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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 will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. All right, gentlemen, welcome back another episode of Final SETTLEMENT. Today is Monday, January 5th, 2026 boys, the new year. I, I take it you both had great holiday seasons, rang in the new year with friends and family hopefully. And you know, a few things did did occur while we are away. We're, you know, we had a about a two week, maybe a two week plus hiatus from the show. So it feel good, feels good to be back. But a lot occurred just to name a few things. Gold and silver continued to RIP through the end of the year. I think silver went over 80 at a certain point. I think it's back around 75 now. The there was a really good chart that showed basically inflation was the most persistent, consistent theme of 2025. I'm pulling that up right now. You can see, you know it, we live in a very short news cycle these days, so you can see all these blips on, you know, various things that came up throughout the year. The time the, the date axis is is on the bottom here, but you see inflation here just persistent. The the really the one thing that rang true through the entire year, individuals, businesses, nation states, we're thinking about inflation in tandem. You know, a few days ago we captured the president of Venezuela, maybe we took 600,000 Bitcoin, we're not really sure, still waiting for details on that. But we also had a an interesting tweet from Patrick Witt, who is the executive director, president to the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets and also the deputy director for the Department of War of Strategic Capital. He said something to the effect of Venezuela should adopt U.S. dollar stable coins. And so this is maybe indicative of of the trend of 2025. But really I think where we're headed in 2026 is further integration of digital assets, namely stable coins, whether that's banks in the US or countries that were now probability running for an interim period. Maybe we just forced them to use U.S. dollar stable coins. Gentlemen, what do we think about all this? Where, where should we head? There's a lot of different directions we can head for. I guess first and foremost, how are your breaks? I take it you guys are happy to be back on the show. Well, my break was good until you just outlined the world is completely changed in seven days or 14 days. That's great. No, that the break was good, but excited to be back. It was it was well needed. We try to take, you know, good 10 to 14 business days off the entire team to recharge. But you know, you get to enjoy what you do and you're you're looking forward to Monday. You didn't have the Sunday scary's and getting to recap all this stuff. And in reality, it's like this podcast at least personally serves as a good way to synthesize and articulate like what the Hell's going on. Think about it, pull some of the main threads and then discuss them. And I think it's going to be important heading into 2026 and and beyond because there's just so much happening. And when you get to like talk about these different angles and then how we all know they relate back to a broken monetary system, you can start to spot trends. You can start to realize what's happening. What are the other implications? So yeah, it it was a crazy 7 to 14 days news cycle. So kind of like quick, but all the things you alluded to, I mean there was a stuff with this silver and gold just like ripping is something that's just widely not still under talked about or understood in the traditional markets. And those are real signals that things are breaking. And then obviously the oil situation as well. We're going to start to see, you know, we've been talking about this, but scarce assets and commodities specifically where they look and how they perform. And then the coming 5 to 10 years with the proliferation of inflation, it's going to be crazy times. I didn't even I didn't even mention this but bitcoins kind of ripping. This is the year to date chart 7.32% up all but erased 2020 fives losses. So are we. Are we back, boys? Yeah, we're we're going to have some more volatility, especially in the first half of the year, but pretty optimistic, especially about the second-half. There's there's too much volatility out there, and sooner or later people are going to recognize Bitcoin as the safe haven in a sea of noise. Yeah, I think, I think to that point, a lot of this stuff would look obvious in retrospect where it was a little crazy in queue for the bearishness around specifically like Luke Roman and some of the some of the other macro thinkers, Sun or Bitcoin because of quantum or because of other four year cycles still mapping. When in reality we've talked about this, there's been a structural change and there's a consistent bid for scarce assets, mainly gold, we've seen silver Bitcoin. And so when you tie that into a, a, a secular trend, well, why would the price of Bitcoin go down this year because of like who's selling and what are they selling for, especially when you look at the things we've been talking about when it comes to Triadfi and other relevant participants getting involved in this ecosystem. So, so yeah, I think we've we've held that stance that we're going to have a big year in 2026 and excited to see it play out. Yeah. And you mentioned sort of the, you know, the, I think one of the big takeaways from last year was despite the choppy price action in Bitcoin in particular, there were a lot of fundamental positive constructive developments in terms of basically, you know, one in the Overton window moving sort of the the stigma around Bitcoin and digital assets being somewhat removed. I mean, there's still some of that, but institutions, whether it's banks, fintechs, traditional incumbents that are putting their chips on the table, either acquiring crypto native companies, partnering with them as sub custodians, basically figuring out what their game plan is. And so Michael, you'd shared a 2026 Outlook report that the Block put together and there's a lot of good charts in here. Maybe tell me which pages you want me to go to 1st. But this really tells a, a pretty compelling story of, you know, a lot of the, well, what we do know around the regulatory environment, which has shifted materially over the past, call it 12 to 18 months, the passage of the Genius Act last year. And really a lot of people coalescing around like stable coins are going to be a thing. And in addition to that, real world assets. I think you'd, you'd shared a chart in here that they grew about 3X in 2025. I will say they grew to like 16 or 17 billion like total real world assets that exist. That is like not that crazy of a number that I, I know the growth is strong, but like Cardano's market cap is like 16 billion, just to put it in context of like other crypto stuff. But where? Where do you want to go in this report, Mike? Yeah, I think, I think they're not necessarily apples. Apples just given that Cardano doesn't have any kind of there's no backing real world assets theoretically are tied to some physical assets. So somebody had to play it have prominence. But before going to that, I think the biggest 1 and I don't remember if it was this report or another one, but it was the regulatory slide. I think I I posted that in the Slack channel. We don't have to pull it up, but there was a regulatory slide that that popped up. I think this was in Grayscale's report and it really just showed. Let me find it real quick so I can just read off of a few of the crazy. I mean like when you see them all together. So there's SEC rescinded the SAB 121. There was SEC dropped investigations in the lawsuits, the White House creating the strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC dropping reputational risk. SEC issued staff statements taking activities were allowed. White House and Department of Labor allowing 4-O1K's to get exposure. SEC 20 in June, which are a variety of proposed rules that would have brought certain smart contract. I