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The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that's missing, but that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. All right. Welcome to the 4th episode of Final Settlement. I believe we just breached all time Highs, boys. The people are calling it on on the Twittersphere, they're calling all time highs. It bumped back down a little bit but people are willing to call it. How how does it feel? I. Think it has to do with Cam joining and those nicotine pouches he got, He just changed. He channeled some like additional energy that we weren't ready for this morning. Yeah, 17 milligram. Well, welcome. Our guest today is Cam Duty. He was previously on the last trade many months back but very happy to have him on this episode of Final Settlement Cam Co founder of Brickyard, A venture firm in Chattanooga, TN and and prior to that built a built a moving business called Bellhop, grew that business very successfully. So he's a builder, he's now an investor and he's also a bitcoiner over the past few years. So welcome Cam. Happy to have you. Awesome to see you guys and thanks for having me welcome. Cam yeah, super excited to have you. I think it was after the last trade episode, which I like anchor back to 2023 and think they're like, well, our spirits were high. It was, you know Bitcoin price is pretty low. So it was the energy wasn't quite where we're at today. And I think like there was a whole summer around 25K. But part of also after the episode, I listened to a few of the pods you did about the the history of bellhop and some of the learnings and kind of like trials and tribulations you went through. And it like added a lot more credit. Not credibility, but like validity or or weight behind the things you were referencing about being, you know, when you invest and looking at individuals and seeing their backgrounds and if they've executed because you had to go through that and work with your hands and figuring out very tough and complex things to make the business succeed. And so, yeah, hoping to get into some of that here because I think that's an important factor of like just allocation moving forward is just being able to have been in the trenches. So when you look at it, you can actually know who's about it versus who's just telling a story, which I think is very, like very much missing in the allocation world today. Or people like to get on the Ivory Tower and kind of move the pieces when the pieces they've never been in in the realm with the pieces as they're playing in the game. Yeah, yeah, that, I mean that was the core thesis of Brickyard. There was just something missing in Venture and I'm happy to get into that. But where do you where do you guys want to take this? Well, maybe, maybe just start sort of in, in honor of price ripping being a much different place than we were several months back. This is not, this is not a price prediction podcast. I will say that upfront. I think the the real part of the goal of this show is to really move past sort of the digital gold thesis and just thinking about price and never go up like all those things are are great to anchor to right like you know number go up is sort of a a mechanic for adoption over time that's a necessary component to to this asset being adopted. But we really like to sort of Orient back to the technology side of things and and Bitcoin as you know an open source piece of software that that people are building on top of. So maybe a good place to start is is Cam. I'm curious, you know when you talk to either colleagues, peers, friends, family about Bitcoin, if you had to just put aside price and number go up, how would you sort of articulate your thesis around Bitcoin, the technology itself? I have a few different sort of answers for this that that I can go into, but I'm curious curious how you think about that. You know, I've been trying to whittle this down for for like 7 or 8 years now. And I think it wasn't until probably three years ago when I read a post, I I I read one of Jeff Booth posts on what was summarizing Christ Tomorrow. And that's really what captured it for me. And so now I can pretty succinctly kind of break it down by like on this hand you have this national natural force of deflation that's caused by you and me and everybody else in the economy going to work and building new things and creating innovations that allow us to increase our output with less energy every year. So like that's what deflation is, is we're cramming more you know we are we're, we're, we're we're becoming more productive every year as we get better at doing things and better and more efficient at doing things is you're creating better things with less energy input. And so you know, if I make a coffee mug for for a buck and you make it, you figure out some new manufacturing process that where you can make it for $0.50, you're going to price at $0.60 and you're going to take all my customers. And that's like how the, you know, production of economy you know, continues to become more and more efficient and produce more and more things, better things. And ultimately the consumer benefits in that because prices fall in a competitive environment. So you got this natural like the the natural state of an economy is deflationary and then you have on this other side. You know, what I say is if we went off of a Bitcoin standard or off a gold standard and straight in onto a Bitcoin standard in 1971, all that production would have to get, you know, captured in this battery of money over here. But obviously that's not what happened. You know, we started, we took on debt. And as our debts grew, we are now at a point where when we become more productive in an economy, the Fed has to to print in proportion to the to the gains that we make to inflate that away or else the debt becomes harder to pay back. And so we're now 34 trillion in debt. You know, let's say our economy produces 3% more stuff every year. A 2% inflation target is stealing all of the gains that we should be having, plus 2% more on this side. And but what, you know, I feel like I'm privity understand, you know, given what I do for a living, seeing what is going to happen with modern technologies like AI. You know, our production over the next 10 years may go from 3% to 5% to 7% to 10% maybe right, as we get more efficient at doing all things and you know, companies P and LS are radically leaned out where you're they're providing better services, more services for less cost, prices come down. You know if we're producing 10% a year and the Fed maintains a 2% inflation target, they're stealing 12% instead of you know currently 5%. And so if you have a, you know your your money in a in a fixed supply over here, all of the the gains that you create in the economy have to be rammed into the same number of batteries. And and that's, you know, kind of how I think about, you know, Bitcoin, like I feel like Bitcoin is a divine gift. And the reason I say that is, is because if we had AI and we did not have Bitcoin as like two sides of the same coin kind of hitting the mainstream, you know, world. At the same time, the people that control the issuance of money would become more powerful because there's more purchasing power to steal. And so, you know, you look at a lot of venture investors today that are, you know, saying things like I want to, we want to invest in in companies that that will change the world, right. And they spend all their time, you know, looking for power production plants like companies that are reducing, you know, prices to the marginal cost of production, right, creating things that that are reducing price like you know, creating companies that are more productive than the companies that came before them over here. But the thing that they're not thinking about at all is like the battery that has to soak up all of that energy. And so if you really care about changing the world, you can't do it just by investing in new power plants. You actually have to figure out how to store that that that energy better. And the The funny thing about you know, most venture investors is because you you, you can't, you know, justify the fees of of holding Bitcoin and there's no management team to diligence. They just completely ignore the other side of this coin. And so I'm trying you know in the venture world I'm trying to sort of wake people up to think like look guys if you want to change the world we got to keep doing our job over here. You know investing in these companies that are that are rapidly creating you know more and better things for us every year. But we also have to start storing this, this money or this, this energy in a, in a in a money that's capable of soaking up all of that energy and and that's really you know and that's price of tomorrow, it's human flourishing is producing more and better things and then allowing the consumer to fully you know reap the benefits of that. You know what I thought of when you were describing that? Is it it like a lot of these concepts are pretty simple in the sense of like like deflationary nature or or technology. Like as humans, we deliver or create more value with less goods or less things that we have, and that keeps us like moving forward. And I was thinking about deflationary nature and like, we look at the phone, right? And it disintermediated a bunch of things that historically have been in the physical world. And that's a form of deflation, of all the different things that are not disintermediated but like almost dissolved. But I was thinking about what you're doing. I don't know if you've ever thought about like Brickyard when you think about like, value and iteration, right. So you have this world of like allocation. And you, you know, there's an old guard. And I would say probably the old past 30 years, which I think is was always like a Fiat model because when you really extrapolate somebody giving somebody money that made the money to somebody