Fort Knox Is Empty, Bitcoin Is the Reserve

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extra ever assembled in the history of gutless 1974198792972000. And whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we. Sell, I say, when we sell. Well, we are recording and what if I'm not enjoying anything that's happening in this market right now? Because if you look at the price chart, we're we're in a big time bear market. I have the one month price chart up here. Look at this thing. Yeah, it's ugly. I know it's ugly. That's really red. Yeah, oh and yeah. So we are recording the last trade. We got my Co host Tim Kotzman, Michael Tanguma and Brian Cabela's. Gentlemen, how are we doing? I know Michael's under the weather, but other than that, how's everyone doing? Doing well, I'm ready for 100,000 again. Yeah, it's been a little too long. Been a little too long in this range, I think. Checkmate on Twitter posted some some metric that he tracks, which is basically like the choppiness factor, which means this, you know, Bitcoin is oscillating in a range and that spiked to an all time high over the past couple weeks. So like this prolonged range that we're in is is actually pretty unique in in terms of Bitcoins price history and he's gone. Yeah, I guess we'll just let it. We'll, we'll just let it keep rolling. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's like the gold in Fort Knox, and it's gone. And you think they're actually going to do that? They're going to audit Fort Knox. I hope they live stream it. I mean, that would be absolutely must watch television, I mean. The most hilarious outcome is the most likely, so my prediction is within the next 4 weeks you'll have a live stream of Fort. Knox I mean, both both Trump and Elon have mentioned it pretty much every day this week. I'm pretty sure of like, yeah, we're, we're, you know, we, we just want to see if, if it's in there. I like the Will Smith or The Fresh Prince of Villier when he goes into the living room and he like normally it's empty and they're just like, where's it all at? Since Jackson, since we're looking at charts, this is the one that has me excited. I don't know if it's easy to pull up, but. Yeah, we got it. That looks good. Yeah. The year to date on gold up 12% with Bitcoin only up four. And we kind of know what the leading indicator is there. So just a matter of time. Yeah, We had a conversation this week with Peter Graskoff of Argo, Chairman of Argo, former CEO of a Sprott and thought it was a good conversation overall. But he was sharing a little bit of the short term sentiment around the gold market and seemed to think that it is a bit overstretched or overheated at the moment, but went through all the structural reasons why he sees $4000 per ounce of gold in the not too distant future. But I think what you're getting at, Michael, is that gold tends to be the Canary in the coal mine for global liquidity. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing now is we're in a period of consolidation for Bitcoin, but what we're watching in the gold price, I think is an indication of what is to come. I mean, do you guys have any thoughts about that? Have you been paying attention, Brian or Tim to liquidity? Not not so much on the liquidity front, but obviously even been tracking gold and all the sort of intricacies of of the market structure there that are causing some of the chaos in terms of the increased demand for physical delivery of gold. I think is at the crux of what's what's happening here. That's interesting that that Peter was, was calling for $4000 gold. Did he, did he put a time frame on that? Because I think we referenced this a week or two ago, but like what was it Michael? Like every three or every $30 move in gold is like or was it $300.00 move in gold is like 1 market cap of Bitcoin? I think it was $300.00. Yeah, yeah, that makes. Sense so he's he's calling for a three Bitcoin move over over what? Kind of time frame, I want to say it was a medium, medium time frame. Call it like two years or so. I would have to go back and listen to the episode. It wasn't this year, but it was it was not too far in the future, he thought. I haven't. I got to send them to you in our Slack. But there's a lot of deep rabbit hole threads going on Twitter where like commercial airlines bringing back gold from like London for the past like 3 months and they're like sitting like in these airplanes. I don't know exactly. Haven't had the time to go down this rabbit hole. But yeah, there's definitely something with a physical delivery and ultimately, you know, something's happening. Well, yeah, the, I mean, the real tinfoil conspiracy, if we want to go there is like they're flying the gold back to the US to to refill Fort Knox because Fort Knox is currently empty. Well, we'll see it on the live stream soon enough. But yeah, I think there's this, we're in this interesting period now where the turmoil in the gold market I think is not necessarily isolated there. There's just a lot of geopolitical tensions. There's just a ton of overhaul that's happening within the US government and then you also all the way over in Asia and China, there's gold trading that's exploding as well. So I just think that there's this overarching theme of moving away from U.S. Treasuries. It ties into obviously just what will happen with stable coins and U.S. Treasury demand there. I think that's ultimately the long game or it is already kind of playing out, but that's the strategy for the US Treasury. But then we're seeing all these other nations, you know, call the bluff where it's like, all right, I'm getting debased year after year. It's getting worse and worse. I need to have something that's harder. And so that's where the gold delivery is coming into play because ultimately those paper contracts don't actually protect you from anything. It's like Peter said in that in that podcast, why would you want to own something that's a hedge against the system within the system, right? It just doesn't make any sense. So it's the same thing with Bitcoin too, where the smart investors are reducing counterparty exposure. They're actually owning the physical, you know, quote UN quote physical Bitcoin, whether it's, you know, on a sovereign custody platform or it's in their own custody. But those ETFs, I think why they're great for exposure. They're just similar like to paper gold, right? It's not really a way. If you're going to own an asset outside of the system, you don't want to own paper claims of it. Yeah, that reminds me of it came out this week. Paul Tudor Jones had like a $600 billion or $600 million position, like close to a little over half a billion from his fund. It's like these guys are super smart, they've been involved in the asset for a while. What at what point do they wake up and realize that if they're going to have that size of a position, counterparty risk in an ETF is also something else. Like we're probably a ways off, but you can imagine once you establish that side, like imagine that double s to a 1.2 billion and you're looking around and you realize Coinbase sits on all of that. It's a similar dynamic with Bitcoin. It's kind of a weird thing where, Brian, I don't know if this is your experience as well, but I didn't even hear the term counterparty risk in Triadfi. Like I had to go into Bitcoin to Start learning about it. So Michael, yeah, Michael, to your point, it's like, I don't think anybody, I won't say anybody, but most people don't actually even like think about this. They only think about it when it's too late right in the GFC. Then people think about counterparty risk and they're like, well, shit, I have my