don't think anybody cares about that. White House and Congress passed Genius Act SEC approved general listing standards for crypto exchange traded products and then Treasury IRS issued safe harbor rules for staking and crypto ET. PS I feel like that's not even like half or that's about half of them. But I think that is a huge one for when you look at the opportunity set in this market, specifically with like incumbents and why they had it figured out, their plans, had it developed M&A strategies or anything alike is because and specifically for also high net worth and institutions because of the regulatory concern. And then I think also in that doc that you had the M&A aspect continuing to grow. The, it's very interesting because there's a lot of notable smart folks that play in the crypto digital asset invested in Lens and they recognize that banks need to acquire custodians. There's not enough assets to go around. So I think that will be a growing trend. The other one that's fascinating, I don't know if it came up in this report, but then we can go back to the RW as really the notion that a lot of people and their predictions expect a very large hack. You know, they recognize that security. I mean, we see this I think every week there's a pretty sizable hack that happens in the industry. Sizable is relative and then also is it related to Bitcoin or other crypto assets? But I think that is just how much opportunities side we have when it comes to early writers and we're building at on Rep with multi institution custody is the vast majority of the market doesn't even necessarily know that there's a differentiated way to custody assets. We don't have a single point of failure and they're all ready and waiting for something like that to happen. I think, you know, tuning our own horn. I think this year will be a big year for the rest of the market to really wake up and realize that there's a better way to custody the the cornerstone sending the blue chip. It is the market when you think about it being 60 to 70% of the total market. Yeah. And looking at the everything you walked through in terms of updated regulatory guidance, I just feel like everybody's really forgotten about everything that happened with FTX, blocked by Celsius, etcetera. Because in reality, what most consumers actually want is just assurances that there is non rehypothecation if you just buy Bitcoin on an exchange. And ultimately, that is not anything that has any regulatory legs within the administration. And people are maybe even just forgetting that that even happened. And that's the reason that there was, you know, a lot of losses back in that 2021 time frame. Obviously, there was just straight up outright fraud, too. And maybe it's just the fact that banks are getting involved and they have more lobbying power than the crypto industry in general, but it seems like a massive messed up and something where despite everything that happened back in the 2021 time frame, there's really been no meaningful change in market structure that would prevent any significant loss of customer funds moving forward. Yeah. I mean, it's a good point in the sense that I think a lot of what has transpired on the regulatory front is not being properly priced in. In the sense that, you know, if you think about, you know, Bitcoin sort of being in this range for 12 months, it really it never making a new all time in gold terms. So kind of being in this quasi bear market in in our in our view for a couple years now. Every other time that's sort of been the case of a Bitcoin bear market. Like you see an exodus of of participation from either institutional banks, fintechs, incumbents, all of that stuff is moving in the opposite direction, like in a positive direction in terms of their embrace and their adoption of these things. And that is directly related or a function of the regulatory environment and the pivot that's occurred at basically all the agencies, whether it's CFTC or the SEC, which has a very pro crypto new chairman. All of that is sort of like the exact opposite of what we saw in 22 when things sort of collapsed where everybody just like ran away from the asset class. And that happened multiple times, right in past cycles, whereas we haven't seen that this time despite the sort of lackluster or you know, lackluster performance, but really, you know, it was fine performance. It just didn't live up to the expectations that people had going into 2025. One thing in this, in the other, the block report that I just came across was this is an interesting chart, the VC funding by category. You can see this massive spike in the middle of the year where, you know, basically all of the capital was was going into funding these dats. And it's just interesting in the sense that like you can see it, you know, there's kind of growth throughout the year again, despite, you know, choppy price action. But to me, this is just like just clearly showing like a lot of capital, you know, most capital still being misallocated in this market. And I think this is something we know intuitively, But like seeing this on a chart is pretty, pretty ridiculous to see that there's just this massive spike. It looks like almost one point or 12 billion poured into like just data structures, which, you know, those corrected materially. And a lot of those are, I'd say most of them are below 1 XM NAV now. A lot of the stock prices are down 95% plus. So just a lot of capital destruction in this market. And then on the other side, you have people, you know, funding stablecoin projects effectively like it's kind of barbelled. It's either you were chasing Dash structures or you were looking at infrastructure that was going to be adopted by these traditional incumbents, banks, etcetera. Yeah, Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I think your your point around the regulatory in in the market, I think there was a chart we had that was showing 2025 had the lowest volatility for Bitcoin and Bitcoin 17 year history. And I think like when you take that into account, it's really a feature and helps track by adopt this asset and feel confident and where it's going. You also look at like what the Trump admin did as it relates to or they're not necessarily the Trump admin, but their friends and family, what they did as far as packing their bags and their involvement in this industry. There was a lot of setting the stage for what's happening we expect to happen in 2026. I think you also tie in a lot. When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, Peace of Mind starts with architecture. On Ramps, Multi Institution Custody distributes control across three independent regulated key holders and a two of three quorum. No single point of failure, no pooled or omnibus exposure. Segregated client titled faults. You retain full legal ownership while on Ramp coordinates security, compliance and operational workflows behind the scenes. It's strength of money delivered through the simplicity of 1. Multi Institution Custody is the foundation for everything. We build sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional controls. And now On Ramp is piloting flat, predictable pricing, making best in class Bitcoin custody and financial services more accessible now than ever. On Ramp strengthen many simplicity of 1. To learn more, check out on rampbitcoin.com. The the things that have happened publicly and that we've heard privately in the banking sector around turning on custody, lending, stable coins, a lot of this stuff just took time. And I think a lot of people forget that the industry was so antagonistic from regulatory policy to the administration to digital assets that Trump winning and then their favorability to the asset class really took a lot of people by surprise. And so they had to recourse correct into what's our plan and they're still doing that today. And so you can see maybe part of that price appreciation was the market pricing that in. But we haven't got anywhere near, you know, the interesting blow off top reflectivity of retail coming into a like a new asset