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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. If you're listening to this episode, you're already ahead of the curve. We had Jerry O'Shea, head of Global insights at Hashtags, on to discuss institutional adoption, the success of Bitcoin, ETF's, evolving U.S. policy, and more. From 70 billion amassed in I bit to Connecticut banning state investment in Bitcoin to a stable coin bill on the horizon and the fallout between Trump and Musk, 2025 has been anything but quiet. And actually, we just wrapped up the first full month of Bitcoin holding above 100K. But with rising adoption and higher prices comes new challenges. Physical challenges, digital challenges, inheritance, custody. This is why we built On Ramp for investors who take Bitcoin seriously. Securing your share of 21 million requires A robust solution designed to mitigate evolving threats with inheritance and insurance built in. Whether you're looking for institutional grade custody, seamless inheritance planning, or access to trusted financial services, On Ramp helps you protect and grow your Bitcoin for the long term. You can sign up in minutes on our website here using code TLT for 150 off your first month of on ramp standard, or you can book a consultation with me or the team to see if on ramp is right for you. Hope you enjoyed the episode and we are live. It's the last trade we're recording today with my Co host Brian and Michael from On Ramp. And we have an honorable guest, Jerry O'Shea joining us as the head of Global Market Insights at Hash Decks Asset Management. And Gary, there is Jerry, there is a lot of global market insights for us to discuss. There's 2025 has just been an insanely bullish year for Bitcoin, but not only the price, there's a lot of things that are actually happening behind the scenes. And I'm sure we'll touch on it quite a bit as well because you have a policy background as well. You were at Fidelity Investments for some time, specifically working on policy. And now is a particularly interesting time for Bitcoin as it relates to policy because it's really the first administration that we have seen with the Trump administration that is favorable toward Bitcoin as a form of money, as an investable asset. And we're starting to see a lot of momentum on policy and the regulatory front. So excited to discuss what's happening there. But before we get into that, we always like to start the show just to acknowledge where we are with the price of Bitcoin. All four of us are certainly longer term investors here, but it's good just to get a little bit of a sentiment check, pulse check. We're trading at about 110,000, just shy of it a 109.6. We are hovering around all time highs, but it does feel like a very quiet time for Bitcoin. Any initial thoughts before we jump into some of the first charts? Brian, maybe I'll throw it over to you. Just any thoughts on the price? Yeah, very quiet, 109 K. It's been pretty astounding the past like 48 hours to just observe this range between like 108 and 110. And it feels like, I mean, it feels like to me it wants to break out to the upside. And and as you were referencing like all of the bullish tailwinds, all of the narratives, you know, that we've observed over the past several months really don't feel like they're they're baked into the price just yet. Like in my mind, so much good has happened, so much positive news flow has occurred that it feels like we should be much higher than this. So it does feel like the chart wants to break out a bit. So yeah, kind of a kind of a surreal moment to be sort of just oscillating in a tight range, right, right around all time highs. Absolutely, Yeah. Jerry, any thoughts from you? We're going to pull up the chart here in a second, but you've been involved in the space personally for a long time and professionally now as well. Just what do you make of where we're at currently in the cycle? Just thoughts on the price? Feels like we have a lot of upside ahead of us here, but curious what you're seeing at hashtags and just conversations with institutional investors how those things? Are that was bought into the, the kind of 100K psychological, you know, being such an important psychological level. I feel like now with it being at that level over a month or so at this point, it feels pretty good and it's definitely affecting my psychology. So I think, you know, it's nice in some ways to have a little bit less volatility. I think, you know, was certainly as Brian was mentioning, you know, with some of the tailwinds going on right now, we're anticipating some more upside volatility for sure. But right now, you know, where we're at this sort of, you know, hovering around 1:10 or so, 109108, like I'm OK with that. It feels about right. I think there's, you know, speculation about who's selling, right whales are selling, but then you have the ETF stepping in, you have some of these treasury companies and then we'll get into that discussion a little bit more later buying as well. So it feels kind of balanced to me right now with, you know, better potential to break to to the upside from my perspective. Yeah, to Brian's point in to kind of support to the upside, the chart I'm pulling up is the total monthly inflows for the past roughly, I want to say looks like roughly 12 months. And basically, the USA has seen plus 60 billion in cumulative flows into crypto ETPSETS, while the West, the rest of the world has been -1.7 billion. And what I think that's kind of a important stat for the upside is like we see the US leading, we see the administration, we see the policy enacted, we see what happened, what's happening with MicroStrategy. And now there's no shortage of not only companies adding Bitcoin. I think IRM has came out offering a $450,50,000,000 convertible note. But then the public markets with Gemini, I think set to IPO bullish, there's no shortage of like access to liquidity in the US markets. And I think that's the leading indicator. And then the bet is that the rest of the world is slowly waking up. And if that's true, then that's obviously positive for the price. The last part to call out is it came out I think yesterday about when GameStop was buying BTC like in the total amounts and what Harvard got reported. And I think that's an important distinction because it's not like net new Bitcoin, but that's what's supported this price left. And we can expect there's a lot more Bitcoin being accumulated across different treasuries and ETFs in the US and abroad. So it's a very bullish setup. But maybe. Then because of that, we're, we're set for, you know, to go down because if we're all bullish, then probably, we're probably wrong. No, we already did that. We already, I already opened up the chart for two months and looked at 80 K. So I think we have that behind us. Not to say there won't be other corrections during the cycle, that's just part of how these Bitcoin and crypto cycles go. But I think we've already kind of gotten through the near term correction and certainly more upside on the horizon. It's also worth calling out, there hasn't been a lot of data to support this because Bitcoins only been above 100K for I guess the first time about six months ago. But we actually just had the first full month of price above 100K. And actually a week ago, we got pretty close to to cratering below 100K, but the resistance held there. And so first ever month 30 trading days of Bitcoin being above 100 Ki, feel like that's a pretty big milestone. And Jerry, one thing that you mentioned too important to call out, especially because in traditional finance, we associate volatility to be a bad thing. But you mentioned upside volatility, Bitcoin and gold. We're going to talk about gold here in a second. Both have more upside volatility than downside volatility. And so typically in traditional finance, people associate volatility to be bad because equities, fixed income, traditional assets in the 6040 portfolio tend to have more negative skew. They have more bad days than they have good days in terms of volatility, But Bitcoin is actually incredibly unique. And it's also really hard to time the market and Bitcoin, which is why, you know, we're kind of set it and forget it type investors here. It's more of a strategic asset allocation because Bitcoin does have days or weeks where it just explodes higher. And if you're out of the market because you're trying to time it, you're going to miss that upside volatility. So one thing I did want to call out here, I think the group will have a lot of interesting takes is we saw a chart here from Eric Belkunis, I believe at Bloomberg, right? And so he threw a chart up about I bit, which is Black Rocks ETF, the largest ETF surpassing 70 billion in assets under management, the fastest ETF to ever hit that mark in less than a year, 341 days to be specific, which is five times faster than the old record held by GLD, which is a gold ETF. And so that was about 1700 days. I think this is remarkable. People have talked about flows, but just the the pace at which we've seen these inflows come and to Michael's point, specifically in the United States is absolutely crazy. And if you just take a a look from a historical perspective, this chart's a little bit harder to see, but this is a chart of the gold price and it has here. This arrow points to November 4th, 2004, when GLD launched. And really that allowed for more investors to participate in gold as an asset class beyond just holding the asset directly. And so you can see here, when GLD launched, it was called about $400.00 or so per oz. And then in the ensuing years called 5 or 6 years, we saw a top off close to $2000.00 an ounce. And so of course, it's not the perfect parallel, but it's just an incredible signpost. It's something worth calling out because other products need to exist for investors, both institutional and retail to participate in Bitcoin. And we've only just seen a little over one year of data that's actually incredibly bullish. We have $70 billion of inflows into one ETF product and about double that 130, a $140 billion into the ETF complex as a whole. So what do you guys make of just the fact that you know what what has happened in this historical parallel with gold? What do we kind of think that means for Bitcoin going forward? Yeah. I think it's it's, I was just going to say it's indicative of, I think just a new paradigm like a the market structure has fundamentally changed. And so when you think about, you know, the this notion of who's selling, like there are long term Bitcoin holders who have an extremely low cost basis who are selling into this level. But there's just this new consistent bid from these ETF products, from