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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. Hey everyone, welcome back to The New Frontier. Today's a special episode. We've got Michael Tanguma Harris, our fan, and Allen Farrington joining us today. Harris, this time around, is going to be a guest on this podcast. And we're here to talk about Bitcoin Institutional Day, which is a event we're hosting in Abu Dhabi on the 10th from 2:00 to 6:00 PM. Seats are limited, so make sure to register and they're subject to approval. So that's just a quick disclaimer right off the top. So gentlemen, great to have you here. How's everyone doing? Good. Thanks. Very well. Thank you. Decided to, yeah. Yeah, Yeah. So we have three people each on a well, Alan and Harris are coming from the UK and Michael, you'll be coming from the US in Texas. Everyone's going to be center focused on Abu Dhabi. There's going to be a busy week with Abu Dhabi Fintech Week happening, Bitcoin MENA conference happening at the same time and more importantly on ramp Mina's institutional day. And we got Harris, who's also an advisor to on Ramp, Mina Alan Farrington representing representing Axiom and Michael Tanguma, both on ramp and early writers. Three of you guys are going to be on a panel each. Maybe we'll start off with Harris, given the GCC and the relevance of the topic, which is, you know, Bitcoin and Islamic finance. So if institutional investors, high net worth individuals, family offices, what would you say to them? Why would they be or should they attend this event? Like what? What's in it for them? Why Bitcoin and Islamic finance? Maybe you can tie those things together. Yeah. So I spent eleven years out in the Middle East and obviously my focus was very much Islamic finance. But during that time, you know, one comes across institutions and investors who are not necessarily faith-based or Sharia sensitive, but they want to see a, you know, a high quality financial product. And that is a that's an attribute across both Islamic investors and non Sharia sensitive investors. And one of the things I think we would like to emphasize during our time in in Abu Dhabi in December is the fact that there is this growing movement of investors and product providers who are starting to consider whether the Islamic finance space, which of course is hugely important to the Middle East, can somehow dovetail with this idea of Bitcoin as an investable asset class. So we're seeing a lot of movement in Bitcoin in the last actually few days and weeks. And we have seen many years of in a real detailed understanding and history of Islamic finance in the Gulf. So the thing that fascinates me most of all is this intersection between the two. And I think that there is an opportunity that nobody has really tapped into yet, this idea that you could have a sound money basis for Islamic finance. To date, all we've seen is Islamic banking, right? That's the dominant type of product within the industry. And really all that is it's fractional reserve banking. So money creation with halal contracts on top. And we give them names like Musharraf and Madara Bias, Disna and so on. But really what we're doing is, you know, we're taking something that's fundamentally not really in line with 700 years of an Hispanic gold dinar standard, which was a sound money standard, and applying that to risk sharing real economy techniques that Hispanic finance should be using. So we haven't really returned to the roots of the ethical principles of Islamic finance. And that's the thing I find really fascinating. And that's the thing I'm personally in my own business. I'm finding a huge amount of traction with investors who are very attracted to the idea of risk sharing financial instruments. Very interesting. Thanks for that, Harris. I'll jump to Alan Farrington. You'll be talking about, you know, Bitcoin venture capital. You know, a lot of people in the Middle East where I'm based seem to think that the Bitcoin ecosystem is non existent. And, you know, there's not a lot of Bitcoin companies and that's why a lot of investors flock to alt coins and blockchain projects. Web 3 type of things. Alan, maybe you can shed some light on what you plan on bringing at this conference and why investors should pay attention to Bitcoin, venture capital, Bitcoin companies. So I think as enticing as a lot of so-called blockchain projects, crypto projects, altcoin projects, however they decide to describe themselves as as enticing as they are. The more you get into the weeds on the economic and financial fundamentals of these projects, the more you realize that they're frankly at best naive, at worst, something more like self referential, ultimately resting on gambling perhaps or or just an outright scam. And they can last for quite some time. I think everybody on this call appreciates that and has been frustrated for for quite some time as well that they haven't quite completely gone away yet. But then, you know, so, so can gambling. Gambling is a is a massive global industry that I think this is slotting into very nicely. So can scams. So conferment schemes. They can run for a very, very long time. They can get very, very big before they finally implode. But for the most part, it's, it's often not all that difficult to identify these kinds of properties if you're, if you're willing to look past the the hype. And I think in this case even a bit more cynically kind of the the marketing budget that is driving a lot of this rather than there being any real technical promise. So the question of why, why care about what I do, which is, is even more specific. You know, if you're moving from crypto just to Bitcoin, then Bitcoin just to, to Bitcoin venture capital. I, I think the answer is relatively straightforward. And I, I think it's that the more institutional adoption we see, the more credibility that seems to come from on the one hand, you know, political and regulatory moves. On the