class. We're just seeing like the smart money really place their chips right now. We haven't really seen the retail buzz, which I kind of suspect similar to AI we saw in 25, like digital assets will be in that same thing. They kind of, they'll end up like intersecting together because of a lot of the stuff that's related to, you know, LLMS and needing stable coins or other units to power them. Yeah. And, and I forget which one of you mentioned this, but like the, the notion that these incumbents are, you know, either doing acquisitions or doing sub custodian partnerships, like they aren't fundamentally solving for what we've discussed around single counterparty risk, right? Like there is, you know, in all of these outlook reports, there's sections on, you know, the increasing risk of both physical and digital attacks for, you know, digital bear assets, whether it's Bitcoin or other crypto assets, it's increasingly being talked about as a problem. There was a, an article in Bloomberg that talked specifically about this a couple days ago. I'm, I'm pulling that up now, but no one has really solved for this in the sense that, you know, all of these partnerships and sub custodian relationships are just effectively grafting onto what already exists. So that's, you know, Coinbase custody, other single entity custodians. And so I think there's a focus on sort of the symptoms of this, but like not actually how to solve for it. And so I think as we look ahead this year, I would expect a lot of this stuff to accelerate in terms of what's talked about here in this article. So the title is small time crypto investors are facing violent attacks. And it's a little misleading because it's not just small time crypto investors. It's really, you know, we've seen Co OS and and CE OS of, of crypto companies be targeted in this stuff. But what this article really talks about is, you know, effectively, you know, think about the sort of normal average person who has some some holdings on Coinbase. They are extremely susceptible to social engineering attacks. And there are effectively these criminal rings of people that just are targeting these specific people who don't have really sophisticated crypto knowledge. They probably don't understand that, you know, it's a bearer asset. And if they are to give up the credentials to their account, you know, their account can be wiped in in seconds. And there's really no recourse, both in terms of, you know, their ability to stop it from happening, but also, you know, the Coinbase side of things, like they are not held liable for either wrench attacks or digital social engineering attacks. So there's really no recourse when this stuff happens. And so, you know, there's been, you know, reported billions of these types of thefts, thefts, which is. Likely super underreported because you know, if this type of attack occurs, you probably don't want to be super public about it in anticipation that it could happen again if that information is out there. So scary stuff. But this is, you know, I think something that we need to continue talking about like better products do need to exist for this stuff. Because effectively these institutions and, and other allocators are coming into this market and really just thinking about sort of 2D solutions that have already existed, basically just ceding control to a a single counterparty, which we just know hasn't worked historically. Yeah, it's a good point. And it's it's not fun to talk about this stuff too, especially in light of the Ledger leak this morning of customer personal identifiable information. But it's something that I've been thinking about a little bit more and just the fact that really Pete and one of the big gaps in the market is just that the self custody principles are are 100% right. You want to sever the Internet connection, you want cold storage Bitcoin. You don't want a single a single counterparty that can essentially lose your funds, even if it's yourself. So many people use multi cigs for large holdings etcetera, but it's just something that unfortunately is not operationally scalable either at the personal level, you know, because many people are unwilling or to take the time to do that or on you know, it just can't scale to businesses funds etcetera. And so they're, you know, a lot of people who aren't willing to take the time to do that or, or can't for one reason or another, or, or know about things like this and their families don't want them to do it. There's just no other real great solution. Just given everything that we've talked about, about the hacks that have continued to happen and and will likely persist in the into the future, as well as just the, the social engineering on the exchange front, the and in instances of customer mismanagement of funds. So it's something that, you know, I've just been thinking about the industry needs to kind of get better at as a whole in the future. Yeah. I think the, the reality is that we're like we talked about being early, but this is a pure product of how early we are because Liam had recommended a good book because a big part of what our plan for on Ramp this year is to really there'll be more news and announcements, but making multi institution more available to a larger portion of the market. So reducing cost and having self onboarding, just making it really easy for almost anybody that has material allocation to use multi institution custody and not necessarily has to be a substitute for self custody, but to be a creative, especially as these things start to increase. It can even be leveraged as a as a like error cover. It's like, look, I don't have possession. It takes, you know, X number of days that you set up to move the assets. But while we do that, there's this notion of the adoption wave and like crossing the chasm and in the the general, and I might butcher a little bit, but directionally this will make sense. He's like, you have the tech for people that are adopt things early and then you have the innovators, they come right after that. And then there's just like chasm to, to cross, which I think we're at as a $2 trillion asset, which is the early majority. And then you kind of go to the late majority and then you have the laggards at the end. And the reality is the technology has to increase, the, the commercial viability has to increase if you're going to cross that chasm. So a lot of people never get there. And there's great examples like VR as a, as a good one. It's like you can get the early people really interested, but then how do you actually get it to be commercially viable cheap, you know, not look like a crazy person wearing it. And one of the things I've been thinking about, it's not perfect, but it's like because a lot of people don't necessarily even know that they have a problem with inflation. And then they also don't necessarily know they have a problem with custody because most people have a very small exposure to Bitcoin. So like, I don't really care how I custody it, whether it's in a Ledger or and they're leaking my PII until somebody shows up and you have a problem more until if it's at Coinbase because if they lose it, it's only, you know, 1% of my net worth. But the reality is like, I feel like there's a mental model here because at least a lot of people recognize that LLMS and AI, whoever wins that race wins kind of the future. And it's like by holding or allocating to Bitcoin basically gives you the best form of AI that's ever existed and you effectively get to out compete everyone else that are here to use that. And the angle though, is that the only way to use that is you have to like, if you're going to pull the large percentage of your wealth, and this kind of like corollary would be a large percentage of your time to use it is you have to feel really good about how do you custody it? Because if you don't feel really good about it, how you can tell somebody you have the best LLM, but like, how do you use it? How do you like power it? Whatever the the example, this analogy would be, it's like what you need to be able to safely custody