assets tied up and and insolvent entity, but it doesn't really come up in conversations for, you know, day-to-day allocation of capital. And, and I love that because when you think about it like the Bitcoin ecosystem is just a microcosm of the financial ecosystem and it's smaller and more accelerated. So you can have a bank run like counterparty risk has always been understood or or known for 15 years. The way majority of people hold it is offline because they understand they had to learn these things the hard way. And you find out really quickly when you take delivery if too many people come for it that you know, we saw this with FTX and everyone that blew up in 2022. So this has just been papered over in the financial markets. Traditionally, you just extend the volatility and you know, O 8 was the last time, I guess like a little bit in 2020. But yeah, Bitcoin's just an accelerated market structure until you get to find out really quickly if somebody's naked. Yeah. And also counterparty risk doesn't actually matter in the traditional system to the extent that you're just getting made whole by, you know, new currency units being entered into that system. Whereas that's where I think it's just so early for Bitcoin, right? Like people don't even appreciate 21 million. I think we had a call this week with someone from the traditional finance space. Objectively a smart person has run a really successful business, but he's like, yeah, there's like something with Bitcoin, right? There's like a certain amount of them. He didn't know the number and it's not a knock on him, but it's just like these things that we just think are like the ABC's, you know, we know them. These are actually still not widely understood. Things like 21 million, the having increasing scarcity, these things are not widely understood. And then if you're, if you can't even understand that, then you're certainly not going to understand the significance of counterparty risk of a digital bear instrument. Yeah, and, and, and to Michael's point around like, you know, Bitcoin being somewhat of a microcosm or an accelerated version of the, of the traditional financial system, the core or you know, one of the critical differences is that you have the optionality like even if you're using a, a counterparty for your Bitcoin, you always have the optionality to, to self custody it. Whereas like that is just not the case. If you have a billion dollars of gold, you can't just, you know, click a few buttons and attempt to take possession of that, right. So it's, it's an accelerated sort of market structure, but also it just has these different dynamics to it where there's more natural sort of inherent checks and balances on the custodial system in that someone can just take delivery of the asset in, you know, a few minutes and for, you know, a pretty minimal cost. You could just deliver things right, Tim. One thing we're go ahead, Michael. Actually, Tim, I'd be curious not to won't divulge too much, but you mentioned you were having a conversation, you know, a few weeks ago and you realize how early we were to like Bitcoin and multi institution custody because there was this like referencing proof of reserves and all of these things that were like, you know, these thoughts of how you the market structure will develop when inherent to multi institution custody is this notion of proof of reserves on chain. Just curious how you think about that, because on the treasury side, I just that's the one that makes the most sense in my mind. Simple. Because in traditional finance, you have controls on a financial perspective or from accounting and how you move funds. And right now, anybody holding Bitcoin on the treasury literally has to leave it on Coinbase or they're going to hold it, you know, offline and on hardware devices, which also brings up a whole slew of other issues. Yeah. I, I won't say anything specific about certain geographies and certain companies that may be public companies, but I mean, we're so early that some companies somewhere in some country, like they might be a Bitcoin treasury company and they might still be like just holding Bitcoin on like a hardware device. Like like that would be shocking to me. But I think it's, it's like not heard of. And then it's like this new thing and then it's suddenly like everything in life. But like, even, right, you only have what, one ETF that actually like has the online address, but it's a commingled address or a general address, however you want to phrase it, I think. Yeah, Like once the ball gets rolling and it becomes commonplace and everyone's like, oh, yeah, like, it's just right, messaging and messaging and messaging. And then it would be like, oh, yeah, like this is just like, the best way to do it. Everybody knows that. But we're like a few months or a year away from that. I think that's my from from my seat with right. Like I think I told Jackson a couple days ago, like I don't know, it was not too long ago. It's kind of embarrassing. Like I couldn't have told you the difference between like collaborative custody and multi institution custody. So like, yeah, we're like I'm an idiot. But also we're early. So I think that's just, yeah, it's a lot for anyone to wrap their mind around. But if they don't even know how many total Bitcoin, like what the hard cap is, yeah, the difficulty like, like just go ask someone on the street, what's the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment? What does it mean and how often does it happen? And they'll just like look at you like you're insane. I think one of the most shocking things we all cumulatively found this past year spending time in the Middle East was because I think this is a notion to what you're saying is the majority of big holders hold their Bitcoin on on ledgers and then they put them in like a central bank vault. Like that's the most sophisticated version of custody that exists in the market. So yeah, we're very early. Yeah. One thing I wanted to go back to Michael, I, I don't know if you mentioned though with Paul Tudor Jones that it was and this is from the 13 F filing. So that information was just the filing date was the 15th of February for the fourth quarter of 2024. One thing that really irks me is that you have Bitcoin Twitter just saying, oh, this is their exposure for Q 12025, which just indicates that a lot of people who are commenting on this don't even understand the nature of 13 F filings because everything that's public right now is from Q4 of 2024. So it means that they, you know, that that position may not be there anymore. But one of the things that's important to call out is for Paul Tudor Jones that I bid exposure was like by far the largest position of, of the fund. I think the next largest position was an energy ETF, but it was like maybe $300 million smaller position. So pretty significant allocation there. I know Paul, Paul Tudor Jones probably in 2020 was speaking about the, you know, Bitcoin just being the fastest horse in the race. I mean, nothing's changed there. And so it's, it's always good to see, you know, putting money where your mouth is. He's also talking his book, of course. But there's a reason why some of the most successful fund managers are over allocated to Bitcoin. I think. One other thing to call out too. We just recorded with Matt Kulich, Dr. Tim and I did and we were talking a bit about pension allocations. What we didn't get into though was any of the 13 F stuff and Wisconsin State pension fund boosted its I bit position to over $300 million. So it's actually over 100% increase from Q3 to Q4. So I think just between the Trump administration taking office or, you