Paper Games, DAT Reckoning & BTC's Silent Clock | THE ₿ROADCAST EP. 23

Let's get it all right everyone. Welcome to the broadcast, where Bitcoin culture meets business and finance. We catch up on news, tweets, videos, charts, trends and any other Bitcoin related content that stood out to us in the past two weeks, powered by On Ramp. I'm joined by Brian and Michael. What's up guys? We're powering the whole industry at this point. We need some extra juice right now because the wind has been taken out of the cells of the believers. Where we're going, there's going to be very few people left holding spot cold storage Bitcoin the way it looks. I feel the same. I think it's so interesting. I just saw Simon Dixon wait, I can I can quickly quickly pull it up. I thought it was so funny. Like did the whole click bait era is so wild guys. Alive and well can I follow something out just before we go and whenever the price does what it does your heuristic on if you follow somebody moving forward should be you probably won't, but should be if they associated with a dat right? Like if they're still hanging around this space talking about Bitcoin and have no affiliation with a digital asset treasury company, I can guarantee you they're probably a good friend of mine and they have high signal and high moral integrity. I can call some of those out if we want to, but we should really look there because where we go has proven that people will just fleece you and take your money and lose it based of all the shit we talked about sailors saying. Sell your car, say your house, double up leverage. You're pretty much wrecked now via your God sailor and we just have to like get that understood and known because this will only continue fertile a million and then a $10 million because this is called the Wild West. We're monetizing a new money in in not only reality, like in in real time. And there's always going to be somebody out there trying to chase and take your money. And so that's just we're seeing it right now. There's a lot of people that got liquidated or lost a lot of wealth. I, I, I saw the kidney. Yeah, I, I know. But now I, I, you know, what is interesting? Yesterday I was thinking about why, why are people so infatuated with like, the history of the gold rush in California? And like, people from all over the country came there, right? And he started looking for God. Like, that's a super crazy romantic story where, by the way, also a lot of scams and stuff happened, right. And of the snake. Oil salesman were were created during that right. Exactly. Yeah, that's where all the picks and shovels stuff, of course from, right. But we are actually living through that time right now with Bitcoin. And I like that Michael is pointing this out, but this is going to take a very long time. And there's going to be opportunities on opportunities for people to fit you different derivatives, different forms and shapes of, you know, whatever is attached to Bitcoin and see if there's people that are that are interested in. And I agree. I mean, as as as much as crypto was a Wild West, yeah, the more clear it becomes how valuable Bitcoin is, it'll also probably become more and more a Wild West. What I wanted to show you is so funny. You know, you, you probably saw like all the tweets that had millions of views, hundreds of thousands, millions of views about, you know, Epstein is Satoshi and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, we have Simon Dixon, like super OG. I don't know how many followers does he have? 200 something OK, you know this has 30,000 views. It's literally Epstein ordering Bitcoin on Amazon. And I mean he knew Bitcoin so well that he either needed to order that for himself or he couldn't explain it to a friend and that's why he needed to buy a book about it, right. And then there's there's people saying, you know, he's definitely not Satoshi, but he was actively, you know, explaining blockchain stuff blah blah. Well, yeah, if you are constantly trying to figure out where to put your talking tentacles and then I don't think it's crazy that. Yeah, it would be more surprise. It would be more surprising if he wasn't talking about Bitcoin at some point in like 2014, 2015. Like, you know, he had his hands and everything and he was talking to people in tech like. Well, they even talked about it in 2011, which, you know, in, in my mind, I would say that is a signal. It's a signal that this obscure, weird Internet thing is on the radar of people in those those circles. I yeah, I mean, I've just been replying the last few days. Open source computer protocol like if you don't understand what an open source computer protocol is, doesn't. You know I. I you know, I understand it for you. I haven't heard that, but it's a good way to frame it. It's like, maybe we wouldn't be on to something if Epstein wasn't a little interested in this kind of new form of money. But what's interesting because he was he was pretty interested in a lot of nefarious shit. But what is fascinating about that is like I'm convinced that the powers that be just understand we have no basis in reality anymore. And it stems not only from like the slop of AI, but just the fundamental basis of like how money and value accrues where people lack that. So you can send all these crazy rabbit holes like the shit you were sending me Braun, people have sent, which you just referenced below there about. I think he was trying to convey that maybe he could be Satoshi or he was doing something. It's like people will just create their own constructs based on like little bread, bread crumbs that are thrown out there, which is like part of that whole like slop. And so yeah, like there's a lot of obviously merit to the stuff that's going on. And hopefully we'll talk about the. I think it's one of the topics about some of the the Epstein files and relation of Bitcoin. But there's also like these mental models people just conjure up because they have too much time plugged into the the computer. They start connecting dots and it's like the Pepe whatever on Always Sunny in Philadelphia over Next thing you know, you're trying to explain how Epstein. So it's also like if you look at a lot of those slop like very sensational type posts over the past week or so, like you look in the comments, since it's a lot of, a lot of XRP army in there. So I you know, a lot of this is not organic. Like it's, you know, it's other bag holders trying to, to cling on to anything they can to, to shit on Bitcoin, which you know, many, many such cases. Well, A2 fan end to end to be cash people, you know to to them I just say, well, you forked and you lost. You know, like I, I mean, I was, I was there when the block size wars were happening. I didn't really pay attention afterwards. I personally think big blocks would have been bad. That's kind of my conclusion. And this is the whole point of Bitcoin is you, you can short it, you can fork it, you can do, you can do all these, all these things and eventually energy will converge on the longest and the most trustworthy chain. And I think that is what is happening. And, and by the way, to all the XRP people, I just reply, where are the 1st 30,000 blocks since Genesis, right? Or why is block 32,000 your Genesis block? And no one ever really replies because these guys don't really understand. Yeah, the fundamental problem with, you know, the flawed integrity of the beginning of that blockchain. But you know, like it, it's, it's fine. You know, you got to I think just let let these people go. But something that I think Mike said just made me think of my my link that I wanted to do as the last, but I'll do it as the as the first because for me, this was I, I saw someone post this picture and it's from Reddit. It's quite old, but I have to save the my phone because I just absolutely love this the first time I saw this. So I think this is probably like, it's probably like 5 years old or something, but I'll, I'll, I'll read it. And I wonder what you guys, what you guys think it says. I, I finally think I understand Bitcoin. It is a silent project that operates in the background. There's no face to it. The founders created it and walked away. It's like an elegant clock set into motion that continues to tick. There's no promise of some complex protocol to come 35 or 10 years down the road. It does not. It does what it's supposed to now without self promotion from the founders, since it doesn't need self promotion to try. If it doesn't fall victim to devices of marketing from greedy, charismatic leaders with overly complex projects. Sure, They're Sailor and Novograds that sometimes fall into that role. Bitcoin doesn't. Well, Novogratz also fell into other roles. Luna, right? But Bitcoin doesn't need them to survive, and won't need them when they die. The project works now. It does what it's supposed to do, and it'll continue to do that, to do what it's supposed to. It's the money of the future of our science fiction novels. There's no crypto Chris marketing shitty debit cards. There's no charismatic Doquan doing a Forbes Steve Jobs photo shoot with a black T-shirt and a white background. There's no Jay Powell magically expanding the money supply with a cobalt feud wand to create cobalt fueled wand is fire by the way, creating a nine trillion USD balance sheet out of thin air. Bitcoin takes out the corruption of humans because the humans that created it stepped away. Sure, people will build corrupt systems around it, but Bitcoin itself is a simple, pure and elegant vehicle, silently taking away in the background until the ticking becomes so loud that no one can ignore it. And what I just love about this is that once you see this right, it's just, it's a protocol for money. Enough people adopted it that it's just chugging along. And every block that gets mined onto this immutable time chain, this Ledger, increases the integrity of this blockchain. And that's why Jeff Booth always says, you know, as long as it stays decentralized and secure and you keep on adding blocks to it, you know, that is the only thing that that needs to happen and all this noise around it, right? Like that's where the meme Bitcoin doesn't care comes from. It's it's fucking irrelevant. Like you get this or you, you don't. And the Bitcoin blockchain is basically, you know, the highest form of ordered information ever, ever to exist. And when that just proliferates and gets longer and longer and more immutable, that makes more trustworthy, it invites other people to use that trust to then contribute to it. And that is basically the, I would say self propelling, you know, positive feedback loop that eventually creates this organic growth. But this takes time. It's so boring. It's so such the opposite of everything that is Fiat, right? That's this for me. It was just a really grounding post. I really, really loved it. So it was really great. I saw this yesterday again and decided to repost and I wonder what you guys think. Yeah, I, I love it. I've I've seen that one before in the past. And it's a very succinct, concise distillation of, of what this thing is. And, and I in the honor app newsletter earlier this week, I wrote something similar where it was just, you know, there was a lot of a lot of noise to your point past few weeks around, you know, control vectors around Bitcoin. And it's like, no, like you have to go back to the first principles, the fundamentals of what this thing is. And it's, it's fundamentally more akin to fire, the Internet, the printing press language itself, where it doesn't matter who contributed to the early development of these things. They become ubiquitous. They become embedded in civilization as tools, open neutral tools. And until you get to that point of understanding, like it's not that, you know, it's frankly not going to click for you. You're just going to look at it as an asset or a number on a screen. But it's much more than that, right? It's, it's a network, it's a tool and it's open and neutral and, and those characteristics make it more like other technologies that, you know, it, it frankly doesn't matter who was involved in their creation because they now exist. The genie is out of the bottle and there's nothing you can do to to stop it or coerce it or influence it or change it with like, you know, just monetary sort of incentives alone. