MetaPlanet, Bond Chaos, and Bitcoin’s Ascent with Mark Yusko

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 excrement ever assembled in the history of darkness. 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. Hey, OK. I say when we sell. This week's episode is a special one. We hit new all time highs Bitcoin Pizza day in the 100th episode of the last trade. You could believe that we sat down with Mark Usko from Morgan Creek. We covered everything from the slow motion crisis in Japanese bonds to why Bitcoin is becoming the neutral reserve asset of a multi polar. World. Mark laid out how capital is fleeting the basement and dysfunction and flowing into assets with credibility and why Bitcoin sits squarely at the center of the ship. We broke down the rise of Bitcoin treasury companies to power of jurisdictional and regulatory arbitrage and how sharp operators are front running institutional capital from tariffs and capital flight out of China to the re monetization of Bitcoin as a treasury asset. This episode hits both macro and micro forces. But before we dive in, you must ask yourself, is your Bitcoin secure enough for this new era of adoption? Do you have a plan to secure Bitcoin AT110K? Hopefully, because that's where we are. But what about 150 K and on ramp? We work with investors who take Bitcoin seriously. That's why we built multi institution custody. It has no single points of failure. Full insurance coverage through Lloyds of London and inheritance that you can set up in minutes, not months. If your Bitcoin strategy spans decades, Peace of Mind is not optional, it's foundational. So head to on rampbitcoin.com or book a consultation today if you want to chat with myself, Cam, Michael, whoever or you can sign up in minutes. So feel free to reach out again, it's on rampbitcoin.com. We look forward to speaking with you soon. All right, we're live flash trade 5 people, special guest Mark Usko. And then we have the usual suspects, Brian, Michael and Tim. Tim has not been on the podcast for a couple weeks. I said this on scarce assets, but I was actually concerned. The audience was concerned, Mark, that the Tim was in jail. And I'll give you the context as to why, because last time he was on the show, he's usually a weekly, weekly host with us. He he claimed he was in the back of a taxicab, but we weren't sure if he was actually in the back of a police car. And then all the sudden we didn't hear from Tim for about two weeks. And then he's back on the last trade. So it's good to have him. Wow, the only thing that that I can come close to similar on that is so I was doing a show a while back when the whole FTX thing was going down and I was pretty outspoken about the whole FTX debacle and all the ties to, you know, everything from Epstein, you know, to Ukraine. And literally while I'm talking power went out, the lights went down. And I found out later that the guy was still live streaming and he's like, I think the black hats showed up and and took him because, you know, I was saying stuff that that they wouldn't like. But anyway, so I'm still around, all good. Well, we like it, Mark, maybe, maybe we'll get into some of these topics on the show today, but one of the things we like to do and and thank you, Mark, I didn't actually thank you for joining. So very appreciative of your time and I'm sure everyone who's listening will know this, but we did hit a new all time high today. And so I. Absolutely. And, and look how perfect on Bitcoin pizza day. And and you know, again, I, you know, I, I shouldn't do this, but I will. I am wearing, well, not only wearing the orange pants, but I'm wearing the Bitcoin pizza socks. Let's go look at that. That's you're professional and the orange. Pants, wow, you know, mount socks is are my good friends and they send me, you know, some, some special gifts every now and then and someone asked me they said, you know, do you wear those for satire? Like no, for lifestyle for lifestyle. Like in fact, I coined a new term last night. I'm sure someone else already did it, but have you seen the the salt life stickers, bumper stickers? You know, I was like SAT life. So I actually created a logo for SAT life that I'm going to try to get out there, but I'm sure someone already did it. But. Not only are we at new all time highs, Mike, you got a little echo going on. Not only are we at new all time highs, I did want to point out that this is actually the 100th episode of the last trade. So a momentous occasion on many levels. Technically one O 1 if you count the emergency pod we did with Alex Thorne when the ETFs went live. But putting that one aside, that was sort of an extra 1. This is the 100th episode, So. So thank you, Mark. Well, no, look, thank. Thank you for having me on. That is a momentous number. Congratulations. You know they say 18 days of anything is a habit, right? So if you can do anything for 18 days or 18 consecutive times, you make a habit. So 100 is is really special. There aren't many shows that to make it to 100 and and keep people's interests. So again, honored to be here. Thank you, Mark. And you know what's funny about all this is we're 100 episodes in and Michael still can't figure out how to work his his speakers and his headphone. It's that's the craziest part about it all. It's like this guy's in and out. It's so. Safe. Because I'm assuming I have audio right now and like I want to talk about pizza day and 100 deal and then Mark my thing clipped. But he was talking about his conspiracies. And it brought me back to being in New York City in the arch office talking about, you know, you mentioned Epstein. We don't have to get into that, but. Absolutely. It's, you know, look, it's everything's tied together and we know that, right? And but we don't realize how tied together things are until you really step back. And I mean, come on, It's just look at our money, right? It's got the freaking all seeing eye on it. I mean, come on. And that's, that's real. So anyway, but I digress. Well, I think the audience would enjoy if we get into some of these topics maybe later in the show, and that's an incentive for them to stick around the whole time. There you go. You know, I guess we'll get into we'll get it ripping. But I thought it was funny, Mark, that you, you showed off the orange pants and the socks and Michael didn't get to see it. So Michael will just have to leave some room for imagination. You can only imagine how good Mark looked on with those orange pants, but you know. It's it's it's funny, right, I wear and you know, I mean, so you can see him. So I wear the, the orange pants every Friday for Bitcoin Friday. So it's like, mark it, it's Thursday. Like, yes, I know it's Thursday, but my partner and I, Xavier do a a weekly show, digital currents and we just riff about, you know, AI, blockchain chips and data, the Abcds of the digital age. And so I, I wear my orange pants and I do a sock reveal every Friday, but he's going on vacation tomorrow. So we recorded yesterday and so I forgot the whole I didn't remember. We were Long story short, I said for Bitcoin pizza day, I would just wear my pants and then tomorrow I'll wear shorts. So Bitcoin Pizza day is important and people make fun of Laszlo because, you know, he gave away 10,000 Bitcoin for for two pizzas. If he would have kept them, he'd have a billion won. Yeah, sure. But that transaction is one of, and it's not the only, but it's one of the key points that allowed us to get where we are. I, I say this all the time, the miracle of Bitcoin is not that we just went from 74K to 111 K. It's not that we went from 10,000 to to 60,000 or even 1000 to 10,000. The miracle is went from 0.0003 to a dollar. That's the miracle. The fact that it actually caught that the technology actually caught on and and doing a transaction was what we needed. And we're we're a year in right. It was May 22nd, 2010. So we're more than a year in, you know, a year away from how Finn saying running Bitcoin. And so it's, it's pretty important. And he did create also the first GPU miner, which pretty big deal. So lots of contributions to to our stacks. Mark, I don't even know where to begin there, so I'm gonna work backwards. The zero to 1. Yes, everything there. We talked a little bit about our Bitcoin denominated venture fund. You'll be happy to know that the total amount were raised or raising is 522 BTC. It's a little Easter egg because most people don't know that you I've never shared this with the team and definitely would not with you. You used to be on one of my most favorite podcasts, Saturday Mornings with Ippolito, Ippolito and you guys had to, you know, bow out. So we had to, you know, step in to hopefully fill a little bit of that void. But that was a very high signal Saturday morning mix of crypto and Tradfi. Well, I, I, I appreciate that. Like I say, you can still listen. Every Saturday morning I tweet out digital currents now. So it's not Mike and I anymore, but it's my partner Xavier. And you know, X is a little older than Mike. So the thing Mike and I had was the generational, you know, gap that we could, could exploit and take advantage of. And we had, you know, good chemistry and, and, and it was fun. But X and I, it's not quite the same because it's not just digital asset focus, because we do talk about boring stuff like chips, although to me, chips are beautiful right now. They're one of the most important things on the planet. But that said, you can still get your Saturday morning coffee fix if if you want or people could listen to this so. I was, I, I was grinning, Mark, because Tim was just standing there in front of Trump Tower for for like a minute or two hoping someone would notice. But Mark, I actually was a listener. To that show, I'm sure Tim is just there to pick up his stack from the Dominarius Bank or Dominus Bank or whatever it is that Eric started down down in the basement of of Trump Tower. Exactly. Well, yeah, Mark, I was a listener to that show as well. So I did, I did enjoy it and I will have to check out Digital Currents. So I would love to talk about, let's talk about the bond market real quick if we can, because you know what, what maybe one of the craziest things happening right now is the divergent between the JGB market, the Japanese government bonds and the yield spiking there. And then of course, metaplanets price action this week. And so we're seeing similar things too in the US, right, with the US bonds selling off, yields are spiking once again and bitcoins ripping. And so I mean, that's