know, first winning the election and that indication of increased regulatory clarity of support, and then now him taking office in January, a lot of these confirmations within his cabinet are going to be bullish for Bitcoin. And then ultimately ties into I think Trump this week was talking about he he meant he was talking about the crypto and the Bitcoin price, right? Like he was like, oh, it's be it's going up because the, you know, the market knows that I want to make Bitcoin or sorry, America, the crypto capital of the world. So I think, you know, they're just like the money. The big pools of capital are positioned for what's to come this year. Yeah, I mean, he's he's he's obviously doing a little like probably a premature victory lap on, you know, saying bitcoins making all these all time highs. But I don't, I don't think he's necessarily wrong. Like I think if, you know, if we think about the parallel universe where he didn't win, like I, I don't know. Because I, I, I think, you know, you wouldn't have all of these cabinet confirmations that are, you know, very pro Bitcoin, pro crypto people. And you wouldn't have sort of the, the lifting of this, you know, the choke point stuff, all this, you know, everything we've been dealing with for the past four years. Like you wouldn't have that sort of reprieve from that status quo. So I don't think he's like entirely wrong, but it is always funny to just see him take credit for everything. Who? Yeah. Who is the other big filing that came out about their micro strategy position? It was Kanner, right? Kanner, Fitzgerald. Yeah, exactly. One point O $3 billion in MSTR shares. Tim, well, can you tell us about that? It's a lot of freaking shares. I mean, what? I don't know. Sometimes I have to, like, calm myself down. When I was recording with Tad a few days ago, you, like, text me words. He's like, Tim, that was great. You are mimetic. And I'm like, I'm a meme. Maybe I need to calm down a little bit. But it's like, yeah. The former chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald is now the commerce secretary. Jumping where I'm wrong, right With all these word soup and titles and his company that he was just the chairman of owns a billion dollars of MSTR and he's in charge of this like 37 quadrillion dollar sovereign wealth fund that might come to be. And own 5 like 5% of tether. What like you have Adam back this morning like saying literally tweeting you are not bullish enough. Like it sounds like gladiator like are we living in a simulation? Like what the what the F do you think is going to happen in the next couple months? Like it's like. Yeah, the best, The best part about this? I'm like posting Adam back videos where he's saying the bull run is like not even really begun yet and like I'm not the bullish guy here like Adam backs. Tim, I gotta. You wear, you literally wear an orange tie every day, Tim. You're obviously the most bullish one of the four of us. It's irresponsibly long. Tim, I have a very serious question to ask you. Are you going to bring this energy? Are you even coming? Are you coming to Happy hour next Wednesday? I'm invited to a happy hour. We're hosting a happy hour and Tim keeps playing coy that he may or may not have been invited. Just want to make sure you know you're going to bring this energy because this is what what we're going to need. I this is just me, so yeah. Come. Hang out. Big week for that. For those who aren't aware, Bitcoin Investor Week in in New York City next week. I think the actual like conference days are like the Thursday, Friday, but there's a ton of events throughout the week. We will be Co hosting a private luncheon with Strive on Tuesday and then we're having a happy hour with Arch who we actually just announced this will come out on Friday. But we just announced on Thursday that we partnered with Arch to provide lending services to our our clients and so super excited about that. And so we'll be hosting a happy hour with them. So if anybody's in in New York next week and wants to connect with us, please reach out. Yeah, not to Doc's Tim, but he took out a loan to buy more ties so he didn't have to sell. It's I'm glad we can provide service. Bullish on orange ties? I mean honestly I need to set up a merch store to sell orange ties. I mean that's probably sounds lucrative. Monetize the podcast. It's like. Yeah, that's like, yeah, you can get a sponsorship. Yeah, it's like, I don't know, even if I only make $1.00 per tie, we're going to sell like 8 billion ties. Yeah, I guess we could just end the episode there then. But but seriously, business plan. Yeah, I want to go back to Howard Lepnick because one of the things you talked about in an interview this week, I guess, after he was confirmed, was that there's not going to be any slashing of entitlements. And so one thing to call out is that with DOGE, right, there's all this discussion and some action about what can DOGE do to reduce the spending of the US government. It actually doesn't even matter because while there's $37 trillion of debt at the federal level, there's like $200 trillion of entitlements. And so if those aren't going to be addressed in any way, that just means that there's literally the only way to pay those back is just to create more, more dollars. And so we were talking a bit about this, but it's ultimately I think it's one of the more concerning things I think at the at the most macro level is that a lot of people who are relying on entitlement programs to eventually retire are either not ever going to be able to retire or they will retire, but then outlive their retirement because what they were relying on is something that could be printed into oblivion. And so that's ultimately why I think someone actually come. I'm going to address the comment on the last trade a couple weeks ago, someone was like, someone was like, oh, why, why are you guys excited about states adopting Bitcoin or the government adopting Bitcoin? Like, why don't we just let people buy it with, you know, their otherwise would be tax dollars? And the answer is because most people don't buy it, right? Like most people don't actually a have the time or have the interest to figure out what's going on here. And most people admittedly don't have the time. Like the, you call it like the the bottom, like 25% or 50% of the US, like they're struggling to get by. We're in a very privileged position to be just like chopping it up here. And so like those people have to like they're working multiple jobs. In many cases, they don't have time to be listening to Bitcoin podcasts. They're not listening to the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast, Tim. And so the, the thing why this is important is because ultimately institutions will have to adopt Bitcoin on behalf of their constituents because most people will actually not have the time or the ability or the money to figure this out. And so I actually think it's an incredibly good thing to see these institutions stepping in. A, it doesn't impact your ability to own Bitcoin, however you want to own it. B. It's for the greater good if these institutions have Bitcoin, as long as they're using that right for the benefit of their constituents. That's exactly very well put. And that's something that I admittedly early on and getting into Bitcoin, I was not even believing, Oh, we got to get the lower class into Bitcoin and don't care about getting others rich and really learned quickly. Like this notion of emerging markets and frontier markets is all a LARP in the Bitcoin space. Because at the end of the day, one large sovereign fund, one large state country getting involved makes all the like is 100 