Transcript+
It all comes down to computers. Communicating the information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of OK, this is actually foundational. Technology. What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing that that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, June 9th, 2025. How's it going, boys? Fantastic. Going good man. This world's crazy. I feel like we just bitcoins volatility. You go to bed one night it's you know 76 now you're at one O 5. You get a lot Elon in out Trump. The end of the bromance. The rekindling of the bromance. Yes, you got circle, you know, trading at what was it? They were priced at like $28.00 a share around like 120 or something crazy. And everyone's screaming on how tethers should be more valuable. Just it's a wild world. It's an amazing timeline. Yeah. Yeah. No shortage of topics we could jump into. Michael, your favorite topic, stablecoin news, there's some some activity there. Obviously the Circle IPO that you referenced, Liam, I know you've done some work there. Maybe is that a that a good place to start? There's no shortage of of topics. What do you guys think? Stay all coins. Let's hear. It, I mean, I think it all kind of makes a lot more sense now. I think when you know, one of the reasons I would hope we provide value on this podcast and I think it's helpful for us is when you go deep down the bat rabbit hole, Bitcoin rabbit hole, you end up in a in a everyone has their own frame of reference. So you like have your myopic view, I guess, because everyone is comes from a different background and it's ultimately up to the individual to be a critical thinker, to continue to like grow the thesis, understand less on what Bitcoin is. That's always a journey. But then how does it play into the the market? How does how will it integrate? How will it get to the money at the end of the day? And other people, you know, and everyone has their own references and backgrounds. It's a point of saying that is like stables have been of interest the past couple months because of this like market structure and thinking about, well, what does it mean for the landscape? And, and I started to get really bullish after seeing I forgot what it was. I think it was, I don't know if it was the the approval or like what was getting passed through the house, but it was ultimately this understanding that the path to Bitcoin is through stable points at the end of the day. Like that's the whole thing. When you think about whether it's the digitization of a dollar to get access to BTC all the way to how does somebody start to think about permissionless or quote UN quote permissionless, like getting rid of intermediaries and movement of global capital. A lot of people don't just necessarily jump through it at BTC. Stable points will be that first layer and there's a whole slew that's just like high level, but it's insanely, it's insanely bullish for everything happening. There was a recent podcast I shared in the Slack channel before this with Scott Milker and Bo Hines that was about 20 minutes long that took place in Vegas. And they were referencing ultimately a little bit about the market structure of the stable coin bill. But also they have like an implementation method like they're, he's telling you like play for play. It's like Tom Brady sitting behind the scenes watching like Monday Night Football and explaining what's happening in in between that like game. He's explaining where we sit today as far as from from like the approval, regulatory approval market structure coming next. And then how they have an implementation method with the banking system as part of like the next part is cultural cohort. So I think a lot of people think there's chaos and they're looking at these different sectors, but at the end of the day, that's what's happening. And then I guess the last part is it makes complete sense why circles trading at the premium they are is because institutional allocators ultimately here are stable coins and they think blockchain, they think innovation, which there is some innovation. And so it's their way from an institutional allocator's perspective to express their view on the asset class because there's one public trading vehicle for it. And just to go a little bit deeper there, I, this all is going to tie back to Bitcoin, so bear with me here, but it's, it's helpful to understand how institutional money gets out, you know, interested in Bitcoin and gets exposure. So if somebody wants to buy or sell Bitcoin that you know, is doing a substantial amount, they typically go to a prime broker that could be Coinbase Prime Finance has that aspect as well, or an independent entity like S Fox. They will either deposit their Bitcoin or they'll deposit their dollars and they typically can deposit all of it or do some amount on credit as well. And then through those prime brokers, they will get the ability to buy large sums, buy or sell large sums of Bitcoin and settle that through independent OTC desks. Whoever have the best, you know, amount or can give them the best. The OTC desk then will either hedge out of the spot immediately or they will then, you know, warehouse some of the inventory risk. And that's kind of how the market works. So taking a step back to 2020 and 2022 when everything went absolutely sideways, you saw, you know, Alameda, part of FTX as well as Genesis flow up and have they, they weren't able to adequately hedge their risk on the OTC side of things. So, and, and on the prime broker side, they, they don't necessarily need to deposit all of their capital, so they can get loans on their and, and have essentially a margin on how much money they can trade. And so when they go underwater and, and, and there's two aspects to this as well. They can put their Bitcoin in BIC, a wallet, or they can put their dollars in a bank. And when everything blew up, because the main banks were signature and Silvergate that were serving the the Bitcoin and crypto industry, they essentially had to move to another asset class. And that's where stables came in and they just wanted to settle in stable coins rather than just, you know, have risk to a bank where they they couldn't necessarily, they didn't know if the bank was going to go under and then and the bank has their own loans and counterparty risk as well. And so one, they had to do it out of necessity because the bank went under. And then two, the there's just like reduce friction and layers of risk in that involved. And so the industry is kind of shifted that way. And it's not necessarily just going to be the, you know, people that want to trade Bitcoin and and broader digital assets that want exposure to stable coins as their