a, that's a big question. It's a loaded question. There's a lot of directions we can go in. But I guess like high level, what do you make of the Japanese bond market and and what's going on there? It's, it's a classic case of, of supply and demand and some, some unwinding of some, some very large leverage in the, in the global system. So look, most people don't think about government bonds like ever. Most, most people just don't until they get older and then they love bonds. Old people love bonds because they're safe. But the average young person doesn't think about bonds ever. So the thing about it that's interesting, like if you ask someone in college, what do you want to be? I want to be a I want to be an equity manager. I work on Wall Street. OK. You want to be a high yield bond manager? What the hell are you talking about? You want to be a convertible bond manager? What the hell are you talking about? You want to do treasury arbitrage? What the hell you talk? The bond market is actually orders of magnitude bigger than the stock market. The currency market is orders of magnitude bigger than that. So, you know, the equity market, which is what everybody says they want to be, I want to be a, you know, hedge fund manager or portfolio manager is actually a pretty small portion of total markets. And government bond markets are critical to a well functioning, you know, global society And, and most importantly is the, the, the, the big three, right, U.S. Treasuries, Japanese JGB, Japanese government bonds and European Central Bank bonds or government bonds. It's a little trickier over there 'cause they kind of a confederation without a union, but or union without a confederation. But anyway, so the US is important because we are the world reserve currency now. We've only been the world reserve currency since 1944. You know, Americans are funny Americans, American exceptions. Like we, I joke, we're like Notre Dame football fans. You know, you get the Notre Dame sign behind me. We remember a past that never was. Like you ask any Notre Dame football fan, you know how often you win. Oh, we win every year. We haven't won since 1988, but people remember the 40s when we did win every single year because we had a team of 28 year olds that we recruited back from the war and we beat up on, you know, College of Osteopathic Surgeons or whatever. So the key is that Americans think we've been in charge forever, but they don't know history. I mean, the world reserve currency used to be the little Portuguese currency for about 75 years in the 1500s and then it passed to the Spanish when they took over the Portuguese and then it went, and this is the crazy part. Then it went to the Netherlands. How the hell does the country the size of Ohio conquer the Spanish Armada? Like like seriously, how did they do that? They invented the problem we have and the reason the bitcoin's so awesome. They invented central banking, right? Sixteen O 7. The first central bank was well, what's a central bank? Well, a bank was invented by literally the Knights Templar, the Portuguese monks with the Red Cross, right? Who thought walking around with bags of gold while they were on their, their quests, not such nice task. But while they're out, you know, looting and pillaging, they could be robbed. So they would leave the gold in the bank and they would have notes, paper notes that that allowed them to have a claim on on those assets. But the problem is some of those nights would go out and never come back. So the banks, you know, maybe we should lend this out and fractions or banking was born. So but the thing about fractional reserve banking, that's actually a good thing, even though Maxis hate it is there actually is some there there at the bottom of the, you know, rehypothecated stack. There is actually is some value. Whereas in central banking, you push a button back then you you roll the printing press and you literally printed money. So the Dutch created this printing press and they just printed money like it was nothing. And they passed it out to mercenaries and they built a mercenary force that conquered the most powerful fighting force in the world at that time. So the Netherlands became the global power. They had the world reserve currency, which is unfathomable. And then Napoleon, you probably heard of him. He came in and he conquered them. And then some of the clan that started the the Dutch bank moved to the UK and they set up the Bank of England and they financed steam ships and then they became the most powerful Navy. And then we invented nuclear ships and, and we became the most powerful Navy. So that's where we are today. But the problem with the dollar and the problem with bond markets, we had an auction earlier this week where they went to auction off bonds and no one showed up. There are no bids and like no, come on, like no bids, like 0 bids, like literally no bids. And we've only seen that one other time in modern history. And that was right during the global financial crisis. You know, people own stuff and they would try to sell it and there were literally no bids. Now think about it, if, if there's no bids for an asset, what's what's the value? What's the price? Theoretically 0, but you can't market to 0 because that would cause a calamity. So what happens when you, if you didn't have a central bank, then you would be in trouble. You'd basically be bankrupt, right? You'd have this asset, you want to sell it. Nobody wants to buy it. You're done with the central bank. And the US and Japan and Europe, the big three have this. They can literally push a button because you don't print money anymore. You push a button and ones and zeros magically populate and they just bought all the bonds. So what's happening? So there's a long answer to your question about Japan. What's happening in Japan is for 40 years their interest rates collapsed to zero. They had no economic growth. They had deflation, the opposite of inflation, yet their money supply was. I mean, the Japanese make American money printers look like, I don't know what's, what's a, what's a lesser token than than Bitcoin? They make them look like Litecoin programmers. Not that there are any of those, but they're pikers. The Japanese money money printers, particularly the last central banker before the newest central banker. So Kurodasan printed so much yen that the yen went from ¥80 to a dollar in 2011 to 160, right? Literally lost half its value because they printed so many yen. Yet the average person in Japan didn't feel it. Well, why? Well, because the central bank bought up everything. They bought up all the government bonds. They bought up all the ETFs. They own like 54% of the ETFs and 70 some odd percent of the government bonds. So they they're print pushing a button to print money magically out of thin air and they're buying these real assets and that compressed interest rates. Well, now here's the tricky part. Well, then these smart hedge fund guys come along and say, you know what, I can borrow at 0 and I can buy assets that yield positive and I can borrow a lot. So I can lever up 10/20/30 fifty 100 times. If it's in the bond market, you can do it 100 to 1 leverage, 1% collateral. So that was called Japanese carry trade and that was going on. As long as interest rates stay zero, it's all good. UAA sign comes in. So UAA sign is the new central banker and he said that does not make sense. I am an academic and I think we need to let the yield curve determine the normal price. So no more yield curve control, no more fixing of rates, no more stepping in to buy all the bonds. Boom. So now you have to unwind all this leverage. And so now people are selling not only Japanese government bonds, but U.S. Treasury bonds. So remember the rumor when when Trump started the tariff nonsense, right? We've had three big uses of tariffs in the history of the Republic. 1823 ended in depression, 1930 ended in depression. 2025, not saying we're going to end in depression, but, but that was the last two times Tariffs are bad. They're they're dumb. They've always been dumb. They're never a good idea. They're a tax on your local citizens. And Trump keeps saying, oh, well, you know, for 100 years we'd had tariffs, right? Because until 1913 we didn't have income taxes. So yes, tariffs funded the government. The government was small and as soon as government got big, tariffs became a bad idea. And 1930 they caused depression. So tariffs are dumb. But what happens with tariffs is you've got this, this decrease of global activity. Well, if you have a decrease of global activity and global growth, what does that do for for your economy? What makes it worse? Well, that's all fine because my real plan is I want to crash the economy to lower interest rates. Because see what Japan did, right? They had all this debt and they just kept crashing their economy and interest rates went down. So it's like, OK, so you want to literally intentionally crash the economy to lower interest rates? OK, dumb idea, but but fine, we got to refinance the debt. Here's the problem. What's happened to interest rates since Liberation Day? Such a fucking stupid name. Liberation Day. OK, I mean he did. He fancy himself Will Smith from Independence Day or something. I mean it's just so dumb. But OK, interest rates, you want to go down, great. But what's happened? Boom, straight up. Why one unwinding of Japanese carry trade. So they're having to pay back their yen based loans, sell bonds. That's bad. More important, Chinese. So this whole trade thing is supposedly about us having the leverage against the Chinese. Really. So in 2016, when Trump got elected the first time, remember he wanted to do tariffs and we did tariffs because he was going to save American jobs and reduce the US trade deficit, right? What happened to both? Neither one happened. We didn't say we didn't bring any American jobs back home. Like he came to North Carolina and there's this clip of him. You say I'm going to get your job back. He's like pointing in the chest of this woman, Donald, her, her job's never coming back. She works in textile mill. It's gone. It's never coming back. You could retrain her and get her another job, but her job's never coming back. So we're supposedly going to lower the trade deficit. It actually doubled. I'm sorry. No, it went up 50%, up 50%, not double up 50%. Why? Because we push a button and print worthless pieces of paper in exchange for cheap stuff that makes our life better. We like cheap stuff because we are a service based