to 1000 X more impactful than, you know, a million people in some random country adopting it to like stack some sats. Like at the end of the day, you have to add to the liquidity profile. The price appreciates, awareness gets there. We know that we only need X percentage of penetration for the rest of the market to like catch up and then just start to adopt it. So you need those flows to be very large. And the beauty of this is a positive sum game because they're there's no dumping on anyone like the asset appreciates, they can still buy, they benefit from a fixed supply, their purchasing power is secured. And nobody talks about this and nobody understands that. It's why we focus on what we focus on here is because you have to support large holders, whether it's state, sovereigns, countries, high net worth, individuals, institutions and then you can naturally build a business to go down market, but you can't start the other way. I also think it just it accelerates the education process to some extent, right? Like, you know, prior to real material institutional involvement in Bitcoin, like, you know, it did, it did take a curious individual, someone willing to look a little crazy and be very contrarian to, to deeply understand it and then, you know, store their own energy and value in it. And you know, now that we're reaching the level of states, governments, larger institutions, corporates entering the space like that just accelerates the education across the board because it gives more air cover to the individual to say, oh, I won't be that insane or I won't be looked up, looked at as insane if I learn about this thing and and decide to use it as a savings technology. Like it just gives you more air cover and it actually gives you more of an incentive to learn about it too. It's like if my state government is buying Bitcoin, Bitcoin for the treasury. Like maybe I should think about it. Brian, are you talking about Bitcoin or meme coins? Bitcoin to Bitcoin, not not Libra. Coin What? What happened in Argentina? Yeah, a lot has happened really just over the past six days. So this the most recent shit coin calamity, to put it lightly, dropped last Friday. So after, you know, after we recorded last week, it was on on Valentine's Day eve for that evening and the president of Argentina, Javier Male, who you know, people were hyping this guy as a pro Bitcoin supporter, very excited that he had gotten elected. He tweets out a token address on Friday night Libra coin Argentina Argentina's meme coin goes live it over the course of probably 30 to 45 minutes. It pumps to like 5 billion market cap it then, you know, as one might expect, starts to dump, starts to rug and you know, no one really knows what's going on in the moment because you know the the the initial tweet came from Javier Malay's verified Twitter account. He also reposted it on his verified Instagram account. So it was like, OK, doesn't seem like he was hacked because you know it it'd be difficult for someone to simultaneously hack both his accounts. Not impossible, but the thinking was that, OK, this this feels real. And it starts to dump, obviously. And then he then he comes back like hours later after it's already dropped, you know, 90 plus percent just distancing himself from it. Like, you know, I think he did. He later did an interview where he was like, I didn't promote it. I just shared it. Like that was a direct quote like that kind of an insane way to phrase your involvement in this, in this meme coin. But the, the larger take away to me from all of this is, and it's something I, I mentioned a few weeks back when the Trump coin dropped. It's like we are seeing the shit coin casino meme coin mania at the presidential level, like at the nation state level of, of countries dropping meme coins. And you know, the, the architecture, the playbook for these things is, hasn't changed, right? Like it's still an insider game, a pump and dump. And if there's any silver lining to any of this in my mind, it's that these, you know, very hope high profile people, whether it's Trump, Melania, Malay, Dave Portnoy in the mix, you know, these people have massive followings and they're they're basically exposing meme coins and crypto for what they are. Like these are just, you know, massive pump and dump schemes where insiders extract value from, you know, unsuspecting retail investors. And so my, my positive spin on all of this is like, I do think to some extent this is speed running the education process of like someone who's observing this from the sidelines, been thinking about investing in crypto or Bitcoin and they see, you know, people who just get destroyed on these, these worthless meme coins. Like I think they get to the end result of, of thinking about Bitcoin in a different light much faster. And I think, you know, it was interesting to see, I think it was head of the head of the central Bank of the Czech Republic over the past week or so has been making some comments about Bitcoin. They, I think they announced that they were going to do a, some sort of strategic reserve. And, and he had some quotes that, you know, were, were pretty powerful in the sense of like he, he understands Bitcoin is different from the rest of this. And so I think that that's the education, right? Like that's that's what needs to permeate as a result of all this stuff. And and it's unfortunate because people are obviously getting hurt in all of this financially. But I think what used to take several years for someone to learn, like they might be learning in a few weeks that all this other stuff is nonsense and I should focus on Bitcoin because you have heads of state it reiterating that that line of thinking. And then you just see what happens when when these things, you know, inevitably rug pull. Well, I really want that to be true and I hope it is. I would take partially the other side just in the sense of people just see things collapse and they just conflate them for all the same, right. People know Bitcoin is volatile and so when they see another mean coin, they just assume it's all like speculative. So I don't know, like I think if somebody's educated on the cursory, like looked at the asset class and wondered what's the difference? I think to your point, it's probably an easier path to saying, OK, this thing's real in the others. But if it's just like somebody on the outside perspective looking at digital assets, they probably just think it's all like a big Ponzi because everything just crashes. Yeah. But then you also have to consider like the 16 year track record of Bitcoin, right, versus, yeah, a few minutes to a day of a pump and dump like they're they're that, you know, starkly different. 