corporate balance sheets, from sovereigns, probably more covertly, that is sort of outweighing that, that selling sell pressure from long term holders. And so it's it's sort of makes sense that we're grinding sort of sideways to up over the past month or so. And so I think it's just, it is a, it is a natural parallel to look at when that market structure for gold changed. You saw you know what I think that showed like a basically a seven-year bull market for gold after those products were created. And you know, I think I think we might see something similar with Bitcoin. I'm not saying like cycles are totally dead, but I do think the market structure is now just fundamentally different where if there is some sort of material sell off, I just think there's, there's new bidders, there's new market structure and there's new market participants that are ready and waiting for any dip to add to their allocation or get off 0 for a lot of these, a lot of these folks in these pools of capital. So I just think it's we're in a totally new paradigm now where I think the, you know, the volatility is down. So like if you know, to Jerry's earlier point, like, you know, Bitcoin's volatility is has sort of compressed down to like similar to some mag 7 stocks. So it's less volatile. To your point, Jackson, it's still positive skewed and so I would kind of expect this sideways slash upward grind just going forward just given the new structural bidders in this market. Yeah. I mean, I support all that. I think like it's super bullish for the opportunity and access to BTC that historically hadn't been there. I can't help but say when I look at those charts, I can't feel like it's very bullish for honoring and just multi institution in general. And the reason why is because the parallel starts to break down when gold is super hard to take delivery and have exposure and access it. And there's a reason why the ETFs because gold was accessible free ETF, but it had a similar, you know, a point in in the culture and society, if you're going to take delivery, have it integrated in the financial system, it wasn't really available. And so the ETFs provided this exposure and anybody that you know has large positions in, in, you know, GLD or gold, most sovereigns are going to take delivery of that. They're going to want it, especially in the world we're going to with volatility. Well, bitcoins looked in that same fashion. It's hard to hold, it's hard to deliver. It's hard to think about counterparty risk. You're offsetting that to the black rocks of the world and then the underlying custodians. But we all know anybody holding a material position that there's better ways and it just takes time in the price appreciation to learn more about the underlying and similar with multi institution. And it won't just be us, but you can click a button and get access to the underlying without, you know, better tax availability when it comes to movement of the assets, lending against them, doing other things native to that. When the market wakes up to that, it's like, well, why would you hold 3 levels of, you know, at counterparty risk and execution risk that lives. And that's kind of where the sentiment has always been around the treasury companies. It's like once the market wakes up that you don't need exposure via this ticker or you know, ETF I thinks will stand for a very long time just because it's a known quantity and it at least gives the closest to direct spot exposure. So I think that's where the the analogy kind of breaks down is that this asset is much easier to purchase and take delivery of. But in the market sentiment, it still resembles gold in the previous corollary where like you couldn't actually do anything other than the ETF product. Jerry, would love your thoughts on this as well, just because I know you've been at Hashtags for several years now. You were there pre and now post ETF. And so curious what you make of the fact that we have for the past 18 months or so, ETFs trading in the US, We've had the most successful ETF launches in recorded history. And so I'd love to see kind of boots on the ground what you've seen there in terms of institutional appetite and how investors are thinking about allocating the Bitcoin. Are they looking mostly at ETF products, financial products to get exposure? Are they're looking for more direct investment as well? But yeah, I would love to hear just kind of your thoughts, your journey, how things have evolved over the past several years and what you make of the big milestones of today. Absolutely. And I think to your .1 of the big, one of the most important things I think about seeing the steady flows into the Bitcoin ETF's is it really does act as kind of marketing for Bitcoin, right? In that, you know, when the gold, when GLD launched, everyone knew what gold was, right? You didn't really have to explain that to them. But with these steady flows coming into Bitcoin, it's opening up a lot of conversations with people, right? If they have exposure, maybe they're thinking about getting it in a different way. But I do think that, you know, we have predicted kind of the end of the year that we'd see as many net new flows into the ETF's at the end of this year, 2025. And to be quite honest, at the time it felt like a little bit of a bold prediction, but we're totally seeing that we haven't seen the demand really slow down. And so I think it's a, it's a really strong sign that there is this demand out there that I think will carry over to institutions like whether or not the ETF is the right vehicle for them or not. That's that's yet to be, you know, determined. But I do think it's opening up a lot of conversations and you know, it hashtags. So we, I don't know how familiar folks are with our background, but we have Latin American roots. We were headquartered are headquartered in Brazil and that was a country that very early on adopted Bitcoin, both at the individual level, but also the government financial regulators in particular. And so you know, what we saw down there and you know, when I joined in 2021, it was not that long after our Bitcoin ETF has had started to trade and and other ETFs as well. And one of the things that the financial regulators did very early on was realize that, look, we need to treat this asset as any other financial asset and give investors that that type of access. And so I often say to people, it feels like to me, you know, Brazil being a country that's had, I think maybe 5 or so different currencies in the last 40 years. A, a digital currency like this is not as crazy an idea as it might be to someone in the US who's had access to the dollar their whole life. So they've been very early adopters of this, this technology. And I like to say, you know, it's kind of like what's happening down there is sort of two years of head ahead of what's happening in the US. And what we've seen is that it went from retail to intermediaries, wealth managers, financial advisors and now a lot of the conversations are really around institutional access right to this asset class. And you know, I think we will see that obviously in the US we're seeing signs of it already. It will take some time. I don't think this is something that's going to happen in a matter of months It and you know, there there were certainly will be milestones I think in Catalyst that will help kind of accelerate the institutional adoption of this asset class that will continue. But ultimately, I think you know, it's a long due diligence process for a lot of these institutions. And maybe it's helpful too, because I think a lot of times when people talk about institutional investors, they don't really define what they're talking about and there is some kind of, you know, blurring of the line so to speak. So you obviously have retail individual investors and then financial intermediaries like Ras, financial advisors, wealth managers. Sometimes those are considered institutional investors because they work for large institutions. They're big pools of capital. But what I'm talking about are really like the large pension plans, endowments, foundations, sovereigns. Those folks that typically have a, you know, very long due diligence process in terms of understanding an asset and getting exposure to it are the folks that are really kind of like the third leg of this investor access stool. That's I think, you know, once that is kind of cemented and again, we've seen signs like this. We've seen the state Wisconsin State of Wisconsin investment board get access to Bitcoin ETF state of Michigan and some other municipalities as well. So we're, we're seeing signs in that direction, but it is something that will, will take some time. And the reason I think it's so important, like using the, for instance, using the state of Wisconsin as an example, right? That's a retirement system that has somewhere like 700,000 people within that system. So because they have exposure to Bitcoin ETFs right now, that's 700,000 people that have exposure to Bitcoin right within their retirement accounts. And which is actually, you know, that's like the size of Boston, right? So you, if someone told you, hey, you know, everyone in the city of Boston is going to have exposure to Bitcoin at some point, it might sound like a big thing. But the big deal with these big pension plans, right, is they're giving all these individuals exposure to this asset class. So not only giving them the opportunity to learn about it themselves, but also giving them this, you know, what we all think is such an important store value, you know, potentially digital gold type asset that they'll have in their portfolios over over the long term. I love that as well. And yeah, I mean it, it'll be a catalyst to your point, Jerry, for just further education in the space too, right? Because you could imagine if you are relying on a pension from your state retirement plan and Bitcoin starts as a very small percentage of that plan, but grows over time, let's say, even discounting the fact of further allocations from the pension. But just. From long term growth of the asset, it might start to cause people to think a little bit more critically about what they actually own and encourage them to look maybe more deeply into Bitcoin at an individual basis as well, beyond the allocation they have through their pension plan. So I think that's incredibly exciting. There are of course, people in the space who think that Bitcoin needs to be this. They have this very pure ideological stance of what Bitcoin is. They don't want any states or governments or pension plans or institutional investors to be involved. But that's not the point of Bitcoin, right? It is for everyone to adopt. And I think