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I think of is all that's happened, you know, the past couple months or last week. And what you're relating to is just comes down to understanding of Bitcoin because there really is very few people have their arms wrapped around it. And it's indicated it's not only the price, but like the different thought leaders and people that are out there positing or explaining or telling people to do the different things. Like whether it's quantum or you need inflation because of the mining and the, the, the spend around security or it's parked it in some other vehicle. And that's how you get your exposure. Or, you know, put it on a plastic device and it's going to last for 100 years. And don't think about the repercussions if you get hit by a bus. Like the reality is there's just a few people that fundamentally grasp this. And then what happens is if somebody generally that goes all in, becomes a thought leader or they're listening or people are listening to, if they didn't grasp it, they end up touting like the wrong information and it gets picked up by the market. Like that's ultimately what's happening. Because if somebody deeply understood Bitcoin, they would deeply understand why you wouldn't want to centralized it with a third party and then relay the consult the custody and all the things associated. And so when I read these things that I think about them, it's just that early. And the reality is more people should actually probably own less than more because if you own all this Bitcoin, they don't understand it. You're the first to puke it because you don't even understand what you're holding. So you should probably take a step back and then do a little more research and realize, Oh, well, it's this. But then if it's this, this is the second and 3rd order effects, right? Because that's the natural version of like why I've never would never be able to build. And I don't think anybody credibly would ever want to build a self cust or a like a custodial exchange. Because if this thing actually works well, we know what happened with gold. And ultimately, whether it's the state or somebody else will attack that, it's an attack vector. So there's just a lot of like second, third order things that come from understanding this new asset class. We didn't live on a gold standard. So we don't understand the counterparty risk. We don't understand a lot of things and how we got there. And then you have a digital bare asset that's never existed and there's no bailouts. And so there's just a lot of knowledge. And so if you don't have it, you shouldn't actually allocate until you get to that level where your conviction grows and then you don't have to puke it out. But you also don't go do something really shady because that's honestly though, the craziest part about all this is more people have lost Bitcoin, right? And probably bought it in the sense of like and still hold it like all these people from the beginning of Bitcoin till now. I've just hold big goose eggs because of FTX genesis block 5 Celsius death. Like there's all this shit that continues and will always continue because everything will look better, faster, stronger than just holding spot and cold storage, which again, is like it's like a reflection of the market. But also, how many people tell you that in this market to just buy the Bitcoin and put it in cold storage and then just go back to work like because it doesn't pay? Yeah, well, it's, it's funny, I'm scrolling really quick on my ex because I don't know if you saw this. Let me see if I can find it. Ron just free blonde. He's just going off. We used to like have a regimen and go through, he started I. Know I have a regiment. I have a regiment. I have a regiment. It's late for him. So he's he's, you know, probably taking some edibles or something is just kind of he's just blowing with blowing with the blowing with the pot. Blowing with the pot. Yeah, look at look at me. Yeah, Here, here, here. Wait, I got it. I got it. That's. What? You know he did. He goes splitting. Look, I fucking love this dude. Like. Yeah, this was out of left field. This was fire. I don't know if you saw this, Mike, but this is this is kiss Gene Simmons, kiss Oh really philosophy? It's a real Gene Simmons. My personal philosophy RA Bitcoin is to hold huddle. I firmly believe in the future you need to do your own research or make your own decisions. Like what's the? Freak. Good advice, good advice. So I asked Grok gave him some Bitcoin face bank. So she did it, Did I? Mean, I did not see that. That's pretty incredible. I mean that that was a nice bridge from what you were talking about, right? Like this is a you don't really often see that advice and definitely not from Gene Simmons. That was super random, OK. When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, Peace of Mind starts with architecture on ramps. Multi institution custody. Distributes control across three independent regulated key holders and a two of three quorum. No single point of failure. No pooled or omnibus exposure. Segregated client titled faults. You retain full legal ownership while on Ramp coordinates security, compliance and operational workflows behind the scenes. It's strength of money delivered through the simplicity of 1. Multi institution custody is the foundation for everything. We build sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional controls. And now On Ramp is piloting flat predictable pricing, making best in class Bitcoin custody and financial services more accessible now than ever On Ramp strength in many, simplicity in one. To learn more, check out on rampbitcoin.com. Thanks, Brian. This is yours. Yeah, this was our buddy Eric Balchunas. We just had him on the last trade yesterday, which came out this morning and we had a good, we had a nice little therapy session with him, but he had some good data just around the ETF flows in particular, which I found pretty interesting. There was, you know, significant outflows yesterday over 400 million and year to date 2.2 billion, but 90% of basically the dollars allocated to Bitcoin ETFs, you know, since they went live hasn't moved. So I think this is interesting just in the context of, you know, we talked about sort of this IPO moment, this transition of old holders to new holders. And these new holders don't have some of the same psychological baggage is one way to put it around for your cycle thinking or even just short termism. And, and like just general sort of having a, a more of a degenerate trading mentality where they're doing, you know, legitimate due diligence on this asset and forming a, a view that is longer than a few quarters or even a year. And so I think this is fascinating just in the, in the respect that this capital, at least so initially this, this capital that has gone into the ETFs appears to be stickier than perhaps past cohorts of capital that have come into Bitcoin, you know, seeing a 30 to 50% decline and 90% of that not moving. I think it's, it's pretty remarkable and a very positive constructive signal of what's to come. Because as we've talked about in the past, you know, a lot of these channels where these ETETF flows are coming from, you know, the, the brokerages, the wirehouses, the banks are really, you know, still in the early stages of, of broadening access to these things. Even getting to the point of like soliciting access. You know, typically at most advisors right now, they, you know, they, the end client still has to request and, and want exposure to these things. They're not typically being sold or solicited to the end client. And so very early days on like the pipes actually opening up. But I think this is a super positive signal that this capital may be longer term in nature than we're historically used to for new capital coming into the space. And I, I thought this was incredibly bullish. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot here. One of them is the notion of like a lot of the capital that came in, we talked about before, not a lot, but there's a large percentage of individuals that have wanted Bitcoin but just wanted to buy it through their brokerage. So they probably have done research, seen it, but there's a real bigger aperture like that's worth discussing and looking at is a those people, it's a very small percentage of their portfolio. So even if it dropped down 40%, like they're not looking at the screen because they just watch their net worth cut 50%. But the other side of that we should be. And it's something that I'm learning is like more empathetic and just understanding of like, A, nobody really wants to watch their portfolio crawl down 50% and B, if they don't understand what we just talked about, nor should they because then they'll puke it out because they won't understand. They'll think Quantum or Epstein are an issue. And so this goes to the angle of everyone's going to come at their own kind of sizing and understanding and whether it's, you know, index, whether it's gold, whether it's bonds. Like there is just this reality that people will have to adopt in the size that is it akin or attuned to their, their age, their retirement profile, their income. And yes, if you're disenfranchised and you're a 28 year old millennial and there's no hope, like, yes, put all your money in Bitcoin. That was that would be like, what else was I going to do? But the reality is like, and that maybe is the case for a lot of people at that age, but it's not the case for all the world's wealth. That's why you don't see this asset class do it because there's still a big misunderstanding of like, will it persist into perpetuity? So it makes a lot of sense why they're not selling it because it's like 2% if if not less than their portfolio. So why would they care if it went down 30%? Like they're probably just like, yeah, that's stupid. But it's like, why am I going to sell it? I'm already down 30%. It's only, you know, 1.1% of My Portfolio. Just like letter Brian. Yeah, percent, it's a great point. We and we talked about specifically that with Eric as well in terms of this, this cohort of buyers is different in, in that exact regard. It's, it's typically a, a much smaller allocation size and that is sort of fundamental to withstanding volatility is you, you've positioned it accordingly and it's not, you know, fluctuating your net worth by 50% and you can have a little bit of more grace with the position effectively when things like