the other? Do you want to do both? What's what's kind of the most interesting aspect here? Yeah. I mean, I would say in an ideal world, you get both. I feel like you asked different venture investors and they'll probably tell you different things. I mean, where my head is going is I would probably care more about like I'm agreeing with Brian, where like you can't really disagree with user patterns. And if they just, if their usage patterns tell you they don't really care what the underlying infrastructure is, I feel like that's your answer, but I don't know I would. I would be curious how different venture investors would would think about it too. Yeah. I'm kind of thinking about it like almost like a parallel to to the Coinbase versus finance deal, which is, you know, finance plan overseas like Polymarket is done. They've done a lot of their unregulated aspect as well, but they have a decent amount of liquidity because they haven't had to be slowed down, but being CFTC approved approved like how she has, but you know how she will have the benefits of, you know, having being integrated with Robin Hood's of the world and more. And so you know, the argument that I could see there is they end up getting more liquidity and and so, you know, being the most liquid, I think is the most valuable with all of this because it can be the biggest sign of where what the market is perceiving to be true. You know, it's, it's not necessarily going to be just is this going to happen, but it's a lot of sentiment as well and where, where people are thinking. But I think that there's a little bit more value in being the infrastructure provider that can have the most liquidity versus going straight to the the user long term, which is what I was most interested in here. Yeah, I think it's all relative on to the investor, what the entrepreneur is trying to do the the market. I think history shows the biggest companies start with the user because you can't really build infrastructure until you have like intimate and asymmetric information. Like Amazon is a great example and Coinbase, because Coinbase, like the, the angle I'm thinking about is Bitco Bigo is a wonderful business. They're a very large business. They're going to IPO, but most people don't know who they are and they'll market capital ultimately always be, I shouldn't say always, but will be a fraction of coinbases. They've always been infrastructure. I think Coinbase is going to wrap back into infrastructure. Like so they started with a user, they went institution and those are going to start working with banks and others. Umm, so I think that's the idea is it's almost very hard to like just come out the gate and provide infrastructure because you can provide it for what you think the market or what they're telling you, but you won't have like intimate knowledge of that growing market and then be able to build what they need. And I think like Amazon and books is a great example. Yeah, you get to iterate real time and realize what what works well, what people like, what they don't like and be able to then go out and provide that for a service like like others are going to do. And the venture component I think ties into the the entrepreneur because if you had somebody that wasn't Jeff Bezos trying to do what he did wouldn't make sense. In the same way if you had somebody trying to build infrastructure that was a consumer person or the way they started it would they would both like probably fail or not be as successful as you would imagine them sitting in the right shoes. So, so I think it's just relative to the opportunity. I don't think there's like a wrong or right. Yeah, no, it's almost said, Liam, I'm going to pull up a link that you you'd shared around AI disruptions causing winners and losers. I think this is a, a broader trend we've, you know, talked about a bunch in the show. But pulling up this link now from Bruce Richards if you want to give us sort of the TLDR on on what he's talking about here. Yeah. I thought this was super interesting, you, Liz. Marathon Asset Management is a large private credit organization. They do $40 billion in loans. And he's saying that they have been and will continue to avoid lending to software companies and that the reason behind it is essentially they are unsure which ones will and will not be disrupted by, you know, AI companies coming in that are just being force fed capital in order to go and disrupt their businesses. And I thought this was super interesting as it's kind of what we've been talking about before of these there's a big disruption of capital going to the biggest winners in the venture space. And of those large private companies, I think that they're that are like software, which has been a big trend in venture for you know the past decade plus and they haven't gone public. I think this is going to be a big issue if other private lenders are thinking the same way that there are issues related to the viability of software companies ability to continue to grow and not have their pricing go to to be deflationary as there are disruptors in the space. So I just thought this was super interesting and not not entirely sure how I, I really want to think about it in a big way other than the fact that just like there are LP's and these legacy funds that are, you know, trying to get out on, on a, in a big way. And I think that they're, they're kind of all pivoting towards AI. And so it's just really interesting that the legacy venture thesis has has really shifted in a massive way and there's kind of dried up in terms of the IPO potential for these software companies. I love that you brought this up. It like encapsulates a lot of the things I think we want to talk about today but in the future. From a micro example, I just think of this as an individual that had a certain amount of cash flow. And if he had a micro like a if we went back to community banking and he went to the person and he saw people getting laid off all across the street. And that person hadn't gotten laid off yet. But it's in his best interest to slow down the credit limit or slow down whatever extensive loan because that person gets laid off and he extended that loan like it was, you know, when everything was gravy, they're going to be in a hole. And he does that enough times and he's out of business. And that's effectively what this is at a larger scale because what we know about, you know, we kind of see it every day. I always joke with the podcast, it's kind of embarrassing how much we actually spend from any podcasts we do. But without sharing the number. When we first