ultimate settlement layer. But it's going to be other industries as well that just are a little bit more worried about the risk at the margin. And so it's you, you keep on seeing all these banks coming into the space and trying to get their own share of the stable coin market because they realize that they're going to lose deposits in the end. And tying this all back to Bitcoin, it's ultimately all about the trader. And you know, it's, it's typically hedge funds trying to understand that counterparty risk. And you know, these stable coins still have counterparty risk as well, whether it's Circle, Tether or whichever one comes next. And ultimately I think that on the margins there will be more really large players that are educated about this and really understand that Bitcoin is really the only ultimate risk off asset where you know they can ultimately control their keys themself or be in a bankruptcy remote account that's not controlled by a single counterparty on the other side. Yeah, that's really well said. And I think the biggest thing to me is, is sort of Michael, what you've alluded to is like just normalizing digital dollars and having that basically UIUX get very clean and frictionless where it's like the dollar sit right next to your Bitcoin. And that that chasm that has previously existed just gets smaller and smaller and smaller to where it becomes commonplace and extremely easy to save in Bitcoin spending dollars. And to your point, Liam, be more and more detached from some of the more inherent risks of the actual traditional banking system. And so up on the screen right now is, is Circle stock price up 17% already this morning. I think it opened at 31 last week. Liam, you said you, you dug into a little bit around Circle specifically over the weekend. Any any thoughts around where this is trading currently? Yeah, I mean, maybe before going there because I'm I'll let Liam go there and then I'll reference something about circle. But before go into that, everything Liam shared is absolutely right. I'm glad he ended on the point of like stable coins are going to affect much larger industries than Bitcoin and that's what the plan is. And there's a notion that we talk about a lot internally, whether it's an on ramp or early riders. And you know, you're really on to something when you're kind of building as close to Bitcoin and in the underlying thesis or a lot of the anecdote to reference. And, and when I hear all the stuff we're just talking about, it's like everything's good for Bitcoin. Everything's good for honor and early writers. Because what Liam just described is ultimately what we, I was looking up the date. It was July 15th. It was episode 8 of the last trade. We talked about Larry Fink was going to securitize or I was referencing Larry Fink was going to securitize Bitcoin. And I was thinking at the time he and it still is, but the ETF is the security. But the reality is everything is going to get securitized via digital, whatever tokens and then everything is going to be traded between these USDC or whatever the token is. And a lot of people are going to conflate what Bitcoin is or what value is, what the stable coins in his Lien alluded to, they're all, you know, permission block chains. They're not permission list and over time, as certain individuals and groups build businesses to the underlying principles of understanding the robustness of Bitcoin and you know, aligning with the value there, they're going to reap outsized rewards. In the same way we talk about Bitcoin and people listen here and have majority of their wealth and Bitcoin and understand the reason why it just takes time and we're just ahead of that curve. So anyway, that was just kind of like the anecdote of when you think about investing in the ecosystem as well. If you're playing a game for three, 5-10 years, you're building businesses that when the market wakes up to counterparty risk or realizing who holds the underlying or what are the trading pairs like stablecoins are great and I think if you're not enough Bitcoin companies implement and integrate them. And that's like an interesting pull thing in itself of imagine like a, you know, whether it's enterprise business exchange like Bitcoin and stablecoin working nicely next to each other for global accessibility. You don't really see a lot of that usually just you generally see crypto firms. So anyway, there's a lot of opportunity out out there, but it has to like be rooted back to the fundamentals of where this goes and where it goes. As the market realizes, 21 million is like non negotiable and then more people want that A. 100% and stable coins have kind of just taken some of the good aspects of Bitcoin and implemented them in on the dollar side of things. I mean, the real when you see the crypto industry at large, there are two main drivers of value 1 is liquidity, which you know, the dollar has plenty of Bitcoin is second to that. But you know, dollars don't necessarily have a stable store of value over a long time horizon. It continues to be debased. And you know, if you can have a slice of the 21 million, you're going to continue to have that no matter what. And so it's it's a marginal upgrade to the banking system when you think about counterparty risk, it's not permission less, but it's, it's moving in the right direction and tying back to circle a little bit too. I certainly, I haven't looked deep into their financials and you know, definitely not going to I'm not interested in investing in a stable coin at all. And so definitely not going to make a call one way or the other. But when you kind of look at how things are structured, it's primarily USDT finance are, you know, the biggest trading pairs in kind of the East and that's how they run their finance prime desk. And then but over here in the West, it's primarily using Coinbase and they've integrated deep with USDC. And so it's, it's not necessarily a call one way or the other. It's just kind of understanding where the world is and how institutional money here in the East is primarily looking at USDC because Coinbase is, you know, partnered with them pretty deeply in terms of their preferred stablecoin. Yeah, I think I think on the stablecoin side and maybe transitioning, I think it's going to be fun when the real players get in. Like when you you know, it came out publicly that Fidelity was testing something there. And we know that some of these other, I think it came out that the big four banks were working on something. But I think that ties into let me see if I can share my screen really quick. Oh yeah. So Brian just popped that up as well. I mean, this was another kind of really bullish thing that I don't think got