else, that's never made money to allocate. You can almost like get to there. Like I'm like, wait, there's something wrong in that. But if you take it a step further, if you're talking about deflation, like what? What's going on at Brickyard? And again, I didn't think of this until you were describing. It's like you have a single building. How many companies, I don't know, roughly maybe 20, but they don't need 20 buildings, they just need one. And the amount of energy when you go from like a proximity or like fidelity of energy, it's like it's probably tighter there versus it going out. And all the things here I'm going with this like it's a form of of a better iterative product and more value delivered to the world in what historically had been very kind of like antiquated. And you know you know 9 out of 10 lose and all the things that we know about traditional venture is you're kind of like shaking that up because it's just a better product, it's a better natural evolution based on where around the market. It's just another form of like deflation. I love that. I I have never thought about it that way but that's yeah, that's the properties of Bitcoin just continue to seep their way into all all all signs point to to to to that. Maybe maybe for for for people in the audience who don't know much about Brickyard. Maybe just sort of walk through you know how and why you founded the venture firm in the way that you did. And sort of maybe you know going back to what Michael is alluding to. You know some of the learnings from your your time previously building bellhop, building a business, building something in the real world and then sort of applying those learnings to to a largely A differentiator approach in the venture space. Yeah. All right. Let me so, OK, so so Brickyard started. So my Co founder Brickyard, Matt Patterson, you can see him we we we realized something was happening in the world of venture around like 2019 like right before COVID and that was that was right before we sold part of our company. And you know stuff that had started getting really frothy in venture and a lot of the new founders had started building in venture were sort of a product of this like marketing engine that had been created by the venture industry. Because you know what what what had happened was you had you had so much capital during the the 20 teens flowing into venture capital looking for yield that fund managers that had been raising like, you know, $50 million funds. We're now raising $200 million funds, $300 million funds, $500 million funds. And and what that naturally did was they had to go out and find more entrepreneurs to deploy this capital into. And so they had to make it cool like 10 years, you know, 1314 years ago it, it wasn't sexy to be a startup founder. Like it was like people just felt sorry for you actually. Like it's like, oh cool, yeah, good luck. You know it it wasn't this pop culture thing. The celebrities hadn't gotten involved in cap tables yet. Like it was if you're raising venture capital in in 2012 when we raised our first round, you you, you were doing it with with pure intent of I need capital to create technology that will allow me to do the thing that I want to do and it it but you. But you knew by taking that you're putting yourself in a pressure cooker. And so it was kind of sort sort of very serious thing. Whereas you know lately you know particularly in this last bubble of like 2020-2021 22 you know by our math like 8090% of founders in the market had sort of been convinced to to be a start up founder because they wanted Forbes 30 under 30. They wanted a line on their your resume that said they're an original thinker. They they wanted the accolades of this. They wanted Steph Curry on their cap table. They they wanted like all the other things aside from building a big company and what that did is it caused this really bad golf swing And and so Matt and I I think we assumed that we were going to just start another company after we sold Bellhop. And the more we thought about it, this thing just kind of kept like slapping us in the face around like something is wrong in venture capital today because so many of the founders that we meet are are very clearly not in it because they want to go to war for a decade and build something really big. And so could we you know do something about solving that. And the the ultimately what what Brickyard came out of was like how do we create a series of filters that have made it really difficult to take capital from us from a standpoint of like sacrifice. And so Brickyard is a traditional venture capital firm. We invest pre seed and seed in. We're pretty category agnostic investors. We we won't really touch hardware or native healthcare. But aside from that we're we're sort of interested in everything because we're investing so early we're we're backing people really more than anything. And so we've built this brand on Brickyard around like if you're really serious about what you're doing, you're you're willing to do whatever it takes to put the maximum amount of focus and energy into what you're doing to get your product market fit. And you have a a bunch of accelerators out there like Y Combinator that's you know the total institution and the juggernaut in the space. But there if you've ever seen Paul Graham's Through of Sorrow graph that it looks like it's like you start out, you think you know everything and then you you reach this like Peak of Disillusionment and then you fall into the Through of Sorrow and it's like a knife fight for like two or three years. And then you get to the wiggles of false hope and then you hopefully make your way out of the trophies are to product market fit. But like people don't realize like this is a three-year grind usually for for companies and YC gets you to like here you, you raise your first institution around everybody that comes out of YC. Like all your assumptions get tested, all the things you thought you knew breakdown, you have to like really get down to brass tacks and like what is it that we are actually trying to build and what is it that the customers really need And you have to go through this process of like like deep introspection to to pick up on those like faint signals that lead you to product market fit. And so we're like we want to build Brickyard you know for when these founders fall back into the through and that's when Brickyard starts and Brickyard lasts until you reach product market fit, which that's an an ambiguous term. But the proxy that we used is the Series A and the Series A is basically the free market signaling, OK, this team is at or near product market fit. You know that's your like sort of second institutional round where you get material capital say OK, there's a there there and the team's been capital efficient enough to execute towards this thing. We can kind of feel it. It's not perfectly, you know, ironed out yet, but like, there's definitely like demand in the market for what they're building. And and the best way, like every stage in company building is so different. It's like the Through of Sorrow is is is 1 by radical focus and execution. It's not about networking events, it's not about parties, not about all these other things that the venture, you know space kind of sells. It's like how many customers can can you talk to, how honest can you be with yourself. How low can you get your ego to really pay attention And then you know are you shipping right and and that's that is what the through of sorrow is. And if if if you buy into that mentality of OK, that's that's how you get to product market fit fastest. The best thing that you can do is remove all distraction in your life and put yourself in a scenario where you only have one thing to do. It's a forcing function. It's a Brickyard. When we get to the point of writing a a check in your company you understand what that means by taking capital is you're moving to a mid sized city in Tennessee where you don't know anybody and you're putting yourself in a building with 20 other super you know ambitious high growth companies that are in your exact same stage and you're going to push as hard as possible to get through to to condense that through is is is is you know as short as you as you can and and and and the whole thesis around you know what we what mattered to us during that stage was it was focus execution but being around other founders that were in our exact stage because no one else in your life understands what you're going through when you're in that through. I mean it's a dark place like you know, 98 days out of 100 are hard as shit and two days are so good that it gets you through the next 100 days. And when you cram a bunch of teams into one area not in some like program, you know, we have no programming. There's no demo day. There's no formalized you know, set meetings. We're just ramming really gifted founders together into the same place and making them build together under one roof. What happens is it's like one of our teams every few days is having one of those like you know, stratospherically high highs and the rest of the building really feeds off of of of that energy. And it creates this like very familial place where you know, you get to know these people better than you know most people in your life in certain ways. Because you you, you deeply understand what you, what you're all going through and and you see how hard everybody is is working around you. So you become like brothers and sisters, but you're also like wanting to dunk on each other every day. So it's sort of this like perfect sort of mash up of of what we think really matters to to getting the PMF as quickly as possible. Yeah, I love that. I think that's where we're very excited to have individuals that have I think about like even how we're building an on ramp in in the future for just Bitcoin products of like historically in Bitcoin it's been you had Bitcoin knowledge 1st and then anything you were particularly