other, just big traditional finance players incorporating Bitcoin into their, their service, their investment offerings. And in some or other way, the the less inherently risky it becomes along the axis that I have always find to be the most credible, which is is essentially just that it is. It is actively fought by the state rather than embraced almost every other angle of attack I've never really found to be all that scary. And in the long run, especially in like that comparison to crypto where it's relying on on technical fundamentals. So with that potential threat seemingly fading into the background, I think a pretty fair assumption over the next, say, decade for all kinds of different asset classes would be roughly as follows that by far the best performers in any given asset class will be those who figure out how to best incorporate Bitcoin into what they're doing. So I think that'll absolutely go for credit investors. It will go for real estate investors. And to finally get to the point that obviously applies to me, I think it will also go for for venture capital investors as well. I think it's, it's almost undeniable, even though we we won't necessarily know which companies precisely yet, but it's almost undeniable that over a long enough time horizon, the companies that do the best that that post by far the the biggest returns and grow to be the most valuable and the most important will be the ones who are riding the the technical wave of Bitcoin adoption. Amazing, very interesting. So Michael, you are in a business, the custody business. Now traditionally in traditional finance, custody has always been an afterthought. But with Bitcoin, things are a little bit different. You're on the panel custody and why it matters. Maybe you can walk us through why institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals should pay attention both to Bitcoin. But they can't just pay attention to Bitcoin. They also have to pay attention to how the Bitcoin is custody. Maybe you can enlighten us a little bit there. Yeah, for sure. I think going back to just Alan's point makes complete sense because I think some individuals listening to this may not recognize Bitcoin as a store of value or being speculative or its volatility. If you take a look at the best performing asset of the past 15 years and if you believe that it will continue to be that, well then if you insert it or infuse it across any sector, you're more than likely going to be with, you know, set up without performers. So that's kind of just an underline because Ellen's statement, I think we'd all agree is correct. But most people specifically at this conference are probably going to be coming at this from a very like looking at this asset wondering why it's 100K. To your point about custody, it is the most important thing. If you can't custody asset, nothing else matters. Going back to Harrison, the GCC discussion or point is we've been building custody for close to half a decade now personally in the space and recognizing from a first principle perspective, allocators cannot put material wealth in the asset unless they feel very confident that it will be there in the future. And that's effectively why the asset is not a $10 trillion asset. So a little bit of background is we built out a lot of the infrastructure in the US on a collaborative class city, my previous firm on chain capital. And part of that was going into what was a desert at the time in Texas that had no real like adoption in the in the space. And it wasn't just unchanged. It was us as a collective. And they they call it some of the miners area. They call it Chegg that where the miners left to China and exited to to Texas and really built up Texas in this like hub globally from not only mining, but financial services were on RIP is based. And before doing any of that, you have to recognize that people in Texas have a certain understanding of commodity. So commodity very rich and also conservative. And they also understand well if they're going to hold an asset, they want to hold it directly. They don't want to park it in a firm in San Francisco. So we learned a lot about how do you position the asset and how do you really develop with your client base and underlying understanding of it will be there far into the future where this ties into the GCC. And your direct question is over the course of those years, we worked with a lot of individuals and you do a lot of it's it's a ground game. When you're developing a new financial service business or custody, you ultimately have to shake a lot of hands. You have to look people in the eye, you have to build relationships. And so when we first went out and established Andre Mina, we were told by individuals, when you come out here, and Harris probably knows this very well, there's a lot of fly by night individuals globally that go into Dubai and try to like, you know, extract value. You never see them again. And they're like, you can't do that. And I couldn't understand. And it kept coming up and they would say you have to shake people in their hand. You have to be very respectful. And I looked at the person and I said this innocently. I didn't mean it's like this sounds just like Texas, but they wear different hats. Like there is a notion of conservative nature and understanding of commodities that makes the GCC very, very rich for ready to be primed to understand all this. But the other side of that is this notion that if you they don't figure out custody, none of it really matters because ultimately this is where we've always seen things fail. And I'll just pull this up because it's a very, it's a very prudent oppression slide that was developed in a lot of this is on the backs of conversations. So for anybody listening and pulling up a slide that shows this was that Bitcoin one or the total crypto market cap of like 1.6. So it's a little higher. And it shows $400 billion in losses over the entirety of its its existence. And