enough juice. Brian pulled up. I think it was originally like one of the bigger tech platforms. I forgot what the source was, but Apple, Airbnb, Google and I think Uber are referencing using stable coins and then I think like what's his name Dara from Uber reference that Bitcoin is like a store of value or just gave some kind of credits which you generally don't hear Silicon Valley talk about. For what I was going to pull up really quickly. It was open range. The newsletter from on Ramp or I'm sorry, early writers that comes out Sunday from Liam. There was a few a few notable things and really two that tie into this. Let me see if I can. Do it. I have it. There you go. Yes, so the the first one was going to reference because it ties into this is the institute industry and institutional updates. JP Morgan will now accept shares of BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust. I think that came out after we had this episode last week. Anything obviously that's huge given that they reference they're going to allow for I believe all wealth clients are all clients. It's not just going to be the private wealth to get exposure or access to loans, but then also various other exposures. I don't think it was just I bet it was referencing other, you know, Bitcoin or crypto assets. And I think that's important because when you think about this is the direction all banks will be going is lending against the underlying not only do they have the lowest cost of capital, but they also will be having stable coin integration. So you think about the ability just to lend against your assets sitting right there in your bank account, like not only for adoption, but for like the price, the the the liquidity from not selling. I'll pause there. There was one other thing I wanted to call out on this, but yeah. Yeah, lots, lots in the in the newsletter that came out yesterday that we have up on the screen here, as you mentioned in the JP Morgan News Circle stuff. One, one thing I thought was interesting was Spur Bank, which is largest, Russia's largest bank, basically announced some sort of quasi bit bond structure that they're going to be pioneering. So I talked a little bit about this on the last trade from last week, but this idea of sort of Bitcoin in general, strategic reserves, bit bonds, these tighter integrations with the traditional finance system. You know, the United States and this administration's kind of just put these things into the zeitgeist. And now you're seeing sort of that flow across the world. Russia as an example. There was also South Korea last week, their newly elected president. A lot of his campaign promises were around legalizing Bitcoin ETFs, which are still not available in that country, despite it being, you know, I think it's 12th largest GDP in in the world and also a pretty crypto forward populist, you know, actual citizens in their interest in crypto. So you see sort of a lot of this flowing across the world, even though, you know, I think there's been there was some initial fanfare around the strategic reserve. Haven't had a ton of follow through on it. Like you mentioned that Bo Hines interview from from over the weekend. I think it's coming back to the fore now. I forget the exact timeline on when the report is due. That is basically going to reinvigorate some of that discussion around, well, one, the audit of how much Bitcoin do we have and then two, how are we potentially going to accumulate more Bitcoin for reserve. So expect that sort of, you know, the next month or so to to sort of gain more traction again and come back into the limelight. But the point is just us saying these things has sort of manifested across the globe and and you're seeing some knock on effects of that. Yeah, 100%. I mean, the, the biggest 1 still that's at the forefront of my mind is I forget if it was MGX or Mubadala is, you know, $2 billion investment in finance. I mean, that's that's a big, big sign of, you know, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund getting involved. And you know, they have shares by bit and they certainly have the underlying as well. I think it's just like they're one of these countries who who kind of positions themselves as partnered with a bunch of different, you know, both both the East and the West. And I think that the rhetoric that's going on, you know, both about Russia's largest exchange as well as their largest bank, you know, giving institutional access to at least dollar denominated Bitcoin bonds and and Futures Trading is, is definitely not anything to understate. It's kind of the the geopolitical flow of funds is definitely shifting a little bit more towards Bitcoin as well, just on the margins. Yeah, I think there's something interesting. It's like a paradox that the more global trade breaks down, the more people drive to Bitcoin. Because if you think about it, if you had treasuries and dollars as your kind of medium of exchange and store value, and as that becomes more and more untenable, naturally people will go towards Bitcoin and understanding it and understanding the properties. The other aspect that was in that document, which we're doing so many pods now, we talked about it. It's worth checking out. It seems to be enjoyed by listeners is the the, the broadcast. I like to joke and call it the broadcast, but it's a broadcast we do every other week with Brom. And one of the things we talked about on that came out Saturday was the Bohind being down in El Salvador. And I think it's a huge deal for for a number of reasons. And it's actually this was, I was talking about it before listening to his pod with Scott Milker. But I think the key thing here is that these guys like are actually playing to win in the sense that like his boss is David Sachs. David Sachs is a tenured. World class entrepreneur and then venture capitalist that's leading this charge. He takes the job seriously. I mean, it's shown based on the divestments of his like exposure into the sector for for trying to get a job done or to do the job in a independent way. Point being is they're trying to understand who and what has been done previously to figure out how the US is going to step into this in the most efficient way and be a leader for not only the next five years, but maybe for the next 50 plus years. And so I think that's just a big one that we haven't seen. And I think this ties into again, the opportunity set. When you think about everything coming in the news, all the different banking integrations, fintechs, now you have tech companies, there's going to be no shortage of opportunities to jump into the space, whether it's to work, invest, build, to just keep your eyes peeled. Because every day we