The Banks Are Here: OCC Just Opened the Floodgates to Bitcoin

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, but that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. This was an exciting and action-packed episode. No shortage of M&A deals and new products and releases in the ecosystem. Quick word from on Ramp, an on ramp business specifically, I'm not sure we've had a chance to share it here. We launched this a few weeks ago, incredibly excited about the product. We announced a case study with a large firm, but also really foundational infrastructure needed for businesses across the landscape that are adopting Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. Not only is multi institution a superior way to custody underline than trusting a single custodian, but then naturally what's existed or what hasn't existed in the digital asset Bitcoin world is governance, access based controls, and everything that generally exists in the traditional financial system. Has not been. Ported over when it comes to just treasury management of the underlying Bitcoin. And so with honor and business institutions, enterprises get access to multiple users. They get access to creating quorum of quorum so they can decide on who has access to check off or approve a transaction before the withdrawal takes place. And then you get complete. Audit controls as well as multiple wallets, different quorums, everything that a large scale institution would need. I'm really excited about this announcement. We're starting to onboard publicly traded companies as well as other large institutions. If you want to learn more, I'd encourage you to book a consultation or reach out. All right, on to the episode. I hope you guys enjoy. Boys, welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement. Today is Monday, December 15th, 10 O 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. Gentlemen, the banks are here. We've been saying this I, it feels like for months that the banks are coming, the banks are getting involved, they're interested, they're placing their, their bets on the table, moving their chips around. But now it's, it's actually happening. And so there was a few big headlines from last week that we'll get into. We'll start out with those, but a big show, lots of links. Gentlemen, how are we doing? Well, first of all, Mr. Grinch, it's Christmas time and if you see behind me, it's snowing in the Hill Country in Texas. And so, you know, they're really experienced like the the Christmas cheer until you have kids and then you start to like figure out all weekend long lights Christmas Wonderland for hosting. So anyway, I mean, I'm very much in the Christmas spirit. Got a couple rips before Christmas in the new year are here. I'm also excited about getting ready for 2026. I feel like this year was a lot of preparation. So it's been a good weekend and excited to talk about the the yes, the banks being here I think is probably one of the most under reporting and appreciated things that are happening currently right now in the. Space. It absolutely is. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of narratives going on right now in the market. There's a lot of fun narratives, to be quite honest, whether it's quantum or four year cycles OG selling. But something that we've harped on on this show for, for what it feels like, you know, since the beginning of the show is really the developments going on behind the scenes that most people, you know, just aren't paying attention to, quite frankly, because they think crypto's a joke. So they don't really care about the banks getting into crypto. They think it's silly, but this is these are the things, these are the things behind the scenes that actually matter for adoption, for institutions actually participating in this asset class and ultimately realizing that Bitcoin is the thing, but it's going to take them a while to get there. So we'll see a lot of these types of things in the in the interim, but let's get into it. So this was the big news from last week. I'll tee this up a little bit just so we have some context on on really what happened here. So basically last week there was really two announcements. There was first on December 9th, the OCC said that banks can serve as crypto transaction intermediaries via riskless principal activity, IE acting like a broker without holding inventory. And then three days later on the 12th, the OCC greenlit five trust charter applications for what effectively were crypto native firms that are now federally chartered trust banks effectively. And so there was 5 on this list. Two were effectively brand new charters. So for Circle and Ripple, those were totally new National Trust bank charters. And then there were three conversions that went from State Trust to National Trust banks and that included Bitco, Fidelity, Digital Assets and Paxos. And so maybe I'll turn it over to you guys for initial thoughts on this. But just to set the scene, this is, these are things that have kind of been in the works for a while. And given the new admin a friendlier SEC and really friendlier, friendlier governmental agencies across the board, these things are starting to get greenlit and get set in motion. Yeah. I think there's a lot we're going to touch on the banks. I think the overarching theme one huge for the industry as Brian was alluding to with just the operation checkpoints. I still think some of these things still exist. But the notion of fast tracking these operations really signal not only direction for the market. Really I think right now it's the stable coins on the demand because that's what majority of these banks trust charters can do. They still don't have the exact provisions that a traditional bank would have around lending and re hypothecation and fractional reserve. But I think the overarching angle just to be aware of because I I fully didn't appreciate it and I think we're all coming to probably appreciate anybody listening to this. I would say majority have been like far down the rabbit hole and been on Bitcoin Twitter for too long and listening to a lot of the, the thinking heads of like this is, you know, and I'll be all best asset forever and we're going to hyper bitcoinize and, and, you know, next 5 to 10 years and it's game over. And the reality is we're they couldn't be more further from that, whether it's gold going to $30 trillion and also, and, and we'll continue to appreciate in this new monetary environment. And then also the banks stepping in. When individuals are going to adopt an asset like Bitcoin, they're generally for the majority of Americans are going to go either their brokerage and an ETF style structure or they're going to buy it through their banks, you know, full stop. Like the and the angle is if anybody's dealt with anybody in private wealth is this notion of people don't want to catch a falling knife. So whether it's institutions, high net worth individuals, even