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What you're telling me is that music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of bodarous extras ever assembled in the history of doubtless 1974? 198792972000 whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same. Thing over and over. We can't help ourselves, I say when we sell. Hey, I say when we sell. And we're live, gentlemen, big week in Bitcoin. We got some Fazbe guidance. The public companies are are very happy about. We've got some grid instability down here in Texas and the Bitcoin miners are playing a big role in that narrative. And we're joined by Lauren Asmus from Canterbury Consulting. Lauren, welcome to the show. Thanks, Marty. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming on. I guess before we jump into. Of the topics we have allocated to discuss today, let me just jump into a brief introduction about yourself, what you're doing your VP of Investment Research at Canterbury, what does Canterbury do? What do you do within Canterbury? And then why are you here to talk about Bitcoin? Yeah, all great questions. So Canterbury, we're an investment advisor, effectively A consultant based on Newport Beach, CA. And so we advise clients which are small to mid size endowments and foundations as well as family offices and it worth individuals on their investment portfolio. So everything from stocks, bonds, alternative assets and and digital assets, Bitcoin it is starting to become a part of that. And so the the clients we work with in aggregate it's a little over 20 billion in assets that we advise on. Most of our clients are on the West Coast, but we work with groups all across the country. I myself am based in Nashville, so I work remote and got connected with with Michael and Jesse, you know several months back. And yeah, I thought it'd be great to come on the pod and talk a little bit about the the institutional investor perspective on Bitcoin and individual assets and and what folks are thinking about within that regard. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on. It's been great to build a relationship and I think what I'm personally excited is this, this world of in my mind is probably like the best nomenclature you can correct me. But like I think of in, in the intermediary between, you know, asset allocators and the form of pensions, endowments and then asset managers and really providing the guidance and research is such an important aspect of the market structure and how they're looking for guidance to navigate this ever changing world. And so it's something that we're excited to be exploring and working with on the onramp side. But then also I think for the market to understand a little bit of that world that I think is a little bit of Gray or fuzzy at best and maybe not even completely known to exist as well. Yeah. And when you when you bring up consulting, people think management consulting, right, and it's always investment consulting, what is advisory. And so you're right, Michael. You know where we sit in between the the money managers, asset managers that that invest specific strategies where that's an equity strategy or bond strategy or Bitcoin strategy and then the total asset allocation of the of that client's portfolio. And so my job, I sit on the research team. My job is to. Investigate and to really diligence all these different money managers and make sure that they fit the parameters that our clients are looking for. Then also putting the whole portfolio together, making sure that the asset allocation makes sense for a given client. And so yeah, it's this world where really. I guess you can kind of think of us as gatekeepers of a way of client assets, right, where money managers would like to partner with us and work with us and start a job to vet and make sure that we're working with good groups. Out there, Yeah. What I find exciting about this to have you on the show is in the Bitcoin space. People are constantly talking about like institutional investors are coming. You know, they're they're just around the corner. They're on their way, They're making, you know, they're learning about Bitcoin now. I talk about that sometimes and you are really living that of. You interface with both sides, the institutional allocators and and the managers with different strategies. And so you are kind of you have your finger on the pulse of this big unknown question that we always wonder about. And so I'm excited to get your insights about all of everything about you know that topic and how it's been shifting overtime. Yeah. And I think a good jumping off off point before we get into the individual mindset of these asset allocators is to properly define them and what they're looking to get out of an allocation. So whether it's an endowment, a foundation. A pension or a family office across those four archetypes, how are they approaching their allocation strategies? I imagine they each have different goals and perspectives. So what's going on? So how do you sort of get to understand those goals and then work with the managers on the other side to make sure that you're you're reaching those goals for your clients? Yeah. And to your point, Marty, you know every client whether it's an ENF or a or a family or or high net with individual, they all have individual goals within that. And cus, you know, really what they're trying to achieve is very different from one to the other. But you know, I'd say in general, you know starting with endowments and foundations, at the end of the day they're they're thinking in terms of perpetuity, right. You know, having a portfolio that's going to last multiple lifetimes in the last multiple generations. And so they want to make sure that first and foremost their portfolios are secure and their principal is largely secure. On top of that, they're trying to achieve some sort of