interested in you you leveraged or as a skill at a company or things that you were just like a hobbyist at. IE like if you're going to go help with marketing because you posted on social for yourself, now you're doing it for a Bitcoin company versus the next wave is the expert 1st. And then they're still, they understand Bitcoin as deeply as everybody else, but that's their second version of themselves. The 1st is a professional and I think a component of all of that is just natural as price, right? Because price runs and then awareness comes and you bring in those experts. And so I've always had this notion that some of the best companies are yet to be built and also venture capitalists are allocators. And so I think it's really awesome that you came directly from, and maybe not directly, but like while it's still fresh, all the battle scars and wounds, because everything you described is literally impossible to go through unless you felt it and you went through it. And to build the atmosphere for what is needed, It's not needed for everybody, but it's needed for a large core, right? Some people can tune out the distractions, but what you're effectively describing is like this reversion to a mean that is a high caliber with the group that you're holding. It's like there's always description distractions and conferences and swag and all the BS that people do when they raise money versus like, how do you just get down and grind? And a big part of that is literally somebody has to love to do it. And the only way you can recognize if somebody loves to do it is that you love to do it. And that's the thing that most people like, just miss. But you've done that and now you understand Bitcoin. So like, I think what you're describing is obviously like very valuable for the traditional technology world and things being built, but it's also insanely bullish for as you're going down the rabbit hole and learning about the products and services that are missing in the Bitcoin space. Oh, like, hey guys, have you thought about this? Maybe it's people already in the units or it's net new companies and products. Like that's when we really started cooking with gasoline. And I don't think most of the markets even looking at it because they're still thinking about like Bitcoin here or the market over here. It's like there's no difference, but it's still not enough to know those sides. You literally have to explain it the way you did because outside of that you're just basically like throwing darts at a board in my opinion, because the same thing as like hiring, but harder. It's like everybody knows 50% of people you hire just won't work out. It's just natural, like you just cannot find out. It's even less so if you're allocating capital because you're literally trying to hire somebody in a thing that you, you know very early stage. And so the way you like de risk it is by knowing what you're talking about. For sure. And and here your your point about capital allocation like VCs allocate capital and like you know the people, people forget like founders are the ultimate capital allocators, right, Like they they are the base layer of capital allocation. And you know I just think there's there's so many parallels like the pendulum is swinging back. You know venture capitalist is this hyper bipolar environment where there's a lot of heard think and venture investors sort of benefit from like following trends but the real you know the best venture investors don't follow trends like the the way you know if you've heard of the quadrant in venture capital non consensus and right are the biggest out outcomes in venture right consensus and right is like some of your you know your those are going to be wins that are not going to return your entire fund right because because everybody is is saturated in that quadrant. So non consensus and right is where you have to live in that space. And when it comes to to you know when it comes to capital allocation like you and me, the three of us, you know I have two daughters. When I think about capital allocation for for my personal wealth, it's like when I take a risk on something I better believe fully that that energy that I, you know, place in in the hands of of of someone else or some other thing I have to genuinely believe then my family is going to benefit from from that risk that I took. And so that makes me, you know, a a a hyper efficient capital allocator because it it, it forces me to be a a fiduciary for my family, right. Whereas you have governments that don't really care about that because there is no immediate pain for anybody of like, OK, if we create this program, you know, we may incinerate you know, a bunch of energy, but at least we tried to do the right thing, right. It's more like about signaling than it is about results. And what, you know, essentially happens is is most of government spending is is like bottling up energy that other people have earned in the economy putting it on, you know Elon Starship and like sending it off of our planet indefinitely out of our solar system, right. It's just the incineration of of of energy. Whereas if if everybody in the world is thinking about capital allocation to the same degree that we are thinking about how we allocate capital for our own families, the whole world changes and we become like this this power plant that's hyper efficient that just continues to make more and more and more power and retain all of that. And so I, I, I tried to kind of get all of our founders to that mindset of of the importance of capital efficiency is like that is everything. When you raise capital, it doesn't matter how big of a round you raise. You know if you're going to go and just immediately hire 25 people that 50% of which you're not going to work out and you're sort of just throwing bodies at things. You know the the team that is that is you know, really closely tied to the problem they're trying to solve and and is, is is really tightly allocating capital. Those are the teams that are going to win. Yeah, I think that's. Swinging back. Yeah, I think that's insanely important like thing that doesn't get brought up and I experience this, you know probably the king at wasting capital at we work and it's kind of fed into a lot of, you know, I've seen this at other companies. They're the easiest to pick on. But it's really like true. It's like liquidity drowns people like whether it's personal, you know you hear people winning the lottery or from a company and you just get too much money. Because it's ultimately like used to be at certain point is the is signal right from energy being directed to you that you're doing something right. And now it's a misaligned signal, but people still interpret it as a signal to doing things right and then they go out and throw that capital out and then it just fundamentally, literally drowns the rest of the business. And most people don't recognize that all the way from if somebody's raising a large round from a venture side all the way down to the company that gets the investment and then add to your point, starts hiring CFOs and all these individuals. It's like I love the term constrained breed creativity because it's like foundationally baked in truth that if you only have so much, whether you like create it yourself or it's because that's just naturally where the market, how it shook out, you're just going to be more efficient with your your cost, your use of time. And that's how like innovation happens. Yeah. Think think about the last 10 years, OK, in venture, all right, where there was all this money that's getting rammed into these venture firms, they had to deploy that capital. So they're actually pushing founders to burn through capital faster. Like talk about like, you know, the the Fiat money systems, basically like everybody thinks about their money like expiring credit card points. Imagine that to like the the power of 2. OK as a founder where you have like this external forces, like you don't just feel like your credit card points are expiring, like you have like outside pressures. They're reminding you every day like you need to be spinning more. And that's literally where the venture space went where all these fund managers were competing with other fund managers to get markups because they wanted to get you know liquid early on these companies and and and sort of shill their thing to the next you know guy down the line so they could get out and and you know boost their their their numbers for their fund and go raise a bigger round and take bigger management. It's like the the incentives in venture and over the last 10 years are what caused the bubble. Like it wasn't the founders that you know were you know errantly spending capital. It was that but it was because of the forces that that at play on their boards of like what do you mean 300% growth year over year? Like could we be doing 500% year over year, right. Literally that's like a verbatim thing that that I've heard over and over again. You know and we all know, you know the the biggest, most effective businesses in the world are ones that that are the best capital allocators period. You know, you you have some operators that just have lightning in a bottle and those are like your outlier outliers where it's like the founders, like, I don't even know why we're growing we're, but we're just, we're just growing, right? And honestly, I respect those founders way less than the founders that had to scratch and claw to to build something, because it it really is sort of the difference between luck and being good. And so anyway. Yeah, I mean it all, it all ultimately comes back to you know the the sort of misalignment of incentives that you're referring to really comes back to the money being broken, right, like low interest rate environment for the past 20 years. All these things 'cause that sort of pre tendency or you know, tendency to to, you know, 'cause malinvestment in, in some sense, right. And so you're forced to allocate