we go and talk with, we were in Texas last week at the North American Blockchain Council. And very often in those conversations with people we've been talking to for years, and I would imagine it's going to happen in the GCC. People want to tell you or talk about Bitcoin and explain why does it have value and they want to explain why can it not go to 0. And I've kind of gotten emboldened to the point of reframing it saying if you want to ask about value, we can talk about scarce that you can talk about, you know, divisibility. But I want to explain to you why it's not ten trillion and it has to do with custody and breaking down. For 15 years, there's never not been a single point of failure. If it's self custody, you have a single point of failure with yourself and how you set it up. And if it's third party custody, historically you've had to live with one of the exchange failing. And that framing really inspires confidence in a different tone with individuals saying, oh, let's talk about why this assets like for 15 years the market has said it's a close to your point 100K. So I hope that helps in like understanding custody and why it's such an important part. Because intuitively people can't even look at the asset in good faith unless they understand how they would custody it. Because that's always going to be a subconscious thing of like, well, sure, I get the thesis, but then I don't want to end up on that slide. So they just basically are like, ah, it doesn't really matter to me. 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Onramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it, as a complement to your existing self custody setup. For more information about our services as well as our new Bitcoin IRA product, check us out at onrampbitcoin.com. Yeah, That's really helpful, Michael. Looking forward to that panel. I'm sure a lot of people are. You touched on a few of the characteristics of Bitcoin and Harris, I'll turn it back to you. Maybe you can give us a glimpse some of the people listening on why they should pay attention to Bitcoin from a characteristics point of view and how it would align, you know, just high level with some of the Islamic principles that you talk about. Yeah, I often have this discussion with Muslim investors, many of whom are, you know, misinformed in the way we see investors around the world are misinformed about Bitcoin. So we know what all the FUD is. I don't have to repeat that here. But the two that specifically come up with Muslim investors are volatility and intrinsic value. So I always, I always find myself addressing those two points 1st. And they say, well, Bitcoin cannot be halal. It can't, cannot be a form of money because it's too volatile and because it's not real, it's not a real thing. So let's deal with that second one first. There's this idea that money in Islam needs to be a real asset backed, commodity backed thing. It has to have sort of corporeal existence. And actually that's not true. That's a misapplication of the scriptures. So for example, people point to a particular saying of Prophet peace be upon him, in which they say that certain things may not be exchanged unless they are hand to hand, meaning spot, and they are gold, silver, wheat, barley, dates. And one more thing which I forget off the top of my head. But essentially we're saying that those six commodities are things that may only be exchanged hand to hand, meaning you can't have a forward, you can't exchange. Here's some gold, give me some gold back with extra interest on top. And they interpret that to mean that these are the only things that are money. So they say, well, that means, you know, gold must be the only form of money in Islam. But actually, no, what that hadith that tradition is saying is here are some examples of things by social concurrence that may be money. And if it may be money, it may only be exchanged hand to hand, meaning you cannot have interest on money. So it's a misapplication. And in fact, if we, if we look at other examples throughout Islamic history, early Islamic history, there have been debates on whether to use, for example, camel skins divided up and used as money. And it was decided not to because it might have meant the slaughter of camels in order to produce money rather than using pre-existing camel skins to use as money. So, you know, these were intelligent debates, they were reasoned debates. And we're not having intelligent and reasoned debates about Bitcoin. We're saying, oh, it's too volatile or it doesn't have intrinsic value. Well, it doesn't need to have intrinsic value because there's no such thing as intrinsic value, right? You know, gold is just a shiny rock. It doesn't have value to me, but it maybe has value to my wife, right? I don't use gold, Maybe she does. So, you know, if I'm in the desert, I mean, there are many examples that we all know if I'm in, I'm in a desert. Diamonds have no meaning to me, but water does if I'm dying of thirst, right? That has intrinsic value. So, you know, these are arguments that are easily rebutted. The other one was I said was volatility. They say, oh, it's too volatile, it can't be used as money. Well, sure, but look at a graph of the price trend and volatility of gold since 1971. Overlay it against Bitcoin since 2009 and Oh my God, it looks, you know, it's, it's almost a perfect overlay. So what does that tell me? It tells me that Bitcoin is on a similar trend to gold since 1971. And those of us who are gold bugs, and I was a gold bug, you know, I thought of it as sound money. And I see that it's got problems because it requires, for example, a trusted intermediary. But when I look at Bitcoin, all of those problems are solved. No need for a trusted intermediary. It's following the gold price trends. It has all of those other characteristics that are Islamic. They, they and can lead to social concurrence. And if we have social concurrence that we may use it as money and a store