this do happen. I think your explanations are probably better than the take I had on this. I also think that in this context, the actual like financial advisors of these funds do actually explain. I think that's my my assumption. You know what, what Bitcoin is also, right? So I feel that if you are just a general person and you're learning on social media or podcasts or YouTube or whatever, you know, it can be quite a rugged journey there. There's a lot of noise, but it's hard to differentiate be be between like who's talking fundamentally about Bitcoin? Who's a high person, whatever. Oh, Cardano, you know, this guy's a billionaire should follow like whatever, all this fucking noise, right? But if you're talking to your high bid financial advisor, you know, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the Bitcoin guy here at BlackRock and I'm going to explain to you why you need to own Bitcoin at XYZ percentage. Then you actually get the proper explainer. I mean, we, we saw these videos about Bitcoin that BlackRock did right at the beginning of when the ETF launch. I mean, that's probably a decent explainer for a lot of people that eventually invest in something like this. So that was kind of my my odds around this year. I mean, to be fair, right? Like to contradict or speak in the other side of my mouth is yes, until a certain extent, right. Because we know that these firms don't actually fundamentally understand Bitcoin. They probably will tell you to rebalance. They're going to put a bunch of like all coins in front of them. So I think this is really why businesses like us and also the opportunity is so great because it's really just going to be digital native firms and people that understand Bitcoin deeply. But that's why I get excited about pods like this. And what we're building is because we're not just like so myopic and saying sell your shares and park all your money and BTC. It's like we help you navigate through that and can come at it through an objective lens of like, what's your right situation? Because it's personal for everyone, not only custody, but how much Bitcoin they should own. And nobody's really taking that like response because between me and you, like, I have all my money in Bitcoin. It's always a bit in Bitcoin. But like the rational decision is not for most people to do that because for a lot of reasons. And we saw that play out like you watch something like this downturn and you're puking your brains out. If you're all in, you have leverage, your family's pissed off, you're not sleeping well, you got to really like know, you know what you're signing up for. And so, yeah, it's, it's a treacherous game because I don't think anybody's well positioned because the crypto people tell you to do a bunch of bullshit and the try to buy people tell you to do a bunch of bullshit. And that's honestly why there's so much asymmetry is because it's really hard to triangulate like what the signal versus the noise is. But if you find it. You benefit. Yeah, that's something I also wanted to say in that we've said there's many, many times on this podcast before, but the the asymmetry is the is the opportunity, right. But you need to do the work. I mean, I'm in a similar situation as, as Michael and I was fucking grumpy last two days. But I, you know, so I mean, I, I also don't don't like it when it goes down. But then I don't know if you saw my post, but I posted my I had a screenshot from when it went from like 500 to 100 and I just posted, you know, I've been here before, you know, multiple times and still it's still fucked up, right? Like it's still not nice to experience so. In, in reality, like we shouldn't be that grumpy. Like there's a version of if you have leverage and I would say we have a form of leverage be personally, because we're building a business and everything's tied to it. So it is harder when you see your balance sheet and things go down. But if you're just like working on your craft in, in saving in Bitcoin, it hit me yesterday. I was like, holy crap, I thought we were 120 forever. And that really keeps a lot of people out of multiple coins, whole coins, whatever. It's like we're sitting, we were sitting at 60. It's like what a godsend for somebody that's been doing all the work that can go and pile in or sell something to go buy like so that's a huge OP for for majority of people that don't even hold Bitcoin yet. And so if you're stacking your balance sheet, which is in dollars and you could buy more Bitcoin yesterday versus 3 months ago, like that's huge. And that's the craziest part. That has never been a bad decision in the past 17 years to to buy at this time. And also and also. It could still go to 5045, whatever, right? Let's say if it's if it's really a bear market, like some people say, you know, and then some days after having well, let's say till October, we go to 45. You know, you buy DCA on the way to 45 and then back up like it's a very, very rare opportunity. And this whole idea of oh, Bitcoin crash TO60K like it's literally the mean. It's the that we've been talking about. The only thing I was going to say is, is it relates to the point you just made sort of around like DCA and that strategy, like the when the the haters and the dunkers come out, when, when these types of moves happen, it's it's always a cherry pick time frame, right? Like, oh, you know, you've made you've been flat since 21. It's like, well, no, If you, if you deeply understood Bitcoin back in 21 and you were DCA ING from 21 until now, you're still massively up, like you're not flat. And they always fail to mention that they just assume everyone bought the top and now they're flat. So it's sort of disingenuous in that respect. Like if you do get to a level of understanding where you're indiscriminately accumulating regardless of the price, you're actually in a great position right now. Yeah. Can you pull up? This is probably my favorite all time Bitcoin chart and then they get posted a lot and this is one of the times it looks the least, the most read, but it's Bitcoin profitable days. I've always gravitated towards it because like there's no, there's no, there's no shortage of like charts and for layman like myself. Like sorry, can you zoom in a bit? Yeah, usually I usually get confused or you look at like hot aways you're trying to like discern. But like here, it's pretty straightforward. It's just how many days if you're holding Bitcoin has it been profitable? And usually this chart is always green with like a slight hint in the in the red because it's only for 17 years in certain days that you're not, to Brian's point, underwater. And even with this downturn, you still look at it the majority of the time holding the asset, you're you're holding a profitable asset. So I think this just underpins a lot of indiscriminately. As Brian pointed out, just storing your excess value and time in a harder money pays off on a long enough time horizon. You don't actually don't have to wait that long. Yeah. OK, you you can keep talking. This is yours. Yeah, so, you know, now maybe some people understand the whole meme of a staying humble and stacking, stacking sats because a lot of people got got greedy and stacked dats. And there was this from Artemis Research, $25 billion cumulatively downed in total and then zero above their cost basis. There was, yes, today I think somebody, Jackson shared Emprey Digital's like working on a, some form of activist take over because they're just like, what the hell are you doing? You have this asset, Why are you still sitting on it? You're watching the price crater. And I think it just goes into what we've been pounding the drum since the very beginning of this is that these things never made sense. Their volatility was going to be even more enhanced. When these downturns happen. You don't have governance, you're going to see them puke out these coins. I think it came out that like Saquons was selling now, like, I mean, everyone, it just it never made sense. And I think it's just important to call out because, yeah, I know there's there's another aspect which is I want to use on the third link, but it is worth referencing. They're like, you know, all these notes and emails haven't come out. But like these creepy people that were, you know, hanging out on Epson Islands, like they were creeped out by sailor. So, you know, you take that information with what it. I think that's a good thing to be honest. Sorry. Well, you know I. Don't think we have enough. I don't think we have enough information it. Was literally like one sentence. One sentence well, I don't know if all the all the deals are out, but it's just mainly the point of like there's rational fundamentals of why you do not want a decentralized asset parked with a central entity. It's like it's that simple. We don't have to make it that complex. We can pull up three months ago you referencing stretch and then it's like, what how's it work? It's like a whole lot. I don't know. It's like the notion of like you Add all that complexity into the thing that is what we just talked about and you're just asking for disaster across the board. What is playing out across these companies? I just don't and this is not popular because almost everyone's in this trade. I don't see on a long enough time horizon how MicroStrategy and Sailor end up good for Bitcoin. And so that whole, because what goes up has to come down. It's just physics. So all these flows, yeah, well that, but also if you're holding 500,000 or whatever BTC, where does that sit on a long enough time horizon? And then the other aspect is really the market structure, because I think a lot of people, we talked about this before, if you don't understand Bitcoin and then you have these incentives that look like they're pumping your bags, you get loud and you join their boards and you pump these dats, but you didn't even really understand Bitcoin because you wouldn't have put your career and your reputation there. And one of the easiest examples is think about how much Bitcoin people do not own because either they were buying these paper shares or they were people selling via in kind deposits, right? So how much Bitcoin was put in these treasuries? This is Samani. We'll talk about the crypto bullshit. But like he took out, you know, that dat that he had a bunch of Solana locked up. He was able to put them in the dat, probably sell those shares, get out at the top without selling on the open market, which is what a lot of your favorite influencers were able to do behind the scenes by parking these Dats, which theoretically took some of the cell pressure or the buy pressure away. And these are all things that people don't understand. They just like go and tout and like this is a thing that's better. You're going to get better multiples. And everyone went and took, you know, the candy and so nobody else called them out and that's the whole deal. It's like the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing he didn't exist. It's like the greatest trick your local influencer ever played is convincing you that the dat was the right trade versus buying spot Bitcoin. Yeah, I know, I I know you have this take on this and I I think I. It's not a take, it's empirical evidence by everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, OK, I agree with you. My personal view on on strategy is is a bit different. I mean, I, you