got quoted 2 years ago, it was like $1000 an episode for some human to like edit each pod. And I can promise you, we do, you know, 12 to 20 a month, if not more. And it costs US, you know, 11 thousandth of what the total of that, if not less. And so point being is all these companies, the writing's on the wall. And it also, I don't know how much we're going to end up taking it back to Bitcoin in this pod, but it's just true. Like if anybody had the the prudence or for forethought to raise some capital back in eighteen 17/16/2021 and park 510% into BTC, they would have ultimately been able to help offset this and then would have just naturally, potentially. I wouldn't say naturally, but the idea is once you see something go up, you start to realize or ask why, and then it starts to impact and affect your business because you're like, well, why are we just wasting all this money when we could just be behind the BTC? So yeah, I think, I think it's going to be huge and I think it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out and where that money comes from and what looks like what a distressed companies look like. Do they end up getting merged like because if the price of software is collapsing like these companies have a big problem. Yeah, Clay, Clay, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on on this one. I have a few thoughts. I mean, like my entire thesis with Outlaws really predicated on this. I think the the new vanity metric for venture backed companies is this idea of growing revenue per employee. I feel like you talk to enough people, I mean, we just discussed this second ago, like efficiency is rewarded more than the old vanity metrics of growth at all cost, account growth, you name it. I think there's a lot that goes into building efficient businesses. The way that I'm thinking about it is that I think a lot of these back office functions and departments within an organization, I think they get consolidated to the point where there's one or two people that can handle the majority of the output for that department. I think where I have the most questions for all of these AI businesses that just like quickly ramp up revenue, I think retention on that revenue has really become the main focus. And I think there's plenty of examples now of companies that scale up to 2030 million in recurring revenue. And then like you see they stall at that because they just have a really bad churn problem. And I think you talked to some sales reps and you can start to understand a little bit as to why. Like one thing that I don't think a lot of these AI focused businesses have solved on the sales side is how to incentivize their reps. And so traditional SAS is easy. If you think about like if you're an AE for a SAS company, you're comped based on whatever that ACV is for the contracts to say it's like $100,000 ACV contract, you get 20% of that upfront. So like you're incentivized to sell as much as possible. And I've talked to a lot of friends that work for these AI businesses and they get comp based on usage. And so it's like their quota isn't necessarily clean. They don't. And they that also makes their sales process a lot longer. And so they say they like close a customer, they didn't have to activate that customer, get them comfortable with the product and they get paid in perpetuity, like a percentage of whatever that customer is spending within the business. I think it's harder to, at least from the people I've talked to, it's like it's easier to attract talent to those businesses. I think it's harder to retain them on the sales side because they just have like a lot less of an understanding of how much they're going to get paid. I don't know if that helps answer the question, but that's just some things that I'm I'm hearing about like why might be tough to sustain growth for some of these AI businesses? Yeah, that, that's super interesting. I'm, I'm curious like on the churn side, it is that more just indicative of sort of the low barriers to entry like what like what is what is causing that higher churn rate inherently in your mind? I think this idea of five revenue where everybody's just like in an exploratory phase and you want to test out different tooling, especially if you can figure out companies that don't lock you in the annual contracts. If you can just test things out and see if it how it goes. And like maybe is that there's this promise that it can remove some of your entry level work and you have 60 to 90 days to figure out if that's true. And maybe after those 60 to 90 days, you realize it's just another tool that isn't going to be part of your core workflow and you abandon it. But technically like you're it's booked revenue. And so the the company is able to market that as book revenue back to their investor base. Everybody else's show that like the growth curve continues to go up, but I feel like especially for Series A investors, I, I feel like for a lot of these seed companies, it's probably not put into focus yet. But I think once you start getting to growth rounds to Series AB and beyond, I feel like a lot of the emphasis and diligence moves to retention graphs more so than just growth charts. Yeah, I don't, I haven't thought deeply about this, but I would not want to be anywhere near venture capital in in AI. There's a a book, the Technological Revolutions, I forget the name. It's gets quoted a lot by Carletta Perez. And it just effectively breaks down like disruptive cycles and the installation phase and the amount of capital that's destroyed. And it's basically what this sounds like is that there's a lot of capital, a lot of people. To your point, it makes complete sense that there's a bunch of churn because to your point, everyone is looking to try the next thing, their tension. And the people that are generally trying to trying to do the next thing already have like a something in their DNA that's always looking for the next thing. So they don't even spend enough time to figure it out. And then if you're spinning these things up and there's no actually real meaning, everyone, everyone knows this. Like it doesn't actually matter how much money you pay somebody. It matters how much like clarity of meaning and their work that they do. If you actually have an ambitious goal and have a good leader, like it's not necessarily obviously compensation matters, But if somebody doesn't have anything outside of like, I'm just building an AI company because it's an AI company or make people more efficient or there's, there's no real like it's just the next thing. People resonate with that and