look at different new opportunities, whether it's in different parts of the market or the United States or different parts of market structure and how Bitcoin or you know, other assets can, you know, integrate with other assets like financial real estate, stocked bonds. So it's just an exciting time. 100% One thing I, I wanted to pull up was sort of related to this is, you know, this, this chart from tougher digital that just sort of puts us all in context of like, yes, there's, there's greater recognition around the asset class, but the reality is, is most of most of the capital is still unallocated. And so this is just putting some of that in context and looking at, you know, US wealth platforms, top central banks, 4O1K plans, state pensions and corporate cash, you know, totaling over $100 trillion that is basically unallocated to the asset class. And as we know, you know, bitcoins finance supply, it's going to flow into there and there there, you know, is already and will be increasingly this, you know, just massive supply demand mismatch as we as we move forward. And then yeah, the additional context here, 5 trillion. So if you're just putting, you know, a 5% allocation on that 107 trillion, 5 trillion is 116 times larger than all the net flows into Bitcoin in 2024, which were substantial, like 2024, there was a ton of flows into Bitcoin via, you know, largely the ETFs. And so that this is just a, a massive wall of capital that is, is still unallocated. And part of this has to do with, you know, turning on the access, you know, we've we've looked at charts in the past of, you know, a lot of the wealth platforms, wirehouses, banks are still not even allowing access to to things like the Bitcoin ETFs. And so slowly but surely, all of that's getting turned on and this wall capital is just going to continue to flow. Where do we want to go from here? The big beautiful bill Trump, Elon bromance. Any thoughts? And I, I mean, we should touch on Trump along, but we should come out with like we come with learning what takes we want. I just can't help but like, look at the charade to just think that we're just all like watching a, you know, movie. It's just, it's all so insane. Yeah, I think it I think there there is an argument that, you know, it was somewhat manufactured in the sense that Elon to go back to his to go to go back to basically, you know, focusing more on Tesla, he needed to detach himself from the administration in some sense. So I think there is that thought that like maybe this was all sort of purposeful to to have sort of a clean break. And but I think there was some reconciliation he's, you know, retweeting to Trump again. And so maybe they're maybe they patched the beef a little bit, but hard to tell. Yeah. I mean, he, he could have just worked on Tesla without, you know, doing all of that and, you know, making a stock dump like 17% or whatever it was in a day. I think I, I don't know, I, I don't think that that was, you know, theater on purpose diverting away for something, you know, there, there's no shortage of conspiracy theories out there on, you know, the, the Epstein files and, and everything like that. But it's just there's, yeah, I mean, there's just marginally less respect for the the existing system going on, whether it's, you know, how the president in the world's richest men operate down to the financial system, so. Yeah, yeah. I think that's the key to take from all of this because we have to like I personalize there's a fine line on on these pods of like, you know, we're keeping a professional and related to financial services and and all that. But the reality is you have to be long chaos or long volatility and counterparty risk where we're going independent of like what's happening. It doesn't matter if Trump or it's a lawn and Silicon Valley elite running the show and Trump's a puppet and was bailed out. Like there's all these like ways to look at like what's actually happening here. And then whether Palantir and everything that's happening from like a technocracy or technocratic state, independent of that, the world is fundamentally changing. And when it changes so drastically, you naturally are going to have disorder. And with disorder comes lots of opportunity, but also a lot of potential ways that you can you can lose. I think it was said really well as like the dollar isn't just an inflation, isn't just a marginal problem, it's an existential problem. And that was like really key for me to hear because ultimately I think that's why a lot of people listening and why there's so much room is they think everyone thinks it's a marginal problem. And so that if I don't allocate, it's like it's OK, I got something else. Or I'm, you know, holding assets in a different form, a different way to store value, when in reality is it's an existential problem and people should just act accordingly. And I think this is what ties into it maybe like from a broader perspective is you just don't want to be at the whims of any like political faction. And then also the banking system, you know, given we all know what's happening across the world. Yeah. I think just as it relates to sort of tying the loop on, on the Elon stuff and and how it relates more specifically to Bitcoin is, you know, it sort of felt like, you know, whether this is real or not, whether it was, you know, more of a show than anything. I think there was beyond being very publicly facing about like realizing he couldn't stop the train to an extent, right? Like the reason he backed this administration, the reason he wanted to get involved in government was to attempt to stop the train or at least steer the train back onto the tracks in terms of cutting spending in some material way, which really hasn't been done in several decades. And it sounds like he just got frustrated with, you know, primarily stemming from the spending bill that's trying to be pushed through by by Trump and his his cabinet. And there was just this realization that like, oh, shit, there is no political will to actually meaningfully cut spending. And then, of course, everyone on Bitcoin Twitter is is, you know, reply, reply botting to Elon's tweets, being like, you're so close to understanding the solution here. You obviously understand the problem. Like, you know, and, and again, he's talked about Bitcoin in the past, Tesla, SpaceX own some amount of Bitcoin. So it's not like he doesn't understand this stuff. But there there's this natural inclination. It would be like just say the solution man like you, you obviously understand the problem. The beauty like of individuals in in in Elan is like Elan. I always get I mix up Elan and then and then our Elan from yeah, so but Elan