of value, then it may be money Islam. There's no reason why it cannot be. Amazing. Can I, can I just add one point to to Harris's remarks? I always like to this isn't entirely serious, but I do always like to tease people who are worried about the volatility by by feigning sympathy and saying, yeah, it's crazy. Sometimes it goes up 10%, sometimes it goes up 100%. You just never know. Yeah. Yeah. And recently on RAMP pushed out a report that specifically addresses the volatility question of Bitcoin. Volatility typically gets a bad name because when you look at the distribution of returns of traditional assets like equity, fixed income, they're actually skewed to the left, so they have more bad volatility than good volatility. But when you look at bitcoins distribution, it's asymmetrically skewed to the right, so it has good volatility and less bad volatility. So the same definition of volatility shouldn't be applied to Bitcoin just because when you run the numbers it's actually a good thing and you want more of it. The more something is asymmetrically skewed to the right, the better off you are. So the odds are in your favor in comparison to, you know, the odds you know, going to a casino and you're going to lose 51% of the time over the long term in Bitcoin, it flips that equation upside down and you're going to win 6070% of the time and positive surprises to the upside. And that's, that's one of the mechanics that allows it to be such a strong store of value. The best way to look at it is to zoom out and look over a long time period, which most of the people we are targeting and inviting to our event have typically looked at investments over longer track records over longer periods of time. So this type of concept, these types of conversations would definitely resonate and that's why we encourage everyone to register. Alan, turning it back to you question on the Bitcoin venture capital side, when you look at these companies, what do you look for and how different is it than the traditional way of venture capital? Yeah. So I'll take the second question first because I think it's actually much easier to address. It's really not very different at all and for people who don't know about my background and the same goes for the the Co founder of axioms by the way, we've only ever worked as professional asset managers. We've only worked in traditional finance. We've been, you know, classically trained as such. We we don't at all consider ourselves, you know, bitcoiners who are just kind of inventing a a job because we want to we want to be doing this full time. It's almost exactly the inverse. It's that we see ourselves first and foremost as professional investors who happen to have an advantage in this space, both in terms of understanding and access. And then going back to one of my previous answers, that to the extent that, you know, you, you want to find an, an, an area that you can invest in as, as a, you know, I'll narrow it a little bit as a, as a professional equities investor, as you know, investing in, in companies rather than say commodities, real estate, whatever else. And I would, I'm obviously slightly biased, but I would very strongly argue that this exact niche is where you want to be right now. If you're thinking about what do you want exposure to over the next over the next 10 years or so? And. These copies. Oh, sorry, I knew that was the second question. The first question was what do we look for? Yeah. So this is actually easier to answer in the negative in the sense of ruling out things that we don't want. And we typically give 2 answers for this. One of them won't need much explanation at all in this context, which is that we're Bitcoin only, not crypto. We often have to clarify that, but I'll just leave it at that for now. The second one is that we don't want companies who in our view are merely financializing the appreciation of Bitcoin onto their own balance sheet rather than say, building novel technology, building what we we use the word or the term infrastructure quite a lot. We're looking for for infrastructure. The reason we don't do this it just to be completely clear, it's not at all a knock against any of any company that fits that description. Anybody that does that well will probably do tremendously well for themselves as the company on behalf of the investors in the company that it's, it's not at all about thinking that they'll be bad investments. It's really more about trying to, you know, stay humble on our end, be clear, be honest about what service we're even providing for our clients. And I think companies that do fit that description are more or less, and I say this just, you know, factually, I don't say this is, I don't think it's a good or a bad thing necessarily, but they're essentially just leveraged Bitcoin. And we think that any LP's who might want exposure to our, our fund, to our portfolio, they can do that themselves. Is that if that's what they want, they can buy Bitcoin. They can, you know, synthetically arrange some kind of leverage on it. Maybe even more to the point, we don't hold Bitcoin in the fund because again, they can do that. They don't need to pay us to do that. They can just do that themselves. I'll, I'll very happily introduce them to, to Michael or to anybody else at all, if that's what they want to do. And so that, that narrows it down quite a bit to what we, what we are looking for, what we get very excited by is companies that are building something that can can helpfully be described as infrastructure, which and I, I, I appreciate that this is quite vague. Part of the point of that is we, we want to try to avoid being too prescriptive because frankly, we don't know what we're going to see, right? If we, if we knew we would just go out and build it. But that's not our skill set at all. So we want to be kind of open to whatever ideas are coming to us. But whatever they are, if they can be reasonably be described as furthering the