know, if, if you, if you realize what Bitcoin is right, and I think we all know the arc of, of sailor and famously dismissing it, right. And then, you know, the whole the wholesaler story. I can imagine that you both have maybe woken up sometime in the night or in an evening or in the morning where you were like, holy fuck, is this Bitcoin? Like, is it this big? Is it this unique? Is it this type of opportunity or you know, the Andreas Antonopoulos clip right where he said says like, I went into this fugue stage for like a week and like, you know, fully into it and couldn't sleep and I saw all the fucking stuff and I read all the history. I mean, I think we all see it like that and I think Sailor also see it sees it like that. I've watched a lot of Sailor stuff and like the Breedlove series and whatever, just a lot of hours of sailor. So I think he really understands Bitcoin and I think he sees a certain type of opportunity to get it right. And it's again, similar as in the in the gold rush, there were people that got a lot of gold by using a certain strategy. Did that work out for everyone who joined them? Probably, probably not. But I, I kind of see it like that. This is just his way of attempting to acquire as much of the hardest money to ever exist. I mean, I don't I, I think, you know, it's a great attempt. Doesn't mean I don't agree with you in a sense that you know, if you truly understand Bitcoin, you should buy you should buy Bitcoin. But I don't see Bitcoin as an investment. I think a lot of people also don't see Bitcoin as an investment, right. You would rather see MicroStrategy as an investment, something that you deem riskier than than Bitcoin. And because 99% of the people still don't even understand why they would even need Bitcoin. Sailor does still have an opportunity to acquire capital in all these different types of ways from people that still think Fiat money is a thing. So I, yeah, I think how I disagree with that. I just see it like that. I think it's fair and I will give when I talked about this on this proof of podcast this past week about because I think he was long Sailor and he was fair like not long any of the other assets. But there is something to an Immaculate Conception with and I don't think I've shared this outside of the pot I did with him. So I'll share it again if I don't like with MicroStrategy and Bitcoin that you can kind of do it once because you see the scale and what he was able to get to. So I will give you that. If there's any credibility to these things, it there is that. But from being around here long enough and seeing inorganic pumping of things, FTX is the best example and watching the evangelization and the like stamping of approval of nobody, you know, giving you think about like 2020 Bitcoin steel taboo and a company comes out and is stacking and is using the debt market to buy more Bitcoin. He's out there basically a Heckley pumping a stock and nobody did anything. There's just a lot of inertia and momentum that I don't see how this is organically skewed up. And when I see that it ultimately tells me there's something at play and at hand. And then I don't feel like it is has the best interest long term. And so I, I stay away from it. And then the other side of that is ultimately if we agree that it's impossible to really impossible without time to understand Bitcoin, imagine layering in Bitcoin and then imagine and then layering in MicroStrategy and their whole debt structure. And then the amount of Bitcoin and why they don't have to puke Bitcoin out until it gets to $7000. And then not puking your own position and selling those shares when it draws down 50%. When people are saying he was in Epstein's deal and they can be insolvent in the counterparty, maybe insolvent Coinbase. So we don't know where his assets sit. You know, it just doesn't even rationally make sense as an investment if you deeply understood Bitcoin because most people that deeply understood Bitcoin never participate in this. Hence going back to the beginning of the principle of individuals never got involved because they all understood Bitcoin and it didn't make sense. So I can see how like theoretically in the short term, it does make sense. I just think long term, you know, we look back 10 years from now be like, how the hell did that sick sicko now? And and it'll just happen. Yeah, I don't, I don't have a ton to add, I I think. Brian's long MCR. So it's that's the. I. Think I think your point on being early and 1st and amassing this massive amount of of BTC does matter in terms of its sustainability, longevity. But to your point on the custody side, like you know something happens with their counterparties 510 years from now, none of that really matters. And but Brian, I would agree with you in the sense that like multiple things can be true, in the sense that like Bitcoin is money, it's savings technology, something like this is just fundamentally different. And if you understand that and and understand that you're taking more risk, it's more speculative. It's a corporate entity with management risk, execution risk, governance risk, custody risk, then then that's what it is. And you know, I don't think. That you should judge it like that. You should judge it like that. And I don't think that those things necessarily mean it's doomed to fail inevitably like to, to Michael's, I think the argument you're making. But so, yeah, I, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. But I, you know, I think being early did matter. And I think there is there is credence to the idea that yes, there's there's a ton of capital that exists globally that doesn't have a deep understanding of Bitcoin, but they want exposure in some sense. And. And that's why it's a fallacy. I talked about it with the guys like you can break down every product in micro strategy and then I can break down what the rational deal is for an institution. So institution doesn't I'm. Not saying there's not a rational path, I'm just saying that like. That's what I'm saying that yeah, but I'm saying the explanation why exists doesn't even rationally make sense from the investor type. It didn't make sense from a retail perspective on why that story makes sense, but it doesn't. Like Harvard, one of the most sophisticated investors went and bought high bit and that's .03 percentage of their total allocation. When they get to 3%, they're going to do something like multi institution, they're going to go and do it the right way because their whole endowment and credibility underpins their deep understanding of that. But so that is super logical. The point being is that if somebody is worried about volatility per what they say about the allocation, all you have to do is just buy less Bitcoin. Yeah, you don't need a third party to go and take all the extra risk on in the same way if you want some like incomes and and dividends or whatever, you can buy less Bitcoin, go and parking in Treasury, go parking in options like there's a bunch of other ways to do any of those products without some like first time ever launching something. And then to Brian's main point, which is the thing that everyone we don't, we didn't even talk about here is the thing that hasn't worked for 17 years is centralized custody. He doesn't tell you where it is. He doesn't even recognize that it's a value of importance, which should be the big red flag because that's the whole thing. Is that at the end of the day, any relationship, whether it's personal or business, if the foundation is rooted or fragmented, then ultimately it will, it will perpetuate and it'll show itself at a certain time. And I don't think the genesis of that whole endeavor was rooted in good faith. That's a, that's a hot take. But the point being is if there's even remotely true, that ties into why he doesn't want anybody to know where the underlying asset sits, because it's as simple as that. Like just show us where the asset is and then you can probably get a lot more credibility. I mean I. Totally agree with that. I guess I'm. Optimistic in the sense that I think he does it. I think they do adopt some form of multi institution at some point. But that's the take of why it's also underpinning that because any rational person that's sitting on $50 billion plus that understands that things like on ramp exist and you don't have to go, you can go. Others would adopt them if they're whole Literally life was dedicated to this. You wouldn't have a third party custodian that historically has lost it. If he's that much of A genius and he and he understands everything we're talking about, then why wouldn't you just adopt A better form of custody? Unless you're not the best actor. It's not like rocket science. The same thing is like do you want three or one? 3 is better than one. Generally people would do you get 3 custodians. You get it on chain and verifiable. It's not like he knows we exist. I cannot argue against this. So I think I'm going to the next link. And Mike, last time you weren't here and we had Jackson on, which was great. And I had this clip of Michael Berry. And at the end I was just like, OK, we need to reach out to Michael Berry, right? So he's tripled. Down since this. I just tried to, to, to, you know, tickle him a bit. So I said, Michael Berry, we'll figure out Bitcoin at some point in 2026 and go fully autistic for seven days to be born again as a Bitcoin maxi. But he's like fractal charting on X. And I'm like, dudes, what's my guy? What are you doing? You know, you got a big brain and, and you're going to, you're going to use arrows on this on this chart to to make a point. You know, I, I'm going to be boring because I'm saying this for months now, almost every episode. I'm just bewildered like what's what are these people doing? And especially I don't know, Mike, if you saw that clip, this have you seen this clip, Mike or not? No, we can, we can play it. We can play it real quick if we. If it's just Fiat brain, everyone just has Fiat brain. They took no. No, no, no. But listen, point is he. Understands Fiat's fucked. I'll, I'll, I'll show it. Maybe if people watch the last time, sorry, I'm showing it again, but I just want to show Michael that he gets it like he gets the reason why. Which the degree? Well, I think, I think the point at which the degree to which we can tax our population is. Our basically tap is eclipsed by the amount of our interest on our debt basically makes us a Ponzi scheme of some sort. And I think that's the point. I think it's very hard to pick that spot. There's a long, long history. This is one of those things I wish. I think our we're cut, our leaders, our government are kind of in this teenage state right now. There's this long history we can rely on for a more mature. View of how things work. And I think there's a long history of governments lasting a whole lot longer than they should and you know, a lot that we'd rather not have happen. Certainly all the dictators seem to get it done. I'll leave it at that. I, I think, you know, Michael is in his teenage stage with, with Bitcoin. But yeah, like I said, I'm, I'm just fascinated by the fact that, you know, these these types of people are so close and they understand the problem and then, you know, this is what he's posting. So I, I just wanted to have like a little fun Internet. So I just, you know, share my bewilderment again, but I wonder what you think like. I