these dollars which are being printed infinitely, Growth at any cost is sort of the mantra. And I think it's very interesting that you know you already had sort of you already sort of had a had a thought around, you know, things need to be more efficient from a capital perspective prior to to getting into Bitcoin. But I'm curious how the Bitcoin lens has even further catalyzed that that line of thinking, right. Because at least for me when I think about, you know, my own personal balance sheet and allocating capital like Bitcoin is the cost of capital. It is the opportunity cost of anything that I go deploy dollars towards because the alternative is I could buy Bitcoin. And so I'm curious how like that it seems like you were almost, you were pretty much all the way there in terms of this sort of differentiated line of thinking, but how did Bitcoin sort of catalyze that even further? Well, I'll give you a perfect example. So recently I like within the last like eight or nine months I have I I'm now on a Bitcoin standard personally in my household and like what happened was is is when we sold our company in in 19 I I had been in Bitcoin since 2015 but you know I I really didn't have a ton of liquidity and and and I I had bought enough in in 2015 in the years after to where like that that snowball like had started to grow. But you know when I really went big into Bitcoin was was right when everything crashed in the spring of of 2020 I've been sitting on cash because the Dow was like at 30,000 and like I I just didn't something just didn't feel right about putting it in the market. So I just said I hadn't done anything with the result of of our outcome and and I just got so lucky. I mean obviously I didn't see COVID coming but like all of a sudden you know Bitcoin became like a very large percentage of of my net worth. And I, I, I that forced me to understand it better. And you know since then I have kind of gotten to the point where it's like OK I'm going to keep like this amount of you know like fun tokens over here AKA you know U.S. dollar dollars that I I like. I think that that this is going to be enough for me to get through this you know this this when the bear market happens obviously don't want to be selling my Bitcoin but there's some things that I want to do for for my family and etcetera. And and so I I I sort of like budgeted like a slush fund that that I sort of just like kind of slowly you know spent out. And about nine months ago I I basically started living on a Bitcoin standard. And my wife had been hurt hearing me talking about Bitcoin for a long time but she didn't understand it until we were forced to compromise of like hey if if we want this thing we have to go and sell this other thing that we have like real conviction in in knowing that that this is this is you know potentially the most important asset that that that we own and and and and she started like changing her behaviors around like how she thought about spending money and and that's when she got Bitcoin. And so I guess this said, this said doesn't really have much to do with Brickyard. But like if you can convey the importance of of of like when a founder raises capital in 2035 and they're raising capital in Bitcoin like that is going to force them to think about every single hire that they make and every single expenditure they put into, you know, building technology. Like is this actually going to create margin for our business or is this going to improve the experience for the customer. And if it doesn't fall into those two buckets, then then we, we don't put this, you know, potential energy to work. You know, we're going to sit back and wait until we have real conviction in in spending this. You know, you know, when when the air that you breathe is free, like you're just breathing errantly right, with when you have to pay for each breath, it makes you really think about how you expend your energy. So, I mean, I'm beating a horse dead, but getting back to like, it all comes down to capital allocation, particularly for founders. No, I think I I think you you tied it back nicely in the sense of like the thing that most forget whether it's like Bitcoin institutions, you know adopting you know products like ours. It's like you always start with an individual you it's always an individual right. It goes back to your idea or the you reference about the government. It's like who will build the roads. It's like we will like you don't need the government to build the roads, but this notion that it starts anywhere but the individual and so it's your wife's example. The reality of like opportunity cost is back inserted. It's something I always think about Larry Leopard, we talked about like I just want can't wait till like Bitcoin's dinner exists just because accountability will be introduced back to the role from all across, right. You go to your diner and like he has to actually produce service or he doesn't get paid because that unit is tied to something that has foundational properties versus something you can print. But to the point where you came back to the companies you back and it's all about capital allocation how they think about it. Imagine that you know that same cost of capital or or opportunity cost in your wife's head is basically built into and maybe this takes years, right because some people will naturally have to will have to go through a you know cycle if people will grow up into this world. But imagine the the founder like you're saying that takes that capital now is looking at it through that lens. What does that mean from the life, the expectancy of the the business How do they think about things how efficient are they. And the only thing that I think it was like that's really where we're we're headed is this like productivity and efficiency gains. And I think about like even the all the Fortune 500 companies and it's like those those companies are almost dead unless they like, you know really figure things out essentially because you could probably do most of their businesses at like 110th of the people if not maybe you know 30%. And so it's just like a complete like repricing and reframing of everything that we're heading into. And I guess the the core of going back to the individual is if anybody's ever struggled with like saving. It's like a heady thing, right, Because like it's very hard when you're always on that rat race to like see the future. But the second you get a solid base it's like oh this is the easiest thing because it's like everything's cost against like where your benchmark is week over week and so now you feel good. And so that same micro example I think about it from a company perspective because once you have that balance sheet and it's accruing now every cost AdWords and all those things are associated with that unit and it's just like a better world of living overall it totally. Is it it? It totally is, Yeah. You know, I think it's, it's something that that the gold bugs have known for a long time, right? Yeah. And the the gold bugs are absolutely right. It's just the world is changing with, you know, this unforeseen thing that came out of nowhere like that, that this just totally changing the game. You know, I think about, like think about this. So I kind of breakdown technology companies you know of of the last like 25 years into like a first era and a second era like the first era Internet businesses call it like 2000 to 2023. OK. You had the Internet that companies were were were building on that functionally for most companies like benefited from the distribution of the Internet like the ability to grow and scale at a lower cost than you could before because you didn't have to take you know out billboards and you didn't it's it's like you had to rely less on. You know you could have these product driven companies where like discovery was sort of hacked by the Internet and you had massive scale where you could get a ton of eyeballs on your business no matter where you were. You know, But the Internet didn't for for many businesses didn't have much of an incremental you know benefit to the P&L like in terms of like like making these companies more efficient, right. It's like they they gained from the ability to grow really fast from the 20/20/20 to 2023. But like I I think how we look about tech stocks like so few tech stocks have have actually broken through to have really successful you know IPOs because of the margin component. But going into this next World of like post AI, you know you have this era 2 which is the Internet plus AI which is now it's like you have the ability to grow like no other company before 2000, right. But now you have the ability to grow and you have this like precipitous force that is that is allowing you to be more efficient to to drive that bottom line. And you hear a lot of venture investors talking about like when is the you know when's when's the first year where where a one person company becomes a billion dollar business, right. And that's almost certainly happening. And and so we're, we're stepping into a new realm where you have companies that that have the ability to to to scale virtually infinitely plus you have you know, this added layer of now these businesses can scale and they can also just dramatically reduce the prices of all things. And so I'm just just wildly bullish around what's is to come over the next 10-15 years and I think it will absolutely benefit the consumer like it, it never has before. But again, going back to that you know, original concept that I talked about, it's like this is the decade that we realized that there's two sides of this coin. There's like the power production side and then there's like the battery and energy grid side and like you have to think about both of those things if you really have positive intent for for the world. Thanks for tuning in. If you're interested in exploring any of these topics further, or want to learn more about how we can help you secure a new or existing Bitcoin