utility and the value proposition of Bitcoin, therefore very likely contributing to its adoption or it's increased adoption. It's, it's accelerated adoption that very much interests us. And that the final point I'll mention, which is where we get really, really excited. It doesn't happen all that often yet, but we are starting to see it more and more. I think, I think we're actually starting to see it earlier than we maybe anticipated when we set up Fund one, which is a couple years ago now. And and now going into Fund 2, which we're which we're raising, we get really excited when everything I just described holds, but in particular where the Bitcoin component of whatever good or services is being provided is actually obfuscated away from the end user. So the end user of whatever this company's products are doesn't necessarily need to know that they're using Bitcoin. So maybe they can, and maybe if they do, that somehow improves the service because they can get more involved, they can tweak it. They can, you know, make it make it more to precisely their needs and their liking. But if they don't actually need to, and what they're getting instead is just a better good, or a cheaper good, or a good that couldn't even possibly have existed before, that gets us really, really excited. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Michael, earlier you mentioned the importance of custody. So on one side we have self custody and on the other extreme, we have third party custody. Now both of these extremes have, you know, as you laid out in the slide contributed to vast amounts of Bitcoin being lost either due to mismanagement. Because on the self custody side, 100% of the responsibility falls on the individual and on the third party custody side, where centralized custodian holds the coins, 100% of the responsibility falls on a single entity. So maybe you can walk us through how you would solve that problem, because that's not something we've touched on and I'm sure that's something you're going to bring up during your panel conversation. Yeah, for sure. I think a big component of the custody conversation is to Alan's point, we're still so early. We're figuring out how to build technologies that are obfuscated. So the market comes and there's actually really good posts. If you know, he's interested in learning more from a DK David King, former Google guy. I don't know if you saw it, Alan. It's incredible. Very like concise came out Sunday or Saturday, but just breaks down how how early we are. And part of that is how we're so early that we're still debating or conversing on what is custody. How do you like custody asset in a secure way? And the way I like to describe it is the market's still been looking at Bitcoin in a 2D way and we need to jump and look at it in a 3D way. And what that means is we still operate where somebody has exchange like they hold the Bitcoin and you give them the dollars. And if you think about that, it's the most like archaic way we've, you know, transferred to buy like the gold to the horse or the Campbell or whatever it is in the same way with custody. So the market, traditional finance has said we hold, you know, stocks, bonds, other financial instruments and then you have controls when you want them, we give them to you. But ultimately, again, that's a 2D version when you have a digital bearer asset. Because at the end of the day, if they lose that, there's no bailouts, it's gone forever. If they rehypothecate, if you have direct visibility, the opposite. The other side of that, and this is where majority of Bitcoin sits, even though majority of asset managers would not know this is that it sits with private individuals. And the reason why it sits with private individuals is this term not your keys, not your coins, because that's historically been the best way to secure the asset because you can't trust a third party because they ultimately over a long at a time or I didn't lose it. The problem with self custody is in both sides have these huge problems, which you have the central point of failure. Self custody has worked for so long because nobody has known about the asset. The thing that nobody talks about and explains is we saw what happened with self custody, with gold and people in a, you know, again, metaphorical version of an hyperbolic they go into your cave, they knock you over the head, they take your gold. Like This is why banks emerge. This is why custodianship exists. For 15 years, the asset has been under $100,000. Majority of the market does not know. Majority of people listening here probably live in a city that has been, you know, increased crime over the past, call it four years, if not ten. That's physical crime. We all get the digital crime of robocalls and all the things that happened with, you know, spoofing, fishing. Well, what happened and and that's where people go steal Bitcoin historically has been over the Internet. Well, what happens when that merges, when people in the physical world naturally know that everyone keeps these assets and they're safe in their home because how many places can you really like keep cryptographic material? So the way I like to explain it is when we get to let's call it maybe 10 trillion just for round numbers, that's AI. Think 500 K Bitcoin price, everybody knows about it. Well, where do people park this asset if it's known that it's in their house and all the data is out there from all the CRM leaks and all the different AI applications that can discern who owns what amount of Bitcoin because it exists already. Nobody talks about it. Our families, everyone's at risk and who ends up holding this, especially if you're public talking on a podcast. And so that's effectively where multi institution comes in. It has the trust of still institutions. It has a very optimistic view of the world that we can still coordinate economic activity and structure financial products without relying on a single entity, which has