ultimately it's a great sign to see just even if it's a little bit, you know, just trickling in, dipping the toe in the water. In terms of an allocation. It was only a few basis points, I would say with SWIB last year, but that's a starting point. And they're one of the most respected and one of the largest state pension plans in the country. So I'm curious to get your thoughts also the group's thoughts too, Just like Jerry, you mentioned, it's a long process. It's a long process from the buying perspective for institutional allocators to do due to due diligence. It's also a longer process from a policy standpoint, but we're starting to see policy be more of a focal point of the administration. You have groups like the Bitcoin Policy Institute that are doing great work to really further the mission of Bitcoin within the United States. So I'm curious, like what you are paying attention to in terms of catalyst to further unlock institutional adoption? Is it more so on the policy side? Is it market structure? Is there just need to be more capital allocated to the space first? Does it need to be a bigger asset? I would love to get your thoughts on this because it's ultimately, you know, what a lot of people are paying attention to in terms of broadening exposure and adoption of Bitcoin is the institutions. Yeah, absolutely. And I think all the things you mentioned are certainly part of that. The one thing that I think with these big institutional investors that maybe people don't talk often enough about is just time, right? Like they don't want to invest in an asset that doesn't have some sort of like track record. And I think, you know, Bitcoin is certainly getting there. I kind of look at the, you know, evidence for instance, over the last five years that Bitcoin can act as digital gold, right? If you look at how it performed in the wake of COVID, If you look at how it performed after Russia invaded Ukraine, after the bank crisis in 2023 and even more recently, like with the with the tariffs decoupling from equities and and other risk assets for for a time. So I think, you know, that's call it five years of of evidence that this is an asset that can perform differently within portfolios and that's going to be very important to these institutional investors, right. They don't want to just put something in there that is 1 you know, untested hasn't been through market cycles and two, doesn't do anything in terms of benefits to the overall diversification of their their particular their particular plans. One thing to call out, this is going to be a little bearish, but it's the reality is I think we naturally assume these investors are long term oriented and they're looking at the asset as a buy and hold. And that's just not the case because I think they will get there in the same way we talk about you know custody and how people will get to realizing it. But the reality is institutions are made-up of individuals and they all come down the journey in a similar fashion. And so I don't know if you guys, if we're all aware, like SWIB fully divested from their ETF position because they probably realized some, you know, gain and they hit whatever mandate. And then we saw in 21 during the run up where there was, I forgot what fund in the UK that kind of like, you know, doubled their investment and kind of divested. So the point being is I think there's a common sentiment that we're going to reduce all this volatility in the next run up and, and maybe pub codes and based on their mandate and vibes that they're selling, that they're never going to sell. But there's a reality that institutional investors and similar as individuals, they naturally have certain time preferences and they may not be all long tour oriented to start because that's naturally how they think about trades. So it's just worth calling out. I don't know if Jared that supports how you think about it. It's a good point too, right, because these, you know, the investment management agreements that these, you know, with these public pensions in particular, right, they set an allocation to particular asset. And when the allocation grows beyond that, they have to trim it back. And you know, with Bitcoin, that may have the impact as more of these types of institutions get involved in, in helping kind of tamp down volatility over time. But you're right, it's, it's a, you know, it's an interesting position for them to be in because I think any of us that know if we personally were only take a 2% allocation in Bitcoin for our overall portfolios, we would not like if it went up to 4% go, Oh my gosh, I need to trim, trim this back. I'm getting too much exposure and with the growth that it's experienced, I think that's going to be something that these institutions will have to to grapple with. I do think you know, the the BlackRock recommendation in their model portfolios at 2%. I think that's a big deal and everything I tend to be and maybe this is overly bullish. I'd love your guys thoughts on this. But I think in a lot of ways it's kind of like a one 2% allocation. You know, why bother with something if you if you really understand kind of the power of of having a Bitcoin allocation in your portfolio. So you know, I actually think that these kind of target allocations for these model portfolios in particular are going to increase over time. I don't know exactly, you know, when that might, it's certainly going to take a lot of folks some time to kind of dip their toe in the water, but it just seems very conservative to me right now. And it's certainly, you know, for these, again, getting back to like the institutional investors, there's only a handful of them that have even dipped their toes in the water and they tend to be very slow to move anyways, right? Like that a lot of these types of plans, you know, just got emerging markets exposure say 2025 years ago or so, right? They're just very slow to move into new asset classes. So that's a dynamic as well. But I do think that the, the allocation kind of recommendations are we're going to start to see those tick more upwards, especially if we see, you know, these periods and have more kind of evidence of the volatility not being as, as wild as it used to be. And, and maybe people being able to make the case that over time this is going to improve sharp ratios, right? And you can do that with a larger than 1% allocation. Yeah, yeah, the best. To me, it's a, it's a, it's a broader signal of a lot of these pools of capital, particularly on the endowment foundation pension side, that at least for the foreseeable future, in my mind, are going to continue to sort of cling to the vestiges of what they've known for several decades. And what I mean by that is not fully giving up on the 6040 and not giving up on diversification and rebalancing all of these tropes that they've become accustomed to over the past several decades. And even if they get to the point of a, you know, 25 basis point allocation to Bitcoin, like they're not, they're not doing that because they see or that they necessarily appreciate like this shift towards hard money, away from inside money, this shift towards, you know, the the 6040 being replaced by, you know, maybe the 40% is not bonds, it's some combination of gold and Bitcoin. Like they're not that far down their journey yet. They're still very early innings in understanding sort of the, the medium to long term trajectory here. So I think it's a great point that like, you know, they're going to cling to these old methodologies of like, oh, it's, it's doubled. Well, we better, we better cut that back to our initial target. It's like, well, if you're actually thinking deeply about the long term investment thesis here, like 1, you would expect it to double over, you know, a relatively short time frame. And two, like you, you know, this goes back to like, you know, some of Warren Buffettism's and like value investing of like you don't, you know, you add to your winners, you don't trim your winners and add to your losers. And that's precisely what they'd be doing if they're trimming their, you know, their Bitcoin exposure and then redistributing that capital to fixed income or equities. And so I think it's there's just a lot of ingrained practices, particularly with these pools of capital that just needs to be relearned and retrained. And and frankly a lot of that is just kind of come from sort of the generate generational shift of decision makers over time and that's going to be a multi decade process. Yeah, I think, I think that's right. I think it's what we've like talked about and maybe Larry Fink and BlackRock are having will have the biggest impact. Is framing bitcoins just a new asset class because historically people haven't known what bucket to put it in. And so it's really hard to think there are 6040 and then how do you have a long term view to express on Bitcoin? The heuristic that I like it isn't, it's not apples to apples with institutions, but it's close enough. And this is definitely not financial advice, but it's like, well, because everyone's probably got this, how much Bitcoin should I buy? And this wasn't my idea as somebody I know, but it's like referencing you, you want to buy enough or if the price double S, you don't sell it, But if it cuts in half, you don't sell it, right? Like you have enough exposure where you're not uncomfortable in either direction. It's like a pretty good starting point to start thinking about the asset class and not be prepared to trade it. And it's probably some of these institutions will be well served by thinking about in that way as well versus it's a trade because all these people are going to be knocking themselves when it's 250K they they sold because they had 100% gain. Totally agree. Love to shift the conversation to States and the federal level in the US, but also maybe just more broadly sovereigns. One thing we flagged to discuss this week was piece of news that just came out yesterday with Connecticut passing a law to ban a state investment in Bitcoin. So this is interesting because I don't know how exactly this is measured, but Bill Miller here says that Connecticut ranks 48 out of 50 states in terms of fiscal stability for 2025, according to U.S. news. So not a great spot to be in or pretty close to last place in terms of fiscal stability for states. And then choosing to ban state investment in Bitcoin, which the four of us in our audience would agree is probably not the best idea in terms of being a forward thinking state, in terms of being a fiscally responsible state. So curious to hear some initial reactions here. Because on the flip side, there is positive stuff happening. Like Texas is one example. And I believe New Hampshire was