large enterprises, if they're going to step into BTC, it's generally when the price is is on retrace and then maybe when it's coming back up a bit, but they're not going to buy the tops. And the version of buying the tops for majority of Americans, especially high net worth and private clients is if you had to leave your banking platform to go to a Kraken, Coinbase River on ramp. Like it's this notion of those really early adopters, those were people willing to go above and beyond figuring this out, but banks stepping in, whether they're going to be, you know, crypto banks, they get OCC charters or they're just traditional banks like we'll talk about. That's really the sign of next wave of adoption because that's how people interact with financial assets is through their traditional brokerage and their traditional bank accounts. And then when you start looking at access to cheaper dollars, credit cross collateralization like this is bitcoins kind of like the moment where you start to see it in in being started in traditional finance. Yeah, I think many of us forgot. I recently was kind of helping out a couple friends with just getting set up with Coinbase for the first time and just because they they wanted to use them in in particular, but just because of the brand has been around. But it's people forget how long it takes to really connect bank accounts to Coinbase and how the lack of customer service can just put many people off. So I think many people, as you mentioned, will just not want to interact with those types of firms first. They will go to the fidelities of the world and others. That's why, you know, last week Vanguard turning on ETFs was so big. That's why we've seen the ETF growth from, you know, BlackRock gets so massive despite having the same custody guarantees as essentially anybody else who goes to Coinbase and the Lindy and trust. It's going to come from both existing banks coming in and offering these financial services as well as just the Bitco's of the world. And Fidelity's getting approval to actually be a bank is just going to get more and more approval and, and safeguards and essentially buy in from these large institutions who want, who need X amount of checks box boxes checked because they have their compliance teams all over this. And, and trying to make sure that they're doing things in the right way because they don't want to lose money on behalf of their clients. And they're all kind of playing the cover your ass game to make sure that they don't get sued because nobody wants to lose their job over something that many people think of as highly speculative. At this point, yeah, that's all. It's all very well said. I think to me, the real signal he'll here is, you know, in part it's, it's what we talked about in the past around like this is the air cover that folks need effectively. And so even if you think about what we've seen a lot over the past few months in terms of partnerships, sub custodian relationships, a move like this from a federal agency gives credibility and credence to a lot of those types of partnerships. So if people are using, you know, some crypto native verb as a sub custodian and now they happen to be federally chartered, that just gives people a lot more confidence to to Liam's point, it's a it's a box check box check that is pretty important for folks. And so I think this opens the aperture for more types of those partnerships that we've seen a lot of over the past few months. And so I would expect that type of stuff to continue. Maybe also I'll just pull this up. I think Bitco did a good job of, of sharing this news and, and really, you know, some of the implications for it and just really setting a new standard for what, you know, being a regulated crypto firm really looks like. And, and a lot of this just is new, right? Because if you think about past four years, like the environment was just so 180 and hostile that a lot of this stuff was, you know, you couldn't even have have thought that this type of stuff was possible. And you know, here 12 to 24 months later, a lot of this stuff is now in motion. So just worth worth calling out that, you know, I think this is going to open the aperture for a lot more integrations, partnerships and really just allowing people to check certain boxes that that allow them to get involved with this stuff. Yeah. I think tying it to the digital asset side, and this will probably tie into some of the other discussions around banking is this theme we've been talking about around convergence of existing digital native firms that are trying to cross the chasm and offer traditional financial products, whether it's on the banking side or equities. And then the other side, which is the legacy firms that are looking to become more crypto native. And So what this signals is, and it makes sense that I believe the last federally chartered Trust Company was Anchorage. This was pre, I think they were the last approval before Trump left his administration for, for Biden in 2020. And so this signals getting them involved. But then what Brian was alluding to is a lot of the rigorous standards that are required because it helps with the like the, the, the muscle of the OCC in these charters getting what looks best in class wrapped around their arms around how do you actually navigate who's managing custody? How do they do it? What is best in class look like? Because there's the other side of it, which is how do you go and figure out as net new banks come in and then also the existing financial markets start to like bring in custody, sub custody. There needs to be like an actual connectivity there on the digital asset side. But then on the same side is as you start thinking about traditional assets and even just like cross collateralization is a great example of what happens when you're a trust charter or you're a bank that has offers custody, whether it's sub custody or through your own platform. And then somebody wants to take a home loan and they're able to put those assets and collateralize them or figure out how to leverage them. All these things are going to start to be built out, which is obviously very positive across the the Board 100. Percent and you you alluded to to this, but this was I would say the other biggest headline from last week was PNC rolling out direct Bitcoin trading for high net worth clients through a Coinbase partnership. And so this is exactly what we were just describing, but from the incumbent side. So attritional bank PNC figuring out a sub custodian relationship with a Coinbase. Now it is interesting, I don't have any alpha or Intel on this, but Coinbase was not on the list of of Krypton native firms to to get granted this OCC approval. Not exactly sure why that would be the case. But this just, you know, according to what you were just walking through, Michael, like this is another big step in terms of just, you know, the these traditional incumbents need to figure out