annualized return that can meet their spend rate, usually that's around 5% plus CPI or plus inflation. So you know, 5% real returns is what they're trying to on average achieve on an annualized basis. And so historically how that's worked is with within the consulting space, our, our team is tasked with going out there making sure the clients are diversified across a lot of different segments, you know across equities, fixed income alternatives. But even within that if you dive into just say equities that could be large cap growth, large cap value, Small cap growth, Small Cap Value, international, Small cap international. So it gets a very, very. Granular even within those asset classes. And so really you know if you just take a step back and look at it at a portfolio, it's highly diversified not only just within you know stocks or bonds or or you know private capital alternatives but also within those individual segments. And so you know I would say if you look at the ENF side, they're highly diversified. If you go to the family side, they're also diversified. But you typically find more willingness and ability to take a little bit more risk. And I think a lot of that is, is down to the fact that people view and this is not always the case, but this is typically what we see. People view their own money separately or differently than how they may view a foundation or endowments money because when you're a board member or trustee, that is a very different role than if you're just managing your own personal wealth. And so we tend to see a little bit different. Ask allocation models between families and and and institutions. But again, it like it really depends on kind of where along the life cycle these different groups are in terms of how you you put their portfolio together or curate their portfolio. Yeah. And I guess with that in mind, obviously Jesse mentioned there's this always been this mean. This means been around since 2014 in the Winkle Vie. We're saying the institutions are coming. We applied for our ETF. It's gonna get approved. The institutions are gonna come after that. Happens. Hasn't happened yet, still waiting almost 10 years later. But what are you seeing internally at Canterbury interacting with your clients and how they're viewing Bitcoin? As a single siloed asset, how are they viewing Bitcoin versus crypto? And then across the different types of clients you have, how are they viewing the risk profile of Bitcoin? Yeah, no, it's interesting, right. You always hear that mean that the institutions are coming or they're here and then it's kind of a head fake, right? Yeah, I would say we've we in terms of just taking digital assets first and then we can kind of get down into you know how, how clients view Bitcoin. Really we're seeing it on the family side the the most interest. And I think that goes back to my comment on when you're a fiduciary for a larger institution or you're on the board, you're going to view risk return much differently than your own personal wealth. And so we actually haven't seen at least yet much of any interest in terms of allocating on the institutional ENF side. And so maybe that's partly because there's this thinking of it's highly risky, it's, you know, venture like risk. You know, I think there's a lot of reasons for that. I also think that it takes a lot of time to really understand one Bitcoin, but then two, when you're hearing about other types of digital assets and and you're getting mixed messages across. The ecosystem, it it gets really difficult to kind of hone in and figure out kind of what the signal is across cryptocurrencies. So I think for a lot of people they've said, hey, I'm just going to be pencils down, I'm going to wait and see how things shake out and then you know, if we're not early adopters, so be it. But I think the one thing that folks want to stay away from is, is that uncertainty. On the family side, though, you know that there has been interest. And digital assets, that's been a mix of VC type allocations as well as kind of diversified allocations across digital assets. And I think that goes back to the model that institutions and consultants, investment consultants have made is. Is you want to be diversified and so you take diversification to the next level. I want to be diversified in in crypto, right, or earn digital assets that means having access or having exposure to everything. There still is a lot of education to be done on just Bitcoin only and why Bitcoin is a signal and you know why that is the important piece of all this. And so that's something that we're kind of trying to figure out as well internally is you know how do you kind of get that message across and. And how do you think about that? So I know it was a long winded response, but I have to kind of dive into any one of those aspects. Well, a couple things. Or? Go ahead, go for it Michael. I was just going to say one of the things that came up about the institutions coming is I think because of the cycles we've heard this and that happened in 2021 were Ras and other institutional investors were very interested in the asset class. But then as the market corrected in the the fallout of FTX, Block 5 and the rest, it kind of pulled back. And so they're sitting there, you know, pencils down looking at the market. But I think this continues to happen because of the cyclicality that Lauren referenced that the institutions might be here in the sense of the personal accounts of the CIO or the CEO have exposure to Bitcoin. But to go via a board and the proper governance takes time. And by the time that time gets close enough, the market has already turned and it's like hey, do we not like what's they probably didn't go deep enough to really understand the fundamental other than maybe an allocation. So I think there's some some aspect there in the cyclicality and that we know as the