historically mired the traditional financial system. And I'll go as far to say, and nobody really talks about this and it sounds kind of it'll be a little bit controversial, but in my opinion, the difference between gold and Bitcoin is effectively this multi sig is native governance built into the protocol that changes the way that the underlying is held. And that's effectively where gold failed was the centralization and then the number of claims on it. So hopefully that kind of answers your question. Yeah. Thank you for that. So a lot of our audience and a lot of the people that will be attending the event, they will typically go to the ETFs to get exposure to Bitcoin. Now, Harris, from your point of view and from your lens on the Islamic finance front, earlier you mentioned how forward futures derivative contracts are, you know, not really halal in the sense because you don't actually have ownership, there's the likelihood of extra fees added on top of it, whether it's, you know, premiums, interest rate disparities. So when you, when you view the ETFs for people within the Muslim community who want exposure to Bitcoin and are more comfortable just going and buying an ETF, how does that play in when it comes to ownership of the asset? Maybe you can shed some light on that. Yeah. So I mean in principle there's nothing intrinsically non compliant with having a derivative of an asset of an underlying. In practice most derivatives in the world in the financial industry today are non Syria compliant because they're based on relationships between counterparties and underlyings and contracts which themselves are not Sharia compliant. And the more intangible they are, the more they move away from the underlying asset. So you know, if it becomes a sort of CDO cubes type structure, the less Sharia compliant it becomes. So in theory, it's possible to have an ETF of a form of money, could be the store of value like gold, or it could be Bitcoin that is Sharia compliant, providing there was an absolute 1 to one relationship between that piece of paper that you hold in your hand that says I own something behind this piece of paper. And if I made you open your vaults, you would show me exactly what I own and it's got my name on it. That would be considered to be halal. In practice, of course, we've seen in the financial services industry these concepts like, you know, rehabilitation and you know it. It boils down to, you know, not your keys, not your coin. So when you're buying an ETF of Bitcoin, do you actually have that Bitcoin? You don't. It's held in somebody else's name. That in theory is not a problem from a fit, from a jurisprudence point of view. But in practice, it's not an industry that we've come to trust over the years, hence why many of us are Bitcoiners. So I mean, I think that's something that if a Muslim is looking at Bitcoin as an investable asset class and their only option is to go through their four O 1K or in the UK we have a SIP pension scheme and their only option is to use an ETF then that that might be a viable way for them to do it, providing they they can be convinced. And there is significant proof that there is actually some real backing behind this piece of paper. But as we know the the most surely compliant ways of doing this are multi institution custody and self custody. Really. I personally wouldn't be comfortable using an ETF because I'm not sure what the real backing is behind it and therefore I'm not sure as to the Sharia compliance. Yeah. One thing just to add there is this is the very important part of the narrative and discourse that I think we need to grow. I mean, obviously it benefits on ramp, but I think it benefits the ecosystem as a whole and in the market structure. It's always been the vision that over time the market will will basically dictate that the ETFs have to leverage something like multi institution and it is have to be with on ramp. The nice part about it is it scales appropriately with the amount of assets. So you don't need a 2F3. It can be if it's a trillion dollars, you know, 5 keys spread globally. The reason why I mentioned it is because I was talking to ACEO of a wealth management firm that had never heard about these problems with the ETFs and had never, this is past week and had never heard about multi or not multi, the $400 billion in losses. And he basically looked at me because he's very green to the space, but he's tasked with basically churning in their wealth management into a Bitcoin, like have a Bitcoin component. And he looked and he said, if what you're saying is true, this can't be possible in the sense of if I invest in an asset from a thesis perspective and it goes to 0, I'm OK with it. If I invest because I picked the wrong custodian, that is it's unforgivable. And that was like how we left the conversation and we have a follow up. But the point being is like most people do not know this. There's not many incentivize from the traditional market to explain this. And that's also where it's important because a lot of people are going to get offsides. And to Harris's point, there's nothing really wrong with it. It's a great first taste and the Bitcoin of like people buy these, you know, a nice stacking SAT's app. But the idea is once you get in, you have to recognize the problem with the ETF's. Unlike an app, you could take delivery and then ETF, you have a taxable event. So there's a lot of capital. It's just going to be locked in there. And we saw all this. This isn't just theoretical with Grayscale, the GBTC trust, there was a lot of people stuck in that product because they had a lot of gains and they didn't want to crystallize a taxable event. And God forbid something happened to that underline, they would have just been stuck there and they would have like lost the asset. It worked out OK for them and they could, you know, I mean, they didn't work out OK. They can't take delivery, but they could at least sell it for spot. Yeah. And