economy. We're not a manufacturing based economy. So if you print money to buy stuff, no matter how much more of a tax you put on that stuff, you're not going to change the deficit. So Chinese are like, bring it Donald, because here's the thing, we own a bunch of your treasuries. We want to have a weak currency, not a strong currency, because if you're a mercantilist, if you sell stuff, you want a weak currency, not a strong currency. So they're like, come on, you know, you know, the anglerfish, you know, the thing at the bottom of the ocean, he's got that little shiny thing. And so there's this, this famous trader, John Arnold, right? He worked in Enron and he became a natural gas traders, one of the most legendary traders of all time. He turned like 100K into, you know, many, many billions. And I was with him on do you remember the trade there was when oil was was collapsing was going from 100 bucks down to 26. And there was this trader, this big hedge fund that was losing his ass and he kept thinking, you know, oil and gas prices were going to go back up. So I was happened to be in the office when it was announced that this hedge fund and this guy, poor guy Brian, lost $6 billion in a day. And I said, John, how you feeling? This is happiest day of my life. What do you mean? What do you mean the happiest day of your life? He says, you know, the anglerfish. He says, that's me. I'm just sitting here with my little thing and there's this guy and he's just coming closer and closer and I'm going to eat him. And he ate him. So that's what China's doing, right? They're like, come on, Donald, Come on, Donald. So they're selling their treasuries, which is pushing rates up and forcing the Treasury, the Fed, to print more dollars, which means our beloved Bitcoin becomes more valuable. So that's a long ass answer to your your simple question, but I love it. History. We got some history lessons. We got some reasons why you shouldn't be an academic and maybe you should be a student. To that Amen, To that real world, better. 111 just like before we transition, I think something that I didn't necessarily know and I felt a little naive because I was previously murk at a Wework pre the SoftBank investment. So my story in Bitcoin is going down the rabbit hole. I was lighting money on fire. Oh, for sure, for sure. Look, look, Masa mad genius, right? One of the things that that he does super well and it's, it's actually he would, he would brittle it, bristle at this, but it's kind of more of a Chinese trait. The Chinese plan in decades like, you know, 30 years, 50 years, they don't plan in days or weeks or months. And Masa has literally has 100 year plan. And I got to know him 100 years ago. I'm old. So 100 years ago when they had a very small venture fund and before they became the big vision fund, but they had this very small venture fund and they had an office in, in Silicon Valley and, and they had a partner there. And, and, and he would talk about Moss's 100 year plan and his hundred year vision. Like no one talks about 100 years. And So what, what he's always had an amazing capacity to do was, was kind of see the future, not in the sense of like exactly what was going to happen, but but but the trends. And that's a skill that not that many people have. And, and I think a lot of it comes from just taking time to think like, you know, in the old days at IBM, every person's office had a little plaque with the word think. And you were supposed to every once in a while, you know, put your feet up on the desk and, and just think not, not be doing stuff that, that distracts you, but, but think. And so I, I, my very first pitch when I started Morgan Creek 20 years ago, I went down to this guy in Charlotte and he'd made $300 million fortune. And, and we walk in the office and it's a kind of a shabby office. And he walks in as a little guy in a bow tie, very Southern gentleman. And we're like, you know, we'd love to know the story of, of, of how you made your fortune. He says, well, you see that map on the wall, right? Yeah. It's like this tattered kind of yellowing map. It had these red circles like a, like, a, like a target, like a bullseye. And he said, well, I figure out the path of progress and I buy land, 1 circle outside. And I wait. And we're like that. That's it. And they're like, yeah, that's it. Like you made $300 million doing that, that that's OK. That's pretty good. So if you can intuit just the direction, you don't even have to be exactly right, but but you should get ahead of the direction. So what Masa's very good at. And so, so he, he built a fortune with, with his core company, but also with raising these funds that would invest in these innovations. And we made a ton of money in the early SoftBank funds on all kinds of innovation around solo MO, social, local mobile in that in that period. And then you know, there's the famous Alibaba trade and we did that with him. And so we did a bunch of things, $0.10 and other things. So Fast forward to today. So he again sees the future, he sees what's happening in digital and he goes out and and raises shit ton technical term of money from Saudi and all those other places for the vision fund. Now my only criticism, and it's not of him because it's probably not him personally, but it's true of pretty much every organization I've ever seen. Size is the enemy of alpha. Every financial organization that gets big, save a couple. And I'll, I'll tell you the, the, the few exceptions, as they get bigger, they get less good. And the reason is there's a, there's a, a guy, he was a, a dookie and I don't really like the dookies, but he's a dookie. He's a smart guy and he had a, a venture fund out in California and he gave me this and I've told the story. I don't know hundred, 200 times. He said it's like families. When you're a young family and you want to go out to dinner, right? You save up for a few months, you drop the kids with the in laws and you go out and you split an appetizer, you split an entree. You have, you know, 2 desserts because dessert's great. You have 7 cups of coffee. It lasts 4 hours and it is glorious when you get a little wealthier. And the reason is because you don't have any money, right? So you have to budget, you have to plan. When you get a little wealthier, you want to go out to dinner. You're like, let's just go to McDonald's and it sucks because you can't. And so we work is a great example, right, which is the idea of a fractional space perfectly good. Now, kind of like what happened with global crossing at the idea of of selling fractional pieces of undersea cables is a good idea. But to then extrapolate that to the extreme and say, I know that square inch real estate, so we should get this big multiple. No, it's a commodity. I mean, it's it's a piece of, you know, cable. So I think the same thing's true is if you can turn a building into a fractional unit and sell the space, that's not technology. Now you may have an app that makes scheduling it better, but it's just still real estate. And so you looked at the other companies that were similar where they took buildings and fractionalized them and sold them and the multiples were off. So my argument is that when you have too much capital to deploy, you lose discipline. And so maybe to me what happened is instead of going down the usual innovation path and taking advantage of some of the early, you know, things like why didn't he make a big investment in Coinbase or you know, other things? So that's that's my my philosophy on that. But now you go to today with 21 cap. So he has some Bitcoin, right? He owns some Bitcoin and Tether owns a bunch of Bitcoin. And there's this relationship between Cantor and Tether. Now, again, with the risk of the lights going out, there's a reason Tethers located in the Bahamas. There's a reason that the banks they utilize are the same banks that got in trouble infinite time go just look at the banks and look at their history. It's not good. There's a reason that FTX was in the Bahamas right next door. So it's it's all connected. There's a reason that Cantor's CEO became the secretary of commerce. There's a reason that Cantor's the one doing this. So all that and the lights didn't go out. So I'm OK, but that strategy, right, Bitcoin treasury strategy, it's a good strategy. Now how good is it? Like we know it worked for micro strategy. Now strategy B, which will eventually be strategy bank because I think like Coinbase, they'll apply for a banking license and that's, those will be the banks of the future. Although I can't call them banks because the banks get pissed off. But how much room is there for this? And I, I always love it. Like we're going to buy way more Bitcoin than the micro strategy than strategy. Why are you comparing yourself to them? I mean, because it's it the model is pretty simple, right issue stock, dilute yourself, buy more Bitcoin, increase Bitcoin per share Bitcoin yield pretty simple. Look, I'm I'm a board member of metaplanet. I'm investor in metaplanet glory Hallelujah. I mean, this is this is amazing. I didn't expect to turn into GameStop too, which is just entertainment, free entertainment. But look, Simon has execute Simon. The team have executed Florida State. I mean, look, Michael Saylor now he's the new Michael, right? You say Michael usually think Jordan, but now it's Saylor. It's like you want to be known by your first name. That's like a really good thing in life, right? It's like you want to and if you own a company, you want to become a verb, Google and just Google it. It's a pretty good thing. So get a long answer to your question. I think there's a reason Tether and Cantor are involved, there's a reason Moss is involved, and there's a reason Trump's always trotting Masa in to announce all this big money. Remember when he said they were going to invest $600 billion in AI? How much money that got spent? Like like 0? So they're good at announcements, less good at at so. But I do think 21 caps 'cause I, you know, Jack Molars is a good, good pick for the CEO. Although what is it about the name Jack that they think they can be CEO of two companies? Like I'm, I'm an owner of Strike and I'm kind of conflicted here. I'm like, OK, I know you're not going to have to do a lot at 21 cap. I mean, you show up for a couple annual meetings, but I want you to fix Strike first because I own some of that. But anyway, I'm not sure I answered your question but. Mark, Mark, one thing. Yeah. I just wanted to go back to pull out something you said in there that, you