price appreciates in BlackRock coming in is a is a big aspect of this. But then I think just one other like touch point is that the intermediary, it feels like such an important position based on what you said Lauren, in the sense of like well crypto diversification and what we've seen in the market with and I can't remember the names, but it feels like they just keep getting rugged in Canada with these. Ontario teachers pension, yeah, And I think they got rugged like three times. I think it was a couple. It's not funny, but it's like Celsius maybe Block 5, but that there was somebody there more than likely guiding them on why this was a good investment and this reality of like giving them the exposure to what's happening in the ecosystem. And obviously they're going to make, they're going to do their due diligence as well. But it it feels very important for that intermediary to really support in the guidance of what's the, what are the fundamentals happening in the digital asset space versus like here it's crypto and then we've seen kind of the fallout. Yeah, No, I would agree with that and and you know that's a very sophisticated investor too, right. They've they've done you know in in in aggregate very well over a long period of time investing that money in that capital. And so I think it's getting back to to your point Michael of you know having the right information and making sure you're doing your, your, your actual due diligence, not just trusting. You know, leading following the herd and trusting, you know, because larger V C's are doing this, it must be safe, right? I think people got burned by not doing their diligence and this this goes across other asset classes too. This isn't just digital assets or Bitcoin. It's, you know, it's part of my job is to make sure that I'm unbiased and not getting persuaded by investor relations, marketing, people pitching a good story or you know, colleagues and other firms thinking that's a good investment or good strategy. You know I need to be doing my own work. You know, it's it's the whole notion of don't trust, verify. It goes across the board and it's especially important in this space, so. It seems it's very interesting that there's like some structural friction or or barriers to for you know, institutional capital allocators to get on board with Bitcoin and Bitcoin only and. You know, I think that that beating heart mantra of if we miss out on being early adopters, that's okay. It is kind of at the core of capital preservation and and how these strategies play out, right of you're there to protect capital, you're there to not take risks, you're there to be diversified and have exposure to everything so that you're preserving capital into the future and that. Prevents you from prevents these types of capital allocators from taking that leap on Bitcoin. But then when they do, they're sort of caught up in in another mantra that leads them astray, which typically serves them well. Of diversification is good. If your mandate is capital preservation, you want diversification. In your across asset classes. And then when you bring that to crypto you you end up with some Bitcoin and a lot of junk. And I think it's it's such a tricky marsh to navigate, you know, to not to make a misstep if you're a capital allocator coming from the old world with a certain conservatism and style of thinking that has served. Capital allocators well and and and you know capital preservation has been the name of the game and that is how you stay alive and here Bitcoin kind of asks the these same people to slightly modify how they're doing things. I think it's such a such a difficult thing to to get over and or navigate and and I and I guess it comes back to like how has that been how is that tone. That you've noticed been shifting over time. You know, in 2020 we had Paul Tudor Jones come out and say, you know, actually I've taken a a close look at Bitcoin and I think it's going to be the fastest horse this decade. And then you know Bill Miller and Paul and Stan Druckenmiller getting on board. And then now, most recently, Larry Fink at BlackRock saying some of the same stuff that Paul Tudor Jones has been saying and and and Michael Saylor has been saying. Do you notice that? That is, that these data points are starting to establish a precedent or or turn the ship a little bit over time about capital allocators, openness to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin specifically. I think so. And I I think back to 2017, right during during that bull run, you know, me and a few other colleagues were getting, you know, more into Bitcoin. And you know regrettably I guess other other cryptocurrencies at the time and you know everyone has their own journey of kind of what they go through and what they learn for for their own personal opinion and and and benefit. But you know, if I, if I were to think at during 2017, if I were to bring up a Bitcoin allocation to or, ICI would have been locked out of the, out of the conference room. It it, it would not have been even entertained, went one bit. You know, Fast forward to you know five years later, six years later, you know can have constructive conversations with, you know senior leadership, you know at our firm about Bitcoin and the value proposition. And you know, a few months ago, you know I had breakfast with one of our senior consultants who who was who's been at the firm for 30 plus years and we spent 45 minutes just talking about Bitcoin when? Prior to that he wouldn't have even entertained it to have that discussion. So the the narrative is definitely evolving and changing. I think there there's it's still early days of understanding why Bitcoin is the signal and and kind of how to kind of think about the ecosystem more narrowly in that regard. I love hearing that that. So tell me a little tell us a little bit more if if you, if