just think there's a lot of insanely smart people without naming names, like big people that manage hedge funds that made a lot of money and the big Short, you know, the Republic and they refused to get that coin as a solution. And I think there's just the version of like, it's hard to recognize that there could be, there's a lot of bias built into it into a lot of this stuff, right? Because a, if you saw it, because a lot of these people are out there like Epstein and they were looking at esoteric products. And there's individuals like Luke Roman who were objective enough, as he's referenced on our pod and probably others that he just needed to play with it. Because you when you have a little and you're playing with it, you're just opening up the aperture to not be biased and say that this is all BS. And that did him wonders because he realized that this is a currency thing. There's a currency crisis and then you have others that miss it. And then they ultimately are looking for every reason to justify why it's BS and they continue down. Then that's a dangerous game because you're effectively throwing good money after bad. And so there's that component and there's the component of like everything else under the sun. I think that's really what Quantum stems from. It's that we just in our in our bones don't want to see new things because it's just like society and technology is moving at such a fast pace. And so when you say there's a new form of money, you can't wrap your arms around it. It's not physical. The natural thing for a lot of people who want to do is just come up with every reason why it can't work, whether it's drug dealers, XYZ and now Quantum. And like that's just how we end up. And then there's a bunch of experimental stuff that people were were potentially took in the past five years that has mucked up their brain. And I don't think people are rational and socially, you know, socially like all there for a lot of individuals, we see this all the time. And so yeah, I wouldn't, I don't hold any of these people credible in any respect because they have certain very specific domain expertise. But like when you try to look at it from a 360 view, that's one of the things because I was doing a lot of not like soul searching, but yesterday, just like looking at the price, I'm like, man, why don't we sign up for this, blah, blah. And I was just thinking about like independent of even sitting flat, think about how much benefit everyone here has had and probably people listening by just holding back one in a larger position. Because you start to look at the world for what it is. You start to learn about things because you just have a fundamental like rooting and like how value is created and how value is not created. And then how it starts to manipulate all these and distorts these other markets. It's like he would be really well served by just understanding how money works. And then if he really understood money works and then did the work on Bitcoin, there would be a natural inclination to say, well, maybe this thing could work. Why would it be the opposite, that it doesn't work? It doesn't hurt him if it does, but there's bias and we're. Humans, yeah, it's it's well said. I think it comes down to the bias that a lot of people that come from the hedge fund world or trad 5 just naturally have against Bitcoin because they, to your point, they saw it at some point, didn't buy it. And now they're they're just fundamentally biased against it because Bury in particular to the point of that clip, he understands the Federal Reserve is evil and he's been a gold guy for some time. So the inclination you would think is there for him to, to actually do the work on it. I just think he hasn't done the work on it. Clearly, like he, he's, you know, bringing up that chart and saying these two, these two bumps look like each other. So this thing's going to fail. It's like, well, sure, they might look like each other and, and we just, you know, crashed 50%, but the trajectory is upwards. And if you don't understand why the trajectory is upwards, then you're not you're not going to be open minded to to the idea that you know, Bitcoin could be the solution. Yeah, my, and again, I'm just surprised that it, it seems like he cannot think from first principles, right? Like, like you said, you know, he can describe this whole problem, but there is this there, there is something that's blocking him. And, and, and that's also in general why I say, I think you need to take a little red bill pill before you can take a, a, a blue pill or sorry, and, or you have to take a little red pill before you can take an, an orange pill. And it seems that there, and, and maybe this also shows how hard it is, right? There still seem to be people that were right in the middle of a giant red pill explosion that the great financial crisis was and they saw it and they foresaw it. And he was fucking crazy, right? And everyone was mocking him that he was wrong and he had to pay huge fucking fees to uphold this whole short. And then he was vindicated, Right. I'm just still surprised that that doesn't look like a red pill like that your actual thesis played out. Wouldn't wouldn't that be like the ultimate, ultimate red pill in that in that context of, of where it also played out? It's funny because I'm not sure if you had him on the show. PS You know, PS Springer. Yeah, I had him on the show. He, his boss was Greg Lippmann, basically the guy, you know, Ryan Reynolds in the movie, the guy that was shopping around the the thesis basically that, you know, very eventually took. But Pierce was the engineer of of all of this. So he engineered this whole way to to short it and he's a huge, huge bitcoiner And and eventually when Greg Lippman left, he became the boss of Deutsche Bank there, etcetera. But you know, so this is a guy that came from deep, deep Wall Street tradfy and is now a full on Bitcoin or so it does exist. Like I know people that you know, have changed their mind. Not to like kind of discredit this whole conversation but I'll try is it probably isn't relevant simply because remember a few episodes ago we talked about Tucker and like I forgot what it was but he's had sailor on and others and then he ultimately was like this is all a scam or whatever. CIA, Yeah. And so the reality is like what the more rational thought or ideas here there are people that have takes for a reason and what was once conspiracy this past week has been shown that there is this like shadow body that exists manipulating, controlling narratives, blah blah, blah. So like there could be just an angle or it's not that there could be. There is because across socioeconomic, geopolitical, every respect, you can name somebody who's come to the conclusion that Bitcoin makes sense when you think about Chamath, David Sachs, Trump, Druckenmiller, like you can go down political people, professors. Point being is that like if somebody can't come to the conclusion, there's probably something else there that that they're propagating, pushing or have an incentive to push. Like when we talked about Ray Dalio pushing gold or whatever. So that I think that's probably more of it versus like the guy doesn't get it because again, it goes back to the Elon Musk thing. It's like Elon Musk gets this. Like we talked about it when we had our buddy Cam Beauty on earlier this week and he was talking about something came up with deflation and, you know, universal high income, blah, blah, blah. And like something about Bitcoin came up. And then like, you know, Elon doesn't even like reference it or acknowledge it as like a solution because there is reality of like there's a current system that needs to continue to propagate around bonds, specifically with the 6040. And so there's a lot of, you know, senior age that's in place to make sure that that narrative keeps in place for at least a while longer. Yeah, I I think that's a very good point. And I thought about, about it like this on my own Bitcoin journey a lot. Like, I, I don't think I fully figured Bitcoin out And, and Elon has not. That would be funny. Like I, I, I, I think it would just be naive to think they don't understand it. And like you said, just these whole circles, you know, I saw, I saw Jason Calacan as, you know, huge dork. I, I think it's such a dork like on, on X, you know, talking about Bitcoin again, you know, and he was flexing in 2011 that he knew the founders of Bitcoin. You know, he was so early and he's still talking shit about it. And he's been sitting next to fucking Chamath for like 10/10 plus years. You know, if you hear about how Chamath talks about Bitcoin when Bitcoin is at like $500, you're like, dude, anyone in your fucking vicinity should be ultra orange built if this guy is talking about Bitcoin like that, right? But so. I mean, he's the other side of that spectrum. He's just not smart. That was like, seriously. Like he's just not Jason. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I fully agree. Yeah, Jay, whatever. I he's incentivized. He's just not. He's just not smart. But it's the same bias. It's the same bias, though. It's a very similar bias in the sense that. I think Jason is still. Have the opportunity to understand it and he didn't. Yeah, but Jason is done in Kruger. But he got rich in some fucking weird, weird, weird way. I don't know. I heard he. Anyway, yeah, like, yeah, exactly. He just bumped into Travis. Like Lanny, Yeah, I got a new link because of what Michael said and I absolutely love this. So I want to play this before we go to our spirit animal Bill for. This is another great guy. He's another great sound guy. Called out the dads got on a pod. Love, checkmate. Good dude. He's great. Yeah. This is fire. I love this. There's two things that keep me bullish no matter what's going on. One, it's a 10X more than a 10X improvement over its predecessor. I'm a gold holder and I'm a Bitcoin holder. And I can tell you having used both, Bitcoin's better in every single way, every single way. History shows that technology, as it evolves and we hit to those 10X multiples, it takes over. And the second thing is, look at the quality of people who are Bitcoiners. Look at the diversity of their backgrounds. I'm a tunnel engineer. There's people who are doctors. There's like people come from all these like fascinating, interesting backgrounds. And they've all converged on the same thing being like Bitcoins, like the best thing since sliced bread. You're telling me that all of these smart INTJ engineer types, they're all dumb and idiots? Like, no, the most bullish thing about Bitcoin is the people who get attracted to it. I'm not betting against those people. So many Bitcoins came up and grew up in an era where the world hated Bitcoin. Every headline was negative, every government didn't like it, it's getting banned, it's going to shut down. And yet we still formed enough conviction to be like, no what? I'm putting my whole life savings in this thing. We all formed a consensus that this thing kicks ass independently whilst everyone was telling us that we were dead wrong and we stuck to our guns. I'm sorry, I'm not betting against those people. They get. Fucking legend, what a legend. I, I think this is such a great point, especially different, well, both points, but especially the first point about, you know, once you see money as a technology, it's, it's a, it's a