the first state to actually pass legislation to allow for state investment in Bitcoin. But then you have a neighboring state, Connecticut, here banning investment in Bitcoin. Boo. Yeah, well, I'm, I'm here in New England somewhere between Connecticut and and New Hampshire, so kind of sandwiched between those those two ends of the the spectrum. But you know, I, I do think it's, it's one of these things where you realize that, you know, it's we're in a high, we live in a highly political world, right? And that policy makers will oftentimes not act in the best interests of their constituents for a variety of reasons. But I think this sort of visceral reaction to Bitcoin, you know, what's if I had to guess, I mean, and maybe it's AI think it's a pretty educated guess. But like a lot of this, I think is just in response to the embrace of the administration by by this asset and people that don't understand it think this is somehow not a political right. It's like, and I know it's not a perfect analogy, but like when I see Connecticut do things like that, it's it's kind of like them, you know, banning the Internet or saying like we're not going to allow any public employees to have access to the Internet, you know, because we think it's this dangerous new realm that that that's not worthy of our our citizens here. So I think you know, that on one hand that's, you know, that's that's one side. But also, Jackson, you mentioned like the fiscal situation there, which is kind of crazy to me that, you know, for a on one hand, you have federal lawmakers, policymakers in the US talking about Bitcoin reserve and its potential to offset or, you know, deal with our uncontrollable debt and our debt burdens. And then, you know, you have a state like Connecticut that that just doesn't seem to see that that being an option at all. I think it's a good thing. One, not what Connecticut's doing specifically, but I think it's good to have states with their different proposals because they can act a lot quicker right than the federal government. They don't have each of them does not have their own central bank pushing back on these sorts of ideas. So I think it's it's good to have call it, you know, these incubators put into practice and like we'll see how it plays out over time. New Hampshire, you know, is, has always been they were kind of a state that had a lot of very early on Bitcoin adopters. They're kind of known, you know, live for your die as a state motto. They have sort of a very libertarian ethos. So it, it makes sense that they would pursue something like this, in my opinion. But at the end of the day, I think overwhelmingly Connecticut and if other states choose to do the same thing, we'll be in a very small minority. And it'll obviously play out over time, you know, the the results of, of having something like that in place. And, and I think these states that are choosing to embrace it as a long term asset like to improve kind of the the overall balance sheet. I think they're they're going to benefit tremendously. It's it's fascinating because this stuff is playing out in real time and, and people still continue to do this. Like so getting political. We're seeing what's happening in California and like if we ought to make bets, you know, call it post COVID, but even before then, you would imagine most individuals that with this expressing this investment thesis would be long. Florida, Tennessee, Texas. A great, again, objective anecdote is we're all long Bitcoin and you would imagine you're long the energy markets related to it in Texas. It's with I think in the last time I checked is like 27% of the global hash rate because China decided to push it out. Like that's just one sector aspect of Bitcoin that this is just going to play out the way it is. And, you know, we saw the Dallas and New York Stock Exchange moving down there. So yeah, we kind of know where this goes. You can ban yourself from Bitcoin, but you can't, you know, ban Bitcoin from everyone else. Yeah, that's that's well said. Thankfully, thankfully the individual citizens of Connecticut can still can still buy Bitcoin for themselves. And I think he nailed it, Jerry. Like I think it is a a very educated guess as to why this this specific case occurred. It's as if, you know, in the age of the Internet, trump.com emerged and they said, you know, we're not we're not going to launch our own website basically something to that effect. Like, I think it is pretty clearly they are being, you know, sort of they're shielding themselves from actually understanding the thing, the underlying, because they're associating it with this current administration who they happen to disagree with on a variety of other things that are completely unrelated to the monetary merits of Bitcoin. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think there was Ray Dalio a couple days ago, I had a pretty good tweet that I think is kind of based on one of his books from a few years ago that sort of talks about how basically linking the fiscal situation of a government to kind of the the quality of life of the people that live in that government. And I think most people keep those things very disconnected, right? And they don't think that, you know, if the government, the US government has 35 trillion in debt, that's their problem, right? And I think he does a really nice job in in this particular tweet. And I haven't read the book, but from, from what I can tell, kind of laying out the arguments that these aren't independent variables, right? Like, like it matters that there's this debt burden at that level of government. It matters at the state level as well. And, and I think, you know, people are slowly recognizing that this does impact their lives in a lot of different ways, maybe in some ways that feel intangible, right? Like, you can go in and see the cost of groceries and, you know, make the conclusion that there's inflation and that's bad and that sort of thing. But I think just in terms of, like, that sentiment that something's not working right for them. And you know, everything that the terrible that's going on in LA right now, I think is arguably could be, you know, tied back to a fiscal situation in the US that's been completely reckless, both at the federal level and with a lot of the the individual states, right. And I think in that scenario, and even Dalio, I think Ray Dalio's made this connection, assets like like Bitcoin become very attractive. And I think hopefully over time, people will kind of realize that that this is not a a political asset. You know, it doesn't Bitcoin doesn't care if you're, you know, red or blue or, or, you know, whatever other party you choose to affiliate with. And so I think, you know, hopefully the tweet that that Dalia had sent out, I think it was a little bit of a click baity title. It was like, you know, civil war question mark. So it's like kind of hard not to read that when you see it. But I think, you know, the points that he raises are are really good and really important. And I think it's something that that I think arguably, you know, makes a pretty strong case for, for Bitcoin as being a way to kind of opt out of this fiscal madness that we're all subject to here in the US. Yeah, and by the way, On RAMP clients get Civil War preparedness advice from Michael Tanguma. So another reason to sign up and work with us. But jokes aside, I mean, yeah, I agree with you, Jerry. Everything is downstream of broken money. And the reason why in large part there's so much tension in this country is because the monetary system is so beyond repair. And even Elon Musk, I mean, maybe we should talk about the the fallout that happened at the tail end of last week where Musk and, and Trump are having a feud over social media. And I just kind of thought it was, I guess I thought it was inevitable. Like, you know, six months ago, a year ago when Doge was brought to the public awareness and this is going to be initiative within within the government and they come out swinging O2 trillion. We're going to slash, we're going to balance, balance the budget. We're going to just prepare the fiscal situation for the United States. Everything will be OK. I think anyone who's paying attention is understands enough to know that you can't just go into the government and fix a situation that is 50 years, 100 years into the making. And so this is beyond repair for the past 50 years. I might have mentioned the last week episode. It's worth reiterating though, and maybe it's worth reiterating until everyone knows, But 45 out of the past 50 years, the government has run a deficit. So it's not about your red team, it's not about your blue team. These are just structural issues within Fiat currency and government and central bank money. And there's really no fixing this. So, you know, you have this fallout last week. Would love to hear the group's thoughts. But ultimately, I just thought it was a bunch of nonsense. I mean, Elon Musk, maybe he thought he was just going to go and, you know, go put a brain chip in everyone. They're going to figure out exactly how to move the needle and balance the budget. But that didn't happen. And so here we are. Their fallout happened. They only saved 100 and billion, 180 billion estimated. And that's not in one year. That's over the course of five years. And then so you compare that into a one year goal of $2 trillion. Just an epic failure. Hopefully Elon doesn't find this episode and and send us some people after me because I haven't taken Michael's course yet. But yeah, curious to hear the group's thoughts. I think the main thing is there's there's a lot of gaslighting, like without calling anything out specifically, just think critically with all this stuff like the you feel it like incepted this happened 1224 months ago with whatever that that movie was about the civil war. And then you have Dalio with his tweet and like, you know, everyone anecdotally, like we know that there's problems and there is there is like natural friction. But also if you go to any town, it's pretty straightforward. Like people show each other respect. It's not this divisiveness that is portrayed in the media. And the other side of the gas light and I think everyone would agree with is like the state of the economy and people's, you know, personal balance sheets. Everyone pretends when you talk to high finance and a lot of the people in our industry, they'll say everything's great and GDP is going up and all the stuff, but it's like empirically not. The case for every individual when you look at we bring up charts every week looking at homes, the ownership, the not even mortality, but like individuals getting married, having kids, like there's all these