know, how much room is there for all of this. This is something we've talked about on the show the past few weeks of like at some point there is some saturation of everyone implementing this strategy. And then how do you differentiate? It's probably by taking on more leverage most realistically. Now, I think there is an interesting sort of jurisdictional arbitrage here. So maybe you can speak to like why Metaplanet is actually arguably very different than like a bunch of companies in the US doing this and just copying Sailor, and maybe just speak to some of the sort of more nuanced differences with Metaplanet. So it's great question, Brian. So look, Metaplanet had a huge advantage in in a number of different ways and the jurisdictional 1 and the and the regional 1 is a really important one. So they were first in Asia broadly. Now, you know, now Jason's going to do his thing with Indonesia and Malaysia and so other parts of Asia, Southeast Asia, but but they were first and they were saying, look, we're going to be the micro and they were, they were blatant about it. We're going to be the MicroStrategy of Asia. Well, why Japan? Well, Japan had a very interesting arbitrage in that if you held Bitcoin individually, 52% tax if you own it in the ETF wrapper, which were illegal or in the metaplanet wrapper, 20% capital gains. So huge arbitrage. There's also Japan, culturally, it's part of the reason why someone like Masa, who's a little bit of a maverick, can do so well because the rest of the country, the rest of the the, the, the society so rules fine. Like my son is super, he's 14, so I have two older kids and I have a caboose. And so we're getting do it all over again. So we went, we asked him where he wants to go and he's big into video gaming, manga and anime. He's like Japan. I want to go to Japan and miss a kid who literally he would eat sushi every day of his life if he could. So for spring break, we go to Japan, not where most people would pick to go to spring break, but but we went and my wife is a very type A tight ship. She gets shit done. We're perfect, but I don't get anything done. I'm ADD she's not so together we're perfect. And she's like, I found my people. I she found, I found my people. These people, they, they, they don't cross the street when the light is red. They never litter. It's unbelievably clean. It's orderly, it's beautiful. I, I, this is amazing. And so culturally, Mavericks have an advantage because the team will follow them and do exactly what they say, exactly how they say it to the to perfection and look at their engineering and look at their innovation and look at Sony. And I mean, just look at history. Japan is is pretty good at stuff. So that's so so Simon, who is can people, you know, like, oh, you know, he's just that that guy behind the the monkey PFP like you like, yes, we share a common bond through through on chain monkey and that's kind of how we met actually. But but he's a very, very Harvard edge smart and super smart, like crazy smart, Harvard educated Goldman equity derivatives trader who then decided to get into hotel management and that didn't go the way he wanted. I was like, what's a better strategy? This? So not only does he have the brain power to take the strategy and execute it Florida State, he has a team that culturally like a CFOI love this guy. I mean, he's like stuff that the five of us could never do. Like you need to get a document that's 100 and 717 pages. It has to be done by 9:00 in the morning. Not a minute later. This guy gets this stuff done. And so he's built a team that is executing Florida State. And they understood the regulatory challenges of doing something that's pretty maverick. And so they befriended. And there's there's always luck, right? In every great story, there's luck. One of the lucky things the regulator at at the Stock Exchange that was assigned to them was a Bitcoin. Like you can't make that up, right? I mean that that's just, that's just like, I don't mean that he did anything special or bent any rules. But I have lots of experience as an RAA with the SEC coming in and when Kenser was in charge, they were not bitcoiners and they were not friendly and they were not open to new ideas. So anything we did, we had to cross our TS and dot our is two or three times. If if the person you're working with is friendly and you say, what do I need to do? He'll actually tell you. He won't say guess. Like, you know the famous joke about taxes? You know, the IRS says you owe me money. Like, OK, how much do I owe you? Guess I don't know 10,000 wrong jail. Like if you know how much I owe you, why don't you tell me? Why do I have to go through this nonsense of trying to figure it out? So a bunch of things conspired to to make the matter. Now, Metaplan also was early in the me too. And so they had a head start. And we all know people like this there. There's certain people, when you meet them, you're drawn to them, right? They have a charisma, they have an energy and, and we all know people like that. Simon's just one of these people. Everyone who meets him is, is just drawn to him. And influencers were drawn to him. And so he got lots of great press and then it and then he hired some really smart marketing people to foment that. And so if you think about just the amount of coverage, this is a little teeny tiny stock up until the last couple weeks, it got way more pressed than it should have because of this, this energy. So that's again, a lot of things about it. But it started with, Brian, your point on regulatorily there was an arbitrage. It's better to own Bitcoin in this wrapper than to own it directly, as crazy as that sounds, you know, not your keys, not your coins. It's just it was better if you're a Japanese citizen, you couldn't buy ETFs. They were against the law. Still, they're they're coming. And there are other companies that have actually bought Bitcoin too, but that's the second difference. They had all the advantages of Japan and taxation but they didn't have Simon and leadership matters like micro strategy without Sailor. I don't know if you've ever watched much of Sailor but his brain works differently than other people's. Have you seen the clip of him talking about Apple from like 13 years ago? His brain works differently right? I mean everything he said was so logical now but 13 years ago people said no. He wrote a book. He bought a book 15 years ago predicting Fang like he's like my I mean, he he sees things differently. And so leadership matters. And that's the second or so. So you have to there's there's so long winded way again of saying Julia Robertson, very famous hedge fund manager, was a mentor for me for many, many years. God rest his soul. I mean, changed my life in so many ways when people would leave Tiger and think about this, the people that worked for Julian now run roughly 1011% of all the long short money in the world. It's a pretty amazing stat, right? So how did that happen? Why was he so much better at identifying talent, training talent, backing talent to gift? In fact, if if people cared, there's a book called Hedge Hunters which talks about it. And I'm in there actually, but talking about how to find people like Julian, not that I am one of those people, but how to find them. But he had this great line. When people would leave, they'd say, hey, Julian, you know, do you have any advice? It's like, yeah, make sure in the first two years you get lucky, right? Great advice. Hard to follow. So the luck piece matters, but Thomas Jefferson said it best. I'm rather fond of luck. Seems the harder I work, the more of it I have and so and you know, we've all heard, you know, luck is where preparation meets opportunity and all that good stuff and it's true but it's not all true There's there's an element of chance, there's an element of luck. There's an element of charisma there's an element because we've all met Goldman people we don't like not everybody opposed to Goldman is charismatic. We all met, you know, assholes, but that's true of all kinds of places. So having great leaders with charisma who can articulate a vision and articulate a strategy and do it in a way like I don't you can't, you can't coach that aura. And now you're going to say this guy's weird, but I'm I'm serious. Aura is real and and aura draws people to those people. You're dripping you're you're dripping with the aura. So don't don't worry. We we feel the aura. The one thing that I want to share to the new Jackson Jackson's has his hands full to to navigate us today. But one thing before we jump to where he wants to go is there's a common thread that you're managing through, whether it's Simon Saylor, Masa, Julian Robinson, and it reminds me of a margin call when whatever his name is talks about it. He goes, you know, in order to succeed in this business, you either got to be first, you got to be smart, or you got to cheat. And he's like, I don't cheat and I'm not the smartest. And so it's like that. That scene around corners is just a component. You got to have the taste and charisma and all that, but you have to be able to have an instinctual feel. I liken it to like rebounders where you can't actually understand why a rebounder captures the ball. They're just always around the ball and it's similar to what you're driving through. That is such that's such a brilliant synopsis of of everything we're just talking about. And it's and and the rebounding is is perfect. Dennis Rodman right? The Bulls when Michael was the only player on the Bulls, they sucked and he'd score 46 points a game and they were horrible. Worst team in the league. Scotty comes along and they were better. Michael only scored 35 points a game and they were better, but they still didn't win any championships. When Horace and ultimately Rodman came, they won championships 'cause you needed the rebounder and Rodman. You look at Rodman, you're like, what? It's not a basketball player. He looks like a thug. He was always exactly in the position and people would say, how is that possible? He's like, I watch so much film, I know the moment the guy releases where it's going to bounce. That was not the answer anyone was expecting, right? No one was expecting that. He was watching the spin of the ball coming up the guy's hand to know when it hit the rim. It was going to do the opposite and go to the left side. And look, that that was Gretzky. Gretzky's dad had the famous line, right? You don't want to skate to where the puck is. You want to skate to where the puck is going. And if you watch