100%, I think if you go into a room with the CIO and explain that, they can see that. But somebody that's just like busy during the week and looks on the news and sees the next cryptocurrency, like they don't know the difference between Bitcoin and that and how long that was around. They don't know that it was just 12, yeah. And to be fair, there's also a component of this of like financial nihilism where like there, there are people who even though they know it's a rigged game, it's a rigged casino. They're still going to put their chips on the table because they think they can get the 100,000 X. And they don't think that that's possible with Bitcoin because they have a a shorter time preference effectively. Yeah. I mean, it's also, it's ultimately an action of despair, right? I think it it ties into the idea that most people feel all the pressure of the inflation. A lot of people recognize that their retirement is continuing to become more and more longer dated from when they initially thought. And so, I mean, I've seen this too within my own family. I have it like a an uncle, for example, who's pretty working class. Like he's provided for my three cousins and done it right for himself. But he's not, he doesn't have a lot of money. And so he's asked me before, I'd like, you know, Christmases or Thanksgivings about other shit coins because he hears other people talking about it or he sees it on YouTube. And to him, it's like it, it's my analysis of it is like, it's a reaction to like the despair that most people face where it's like, maybe I will put $1000 into this because maybe it'll be 10,000 or be $100,000, right. And so that's, that I think is the big underlying issue here. And that's why I think it is so critical for leaders of states of townships, you know, if you go into the local level, I think that's why it's critical for there to be a push for adoption of Bitcoin because ultimately this could help to reduce the pressures of inflation. It could ultimately reduce the tax burden on these individuals as well. And it leads to a more prosperous life for, you know, for the country as a whole. So that's why I'm optimistic. Unfortunately, it just seems like these these lessons are never fully learned, right? Like the Trump coin. And then I didn't even know about the Malay stuff until we we just talked about it. And yeah, there's just so much going on every day, right? And then you have like a couple weeks ago, people are conflating on CNBC. Well, hawk to a coin, what's the difference between that and Bitcoin? So it's like we have a long road. But that's ultimately why people are elected in the position of power, because the constituents that elect them want them to represent their best interests. And they're in a position of having responsibility and looking after their people. And so like we've been having, we've had some conversations with folks at the state level and they want to do things the right way. I mean, there are people out there, The funny thing is right at bitcoins bottom up. So you have people who own Bitcoin who understand it deeply and then they they've seen how it's benefited them as an individual. So naturally then they want to use that to further the mission, you know, whether it's in just their local community or at the state level or at the federal level. So that's what I'm optimistic about and. I think it's really well put in the sense of like what Brian basically referenced was these, these tokens are like lottery tickets on your iPhone, right? And we all know, you know, how lucrative lottery the lottery system is. And but I think ultimately we have a big opportunity to do and others is like these banks coming in are going to OfferUp lottery tickets next to their checking and cash balances. The ones that don't understand or not thinking long term. But then to your point, Jackson, we're now actively talking with banks as well. And the thing I've really kind of coalesced around, I think we've coalesced around is like this like user experience where it's not a lottery ticket. It truly is just savings technology. And whether it's 100K or 150 or $350,000, you can just store a little bit and more and more of your wealth in it and increases in purchasing power. And then you just have a better life. And so that experience between your checking and you used to have a savings where you put dollars and it generated a nominal yield. Now this is just a real yield in the real world purchasing power. That experience is something that I think we want to like get to and I think we ultimately get to and the banks that get there first are going to be the long term winners because it's just the right play. While everyone else is losing money, you're able to preserve your purchasing power, have a nice experience and then just better your life is is something that's going to be exciting to to see play out because I don't see like many other ways to make this happen where historically it's been, oh, I got to go to a coin base or another third party firm have to buy it seems speculative. I got to figure out how to custody it. Just imagine in your banking experience, you direct deposit, buy some Bitcoin sits there. It's a it's like very clean way to just manage your finances. Yeah, I think, yeah, I totally agree. It's clean. It's also essential too, because most of these people don't have brokerage accounts, They don't have, you know, retirement accounts. And so, Michael, to your point, they may only enter the extent they interact with financial institutions as they have maybe a community bank where they're getting some very small percent of interest on their checking account and then their savings account is marginally higher. But we all know that we're in an environment now where that is ultimately still a negative real yield. That wasn't always the case. I mean, people could actually save in in U.S. Treasuries at some point and not be like totally debased out of there, what little or maybe large amount of retirement money that they have. But now you just can't do that. I mean, like I have a Chase account that I keep barely any money in at all, but they pay 0% on checking accounts. So that's what most people are up against, right? Like they have the bank account, that's where they have maybe some emergency funds. If they could access Bitcoin, whether it's just 1% or 5% of their savings directly there, that's that's a huge improvement upon what they already have. Yeah, it's it's to your point, Michael, like the the long term winners in the incumbent space, but are going to be the ones that that go about this the right way and and view Bitcoin as the new savings account effectively. And but but part of that is also avoiding putting the shiny gambling token right next to that. And so I think, you know, there's it's that's what's going to destroy your reputation of the long term is, is putting people in things that, you know, are in the broader crypto space that are going to underperform Bitcoin meaningfully over time. And I think part of the problem right now is like these people still can't distinguish, you know, you have people calling like blue chip cryptos and including like Ethereum and Solana in there. And it's like, if we want to really strip this back to reality, it's like those those other coins are no different than meme coins. Like in my mind, like going back to, you know, speed running the education. Part of the reason the, that education process has been longer historically is because these alternative blockchains, these other cryptocurrencies have done a pretty effective job in sort of masquerading as decentralized or promising all these different forms of, of utility to where they can sort of get away with the scam longer, right? And so it takes it's, it takes longer for someone to realize that it's bullshit. Whereas with these, you know, actual just worthless meme coins, like it's, it's a faster process to realize it's bullshit. But like all these alternative block chains are no different in the sense of they have the same sort of, you know, insider dynamics, lack of sort of credible neutrality, people who are in control as opposed to being truly distributed and decentralized. So, you know, I think that's where that's where people are going to, you know, put their hand on the stove ultimately and in the incumbent Tragify space is by not realizing that these alternative block chains are the same thing as Trump coin, they're the same thing as Libra coin. And the funny part I was thinking about like I've never experienced and I was wondering if we've ever seen a disparity in education or like asymmetric information and realizing