things that like the media will portray versus like what's actually happening. And so I think that's just like a very good like mental model of whatever you see. You're probably seeing it for a reason, and you should just try to peel back second and third layers to think a little more critically across the board. I think that's a great point. And you know, the one I was going to add kind of an anecdote. So Jackson mentioned, you know, my background and policy after college. I worked for about five years on Capitol Hill. I worked for Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee. And that was after we actually the last but but balanced budget we had was the like late 90s Clinton era with the House Budget Committee chairman who was a Republican. They balanced the budget and I came in and I, you know, I worked in the Senate and then I worked for a freshman member of Congress right after that. This would have been 2002. And his first order of business was to create a group that would eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in in the government. And it was at at the time, you know, was him and two other freshmen congressmen. And it was kind of this thing where, you know, the senior leaders in in the Congress, both Republican and Democrat, kind of looked at it like, well, this is cute. You know, we've got these new members of Congress that think they're going to eliminate all this waste, fraud and, and abuse. And so I kind of saw first hand back then how difficult it is to even get rid of like the most egregious types of spending, right? Because, you know, the world works off incentives. Politicians maybe more so than than the normal average person. And most of them don't have an incentive right to kill these programs that are potentially benefiting some constituents and voters in their districts. So it's a very difficult thing to do. And so I was pretty optimistic actually when when Elon said he was going to champion this and thought to myself, well, you know, Elon, if there's anyone that can do it, it would be him, right? Just because of his ability to actually deliver results. And, and so I was pretty optimistic for a while. And then, of course, you know, as we all kind of saw the reality set in about the, you know, miniscule discretionary spending versus the mandatory spending programs and trying to make cuts in those is just, you know, almost impossible, maybe arguably impossible. Now, if Elon Musk can't do it with the the folks in government that he was he was working with, but you know, ultimately I think this all kind of sets up a really good narrative for for Bitcoin, right? And, and I'm not telling you all anything you don't know, but I, I think when you see like such a monumental failure at that level to really pull back and, and cut some, you know, a lot of obviously there were things that were cut that were controversial, but a lot of it is really just waste, right? Like it's a big, huge government, very bureaucratic. And there's a lot of efforts that both parties over the decades have tried to, to eliminate spending. But when you see it kind of fail like that, you realize that the incentives from these policy makers aren't really necessarily in line with your, your own incentives, right? Which kind of Michael, to your point, it, it makes you kind of think, OK, maybe I need to be doing a little bit more thinking, you know, about myself and my personal situation, what I'm seeing around me, what I'm seeing when I'm going to the grocery store or hearing, you know, from people trying to, to buy a house or anything else like that. So as kind of, you know, unfortunate is that the, the Doge cuts didn't really come to fruition. I do think maybe it's a little bit of an awakening for folks that this is a real problem that's not going away anytime soon. And to think about kind of your long term savings, your long term ability to provide for your family like you, you really need to think outside of the traditional means of whether it's investing like a 6040 portfolio or you know, where you choose to save and, and what you use as a, as a store of value. Yeah, I think that's that's very well said. And, and to me, I think that's spot on of like, if there's any silver lining from all of this, you know, despite, you know, sort of the, the inability of doge to make meaningful spending cuts, The silver lining is, is that it brought the inability to, to stop the train to, to quote Lenalden, like nothing stops this train of debt, deficits, fiscal spending. It brought the reality of realities of that more to the fore. I mean, Elon Musk has, you know, the most Twitter followers on Earth and he is spouting constantly now over the past couple weeks about the inability for, for anything to change on that front and how it's like a very dire situation. Now, he won't specifically call out Bitcoin as the solution, but if you go into the replies, that's, that's most people's solution that are, are seeing him having this sort of realization that even he wasn't able to stop the train in any meaningful way. And, and I think that that will continue to catalyze education about the potential solution of Bitcoin, at least for your personal balance sheet. And to, to Michael's point, to try to, you know, move past the gaslighting of the government, like the government's not going to save you. You have to save yourself. And in order to do that, you're going to need to opt out and save in a form of money that they can't control or print. Jerry maybe going deeper, I think it's it makes complete sense. I think going deeper on the policy stuff, you're, you have a unique background that you've worked in policy, deeply understand Bitcoin work in the industry. What's your take been on kind of the new administration the past like 6 months? The, the amount of leaning and I think it's caught everyone by surprise. But then also the influence of should probably give a shout out to the Bitcoin Policy Institute in the summit that they're hosting, because I think everyone here, majority of people on this panel or this conversation will be there. Just like how do you see that intertwining? Like the the the state of how fast that's moved and then the interesting dynamic of Bitcoin and just the incentives and how they're just like integrating into policy and in our favor really. Yeah, so also I agree, like the Bitcoin Policy Institute, I think has done a, a tremendous job and, and one of the the reasons why I think they've they've done such a good job. As you know, they're not a trade association, right, representing a bunch of different companies with commercial interests. And I think, you know, in addition to having some tremendous thought leaders there, I think a lot of congressional staff and regulatory and staff and stuff can really rely on them for very high quality research and a, you know, objective view for why we think this this asset is so important. I was surprised, like I didn't think that's the, the Bitcoin strategic reserve would come that, that quickly. I was a little bit more skeptical about it. I think, you know, generally speaking, it's, it's a good thing. I, I think the, the challenge now is figuring out how to potentially fund it. I haven't really seen any like great ideas that I think would be easily easy to do right. I think in the legislation that Senator Lummus has, you know, potentially repricing gold or something like that could, could work or, you know, maybe even using other crypto assets that are confiscated to buy Bitcoin. Those those are things that that could potentially work. But I do think it's going to be difficult to kind of do this in a budget neutral way that is not going to cause a lot of political strife And and that's still very much kind of getting back to the the Connecticut activity. I mean, the, you know, Congress and the Senate in particular, there's still a tremendous amount of very important, very powerful people who you don't hate this this industry and don't want to see it succeed. And with the president going kind of deeper into this space, I think they're they're going to be digging their heels in more. It sounds like, you know, I think the stable coin legislation will be approved and potentially even this week. But even that, you know, was a lot more difficult than I think most observers, certainly crypto Twitter thought it was going to be right because I think maybe people underestimated the degree to which politics drives policy in DC. And if you have the the sitting president, you know, very actively supporting this new emerging asset, like there's going to be a lot of people that just have this visceral reaction to it and want to push back for the sake of pushing back and because they think it's some sort of political thing. So for for Bitcoin specifically, like I think the, you know, it's a little bit different than say other crypto assets and that it has regulatory clarity or at least more on a relative basis relative to other types of of crypto assets. So it would certainly benefit from, I know there's new efforts now to put together a market structure bill. And I think Bitcoin, if the, the folks that are the businesses that are providing the infrastructure for people to, you know, hold Bitcoin, trade it, you use wallets, all that stuff. If market structure legislation can give them a much better sense of the rules of the road and, and help them operate in the more kind of friendly environment, I think that that'll be a big deal. But I, you know, my perspective is that it'll probably be more of a boon to like other assets outside of, of Bitcoin if market structure legislation is actually approved. And I think that's going to be a much more difficult complex bill to pass because it's not as the interests, you know, stable coin legislation is very different because it, it aligns very well with policymakers who are interested in finding new people to buy debt for the for the US finding new ways to for that debt to be purchased for strengthening the dollar. So there's a lot of, you know, getting back to the world, working off incentives, particularly politicians, they have a lot of very strong incentives to see a stable coin bill pass. I think it just gets much more complex and complicated with market structure legislation. And so that one I think is, I don't know if I'd call it like a 5050 shot of that that happening at least this year. And but, but we'll see. I mean, I think the the big things to watch for, obviously if there's news around how the the strategic reserve could be funded, obviously from a price perspective, that could be very a huge tailwind. But in the interim, I think we're going to still see a trickle of these states. I think so we have New Hampshire, Arizona, Texas, you