how they're going to go about this. And frankly, this is the path of least resistance, right? Like you just partner with Coinbase. It's it's what hasn't gotten people fired from, you know, BlackRock to everyone else. And so it's really it's this or you build it yourself or you acquire A crypto native firm. And so we've seen a little bit of the first two. We haven't seen a ton of the actual internal build outs. Maybe that's happening behind the scenes at certain places, but this seems to be the path of least resistance. You, you partner with, with Coinbase sub custodian, which for you know, reasons that we've discussed many times, like is not an optimal solution for their end clients, but it is the fastest way to the door effectively. And so to avoid effectively client assets fleeing APNC type institution, they've got to get something there, right. And so I think it does make a lot of sense in that context of, well, if they just wait, if they try to, you know, do the perfect acquisition, if they try to build something internally, they could just end up losing a lot of client assets that literally just leave the platform because they don't offer exposure to these things. Yeah, I think to wrap up on the the digital asset side, it's super fascinating that those got approved. They got fast tracked because I think that the Orabo or whatever the Peter Thiel neobank that's like a a Bitcoin bank that also got approved randomly like they're they're de Novo their net new. But I do think that my instincts tell me one of the main reasons is stable coin demand, because if these digital native firms specifically like Anchorage has their solution, Bitco has theirs, Paxos has theirs, that like they need this treasury demand. They need to execute on whatever plan that is coming. And so you need those businesses set up because those businesses will sub custody for other banks. On the other side of it, what you're alluding to APNC, there's a few things, one of a few things we can touch on curious your guys's takes. One of them is banks have insane like data analytics, analytics on what their clients, where their clients capital moves. And I remember seeing this, it's little known because they kind of reversed it, but back in like USAA based in San Antonio, largest, one of the largest private banks. I mean, I don't even know if you would consider them private banks. They're not publicly traded, but member owned effectively. They support the military. They have really innovative technology, like they had the patent for the deposit by check when that was a thing. And then they ended up investing in Coinbase's Series B and back on in like 1617, they'd have an integration within the app where you had your checking and then you had your Coinbase account. And then they deprecated that and they kind of rolled back after the administration that got spooked and scared. The point being is from them to like hearing directly from Schwab and other large institutions, they see the flow of capital leaving their firms. They also see that not only is it one way capital, it's very large amounts. Because when you think about somebody buying and acquiring a boat or a house or whatever it might be, it's, you know, nominal like it's, it's small relative to their total net worth. But in Bitcoin, people just like end up moving very large amounts and they never see those assets again. The problem had been the administration. And nobody wants to catch a falling knife and nobody knows how to go and figure out you don't like, you know, between compliance and all things associated. So that's where the delay has been. This new administration, it's taking some time to get these things approved. And to Brian's point, what the two things that I find the most fascinating from market structure and demand that I think most people are missing is a, even though Coinbase is suboptimal, it's still much better than nothing because we're so far from people recognizing this that it's a, it's a true in the banking side and the RAA side. I look at them as very similar, their businesses competing with other businesses. It's less around like endowments and institutions and even like sovereigns and a certain example where they have certain inertia and certain like bureaucracies where these are fundamental businesses that are chasing deposits and chasing demand and chasing revenue. And so they have every reason to figure out how to try to win net new clients once they wake up to this asset grows in dollar terms. So they get closer to the underlying. But then the thing that most people don't recognize the sophisticated people do on the RA and banking side because we talked to them daily is that well, for every one to 10%, they get in somebody's net worth with BTC, they get the other 90% in traditional assets. And that is huge. And This is why my thesis is that like most of these banking companies are going to like just completely crush a lot of the natives businesses in the space, whether it's the traditional large custodians and exchanges. And then also because there is distribution, like they have too much distribution being able to turn on buy Bitcoin unless you look fundamentally differentiated. So I can go further, but I'll pause because I think those are like 2 of the main themes is like looking at these firms and they know they need to make a plan and it's just pure game theory and market dynamics. And then the other side is when it comes to financial products that are different, they're going to have insane distribution, insane economies of scale that they can even undercut on cost and eventually feature set. And you're going to have to really be differentiated if you're a native company basically. Yeah. No, there's a, there's a couple things in there I I think are worth pulling out and and maybe just following up on like so I, I think I agree with you that the, the more tratify incumbent type banks have a great shot at winning. But more specifically, winning like net new people because of what you said in terms of the other deposits, their other assets or if you know they're already at PNC and now you know individual XYZ is going to be making an allocation to Bitcoin for the first time. It's likely that they wanted to stay with that same provider, stay on the same platform, get their exposure to Bitcoin and probably increase that over time, right. But in terms of like the people that already have Bitcoin, so like what we talked about of like the 70% of Bitcoin that's owned by individuals, like who do you think is more likely to win that person? Is it the crypto native company that just got a bank charter? Or is it the PNCS of the world that, you know, maybe they, maybe they've been used for their other assets in the past, but you know that that person, that individual likely deeply understands Bitcoin and, and, you know, would maybe prefer a crypto native firm as opposed to a bank. So this is the fascinating part. It's both. But if