this and it's we haven't. And the reason why is because we've never here or like the past 200, if not 1000 years have lived while money has been monetized or been created in real time, right? Because when it's technology, it's like, oh, I can see Uber to like cabs and the difference in like the step function change. But you can start to like grasp that. And there's always the laggards. But when you're like monetizing an asset in real time and you're, you're creating like a new money is basically being important in real time and everyone else is trying to create another one. It's just, it's just, and then especially because we never educated on what money is, it ends up where you have this just disparity of information. It's going to persist for the next decade. It's sad. Like talking to banks and other large multinationals and like, their thing now I guess is like stables, like they're just really excited about stable coins. Yeah. There was a good tweet I saw today. I'm not sure who this person is, Juthika on Twitter tweeted. There will never be another fair launch like Bitcoin because you can never recreate the environment where everyone had access to but nobody cared about such a thing. And I thought that was a really articulate way of putting it because when we talk about Bitcoins fair launch dynamics, it's Immaculate Conception. It's sometimes hard for people to wrap their minds around why that is the case and why it can't be recreated, but that's that's the best way of putting it. It's like you can't have that in today's world where everyone you know, at least on the periphery has heard about crypto or Bitcoin. You can't launch a new coin in a fairway where you know it it it can trade valueless for months like that just wouldn't happen if it had any, you know, long term trajectory to it like so that just can't be done again. And I thought that was a very nice way of of putting it. You needed that environment where actually no one gave a shit about it. 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Multi Institution Custody removes the operational and technical burdens of private key management, providing an institutional grade custody solution that meets the stringent demands of family offices, Raas, endowments, and pension funds. We recently launched Onramp Institutional, a dedicated segment of the business designed to provide secure, innovative Bitcoin custody and advisory solutions for institutions worldwide, providing allocators with robust security without compromising on accessibility and allowing them to tap into a comprehensive suite of financial services, from trading to lending and more, all built to institutional standards. Discover how Onramp Institutional can elevate your firm's Bitcoin strategy. Schedule a consultation with our team to learn more at onrampbitcoin.com. Yeah, I agree. One of them to change topics a little bit or go back to something we talked about was the Fort Knox audit. Do you guys think that? I think it was the, what's his name? Walker from the Bitcoin podcast had an interesting tweet about just the idea that this could be almost staged. The sense that they, you know, people know that there's not actually the amount of gold that we say there is or claim there is in Fort Knox. And by opening up that door or that Pandora's box, then we can use that as a way to accelerate the push for a national strategic Bitcoin reserve. Do you guys think that holds any credibility? I, I'll say I, I think it does to the not maybe that it's like that theatrical, but I do think that those that are within the Trump cabinet and administration, I think they recognize that Bitcoin is ultimately the way to leapfrog all these other countries that are moving toward gold. But do you guys have similar differing thoughts there? I. Don't know the answer necessarily, but it was interesting. I guess. In an interview this week, Scott Besent basically said like something to the effect of like we wouldn't be considering gold reserves for the strategic wealth fund. And I thought that was interesting for a few reasons. But mainly just like, is there an underlying sort of to what you're alluding to Jackson of like, are there people who who recognize like we need to leapfrog and and sort of forget about the gold and and move towards Bitcoin? That comment would would lead me to believe maybe that is the case that you know, because otherwise, like, why, why would he say that? Like, why would he say no, we're not considering our gold reserves for the sovereign wealth fund? Yeah, because it's a rock. No, I don't know Yeah, I agree though. I mean, I I was talking about this over the summer. I, I, we had a spaces with Peruvian bowl and I've been thinking about this for a little bit now and I know a lot of people have, but I, I think that's ultimately the direction this goes, right? Because if you're the, if you're the US government and you issue U.S. Treasuries and you recognize the demand is dwindling for all the reasons we talked about weekly. You recognize that sable coins are a way to have demand, but you also are cognizant that these other countries have been accumulating gold certainly at a bigger clip the past decade, but even more so in the past like two years. And so as far as we know, because they haven't been public about it yet, I mean, there is some information on national treasuries or other other nation states, their treasuries of Bitcoin. We have that stuff on the on ramp terminal. So you can see like what's publicly disclosed. But there's still an opportunity here for the US to lead. I think the US does have, with the confiscated Bitcoin or seize Bitcoin has the largest amount of Bitcoin already and we obviously have the means to acquire more of it. So I, I think it is pretty obvious and it just seems like by how people are positioning themselves that that's really the direction this is going to ensure that the US remains in a dominant position, you know, from a financial standpoint for the foreseeable future. Do you guys think we get any sort of DOGE dividend as they're calling it? There was, you know, there's been talk of like $5000 for every person, which just makes me think of, you know, the stimi checks that we got during COVID and I'm going to pull up. Stimi. Stimi check. How many? How many were sent out? Was it like two or three? So $12,000, if you just poured that all into Bitcoin, you'd have that return, which is just wild to think. About 17. $17,520 a 1300 or 13160% return over about five years. So, you know, if we did get some sort of DOGE dividend, I, I'm curious to see how many people would just do the same thing and, and pour it all into Bitcoin. It could be a massive boon for sort of short term near, you know, near term Bitcoin price. If, if people are waking up to this in in a more coordinated fashion, like, yeah, if you're going to give me cash, I'm going to buy hard money with it. I was just looking at the number there, Brian. So it's the plan would be $5000 refund checks and so 79 million households for a total of $400 billion. And so that's 20% of Dojo's projected savings by 2026. I didn't go any further detail than that, but so we'd be looking at $400 billion being sent directly into American households. So ACPI, you know, we're not going back to 2%. We already knew that. But like that's obviously inflationary. You inject that about 1/2 a trillion dollars into households. People in many cases will have to spend it and a lot of people will spend it. And yeah, I mean, I certainly, if I receive that, it's obviously going into Bitcoin. If I, if I knew it was coming, I'd already, I would figure out a way to get that $5000 into Bitcoin preemptively if