they just like are mercenaries. And so the thing I would be investing in as far as like AI is just anything that in Palantir was like, there's probably more companies, but I always think about Palantir in the notion of what they keyed in on is the fact that you want humans and then you want technology, right? And like that dance is what really is like the alpha or the mote. And so Palantir has all these like models and all this crazy shit, but then they have humans that can actually go and discern and really go through it. And when I think about like back office, like to your point, it's less about the software. There's software that's needed to do like 5 things, but it's like, who's the human or the shop that can plug in somebody to handle all of that because now they can use AI And how can it like generate revenue from that? Or the other one that the guy from former Morning Brew, Alex Lee Lieberman's trying to spin up is like McKenzie for AI or whatever, where it's like, I'm gonna go and like audit your processes and then I'm gonna come because that's like valuable in my mind versus like them trying to figure out they don't know shit. That's why I like they're McKenzie is like they've been telling people some other stuff. It's probably like 30 years already antiquated. So yeah, I think the AI spot is just going to destroy so much money. And that's just natural to like innovation cycles. I personally would be far away from from it unless you got like the right founder and you could get in early enough where you can trade on vibes and momentum and let somebody else you know buy your your shares or get it marked up enough to potentially get out. Yeah, I would agree. I, I think that the main beneficiaries of these, you know, companies are, are kind of just being the large MAG 7 as well as just large companies that have way too many people in their organizations and can continue to find better processes in order to, you know, continue to find efficiencies in their businesses. Ever since the AI kind of trend took off, there's been some like substantial growth across all of these companies, but there there hasn't necessarily been a big increase in cost and headcount has significantly gone down across most of them. But it's really only been rewarded to the top companies that are not, you know, only AI focused of we've now seen a significant jump in IPO activity as well as M&A activity over a billion dollars. The but Despite that, we're we're only seeing of the trend do more with less not really being picked up outside of the really largest firms in the space of the Microsoft's, the Googles that can use can improve their processes. I think that there's also a lot to be said about founders who can use the tools in order to bring more efficient products to market that haven't been there previously or just do it at a significantly lower cost and with a better form of money. And so to date, over 50 percent of all venture has been, you know, AI related, but and it's significant, it's down significantly from the 2021 levels despite all of this hype. And so there's a major amount of or major lack of funding still for non AI companies in the venture space, which I think is is a sign that things continue to be a little bit mispriced. Yeah. I mean, I think just real quick, I think we also benefit, right. Like it reminds me very much of like Uber DoorDash wars of like we probably these things are being subsidized. So we benefit anyway. Sorry to play. Yeah, I was just pulling up. I was pulling up a link that Clay shared. So this is along similar lines if you wanted to speak to what's being shown here. Yeah. I mean, I think this just shows kind of the trend line of how many NYC companies are labeled as AI agents for specific functions within a department. I think last batch had, let's see, 67 out of the 144. The batch before that it was 58. And I think you talked to some some venture folks that go to Demo Day and they're saying some of these companies are raising a $70 million post for like a tech like a seed deal. That seems ridiculously overpriced to me. But I think earlier we were talking about the Robin Hood stuff. We're talking about taking advantage of the financial illiterate. I do think there's a lot of financially illiterate people that work in venture now. And so I think when they hear these revenue numbers, they don't go a level deeper and they ask where the money is coming from. And they also don't clarify what these founders mean when they say ARR, because I think everybody in the founder world, they like are starting to dilute the definition of what ARR is. And I think a lot of these YC companies, they, they just sell their book contracts to each other. And so they like are able to prop up their revenue. So it makes a, it tells a better story at demo Day that they're able to say, we have 2 million in run rate. What's all just these other YC companies who aren't going to actually adopt the software, but it's technically booked and they're just able to market that off to other venture investors. They get more capital in the, in the door. I mean, I think that's a dangerous game, like a main reason why I don't like pursuing YC companies. Yeah, I think like a question I have is where all of the revenue is coming from. I think if I hear AC company say they got to like 0 to 2 million in revenue, like I think the next question I have is how they're defining revenue. If it's like book versus contracted versus actual, I'd want to see the, the breakdown of the customer profile. Ideally it's multiple and you don't have so much concentration risk, you know, 1 customer where if they pull the plug and decide to go with somebody else, it completely destroys the business. I just think having that level of granularity in your diligence process becomes more and more important because I think on Twitter you see like all these companies just posting their growth charts and that just tells you like, that's the tip of the iceberg. That just doesn't tell you the whole the whole story. It's a great, it's a great point because I don't know, I'm assuming this is real because it makes sense. There was something going viral on, I think it was on Twitter and it was like a guy that created LinkedIn profiles like Stanford. I'm sure you saw this. Like it was like Stanford and then, you know, wherever NBA worked at, like some, I don't even know. It wasn't Google. It's one like like maybe it was Uber or whatever and I forget he just like called, emailed. Do you know what I'm talking about, Liam? Yeah, it was like Palantir and like something like that, Like, yeah, what? Emailed