tool that you use to, you know, on one side of a value exchange between 2:00 or you know, well, let's say, let's say two party to it. It's obviously the most important technology in communicating, you know, value with each other. And like he's saying in, in, in history, if you just look at history, all the really great technological advancements came from innovations or discoveries that that enable to compact more energy in a smaller unit and therefore become more productive, right? So increase the use case or speed up the use case or broaden the use case, right? And and with Bitcoin it's the same. So I absolutely love that he touched upon that because I think this is under discussed, right. There's not a lot of people that I think talk about it in this way. You still have like the gold bulls and say like all gold is 5000 years, etcetera. Yeah, dude, but it's 2026. It's fucking that it's a digital era we're talking about, you know, agent swarms with AI. What are they going to how are they going to pay with gold or like a tokenized gold, whatever the token is going to be? So you know this what he's saying is a history lesson in itself. If you look at history and technological advancements, this is factually correct. And Bitcoin is that you know 100 X that that that he said over its its predecessor and it's so clear. It's objectively clear when you look at the characteristics of Bitcoin. So I thought this was absolutely fantastic. I don't know if you guys have anything to say, but I can go to Bill for. This is an aside. Like that's something that nobody brings up. I don't think it's like it's relevant, but like the notion that people bring up quantum and then nobody brings up gold being 30 trillion or 35 trillion. And that it's probably much more likely scientifically to be able to recreate gold like because they probably done it then like quantum, right? So like gold underpins global finance, you know, is a sovereign asset. And it's much more likely that you're going to create and it's still not economically feasible. But point being is, you know, going to space and trying to do a blah, blah, blah. But like note that never comes up around like, well, you would just wreck the whole financial system when it comes to gold because you at least can see it. And I'm not saying that it's even close there because we've made this point already. Like it's not even, but it's just that's how preposterous the brought bringing up of quantum is that it's we've already proven that you can make gold, but it's not economically relevant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Disagree. Theoretical construct. It's a good bridge. Here's the conversation no one wants to have. If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin? Really think about it. The seed freeze hidden in your house, the hardware wallet and the safe. That complex multi 6 setup? You understand it, but does your spouse? Do Your children? Billions in Bitcoin are already lost forever because people did not plan for this moment. Onramps inheritance solution is built into our multi institution custody from day 1/3 institutions, clear beneficiary designation and professional succession planning. No technical knowledge required from your heirs. And with our new flat tier pricing starting at $250 monthly, your family won't face surprise custody costs just because Bitcoin appreciated the same predictable fee. Whether Bitcoin hits 200K or 2 million, don't leave your family's future to chance. There's strength in many. Visit on rampbitcoin.com/inheritance. That is on rampbitcoin.com/inheritance. Because that's what this is about, at least in, in, in my mind. So I don't know who had this link, Brian. Yeah, I brought this. Yeah. So it's our our boy Bill Miller quotes reading basically something talking about, you know, that, you know, Bitcoin's not a store value, classic stuff. You know, by definition, if it has some sort of tail risk, it can't be a store value. And Bill says you're confusing volatility and tail risk, and failing to account for the fact that Bitcoin is a capital governance system with less risk than any alternative yet devised. Fucking fire pro. Sorry, that's so fire. Banger, banger sense. Wow. But my my take away, it was less even about like the the proverbial quantum tail risk it to me when he's getting out here is like, you know, when bitcoiners talk about Bitcoin as a risk off asset, it's not because it's, you know, we ignore the volatility and like just stomach it. And you know, the the reason we think it's risk off is because it's not just an asset. Like it's not just a number on a screen. It is a decentralized network. It is a importantly, it is monetary policy. At the end of the day, it is a set of rules around monetary policy that cannot change. And that is what he's talking about to me where he's saying, yes, this thing, this asset that you you perceive as volatile, it doesn't have the tail risk of inflating the supply at the end of the day. Like that is the 21 million. That is the promise of the code, the mathematics that supports the system. And, and you know, most people don't see it as that. They see it as the asset. They see it as this volatile number on a screen. But like, the reason we think it's risk off and the most risk off asset you could hold is because we know what the monetary policy is. And there's no other money in human history that that has ever been the case. And and frankly, like that's that's. A huge component of, you know, my personal thesis on it is like this is just monetary policy that anyone on earth can trust is not going to change. And that is powerful. And if you understand money, if you understand what money is meant to do, the purpose it's, it is meant to achieve like that is that is the best quality that you could have. And, and you know, so that is that's why you stomach the volatility, because, you know, this thing is unchanging in terms of its rules, its governance and ultimately the supply. Yeah, this is exactly what these people don't understand. I will show you just a quick other other tweets because it ties into it. I think I saw I saw this house being sued by its own shareholders for printing so many damn Magic cards, destroying the long term value of the brand. This is this is how people think about Bitcoin when they say like, you know, it's BD babies, Pokémon cards, you know, something, something, something. I think what you just said, Brian, is absolutely correct. They've they've they think about it as an investment or like a stock, like a single unit. Yeah, something you you buy like, you know, a rare beanie baby or La Boo Boo or or whatever. But they, they, they fail to understand that it is this entire system, like you said, it's, it's this net network in, in all these different ways, right? There's all these incentives for people to uphold the integrity of this chain. And what we, what we talked about in in the beginning, but this, you know, capital governance system with less risk than any alternative yet devised, right? Like in essence, what is I think talking about, like you said, is this monetary protocol. It is just that that is the outset, that is the start. It's like, these are my rules. If you want to follow my rules, well, you can only gain value from using me as the coin, as the network. If you follow the rules. And you can trust that other people also follow the rules because that's the only way that they can play basically. And once you wrap your head around that, you actually understand that all this other fuckery in the field, money system, does not have this governance, right? It's an unequal playing field. It's a 0 sum game. There are certain people that win and there are certain people that that lose. And here it is an equal opportunity for anyone to participate in this network. Wherever you are from, whatever your religion is, whatever your skin color is, however much money you have, all these things are irrelevant for for Bitcoin. And so I one thing Mike, I see you're jumping. I wanted to reply to this, but this guy blocks me. I don't really know why. Maybe maybe I called him regarded, but I thought it was funny. He said by definition, this is in response to my point that a store of value by definition cannot have a tail risk. I don't know which asset doesn't have a tail risk, but you just mentioned Mike about gold. You, you can make gold in his fucking hydrant Collider. Or where did they make the, you know, super, super, super tiny gold particle? You know, there's infinite gold in in the universe. Basically there's people spending time and energy on figuring out asteroid mining, right? So what is he, what is he talking about that I don't think this is a good argument, but I wonder, Mike, what you think. Yeah, I mean, I don't I was the the card thing was interesting because sometimes like I think about Bitcoin and how hard it is, but then how also easy in like when I got in or into Bitcoin, I just when I realized it was like the price was going up. And then you just look it up real quick and you realize there's only 21 million. And if the market is subscribed some value to it, prescribed some value to it, then you basically start digging into like, well, is there really only 21 million? Because if they're already starting to put some value and 21 million globally is a pretty small number. That was all it really took. Then obviously have to go deeper to how it works and then understanding money. But the point being is it's kind of shocking when you don't think about more people, you know, growing up playing with like Pokémon and collecting sports cards. You understand scarcity, it's actually innate, right? You know, scarcity and value and how you think about art. So it's it's always so I think this is ends up more of like the truest sense of enlightenment because people that are born into a world where Bitcoin exists and the rationale of infinite amount of dollars, it just becomes a rational economic expression of your value to put it in something scarce. But I think we just got bored into a world where there's just, you know, this level of the dollar propagating that makes it hard to unwind those things, which another testament to this past week because all these things that were in these letters were things that most people that have really gone down the rabbit hole knew were true. Yeah. There was something that came up about Britney Spears. We won't post it. But if you're curious about like Britney Spears, like you can, you can you can look it up on Twitter. But point being is there's just all this craziness that's actually truth, but it's looked at as conspiratorial because the Internet didn't exist. And now the Internet exists and you can do your own research. And you can also find out what Michael Berry doesn't get Bitcoin. And Bitcoin has fundamentals. Yeah, here's a thing that I wanted to check with you, with you guys. So this was a whole, it's so funny, like you said, Brian, like when Bitcoin comes down, all these people come out of the woodwork, right, with their hot takes. You know, they never pay attention. But they're like, I've always been telling you, it's not the store value, it's not this, it's not that, it's bullshit and blah, blah. OK, so Bob Kendall. Kendall reports a 42 year veteran of technical analysis. Portfolio. And waiting for. His I have. A PhD. I have a. Video Expert. I had a guy also this week saying like