said Michael, I think they're like they're close right to maybe having a reserve. So this it's happening at the state level and I think that'll continue and that'll continue to put pressure on Congress to at least consider legislation around this and get it out of the kind of administrative executive order form which over the long term isn't as sustainable as having it put in in legislation. I'm curious, Jerry, any thoughts on sort of you sort of alluded to this, but the order of operation? So I think Senator alumnus has sort of laid this out as you know, genius acts stable coins that's coming first, then it's market structure, then it's turning to how do we accumulate more Bitcoin. And I agree with you that that middle piece is probably the most precarious. There's probably the most debate around what that market structure Bill actually looks like. It seems like there's line of sight to getting the stable coin bill through. In your mind, is the market structure bill a prerequisite to figuring out ways to buy Bitcoin? Or do you think that they could just skip that step if it's too contentious? Yeah, that's a good point, a good question. I think. I think it's certainly possible that if it does become too contentious that they, you know, might say this is not it's something that is like in anyone's interest to pursue like, you know, you have like the you basically have two years right to legislate before everything starts to focus around the election. So if it doesn't happen right, the end of 2026, it's probably not going to happen anytime soon. And if, you know, policymakers make that determination, I could certainly see them maybe refocusing on, you know, Bitcoin reserve legislation or other, you know, kind of similar initiatives. But the important thing to remember to hear is right, it's, this is political influence, right? And one of the reasons why we saw Trump come out. And so such support is because the, the crypto industry broadly, you know, with, with several folks, you know, several leaders within the, the Bitcoin community did a tremendous job of making him realize that this is an important issue for, you know, 50 + 1,000,000 Americans that are going to vote on this issue and, and all that good stuff. So there are the sort of political considerations in in all this as well. And, and that could certainly inform the the, you know, what ends up being prioritized from a legislative perspective. I think generally speaking, I think the policy makers want to show that they've done something for this industry, right? So they'll probably get the stable coin bill, but then the market structure bill is a lot more important to a lot of other different aspects of the industry. So I do think they're going to want to show some progress there. Whether they can get it across the finish line with bipartisan support. I, I, I don't know. I don't. I don't. I'm a little like pessimistic on that one. It's kind of this is going to be a cynical, cynical take, but I'm curious, Gary, like where you see, I think the market structure, I mean, it hasn't been the best, but I think it in in the from a Bitcoin lens, it's probably been as a creative or advantageous because Bitcoin's been the only thing deemed A commodity. CFTC. What I look at the market structure bill is who gets to govern the grift, right? Like, like it's just like who gets to whether it's stable coins and is it banks is a yield issued on it? Who's the custodian? Who's going to issue security tokens? Who's going to determine if it's a security or not? When we kind of recognize that I think we'd all agree on this podcast that Bitcoin is a commodity and most, if not everything else would be deemed a security because they're central issuer issues issuer and how we law and all that or how we test. And so independent of it getting approved or not, like I think that there's some notion that there's actually been less, there's a lot of grift, but it would it would amplify and I think it actually gets passed because I think there's enough capital to be made. And that's part of where like, personally, I think the next 5 to 10 years are going to be well, bullish for Bitcoin. A lot of people are going to lose their shirts because they're going to get, you know, caught chasing shiny objects. Curious if you see it that way or if you see it differently that just because people start to figure out the lines of who's governing what, that's just going to open the door for much more deferation of, you know, digital assets that historically haven't really been a recipe for success when it comes to preserving individuals well. Yeah. So I, I think to me, it kind of comes down to the almost more of like a political decision by the, the Democrats to decide how much they want to fight the progress that this industry has, has had with this current administration, right? Especially as we get to the midterm elections, right? And there are a number of very, you know, pro Bitcoin, pro digital assets, members of Congress that are, that are Democrats and their voices, I think have been been drowned out more recently. But I think if, if there is kind of a decision made that politically they can't afford to, to, to kind of fight the, this, this industry. And again, using the Internet analogy, like, I always just think it's like these are essentially like being, you know, anti Internet politicians or something from the early 90s, right? Or if there was ever such a thing, it's just like the, the realities of the technology. I'm optimistic that the, you know, leaders within the Democratic Party will kind of realize what that means both from like what their constituents care about, but then also just from like a political perspective that this is going to be a losing battle. Like, you know, if you're, you know, again, like, like the Connecticut example, like that's just something that like you're going to sit here and watch New Hampshire and all these other states benefit from making a strategic allocation to Bitcoin while you're basically just saying that you don't want your retirees to have any access to this, you know, the best performing asset in the last 10 years. So it's, I, I think that's what it comes down to is basically just a political question from the, the Democrats and on how much they want to continue to fight this. You know, I, I had kind of thought with the election outcome that the, you know, Elizabeth Warren's anti crypto army was, you know, officially dead. But I do think that there still seems to be some energy behind them wanting to push back against this stuff. And a lot of it's politically charged. So I think it'll come down to political decision whether or not they want to continue this like through the next election cycle. At least Trump and Warren can agree to get rid of the debt ceiling. That's true. There's. A middle ground there at least. That is, that is true. It doesn't happen often, but you know, when it when it does, I guess we it's either like this. Well, it is scary actually, when you see the two of them agree on something that that's a little bit of a red flag. So without even knowing, you know what the particular issue might be. Hey real quick, hope you're enjoying the episode. If you are, would love to see some likes and comments, subscribes on the episode. A lot of time into producing the show each week, preparing for it, scheduling guests and then of course, having the conversations as well as well as editing and getting it out on 2 platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple, etcetera. So if you could just show a token of appreciation, leave us a like a comment really goes a long way and knows that we're doing something right. And if you have any feedback on how to improve the show, certainly welcome a comment on YouTube. Or you could also reach out to me directly on Ramp or sorry Jackson at on rampbitcoin.com. Would love to hear from some listeners. So yeah, hope you enjoy the rest of the episode and really appreciate you listening. I don't know Michael or Brian, did you have anything else you wanted to chat on about policy or just anything else related? If not, there is something I wanted to talk about with something that Galaxy shared about just physical attacks in this space. But before transitioning there, I want to make sure we covered our bases. Yeah, I think maybe I'm curious, Jerry, on your side, the sentiment how you feel about like stable coins and the, you know, what's happening right now, whether it's the market expressed in its view via circle. But then also I think it came out before the this launched a Bank of America is in the works. And it got leaked, you know, through two or three months ago about Fidelity testing out like how you see this kind of, you know, from a integration into the traditional financial system. I think last week tech companies, the Uber, Google, I forget who else, Airbnb and one other just like, yeah, Apple. How do you see that playing out and positive, negative for just like everything else we've been talking about today? Yeah, absolutely. So like assuming that the the legislation does get approved, I mean, I think it'll be a bit of a horse race, right? Because I don't know how much room there is for like, you know, 10s or hundreds of different stable coins that there might be some valuable use cases there. But generally speaking, I think it's a good thing, right? Especially working for a firm that's based in the emerging markets where people can now access the US dollar on their their phone right through a wallet. The emerging markets use case for stablecoins I think is is important. And you know, the ability for them to have access to the dollar is I think something that is absolutely fair. It'll be interesting, like getting back to your point about the lobbying aspect of all this, it'll be interesting where the incentives align for these different firms, whether it's a consortium of, I forget all the banks that were involved, JP Morgan and a few others were talking about doing their own stablecoin. If they can come to some type of agreement on like this, you know, big bank stablecoin, it'll be interesting to see how something like that plays out. The, you know, a Fidelity or other asset managers are going to take a different perspective, I think than a lot of the banks and, and you know, so they may choose to compete with a, with a, you know, a different type of, of stablecoin. But at the end of the day, I think. It's a huge on ramp to Bitcoin, right? Because I think once these stable coins become, and I think they already are to an extent, people are starting to become more familiar with it. But once they become kind of a household term, people are immediately going to start kind