I don't have it available. But yeah, I think there's, yeah, there's some merit there for sure. Tim, would you, would you pour it into MicroStrategy? I would probably put it into Bitcoin in my own ramp account and then take a loan against it and put that cash into microstrate. There you go, not. Lover to the gills. Anything new, any any worthy updates on on the strategy front, Tim, I know they there was a new convert put out this morning. I think I haven't done any other follow-ups around the STRK like this, the strike instrument any any updates from your end on on just following strategy and everything they're doing? Yeah. I don't know that there's any update on strike. I think they need a few weeks to a few months to kind of get that market and certain thresholds check in the box before they can get an ATM on that. But as you mentioned, they have somewhere between A2 and $2.3 billion convert that is you know priced and out the door and should be closed by end of tomorrow based on all the filings. So probably some Bitcoin being bought, if not today or tomorrow, this weekend. This this just came out or it was tweeted about the, this is the positions they increased from Cantor. So there's obviously the one we talked about with MicroStrategy, but look at you could see Mara Coinbase increased the I shares, grayscale and Fidelity and bitwise positions. So they're basically all in on Bitcoin. And Etherium. So I guess they're ready to ride down the Etherium position to 0. They're trying to get a little smoke or a little smoke out there that like, you know, just this is, it's a smoke Screener and I don't it's, it'll be very interesting to see what the, I mean, we haven't talked about that, but the CFTCSEC and OCC all having heads now that were former, I believe all execs, digital asset firms. So this notion of like where the markets heading and what Lutnick knows is it interesting dynamics in these positions? Yeah. That chart you just put up too. I think it's interesting that Tim called the number out earlier, but it was $1.03 billion of exposure to MSTR and then only about $100 million exposure to I bit. So they have a 10X bigger position in micro strategy than they do in the the Bitcoin ETF. So they're bullish. I would say that's what we could discern from that. Tim, I, I told you this is coming. So you better, you better have something ready, ready for us. But you're, you're tweeting out, you're tweeting out earlier this week and you even have been you you think $1,000,000 Bitcoin by the end of 2025 and you're as bold to say 2,000,000 by the end of 2026. So that would totally go against the historical cycles that we've seen. So I think you're implying that there's a super cycle upon us, but what what would you say to kind of back the sentiment that you're sharing there? Just encourage everyone to go watch the Adam Back CNBC interview that I posted and said look for the 500 people that commented wanting to know my rationale. I mean, I'm not as smart as Adam Back and not as eloquent. And he lays out right, corporates, institutional, if you get nation states in there. I mean, just the reality of printing endless Fiat to buy Bitcoin that is not endless. I mean, that's, I don't necessarily think it's the end game meaning like a super cycle, but I, I do think we're going to see an elongated cycle. And so that's where the, you know, increased price next year comes from. Yeah. I mean, everything that you guys were just talking about, like the sovereign wealth fund, I think it would be a little disappointing and people would just kind of move on. It would not be part of the conversation as much if they said, oh, yeah, we're going to put our gold reserves in this new sovereign wealth fund. It's like, all right, well, we don't need wrapped gold in a new fund. We already have the gold. What? So there, you know, Brian, to your point best, it's probably like just moving the conversation forward, like, well, if we're going to have a sovereign wealth fund, we've never had one before. Let's actually make it something that's going to make the golden age of America and all these things that all these guys keep saying and then you like, is there anyone more controversial in the entire on the entire planet then Trump and Elon? So like every single day you get a headline and like, again, the most hilarious outcomes, probably the most likely, right, live stream of Fort Knox and abolishing the IRS because you don't need an IRS if you have an ERS, right? And the interesting thing is, you know, just speaking for myself, I mean, I'm on a learning journey. And so as these different voices on social media, not so much mainstream media talk through their hot takes on, you know, should there be a Doge dividend? Maybe not Why not? And you just see what's happening. I mean, it's all like publish information. But when you put it all together and not to beat a dead horse, but like I honestly kind of can't believe that. Adam back tweeted. You are not bullish enough today, right? Everybody gives Gladiator so much shit and you have like the guy that invented hash cash saying you're not bullish enough. I mean, I don't know what more people would need. And again, like I don't, I'm not saying $10 million or 100 or a billion dollar Bitcoin by next year. I mean, historically you want to talk about cycles. I mean, it's you only have to go back to cycles to see A10 or 20X and that's A10 and 20X. So yeah, that's, I think it's fun to be excited. I'm excited because I'm learning every single day and I'm encouraged by where we're going because I just, I don't see any data points that would leave me not to be encouraged as to where we're going. Some people use the term bullish and I just think even this range that we're in when we pull up the on ramp terminal, it's like that's what the guys that I talked to, they're like, oh, you know, the longer we can just kind of not go parabolic, that's actually really good for the cycle. I've been hearing that for the last two years and I think that in and of itself is, is really encouraging. Like, all right, we're between 90 and 110 and you could easily go to 150 two 100,000 within a few months, 1/4 or two. And again, I think that's being conservative. So I think it's going to be really interesting not just this year, but next year and all of the learnings, right? The meme coin Fiasco's, the, the port noise being kind of transparent, right? All these viral videos of, but you're just upset because I dumped on you before you dumped on me. It's like, well, like he's being pretty transparent and educational about some of this stuff. If you think about it from that aspect. And yeah, you have these like presidential international incidents with meme coins. I think that is educational. So I think it's all for the good of, of Bitcoin anyways. So yeah, lots to be excited about. Yeah. I mean, I think I'll take a more temperate approach than the million. I think we end up probably higher than we all think. And you know, anything's on the table. But the thing I'll say is I think more people are starting to realize we've talked about this before and you hit on it, Tim, is that it? This most likely goes out into 2026. Like there will be, it will overextend, there will be leverage built into the system. But you know, I think it came out last week, Was it State Street and city? Don't their their custody services won't even launch until 2026. Like there's still so much plumbing, still education on boardings from Raas to their clients to institutions to sovereigns. So yeah, I do. I definitely think that we're going to see like a longer cycle than just a general blow off top in the next like two quarters. And the