it with assurance it was there. And so that's really what's happening. It's like people's wealth is deteriorating, their time is deteriorating their mental bandwidth and they don't have Peace of Mind because they don't actually a know that the problem exists. And then if they get the problem, well, they don't feel comfortable in allocating A sizable amount. And I think as that just proliferates and grows from a marketing perspective, and then multi institution grows and the ability to get the assurances of self custody without the friction, you can really start to like cross that chasm into mainstream adoption. They'll be different iterations and implementations of multi institution. I think this really helps in a market where people go from speculating to like all Bitcoin is it, you know, is the best savings account that's ever existed. And like everyone wants the best savings account that's ever existed. It's just like they don't know how to do it because either they think it's a Ponzi because they can play to a crypto or they just don't understand. How do you custody an ephemeral acid that you can't touch? So yeah, it's, it's an exciting time. And like, Liam and I were on a conversation with a large bank and potentially getting involved and, and one of the things they said started off a little warm and then towards the end, they're like, wait, so once somebody gets hacked, this will all be obvious. And it's like, yes, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I agree with all that. The only thing I was going to say is like, I think part of the near term issue is that like most people don't think in long time horizon. So like even if they want to be able to save money for the future, it's very difficult for them to see the light of Bitcoin as superior savings technology, particularly given the past 12 months of like choppy price action. Watching gold RIP, watching silver RIP like it, it becomes very easy to dis dismiss Bitcoin as savings technology if you watch it for 12 months and it doesn't really move. So most people don't have one. The deep understanding of like what it is, how it works, why it's resilient, why it's monetary properties are superior to gold, etcetera. And they just typically have a shorter time horizon on it. So I think that's part of the rub today and part of why 1 you know, you see the nihilism in markets, the casinification of everything, predictions mark prediction markets really taking off this past year because people's time horizons are just not oriented towards the long term and being able to hold an asset like Bitcoin for four to five years to really see the benefits of of sound money. And so I think that's part of the story too, is like there is this intense nihilism in markets today. There was a good Twitter article that spoke to this and, and very sort of succinctly summarize where we're at. It's, it was kind of a Dumer Dumerism post of like, you know, basically young people in particular have no other option other than to gamble because they see the wave of AI taking their jobs and they see basically, you know, assets like houses really out of reach. And so they're, they're forced into this speculator mode and gambling on prediction markets, etcetera. I would say that that's a little bit too doomer in my take, in my, in my mind, in the sense that like, if you have agency as a person, like you can leverage those deflationary tools that you think are taking your job to create value in the world. Like it's never been easier to spin up a business with one person and very little capital. And this is something we talked about a lot in the context of, you know, our thesis and early riders and the ability to do more with less. Like all these things are changing in real time. And it takes someone with agency and recognizing the power of a lot of these tools to actually harness them. And so that that goes across software, AI, but also the money itself, right? Adopting Bitcoin as a superior treasury asset for a business for or a builder or a founder. They're they're related and they're sort of connected. But like, if you don't embrace those things, then yes, you're going to be still on that treadmill and getting out competed that by those who do adopt these standards. I I would say that is a part of it. Like it is the short term thinking, the nihilism that's sort of confronting what you describe, Michael of like, yes, this is the obvious thing. You should be adopting Bitcoin, You should be using superior savings technology. But I think that it's still a big leap for people and it goes back to what you said, like we are still just early. Yeah. I think I'm optimistic in the sense that this ties into maybe there was a lot going on over the past two weeks. Maybe I felt more because I had more time on my hands to be on Twitter as it relates to the new models that are coming out and the efficiencies and like where we're heading. But I think there's a reality of the market corrects to the current thing and and where it's going to the example is all the slot that exists on Twitter. And just like social content, like we recognize that we're going to have more and more of that. And so in that world, this city reigns supreme. You're going to have a resurgence of just like a more authentic media opportunity set. And so the point sharing that is as like more and more people recognize how to navigate that. It's a very similar concept of right now people are speculating their Nihilus, they're not realistic. But as you start to see like whether you're holding crypto and you're getting rug pulled and you know, whatever happens there, you start to realize whether it's gold and silver and you see them running, start to go down the rabbit hole of like scarce assets and what like derives value or ultimately Bitcoin, Like it'll, there'll be a chasm that's crossed where people just realize, oh, this is the savings account for the digital age and I just sweep my funds into there. And then that kind of shifts that whole notion of nihilism because you end up going from wait, I can't get ahead to wait. This thing can't be be debased and now you can start. And so I think it it just will take time. Yeah, the fact that Bitcoin isn't even in the top financial nihilism assets in terms of, you know, gambling is just the fact that we're not in a real bull market either. Because historically that's just unfortunately, for better or worse, like how most people allocated to Bitcoin at least for the first time. And then they'll like learn more to see if they're actually on something or crazy too. So, you know, ultimately we're better or worse. Like that is how most of the people are going to come into Bitcoin is just their flexive price. But I've also been thinking about this AI topic more too. And I think we're kind of using it like caveman almost like. And I really do want something to be built or, or kind of almost social proof sharing how people who are either freelancers or, or at the top of their game and to be able to show their historical usage of AI in order. And then I'll end products in order to, you know, almost create like a YouTube type sensation where people like today, they will go to YouTube or, or some other website for how to change like a chain on your bike or something. But there are much more complex systems and products that people are trying to use with AI, whether it's coding, whatever sort of app, etcetera. And there can be a lot of essentially profiles of people who go use it for certain aspects and people can go follow along with that and then use similar end products in order to in order to kind of recreate or use the frameworks that others have used in order to create better end products. And I think that's going to be something that, as you mentioned, the sloppification out there, that there needs to be some way for other humans to really understand how people have used these tools in a, a real way in order to create end products. And that they're actually viable. As well as there, there will end up being just, you know, payouts to these content creators that they're going