is he's just like he's a troll and probably trolls like kind. So like referencing, I remember like, was it 21 or 22 is like, yeah, Doge is the blockchain of the theater. It's like it just has higher throughput. And it's like if anybody took that at face value, it makes zero sense because if you you know, the guy has a brain, a very probably big brain. And then the other one is the debt situation. So it's just like, I don't it's all just theater in some form or fashion. But two things to just call out and curious where you guys want to go is because I think they're they're I haven't looked deeply into them, but they're big is South Korea and what's going on there. I don't even know who the individual is, if he's in office or potentially going to office and then shit, it went away for me. But the other one that I had pulled up is the pump dot fun $4 billion raise. I just think it's worth it calling out like. No, I thought that was fascinating. So they're raising, Yeah, they're raising out of they're raising a billion out of 4 billion valuation. And to me it's just indicative of this sort of something I've talked about in the past of this this tacit admission of like, you know, the the broader crypto X Bitcoin X stable coin space has really devolved into just the gambling casino. And that and this is a a strong signal of that is like, OK, that's where at that's where the actual value lies. Is, is just this like hyper powered online casino And so I think that that raise is is very indicative of that that sort of transition and and devolution into that. My favorite part of that take, and I'm gonna get shit from this, probably from listeners, especially from Liam because he's closest from coming from Tratfize. I don't see any different than pumped up fun in the in the S&P 500 or public equities like because, you know, there's obviously a slight difference because there's some companies that, you know, generate some generate value. I'd make the case that if you had to rebuild them, they probably get, you know, built more efficiently and wouldn't be around. But independent of that is they're all trading on vibes and momentum. It's similar to the circle. What I was going to reference when you asked about the circle where it's trading. It's like, well, it's obviously trading overvalued because everything's trading overvalued. And then it just all comes down to the vibes And so pumped up funds tokens just trade on vibes and the medic and whatever you can get on social and who you can pay to amplify it. And so it's very similar to like anything that's out there trading, it's based on like who do you know how you can pump? And that's really a lot of people just get caught when without thinking critically or for first principles is because you see people in the news or hear people talked about in the recent treasury company or whatever. It's like there's capital behind that. There's a reason why you're seeing it. And so when there's capital behind it, reason why you're seeing doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, but also doesn't necessarily mean it has fundamentals or is good if there's just there's just money. So you're naturally seen in front. And this is where I won't name any conferences, but they're naturally is now starting to be like the ultimate top of funnel for the ultimate like mother of all shit coin treasury companies. It's like, let's just take all the capital from the front end, pull it in. And then again, it all goes back to what is money and then what's credit and bitcoins money. You can take delivery of it and whether it's pumped up fund tokens or treasury companies, you ultimately don't have any claim on anything other than the exposure to the ticker, which is the same as a cryptocurrency. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think I would I would say the pump fund rate raises more akin to like DraftKings raising like it is literal, literal casino vibes as opposed to like you know, operating companies with a business model or or some form of cash flows right. Like there is some distinction there, yeah. But even like Tesla from. Tesla is a great example because I haven't dug deep, but like from a we'd have to write a whole paper on this. But ultimately, like they couldn't live without the Fiat system because of the subsidies and the amount of count, right? So it's just like, so that's the angle. But Liam, I know I saw you take a deep breath there. So really I mean I. Just there is kind of a, a difference too, like like let's take a step back. If you're an HVAC company and you're providing a service that people will pay for just because the public market is not trading your vehicle or publicly traded company at, you know, what should be the right valuation in terms of Bitcoin. And if they couldn't, you know, access cheap amounts of debt like they're they're still underlying value that they're providing to the world that I think isn't necessarily there on the pumped out fund side of things. And yeah, there there is. They're trading at a massive premium to what they should be. If you know, we're we're being honest with ourselves and taking a deep lens into like, OK, how much more Bitcoin can they produce in the future versus, you know, I don't I haven't ever gone on pump dot fun and I try to, you know, keep as many brain cells as I can by not not it too closely, but I think that there is definitely a difference. There, Yeah. I mean, obviously there's a difference if somebody's producing, producing like value in the world. The thing that I think nobody really takes account for in prices is it's kind of like in life, we always are good if it doesn't relate to us. Like if it's not our problem, if like somebody doesn't have exposure to Ethereum and they only have Bitcoin, they're fine with Ethereum being and you know, crap. But if they have a little exposure, Ethereum, it's like, well, hey, let's be open minded. And so it's just, it's just like people talk their book. And so when you think about the capitalization or market cap of companies, if somebody's in equities, they're in their whole Bitcoin, they'll naturally say, well, of course real estate's going to be repriced, right? Well, let's have the other discussion. Well, of course equities are going to be repriced Because if you have to look at just from a natural like amount of not float, but bloat in a company that exists from, you know, Zerp and government subsidies and, you know, being able to take, you know, bonds out like all like IBM is the best example. But there's no shortage. Like what happens when people sell their equity for BTC when they realize why am I holding this? Well, that company actually might go out of business because they