other note you mentioned about the most interesting path is generally the one we seem to be taking. So just on that notion alone, you know, you can imagine that we get some crazy numbers just because everything else has seemed to be going crazy every everywhere around us. Well, good timing to have a lone product live. I'm going to be using that. I, I'm going to, I'm going to take a little loan out now that now that I've had to talk to Tim about $1 million per Bitcoin 2025. Yeah. I mean what's quickly talk about that. So taking a loan out for anyone is very for leverage is a very risky thing. Like the loans in general from this isn't obvious financial advice, but would encourage anybody that's looking to use leverage to pay for day-to-day expenses, manage liquidity, you know, taxable events, things that you can naturally operate around, not necessarily to buy a highly volatile asset. My previous firm, we were one of the only retail, we were the only retail lender left standing. We took a very conservative approach to how we let clients lend against the asset. It's what we're doing similarly here. But at the end of the day, everyone has to make their own decisions. And so we will educate and talk clients through it. And this is partially Jackson's being transparent. He's been thinking about taking on a loan. I told him, let's talk in New York and just explain, you know, just how to think about it and why you should or shouldn't do it. But yeah, it's, it's a, it's not a thing to play with really. Like you have to really understand what you're doing because This is why we exist. Wall Street's going to come in and offer loan products and they're going to get wild with it because they're going to, you know, let's say our interest rates are going to be higher than most firms. It's going to be simply because we do not rehypothecate the asset. It's, it's segregated. And most firms as they step into the space are going to offer lower interest rates, but they're going to be relending the asset. And so nominally, it'll look cheaper, but risk adjusted, it's going to be insanely more expensive because you ultimately may never have your Bitcoin again. And people had to learn that the hard way with FTX Block 5 Celsius. And so we're always going to take a conservative approach. We're always going to educate clients. So always happy to talk about it. But that's just an important thing. No matter if you use us or anyone else, is Bitcoin super volatile? And as quick as you can, you know, take out a loan as quick you can get margin called. And if you don't have the ability to make that, you can lose your Bitcoin. Yeah. And I'm happy to use this platform to be transparent. I mean, I'm just thinking about it for like a small percentage of my overall Bitcoin allocation. I wouldn't want to get over my skis on on the loan. And the only reason why I'd consider it is because of how we've set it up with Arch like I would not want my collateral to be right re hypothecated. I'd want to be able to always audit it on chain 24/7. And I just, the reason why I'm even thinking about it is because I think Bitcoin is massively mispriced at 97 or $98,000 per Bitcoin. And so I'm obviously bullish, but it's like we we kind of have this edge just be building businesses in the space, having to pay attention to all the things that are going on. Most people are not paying attention. Like there's plenty of other things that you could pay attention to that is happening with the Trump administration outside of Bitcoin, right? So like we're taking this nuanced view that we're focusing really heavily on one asset class and, and we have this alpha by paying attention to everything that's going on in the ecosystem. And because of that, I think it's just it is mispriced. Of course, I have a long term time horizon. We can take a loan out for up to two years. So I think it. For me, it makes a lot of sense because I'd like to buy a little bit of more Bitcoin and I would want to do it in a responsible way. So I wouldn't like want to go take any smart contract risk or, you know, get a lower rate on the loan because it's being rehypothecated. I don't want to mess with that. I want to make sure that the the collateral is bulletproof and it's it's what exactly where I want it to be. Yeah, I mean, not to go too far in the weeds, but the we're going to talk with the arch guys are fantastic. We're going to have a podcast with them in New York. The the caveat to that is there's no such thing as a free lunch. So like in the same way we say people pay for custody and their Peace of Mind and like how they sleep at night. When you have leverage, you're ultimately gonna experience volatile market and you're not going to sleep very good because the market it's you can potentially market called multiple times. And then at the end of the day, the thing that sounds easy and it's the hardest part is when you exit a position because if the price is 750,000, you think it's going to 1.2 and it cuts in half. So that's just like, it's not like a free lunch. You're going to have to manage it. So this is speaking from somebody that that's very much not had a free lunch. But, but the other thing that's more interesting about this product that I find fascinating, and it's going to be exciting to figure out how we integrate into our overall platform is Arch has this line of credit aspect where, and this is something I previously had worked on with Visa. We never got to see the light of day because of FTX and what happened there. But you can imagine this notion of you have your Bitcoin store value, your, your savings account for your personal wealth. And then you want to tap into liquidity because you would go on a vacation. You want to buy, you know, you want to, you want to fix your, your cabinets, whatever it is in your house. And you can tap into that line of credit. You can manage like tapping the line of credit, paying in cash or using your, your credit card to put things down, then get points, pay that, that line of credit off the credit card. Like there's different ways to manage that where opening up liquidity is going to be something that's huge this cycle. And I think it's, it's in my opinion, more healthy way to use leverage than to just buy more Bitcoin. But again, we'll, you know, everyone's going to do what they want to do. It's just there's no such thing as a free one. Well, the biggest issue I have would be losing sleep because as as you guys know, I like I like my sleep. I like to go to bed early, so if anything would have me reconsider, it'd be not sleeping as well, yeah. Can't have a sleepy Jackson. Yeah. Tim, how do you think about leverage? I don't think it's appropriate for this podcast. Well, there you go. If you want to hear about Tim's leverage, you can come to the happy hour next Wednesday. We're hosting with Arch. We'll have that online and social if you want to try to try to join us. Yeah, yeah. And for anyone who's based in New York as well or will be in town for the Bitcoin Investor Week, just feel free to reach out to us at On Ramp or to Tim, Bitcoin Treasuries Podcast. We'll have a lot of things going on there. It should be a great conference. We're looking forward to it, so please get in touch if you'll be around. If you've been listening to the show, would be a lot of fun to get to meet in person. Gentlemen, I think we'll wrap it there. Good week. Nice to see you all. Tim. Like the orange tie. Keep it up and we'll see you next week. Thanks boys. 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 Rat Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal. Advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private client advisors.