you, if I had to pick one, it's the PNC. And the reason why is because it it all comes down to material allocation and majority of the world doesn't have material allocation. And even the people that are holding 70% of that asset will like, is it all of their money? If it's all of their money, then I would still say they have some relationship in this theoretical PNC world. And the main reason why is it's pretty obvious, right? Like, well, I want access to like financial products and services. Think about 17 years being alone on an island, never having any opportunity to lend against the asset, never move it, leverage it. If you're going to go take out a home loan, just to know that that's part of your asset profile. And there's like 10 other reasons why, you know, we could talk through. But point being is, and so this is what we talk with banks actively about, and this is what I talk with clients actively about because, and this is part of like the whole circle is if banks start to the the Holy Grail in our view is that, well, you can actually build best in class products, get Bitcoin, adopt Bitcoin integrated, but invest in glass products. Now you're playing for now and the future. So yeah, that that's the angle. I think it's like you can that's the hard part around again, going back to this ties a little bit just traditional venture, right? Like we see this across the board, whether it's like crypto native venture or Bitcoin native only venture. Like those businesses when you look in the future will be looked at as kind of like anomalies in the sense of where we're going is commercialization and it's going mass adoption into that's not like a tinkering app trying to build E cash or lightning. That is, how do you tie those into applications and experiences that the majority of the the public will accept, tolerate and want? Because the banking system and other large firms with distribution are going to do that much, much closer to that may not be perfect, but the market doesn't go to the best product. It goes to the best sells and distribution. And like Cash App and Square is a great example of this. There's probably things that hardcore people would rather do, but if somebody's going to win that market right now, it's them because of what they have. And so that that's very similar on the like venture capital, private equity side. And then if you take it over to the Bitcoin side, if you're Bitcoin only exchange and your main value prop is, let's call it somewhat fees, but fees are kind of commoditized in the in in trading. And then you go to experience, well, even if somebody's hardcore aligned and has a huge affinity for what you built, they're still going to be predisposed at at best to like split some of their, you know, their banking relationship in Bitcoin because of XY and Z that they cannot, that the, the other institution can offer that you can't. And then at worst, they're just going to move it over because it's just a, it's a very transactional relationship on where you buy your Bitcoin versus This is why we focus on custody and have your best in class because now you start to like make it harder and then it makes more sense to you integrate some of those financial products in your offering while also exporting that technology for other firms. So again, we're, I think we're still so early in this, but if you just think about it, what's logical from a client user behavior, it's to go to the passive least resistance that's going to integrate with your credit cards and all the other financial products that you need, especially stable coins. Stable coins are a great example because we talk about this a lot. Traditionally, people on the Bitcoin only side or Bitcoin companies don't really integrate or play with stablecoins. It's like everything that has been shown is that stablecoins are going to just be inserted. And I know we have a couple topics we'll talk about on this spot, but they're going to play next to every financial asset. And so you just have to get in that world or people aren't going to work with you. Yeah, there's a lot there and I agree with some of it. And you know, like you talked about the distribution being incredibly important and I agree. And I think that's why PNC, I think that they're first to essentially rolling this out at least at least this time with Coinbase in the back end. I know City and likely some others that are probably being a little quieter about it are building their own, you know, infrastructure in house. And I don't necessarily know if that's the best move unless they have people who have really done this before, because they're probably going to have a number of different factors that they're not considering. 1, you know, what the customer really wants. It's usually at the, you know, say what you want about the Bitcoin native firms and just startups in general, but they can really ship products and get feedback from customers in real time about like what they actually want and need versus, you know, what's overkill. And you're, you may be over engineering for something that there's no actual real demand for. And so having a product that you can just get out into the market and really start to understand how your customers want to interact with, you know, Bitcoin and digital assets in general for PNCS, a great product in general, but in the end state, I think that this is a great V1, but they need to use that information and how customers are interacting with Bitcoin in order to create their own differentiated product or service. Otherwise, I'm certain that there will be more partnerships by other banks that want to offer Coinbase as a service in the back end. And you just kind of look like every other company out there unless you have a real differentiated products and service. And that's like just like, you know, buying Bitcoin at a Gemini versus Coinbase versus cash off strike, whatever else out there. And you need to figure out how to manage that for the long term and you know, through holding it with in the best way possible, whether it's the hardware devices, multi say multi institution custody, however people determine what's best for them. I think just in this same instance, people will get more sophisticated as they generally have larger positions or, you know, a lot of people don't do that too. A lot of people just will sell it back and you know, that's fine. But there will be an instance where those who are more sophisticated either demand that PNC build something in house or they'll just move off of that, I believe to other other services where they can have better assurances that the Bitcoin will actually be there long term. Yeah. I mean you're you're saying the pitch for like long term, but the reality is it's not what we've seen in the user behavior because we know people sold their Bitcoin to go into an ETF, you know a company you're a treasury company. So like the point is like on a long enough time horizon, of