I'm a multi millionaire in a CFA. I said OK, cool dude, you did a CFA. Amazing. Dude, you're a CFA. Wow. OK, I've been waiting for someone to ask this because I've actually been inside this machine. I operated as a market maker in the Pacific. It's all about paper Bitcoin, right? So he said actually 2030% of what actually trades is controlled with fractional leverage, meaning a small group can move price without owning anything real. When we've watched this play out in real time, etcetera. Our buddy Larry Leparte said paper Bitcoin is a thing. So is paper gold. One important distinction, gold has never gone up 6.3 times in seven months like Bitcoin did from October 2020 to March 21. Write a paper short. Write a paper Bitcoin short. Get your face ripped off. So one I wanted to check with you guys when we kind of touched upon this before also in the in like the the Reddit post, right, But I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to try to play Fiat games on Bitcoin of obviously, right, like that incentive is, is, is always there. But because with Bitcoin, you either have the Bitcoin or you don't, right? Bitcoin allows for any participant in any structure or agreement to actually like Mike also pointed out the strategy, you know, to demand the proof of reserves, basically, right. You either have the Bitcoin or you don't. And so if you tell me I have the Bitcoin and I say prove it to me, you know, sign, sign this challenge, you know, with your wallet and I see it. Yeah. If you don't do it, I know I cannot trust you because there is this mechanism that I can just this tool that I can use to force your transparency. Does that make sense? OK, so with gold, so so with Bitcoin, this is much easier. So although people are going to play games on it, I don't think you can abstract it as much as you can on, for example, physical, physical gold. Does that make sense? Because like, it's way more difficult to actually prove you have the gold, right? And there's even ways you could you could fake that, right? Like first party says, yeah, you know, I am a certified gold custodian, whatever. We understand you're describing why multi institution exists because when banks have to issue paper notes you they're going to be able to verify. It's also why the DAT tree doesn't make sense because if they aggregate all the Bitcoin then you end up with all these funny games. Yes. So the government uses it. Yeah. So I just want to check this fault with you. Like yes, there's paper Bitcoin people are going to around, but I think there's less wiggle room before you are exposed or before you blow up. Does that make sense? I just want to I just would love to get your your faults on that. It makes sense, but not well, I guess it makes sense maybe if you're coming at from the angle is that because it's a global geopolitical held asset or increasingly held by sovereigns and you can hunt out the positions that are offsides, so you'll basically expose them in that respect. There's probably a lot of other reasons, but like the point being that it's. Easier than with gold I would say. Or silver. Yeah. I, I don't know enough about the gold markets and how you can move them, but the point being is that it's more transparent. So you actually have more identifiable ways to hunt out positions and where there's leverage now there's that opens up a whole other kind of worms. Me and Brian were roofing on late last night about some of these hedge funds out of like Hong Kong that aren't like crypto funds, but how they got I did exposure and then had I options trading. Then maybe they got, you know, pulled into the 10:10 or silver trade and then there that's what's pulling the market down from selling. But point being is that because you have a like open borderless asset. If you're Russia or you're Bhutan or UAE and you're accumulating this asset and you have people that can understand some of the mockery that's happening and it's also not in your best interest, you can go and hunt out those positions to basically liquidate them. Which, to your point, like theoretically would make it easier to have less of the fuckery than more of it. Yeah, I think that's a good way of describing it, that it's because it's more transparent, because it's digital, there is less, less wiggle room. I like that's the way. I like that way that you described it, Brahm. There's less wiggle room for these paper games games. And while they will exist and have existed for some time, it's much easier to basically either hunt out someone else's position or basically just have the truthful Ledger to know whether something's there or not. And like, you know, an example of where the games can still be played is like FTX, right? Like everyone just thought they had the Bitcoin, but it wasn't there because they, you know, they'd sold it or they never even bought it. They just took the dollars and it did whatever they wanted with it. So to Michael's initial point, it's like, yeah, that's why we need better standards for custody that actually are transparent, auditable in real time, have multiple counterparties involved so that you're not trusting a single counterparty. Because ultimately, that's part of why games are easier with gold, not only because of its physical nature, but because it historically has centralized with single counterparties. And it goes back to like the Fiat deal of the reason why you don't put central control of the money or of the custody is because we're humans and we're fallible. So you take that governance out her Bill Miller. And so it's rational like again, it goes back to understanding Bitcoin. If the thought is a centralized entity is going to create a bank around that. Well, we know that, you know, from UTX OS and on the blockchain, you can't do the transaction. So you have to create these other layers. Will the only way to understand the other line is if it's held in a form that's transparent, but there's no transparency delivered there, you know, so you see like going down those progressions, they're not even actually like making the the you'll have the understanding. So like, yeah, it's there. It's just we're just so early. I mean, yeah, I agree with that. I had to think about something we talked about before where I think it was the Bank of England who hadn't or like this, the biggest like bullion exchange or whatever in London or the Bank of England. I don't even know. They were like, yeah, there's a little snafu with our tagging system and it's all going to be great and we're going to have a press conference and yeah, nothing to worry about that. That was basically their way of mitigating the fact that I think, you know, people couldn't get certain bullion out of their vault or, or something like that. I mean, that is how early we are. Because that still works. While at the same time there's a a, a neutral digital asset that exists with absolute scarcity that is verifiable by, by anyone, right. And you can force this transparency on anyone that says they, they hold it, but even at those levels, they still rely on, on PR or like, what did I say, press conferences to just, you know, assure, you know, the safety and security. So I agree, I think it's just really early. I think just people, people, you know, they don't understand it and that's they don't see it. I want to check your time guys. We have 3 links left. OK, good. OK, Mike. Yeah. So I think this ties into just like the market going out being somewhat healthy ideally. You know, we talked about it early, but also on the crypto side, there was multiple people leaving yesterday. Just interesting that it came up with like the largest, you know, nominal downwards, kind of whatever we're going to call the, the Bitcoin that the Billings that were evaporated in value. But it ties back to the notion of like there was Solana and Carl Sumani stepping down. I think he referenced like there's not really anything else out of monetary use cases for crypto, which is still, you know, obviously we know there's only Bitcoin for for, for crypto or digital assets to store in wealth. But then the other one was Aetherium. And I don't even fully know Brian will be able to like explain better, but the notion of metallic coming out and saying that I guess like layer 2's didn't make sense. These roll ups that created, you know, had billions of dollars in invested capital to go build a scalability. And the there there's two sides of this coin, because one of them is, I think there's a from sophisticated participants understanding that there's value in cross-border payments via stable coins. There's value in storing value in a borderless form of money, you know, in Bitcoin and all the properties there. And then the reality is from an efficiency and whatever they're going to, you know, securitize physical, non physical assets and tokenize them. But outside of those respects, like there's not really any use cases for a lot of this stuff. But the problem is that like they're still where crypto has like recognizing where the sentiment really is, is deep down, I don't think Tri 5 fully understands this yet. And so when you have these large firms adopting it, most of them, I mean, just yet this morning it came on. I think that wise is launching a UNI swap, ETP or ETF. Point being is that TBD on the names on who's going to be launching crypto brokerages, but they're still going to offer all these products and services, which opens up their attack surface like kills credibility long term, blah, blah, blah. So it's kind of like a, a double edged sword that it's cool to see the realization coming and the sentiment in the crypto industry. I still think that because we live in these like small fractals of distribution of knowledge of people that have been here. Like think about Samani, He's like the most sophisticated crypto person. I'm not saying it much, but he's been there forever and seen that it doesn't make any sense. And so I still think that we have a long way to go from Travis still trying to figure it out because they just think of like digital assets as in as a sector or a asset class versus basically Bitcoin and then dollars on the blockchain. Yeah, we, we talked about this last week when you weren't there. I said the American hotel told me, you know, as Bitcoiners, we are probably 8 years ahead of, of, of all the other people. And it's funny because this is exactly how I feel about Transfi getting into crypto. It's like 2017 all over again. But but they weren't there. But they're still, you know, doing this. And I saw this, Yeah. I don't know the guy. What's his name? Vitalik. No, like what is Forward Industries, the world's most leading Solana treasury company? OK by the way, I thought this was funny to Zama. Never heard of it. I've been in this for over 10 years. Zama is an open source cryptography company that built state-of-the-art fully homomorphic encryption solutions for blockchain. OK, it's a homo. It says. It's a Homo cormic. Homo erotic blockchain. Yeah, Yeah, I had. Wait, give me one SEC. Now I lost my. I like spicy safety. Yeah, here. Yeah, this was what what Michael was referencing that metallic earlier this week had this, you know, essay long posts on on X basically just like full circle, you know, saying L twos don't make sense. And and for people that don't have the context, like the reason L twos became a thing. So like, you know, think of like Arbitrum SUI, all