I'll add to that as well, when typically an investor is doing a search for an asset manager, 99.9% of the work on the due diligence side is done at the asset manager level, the custodians kind of in the background. And I think that kind of mindset has stayed its course even with an asset like Bitcoin. So the ETFs themselves, 80 to 85% of the biggest ETFs in the US are custody by a single custodian. And typically people invest in them because they're looking at the asset manager that's issuing those ETFs. No one's really looking at the background to understand what are the risk implications of this bearer asset concentrating under a single entity, in this case, Coinbase Prime. Now, when you factor in the custodian, people also fail to factor in the exponential growth in risk the bigger the basket of coins under one roof. In this case, you know, the single custodian. So I think there needs to be a paradigm shift because Bitcoin asset management isn't just restricted to owning the asset and allocating to the asset. There's a subcategory of asset management that's being created as a result of this asset, which is the custody component. Because now unlike any other asset class, you can, if you wanted to diversify at the custody level between single sig, collaborative custody, multi signature and centralized custody. Each of them has, you know, its risks and benefits, but you know, ideally you'd want a balanced approach such as like multi institution custody was kind of smack in the middle and can be, you know, alleviate some of those risk by sharing the risk across 3 counterparties and eliminating single points of fail because that is the common denomination in all custody, which is the single point of failure. Does your Bitcoin custody setup keep you up at night? Maybe you still have coins sitting on an exchange. Worried about hackers? Or maybe you've set up your own self custody but don't feel safe with your Bitcoin savings stashed on a little plastic device in your desk drawer? Gain Peace of Mind with On Ramp and our multi institution custody solution. Here's how it works. On Ramp creates a dedicated multi sig vault just for you. 3 separate institutions each hold a key on Ramp, bit go and coin cover, but none can move funds unilaterally. Instead, only you have control over your coins. With on ramps multi institution custody, you'll sleep better at night knowing your Bitcoin is stored with best in class security on chain with fault tolerant multi sig. If you believe your Bitcoin is going to be worth a lot someday, don't jeopardize that future by exposing your coins to hackers on exchanges, $5 wrench attacks in the real world, or perhaps most importantly, the risk that you might screw something up with a highly technical self custody set up on ramps. Multi institution custody eliminates single points of failure, reduces your personal attack surface and technical burden, and provides access to financial services that allow you to confidently secure your Bitcoin, including inheritance planning, insurance backed warranties for all balances and transactions, low cost trading and more. Bitcoin is a once in a species asset. Secure it right. Learn more at on rampbitcoin.com. Alan. There's. Oh yeah, go ahead. Sorry, Mike. Just one thing to re emphasize because I think it supports everything we're saying here specifically around the assets appreciation. If you're interested in just spot Bitcoin and then Alan's notion of venture capital and Bitcoin is think about what Ralph just said from our perspective, how long it took for us on this podcast to understand what he just described. Like if it's still so early, there's still so much room to run and those, and this is the asymmetry. This is the delta Bitcoin only, not crypto. And then how you custody it because you just because you get the right asset manager wrong. If they have the right, the wrong custodian, which has historically kept people out. So it's just worth pointing out that this information is really, obviously you need to do your own research and research and get the understanding, but it's, it is the reason why this asset is only $2 trillion right now. Yeah, agreed. And Alan, what are your views on the ETFs? What would you say to investors that would just tell you, oh, I'd rather get the exposure to an ETF? I, I try not to be too cynical about this. I mean, I, I joke about it with probably exactly the kind of people on this call, right, who've been in Bitcoin for, for a long time along the lines of it being kind of technically silly and not really appreciating the, you know, the, the properties of, of the asset that the, that the instrument is being built around. But I think for for this audience it, it is worth saying, it is worth emphasizing that you, you can't be too cynical in that direction. On the basis of the overwhelming likelihood that the vast, vast majority of new Bitcoiners, let's say if they are, if they end up being comfortable calling themselves that, the vast, vast majority of them who arrive over the next say 5-10 years probably are going to come via the ETF or at the very least are going to come via awareness generated by the ETF. So I have technical quibbles having been involved for as as long as I am, but I appreciate that it's the I think the onus is on us to reach these people to do our best to educate them once they have, you know, got as far as the ETF can take them. Great. So we're getting close to hitting the mark. I know. I think we have a hard stop at 7:00, but let's do a quick circle around table here. Bitcoin Reserve in the United States, Let's start with that one. How likely is that to happen and what would the implications be on adoption and price? Maybe 30 seconds each and then we can wrap it up with another round table basically quickly. Everyone telling their opinion on why institutional investors right now with individuals and family offices should attend. What's in it for them? So maybe we'll start off