somebody without a DAC or something like an idea and they're like OK like where's? The guest, well, it was a little more than like I think he referenced he sent it to a couple. I don't either 100 or 1000, but he referenced he already had like a term sheet and he want and he said he got like seven term sheets. He gets to Clay's point. Like it's just like you kind of get taught one thing and you're just going and it's just a a vibe thing. Again, I can't. And yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean that guy's probably going to get charged for something natural crime there, I'm sure. But now I saw that and then I mean that's like type of behavior that unfortunately happens a lot in venture. I mean like it's it's I get it from a pre seed and seed investors perspective, like you're incentivized to see as much as possible. So you'll take meetings wherever you can get them. I think the more established you become as a firm, the harder it is to meet with everybody. So you have to like put in some type of filters for yourself. And I think an easy filter is just like previous employers where you went to school. Like however you're able to tell your story like in a condensed manner. But ideally, like, yeah, in order to meet with those types of people, you got to make sure that everything they're telling you in that is, is true and they're not just lying on their resume. So yeah, I'm kind of hoping that that kid ends up getting in some sort of trouble. It's why kind of like it's very subtle and, and simple, but elegant and Cam Duty's Brickyard model, because once you build a brand like that, you have to go to the middle of nowhere Tennessee and spend 6 to 12 months like you kind of self select already and who you're going to see. And I think that's like an interesting. I don't think we're there yet, but there's a notion of like counter, you know, the whole like counter culture narrative, like probably why see people still go that are like world class similarly from like the Stanford's and Harvard's. But there's going to be a time where it's actually opposite. It's going to be a complete and we might already be there. Just depends on what the the right job is. But point being is like there's just going to be a natural like switch and and I think that's an example of it where it's like, OK, you want capital. Well, you have to come sit. I don't know if you're familiar with Cam duty and Brickyard, but you have to sit on site. I believe it's 12 months out of the year and just move there. It's like, well shit. And like that kind of tells you a lot about the individual. It's not to say that all founders have to do that, but it's like, if somebody's willing to go do that, they're at least willing to grind for 12 months and like, push everything out of the way, Which you can't say that for most founders, especially in Silicon Valley, because there's a whole other angle of being a founder that people are excited about there and actually building a business. So, yeah, I think heuristics like that are going to be growing and I think that will initially start to help with the differentiation from both sides, from founders finding the right venture capitalist and venture capitalist finding the right founders. Yeah, I love the sound money aspect that we have too. I mean, if somebody's willing to denominate their returns in Bitcoin, it's a telling sign that they are really just looking to get more capital rather than, you know, really live the founder lifestyle, go to whatever sort of parties there are the in the AI space and you know, kind of just do it for a clout, which many of these people are. Hey guys, thanks again for tuning into another episode of Final Settlement. We had an awesome Rep this week with Clay Norris. Clay Norris is a general VC in the traditional technology space. We're gonna start on a every other weekly basis having guests that come from the traditional finance tech business building space that are starting to integrate or think about how Bitcoin plays into the portfolio. Part of one of the goals of final settlement is really to help and articulate and Dr. how Bitcoin is going to get infused across all capital markets. Now a quick word from on RIM. As you may know on Ramp leads the space in multi institution custody. We work with businesses, institutions, endowments and individuals. We've increasingly seen an uptick on the public treasury companies coming to on Ramp for best in class custody. But at the core of our services, our private banking experience for individuals as the Bitcoin price appreciates it naturally that notion of the the plastic device or that harbor wallet gets heavier and heavier and it gets scarier and scarier. When you think about inheritance planning, the risk associated with all your capital being stored on a bearer asset that something bad you could happen to the other side of it is obviously custody with a third party custodian, which as most people educated know that you don't also want to leave all your assets there. And so multi institution custody is really that middle ground having three independent institutions work on your behalf. We mix technical governance with legal governance. So the assets are segregated on chain, but then also you have direct title and then each of the key holders work on your direct on your direction. I was recently moving some, you know, decent amount of capital in a single hardware wallet with a passphrase this past weekend. And if you forgot how daunting the experience is when you're moving significant amount of money or at least significant for the individual. And so I'd encourage you guys to book a consultation if you want to learn more and just understand how we can potentially help you, your family or network as you think about navigating the space and preserving your wealth in Bitcoin. But at the same time, not having to have the friction of all the different trade-offs with self custody or third party custody. At the end of the day, on Ramp provides our clients with Peace of Mind. And we'd love to talk with you again. You can book a consultation at on rampbitcoin.com. Now on to the rest of the show. Yeah. 100% Mike, you shared a Bill Gurley clip on this similar track of the sort of venture scape, venture landscape shifting. You want me to play the full clip? Yeah, it's actually really like, it really exemplifies almost everything we're talking about from somebody at the highest level. So we can listen to it and then we can. They are forced to play a game on the field. And this is, I think, the worst part of this whole world. There's