you will, about like what was what was he interested in now that like you know, why was that a 45 minute conversation? What was he trying to find out more about? And and you know, yeah, if you could share any color there. Sure. No, I mean, frankly, he was just trying to to understand the value proposition of Bitcoin. How he's trying to understand how it works. He's trying to understand why is it considered to store a value. You know, why would you choose Bitcoin over gold when gold has the track record in history that it has? It was definitely a, you know, he's, you know, I consider him to be part of the the boomer generation. I consider myself to be part of the millennial generation. And he was just trying to figure out, you know why would the younger generations want to invest in this when gold is a perfectly viable option. And so, you know it's talking about the the ability to transact at much quicker pace, the fact that you you are purely decentralized you you you can hold the asset directly without any intermediary third party and and this was yeah 7-8 months ago and and for him it was just, you know, I don't know if we kind of fully got to him being a full on Bitcoin or by the end of the conversation, but you know just the fact that we had the conversation I thought was a big. Function forward, Everybody needs their three touch points. And it sounds like he got one of his touch points at that lunch or whatever it was. And and that's just like such a perfect microcosm to me of the viral, the virality, the viral coefficient of Bitcoin. Where, you know, those of us who get into it and see the value of it, we tell more than one person about it, right? And so it's a positive viral coefficient over time. And yeah, I just love that little microcosm. Yeah. And I want to take a step back to just to focus on because I'm really fascinated about this particular subject. You brought it up earlier, Lauren, but like just due diligence more broadly? That's what you guys do at Canterbury on behalf of your clients. And I guess you could say that's your fiduciary responsibility is to make sure that you're doing that. And as we saw over the last three years particularly, I mean, yet Sequoia, their due diligence that they wrote publicly in the blog post was that SBF was playing League of Legends during their call. And that like said that he was a Wonderkin, Like that's the utter state or that was the utter state of due diligence at that point. In the market cycle and I think the zero interest rate environment that we experienced over the last 15 years or the 15 years proceeding last year, the year before 1314, whatever it is really led to this sort of environment of complacency when it comes to due diligence. So just on the topic of due diligence alone, like how do you at Canterbury or you individually within Canterbury try to sort of? Zone out all the noise that is out there and sort of buck the trend that existed in the zero interest rate environment. Yeah, I mean it's it's a good question because it's, you know, just even thinking about time, it it feels feels so long ago and in a weird way, even though it's just what a few years ago, how hyped up everybody was, It was all Web three, it was the future. It's about the blockchain, right? And it's so easy just to follow the herd in that time period and say okay, well, Sequoia, they're highly successful. They made a lot of money for clients, for their investors. You give them the benefit of the doubt, right? And I think it was a stark reminder to everybody in our industry that you need to do your own work and your own research. And you take all the factors, you take all, you try to take as much information out there that you can get. But the end of the day, it's asking me the questions that they're not giving you right. Whenever you're getting pitched on the new fund or new strategy, they're putting their best foot forward, right? They're only gonna tell you the good news. They're gonna tell you the good investments. They're gonna tell you why their experience beats everybody else. But you gotta actually look at the investments, look at the structuring, look at the portfolio as in aggregate look for potential weak points. But then also it's it's really trying to understand people at the end of the day this is a relationship business and the second you lose trust with somebody it it's over. And so I think trying to understand the people aspect of it is almost as important as as trying to understand the, the the quantitative aspect of looking at the various characteristics of an investment. And some of those things are you know how not how you know someone ACIO or a PM will speak to you on a on a call. But you know how do they interact with their colleagues, with their employees that are under them, that are reporting up to them? How do they treat them? You know what do they, you know, what do they do to kind of spur on a certain culture at the firm? Does that, is that culture additive or subtractive to the the firm as a whole. And so I I think, you know, really trying to understand the cultural aspect and the people aspect and the incentives behind that is almost as important. And so, yeah, I think as of the day, it's in a way you're kind of a psychiatrist or psychologist in a way, trying to figure out kind of the mental side of it. But it's important in this area to get that aspect of it. Yeah, and I think. This it's such an important aspect to under score. Maybe Lauren, you can speak to this, but it's where the focus from an on ramp perspective and also just in general where we support and various other aspects of our, you know, business or professional lives across the folks on this podcast in the Bitcoin only thesis when it comes to let's let's forget about, you know, crypto digital assets in the sense of should they exist, what's their value. But when we look at like