course, multi institution, the awareness custodians go go down. But the reality is people adopting Bitcoin, I mean, the majority of the market even that's been here believe that like Mount Gox, FTX were anomalies, right? Like the majority of people just believed that for the 1st 17 years there wasn't serious actors in the space. And so everything, you know, just goes by the wayside and moving forward, we won't have any of these problems. And the reality is if there's a single point of failure, eventually there'll be a single point of failure because it's just a new type of asset we're trying to manage. But like so that's like everyone, including like people have been here. So imagine everyone else that hasn't been here. They, if we can't help but with the social proof and appealing to authority that when Citi infidelity and Coinbase and Black Rock stuff in that they cannot do any wrong. And if they did, they can bail you out. And so that's where I just think in the short run. But to your point, the sophisticated people will recognize and this has been the biggest one is the just intermediation of banks, right? Everyone has seen the centralization of banks, the closing of banks and this notion that if Coinbase and a few large custodians are the back ends for a lot of this, not only is it a market structure problem, a custody problem, but it's really a business model problem because if somebody else is holding your client assets, well then what's your Moat and where are you going in the future? So of course, like long term looking different, feeling different, having different products. But I'm just explaining from here until there, there's going to be, you know, because just we do this all day long and this is what we see. Nobody ever got fired for going to these other third parties. Right. I mean, it's a, it's a really good point just in terms of the perception of Coinbase today. It's just very interesting in the sense that people do look at them as the a grown up in the room because they've been blessed, because they've been green light, because they're not, you know, custody 9 out of the 11 ETFs. There is this again, back to the box checking like people can check a box with Coinbase today. I think the the disconnect or the difference is that like, you know, if you talk to most bitcoiners, they don't have that perception of Coinbase, right? Like they don't they don't perceive Bitcoin to be the serious grown-ups in the room because they run a crypto casino. And so it's, it really gets back to like the distinction of Bitcoin versus crypto in some sense, because that's where that's where this perception, the negative perception arises is like from a Bitcoiner perspective of like, well, they're doing all this other stuff. So how could you trust this business to custody or Bitcoin long term? And so I think that's that's a big disconnect is that like, while they're perceived by the broader market and newer entrants as legitimate and, you know, maybe even too big to fail to some extent. Now, I would say I don't think the government's going to bail out Coinbase if something were to happen, but I think there's the perception that that could be the case. And so, you know, basically this, you know, what we've talked about around Coinbase centralization is, is likely to continue and get worse before it gets better. I guess that is another way to say, you know, your response to Liam around like the short term versus the long term. I would agree in that the centralization at Coinbase is likely to get a lot worse before it gets any better. And then just going back to one other thing you said, Michael, which I think was spot on is like the example of of Square and Cash App. Like, you know, they have their R&D department, I think it's called Spiral. So they do a lot of that tinkering stuff. But the biggest thing, like the most viral thing that they've released in years was a a commercially viable product that integrated actually Solana based Sablecoins. So they said fuck it to like the Bitcoin ethos around like not using Solana and said, no, this is just going to work better for and clients, customers. So ship it. And so I think that's a great example of like, well, this is where we're headed short term. So you either have to adapt to win clients and and get usage on your platform or you know it's going to go by the wayside. 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 many 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 and many simplicity in one. To learn more, check out on rampbitcoin.com. Yeah, it's, it's really difficult. I mean, just across the board, because you have segments you had 17 years that were fundamentally different of the market you had to appeal to. And I think where we're go especially have a viable business and to compete, you think about like the spectrum of somebody first buying back coin to getting super down the weeds, whether it's understanding multi sig or why their counterparty shouldn't support other cryptocurrencies. Like that's you just basically whittling down the total addressable market where most people stop it like I just want my allocation then go back to my life. And so that's a component of it. There's a component of what you just shared and you know like what's the delicate balance? I think stable coins are obvious between being marketable and having a taste for a business that either A will have large consumer appeal or B have large acquisition appeal, because I think Liam's spot on as well in the sense that these firms will go look to buy versus build. But how far does it take? And you probably need some of this froth. And we're not even in the frothy area to, to dissipate or whatever before people like, oh, it's Bitcoin and maybe stable coins, not everything else. So right now it's above not a feature that somebody is solely focused on this one asset where it's a bug because most people are looking at like, Oh, well, I'm we're we've got the digital assets green light now I've got to support XYZ now I need to do, you know, it's very few and far large institutions. I mean, we look at Fidelity, Fidelity, even world class and they just turned on. I think, I don't know if it's anything related to spot in Solana, but they have the ETF. I'm assuming they have to custody it, right? They have their in house and they probably will adopt, you know, let people buy and and move spot. And that I think about that a lot because like I don't we would never do that. But that has nothing to do. That's purely based on the fundamentals of the underlying asset. And from a security perspective, there's no multi state, but also from the fundamentals of the underlying, there's no value. And on a longer enough basis, if you offer that, you will have to pay the price via brand reputation and all the things associated. So it's just as delicate push and pull with where we're going in the market and how do you mass appeal while also staying principled. And it's what's about principled. It's really just about like trying to play the long game that people remember that you put them in the right products and the right services. 