a word that I sound called a gavage tube. Do you know what A gavage tube? So a gavage tube is what the French used to force feed the geese so that they can create. And what ends up happening in this world, because it's the same thing that happened in 2021, is the minute there's a company that has any amount of excitement about it whatsoever, someone's knocking on the door trying to give them 102 hundred $300 million. And I think for for founders that have struggled their whole life to raise money, this must sound like the most, you know, a ridiculous comment ever, but it's a reality. And I think you know it, right? Like, you know, this is a reality and what that does is it forces everyone to go all or nothing, swing for the fences. And I lived it in the Uber Lyft situation, but we're going to have that type of capital battle in every category under the sun. And you, you know, you mentioned the notion of like traditional company building. Traditional company building isn't spend 100 or 150 million a year in cash burn, but all the big AI companies are doing that, maybe more. I think Open the Eye said you're going to be 7 billion in a year, and that's not, you know, your grandfather's startup business or your grandfather's venture capital. That's a radically different world. And if you're a founder, you'd like to think the advice is, well, ignore all that and build your company the way you want to build it. But if your competitor raises $300 million and it's going to 10X the size of their sales force or 50 exit, you will be dead before you know it. Like you won't be around. So you are forced to play the game on the field. I guess the good news is the because these investors are so eager to throw money at you, you can probably take founder liquidity. I think that's bad for the company's potential long term. Success, probably. But because it fits you. Probably cut it. I mean, the end was basically like not a good outcome. He's like the founder should take some liquidity because he's building it like an unsustainable business. We're going to have Bill on. We're going to have Mike Maples on. We're going to have all these guys that are world class because eventually I thought that clip was really prescient and and interesting because this is somebody at the the top of the game when it comes to business building. Seen everything's was on Wall Street to start his career and he knows there's something wrong, but he can't put his finger on it. And I know they'll probably like push back here because I even push back on myself what I'm about to say, but I'm fairly confident what he described is completely wrong. And if you can't win the game, you shouldn't play the game like it's fundamentally unsustainable to do that and there's a lot of angles. I don't think there's a perfect one-size-fits-all if you have the money cannon at you. We did this thought exercise with we work on if they would have held Bitcoin, but I think about like Uber, Lyft, I think every company has their own path that they can go down when they face that dilemma and whether it's playing a different game, being more of a spoke specialized counter positioning to the incumbent, raising capital and saving it and watching the mistakes because ultimately somebody's destroying capital. They're making a lot of mistakes. I anchor back to the the Sony founder and and Japanese culture, and it's really kind of like this goes across all cultures, but Japanese and specifically because they're on an island. And so they really like had this high level in their culture around waste. It was like a sin. It was the worst thing you could ever do is just like waste money, waste food, whatever it is, because you had to import it. And that's how they effectively built Sony. And there was a lot of just kind of like doing more with less than the constraints made these world class products. And when you think about that as a small example, just now extrapolate that to just the money cannon and blowing all this capital is you're you're just it's fundamentally incongruent with the world. And so rather than play that game and be forced to it, founders should take a step back and say, well, what are the ways I can play? And if I can't, then maybe you just start a different business or you closed up. But you shouldn't like be 10 years down the track and where Bill Gurley tells you, well, you can just take some secondary. So at least you got to eat because you're just built. You're just wasting money. You're wasting, you know, world's resources and I think this is all going to come to a head eventually because it's just the natural laws of the universe. You can't just keep wasting and everyone expected never anyway. So that's kind of like the thought that I think encapsulates a lot of the stuff we'll be talking about here where we think are like edges in the, you know, business building spaces, building with sound money principles and and sound capital. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. That's that's the notion of playing a different games because if you can't compete with the people throwing 300, you know, 300 million to a billion at the problem, then you have to fundamentally play a different game and use sound money to your advantage to bolster your balance sheet. Be more disciplined. Think about opportunity cost more than those people that are, you know, spraying the money bazooka. I think that's necessarily sort of the counter, because if you're anywhere in the middle, you're kind of screwed. So yeah, you kind of have to pick a side if you're going to try to play that game or play a fundamentally different game with sound money. I feel like he talks about the end I listed that episode too. I think he talks about the removal of small, medium and even relatively large outcomes in the asset class and how I mean it really is just pushing more companies to play that game. I mean, everybody talks about power law outcomes, but I think you breakdown portfolios for different venture funds. Like if everybody plays that same game of just prioritizing parallel outcomes and just avoiding companies that can still be good businesses but not have these crazy return profiles. I mean it ends up with especially when they're downturns, it just ends up with a lot of lost money. I think it now gets us to the position that we're in now where LP's that are into those funds, they become really turned off by the entire asset class. They have no interest in re upping in that fund and they definitely don't have any interest in joining any new fund for the partnership. And so, yeah, you just like