the conservative nature, when an asset allocator, somebody's looking at the asset class, there's certain components to Bitcoin that are just very like clean. And and when you think about it, a security versus the commodity and where the CFCC has come down or custody and how there is a landscape of really battle hard and tested custody frameworks versus what you see with like of the long tail of crypto assets and how they're supported in the in the associated hacks or bugs. Around it or defy and thinking about the opportunity to lose all your funds or ventures, venture funds going heavy into crypto and effectively going to zero or the assets being you know the counterparty risks associated with leaving with like you know unscrupulous actors And so we've seen this So this has always been a it's not a it's there's not only a thesis around the Bitcoin only from a. Conservative nature. There's also the the technical debt, the human aspect and being able to speak, you know, very intelligently across, you know these different crypto assets. But then also when it comes to all the things that have happened in this space and we're seeing this in real time. We've had some really great conversations the past couple weeks and months where to to Lawrence point like some of the institutions or entities are looking at this and and doing diligence, but others are really looking in and realizing that this thing isn't going away. But how do we get ahead of what just happened the past two years and how do we sidestep all of those big traps that are just laid out and will continue to be laid out? Because the reality is that this is it's not like tack in the sense that you make a wrong bet and now you just maybe goes to 0, but you just have something in a venture portfolio that could potentially. You know, not pick up traction or there's another winner, but you were right on the sector and now you have exposure to a like an area, it's like it can actually go directly to zero. And we've seen this. There was a slide that we previously had with Martin 1031 on the, I think it was like 7 or 8 companies back in 2021 that had $100 billion in enterprise value and it was like the Genesis, the FTX's of the world and it's it was effectively 0 looking at it and it still is 0 today. And that just doesn't exist in any other asset class where it goes from you know in a year 100 billion and this investment is getting marked up to a 0. And so anyway I think it just speaks to why the the Bitcoin ethos or Bitcoin only at least to start is such a great place for folks to come in because it kind of de risks it and then they can start to learn a little more. So anyway, I'm curious to learn, is that like how do you feel about that and like how you think of the market outside of Canterbury, but just like consultants and institutions? If you think that will help in letting them get access to a market like this or a sector like this, or it's not really gonna matter. They're just gonna come whole hog in across the sector, Yeah. No, I think it will be gradual. And it's interesting, right? Because it goes back to that comment on diversification, right? If you're diversified across a bunch of different cryptocurrencies and tokens and VC projects, like in the grand scheme of things, like, you're gonna get something, right? Even if there's a lot of zeros. You just need a few things. It's the trip, typical VC model, right? You just need a few things to work out and you're gonna do well. And I think there's a lot of noise around that. And I think because of that people view Bitcoin, and this is not everybody, but I think some people view Bitcoin is just something that's boring and not worth the time to dig into. Which is insane, right. But I've heard that from multiple people that it's just not exciting enough to do the deep dive work on it and and part of it is is I can I can understand that because you have you have different groups that are pitching you different ideas that sound great, the stories sound awesome and then at the end of the day you're diversified across all these different types of stories And so from your perspective it's all good. But you know I I do think there needs to be this kind of first principles back to basics of you know why Bitcoin is is is the signal from all this. I also think that in a way, you know, if you're running a Bitcoin only company or you know like like in terms of your strategy, your product, right. It's a very low time preference business and it's it takes a long time to gain credibility and trust and for you know, people to reach out to you. And then you know because it's Bitcoin only, you don't have all the other stories and all the other exciting things that you can report to people. And so I think it's just that it's just a matter of time. It's just going to take longer than people, I think think to to kind of come full circle. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I see at least from, you know, speaking with colleagues and others out there. Yeah, I agree. Like historically, up to this point that's been the case where it's like it's boring. But I do think we've talked about this, particularly last week's episode with Max Webster. I do think something. It is becoming a tailwind for Bitcoin and it's a narrative. Is the development happening at 2nd layers, particularly the lightning Network. Like it's finally gotten to a point of maturity where you can have web three like functionality on top of Bitcoin. Point to things like podcasting 2.0, the intersection of lightning and AI, monetizing music via podcasting 2.0 functionalities L 402 as a protocol to sort of embed. The payments protocol into the Internet stack, and I think that I mean it. We always knew as bitcoiners that this was going to come fruition and just took some time. And I feel like we're finally at a point where those narratives that crypto has