100%, we mentioned stable coins. I'm not sure, Michael, if Liam or Liam, if you brought this one, but the YouTube launches option for US creators to receive stablecoin PayPal payouts through PayPal. So this is like, you know, even even in another side of it, right, Like just big tech adopting stable coins as well. It's not even it's not even siloed directly to banks or financial institutions. Yeah, 100%. And this goes back to, I mean, there's no real reason that they should use PayPal USD over some of their other competitors. PayPal USD is like 4 billion in total market cap. It's just how the business was done when people have established relationships and essentially, I'm sure that YouTube uses PayPal for a bunch of other assets or like payments and they just naturally want to use them for this as well. And so naturally, when you think about the way that other people interact with financial services, like if people have all their assets with PNC, for example, they're not going to completely abandoned them because they have other relationships on the line. So that's just kind of how they how people do business. But looking at YouTube integrating stablecoins, I think this is really big because of just the size of Google. Like this is going to be a great testing Center for everything that they're going to, I'm sure launch as it relates to Gemini offering paper like in consumption, you know, a lot of API usage that will be out there too. And people are just going to get more and more familiar with operating and like receiving payment in digital money. I think naturally over time is others offer other stable coins and it just becomes like an or sorry, other coins as well. They're they will want people to or people will want to receive, you know, Solana, Bitcoin, everything else under the sun in response for creating content as well. I'm sure that they're going to offer all of that too. It's just naturally they want to appease their creators and I'm sure that they can make a little bit more spread on, you know, non USD stable coins too. So it's interesting to see. I think, you know, we've talked about this before about why, you know, money is better for or stable coins and other digital money in general is better for a number of other Google services out there. So I think this will just increase the zeitgeist that digital money really has out there. Mike, any thoughts on this one? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think this is huge because of the culture aspect. There's a number of, we talked about it last week with Klarna, just the notion that you can move money instantly, forget about counterparty risk. Because I think like that will, we're going to have a, a time where the, the frog is going to be boiling like this is what the stable point issue is. And so the frogs didn't boil for a while. And the positive is going to be that the frogs getting a little warmer and it was cold in the sense that until it gets too hot and there there's going to be so much entrenchment. Where I'm getting at is that people, whether you're a creator and had fun, seized, locked up, amount of time to do withdraws, you can take that and extrapolate it to your W2 contract. Having to get paid all the different permissions that exist within money movement effectively move when it come, move away, barriers, borders. Everyone that's trying to send a wire knows this when you can send $100,000 or whatever it might be. And so YouTube, because of the cultural relevance, the amount of time people spend there from advertisers, viewers and then obviously creators, whether it's patronage via tipping, whether it's taking your capital, going directly and sweeping that we saw. I don't think this is a response to it, but it is interesting and timely Rumble and what Tether's doing in the integration there with Tether that till Liam's main point, I think this is just a very big deal that you're starting to see the proliferation of digital money move across the Internet. And yeah, so I just think it's it's it's a huge opportunity. Yeah. A. 100% unless there was any, any other notes on that. I did want to rattle off a few headlines that were really broadly under the theme of, you know, something we've talked about is like blur, blurring the lines of, of financialization, maybe the the sloppification of, of markets to some extent. And so whether that's crypto providers offering stock trading or prediction markets or prediction markets offering stocks. Or crypto access. It's it's all sort of blurring. And so there was a few different headlines. I'll I'll just rattle through them here. So Coinbase is going to launch prediction markets that's been rumored for a bit. Gemini win CFCC approval for prediction markets, Binance API update hints at stock per perpetual contracts as exchanges itratify markets. And then the last one, which was the funniest to me is is Gondor, which is a a new start up that allows you to borrow against your Poly market positions. So all of this is again within the theme of really effectively, you know, nihilism to some extent, people feeling like they need to gamble to get ahead. And all of this stuff is just merging, whether it's stock market, prediction markets, crypto, it's really, you know, pushing people out the risk curve and saying this is the only way to to basically make it ahead is is to get well on these types of things. Thoughts on any of that? The two big ones are just this chart. This came out I think yesterday. Basically we're pulling up, there's a title from Axios, the high cost of US sports betting boom, it says changing average calls to the national problem gambling helpline since January 2017 and it's effectively showing. You can see it's just basically post COVID right? And in states where betting was legal since August of 2025 or by August of 2025 is appreciation of 150% basically in calls and the the other side. I didn't realize this, it's pretty wild. I saw a calciad pop up on something on mobile and it said the world's gone mad. This is their tagline. The world's gone mad. Bet on it. Yeah, I saw that as well. It's pretty dark. It's pretty dark, man. Liam, thoughts. Agreed. I have, I actually have a slightly different take for the prediction markets, but I'm going to save it for our new around the Horn section that we're going through. Later on today, OK, OK, the I did see yesterday it, it felt like advanced, like marketing techniques, but there was like that guy, did you see the guy who like went from $1000 to 100,000 just betting on Kaushi and he like went super viral. It seems like an elaborate marketing campaign for these platforms because yeah, I think part of the perception would be OK. You know, in sports gambling, the house always wins, right? If you're, you know, going to the casino, the