allocation, get in touch with our team at on rampbitcoin.com. We look forward to supporting you on your Bitcoin journey. Yeah. No, I think I'm, I'm curious from your perspective like when you're thinking about AI and all the impacts it could have generally speaking on on technology and how businesses are built. You know from from a fun perspective are are you guys looking at sort of AI specific businesses or just looking at businesses that can benefit from AI Because that's really it's every business becomes an AI business kind of like I think every business becomes a Bitcoin business at a certain point. But you know, what is that lens from? From an investment? Perspective. That that's exactly it. I mean you just hit the nail on the head. You know I think you know AI it's it's just modern technology, it's not like it's just modern technology. So like every technology company that's building today, you know almost every one of our companies has an AI component to it or they're they're thinking about how you know they're going to be implementing AI. Because if you, if you aren't and you you and you don't have that component in your business, it's going to be like starting a venture backed company in like 1997 that like never adopts the Internet, you know, So yeah, yeah, you you nailed you hit the nail on the head. How, how have you seen I guess like a different framing of that with the existing companies and people you're working with like bent towards leveraging the tools? Because I think that's actually really interesting even from like digitally native to see the even internally the predisposition to use some of this stuff versus like like it's not there yet or I'm not going to go because if you go and like a lot of like, you can actually have to be a curious person. But then I think that there's just like this willingness to try things new and like a good example of this as like the podcast formatting. So like you can go and, you know, you can do this and you can pay a producer and then they can take it out and they can chop it up and you need clips. And that chart is going to cost you per episode a couple $1000. Or you can download a tool for $30.00 a month and literally it'll do it all And and like, it's literally the the mindset set of like, Oh well, efficient cost and like 3000, 'cause we literally went down this route. It's like well, do we spend $5000 or whatever it costs a month? It's like there has to be a better way. And it's like, Oh yeah, it's $30 and it takes a little time, but it's less than the 5000, but I don't think that's everybody yet, right. Like I think that there's a certain you know, business profile and individual. So just curious like how you're seeing or if you're helping Orient portfolio companies because it's obviously going to again goes back to the capital preservation and extending their runway to find that PMF. Totally. Like like, I don't even worry about that side. Like Moore's Law is going to Moore's Law, right? Like companies are going to use better technologies that are more efficient just because boards are are going to be always like making you force, you know, force you towards thinking about your bottom line. And like when there are tools to that exist out there where you can cut out costs in your business, you're just going to do that. Like that's just, you know, that's just going to happen. And I think the most, the more interesting you know, part to me is on, you know, on the Bitcoin side where it's like, you know, it's not just how you allocate your capital, it's how you store your capital. And like I even think you know, you know we're starting to see companies like Anchor Watch and and Unchained that are going to allow for for corporate custody to happen where you know companies soon are going to start carrying a certain you know percentage of their their balance sheet and Bitcoin and that's going to buy them runway over the longer term. And you know, I think also venture firms like I, this is a prediction of mine in the venture space is that probably most funds 5 or or seven years from now when they go and raise a fund from LP's, they're going to say listen, we're raising $100 million fund. We're we're going to allocate 5 or 10% of this fund and we're going to call 5% of of every capital call and we're going to just put it directly into Bitcoin. And here's why. You know, venture is one of those things where it's like the top performing funds, like a like a 60th percentile fund is basically like a 0X fund, right. And and and So what happens is when you can go to LP's and you can say listen, you know we're going to put 510% of of of your capital, you know, into Bitcoin over the term of this 10 or 12 year term fund. And once people understand what Bitcoin is and and what it looks like over a longer time horizon, it's essentially like guaranteeing that you're going to be able to return the principal back to your your LP's at at a minimum at the end. But what that also does is is when when you know when you when you're able to to have that baseline of like OK we're going to return capital after 10 years. We we have 10-5 or 10% less to deploy in the companies. But that 5 or 10% is going to reduce the downside That's going to allow like way more of the capital stack to to to to, you know, take, you know, an endowments allocation of what's, you know, probably like a 5% allocation of the endowment to like a debenture bucket. Like that may go to like like 10%, right, 'cause there's just less risk, but you still have the upside and or maybe it's 20%, right. And and that's like the crazy thing is like if we as a species can can de risk you know the the, the, the, the capital to to a standpoint where we can take more risks in in in in higher growth, you know more deflationary businesses. And what I mean by take more risks, I don't mean like like errantly allocate capital. I just mean a bigger percentage of the the allocation of big money is going to be more willing to put you know put their money into you know these these potentially higher returning buckets. Yeah. I've heard this a lot to to push back just a tiny bit. I don't necessarily know. I know it like it's conceptually sounds good but from an allocator's perspective like if it was a bitcoiner who say like, well I'll just hold the Bitcoin and not pay fees. And if it's an institutional because I know there's like you know, without naming names, you know certain Bitcoin finance groups that are doing like structured credit and blending and all these like very fancy things. The end of the day like if you think about the sizing because there's no shortage of hedge funds that do effectively this worth. Like they just basically retrade around the volatility of Bitcoin. So they like go into dollars when they think it's going to like hit. So they like you basically dampen the upside but also like have a certain baseline that's above the benchmark of like you know inflation. The the thought would be you just buy the Bitcoin and then size the venture investment appropriately to pay for the risk versus putting it all and then putting the 10% in BTC. If that makes sense, well. I think it's just going to be batched in like I I I don't think these venture funds are going to take a management fee or carry on that bucket right on that 5 or 10%, but their fees are going to be like at parity with where like these ETFs are right. It's just more of Does that make sense? Yeah, but I guess the the question there if they've not taken the fees is like they would take liability of holding the asset for that long to make sure and then the investor, why wouldn't they just buy the Bitcoin themselves. It's it's basically I've heard this like a lot from different people on the like edge of this stuff and it like again sounds good like theory, but when it like it goes back to the liquid hedge fund. I think the angle, at least the way I've seen it, is it helps people get off a 0, which is a, but that is a different story. Because I I should have caveated this. I don't think that this is going to be this way when Bitcoin is the world reserve currency. I think right now where you have a lot of LP's that want to deploy in, you know, money into a a venture fund if that LP doesn't understand Bitcoin and would not otherwise buy Bitcoin, right. But they're being sold, you know, by these fund managers like this is how we're actually differentiating from other venture firms like. Yeah, 'cause you're basically, yeah, 'cause you're basically saying you're getting pick whatever. There's actually a slide in one of our decks. It's like pick whatever top tier venture firm you're almost baking in that you will be part of that just based on this one allocation. And think of it like a venture investment into your your firm, yes, but that's like a traditional VC cause, like somebody going into regular anything where we're talking about like in Bitcoin VC, it's like I'm just holding spot. If you're holding spot, I can just hold it myself but if you're like code 2 or you're 8 VC, yeah like that is that's actually a very interesting concept of like look we're especially if you have the discretion you know who did this that had it was a paradigm if you know of Paradigm they were the spun out Fred Erscherm was a Co founder of Coinbase and they spun out. He left in 17 I think it was 17 and in 18 they launched Paradigm with another guy. I forget his name but Long story short he came from Sequoia. They called all the capital from it was not Stanford. What's the big endowment Yale's endowment. Charles Swenson like Swenson model went into. He was the first that went into crypto and I think they raised like 355 hundred million and they literally ticked bottom, ticked the the bought all 500 million in Ethereum and Bitcoin and then they then they sold it. But they're out and they like have you know, equity bets everywhere, but they just basically did that on steroids which are describing of like look, we'll just have discretion between you know BTC and