sort of taken and run with historically are beginning to come to Bitcoin. You do have that sort of flashy, high tech play within Bitcoin coming to the market from a narrative perspective, but another thing? I wanted to touch on to get your view on this is that I think this is a line that many Bitcoiners have run with for some time. And I do think it's true, which is the idea viewing Bitcoin from like a risk profile and sort of flipping the table on asset allocators and saying, hey, it's actually probably riskier not to have an allocation of the Bitcoin that than it is to have an allocation of Bitcoin, especially if it's a small allocation like you could. Miss out on some of the the biggest gains of any asset in human history if you don't at least have a small allocation. So does that fit into sort of the way you pitch Bitcoin at all this this idea that it's actually riskier not to have any allocation? We've talked about that. No, we have talked about that and that and that has been an internal discussion. Is it, and you hear this from other groups, right? Just have like a 1 to 3% allocation to Bitcoin like your toll risk return across your portfolio, your your riskiest return increases you know meaningfully just having a very, very small piece of of Bitcoin in in the allocation. I think what trips up a lot of folks is, is if you're to think about just real assets in general and the real asset bucket within a within a portfolio, right, it's a mix of commodities, maybe real estate, precious metals, gold, it's it's combination of things. And so you know what we've heard and this is something that's occurred in the past is you know we don't have just an individual allocation to gold, right. We may have a strategy that invests across gold, silver, you know, other types of of metals, you know commodity, other types of commodities. But you know why would we have, you know, just like a gold only or a Bitcoin only piece to that, right. And then it kind of gets to the point of bucketing. Where do you put it right. Allocators, institutions like to have a very neat place to have their investments in. So it's very easy to say, okay, this is an equity, this is a bond, this is a venture capital investment, this is a private equity buyout investment. But where do you put Bitcoin right? Is it a DC asset? Is it a real asset? And then in terms of the the value proposition, right, a lot of people say digital gold store value but your partner already about the growth of lightning network in L2 and kind of that medium of exchange really starting to pick up. You know that's that's valuable And so how do you kind of think about that aspect of it and how do you bucket it from that perspective. And so then you talk about all these different then diagrams or or trees that start splintering out from use cases and where you bucket it and people just get over it just becomes overly complicated. And then at the end of the day you say okay, it's a one or 2% position, why are we spending all this time on A1 or 2% position in the portfolio. So yeah, it's it's interesting, but these are all happening real time and I also think that you tend to see more more talk, more conversation happening during various hype cycles. And so I'll be just to see kinda how the ball moves forward going to the next bull market. But yeah, that's kinda some of the background behind it. Logan quadboxes, we're gonna sit figure this out now cuz this is something we've talked about in recent weeks. We gotta, we gotta do a little working group here. What is the new bucket? We've been saying like you just have to create a whole new bucket for this. For which bucket? Which bucket does it go in? Or is it a new bucket? It's a new bucket. Well, a couple. So Logan, I'm glad you quad boxes, this is a really good point to discuss because a little inside base we've hadn't having a lot of these conversations Lauren, since we've last chatted. And the the common things you brought up are things we've been discussing with large institutions. And this is partially where it's exciting between the pod or just advisory services like they need the support whether it's for them or their clients, whether it's wealth management and the FAS or the end client into helping them understand this. And you made this like key point of like it's not sexy, but it's not sexy for a number of reasons. Like it's not sexy if it's not 100 bagger because maybe not venture right now in the truest sense or a token, but then it's very sexy if it's a like commodity or gold or a bond like so they're not. It's like the lens keeps moving around and the bucket like on how do they position it. But then also it's something we think about is the fact that the strategy is so simple it doesn't look like a strategy. To the institution, but it actually is the supreme strategy that we're going to support with and the the idea is that you buy and you hold it for whatever the the timeline is that you need to see the return. You know, we know in the green you're in three plus years or whatever, but it's like this is what you do with it and you sit on your hands and you just let it sit there. And everybody in this whole game working with institutions has said the complete opposite, right. They told you to do all these fancy things and they never get to see the game. So anyway, that was a kid. But like we put some really good materials we can even pull up on the screen in the different buckets with PE Venture and how they can like start to benchmark in the quartiles. But you hit on all the common tropes that come up and it's just about dispelling it. And you reference listening to the episode with Brian. And that's why we're really excited with Brian and Jackson. Also recently coming on is that he's been doing this at the highest level right? Working with institutions and helping them understand and how to articulate and pull the