house always wins. So you're, you don't have an edge, you mathematically are likely to lose money over time. And I would say the same is probably true in prediction markets. We have less data on it. But yeah, I, I saw that as as sort of maybe a technique from these platforms to, to counter that narrative to say, oh, you can't actually make money on this thing. There was another quote from somebody on a podcast saying like something to the effect of like the risk free rate on cash. She is like 10% if you're just betting things that are like going to happen, which again like obviously is not true. Nothing is riskless if there's a 5 or 10% chance of something not happening. You could still lose money on it, but it just an interesting thing to be cognizant of as this stuff proliferates. Is like it is no different than gambling even if they are going to market or portray it as as different than that. Yeah, we'll save. I have some other random thoughts but we'll save it for Liam because he always by hopping up the bit to to share something. OK, before we get to the around the horn segment, did want to rattle off some deals of the week. So I'll go through these and you guys can stop me at any point. This first one, Peribou acquires majority stake in Koimena in Turkey's largest fintech deal. Next, Stripe acquires Veloro wallet team as it builds out stablecoin services. All scale raises 5 million seed led by Yzi Labs to build world's first self custody stable coin Neo bank and then loop crypto. Michael, I think you brought this one and had some thoughts on it. So I'll maybe I'll hand this one to you around loop and lead bank. Yeah, I thought this one was super interesting ties into the last one in relation to there's really something attractive to build better rails neo banking online between stable coins. We talked a little bit about this before specifically with the lead OP. I think what they've been doing is very fascinating because this acquisition was one of their most recent loop crypto it it effectively allows people to accept stable coins in for payments and how do you integrate it? Lead is interesting because they're about 100 year old community bank in Missouri and Jackie Reese's who is former Square executive, I think she said on the the federal board in San Francisco of the Reserve, she basically bought this bank with other investors and it was the idea to make it a like digital friendly, digital asset friendly bank. So they offer traditional banking services, a lot of like banking as a service, integrations, APIs, but then really trying to go. So I think it's still the case that they're the back end for Rivers product when it comes to Bitcoin yield that if you're holding your dollar yield that's get swept into Bitcoin. But I didn't realize this, but earlier in the year they actually had raised a traditional, I think they called it a Series B for a bank. It's interesting at a like $1.6 billion valuation with A6 and Z as well as other large venture capital firms. And I just thought this was fascinating because it bridges a lot of what we talked about before, which is these older traditional banks that have bank charters, federal charters, a lot of the plumbing. And then they had the visibility to understand, well, they can offer native solutions to the market to not only bank these digital asset firms, but then also start to integrate other solutions into their banking, maybe even eat the dog food or or see what's working with these other firms and then incorporate into their business. And I think it's just a fascinating use case. I think we probably see more of it from just again, entrepreneurial individuals that either at a bank and a challenger or somebody goes and acquires them, leverages those charters and then starts to incorporate a lot of what we're seeing. And it's like this hybrid model of trying to be Bitcoin digital native while also still having the traditional products and services that you offer that a bank like would. Super interesting. Liam. Any thoughts on that one or any of the other deals? No, that is interesting too. The only other one that I think is worth bringing up for sure is the Coin Mina acquisition for 240 million. I think that there, that's something that we've essentially just alluded to throughout the show is and just for a long time, it's just there is a massive demand for others who, you know, want to acquire customers licenses and the brand of companies who actually have worked with people in the space understand what they want and what they don't. There's obviously a lot of demand for all coins outside of the coin outside of the US and, and in the Middle East in particular. But I was looking it up today and I think they have something like over 2 billion in transactions and one and a half million users. So you know that that has a lot of value and anybody kind of building products and services in the space is a there's there's a lot of demand for others who want to get into the space by acquisition rather than building everything in house too 100. Percent and the licenses was definitely a a big deal of this. I know in terms of tracking coin mean over the past couple years they've done a lot to build out licenses and our aim to buy ADGM etcetera. So it's an exciting one. OK, shall we test our new segment boys around the horn? We've all brought a secret link that the others haven't seen and we're just going to go around the horn and and see what see what was interesting to each of us. So Liam, we're going to start with you because you were already very excited to bring your secret link. What do you got? 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 phrase 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 and Bitcoin are already lost forever because people do 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. All right, Well, we're still working shopping this. So I didn't always know it was a secret link. I thought it was a secret link or topic in general of something that we they should be built out in the in the market, but it is kind of related to production market. So right now outside of the everybody's worried about quantum, I think that they're the information is extremely disparate and nobody's really done a great job of packaging everything together and showing both sides of, you know, what are the risks to Bitcoin, Bitcoin addresses as related to how it's currently architectured as well as on the other side, like where are we in the quantum space? Like what's really out there? And then combining those two of like, OK, what is the timeline and what can we do in order to I'm using air quotes, but upgrade Bitcoin or change Bitcoin if needed or or not at all like any of those proposals and research. And I think that having one specific area for everybody to research, see interviews by both sides is something that's sorely needed in the space. And for anybody out there, it will vastly increase distribution. And