I think there's a component though that will have to be delivered in that thesis play of like Bitcoin is different than crypto because you know, this may be more tactical, but like you can imagine a world where an LP is like, wait, so you're going to like be doing it like trading and ICO like you know, tokens versus like no, this is like this pristine collateral that this is going to bake in. But I think it's position like a tech company because that's what it is, right from a growth perspective when people like think about. It totally, yeah. And and again, I like to reiterate like I think that there's a window of time where fund managers are going to be able to like front run this thing Like it. It may only be for like, you know, the next like 7 or 8 years where you can actually differentiate by going into a, you know, pitch, meeting with LP's and saying, hey, look, here's our strategy. Like if you if you believe that Bitcoin's going to continue doing what it has done right. If you can buy this, you know the the the Bitcoin log chart, right. Even though that you don't have personal conviction Bitcoin, you don't understand how it works. We do and and we can give you all the materials that you need to understand why we're going to allocate this to it. I think those fund managers are going to be able to differentiate from from other fund managers for a brief amount of time before it just becomes and you know before Bitcoin becomes pervasive. And then it goes back to what you said where funds won't be able to do that anymore because why would they do that right I. Think the the wild part on those, there's two other risk factors. Is A the ETF playing into like if somebody just going to buy it and then B this requires a fund manager to be as far down the rabbit hole as as us, which is the that's what. I was, that's what I was going to ask. I was like where are where are we in this this potential evolution Like you know people you talk to your peers Cam. You know I think when when you were last on the show many months ago it sounded like, you know you had had some conversations with not only partners at the fund but but peers and colleagues and and there wasn't there wasn't much open eyes to to this thing called Bitcoin. Has that changed over the past six months or so and and are people starting to wake up to it? Because I think at least for me like the the proof statement of everything we're talking about or one of the proof statements is MicroStrategy. Like what Saylor has done effectively, like that is the ultimate proof statement of OK, because because at this point he started this in 2020. So he's gone through a full Bitcoin cycle and it's worked out tremendously. The company has grown many, many multiples and he has now this fortress balance sheet of Bitcoin. And it's and it to me it's, it's the same whether it's a personal balance sheet, you know, a family, a business, a small business, a business in the S&P 500 or even a venture fund like we're talking about. It's just a better form of money. This is how we're going to store the value and and be able to use that value better over time, be more efficient, all these things. Yeah, I mean, to your question, you know, I, yes, Six months ago, like when SVB happened, we banked with SVB at at Bellhop. We had like a lot of money at SVB. When that happened, that weekend was like a nightmare. Oh my God. And so after that like I, I sort of started trying to back channel with few of our board members like hey guys, we may want to carry like two or three months of of you know reserves outside of this system just in case, right. And it was like like nails on a chalkboard. It was just like they just didn't even like want to think about that right. In the last two weeks like two of those, those three you know fellow board members have like reached out to me and and and they've been like hey, can we get on a call and can you help me wrap my hands around this thing And so like number go up is like the ultimate. We've said it 1000 times, right. But like this is going what we know other people will know. When you you know, I have this deep belief like when you know something is special, it's only amount of time it, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the world finds out about it, right? And like we just can't forget that like 99.5% of the world doesn't understand yet and in fact like probably 99.9% of the world actually understands the asset, right. And I and and I think going into the few, 10 years from now most people are going to be using Bitcoin, are holding Bitcoin in one way or another and have no idea like functionally how it works the same way as like the Internet. Right. It's most people don't technically understand how the Internet works. They just use it everyday, right. And so yeah, I I think number go up is just like people are going to come to Bitcoin because it's not because it's this cool novel concept, but because it's actually doing the thing that you know solving the problem that that that they have. Yeah, it it's a little, I guess disappointing, but it is where we're at in that. You know you mentioned you, you founded Bellhop and you're telling these guys like look it's like forget about number, even number go up. It's like from a business continuity perspective like do you care about your employees? Like this is like this is what I was thinking about then And you know just in general like if you were in the cockpit you would obviously have some Bitcoin outside of just making sure payroll and business continues until it's figured out. But I think it comes to this other point where we have an advisor that overseas his synagogue's treasury and and this notion or this idea came up by holding Bitcoin and it's been like pushed along pushed along and it was became this conclusion on the framing now switches. It's not about like, oh I need to make a pitch to you about Bitcoin. It's like no, no, no. You actually have to have a good strong thesis on like why we don't hold Bitcoin. Because everybody else, you know this thing is like here ETFs and it almost falls back into like your description of the firm of like why don't we have 5% like it's the increase of purchasing power business continuity. You know, it's it's an innovative technology that maybe we want to accept payments and whatever the The thing is. You tell me why we don't. Because if you can't then like you know some of the IT goes back to advisors and everybody at a certain point. And I think it's common. And I always like have this anchor of the six, six, bigger Bitcoin 100K where these conversations just like have to start happening and there's credibility behind it because there's a wave of, you know, appreciation that nobody's ever seen in an asset that just won't go away. Totally think. Think about Yeah, like OK did so Fred Krueger said this yesterday or the day before when I think when Bitcoin hits 100K it becomes the largest company on earth. Is that right or or or or the market cap is it's going to it's going to be it's going to be like the number two or three largest business owner. I can't remember the note. What was the price? That he. Said like 100 I I I don't want to mess it up, but it was, you know, something. That kind of makes sense because that means that it's going to be like a $2.5 trillion market cap, and so that's about like Amazon and Microsoft or whatever. Yeah, exactly. So his point is when that happens all the big money in the world like they can't afford to not own the largest asset like in the world, right. They they can't afford it like they will have to have exposure to that. And so when they when high finance starts like having to have a a piece of of of the the the largest you know it's not a company but you know that's going to trickle down to all the downstream capital that that that comes underneath all of that which is your venture fund, your private equity your venture fund your you know all the way down to like the household like it's like the the lake above the dam is is the big money right and that all trickles downriver you know in succession like to the bigger firms to the medium firms to the small firms to the individual like running a household and. You got to be careful, Cam. That said Zinn's energy coming down like Brian's about to Brian. Brian gets bowled up sometimes, and you gotta. Well, one bullish thing that we've we've sort of we've we've danced around the topic and in sort of a different context. But the AI and Bitcoin sort of synergies I think are are fascinating and and not priced at all. If you're thinking about you know the price of Bitcoin and and it's it's potential the way that you were referencing AI and Bitcoin is sort of you know two sides of the coin in terms of being more capital efficient and then storing your your value in a more efficient form of money. But there's also really interesting synergies there in terms of, you know if Bitcoin is the native currency of the Internet, it is going to be likely the preferred payment of AI agents that are either communicating with humans or communicating with themselves where it gets kind of a little a little heady. But I do think that this is a a narrative that we're going to see really percolate. As you know AI continues to be a a thing that people are thinking about and Bitcoin just becomes a very natural sort of synergistic component of how how these systems really scale just in terms of and it's really Bitcoin, lightning and AI right. Like that's that's the the the secret sauce of of how this thing really takes over in in an interesting way. But curious if you had any thoughts on that or if you've been digging into that recently? Yeah, I I think that that a lot needs to be built on Lightning in order for this to to to be possible. We know it's coming, right? But there, you know, people are still trying to wrap their hands around AI. Like where's the value in AI? Like basically my perspective on AI today is like all the money in AI is going to be at the