fundamentally might not have the fundamentals to be alive anymore. And so that's that's kind of where I'm I'm grafting or I'm going towards is that all these things are trading based on the amount of like liquidity in the system and then vibes that are based on it and are going to get repriced in it. Whenever they repriced, they may actually just go out of business and nobody actually knows where the bodies are buried. We know pumped out funds are probably a big body just because there's nothing. It's literally a, it's a casino. But that's the point I'm trying to make is I don't think most people like think of the world being repriced in that way. And what they're holding is, yeah, is. I think that there's two, there's a little bit of a difference there though, like once the world gets repriced accurately, like a boring like HVAC company or whatever can be traded at like 9095% discount where it's, you know, today in terms of Bitcoin, but like the pumped out fun and all that, it's just going to be traded at 0 in terms of Bitcoin. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that a lot of these companies don't have sustainable business models. Yeah, like that. Like they didn't actually build to have a sustainable business model. It's one thing if you've always been, you know, built with like fundamentals and then you're trading publicly and you're, you know, you're positive in the green. But there's a lot of companies that don't, or that's what I'm referring to. Or you have to pay back your bonds and now you that's when you're out of business is the. Yeah, the only data point I was going to bring up around this is so this is basically like a distribution of just the past month of fun, fun. And so like basically the vast majority of people lose. And so it's actually like worse EV than like literal gambling at the casino. And so it's it's on, it's more on par with it with a literal casino actually like worse EV than a casino. Whereas like if you compare that to the equities market, like I think there is a parallel there in the sense that what we know about the concentration of returns in the S&P, for example, right, Like MAG 7 is driving the vast majority of performance. And you know, actually the majority of companies are underperforming, the benchmark underperforming generally speaking. And so there is a parallel there there. But you know, again, I would I would put this mark into like literal casino gambling. Yeah. Yep, I don't 100% agree and kind of ties back into the the Trump company race. And so, you know, they're, it's interesting to see that they're now launching their own ETF and you guys may have may have touched on this outside of this show as well. But we haven't really seen this with, you know, they raised their 25 billion or $2.5 billion as a convertible note. And it looks like they're actually taking the steps to launch an ETF with that. We haven't really seen any of these Bitcoin treasury companies. I don't know if they're going to be considered 1, you know, actually go and do something with that and, and try to create a product that, you know, they can get fees on with it. It's it's just the first one to go in this direction and I think it's worth watching to see if and and how successful it will be. But like, why would it be successful? Why would anyone buy the truthful Bitcoin ETF? Fine, I'm sorry, but the the. The name on it a. 100% yeah, yeah, yeah. If I was like, this is the the, the pattern recognition when I see like, you know, being around the space and salon and being able to buy it under a dollar, it's like you saw like the just it was great marketing. And I look at something like this and even the treasury companies, there's a principal version of why I don't trade them because I see them as 0 sum. But if I wasn't, if I was looking to dump on somebody, I would definitely buy Trump, Trump's ETF because to what Liam said, it's the president of the free, like free world. And he has his own Bitcoin ETF. Like it has to be the best one. There's better Bitcoin in that ETF. Yeah. But it's like an outlook forum Bitcoin like it's so it's different in the treasury companies. The bitcoins in the ETF by Trump are fundamentally better than the rest of the market. The best bitcoins. They're the best bitcoins. They were made in America. They've been blessed by him. Like it's just, it's just better. It's better than definitely that would. Be something, yeah, these are, I will tell you American made bitcoins only in this ETF. I'll tell you it is objectively better than Bitwise's ETF because Bitwise will tell people to go buy XRP and lobby on behalf of True you know there. So like Trump, at least he's just staying principle with just a Bitcoin ETF. This is this is honestly how how insane the world has gotten that nobody actually talks about how insane the world has gotten. So we might as well just like bring it up every week until everyone realizes that we were just explaining how insane because you could just buy spot Bitcoin. And you know what? I can't wait till we have some some some fun stuff coming out, coming out at on ramp. And about two years ago we launched the on ramp Bitcoin trust. I still fundamentally think it has pensions that have allocated to it. I think it's the best product in the market and it's not us talking in our book. It's from, you know, sophistication perspective, whether it's how the units trade to be able to deliver Bitcoin in kind to private placement requires accredited investors, but you can take delivery of it and then it leverages multi institution in custody. It's just a beautiful product. The problem is that majority of the market A doesn't know who honor is, but 2B doesn't understand why you would want it because most people have .1% exposure to the ETF for 1%. But again, the whole thesis that we talked about and why always bring up the treasury companies is just, it's not incongruence with the world. It's nonsensical, however you want to phrase it. Why? Institutional allocators or an individual will eventually understand what Bitcoin is and realize they need to get out of that position because there's like 10 layers of execution risk embedded from the Bitcoin hitting their wallet to them delivering. Yeah, 100%. We want to talk on the South Korean new president deal. Yeah, I'll pull up that link if you want to. You want to start, are you? Moving to South Korea, Asia Pacific's heating up, all right. How do you feel about you being in Singapore for like maybe a year? Singapore is not South Korea. Well, I'm in Asia Pacific, so you can get you can get to. I figured I wouldn't you wouldn't have to go to South Korea. Singapore was a nice like middle ground. It's nicely on. No, it's