Gretzky play or any great hockey player, they're always in that spot. You're like, how did how did that happen? It's because in in chess, it's called, I can't remember the German word for it, but it's the move before the move. OK, so you don't win on your move. You win on the moves that you make, setting up the move that you're going to win. And the rebounding is such a great example because people don't think of rebounding as the most important skill. They like shooting. They like, you know, dribbling, but it's getting possession. I got I watched this, you know, someone said, what am I doing for fun these days? All I do is today is now let's watch lacrosse from February to June. I watched a lot of lacrosse because my son plays and I'm I'm fan of college and this is the big weekend. So I watched a lot of lacrosse. Lacrosse. It all comes down to your Fogo face off, get off and like, what do you mean? Like you have a guy who does the face off and then he runs off the field. That's all he does because if you can win possession, you control and so and look. Funny you. It's funny you it's funny you talk about possession because there's a funny anecdote. We had that dinner. We were talking about what we do and you're interested in the multi institution. And I look back when we incorporated was in November of 17 when the price of Bitcoin was 16 K. And either you're an idiot or you know something because everyone else thought Bitcoin's dead. But why? Custody matters so much and nobody really picks it up and it won't end up all of coin bases. If you have possession of the asset, then everything else is the direction of it surrounding it all. No, I mean, and again, and so you and I had the had the similar bonding experience that I had with Simon. I mean, I haven't known Simon my whole life. I've known him for a little more than a year. We met literally because of Unchained Monkey. But there are certain people you meet and you have an instant connection. And part of it is authenticity, part of it is honesty and integrity. Part of it is common interest that there are all kinds of different reasons. But we did have really interesting conversations pretty quickly about it. Was the Epstein stuff that really got me, but that's a different. That's a different. But, but it's, and I wouldn't bring that up with most people, right? But when you feel comfortable with somebody, then you can have that conversation because a lot of times people are afraid to talk about what they really want to talk about, right? Because and it's true of investing, right? Most investments are pretty lousy because people don't do what they really want to do. They do what they think everyone else thinks they should do. And there's actually Barton Biggs, you know, was a famous strategist and Morgan Stanley, again, God rest his soul. He wrote the best 2 pages on this ever in 1994. Five called group Stink and and you still get your hands on it. And, and what it talks about is there's a line and they attribute it to Buffett, but I don't think Buffett really said it, but that an investment committee should be an odd number. And three is too many means one, because individuals make better decisions doesn't mean they're right all the time, but they're better decisions cause groups tend to average. Like if I asked this group what's the best restaurant in New York, I would get McDonald's. Like, no, I know that you like Indian food and you like seafood and you like pasta. Why don't you give me what you really like? Oh, I don't, I don't want to say that because that, you know, other people are not like Indian food or someone might not like my shawarma. No, give me what you like. But groups, they just want to stay in the group. They just want to stay. And so you look at boards, you look at at endowments, foundations, pension funds. It's just like, did you see the UBS thing today? I did. See that? What's that? Other thing here's our recommended asset allocation for rich people not for the average person, but for rich people less than 1% commodities, less than 2% gold and precious metals. Are you joking? It's it's like 6040 with a dash of salt. That's that's your best work? No, that's. Yeah, and this basically ties down to something that most people don't talk about. We haven't shared it, but we shared a lot on this pod is this is effectively why most of the Bitcoin is held by individuals because they're a consensus of one, maybe their wife, but they don't have to go to a board and have to go to, you know, investment committee to get the thesis. So, and this is the kicker why how we look at the market is it'll always be driven by the individual because they're by definition the most sophisticated because they've been in the market the longest. So it's like a whole flipping of the traditional archetype of like, you know, tratify Wall Street, smart money's going to drive this industry. It's actually going to be the opposite. And nobody really talks about that enough. No. Again, it's such a fantastic insight. And again, the nice thing about the age in which we live, right, The Internet age. In the olden days when I was growing up, that information existed, but it wasn't in a nice form like that. And in fact, if it wasn't an Encyclopedia Britannica, it really didn't exist. So finding that information was really tough. And in fact, if you think about investing in that environment, it was all about information. Access. To your point earlier on the quote, right, you either have to be first, you have to cheat, which remember Wall Street, right? How did Bud Fox get his information? He cheated, right? He would go in people's office and look or he would follow the guy around. That wasn't cheating. That was actually just good diligent. In fact, I love telling a story. There was this hedge fund manager, amazing guy. He was the first one to buy Apple big. This is 20 plus years ago and his thesis was, it was like single digits back then. And his thesis was they're going to sell a million iPods this year, right? You know, the iPod, the little music thing and the street was like it a couple 100K. And I said, Brett, how do you know they're going to do a million? He says hired a bunch of college kids and I sent them to the mall and asked them to ask the stores how many they're selling. And I said no, no way. You know, they're not going to tell. He says, Mark, are you joking? You asked a minimum wage person their opinion. They give you everything. They're like pulling out the books. They're giving you all the info like, Oh my God. And then they passed regulation FD, as my friend in Boston says, regulation feckin disaster. And you couldn't do that anymore. That was illegal. I'm like, why is that illegal? That's just good diligence. And it's like not everybody has the same thought. And so like today, you're not even allowed to ask a CFOA question unless everyone else can ask the question. It's like, no, that's stupid anyway. But but the the point about that is that information access used to be the most important. Then it became processing power because information became ubiquitous. And then it was how fast can you process? So Millennium and Rentec and Citadel and that's what that was my exception to the rule. So if you draw a curve that makes a smile and size, no size like this and success like this, every industry, whether it's oil companies, restaurants, asset management firms, there are great small firms and a few great large firms. There are no great mid sized firms. There just aren't. And it's because when you're small, you're young, you're nimble, you're hungry, you got something to prove, so you're great. But then you start to grow and you got offices and you got people. And the problem is 85% literally fall off the bottom of the smile. They just vanish. They disappear. A small number get to become Citadel. Now why is Citadel so good? Citadel so good because Ken Griffin, probably the smartest person I've ever met, and I, I was lucky. I got paid for 20 years to travel around the world and talk to the smartest people in the world. That was my job. It was awesome. I mean, Nobel laureates and every hedge fund manager, every real estate manager, every, everyone you've ever, we got paid to go talk to him and give him money. So amazing. But Ken, probably #1 because Ken Griffin is a better trader than all his traders. He's a better lawyer than his general counsel. He's a better accountant than his CFO. He's a better tech guy than his head of tech. He's just better at everything. I mean, I asked him a question one day. I was in his office and I asked him a question. You know, you have this reputation for having amazing talent. And part of the reason is he has two people full time. All they do 8 hours a day is interview people primarily from their competition. I love this part OK, he interviews people all day. He doesn't hire very many of them, but he says it's amazing what people will tell you in an interview. So I learned all about my competition, what they're doing and how to get ahead of them. So, but more importantly, he says you don't get a performance with B players. So you have to hire A players. In fact, you have to hire A plus players. And they went through and he wrote out on the board. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but there were no, you know, quick cameras back then. He gave me like a half million dollar, you know, McKinsey consulting thesis on talent acquisition and retention and in it was a master class. And that was on a random question. The only other person I've ever seen close to mental acuity of that was Bill Clinton, who I don't really like as a person, but as a as a brain is this is amazing. He, he was, he was the, the headliner for a UBS. It was actually UBS. So I was the warm up act. So I was on with a panel and then he came as the headliner and I got to shake his hand. That's the only time I ever met him. And talk about charisma in that 5 1/2 seconds. We were best friends. It was, it was unbelievable, the power. I was like texting my wife. I'm going to leave my job and go work for the Clinton Foundation, which I'm glad I didn't because it's bad. But you heard it's a body. Count Mark, I heard there's a body count around there. There's. A body count? Yeah, that's Hillary. It's not Bill. It's Hillary. It's all. Hillary Mark real quick before before transitioning, because you were on the the Kenny Griffin note, there's something notable that to your point, it's my understanding that he gave very early made everyone read a book called Hardball and the the book the the essence of the book is are you planning to play? Are you planning to win? Which I think is like summarizes kind of what you're describing when it comes to competition. And if to go to cultural parallels. If anybody's watched the movie Rounders and there's a there's this quote there that always stuck with me, but I never understood he goes as Canada Wild Bill would say it's immoral to let a sucker keep its money. And I knew there was some truth to it, but it sounds very like cynical. But in Hardball, it's effectively explaining why it's immoral to let your competition get away with anything because that's how like actually society progresses is you out compete them and it forces them to either get better or or die. And that's how we move. And that's effectively what's embodied like him being the best and all of those things. And we can't find that book and it just showed up in my house the other day. So I'm excited to actually read it. So important and such and it, it is genius. And I ask people all the time, right? Like I just think so my wife and I endowed a scholarship at Notre Dame where we went that copies because, you know, great artists, good artists borrow, great artists steal. So why recreate the wheel? I just copied the Morehead Kane program here at North Carolina, which all they did is copy the Rhodes program with Cecil Rhodes. And and the whole idea is to identify the very best people because if you bring the very best people to your school, then you'll have a better school because the best teachers want to teach the best kids and self perpetuating mechanism. And so the way I recruit them is I asked them to give me 5 words to describe themselves and and people said that's not how you pick my head is because I'm not allowed to do Myers Briggs, which would be a better way to do it. And but the five words I can tell who is going to be the type of iconoclastic rule breaker, not rule follower. And Long story short, I love, I still remember it like it was yesterday. The very first one application I ever read the the five words, the kid, the kid said, my first word is Renaissance man. And I'm not afraid to hide behind the hyphen. I know it's 2 words, but but I'm going to cheat here. And I'm like, OK, perfect. Yeah. And he's like, look, I want to study history and the classics and, and apply it to the future. I'm like, great. Said second one is Beowulfian. Oh my gosh, I like the lead character. I'm not afraid to go outside my comfort zone because no growth occurs out inside your comfort zone. If you stay comfortable, you die. So awesome. Third one was clutch. Oh my God, it's like when the game's on the line, my teammate are looking for me. The the 4th 1 was a little bit not not not the best. It was, you know, dependable, which is good. You know, you got to have something that, but then last one was happy and I love that one because happy people, optimistic people are just better. And it's not that pessimism isn't warranted. Sometimes, like right now we're in about bond markets that that's real. Back to our first question, but but all that said, talent and and getting talent. So the in addition to the five words I ask people all the time, do you love to win or do you hate to lose? People say they're the same, like no they're not. Answer my question. And I hate to lose. Yeah, and there's a difference and and there's not, there's not a right or wrong, but those are different characteristics and, you know, making mistakes part of life. And you know, it's called, you know, the next trade, right? It's the next trade, right? Or no, it's the last trade. The last trade. So, OK, now what's important about that? That's why the last trade, so I didn't. Find it was your next trade. Bitcoin's your last trade when you cycle out of those gains into the. Last trade, the last trade, OK, I love that, know that, OK, that again. But if you think about we're all making mistakes. And the thing about investing is the mistakes make you better. So as you get older, you actually get better at this, which is kind of cool. And there are lots of things where that's true, but anything really that's mental as opposed to physical as you age is tougher. I mean, I tried to Sprint the other day and pulled my calf and it was just so embarrassing. But so Dean Smith, famous coach from here, has the great line that, you know, when you make a mistake, you got to Ralph, you got to recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it. OK. And that's the most important because Coach K, you know, team University of New Jersey at Durham, that other team, Coach Ki was with him a number of years ago pitching him for some of his capital. And he said, you know, we have the same job. I'm like, OK, coach, help me understand what I have in common with like one of the greatest coach of all times because I'm I'm not seeing it. He said, look, we both identify talent, we recruit that talent, we build up a team, we set up a game plan, we put the team on the court and we sit down. Oh my God, I have the same job as Coach K. That's exactly what I do. When I was an allocator because I didn't actually pull the trigger. Now I'm a venture capitalist, so now I do pull the trigger, But but back then we had the same job. And he said, you know what separates the great players from the average players? And it's true for investing the same, but separates the average from the greatest. The average player always thinks about the last play or the last investment. And so you mean last in terms of the ultimate, which is better. But if you think how many times you watch somebody, they miss a shot, then they go down and commit a stupid foul all the time because they're thinking about the last play. So it's a great player, misses a shot, instant erasure, doesn't even remember taking the shot, goes back, you know, plays good defense, steals the ball, makes a layup. Michael Jordan said it says I missed 19,964 shots or whatever. I don't even remember taking them. I'm like, oh, my God, that's so perfect. It's like, be a goldfish. And so investing's the same ways. We're all going to have mistakes. We're all going to have things. And again, back to Julian. You know, you, you've probably seen the picture of Paul Tudor Jones in his dorm room at UVA. And behind him is the little sign that says losers, average losers. And the reason humans do that is we want to prove we're right. So we, we make a decision, we buy something and it goes against us or like, oh, I'm, I'm right. The market's wrong. The market's never wrong. Losers, average losers. Julian did the opposite. He would cut his losers immediately. He can always go back if you decide you're right later, But but in the short term, you're wrong. But again, I interviewed all these guys that worked for him and I have these, you know, notebooks full of these notes and I should probably write a book about it. But I said, what makes Julian great? And they said, oh, you know, 1 is a person of integrity, 2, he has incredible competence. He never fudges the numbers. Super competitive. He wants to win. I mean, he he wants to win. But most importantly, he has an uncanny ability to double up. It's the hardest thing in this business to do. Most people are taught, oh, I need to rebalance. I need to sell my winners and buy my losers, Peter Lynch said. You want to pull your flowers and water your weeds? What are you, an idiot? I mean no. You know what? You know what they call that where I'm from? Texas hedging. Have you ever heard the Texas, Texas hedge? Yeah, Yeah, Mark, on that note, because we got to get our buddy Tim. I don't want to put my knack out there because I had this epiphany last night with the I want to get your thoughts on it and then how it'll affect Bitcoin with the stable coin legislation. Because I kind of got, I was thinking and squinting of, you know, our buddy Tim here has a call that Bitcoin will hit $1,000,000. We won't say this year. Let's just call it within the next 24 months. And after thinking deeply about how tethers liquidity profile over the past 10 years allowed for Bitcoin to really, you know, capital to flow in, I think we might have under at least on this show under appreciated what it could mean if stables are able to be created and redeemed for BTC in a digital environment coming in with this legislation if they're going to proliferate in the US. But curious what your thoughts are on all that. Look, I mean stable. Stable coins are are the future of of payment rails. May I talk about this all the time? The first time I bought an NFT sitting on my couch in my pajamas on a Sunday using Metamask was glorious. Not because the NFT did anything, but just because I didn't have to wait for Monday for the bank to open. I didn't have to go anywhere. I was in control. Instant settlement. Beautiful. So the construct of payment rails being unleashed from Swift ACH fed wire? Yes. So stable coins as a bridge to the ultimate answer, talk about the last trade. We're going to have C Fi. So we have trad Fi, we're going to have C Fi and then ultimately we'll have D Fi C Fi includes stablecoins. Well, why do I say that? Well, because stablecoins really just a better Fiat and Fiat sucks for many different reasons, but it's way better than central bank digital currency, which could be programmed and and they could tell you how and when you could use your money. That would be evil, but but stable coins just backed by Fiat good. And it'll solve the short term problem for the US of low demand for treasuries. Do I think that has impact for for Bitcoin? Yes and no. See, to me, Bitcoin is digital gold. It's the new base layer of money. Gold's been the base layer of money for 5000 years. Gold will be for the next 5000 or 10,000 or whatever. And what does that mean? Well, today central banks buy gold. They put it in warehouses and then they have, you know, Fedwire, ACH and you know, the Visa MasterCard networks. I don't actually use physical money anymore. I just use my credit card and I settle up once a month. And so those rails are supported by the banking industry and it's about a 7 trillion with AT suck from people and it's great for Jamie Dimon and all the banks that gets disrupted by stable. So you know, if I want to send money to my myth mythical mother-in-law in El Salvador, my mother-in-law is in Tulsa. But if she was in El Salvador and I sent her money, it would cost $0.30 on the dollar to send her through Western Union. But if I use strike app or or stablecoin, I could do it for free. So that's better. OK, but you