of asking more about this asset class, you know, broadly what how does this differ from Bitcoin and that type of thing. And, and so I think it's a, it's certainly like a positive for the the industry, Like who knows what ends up getting included in that bill and what interests get, you know, benefits over over the others. But generally speaking, I think it's going to be a very important development for for Bitcoin adoption in particular. Yeah, I tend to agree. I think the notion of Bitcoin and stable coins will be ubiquitous because the dollar is ubiquitous. It's just digital version of that with you being online and specifically the, I don't even want to call it a use case, but the user behavior of if your checking account is digitized via this interoperable token, this dollar that it can go anywhere. Think about, you know, folks listening probably are very heavily overweighted BTC and maybe you want to be more in the market and Bitcoin and less dollars, but you naturally need to go spend those dollars. Well, maybe those conversions from your bank account can go from, you know, BTC to stable coins in your checking to to pay. Like it just starts to tighten that connectivity and there's like 100 different use cases or examples how you can buy that. Doing that opens up capital flows or flows into BTC. And the earliest example, which is probably the most predominant is other Bitcoin in the trading pair and kind of where even circles origins came about when it came into settling trades, because you can only wire money from 9:00 to 5:00. And if you're going to execute and run a, you know, a trading shop and FX and all those things. So I think it's really positive for for BTC. And then obviously, we've talked about it here from just like the longevity of the dollar for, you know, demand for Treasuries is. I think that's going to be a big part of the whole story here. Yeah, absolutely. And I think like the, you know, the the politicians have really, you know, latched on to that and appreciated the fact that this could be, you know, an easy way to kind of cover up the mess they created, right in, in some ways. Someone needs to buy the debt. Someone's going to have to do it. It's going to be the stable coins. I mean, Tether is already in the top ten. I would say top five, but I'm not confident. But certainly top ten largest buyers of U.S. Treasuries and as traditional financial institutions in the United States get into the staple coin game, they're just going to be acquiring acquiring more treasuries through that and they're going to be exerting dollar influence throughout the world. And so I don't think the end of the dollar is anywhere close. It's going to likely be extended. And this is really a strategic play. I think This is why it's particularly so frustrating to hear politicians bicker about Bitcoin is because what might have been Alex Thorne, who said of last week is that the stable coin bill is not a crypto bill. It's really just a dollar bill. It's best for the American people. You could argue it's a grift, like we're exporting inflation to the rest of the world, but it is better for us. I mean, it's it's kind of a selfish thing to say, but having a stronger dollar and stronger treasury market by having stable coins be issued around the world and have buyers for the debt, especially when adversarial nations are divesting of U.S. Treasuries. There just needs to be, you know, kind of a backstop there. And that's ultimately what stablecoins the role that they'll play. And then of course, Bitcoin fits very nicely into that as well. The great thing is Bitcoin is available to everyone. So I mean, for countries that are looking for a way to have, you know, de risk themselves from dollar debasement, confiscation, seizure of assets, I mean, Bitcoin exists is a better way to do so than gold. And so it'll be interesting just to see how everything plays out, probably take longer than this cycle, but over the, call it next half decade or so where things land in terms of sovereign accumulation because we're still awaiting the audit from the US government. But there are reports that estimate about 200,000 Bitcoin is held by the US government. But then there's a lot of evidence that would show that maybe it's about half of that give or take. So hopefully we'll see that in the next month or two. It will give us a better sense as well. And Jerry, to an earlier point you made hopefully more clarity as well from the US government in terms of what their sexy phrase of budget neutral means for accumulation of more Bitcoin. But Michael, do you have something? Two things. Yeah, I think the optimistic take to your point is it kind of goes back to everything that's good for Bitcoin is if you export the dollar and actually helps the US, but it's generally better currency than where it's getting exported to. And then it gives people access because if they get access to that, then they're one step away from BTC. I think historically with inflation being sub 5%, you can make the case why you'd want to hold more stable coins if you're subject to volatility of Bitcoin. But as Bitcoin naturally dampens and and then inflation heightens, more people are going to make that decision, right? It all just comes down to the economic rationality of the individual. It's like, why wouldn't I hold more of the thing that goes up to to the right versus down and buys me less? One thing before transitioning to the the report you want to pull up is you. You pulled up something before the call about it's a little bit unrelated, but still like pretty big is the sailor tweet about if they close? What was it like if they close if Bitcoin closes at 119,000? Yeah. So I can pull it up here. It's if Bitcoin closes at 119 K for the end of Q2, strategy will post the largest quarterly earnings in human history as far as we know. I mean, maybe maybe a long time ago, there's bigger quarterly earnings, but this is pretty crazy, you know, outside of any opinions, good or bad on the Bitcoin treasury fiasco. I mean, strategy is certainly the front runner here. Sailor has done a lot of good things for the space. And so this is a really, I mean, aside from the extremely retail branding of this tweet here, it's an interesting data point. I mean, I don't know what you guys think about this, but I caught it right before we hit record. It is a it is a wild stat and seems pretty, pretty damn feasible with the way the price is headed right now. And I think it's also just it's, it makes it easier to understand why the Bitcoin treasury company trade is quickly becoming overcrowded and saturated. Because people that are paying attention to what sailors been doing for the past few years have seen the writing on the wall of like this was inevitable. Like it was inevitable that they would once the gap accounting was fixed, that any sort of material up move in Bitcoin, given their massive balance sheet of BTC that like this stat would be inevitable. And so I think for the folks that are paying attention and and have sort of latched onto the strategy, like it just speaks to why you've seen so many copycats trying to do the exact same thing. Yeah, And to, to use his analogy to to fire, right, with these treasure treasury companies, it's like, you know, you can obviously use fire to eat your house or send a rocket into space, but you can also, you know, fire can burn your house or the neighborhood down, right? So it kind of the, the, the devil's in the details with these treasury companies. And there's a big difference between a solid business deciding that they want to, you know, strengthen their balance sheet over the long term versus someone trying to, you know, think that they're going to be Michael Saylor 2 point O and have the capacity to, you know, carry out a lot of these much more complicated derivative based, leverage based strategies. So, you know, that's, that's something I to be determined right with how this all plays out. But I think it's, it's certainly, and I was at the, the Bitcoin conference a couple weeks ago and, you know, outside of maybe stable coins, I think the, the treasuries was the dominant theme, right? Everyone talking about the companies getting exposure. And so I think it's just going to be a matter of how these companies actually do it. And, and people are going to have to do their due diligence on investing in these these stocks and, and understanding why this company has a, you know, quote, UN quote Bitcoin strategy. Or or just buy Bitcoin. Or just buy Bitcoin, which is save yourself the hassle. You don't need to be an equity analyst. There you go We have better money. Just just buy Bitcoin. That's. A great point. Some people are scared to buy Bitcoin though, and I'll tell you why it's I'm smiling, but it's actually not a it's a more serious topic. But some people are scared to buy Bitcoin because pulling up another tweet from Eric here, he mentions he read a piece about a whole family that has to go off the grid about their crypto and Bitcoin exposure. And he says should not have to watch your back just because you made a smart investment. I wonder if these highly publicized cases will drive more use to ETFs versus self custody. I mean, this is so, Brian, you could just buy Bitcoin. But some people are scared to do it because it's like, you could pull up this chart here as well from Alex Thorne. Which is what? Can you bring down what's happening? Yeah, breakdown. What's happening to the chart, just for anybody that's not watching. Yeah. And so this is a chart here from Alex Thorinet Galaxy, who we had on the podcast last week. And he says 2025 is on track to be the most dangerous year ever for crypto owners. More than 25 documented physical attacks against crypto owners this year. And the year isn't even halfway done. And mind you as well, this dad is like criminally under reported as well. There's a lot of things that are just never reported. And so the chart he has is just breaking down by country and also by year. It's a bar chart by year. And then different colors for different countries where these incidents are occurring. And to tie it all back, it does actually, like these statistics ultimately do, drive more demand to financial products like Bitcoin, treasury companies or ETFs because people don't want to have to die for a trade. I think Michael said that before on the show. And then it ultimately ties back to what we do here at On Ramp. But I'm curious, like before going on my own tangent, if any of you guys have an initial reaction to this data. I mean, the one thing I want to call out somebody should you know, if you're listening pull it up because if you look at the trend, it basically directly is correlated to the price of Bitcoin. So