just it's it's cool to see. I think I wanted to tie this back to what we talked about earlier, you know, a couple weeks back, which was the odds of non Bitcoin digital asset president getting elected. I think is has gone down significantly over the past, you know, year or so I think at least well, well Bitcoin is, you know, not 80% off its all time high. We're going to see this trend continue. I think that there's no significant benefit to being anti Bitcoin, anti digital assets in general. And I think that this can only be a pro in terms of, you know, marketing your own strategy. The vibes are higher as we talk about when when talking to other, you know, young people in particular. But it's good to see. We'll we'll see how this if and when this actually does get implemented because, you know, a lot of these politicians we're seeing just kind of talk their own books in order to get elected. So, but I think it's it's great to see on the. Margins, yeah, I think there was a few key points from this. One was, you know, allowing spot crypto ETFs also pushing forward, you know, one peg stablecoin. And then the third, which I don't see in this publication, but was also included in some of his campaign was allowing the national pension fund, which I think is like has close to a trillion dollars in it to invest in, in Bitcoin as well. So yeah, very, very positive in my mind. I don't know if there's anything else there we wanted to touch on. If not, if not, I could pivot. There's there's there is something I did want to pivot to that is not as related to to Bitcoin necessarily, but more on the AI side. I don't know if you guys saw this, this report that Apple put out basically saying that like AI reasoning models aren't actually thinking or aren't actually reasoning. Like it's all just memorization and pattern recognition. And why this is interesting is basically because Apple is super behind on all of this. And so one way you could look at this is like then basically coping and just like flooding everything that's going on and saying like we're not actually making the progress that we think we're making. And we're way farther from actual AGI as as some of these other companies would suggest. And basically that the take away is like, they effectively created, created puzzles or things for these models to think about that they haven't been trained on. And once they're looking at things that they haven't been trained on, they basically hit this wall of understanding and reasoning. And So what that would tell you is that they're not actually thinking, they're actually just memorizing what they've been trained on, which I don't think is like a new novel theory, but it is just fun. Funny to see Apple put this out given that they are sort of behind all these other companies. Thoughts. Yeah. I think this is just going back to what we've been talking about for a long time now, which is just the incumbents are not going to lead on the margins. They're not going to be, you know, the people that can innovate. I mean, the, the great thing about or, you know, the one advantage that incumbents have when it comes to AI is, you know, having all the capital in order to train the models, you know, deploy all the data centers, everything that you need in order to out compete because there are massive efficiencies when it comes to scale and, and with these LLMS. But it's really just kind of disappointing to see that Apple is so far behind all the others because, you know, they're they're just going to kind of get their lunch eaten. It, it looks like I, I think we always kind of knew that this was how these models operated of just like kind of checking other vectors and using reasoning behind them. They're not actually thinking themselves. But yeah, it's it's a little disappointing to see, but expected, yeah. Yeah, I think without being technical expert, I think the point you made Liam is like around the incremental nature or how fast it's moving. You can surmise like this stuff is going to disrupt a lot, especially like middle management, the heuristic that I'm personally because I just don't have the time. I'd love to to look into more and like play with. I'd love to be a Viber and just, you know, vibe code, vibe market. We have some on our team, but is like when you really start seeing people anecdotally lose money or assets or get phishing scam because I think when it gets that good as you're kind of like, no, because there's a dynamic nature to this process, right? You see this like I remember like a year ago and and then it came up that it was recently with a long Elon talking on YouTube, where like have you guys, have you guys ever gone on YouTube? And then you'll see like the commercial come up and it's like Elon talking, but then it's like a literal scam. It's a literal scam. And point being is like when you start to see these become very like dynamic and in real time to the point of like that reasoning that when somebody's asking the question and you're able to like actually bring together relevant information based on time, local, you know, understanding who the person is. Like that's when you have started. Like, I mean, you know, I think it'll happen in incremental steps, but that's just something that I would use as a heuristic to understand if this shit's really getting out of hand. Because right now, like, you don't hear about that. You just hear of ordinary fishing and regular roll calls happening. Yeah, Maybe one other thing, just back to sort of global adoption regulatory front. This was also from last week the UK sort of taking a more accommodative stance, which you know, I think they've been particularly adversarial to to crypto and Bitcoin historically. And so this is a bit of a pivot that they announced last week to lift the ban on the sales of crypto exchange traded notes and sort of start to allow some more access to to these things. So again, it's just this this game theory of like, you know, now it's in the zeitgeist and now everyone's sort of putting their chips on the table and, and, you know, figuring out that they need to be more accommodative than adversarial, which was the historical norm. Yeah, I mean, this, this just all goes back to the point where the most sophisticated people want Bitcoin. If they can't get access to it, they're just going to leave your country and you're not going to be able to, you know, get their taxes anymore. And so you may as well lean into it and embrace it and, you know, take the capital gains taxes on it. I think it's, you know, when, when for everybody involved, if, if the current status quo keeps up. I I don't love capital gains taxes, but you know that's, that's not going to change anytime