to call that more and that'll be used For more information sharing. I think that's probably my, one of my predictions that I missed or that I wish I did is that somebody like Facebook who already has a social graph will lean into this in a big way in in 2026. And that just has a lot of far reaching implications for both enterprise clients, how they can share information across doing things from a certain business perspective, as well as other freelancers using, you know, best practices that others have done. Anybody who's starting a new business, I think that many people are using these tools in 2D ways and they're they need to learn how to use them in a faster evolving manners too in the future. Yeah, that's interesting. Are are you kind of describing like almost like this is this is going to be poor terminology, but like a social, a social creditor scoring system for like your ability to leverage the tools, Like something to that effect of like because yes, like people are using the tools, but it ends up being very slop oriented unless you're doing it in a specific way. Is that kind of what you're getting at, like assessing someone's talent in using the tools? Well, almost, but like more of like a algorithm based thing where you know likes people based on your existing. Almost like this is a crude example before you page. Like if you're interested in topic XY and Z, you can find other people who have been successful there and who you know have liked things that are similar to your interests, etcetera. And that will allow you to better find other tools that can help you in the future too. Yeah, I think, I think we just kind of describe it as like a marketplace. I think is very interesting. I think I think it ties into the post that Brian had AI forgot who had it. The barely app is pretty cool. But I think it was somebody maybe when they were at Instagram, but they did a report on like content and just a proliferation of amount of content given utilization of AI tools, that's going to be hard to discern like what is real, what's not. And I do think that it's going to grow. I think for the first time over the break, I was thinking about like Noster and a lot of the, the different tools built on that, that we had David King and Max like almost like 2 years ago at this point. Talking about one application called highlighter, which ultimately, like you highlighted a part of a blog post and then you could really have like an algorithm or feed that would show the amount of Satoshi's that were had highlighted or be contributed. So you can, you can't really DDoS like the, you have proof of work. You had SAS that have been attributed to, to surface like what was relevant and what's not. And I think with how crazy Twitter and other just social media and just the Internet in general, with the the like proliferation of so much content, that the way to discern we've already seen this, right? Reddit, it's a great example. I think that's why Reddit probably has a big following is because they really created the right way to gatekeep some of the slop or posting because SE OS kind of cracked where you can't really search for anything outside of like you'll see what's ads pop up versus you go to Reddit and you can see real people liking in in servicing relevant content. And I, I could for the first time kind of see where that starts to play out. So I do think in 2026 we'll see more of that wordy. How do you embed value? It's probably going to end up in stable coins to start because of just the amount of inertia and like people just understand what a dollar is worth. And that's the hard part. I think most Bitcoin investors and, and folks in this side of the market don't really attribute that it's there's huge mental friction in having to spend your Bitcoin, whether it's spend and replace or whether it's getting a wallet and seeing those stats move and then having to allocate versus like imagine you have your bank accounts. The same reason why it's so easy and e-commerce has grown so much. It's like you can just Apple Pay out. You can just quickly load a wallet. Dollars are so much easier to be moving around online. I do think it'll start there. And then it'll be interesting to see what those use cases are where people would actually use Bitcoin versus, you know, a stable coin. But I do think that that'll actually be a a bigger part of this story in 26 is just with how much content is created. There's going to need to be some kind of proof of work mechanism via monetary value. Yeah. It's a good point. I don't know when the sort of that transition occurs where people would rather it'd be denominated in Satoshi's as opposed to dollars, because I think you're right. I think at least initially, people are just going to gravitate towards stable coin payouts, particularly when you think about like, you know, what Coinbase launched a few weeks ago, like basically anyone's going to be able to spin up a, a sort of branded or themed stable coin for whatever content they're producing. But your, your broader point around like the sloppification of, of just content generally sort of what, where we're headed in terms of waves of, of content and being able to discern what's actually valuable or even just being able to discern what's human, human generated, right? Like, I think that that that's partially where we'll head in terms of like there will be a premium and whether that's expressed in stable coins or Satoshi's, there will be a premium on content or information that you can verify is human generated and not explicitly slop. Now some of that AI generated content will also sort of quote UN quote do well in terms of virality. Like we see that on Twitter today where like certain slop posts get, you know, massive views and engagement. But I think increasingly there, there will be a recognition that because basically we're going to get so flooded with that type of content that there's going to be there's going to need to be basically a way to discern what is highly valuable. And, and partly what, you know, Max Webster has talked about in the past around value, basically value driven engagements. Like instead, and this is what like Stacker news does today. It's like you can tip a post in Satoshi's and then, you know, things ranked towards the top that have gotten the most sort of monetary value ascribed to them. And so in this world where, you know, information and content is basically commoditized and can be produced in mass very cheaply and quickly, those types of sort of rank ordering, value ordering systems, I think are going to become very important. And and to your point, like I don't know, I don't think it jumps right to like Satoshi's necessarily because you know, these stablecoin networks are being built out and being adopted by these people that would would want to discern that type of value, right. It it definitely doesn't, I think like the the notion of I guess going back like I think you did, the real angle or value that's added is surfacing content that people find valuable independent if it's made by AI and somebody could put a bunch of research together using tools and that can be much more valuable than somebody that puts writes the whole piece and just doesn't have any relevance but is able to gain the system. So I think like that's just in, in general, a very interesting way that the the Internet will go now where I think majority of investors have really missed the bow. And this is where the crypto investors in triathlon has at least somewhat gone. It is like most companies with large distribution channels or just legacy modes when they look at something that's Bitcoin only makes zero sense to them. It's like, well, why would I want that for whether it's an asset, Well that's super singular in focus. My clients want more or whether it's like perpetual features or what is it called the the prediction markets. Like imagine you just had only Bitcoin. It's like, well, people have stable coins and all other things. Point being is so from a commercial perspective, you would want more than Bitcoin, meaning stable coins, but