dry up all potential capital. So I feel like there's a time limit on this type of game because like even in the Middle East, like I think Saudis, I think a lot of people have been told like if you run out of options in the states or in the West, you go to the Middle East because there's always money there. And it sounds like even a lot of the Middle East investors, they're getting concerned about private equity valuation practices, which is a totally separate conversation. But I just feel like all of this is leading to like there's there seems to be a timeline of how much longer this can go on before there's just something has to change or the asset class just never recovers. I don't know, That's too doom and gloom, but just doesn't seem great out there right now. I think it definitely, I mean, we'll it'll transition because capital formation and business building, you know, has always existed, right? Somebody has to have an idea and somebody has money and they want to invest. I think the I forgot Rosie to take. What did you say before that part about the Saudi stuff? Before the Saudi stuff. Yeah, there was on the Saudi, on the Saudi and just interesting like the crypto, a lot of crypto people went there because the regulations like a lot less LAX and similar with a venture. They're just like, it sucks because they have the money, but they're always like one step behind the like charade and what's happening in the state. So they just kind of get dumped on. But there was something else I was going to reference about, Oh, the game. So we was thinking about like when we explain when when we look at businesses that it's kind of like nonsensical or insane to be like one out of 10 bets are going to make it. And the example I use is like, well, when you know, I got a bed to build on rim if there was a one out of 10 chance that I would succeed, so there's 90% chance of failure, I would just wouldn't get out of bed. Like it's just making any sense and that's what you're effectively like communicating or expecting somebody swing for the fences and there's a 10% chance you're going to win the rest. It's like, that doesn't make any sense. And that's not how businesses should be built. And to your point, I think that notion of like power law, the return profile and there's a lot of like misaligned incentives became the norm for people versus how do you just actually like return the capital, return some Capital plus whatever was invested. And then you have a call option on like, I think that's just a natural organic version because you can't, I like in building businesses to like if you have a child in like day one, you can't tell. You can't tell if it's gonna be Michael Jordan or not. Like you can only do your best. And then maybe they turn into Michael Jordan or somebody world class. But you have to like get it to a certain point. It can't like you can have ambitions for them to do that. But then you know, so you may start with the right framework. So I think it's just a natural comes down to the private sector in that asset class having so much liquidity and as it happens the turns into like a Frankenstein construct. It's all these like misaligned incentives. Now to your point, I'd be curious the guy's thoughts, the one in the way I kind of see how that transition would be seamless is we already see this. Now we're certain venture capitalists are interested in putting a certain component or portion of their capital raised in the BTC to help offset just doing the modeling out. I think you know, putting 10% held over 10 years probably gets you all ready to middle like quartile return just given like where VC or middle percentile returns given where VC returns historically are. So it's a downside protector and then also potentially getting venture investments to hold a small component of the Bitcoin because extends burn weight continuity if your bank gets shut down. And then naturally, the version I like most is it gives people A-frame of reference to like what real money is and then lets them think about capital and and time allocation in a fundamentally different way. I think that will eventually happen because it just makes sense. If Bitcoin adoption grows, will venture capitalists are going to whole Bitcoin and then they're going to understand its properties and then they would adopt that. And then over time, LP's are going to start to be like, well, why don't I just own the Bitcoin instead of investing in your fund like, and this naturally ends up going in a in a way where everyone just needs to return Bitcoin or you're not getting money or at least pretend, pretend like you're going to return Bitcoin or you're not getting money. Like, and that's how I think that is how you get this transition. Sorry, Lou. It really starts with the founder too, because if they want to start a business, they want to return more money than they have originally if they're self interested, right? And so most of them, like even Vlad was talking about Bitcoin in a completely different way than the rest of crypto and what he's focused on. He's like Bitcoins the only thing. And there was, you know, a lot of speculation of, you know, ultimately while they want to pump their own stock and, you know, hype up everything that they're doing, they're going to hold their own Bitcoin as well. And so they're going to be self interested and, you know, want the best outcomes for whatever they're talking about. And so they're also going to want to integrate it into their business because it just makes more sense. They they want to get more Bitcoin or otherwise, you know, why would they get out of that if they think that's going to be the best form of money? And so it's good to start with them. If they, if giving them too much money will odd hampen their ability to return more Bitcoin for themselves, they're not going to want to do it. LP's aren't going to want to do it and everybody along that path isn't going to want to do it. And so I think, I think that's just kind of the very early stages of where everything's moving. It's fantastically put because it's paradoxical, but like bringing on too much Bitcoin because it's not your money can actually a kneecap you from making more Bitcoin in the future. This is how we thought about building the businesses here. It's like you need the constraints. So for for all reasons, we've all had our checking account have a little too much cash and it goes out way too fast than it should. And it's the exact same example from hiring to the culture being like, OK, we have two money, too much money to pay versus finding the real people