research together. And I don't think there's a silver bullet. It's just understanding what matters to the individual and then or that that sector of the institution when you mention real assets venture or whatever P/E and then giving them the right materials and having those conversations and then ultimately they're gonna have to like find the end of the rabbit hole. You can only start the the journey for them. Yeah. I also think too right, if the liquidity profile makes it difficult, because if it's a VC investment, it's locked up. Once you go into the VC fund, you're locked up. There's nothing you can do. You don't see the marks very often quarterly if you're lucky and with Bitcoin is 24/7 and there's a running, you know, there's a consistently running scoreboard going on with how you're doing with that. And you're reminded over the over the weekend when you're, you know, hanging out with your family or you know trying to get away from the screens. So it that's also a psychological barrier that I think that has an effect as well. Yeah, I I did recently put out a piece trying to analyze this this problem of of how do how do we think about Bitcoin in in terms of what assets it compares to like what's your opportunity cost of capital. And how that plays in the Bitcoin and and and what's the hurdle rate for you know when you're allocating to an asset like this and you know breaking it down I mean over the last halving era it's been 45% kegger for for Bitcoin and every halving era has, has been a reduced kegger just as the the upside volatility has has dampened over time. And so you know going forward maybe it's 25% over the next 40 years kegger, but that's venture capital, that's the expected returns for venture capital which is the top end of of the risk profile, right, Like that's as risky as you get. You're being paid that well for locking up capital for 10 years and and and it's going to be pretty binary. You're either going to underperform or you're going to be a part of Google or you know Uber or whatever and and your your fund is going to over perform. To outperform and but you know with with Bitcoin looking forward it it it's got this increasing scarcity mechanic that is guaranteed and that seems to be driving a lot of this the the kegger here So that 25% may be largely based on a programmatic mechanistic reality playing out and and at the same time it is 24/7 liquid which is the kind of so it's low risk in a weird way and it's completely liquid which those are the kind of the characteristics of U.S. Treasuries which yield 4 or 5%. And so you're talking about an asset that appears to have venture capital returns and yet U.S. Treasury risks and and that just breaks everything like if that's true that's that's the opportunity to cost capital that should be the hurdle rate for an incremental dollar allocated to an asset class. It's Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin should be the default but that's just so outside of how people can you know have to think because I'm sympathetic to like the mandate is capital preservation and if you're wrong on Bitcoin then you screwed up. You know if if you're an institutional capital allocator and you make that mistake that's your ass. You know, you're you're done. But 14 years has has only like made it clearer how this thing is, is moving, why it's moving in this direction. And and I don't know, the next four years looking forward seem clearer than any prior four year period with Bitcoin. And at some point like, you know, Bitcoin is a 12 thousandth of the world's assets. And if the institutional allocator strategy is to maintain diversification across the world of value, at some point you have to own a slice of that that little tiny thimble of a bucket. And so when does that happen? Yeah. One one thing that is really interesting Marty brought up is the risk like the risk associated and I think. There's a different way to position the risk. And the risk is like, well, or I don't, I don't, maybe not different way to position, but there's a form of like risk on, oh, like you don't have exposure, you're going to miss out on the greatest asymmetry. And then there's the other form, which I think you touched on, Jesse and you mentioned early, Lauren, on the 5% benchmark of like real returns and like one, how do you measure the real? Is it like, you know there's a nominal, but then what is real compared to inflation? Because it is plus inflation. So let's say real, you referenced 5% plus invasion, let's call it 3%, right in quotes. So we're at 8%. The reality is like I think we'd all agree here it's not really 33 and so is it 12, is it 15 whatever the number is when it when people start to recognize and and I also think This is why it comes from a bottoms up because individuals recognize that like they're buying less food every day and less day-to-day expenses are getting more. And so it's like, how do I protect myself? But ultimately this is where that gradual and suddenly happens is the institution is like feeling the risk because how do you capture that 10 to 15 or whatever the benchmark actually starts to become, what's the actual hurdle rate? And then where do you find it? That's where the whole BlackRock thing is so fascinating because I think they kind of know this, right? It's like, well, how do you actually get out of this hole? Well, before you jump in here, like another part of that risk too is like if you miss out on bitcoins value appreciation it. Appreciating value typically means that things are going bad in the other part of your your portfolio. That's why Bitcoin is accruing values, because people are finally getting the light bulb moment where oh, I probably need to own this asset over all these other assets. And if you're on the sidelines, you're missing out on the value appreciation of Bitcoin. And you're also suffering the losses of the