these other block chains that sort of built around the etherium ecosystem, frankly, because like there was a recognition by Vitalik initially and then like the Etherium developers that Etherium on the base chain wasn't scaling wasn't cheaper and you know, as fast as newer entrance, IE Solana. And so they needed to scale in a different way and, and build all these L twos that then would settle back to the base chain of Etherium. And he's basically just admitting like that never made sense. And he's saying, Oh, now we can just do it on the base chain, but it's circular logic because the reason he's saying they can do it on the base chain now is because like, oh, fees are are low. It's like, well, that's because no one's using the chain. And so it's like it's this very circular. It's. Very circular logic of like continuing to pivot, pivot back, pivot back. Like, you know, they tried to be ultrasound money, then they were the world computer then, you know, now they needed L twos. Now they don't need L twos. Like it's oil, oil. And the broader higher level thing that Michael, you were talking about it like Tradfi. Like I do think that there is some recognition on the side of Tradfi fintechs, banks that are coming in that they're realizing like, OK, like there is marginal improvements to be made here in terms of tokenizing assets, stable coins. But we don't need a theorem. Like we don't need these quote UN quote public decentralized block chains. Like we're just going to build them ourselves. And so you've seen Stripe and Tempo do this. I think PayPal doing something similar, like they're they're just going to build their own private block chains. And it kind of like goes back to like what was talked about in like the 1718 days around like enterprise block chain and these more private block chains. It's like, yeah, just all if all you're needing out of this is a faster, cheaper database, it doesn't need to be decentralized because it's not money. It's just infrastructure for financial markets. And there's been a lot of other tweets in the past several weeks and months that are speaking to this. And some of it's from these crypto natives like Somani or and, and some of it's from Bitcoiners. But it's basically being like, yeah, there's, there's kind of an admission that a lot of this stuff never made sense. And particularly as it relates to like value accrual to these native tokens like there, there may be value marginal benefits to. Better, faster databases, but you don't need a token attached to it. That is not money, that is not actually decentralized. And so I think a lot of these new players, whether it's the banks or fintechs, are realizing that and they're just building their own shit and they don't care about all this other stuff that's existed for the past 10 years. Yeah. I mean, just to contradict myself a little bit because I know where Brian's going. It's like we're not. They're not going to use it. They still are going to use these things for two reasons. One is because they will get sold a bill of goods around, they can use it, they can incentivize, they can have a bag, they'll push their clients into other products because they're utilizing it. But more importantly than that is what you're describing. And I heard this on another podcast, it was a really good example of when you build these like enterprise block chains, that's effectively what like Venmo is today, right? Or cash App because like you can send within Venmo or cash app. So you're going to need that interconnected layer of an open blockchain so you can basically settle. That's why I like Ethereum still has the vast proportion of stable coins and it's Solana picking up. So I I agree, but also like there are these things will persist and people will find theoretical narratives to validate why they'll put them in front of their clients. Oh yeah, I just wanted to say song cost fallacy. I mean, I, I walked around in a traditional bank like 8-8 years ago and they were exploring, you know, crypto and, you know, using blockchain As for tracking commodity trading, blah, blah. Never did anything fundamentally come out of that. Still not after, after eight years, but there's a lot of funding in there. There's a lot of, you know, cool stories, innovation, whatever. So I feel this. Yeah, one thing just add to that and because I know where Brent's going, it's like the sun cost fallacy is real when you have a well regarded long tenure institution. I won't name, but there is one that just, you know, launched the past six months, Solana Right. So at what point does that firm say, Oh yeah, Solana with BS like a long road before they're like, you know, so like there's just going to be that natural deal for them to like get to the other side, especially when they're their buckets and their like reputation. They put that in front of clients and now they have to, you know? But again, just like we did over the last eight years, further and further and further. Just which? Is the reason why individuals are easy to buy Bitcoin personally and then, you know, like institutions are harder to get involved and then all that inertia to get involved. And it's going to take to unwind it. They probably won't exist. Like they'll just die because they'll get themselves blown up because their tax service are just supporting all these crypto assets. And then the long tail risk of everything being tokenized, then you have a deleveraging of that, which are only going to continue. Yeah, probably pull down a lot of financial firms. Fully agree. OK. Last one, Mike. So to paraphrase this, I was just thinking about it the other day about like what's going on and it's ultimately the fundamentals from anybody paying attention to this industry around Bitcoin have at a minimum 5 to 10 axed in the past 24 months and the price has fallen by 40 to 50%. So if you deeply understand that that's just full asymmetry and understanding that this is a longer game, but that the fundamentals have never been stronger. And then it goes back to what we talked about earlier. Focus on your craft and delivering value because it's pretty simple as you just park and hold. Everyone that has ever held any financial asset that has accrued in purchasing power has literally sat on their hands. Every investor you look at, some of the famous investors have had that exact same common denominator of like getting away from the screen and just going back and and keeping themselves busy. And in this circumstance, most individuals should just go and deliver value to the world and then sack more Bitcoin. You know, over time, they'll increase their purchasing power, which will give them more optionality in the world. It's really that simple. And so I think that this really, I put this here because it ties into like this past week's narrative around, you know, Quantum, the Epstein stuff. And we're not going to get into it because we've gone on for like an hour and a half. But all the block stream and whatever Jeremy Rubin and like all these people like, it's all crazy. And yeah, like we should look at some of the core devs in the things that have been incentivizing people with more scrutiny and try to back into like, what? What were the incentives or reasons for doing things like that's all valid, but none of that changes the dynamic of like what we just talked about here in bitcoins fundamentals. And I don't think there's enough people talking about that. I think they're rather go down these rabbit holes of well, what if this, what if that is like none of that changes what we talked about in this tweet. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I just realized I I've had 1234570 plus percent drawdowns in this fucking journey. But also this was 93%. Yeah. This is so brutal. So brutal. Yeah, I am. I love, I love this dude. I think this is a great positive ending. Also that just this, this, if you, if you do the work, you understand what this is and then you understand that no one really understands it fully, but you see the direction as where it's going. And the reason of existence is becoming more and more clear every day. And this is a Wild West. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a war of ideas. It's a it's, it's, it's a war of noise. And I think the biggest challenge you have is to not fade yourself, right. So if you do the work and reflect and take that little red pill and just realize you have no fucking clue what money is and there's other people know better than you that control the money and you need a neutral decentralized system to escape from, then that is this. But it takes a long time to get that. And also it is it is a the huddling journey is really hard. And so I think this is a positive note. So thanks for that. Yeah, the only thing worth adding as I was, you know, texting with folks a lot over the week and just reflecting on imagine somebody coming in 2020, 2122, and all you're doing is trying to like buy some Bitcoin and you got everything under the sun just getting thrown at you. At a certain point, unless your confidence and conviction education is at a certain level, you would capitulate because just like, what am I doing here? I got head of a Mossad coin or as they're talking about, I'm turning out GOI coin, you know, hanging out there. I got quantum, you know, I got people that are smart like Nick fighting and going out there. So then you're like trying to discern who's real, who's not. You have these treasury companies that you told to buy that are down 90%. You don't know what to do with that. You cut your losses by Bitcoin. You have all these things. And it's the real reality of why people just stick with the 6040 because it's, you know, you're maybe real purchasing power is reducing a little bit, but at least it's a slow lead. And the social proof and signal is that you're not going to, you know, be associated with Epstein and all this crazy stuff. So it goes back to just like the best thing to do if you don't have to get involved in this industry, it's literally just to buy the thing, feel confident, and then go back to work and just put all the screens away. You're all. Just confident you just never. Looked at the price for the past five to 10 years, you weren't on on Twitter and you were just DCA ING every day like you just live your life and you you store your value in a superior savings technology and and none of the noise matters. But the reality of human psychology and and our monkey brains is that we look at the screen, we look at the numbers and ultimately that's what compounds and and shakes people out. If you don't have that deep understanding and and ability to withstand a lot of that noise. So yeah. Awesome. Well, I hope people found this valuable. This was probably our longest episode yet, but also quite an A crazy two weeks. So for everyone watching, if you enjoyed, please hit the follow button, like button, follow us on YouTube, Spotify, etcetera. We'll be back in two weeks and also send us questions. And by the way, I think Michael is making merch, so I don't know if Mike has any samples yet, but there's going to be merch. I heard there's merch. I do have some. I was going to bring. I didn't know if we bring it out, we'll I'll bring in for next week and then we'll do some kind of some kind of giveaway. We'll figure out. Awesome, guys. Well, thanks so much. Thanks everyone for watching and we'll see you next time. Bye.