you can see it in 14 lower and then you see the run up in 17 and then 18 and then it drops down during the bear. And then similarly, you can kind of see in the run up of 21 and then it kind of like dissipates into the the bear and then it picks back up in 24. And then 25 is almost, you know, close to the 24 high and a little bit less than the 21 high, but basically saying we're going to be much higher. And this is something we've been talking about behind the scenes and naturally have been more a lot louder about it because it makes complete sense as the price appreciates. If people are holding this stuff on their in their on their person, they're naturally exposed. And that's one of the big things we talk with clients about. It's like we can talk about differentiation on all these different aspects of custody and financial services, but we're the only people really have been saying this for a while and having a viable alternative if you're going to get spot exposure, reduce counterparty risk while also reducing your family from being put into put at risk. And everyone else will position in a different way of do XY or Z. And they're ultimately putting their clients at risk. And eventually their clients are going to wake up when something bad happens down the street because I hope it doesn't happen to them. And then say, well, why didn't you tell me this? And then that's when like people are just going to flee to better products. So it's really unfortunate. And it's really unfortunate that like people don't talk or have the foresight because I think a lot of people know this, but they don't have a solution. So they'd rather talk the book of like their existing product. It's the rational thing that was always going to happen because This is why gold was sitting at banks. This is why custodians and banks have existed for thousands of years is because ultimately, if you hold all your wealth on your person, bad things happen. Because Pete, bad people exist and they want it. Yeah, I think I would just say like, I think it's great that you guys talk about this a lot because I think it's a a hugely important part of this investing in this asset class to kind of understand what it is, how it's different. And, and I think, you know, there's a lot of like there's a lot of folks out there that I think, you know, think of self sovereignty as being like the most important thing. And it obviously is incredibly important. However, like you also have to kind of think about who you are like individually as a person, Like are you a technical person that can manage all this stuff by yourself? Are you someone that is wants to, you know, secure your physical home with fences and security systems? And right. And and so I think a lot of times like gets lost in like the debate, particularly among kind of like the Bitcoin community on Twitter, is that like that's that's the ideal outcome for everyone. And it's just not the case. The majority of people don't want to invest in something if they have to somehow become technical experts in, in managing it, if they have to now, you know, figure out a way to defend their home from potential attacks and all this stuff. Which is why, you know, I think it's, it's so important what that you guys are, are, you know, have the product that you do, but also that you're, you're talking about this stuff because it's kind of like the, the family's dirty secret that no one wants to, to really talk about because I think it's like an uncomfortable conversation, but it's, it's so important. And I think the the less we talk about it, the more risk there is of it happening to to people. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. And it's not even all about the physical risks only. I mean these are obviously ever more present and unfortunately are only going going to grow over time because to Michael's point, if you look at the bar chart, it's correlated with the price of Bitcoin. And it makes sense, right? Because the price appreciates, people are securing more amount of wealth in their home or nearby. And then there's also more awareness around the asset class as well. And so you can imagine how many people still don't even really understand or know anything about Bitcoin and how it's secured in 2025. And this is already a problem. Well, what does that look like in 20-30 when Bitcoin is 1/2 a million, a million or more? Maybe I'm being bearish and people are still using the same solutions to secure their asset. I mean, it's so there's obviously a huge problem with that. And then the digital side of it as well is becoming even more sophisticated too. People are getting duped by social engineering attacks to give up access to an account or give up access to a wallet or seed phrase. So there's really not many viable solutions in the market. And of course we're talking our book, but it's also because it's true. I mean, I use on Ramp and team uses on Ramp for our own Bitcoin because it protects against these threats that are going to become more and more present. And so this is a serious conversation that people need to just think through for their business, for their family, because unfortunately it's just a one way street. I mean, it's great that Bitcoin appreciates over time, but then there's also just need to be real about, OK, well, how do I actually secure this for the long term? Yeah, I'd like to like try to look at it all objectively in the sense of pretending on RIP doesn't exist. It's really about like, I just think it was a broken sign of market structure that that's possible because when you look at across asset classes, people don't generally, of course, there's always edge cases because there's always deaths for people and there's always things that happen bad in the world. But you don't see this level of occurrence where people are robbed for their equity or bond portfolio because you think about all the controls and things in place, but in in Bitcoin and digital assets. And the problem is like most bad actors in the physical world don't even know about Bitcoin yet or that it's sitting on these devices in people's homes and all the things. So that naturally is going to converge and somebody can make the case, well, if we went into like a utopia and everyone had money and we're fine and the world's in a good place, but the reality is the world, we're long volatility, I think we'd agree. And we're going to be long kind of disruption just because of when you're changing a monetary order and you have inflation that's running rampant, that you're going to have people that are not only desperate, but feel like maybe they didn't get their fair shake and a lot of people are going to be exposed. And so the alternative shouldn't be an ETF or a public treasury company because you're still having a bunch of risk if that's your trade off, that's fair for for now if you're going to hold a hardware device, but that's where products and services as the market grows, starts to, you know, grow around it. That gives you the natural exposure you would want without all of the counterparty risk of somebody being robbing, robbing you. So things just a logical progression where this is really the key thing I've always keyed in on here is that it's this is how early we are. We hadn't figured out custody like this is how early, like maybe we're free, you know, 1995 to 2000 in the Internet bubble where we're just trying to figure out like these primitives and how do you make them kind of dynamic and and all the things related. But we haven't even got to that 2000 crescendo. And I think that's what's going to happen with these pub Cos is eventually like we're going to have this blow off top and then kind of go into it like deeper bear that we went into from 2000 to 2005, eight once, you know, iPhone and things like that, Uber, everybody came about. You didn't hear Michael, Michael Saylor said. There's no more crypto winner, Michael, no more winners. I think it's not. Relative is the big problem, right, because we could go to a million over and then drop to 200 K and people will just be like, oh, this thing was always a grift and a Ponzi and they're associated with Bitcoin when it was like people, you know, running up shell companies. That's the funniest part about the shell company stuff is like it's this is a create, this is a this is a product of how crazy the world is. And and generally, you know, when you have money dislocated from real value is that it is turned around as a positive that you don't have any economic advantage outside of being an acquisition vehicle, right? Like Jerry, you keep it on. It's like you got to have some productive utility if you're going to use debt and leverage, not the underlying. Because that's the equivalent of like somebody taking out a credit card and say they're just going to keep buying more credit cards and buy more Bitcoin and not have a plan if it delevers. Like that's effectively or somebody calls it Capital A. 100%, yeah. Well, we're coming up on time here. Any final thoughts? Anything we didn't cover that we want to get into real quick or did we do a good job this week? Also, if we did a good job this week, please let us know in the comments section or tell us what we didn't do and we'll maybe try to improve. Sound off in the comments, like and subscribe. All right, I'm, I'm not hearing anything. So Jerry, I want to thank you for coming on the show today. Yeah, if you want to get in touch with you to discuss, you know, anything we chatted about where should they find you. Yeah, so Twitter, O'Shea, GTS is my handle hash decks. You can find our research and ways to contact me there as well. But I really appreciate you guys having me on. I think you all know I'm a big consumer of your content, so appreciate having the opportunity to speak with you. Easter egg, if you made it this far, We've talked about this a long time about the last trade dinner series, and I know you guys are going to be in DC at the Bitcoin Policy Institute. Maybe that's when it gets kicked off. So if anybody wants to attend, they should shoot us an e-mail. Yeah. Reach out, let us know why you'd be a good guest, and we'll set up. Maybe I got to talk to Jackson Brian first. But I would imagine Jerry would enjoy seeing everyone in person. But yeah. BP at last trade dinner series. Yeah. I love it. Well, Jerry, thank you. Really appreciate the time and good connect. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks guys. Take care. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Ramp Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit on rampbitcoin.com/contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private Client advisors.
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