know, somebody's gain is someone else's loss. Yes. So those big banks and payment companies are going to have a tough time. So I'm a huge fan of stable coins and I think all transactions will run on digital rails. To me, the difference is I still live in a Fiat world. I can't pay my taxes and Bitcoin. I mean, I can buy Steak and Shake, I guess, but but most things I can't buy. So I put as much as I can into Bitcoin and metaplanet and things like that at because ultimately metaplanet, I just own Bitcoin as my savings for my Fiat. I don't want it in cash because that gets devalued. I'd rather it be in a stable form. And that, you know, is is a good thing. But ultimately, and Murray Stall says this better than I do, he runs Horizon Kinetics in in New York. And I said Murray's the only guy I know who makes me seem bearish. Like he makes me seem like like, you know, Bitcoin is going to 0, which is crazy. But I think Bitcoin displacing gold and having the monetary value and you know, I say it's, you know, half of the monetary value, which today is 25. So that's 12 1/2, something like that. And some would say no, it's higher than that. Maybe it's closer to 20. Fine, it's called 20 trillion. So gold at 20 trillion, that's $1,000,000 Bitcoin done. Awesome, easy. I mean, 24 months, I'm going to take the over. I'll tell you exactly how many months it is. May, June, July, August, September, 52 months we'll hit a million because every halving we add a 0. So this halving we added a zero to 100 K. Next halving we add a zero to 1,000,000. But we won't hit that until the end of the the Bitcoin fall, right before Bitcoin winter. So this fall will be October, we'll have to crash, then we'll have to come back, then we'll have the halving and then we'll have the ramp into 2020 9. So 2029, September, we'll hit a million to put a number on it. And I know as little as as anybody else, but that's my, my, my expectation. So again, that's a lot of words about I, I love stable coins. I love everything they represent. I think they're a stepping stone to alter. Oh, so so Murray's point is that OK, Yeah, fine. You're talking about gold is the base layer of money, but I'm talking about all this Fiat. And there's, I tweeted this out the other day. It's this great. It's a big pyramid like this with a little pyramid like this. And this is Bitcoin and this is Fiat. And literally he's saying all that Fiat is going to push into the bottom and that bottom pyramid is going to look like this and it's all going to be orange and all the Green's going to go away. So he's like, it's 100 trillion, which is, you know, meaningfully higher than than $1,000,000 a coin. Well, yeah, it's not just the Fiat money too, right? It's all the monetary premium that's baked into the real estate market and other assets as well. And so, you know, we often pull up the the sort of global asset landscape chart that's now I think a quadrillion over and over, you know, up about 100 trillion since about a year ago. Yeah, yeah. Here's here's the updated one. I. Love this. Hope you're enjoying the episode. Just a quick break if you're looking to start accumulating Bitcoin, or perhaps it's your friends and family who are starting to reach back out to you, maybe admitting that you are on to something and want to start buying Bitcoin. Send them to On Ramp Trade. It's our new account here designed to support everything from individuals first purchase to a long term strategy. You can see here on the screen, but if you're not on video, we are running a promotion with code TLT. Sign up before June 30th and get 0 trading fees through September. 50% off account fees and you can earn up up to $150.00 in Bitcoin for every person that you refer. So again, you can head to onrampbitcoin.com, send your friends and family there, let them know you heard of us through TLT and we'll hook you up with that promo. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Yeah, one thing Mark wanted to tie it back to some of the things you said before. So I like the map you'd mentioned. I forget whose office it was, but you mentioned the map. United States. The first, the first client I pitched, yeah. Right and so there and so that was all about real estate investment and kind of being where the puck is headed in terms of demographic shifts, you know, capital being invested etcetera. River Bitcoin only company appear in the space but out of a great chart earlier this week, actually a full research report. And I really do think it ties into a lot of the themes that we've been talking about because you have this battle for power, right global dominance United States and versus China and then the BRICS nations and certainly over the past decade, but even more so in the past couple of years with the sanctions of Russia, you know there's been this concerted push by countries to circumvent dollar systems for trade to acquire gold and move away from U.S. Treasuries. But ultimately Bitcoin is is kind of leapfrogging gold right. You just kind of described that you said Bitcoin mate reach gold parity in the next called five years or so or four years. And I'm just curious your thoughts with everything we talked a little bit about stable coins, but maybe more so if we focus about the administration's work specifically in the Bitcoin space with the strategic Bitcoin reserve budget neutral accumulation strategies. Like it is pretty remarkable just how quickly things have shifted right with the administration in called six months or so where now there's at least a recognition that Bitcoin and stable coins together would could prolong U.S. dollar hegemony and, you know, push the US dollar dominance from 1944, you know, another 100 years that they call it or maybe it's less, but. Again. Again, really, really good sequence of, of links there. Jackson I, I, I like it in the sense that, you know, one thing about, about the Donald is he's an incredible opportunist and he does surround himself on occasion with some really smart people. Not always. I mean, there's plenty of examples where he, he does the opposite, but but you know, on occasion he's, he gets some, some really smart people around him. And so it's amazing. We are one year away. I mean, about to do Bitcoin 2025 in Vegas next week. We're only one year away from Nashville where, you know, someone said, Geez, you got to go to this event because you know, we've done the math and there's a lot of voters and they're one issue voters. And if you say these things about Bitcoin, and I'm sure some of you guys were there, he got up on stage. And my favorite part was, yeah, he does the free Ross and everybody's happy. But my favorite part was when he said, and on day one, I will fire Gary Gensler. And the crowd went batshit crazy. And you could see in his eyes, he's like, Oh my God, that was like a drug that was that was awesome. Like, I'm going to say that again. And he said it again. And the crowd went even more batshit crazy. And so he didn't believe any of this stuff. But David Bailey and others have have really done a good job educating and you know, whether it's Baron or Eric or, you know, whatever, but there's been some education. And again, I don't, I hope like, you know, Donald's walking around with with a Bitcoin account that that he's going to paste off. He tried doing it at the pub key one time and it didn't work, but whatever. So, but he his level of education did rise, which then said it was OK for some of the other people. And we look, we always had Senator Lummus and others, you know, because Caitlin did a good job with her. So we had, but there was an amazing number of people, Patrick Henry from our district here in North Carolina. And there's been a lot of people who they were willing to be courageous and and look, at the end of the day, all great investments, all great fortunes come from courage. And it's my pin tweet on Twitter, right? It's you got to invest in innovation. To invest means you got to invest in something that you believe in before others even understand it. And you'll be mocked and ridiculed for your non consensus actions. It's totally worth it. I mean, that's not just drivel. I mean that that's truth. Everyone who's ever created anything really big was labeled as a heretic because if you do what everyone else does, it's already in the price and you don't really make that much. If you do something different, then you have a chance, but you're going to be fought and you're going to be mocked. And so we do have now a growing movement in the US and and look, we can go down the rabbit hole of when I first got exposed to this down 13. I did what every, you know, red blood America do is I don't know who's Satoshi Nakamoto into Google and it pops up intelligence central. The word Satoshi translate to intelligence and Nakamoto is the surname from people from the central provinces. I'm like, that's way, way, way too close to CIA. So you know, the fact that sailor lives in Virginia. I mean, all this is like, oh shit, what if what if the NSA created this to suck in all the bad money and then they're going to steal it out the back door. And I was pretty freaked out about this for a while. And Scott Stornetta, who is in the white paper, right? If you go to the back of the white paper, there are 8 footnotes. Three of them are his. He actually coined the term blockchain with his partner Stuart Haber. He's a, you know, math genius from, from Stanford and he's a venture partner of ours. And I said, Scott, you know, walk me through this. What if this is, well, I've actually never thought about that. No, I'm like, what? You didn't even think about it. He's like. No, the way you're so everything you say is plausible. I mean, certainly possible the NSA could have done it. And because you know, if you, if you go back two years, 2007, there was a paper sponsored by NSA written by Natashi Sakamoto. I'm not making this up. Who was the head of, of cyber security at NTT Docomo in Japan. Back to Masa and maybe they're friends. Literally his name's Natashi Sakamoto. I mean, could not make that up. So he said, yeah, that that all could could be true. But the way you're thinking about a back door is impossible because of the air gap. And I said with Ethereum, it could happen. Wow. I didn't ask that question, but OK. So I, I think ultimately, I think the technology's here to stay. I think it is the future of money. I think it is digital gold, even though people don't like that they want to be a peer-to-peer electronic. But it is, I can transfer value to anyone in the world without an