base layer, IE NVIDIA, you know, and then at the app layer and at the app layer on top. It's basically like the the models and LL Ms. are are just going to be ubiquitous and you're going to be able to plug and play the middle. But the app layer at the top is basically like pick and choose all the stuff in the middle and then they're going to create symphonies at the top. Like they're going to plug in all these different things and build businesses based on like what you know what different models that language models are are you pulling in how are you applying it you know at A at the like the app layer. And so it's like all the the value is going to be you know created at the top and at the bottom and then everything in the middle is just going to be you know it's just going to be a race to the bottom on on like how efficiently can you make these models and and you know and and so we're still trying to like figure that part out yet and but the app layer is going to figure out the payment side, right. The app layer is going to understand you know as lightning continues to to you know build tools that that create their functionality that that that layer needs to to kind of plug in that that trombone you know as part of their Symphony. We're just not there yet, I don't think. But but obviously you know it's coming. I don't. I don't know you know functionally how far off we are from that though. Yeah, I think that's that's a very rational and fair take. I think Lightning itself to your point does need a lot more sort of maturing in in terms of just being able to scale to the types of things that we're even alluding to here. But I do think you know the, the interesting part about it to me is that I think already in its present state if you're thinking about you know how these models are trained and basically the the existing payment rails are way less efficient than if you're using Bitcoin and Lightning today. And yes we can, we can sort of discuss around how you know whether or not that scales to to sort of you know billions of people using this. But already today I think it is more globally accessible if you are you know, paying an AAI model using Bitcoin and lightning as opposed to traditional monetary rail. So it does in some sense already sort of democratize access to these models and and the ways ways in which they're trained. So to me that's sort of like an early proof statement of of there might be something here, but to your point it does need to to mature a lot more for it to be a a real reality. I think so. But you know, the pace of AI and the pace of, you know, we're like a year into companies building on the app layer, right? Like how insane is that? How crazy is that? We're we haven't even begun to feel the benefits of like what happens when you're building an AI native business, right? Like all the AI all like the the app you know the app layer is all like it's like isn't even the first out in the first inning you know it's it's they're all seed stage companies. Like they may have raised big you know funding rounds but the the pack of of all the companies that have raised on AI haven't delivered a like a a fully functioning product yet. Like most do not have product market fit yet that's going to change in like 2 years, right in a massive way. And and so I think that velocity of adoption on on these companies that are building on that app layer that's that's going to push Lightning to to to become relevant and and every Lightning business is going to be you know it's it's not going to take as long as you think like this is going to happen. So, like, what was Chad ChatGPT 3 was what, a year ago? Roughly. Yeah, Like I would say like two years ago I I I thought chat bots like still were these clunky things. Like, I can't tell you how many chat bot companies we look for at Bellhop. They were just awful. Like, I'd almost written off AI is like, this thing's never going to happen. And all of a sudden like boom one day, you know, ChatGPT arose and it was it truly one of those mind exploding, exploding technologies that you talk about as like if you had no knowledge of it and you saw it for the first time, like you might have a heart attack like or or. No, you would think it was magic, right? It's like 500,000 years ago, the first example of this was fire, right? Like if no one had seen fire and you saw fire for the first time, it's like OK, that's magic, right. And then the next one that happened was like like 400 and and 50,000 years later when it was like the written language or something where it's like, Oh my God, like how can we communicate information? Like we haven't, we passed information down generation, generation without storytelling. And then it was like, you know, to Fast forward through a few. It was like the Industrial revolution, like first time a farmer saw a tractor, it was like, what? What? Right. And then the airplane, and then the computer and then the Internet and then and it's all just getting smushed And without a doubt like AI is that thing that's happening right now. And I think Bitcoin is like it's AI and Bitcoin are two sides. You know to to my earlier points, two sides, they are to the same coin. Yeah, I think that ties into the any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I think that's real, like the power of whether it's sending a transaction and not being able to be censored or using lightning to see it instantaneously or the AI side. I think what you described about the first inning of the AI stuff is actually, for me the most fascinating and exciting Because in my experience, and we've seen this, like it doesn't have to be my experience, just in general, right? Like the first people through the door are generally not the people that win. They're the people that get shot and like they have to get shot for, for, you know, industries to grow and open and ideally they don't die after getting shot. For this analogy, I guess if I have to keep going down, it is that they would like to see another day with a different company and like the one that goes out as the Webvan and Instacart, right? But that iterative process isn't going to take 15 years and wait for mobile to catch up and all the things. It's going to take 15 days or 15 months, right? So there's all these fascinating things that came out and I think of that in the same way as crypto. Like crypto to Bitcoin is kind of like interesting in the sense of there's certain projects that are built in crypto that you look at. You're like, oh, that's interesting. It's just built on the wrong foundation. And the one that I always anchored to is there was this like cryptocurrency called step in that like helped incentivize people via like digital tokens to go and like work out and run and like it just basically played on. Obviously people traded it, but then also people like our social individuals and have game theory and cohorts and gamification of working out. It's naturally why people go and walk together or do whatever they do as a group workout. And so you can imagine and this would be working on this real like you can actually incentivize via like units, Sats or whatever you call it in certain apps that can incentivize and like that's really foundational and like it's nice because it's interoperable and number goes up And there's like a lot of interesting things there that I think they're both side of like we're just squinting at the very early stages and most of the things that exist today won't be the future leaders, but they will pave the way for what will be the future leaders based on all the learnings and the technology catching up along with the entrepreneurial like excellence because that's still not here in a lot of places. Yes, Yeah, totally. Yeah. But to your point, like, we're not going to have to wait like 10 years for this to happen. It's it's it's here like this the the failures and the ones that rise up it, you know the people that go through the brick wall are like it's literally like the guy right behind the person that went through the brick wall is just going straight through the you know, the opening. You know there's no wait for the the market to figure out, you know the next opportunity and like reconfigure out at your approach and then you know anyway. Yeah. Like what a wild time to be alive. Oh my gosh, it. Is I just checked the price guys we're down a little bit. So we we we take all time highs, people are counting it. We're back down a little bit. So stay humble. So we are we are counting it. I mean, I. Think it's counting for. Sure. I think people are counting it. So we'll go with that. I somebody texted me during this is like it's kind of crazy anybody calling numbers and projections simply because we've never seen like the buyers IE the cumulative buyers that just never been here. So there's just no talent, it's just doesn't the number it actually does without throwing numbers out, Cam was pretty bullish free pod and now I'm starting to see like yeah, like I guess everything's in play simply because you know. You know, it sounds, it sounds, it sounds sacrilegious to say, but it does feel like a bit of a new paradigm in terms of just whole new avenues, valves of demand being open that didn't exist before. And so now you can have some of these sort of reflexive tendencies, whether it's, you know, Bitcoin being added to an all world ETF that then it's just indiscriminate flows or it's the Michael Saylors of the world who you know when that company enters the S&P 500, people are going to have exposure to Bitcoin without knowing it. So it's just all of these little things that sort of snowball and accumulate. So yeah, I do think, I do think we are in in a bit of a different space. What about this whole notion that what we just described once it gets to the collectiveness, which is probably half their people holding Bitcoin? Because like you're always like in the paradigm of thinking of Bitcoin's framework, it's like, OK, you have like these benchmarks of where it