soon. Yeah, this isn't exactly related, but it feels like we're coming whining to an end, just like what's going on in LA. Yeah, I don't know. You have thoughts, Michael? I mean, I don't, I just, I just go on. I'm just getting those like 2020 COVID vibes, you know, for a little bit kind of social unrest. And the reason why, I mean, I guess the tie back to this is like, you know, people get unruly and they don't follow the law. So like, imagine somebody has wealth. This is like California. Like empirically I would say directionally about half of the all of Bitcoin sits in California. All of the United States. Bitcoin in the United States yeah yeah you can make the case potentially because of Coinbase yeah but because of Silicon Valley and and just you know technologists they were the first to really see it but point being is like that is AI mean it came out what last week. I don't know what you know it's not even in in you know stone, but whatever was with the assets being like on an exchange if you if you pass away and have access to or rights to but point being is like California holds a lot of Bitcoin there's a lot of wealthy people there and it's practically like a failed state at this point and so when you think about custody and your arrangements and how you do it like it's kind of again the from how we started the show as being long volatility and counterparty risk. You want to be very careful with how you're positioning your money. So anyway that would be how to tie back to. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean, if, if you're not able to keep people safe, but then people will leave, especially when when their money and, you know, personal safety is involved. Yeah. All right, anything else, boys, before we wrap? We should wrap sometimes if we come up with one of what do we, what do we want to see or what's missing? There's like no shortage of stuff. So like, but I have something top of mind and I'll, I'll keep it quick. If you guys have something else we can extend. We just need we talked about a little bit a few episodes ago about like the Piggy Bank and the kid, the kid idea. And I think I still think that's, I mean, awesome. It should be done. But I think there just needs to be a like very acid light exchange that's denominated in Satoshi's and probably just built on lightning or maybe even E cash or some hybrid of that. You'd have to figure out the regulatory setup on how to how to do that. But it's not, it can't be that complex. But the main point of that is just like where the markets heading, there's more and more people getting out other skis when it comes to leverage and thinking that 100K Bitcoin, you know, they're they can't buy a whole Bitcoin and there's just something to things are going to start getting pricing SAT's people are going to start, you know, paying in SAT and there's some market advantage and opportunity to educate around financial Wellness. I'm just like how far your dollar goes or not on SAT's and how it incrementally goes up monthly and annually. And nobody's really like coalesced around that and done it in a good way that I'd really love to see. And anybody can do it. It's not the hard part. I think really what it's going to come down to is the taste and commercialization of like how do you actually bring that to market and make it, you know, a viable business? Yeah. I mean, I would say like Block is probably closest to doing something like that just given the work that they've done on the Lightning side of things sort of in parallel with their, you know, Cash App and traditional exchange and stuff. So that would be my guess in terms of like who's closest to doing something like that. But to your point, it might it might make sense to someone, to someone have a singular focus on something like that would probably be yeah, pretty for. Block remind block reminds me a little bit like Fidelity. Well, I love both of those firms. The reality is like what Liam talked about earlier, I don't see both of them. They may lead from the incumbents direction, but they won't lead from like 20 years from now us looking. And it's just basically because there's too much inertia. Like when block has to come up with something or wants to educate the market on Bitcoin. Like not only do they have all the other things you referenced that they have to work on, but also it's always going to be some like tempered down version of what they really would want to bring to market or explain. And it's similar with Fidelity. So it cycles the innovation why people leave. So I fully would expect somebody that wins that it's going to be kind of from like an early writer or somebody that's. Yeah, 100%. I mean, the Fidelity and Block have the best top of funnel because they already have all the customers, but it's just the bureaucracy of the large organizations that, you know, limits the amount of innovation and the speed that can happen in the industry. Yeah, I think a prime example of that is like, you know, what they announced at the conference a week or so ago around, you know, turning on basically access to to Bitcoin at all the terminals. Like that took years. Like people were calling for that for literal years and it it took them that long to get there. And it's unfortunate because anybody running a business knows like the first step is literally like just getting punched in the face. Like you got to launch it and then hear the market's feedback and understand how to commercialize it and how to like get the right tooling and all the things. So like they're starting today. Theoretically, obviously, they've probably done some user testing, but to Brian's point, if they did it four years ago, they could have like disrupted, you know, global finance or how like interchange works. So that's a great, that's a great example. And then the use case of just buying Bitcoin or holding it or exchanging it for an intermediary good is like just just like getting out of bed. It's expected. Like that's just the start. So then once they get there, somebody else is going to be running faster downhill. That's why I was thinking of like when Fidelity does multi institutional custody or Coinbase, like there'll be like 10 other products that are already out in the market leveraging that we'll be doing. So it's always going to be playing catch up behind it. It's similar with Blockbuster I'm assuming. Try to do streaming and and didn't work out for them very well. All right, great. RIP, guys. Good. RIP, boys. Appreciate it. Thanks guys. See you guys next week. All right. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Rat Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. 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