then in particular too why I brought up the prediction markets is we really need some way in order to understand what is the viability that for example, somebody is able to access Satoshi's coins or any early coins where those are the most vulnerable to quantum encryption. And that is important for a couple reasons why as well as the prediction, markets can have other things like what is the likelihood that there's a new change to scripting or, you know, private keys, etcetera. And I think this is important because it will allow #1 the market to understand how what the likelihood of quantum is of breaking specific signatures over the any period of time. And it will allow thus the market to, you know, understand what the likelihood is if those who are super deep in the quantum space will be able to bet on it, as well as those who think that quantum is, you know, maybe a fad or or isn't likelihood at all. And then we'll give the market signals if they should be doing more in order to, you know, make sure that there are quantum resistant addresses and GTX outside. And so I think that that's something that's extremely needed right now just because there are people who are confused about what exactly is going on. And and if you're a company in the space, it's something that you can also use in order to just, you know, bring back and help, you know, Bitcoiners get educated on everything that's going on right now. So that would be one of my requests to people in the space. Yeah, I like it. I mean, I think, I think the overarching idea of like a bit Bo style aggregation to show a bunch of reports, research. I think Blockstream just came out with something use cases implementations. But then what you're saying for better or worse integrations with multiple prediction markets to show the likelihood because my instincts tell me if there was any kind of volume there, it'd be very low? That that's like $10,000 and so that's. The point mean is the point less around the volume but more around the prediction of it. It would be very low because I think this ends up more a FUD than anything, but anyway. But yeah, I think the idea would be like if you saw a spike in that market that like maybe somebody made a breakthrough, right? Like that would be the that would be the advantage of like information seeking market to to pull that out of of people who had advanced knowledge of some breakthrough. But I agree with you. I mean, I, I generally skeptical a lot of the developments and progress that people are claiming over the past 12 months. My, my secret link, not exactly a secret link, but it was actually related to this. It was going to be our Luke Roman's comments over the weekend. Some of us were texting about them and, and he effectively it seems like got flooded out by, by quantum FUD. It was, I think, you know, it, it's, it's this dangerous path of like reading other people's perception of an issue and then proceeding that in some way and saying, well, maybe I should sell, get out of my position now because some people think this about this other thing. And so just something to be cognizant of and speaks exactly to Liam's point, like there needs to be a, a better job done of, of aggregating a lot of this discourse, information, plans, progress, all these things. Because you're right, like there is a lot of one FUD, but also two, just misunderstanding of what's actually happening. And so that is leading people to say, well, if this is a real risk, then maybe I should just reduce my exposure or get out entirely. When in reality, like, you know, nothing's really changed from a fundamental Bitcoin thesis perspective in my mind. You know, quantum FUD has been out there for a long time. So just something to be cognizant of. But I totally agree with that that suggestion, Liam, I think that makes a lot of sense. I'll go real quick because I do have to have a tight stop this one, I wish I had a better one. I don't know if we're doing this segment or not this week, but this one's just on my radar because it really ties back to the themes and the comments we talk about here. And then we talk from private with potential investors, the digital asset or Bitcoin space and institutional investors around crypto and, you know, innovation substance there and all this capital being destroyed. And so forecaster was founded by a guy named Dan Romero. He was former early stage or early at Coinbase left. He was, you know, very tight in the the crypto world. Start a forecaster a few years, a few years ago, I believe during COVID, it was this notion of building like a decentralized social media on Ethereum. It's effectively kind of like a cousin of like what, you know, Nostra, I believe is attempting to do but point, But obviously, like we we talk about this, you need a you know, to sufficiently decentralized protocol, you need it with more interoperability. All the things are what makes Bitcoin difference in digital, other digital assets. But what is in my view, so interesting is because they're industry insiders. I think paradigm either led the initial round or their whatever Series A or B where they raised about $150 million. Paradigm was involved a 16 ZA lot of these like insular circle, you know, VC kind of pump up valuation and they made a pivot, I would say last week or two weeks ago related to forecaster shifts focus to wallet service over social app siding potential growth because like there was no use case, there was no volume, there was no interest. And so they they pivoted to a wallet. And I think it's just fascinating because they raised this insane amount of money, like 150 plus $1,000,000 in the last round. And even at the time it was looked at as well. That's crazy because they're daily active users and even quote air quotes daily active users. What it what you know, what were the real numbers versus whatever. But it's just a fascinating example of you see this all the time in the space. There's large backers, large capital and the social again, going back to social proof is like, oh, there must be something here. It's like there never was anything there. Everyone understood it. And like now they had to actually, you know, go out to the market and and say that. Yeah, that is it. That is an interesting one and is a good example of what we were, you know, discussing previously around like, well, now let's let's just pivot to something that is commercial. We know people need wallets. So let's let's do that instead of trying to create a social app and really not having success for for several years. All right, I think that's a that's a tight RIP. We have anything else before we before we hop. No, that's it. Thanks. Thanks for having me. All right. Sounds good. See you guys next week. Oh no, we. Rugged. Here's what keeps bitcoiners awake. You're still securing millions of dollars the same way you secured thousands. That hardware wallet in your drawer. 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