can go and then when you sell, because at the end of the day, like, it's the dumbest thing to think like people don't sell bitcoins. Like Bitcoin's a tool. It's it's money. Like we use it for things to like, it's the low time preference thing. The high time preference thing would be like never sell the Bitcoin. It's like, then what are you doing? Just hold it on to this like thing and so but with that, there's also like a mental model of like which you're coming in and going out and that can be institutional investors, individual investors from an individual perspective like the house or the the, the boat, whatever the hell people want. But like what Brian just described kind of like throw it flips on his head When you're like even in my own head I was thinking about like like why do I want to like go on that trip? Like do we just or if I need to sell Bitcoin, why don't I wait to see how this plays out? Because I don't know what global demand looks like in 2025. And if everybody does that, we already see people doing that already. They're 70% or whatever the number is that's held. But when you see that continuing to go, these people are going to take something off and they're like, well, let me see how far this runs. Just an interesting. Yeah, yeah. I mean I tell you so I personally invested in Anchor Watch and Unchained and you know I I invested in those companies like during this last Bear and like it was like I had deep conviction in both both of those those companies and teams. But it was like hard to to to let go of like sell the native asset for the for the company. I ultimately did it, but like those are two of my like highest conviction bets that I've made because it was so difficult for me to like get to the point of like OK, yes, like this is, this is a A you know, this is I'm going from something with no counterparty risk to counterparty risk. However you know these companies need to exist one. And two, I think that that they may outpace the native asset, but it was tough and I think a lot of the, the Bitcoin only funds are actually running into that. Like I think they're obviously timing their their next fundraisers. You know, for sort of like as we're like deeper into this bulk, 'cause I think a lot of, you know, their native LP's are like, hey, I wish you were raising in like 10 months, you know, so. Yeah, I think, I think there's a a component of that to going into a larger bull like the return. That's always been an interesting thought. Like from a venture side from somebody holding Bitcoin, there's this natural thing that most people don't like to say out loud that when you have significant material wealth and it can be with one Bitcoin to start and then that one Bitcoin turns from 100K to a million whatever, that threshold moves for everyone that you naturally like almost want to diversify some of that risk because you always want to be like in the game if something happens to that. And so I think like venture. But the problem is like what you describe, if you have that base from 20 to 100 or whenever you allocate it, you're like shit, but at 100 it gets a lot easier, right, because the multiple increase versus like that capital being locked in the return profile. And there's also a natural thing in venture that's that we've seen is historically like the volatility really is messes with people and they rather have like a proxy for the volatility. Well, venture's still volatile. It's like a lot less volatile than BTC. And if you're allocating in size and you have pre, pre-existing conditions and there's things, I mean I've seen a lot of this like raising you know money and stuff. It's like you know some people are just like just give me the equity of the company. I'd rather just have, like you know, proxy on the. Upside. I just want to see it. I just want to see it quarterly. 20. 47365 that that scares people. Yeah, waking up, not sleeping, not sleeping. Right. Wife is kind of like, you know, are we getting this house redone or not you know this, this deal right now it's not getting not getting anything fixed in the the kitchen for for at least, you know, 18 months. I'm literally trying to to fix our sink right now because I've refused to to call somebody to come and yeah, I yeah, I think that's, I think that that is spot on. Yeah. No further thoughts there. Before we we wrap, curious if there's anything you not necessarily plug but like any portfolio or firms building that are interesting right now that you want to share what they're working on or any like I know you referenced a few, I don't know it would be appropriate. So I'm not going to say the company unless you want to, but you share that's doing some interesting stuff around like data and like just from a geopolitical perspective and thought that was interesting how it can play into, you know, borderless payments because you have to pay for that. But anything else related to either that one or others that you want to share? Yeah, there's a really interesting, so one of our companies called Brev brev dot dev, they were like the 4th company that we backed, just an absolute killer team. They are essentially building the software layer for NVIDIA and it's it's a it's a highly technical product and I don't want to Bush butcher it here but they're they're they're bringing value to sort of that base layer of of the the value production in in AI in allowing companies to to be able to train models and fine tune models with a with an interface that's you know doesn't exist elsewhere. And you know that is that's going to be key for that app layer up here that's trying to like create that Symphony of of LLMS here and use and fine tune those models to be able to fit you know the solve whatever problem they're trying to solve at the top Rev is wildly exciting. I'd say Coast is another really exciting company. I think it's tricoast.com and they're building API demo software for for API first companies that's making like. The technical cell of integrating AP is into like basically a visual where any sales person can scrape the, you know the the code of the client they're they're they're pitching and then show them what that you know what an integration would actually look like as opposed to like hey we can do all these things and here's like a you know A50 page technical document for our API documentation that only one person in your company can actually like you know breakdown. And that's usually the CTO. And it's like you can just go straight to the CEO and be like hey do you want this 'cause this is possible right now that one I mean if anybody wants to to check out our portfolio teams and I would ask if anybody's interested in in in just learning more about Brickyard, go to justlaybrick.com and and just sort of like read the manifesto and it's the manifesto is like really kind of in the FA QS. But you can also check out our our you know portfolio page. But you just wildly I think we have more you know teams that I think we have more YC teams in this building than live in Nashville and in which is just a wild thing. So we we've been able to like tap in this, this undercurrent of. Of. You know really top tier talent but everybody are those neurotic types that are just totally willing to burn the ships and you know leave it all in the field. Brick, brick to put in Bitcoin terms. Last thing I'll say is Brickyard is like the maximalist approach to product market fit. Leave it all on the field and that's that's really what what it is. So I'm I'm proud of all of our teams. We've we've got some just insanely awesome operators. No, I love it. I I can't be more excited for what you're working on and kind of like just paving a path for a different and better way to build companies that I don't know if it was Trey or Cam like a year, two years ago. I think you were first talking you know like yeah you got to meet Cam and shared it. And I remember looking at the website and just like seeing it's like you know it's like similar to like Bitcoin or certain things that just intuitively inherently makes sense because it's just like a model that structurally has different foundation and better foundation and it feels like you guys are just like picking up steam. So it's super exciting and you know, look forward to like continuing the conversation and learning more about what you're doing. Well, hey, I want to see you. I want to see you both here like you've got to. You've got to come to Brickyard. Well, there is, you can't. The little secret. Is Cam has some ties to the Hill Country. So the thought is we're going to set up, you know, like our version of Brickyard in the Hill Country with you know, have a hanger and then Cam I think also flies. So we'll just set up, you can teach me how to fly. We'll just like fly portfolio companies back and forth. From country Tennessee. Texas already have the direct tie. We're just going to bypass Austin and Nashville, we're going to go to the places where the like the real builders are are set it up. So that's. It That's it guys. I love. It thank you all so much for. It. I mean, I I. Love this I, I I I genuinely like it's good for my soul to talk to bitcoiners and I'm sure you can see my enthusiasm but I really I appreciate it and and I'm I'm just really excited and and feel privileged to to be a part of this thing. We still owe you a live podcast recording. Maybe it's. I'm sure you'll be around all the noise at 2024, the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville. So maybe we'll we'll do a big we'll get Marty, Jesse and everybody. Else it'll be fun. We'll do a big tour. Let's. Do it. I would love that. Yeah. I can't wait to see you guys. It should be a good one. Yeah. All right, well, that'll that'll do it for this episode of Final Settlement we breached all time highs. Just for context, this is March 5th, so this'll this'll air a little bit later, but preached all time high, so thanks for that Cam and got we'll see you in a couple weeks later sounds. Good.
Transcript source: fountain