intermediary that is peer-to-peer. That's what that means. And so as we think about the linkages necessary for that to become ubiquitous, well, you need to make the UIUX better, right? You can't have people losing their password and losing control. I mean, that that's just, that's a tough situation. And yes, Satoshi said, consider that a contribution to the community. And like, OK, but if everyone loses it, and that's like, my dad's never going to hold his keys. He's always going to have Coinbase account. And it was not your keys, not your coins. Fine. Tell my dad he doesn't own Bitcoin. The people said why do you hold these keys? I'm not holding those keys. No way. Because if I lose them, you know, Bezos, maybe I should send them to you guys. But anyway, SO probably didn't answer your question but. No, it's all good. How are we on time, by the way? That we. I have to run in 4 minutes. This was super fun. We're gonna. I could. Talk to you, we'll wrap it. But we could. This is why you got to keep your father off of Coinbase. And we will take care of him because I'm pulling up. For anybody listening to the Wall Street Journal, severed fingers and wrench attacks rattle the crypto elite. You know, it's something that we talked about a little bit without concrete proof, but it just makes logical sense that it wasn't just Philippines, it's people in the US. Like if you're making even if it's 150 to 250 K at Coinbase and you can download a CSV with customer data and send sell it on the dark web for millions of dollars. Like who wouldn't do that? So that's just what's coming as the price appreciates. But and specifically for any users, because data is data, you can get it out there, but before you. No, but, but on that point, let's take it to its logical kind of conclusion, which is we all had money in the early days, our ancestors, and they'd keep it in their house and people with guns would come and take it, right? And so we'd put it in the bank, and then the people with guns would go to the bank and take it. And so then they had to find ways to, and I say this all the time, how much money has been stolen from the Fed, $0.00 How much money has been stolen from Bank of America's main office in New York, $0.00 How about Bank of America, El Paso, TX, more than $0.00? How about people's wall safes? I don't have a safe behind that, by the way. But how about people's wall safes? Zero. I mean, lot more, lot more than $0.00. How about from people's purse or what? The further you are from the source, the more risk. So you're a Coinbase. And they didn't hack Coinbase. They paid humans to give them information. And you know, someone asked me this about the, the, the severed fingers this morning. They said, don't you worry about this. I'm like, I don't only because 1 I don't talk about, you know, my Bitcoin as as much as I can on, on, you know, online. And there are plenty of people have way, way, way, way more than than I do. But it is a concern. But the problem is that's getting clicks right now every single day, every single day, rich people get victimized by poor people. I mean, and, and I don't mean that in a derogatory, it's just that's how it works. That's that's what robbery and theft is. And that's been happening for millennia. And when people get desperate, they there's even a song about it. Now the what the hell is the name of that? Something where the, the guy puts the gun to his head and said, he said, why do you do that? You know, ain't no rest for the wicked, right? So this, this is a big deal. But you know, Eddie Lampert, you know, famous hedge fund guy, he got pushed in his trunk and kidnapped and they wanted money. And I love it. He's so smart. He he said, you guys, I know you're hungry. Why don't you order some pizza with my credit card? And they found it and rescued him before they severed his finger. But but yes, severed fingers are bad. Wrenchatechs are bad. But it's not just crypto people that are being targeted now. The ones that make themselves known to be super rich. I've never really got that. It's like, like driving fancy car and wearing fancy clothes. I mean, you're drawing attention to yourself. I mean, don't walk, don't walk down a dark alley with a Rolex watch. I actually happened. You know, my, my, one of my best friends got a concussion. He was given a, a speech at a academic conference in South Africa. And he didn't even have a Rolex. He just had a nice watch and he got, he got whacked and he wasn't even super rich and he was a professor. So it can happen. Yeah, for sure. We'll, we'll set up. I have a really great answer to share with you that you'll be like, oh shit. But that's a different pod, different call before rewrap because I feel like the theme of this pod was what's obvious is obviously wrong. What's not obvious right now happening in the markets that you're paying attention to that you don't mind leaking that we should be listening or looking out for, that's potential opportunities for alpha investments or just to that's coming around the corner? Yeah. So look, I think in, in the in, in, in the area we've been talking about, you know, digital and, and digital assets and, and Bitcoin, I really do think there's huge opportunity in service based businesses that provide custody and, and transaction assistance and, and a better UIUX and, and just a feeling of comfort for people to transition from Tradfi to ultimately Defy. So you know, help people with that, which I think you know, you guys probably know something about that. I think that that's a huge growth, growth business in terms of what no one I think is paying attention to is kind of what's going on under the hood. You know, our world is, I said the Abcds and you flip that upside down and data is at the base layer. You know, data is growing at exponential levels and data is the new oil, oil in the ground. It's not really that valuable, right? You have to extract it, process it, distribute it, refine it, then it becomes valuable. Same thing with data. You got to organize it and store it. That's what block chains do. You got to process it. That's what chips and computing platforms do. And then you got to make decisions with. That's what AIS do. So everybody's talking about things like LLMSLMS are a tool, agentic AI better and ultimately there's going to be things that people aren't talking about in AI where it actually does stuff like I have, you know, AI on this phone supposedly, according to Apple, it's done nothing for me 0 nothing. I mean totally useless. So there are good uses of AI there bad use of AI. And the thing about AI it's a 75 year overnight success story term was coined 75 years ago. I'm old enough to remember 1980 Time magazine called it the year of AI. OK, it was not the year of AI. So, so AI is, is big and that's people are paying lots of money, Masa and everyone else paying lots of money for AI companies like open AI at 160 billion make my head hurt. So we're down one level. We like to arm the combatants. So we focus on on the chips. We own a little piece of grok that sells the chips that make inference possible as GRO Q, not GRO K. But two things that I, I have an eye on that I think are really, really, really big. One is, and I say kid because he's I mean that in a loving way, not derogatory because he's like 29 years old, changed from that school down the road, Duke, But so he had a lab in college. He's a material science guy. And we've all experienced that. Our phone gets hot and I can't see it, but my computer actually sits on a little box to get airflow under it because it heats up and turns off, which is not a very good feature, but and that's Apple. And if Tim Cook were alive, that would not happen. But you know, God rest his soul. So he said, well, you know why it gets hot is you get memory here and processor here and the electrons have to go back and forth and the faster they go, the more friction, the more heat. So what if we use photons instead of electrons? People are like, he can't get photons from silicon. He's like, I know, but we're going to put liquid crystal on the silicon and then I can use photons. And like, you can't do that. He's like, well, I did it in my lab, so he's done it. And if we transition from electrons to photons, I mean the exponentialness of processing power and the expensiveness. So that's, that's one that I'm, you know, photonic switching and photonic like the other one that just kills me is math, right? 2 + 2, two times 2, whatever. It's linear and CPUs are good at linear math GPU's pictures worth 1000 words, you know it, it processes pictures and does parallel. Well, it's still 2 dimensional, 3 dimensional matrix multiplication, which I kind of only remember. He's like, you know, I could do that. I'm like, what do you mean? Like I could shine the laser and I could spread it and I could paint the matrix on my LCD and then I could shine the two into a 3D picture and I could do the and be faster. And people were like, dude, no way, yes, way. So that is mind boggling. So the other one that's really cool is some called in memory processing, which is again processor memory. It's got to go back and forth. So one way is let's use photons. The other is this professor at Princeton said, well, why don't I take the processor and put it in the memory? He can't do that. He said, well, watch me and he did. So they actually now have a chip that you can plug into your piece to your laptop. It will allow you to run full size LLMS locally with no heat. Again, total game changer. So that's the layer that I think the biggest innovation is going to happen right now because of Moore's Law and. Awesome, love it. Fascinating. Well, we'll get to the Epstein stuff on the next episode, yeah. We'll have to be back. Awesome well, if, if, if I get invited back, even though I did talk too much, but happy to do it really, you know enjoy partnering with you guys and and what we're starting to build and what you guys what you guys starting to build and and I need to get off the dime and get more involved in what y'all are doing. So thanks for. Having yeah, we'll set, we'll set up some time to chat. We don't want to talk you through the the Coinbase stuff and the logical progression. It's gonna be a little bit different, but I'll, I'll shine that light privately. Appreciate it, Mark. Have a good rest of your day. And yeah, look forward to talking soon. Thanks guys. Mark. Thanks, Mark. Thanks guys. Take care. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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