with you, Harris #1 Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. So I think this strategic reserve is all about game theory. And I think if it's being talked about publicly, then it is incumbent upon every nation on earth to start looking into this very quickly and accumulating as fast as they can because the alternative is they get annihilated. And, you know, they don't want to be the only nation left without this strategic weapon, which is essentially it's an economic weapon. If they don't have it and everybody else has it, then they lose out. It's just game theory. And whether or not it happens, that momentum behind this game theory is I think what will increase, you know, will lead to hyper bitcoinization. I hope anyway. Alan. Yeah, I I want to be quite careful because I don't deem myself at all qualified or or competent to, to judge the likelihood or not of such short term political events. But what does give me quite a lot of confidence and optimism is that I think exactly per the game theory that Harris has just described, over a longer and longer period of time, the more and more likely exactly this kind of thing is to the point that it's inevitable at some point in time in the future. And I think it's there's maybe similar comments here to the ETF that you can quibble with, you know, exactly how say, ideologically aligned it is. But frankly, it's going to happen whether I make those quibbles or not. So the the silver lining I guess is that it in over a similarly long period of time, it can't fail to be good for price and it probably can't fail to be good for adoption either. At at the very least, by making people aware of it such that they reach a point that we can then hopefully educate them a bit further beyond that. Amazing. Michael, I'm sure you have a take and you must be hoping and working hard to try to get that Bitcoin strategic reserve under multi institutional custody. Yeah, I think I mean what Harris references the the notion of like what is safe? I don't even know if safe claim claim to own this, but you know, you can't in in insulate your money and sell your currency for money harder than yours. However it goes like the Geo the game theory plays out exactly how it is. It's it's asymmetric not only to the upside, but downside. So if you don't hold the right form of money, you get to feel the pain on the other side of it. The big thing is that I, I think all this was set in motion with the ETF being launched, right? The 2nd and 3rd order effects were naturally going to come from it once the ETF's approved and the the one that I'll references, it came out with all public information. Strive asset management, you know, Vivek Rosalami's Co founded this for firm that is incorporating Bitcoin into their, you know, just strategic positioning. If you will look at everyone that's participating this administration, they're all insanely long publicly, like, you know, and whatever disclosures Bitcoin. So it basically tells you whatever you need to know that like that's what I look at when we think about what's the percentage likelihood that the US is going to allocate some positioning is everyone that has any way to influence that already packed their bags on this way up to 100K. So, so you're kind of that that's that's how I would place the bet. Good, Great. Harris, what would you say to our guests? What? Why should they? Why? Why? Why should they join and attend the event real fast? Because if they're not looking at Bitcoin as an investment class, then they they risk being left behind. This is, say, the most significant financial event probably in history ever since gold was adopted as a a universal standard by human beings to pay for goods and services. And if they haven't considered this as the most seismic change since gold, then I think they're going to get left behind. That's incumbent on any professional investor to look at this seriously now. Amazing, Alan. I would say because on the basis of what Harris has just mentioned about the the importance of the subject, people should be attending in order to hear perspectives that they likely wouldn't otherwise and have the opportunity to meet people who have thought about this probably more seriously than anybody else in the world. Yeah, that's exactly right. We're we are witnessing, as my Co founder Jessica like to say, once in a species moment with the monetization of money in real time and the education is the alpha because there's no shortage of snake oil, potholes, whatever you want to call it, that will take your money. And the way we like to think about it is like when gold is monetizing, we like to like anchor to a bar or Troy Oz. It's like think about all the pain and struggle that went from looking at a rock and people creating objective properties of why it had value and then shining it and churning it in all that time somebody was trying to trade it for all these other weird things. And this happened over hundreds if not thousands of years to to that singular standard that the world lived on. And so we're doing that in real time. The difference is if you get educated, you get to participate in that. And that's what the idea of curating this group around the event, just to provide that asymmetric information so you can do it the right way. Amazing. Well, thank you all for joining and we look forward to seeing everyone at the On Ramina Bitcoin institutional event in Abu Dhabi on December 10th. Description about the event will be in the details of this video. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out. OK, it's a look. Forward to seeing everybody. Yeah, looking forward to. It thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Ramp Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are in your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit on rampbitcoin.com/contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private Client advisors.
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