that want to come on board. And ultimately, it's to to Liam's point, the person changing, chasing more of those monetary units that's going to drive to build a more efficient business and getting everyone on that same boat chasing those units. And that's been the historical problem or where everything breaks down is around seeking higher valuations. Like the amount of crazy to your point, Clay on, you know, Silicon Valley metrics like it was just insane. I always remember that we were it's like it was desks. It was always like you got to sell desks. You end up giving them away for free because that's what like Mollison SoftBank and I like talking about the we were example because like, well, it's a joke today. They had not only world class talent, the best people, but it's also you saw at the highest level of operational scale, but you also saw that like. Fiat, like just in its purest form, how the craziness can just like distort all of business building. And so I like to think that just as good as like learning, you can take learnings and, and leverage them. I think the mistakes are probably more important than the learnings because, you know, the mistakes are the things that can kill you. The learnings can only make you a little bit better. So there's a lot from the we work that's We work days that have always stuck with me. Yeah, there's a, there's a nice convergence of sort of everything we've talked about for the past hour, like the first half of the conversation around disruption from AI tools doing more with less. Like saving a Bitcoin is just an extension of that mentality in my mind of if you're going to do more with less with your capital asset and you want something that's finite, scarce and actually grows your purchasing power over time that allows you to do, do more in the future. And so it's kind of these two ideas are converging. I think that's the transition that we're going to watch play out over the next decade is people recognizing these two forces sort of colliding in terms of, you know, deflationary forces from AI and then needing basically a, a better form of money to preserve your purchasing power into the future and, and actually get the most out of those tools effectively. So not only being efficient from an operational perspective, but also how you're actually storing value. Clay, you'd shared another link that I'm pulling up right now. This is not your mother's alpha is the name of the the report here. What are what are we looking at on the screen here? So I think these guys are some of the better fund of funds investors. It's level, it's Jay Coverman, Alberta Zut. And I mean, they've done a lot of thinking of just like what actually creates alpha for early stage fund managers and they just condense those notes into this piece. And I think the four that stood out, it's this idea of structural inefficiencies where smaller fonts just have more freedom. And I think that gives them a lot more alignment with founders, deep information asymmetry where they can just become sector as experts and specific verticals and they can leverage that information asymmetry to make better decisions. Non redundant sourcing networks. I think you're saying people that I think a lot of venture investors, they talk about this idea of having proprietary deal flow or like proprietary sourcing abilities. I think that is just not true for 99% of funds. But I do think there are a handful that do have pretty interesting sourcing networks. And I think speed and analytical edge, I mean, I think speed is and especially in the early stages, like being able to make decisions quickly. I think, I don't know, it seems harder to do that the more downstream you go. And I'd argue like the quicker you're making decisions as a Series A, series B investor, like I'd argue you probably not doing your fiduciary duty, like there's just too much to underwrite. But that's what they that kind of recapped is there their main sources of of alpha? I mean, I think all of these are constantly evolving, but going through that entire piece, I think it's I mean, I like listening to how LP's are evaluating the asset class as a whole. I think they they do a good job of jotting down some of their thoughts you. Know what that reminds me of? Yeah, we should share this in the show notes. I'd love to look at it. This just reminds me of a start up like at the end of the day, like venture firm is a startup, especially when it's first starting. By definition, you know, you can make the case that, you know, an A16Z or a founders fund or ABC's a larger enterprise, but the more successful they could run like a startup, meaning iterative, quick, like a lot of the functions that you share, domain expertise, actual edge, right? Like a startup that's very successful has like a learned secret. There's something that they know about the market that's allowing them to tap into growth and product market fit in the same way here, if you actually have proprietary deal flow or access, it's because you have some earned secret in the market that you're leveraging to make investments or connections. And so, yeah, this makes complete sense. And then it also makes complete sense of why most venture firms aren't run like this because they're not really run by like builders. They're run by people that have like looked at the mental or the legacy models of like what capital allocation look like. And they just kind of like cloned it over versus thought from first principles, like what would make me super dynamic, iterative, give me asymmetric edge knowledge. So yeah, I know this is very cool. And Ryan's, we have a lot of the stuff we're kind of working on at Early Riders. Hey guys, hope you're enjoying the podcast. It was a great RIP. Just wanted to do a quick note from early writers. We producing an insane amount of content at the firm from research to analysis. And then we have some exciting companies that we'll be announcing that we backed recently. If you're looking to break into the space and you're either trying to get more insights or looking to build in the ecosystem, you know, would love for you to sign up for our research and newsletter or shoot us a note on how you want to get involved. There's some very interesting things we'll be bringing to the market and so I encourage you to to stay close in case you're looking to get into this ecosystem at some point in the future. Hope you enjoy the rest of the show. Yeah, it's super interesting. All right. We're coming up a little over an hour. There was a few other links that I wanted to cover. One is these, these are both sort of more