also just from a like viability of the consumer adopting it. For every person that wants to spend Bitcoin to interact on the Internet, there is going to be 100 to 1,000,000 that will rather interact with the US dollar because that's their unit of account. And so it's not to say to get rid of one or the other. And this is really where I think we have an edge is looking at, well, what are the things that have signal? What are things that won't rug? It's not offering salon and all this other crap. It's like we'll, stablecoins will be there and probably the category winner will be offering stablecoins and Bitcoin next to it and they will transition over to Bitcoin because on a long enough time, whereas I don't think anybody knows, but it's the logical progression for somebody to want somebody something that can be debased that doesn't require KYC that all the all the positives that we know exist. But it's kind of crazy to believe like, well, that would just start today and you'd get enough market share. And so I think that's just a big component and like if there we can chat about that. But if there if there is anything else, I think that ties in a lot to like gold and silver running or Argo investment, even RW as is that you're going to just see a lot of I think where the real opportunity sets are. And Tether is a great example of this. I think the Tether is one of the most sophisticated private public actors in the world. And they have had an exchange, you know, obviously pioneered Tether stablecoin at the next exchange, but then their gold allocations and then their real estate or land allocations like these are people that are getting behind tokenized gold dollars in BTC. Because if you like play out, those are the things that will have value over the course of the one next one to 10 plus years. So I think anyway, I think that is a get the lens from an investor to look at is what are the things that will persist not like a year from now or 24 months, because obviously probably Solana will be around. But when a faster, bigger, whatever more distribution blockchain comes about, it's like who's using Solana? And so you want to build things that have actual moats and needs to persist in the future in dollars. Gold and Bitcoin, I think are the lenses and very few people hold that lens because most people that like Bitcoin don't think gold is going to have any value. And most people have like gold, don't believe Bitcoin is going to have any value. And they both hate dollars because they're both, you know, short the dollar via those trades. But the reality is the majority of the market's going to take time to get to that. And so if you can integrate that across different media financial service products, I think that's really going to be some category winners. And the beauty is those can play across different world geographies just based on your distribution as an entrepreneur. Here's the conversation no one wants to have. If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin? Really think about it. The seed freeze hidden in your house, the hardware wild and the safe. That complex multi 6 setup. You understand it, but does your spouse do your children? Billions in Bitcoin are already lost forever because people did not plan for this moment. On ramps inheritance solution is built into our multi institution custody from day 1/3 institutions. Clear beneficiary designation and professional succession planning. No technical knowledge required from your heirs. And with our new flat tier pricing starting at $250 monthly, your family won't face surprise custody costs just because Bitcoin appreciate it. The same predictable fee whether Bitcoin hits 200K or 2 million. Don't leave your family's future to chance. There's strength in many. Visit on rampbitcoin.com/inheritance. That is on rampbitcoin.com/inheritance. Yeah, this is, it's a great point too. And one of the things that I mean, it's, it's a little bit of a segue too, but this is really showing the importance of Tyler really has their fingers on the third world countries and understands that people there aren't going to naturally only go to Bitcoin because of historically its volatility. And gold's been around for so long and their currencies have been so depreciated that they are naturally out of their existing currencies. And so they'll go to dollars naturally because they depreciate slower and also gold because, you know, that's what they can touch. And it's been around for a long time. And, you know, it doesn't naturally seem like Ponzi. And I with the with the news of Venezuela adopting dollars and stable coins too, is, or at least that's what Patrick Witt really is, is focusing. It's going to be interesting to see if if they do USAT or Tether or or whatever is naturally the most popular locally, which I honestly don't know. And then I also think that within the next five years or so, somebody's going to you at least try to have tokenized gold as their national currency, maybe even in collaboration with something else is their citizens naturally start to opt for USD stable coins or or something else. And they just try to latch on to any existing goal that they have or market momentum. And so naturally, I think that these types of assets will persist for a longer period of time than most people think. Yeah, I would agree with all that. I mean, I think just the just to highlight Tether a bit like I would, I would consider them, you know, probably the most, if not one of the most sophisticated actors in these markets. And to Michael's point, like if you look at what they've done in terms of their treasury allocation, sort of portfolio construction over the years, like they are planning for this future that we're describing where people continue to transact in dollars, whether that's USAT or USDT, depending on your, your local jurisdiction, maybe that varies, but increasingly tokenized gold and Bitcoin sitting right next to those things. And Paolo from, from Tether tweeted that they are building a wallet. I found this interesting because I, just a few weeks ago, they led an investment in speed wallet, which prior to this announcement I had never heard of, but they led a $8 million strategic investment into speed wallet. And then Paolo comes out, you know, a week or two later and says that they're going to build their own wallet. So they're clearly focused on like this future that you want to own basically that interface where people are interacting with either dollars, Bitcoin or tokenized gold. And so I think it's just, it's, it's worthy to just watch what Tether does because I think that they've been in this market a long time. They've been allocating, they've been building. And so I think they do have a sort of an edge, particularly given, you know, their coziness to this current administration. I think it's it's very logical to to watch what they do and sort of see the writing on the wall for where things are headed. But what did you guys make of them announcing the wallet after leading this investment? Well, I I don't necessarily know how much of speed business is a wallet. It's my understanding they're more of like like interchange, like merchant services. They power like shake pay famously integration. I'm assuming they have a wallet, but I. Think they do make a decent amount of money by just allowing people to buy Bitcoin directly into their wallet as well as just like buy like Bitcoin debit and credit cards and gift cards, things like that. Yeah. And and to Brian's broader point, I think that they have their hands tethered in so many things that like they're building a portfolio of products that are accretive to their end state goal. And that wallet makes sense in the this in the context of everything else they do, whether it's like bit Fenix from an exchange perspective or Tether to house it offer other services. The the funny part about wallets alone, unless you're providing like Privy, which is like B to B to C integrations for other fintechs to like house wallets on behalf of your clients. Like wallets in general have historically been very low. Like there's no margin really there and there's no business model there. So it's similar to like some of the other stuff tethers pushed out like hole punch and some of these other things. I think they like, they have their own R&D labs where they like to scratch their own itch. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of uptake that picks up. I think it, it'll just be generally fascinating to watch how Bitcoin proliferates in this new world when it comes to the sizing in in an individual's portfolio. And I say portfolio, but some people don't necessarily look at their net worth as a portfolio. They may have only 10 to $50,000 and it's like how much does that sit in a singular asset? And then does it make sense to park it into a mobile or like wallet that's tied to the Internet? Especially we talked about AI, like the amount of agents and things that are going to be out there trying to like, you know, basically steal people's hot assets is going to be incredible. The other thing that I think it's discounted a lot and this is kind of where I'm paying attention to like what happens in real world assets. I'm ruled assets give me a synonym for like tokenized gold, right? It's just anything that exists in the real world that is going to have some kind of like digital presence, even dollars. I would consider real world assets. I know it's not in the same context. Point being is that like I think people discount the intellectual interest and curiosity and benefits people get from just being like either allocators or diversifying, right? Like it's a crazy thing for most people just to say, I'm going to get rid of everything and put it in into BTC. And it's like a cousin of that is like Druckenmiller and some of these world class investors are saying you pick your winner and you like triple down on it. You put all your eggs in one basket. You watch that basket. Those are world class people. There's very few people that do that. So I think that's a big missed notion on the Bitcoin side. And I've been there where it's like, oh, everyone's just going to see Bitcoin, they're going to adopt it versus like people are just naturally going to go and hedge and diversify and have other assets. And that's really where the RWA stuff comes into play, whether it's real estate, equities, private equity. I think that when we start to see this world of digitized money, you'll naturally see stable coins, Bitcoin, gold, and then this other portfolio of people getting exposure to these assets. And they'll free float because of the, the lack of intermediaries required. Now, obviously that opens up a lot of counterparty risk and a lot of people have to touch the stove and they'll be a lot of, you know, bad things that happen. But the, the bet as an investor is not to like, you know, it's not wishful thinking. It's just the reality of like where the market goes. And I think that's really, you've seen this from Tranfi in general. The only other last interesting part is like, I forgot what they were called back in 17 and 18. There was like STO security token offerings, like this stuff's been tried for a while, but like there's enough of like infrastructure coupled with like administration and Tratify stepping in and very much interested that you can see how this is going to play a big theme heading into 2026 and beyond. Yeah, absolutely. One other thing I did want to mention was sort of this bit of a departure from what we were just discussing, but the sort of proposed billionaire tax in California and the exodus of talent. And so David Sachs tweeted the other day he's moving Craft Ventures, his venture firm, to Austin. I think there were a couple of other announcements to a similar effect. But you know, we kind of, we kind of talked about like, you know, adapting to this new world one, you need to assess hard assets, storing your value in in something that can't be debased. You need to embrace the, the right deflationary tools, leverage AI in the right ways. And as I would say 1/3 bucket is like jurisdictional arbitrage effectively like if you're going to be operating to the best of your abilities, you probably need to be in a jurisdiction that isn't going to try to seize your private property. And so I think that that was, you know, fully on display with if you guys watched the most recent all in where David was talking about this announcement and and basically just the the the sort of shifting tides away from Silicon Valley. There's still obviously a lot of activity there with the open a eyes of the world and more traditional venture, but you're starting to see that that slow exodus to places like Austin. Curious Michael, if you have any thoughts on this one. Yeah. I mean, I think this is incredibly fascinating. I mean, from a business perspective, for us being headquartered down here, having deep presence in Texas, specifically Austin and Dallas, it's really like we're kind of skating where the puck's going. When you think about the Capitals coming here, the entrepreneurs are coming here and then the friendliness to this asset specifically, it's incredible when you talk to to folks about what's happening, what's happening in West TX. Everyone kind of knows Midland, but there's like Abilene and other towns where Google, Amazon, Facebook, NVIDIA like they're setting up like large multi acre multi GW facilities for where we're heading, like project star date. My understanding a component of it is out there. And so you see all this growth and you naturally want to be there because I think like there's a lot of things that are this time they truly are different. Use a lot of the back, not backlash, but comments when it was a real interesting couple days with I think Peter Thiel's also setting up one of his offices down here. Obviously Elon, but for every one of these big billionaires, there's no shortage of 10 to 100 other multi millionaires and entrepreneurs that are also moving that these things will only continue. And the market, the markets like they're basically saying, well, the concentration of talent is in New York and is in San Francisco. But we're heading to this new world where from a viability, from a continuity, from not being taxed, all the things that are happening at the political level in these states, it's going to make the logical sense if you're going to stay alive and you're going to flourish that you're going to want to be in friendly jurisdictions. And so this time is different in the same way we look at this time is different with Bitcoin and gold because of the structural change that's happening. I think there's also very structural, large structural changes that are happening that will really set up Texas to to lead and then some of these other states to increasingly see a mass exodus. The UK, The, the interesting part is we can look at other countries. They're like Canaries where states, you know, they're kind of like forward-looking where you've seen what's happened in Canada, you see what's happening UK and Europe and they're like 12 to 24 months ahead of which you can see the mass amount of people that have left the UK from a millionaire perspective is going to be a common theme that's already happening, but I think will accelerate in the in the new year. Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm not going to compare the 2 yet. You can see if you squint really hard, but the number of people who left Venezuela over the past like 20 or so years because of the mass that happened down there is staggering. I think it's like 1/4 of the population. And that's like, I'm sure a lot of people had to leave behind their families, etcetera. It's obviously not quite the same situation here yet, but people will always move from their existing status quo to better situations. But it's also like a similar instance. It's probably not, you know, just because Bitcoin is better money doesn't mean everybody's going to, you know, identify instantly and and go there right away. It'll take some time and their network effects in each of those distinct places. But yeah, it's not great to see from California and it's all it's very. Positive for Texas in general. Well, and I think it's like a flywheel that compounds because we don't think of deep here, but there was also all the discussions around the fraud and like the Minnesota frauds kind of an interesting thing because you can imagine the Minnesota fraud is just pales in comparison to other large states that are very like, you know, have a bunch of SBA and other loans that are out there. And so I think there's a reason or, you know, whatever that really picked up steam on on social. But point being is what you're seeing is people with agency leave their current situations to go to other locations. And you want those people within your borders. You want to work next to those people because they produce value, right? They don't take value away. And so as that happens, well, it turns into the culture. Well, we have XY and Z. We talk about money and what's being utilized and like the proliferation of that for merchants you and then from a just pure self preservation perspective, this is something friends, you know, believe in. I don't necessarily know where it stands and how fast it happens, but as a dollar breaks down, you want the people around you to be already primed to understand some money and to be able to accept it, right? And so that's like a logical progression from an individual perspective. Like you don't even have to leave to go work at, you know, Starlink or SpaceX or any of these other firms. You can just want something better for your family. But once you get into that gravity and that culture, you naturally start to learn about XY and Z. You see this happen all the time. I've seen this happen with family that left the Northeast and they come down to Texas and then they start questioning this happen a lot during COVID when it's like, why aren't you guys doing it like this? And then when you have to leave Texas, you're like, well, why are they doing it like this? When you go back, it's just like once you get a proverbial muck for that water, you're boiling in. So I think that this is just naturally bullish for business and regional growth. And it'll be fascinating to watch how some of these like countries that have the inertia going their States and countries that have the inertia going the wrong way, how they can course correct. Because that's like the big thing is in the same way you we would tell a naysayer what would cause Bitcoin to go back, Like what would cause it to go to 0, right? Like there's this inertia, this momentum, the debasement, the decentralization, everything that's in its favor. So now there's this inertia and places like Florida and Texas and then let's take it the other side and what's happening in the exodus in California and New York as examples. What would cause it to to retreat? What would cause it for them to get their shit together and everyone to go back there And then because like, unless you can point to that, that is really where we're at as from a United States perspective of like where capital and we'll continue to go. And it's just accelerated post 2020. Yeah. And I think there's also a a recognition of, you know, whether you're talking about a specific state like California. But as it relates to like the fraud, I thought this was a good tweet from our buddy Macroscope. Like, I think there's a silver lining here in the sense that like sort of exposing a lot of the government waste, fraud and abuse. I think it naturally like if you follow that rabbit hole and you follow that down the path, like you eventually get to recognizing that government's ability to print money is what causes inflation. And the fact that there is so much waste, fraud and abuse being exposed. That basically, you know, is a light bulb moment for the average person who's never really thought about money. They've they've never really thought about the cause of inflation. But when you see very explicit. Waste occurring at the government level and you recognize that, you know, their ability to print money is, is what enables that fraud and, and waste to occur in the 1st place. I think there is a, a path here for people to start, start to, you know, really go down the, that path of understanding why hard assets are important and how you need to leverage these things to protect yourself, whether it's your specific jurisdiction or just the money itself. I think this, this was a very salient point, like the, you know, there is a, a path here for a lot of this stuff to actually send people, you know, down the right learning curve effectively. Agreed. We'll see how many people actually go and and make that. Maybe. Maybe I'm being too optimistic as always, but. Yeah, for sure. I, I, I think that, you know, a lot of people would just be like, it's, it's the Democrats or, you know, it's Elon Musk being able. It's also might just get memory hold like. A lot of this stuff might just get memory hold like in a few months, so we'll see. All right boys, anything else you wanted to cover? About an hour. Maybe one just quick thing to pull up. This is something that was on my radar. I think it's a very interesting opportunity. There's a post by Joe Lonsdale. They invested 8 BC is actually based down here in Austin as well into a company I believe it's called Main Street or something, something close to that. But the, the, the core idea is it's like roughly $10 trillion in capital and investment or enterprise value in small to medium sized businesses that will be handed off to somebody that doesn't necessarily have anybody to transition. And they invested in a firm that's going to work like on a roll of strategy that will take the time to not only underwrite, but really influence and leverage a lot of the new tools, whether it's AI software. And we'll link to this. But I thought this is really interesting because I think like it's kind of what we've been discussing here. We're not in that area. We, we would discuss at some point, maybe in the future, you can get in that space, but there's a huge opportunity to what they're describing. I think it's pretty straightforward that there's legacy businesses that don't utilize existing tools. But I think that it's almost like a fool's errand to try to do that unless you fix the money, the stack, the total capital stack, because you can go and do XY or Z, but if the money's working against you, the inflation and you don't understand that, it's not only enough to like put the money there and park some capital, but you have to understand what's happening because until you do, you don't have the right lens to build your business because you're ultimately just always swimming against the current. And so I think like that is just going to be a very large opportunity, whether it's for a business, a private equity, a fund stack, anybody building something like that or thinking about it, we'd love to chat with them because that's just a very interesting place Where we go is that real capital efficient, smart, strong businesses that are looking to persist or grow into the future, but know that they need better management, but also better capital stacks. And how do they utilize new infrastructure that's coming about? That's going to be a real interesting economic advantage, especially if you're already cash flow, you know, positive you're able to sweep those funds into a better money and go really think about roll up and acquisition and just taking more market share, you know, being defensive and then offensive. We're still so early. The market doesn't understand bitcoins that like best, you know, LLM we talked about earlier. But I do think that once the market gets there, there's going to be a lot of opportunities in that space. All right, gentlemen. Good stuff I. Think that was a good RIP to to start the new year. Thanks for joining me as always, and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks guys later. Here's what keeps bitcoiners awake. You're still securing millions of dollars the same way you secured thousands. That hardware wallet in your drawer. 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