crypto related. Liam, you had shared something on the regulatory front which I'll pull up right now. And then the other headline from this morning around Deutsche Bank getting into crypto custody, which is something we've talked a lot about over the past 6 to 12 months or so. As as these banks come in, how are they going to do it? And it looks like they are effectively outsourcing it to someone, yet it still won't be ready until 2026. But up on the screen now, I have this market structure news if you want to speak to this, Liam. Yeah. I mean, this, all of this was pretty much going into where the money and valuations and raising has been over the last few months. And it's all gone to the largest players in this space. We've seen circle with a massively successful IPO. It was up 10X at one point. It's settling in around 7X up now. Finance received $2 billion earlier this year. Gemini is assuming to be going public, cracking rumors with them going public as well. Bitco sounds like they're going public too. And so we're, we're seeing capital being raised from a large amount of legacy player, I guess legacy players in the crypto space, because we're seeing a slew or a ton of very positive momentum as it relates to digital asset clarifications in the space. So at the same time, so I would say those they have a massive advantage because they have a really established client base, solid UX, like no name in the space, but they generally have a lot of, you know, some cost of old technology grafting to, you know, whatever old Ethereum L twos. They have a bunch of different communities and VC arms across all these different firms and, and have different, a bunch of different cohorts. Please. On the other side of that, you have the banks like DB, which is launching Crystal crypto custody by next year by partnering with another company. And these banks, you know, I think that they're mostly leaning into stable coins because, you know, they're banks, they want to make more dollars and stable coins give you the ability to make more dollars. They don't yet realize that the end goal is to get more Bitcoin, not more dollars. And so with that, I think that, you know, these banks are going to be slow to move. They get a partner with others. I would imagine that there are acquisitions being looked at from other players in the space, but I think that kind of and then one other cohort that we mentioned previously was the Robin Hoods of the world. But and they're going to be integrating a lot of the technology that, you know, these crypto players have, which, you know, being stable coins to lower cost, tokenizing equities kind of grifting off that as well as, you know, they continue to offer Bitcoin, but it's not really a core focus. So they'll be like somewhat of winners, but don't. And you know, the the banks and native players in the crypto space are are being rewarded with large amounts of capital at the moment. I do think that this is going to be kind of a buy the rumor sell the news type event as it relates to regulatory structure across broader digital assets. And you know, I don't see a lot of these circles, coin bases, Gemini finances of the world kind of continuing to gain additional market share and value accruing to them just because just like the earliest Internet companies, many of them kind of faded away into a relevance because they were unable to adjust based on, you know, consumer needs over time. They had some cost fallacies they had to stick to. And I do still think that there is a massive opportunity as it comes to infrastructure that well positioned to benefit from increased needs like like multi institution custody. So that's kind of just like an overview of everything that I see going on in the space right now is as I referenced earlier, the amount of IPO and M&A deals over a billion dollars is significantly higher than it has been anytime in the past. And so I think now many of these legacy funds just like kind of the AI trend in in narrative crypto is kind of benefiting from that as well, at least as it relates to the public markets. And but I think that the majority of of that is, is kind of going to be a buy the rumor, sell the news just because they're they're not necessarily the ones who I think will continue to be innovating and keeping up with where the consumer wants in the future. Are you are you shorting hood? You think hood's down only from here? You know, all time highs building on Arbitrum I'm. No, I'm not. I'm not touching anything in the public market. I think what you're describing though is, is like more of a medium to long term outcome. Like I think, I think a lot of this stuff could get super frothy in the near term. I think we're just like as you just listed off like all those companies that are yet to even go public. Like I think there's a lot, a lot of near term noise. It's going to be hard to discern for the average person, the average investor looking at the space specifically on the bank stuff like this DB announcement. As I mentioned, we've kind of talked about this a lot of like, OK, well how how are these banks going to actually get into custody? Are they going to build it themselves? Are they going to outsource it? Are they going to look at things like multi institution custody participating, but you know, in in sort of a more isolated fashion? This is kind of like my base case, like I think they are largely going to just outsource it because I think we've already seen signals of that trend with the ETF issuers outsourcing the custody of Coinbase by and large. And so I think you're going to continue to see similar announcements like this from more of the incumbent traditional banks that are tapping, partnering with or even acquiring more crypto native firms to, to help them figure out custody effectively. Clay, any any thoughts on this before we wrap or or anything else you wanted to mention? I feel like you guys got such a deeper understanding of all this stuff than me. I probably had the most qualified opinion on it, so I played the 5th. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, Clay, thanks for thanks for joining us. This was a fun one. And as you mentioned, we'll we'll have more guests in the show going forward. So stay tuned everybody. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, feel free to give us feedback as well, what you want to see, what you liked and what you didn't like. And we'll continue to iterate from here too. Sounds good. All right. Thanks, boys. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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