other parts of your portfolio that are bleeding because people have finally recognized like, oh, this is a sinking ship and they have gotten. Into the lifeboat. Yeah, I mean point. But I think going back to Jesse's point, if Bitcoin breaks things, that's very scary, right? Like that's insanely scary and it's your point, like okay. Well, for breaks things you probably won't have an allocation to it. Well, things break, and that's why Bitcoin succeeds, right? Right. But also I think that leads to. Apprehension of you know, Bitcoin is a paradigm shift in a way from what people have been used to. There's been whole careers we we've had a what, a 40 year bull bull running bonds since the early 80s in terms of just yields continually decreasing and that's that's the whole career, that's several careers for for people in in our industry. And so it is a paradigm shift, and it takes time for that paradigm shift to really work its way through. The system so. Yeah, I think that's where like the it's really been a I think pivotal mindset shift for Jesse and I. And I think as we think about like the digital gold, digital gold's good. There's nothing wrong with digital gold to start 2% get in. We all know you buy 100 bucks, 200 bucks as an individual and you start to pay closer attention. So I don't think digital gold breaks anything. I think it's a nice entry point. There's a lot of upside that still gives us what like 20 acts I guess from here, even more from like Bitcoin's current price. And I think that's an easy narrative. And I think that's also where BlackRock is focused on and we're starting to see other institutions come in, makes a lot of sense. It's easy to handle and not have to go down the rabbit holes of. Multiple layers and cryptocurrencies and all the things. It's also part of it. I know you guys have, you know, certain focuses when it comes to the ESG side and that's also I think where it's important that like Blackrock's leaning into that or I don't know if BlackRock fully has yet, but like I know the KPMG article, it's not coincidence KPMG comes out a week or two later with leveraging, you know, the fact that Bitcoin is ESG, which is something that you know we don't. Lean into but we've always said if you ever were going to like guide by a principle of environment, environmental, social and governance like Bitcoin was always the one that embodied it, embodied it the most. When you think about what does it do for the environment, when you think of, you know, energy or the social aspects of giving a form of currency that is accessible to all seven plus billion people on the planet Earth, like what else can do that that's open other than the Internet? So I think that like as this continues in that now the the narrative is somewhat on our side because the institutions are picking it up for for reasons we can debate. I think, I think it happens a lot faster and maybe that's a good transition on the ETF stuff or I don't know, Jesse, you have something. But I think that's a good be. Good to hear how you guys are thinking about that. Yeah, I mean I think I think the last 10 minutes we've just thrown a lot of our thoughts at Lauren about how capital allocators should be doing things. Me most of all and ultimately I'm sympathetic to it. It's like it is a problem of where do you put this thing in a portfolio, like do you what bucket does it fit in? And it's a very high bar to create a brand new bucket. And I've thought about this a fair bit, especially in the last six months. And you know, unfortunately I think the answer is you kind of need to have a new bucket for it if you're going to really do it right. And that's a really high bar. So barring that treated as digital gold right like and and then fit it in with the the hard asset part of the portfolio and try to justify it being a few percent when the hard asset portion of the portfolio is probably only a few percent on its own. You know so it's hard to hard to really get enough exposure to Bitcoin when you when you fit it in in that way. But but at least that's a start and you know, I, I, I, it's I think it's just an impossible problem. And and Lauren you're on the front lines of of trying to help make sense of this for your clients of where does this fit in and how does this work with how people currently think about things and how they've structured their portfolio to work. And it's just so tough that like the best answer is create a new bucket and nobody wants to do that. Yeah, yeah. And I think part of it too is the origination of Bitcoin, right? It came after the GFC and it was made for individuals to have some sovereignty and rights back. And this is the first asset that I know of that. The individuals were able to adopt it first and then the institutions came in after, right? Or you know it's usually the other way around where it works top down, not bottom up. So I think that also leads to to to issues like okay. Going back to my comment on my families have have looked into it more than the institutions like I can just hold it as an individual because I don't care about bucketing. And also you know, I I get the the personal benefits of owning it directly. Versus institutions like Okay, I have to own it in a certain vehicle. Where do I put it? There's just all those other considerations. It wasn't designed. It wasn't created as a product for institutions first and foremost, yeah. What's fascinating about the top down approach that you referenced though is it all still starts with the individual, just like at the very beginning, IE like. The individual in part of a investment committee or corporation is the one that's going to drive this. They're going to get it, they're going to grok it and then they're going to work with their peers. Similar to you having the conversation with your colleague and having these kind of conversations. And it's it's maybe takes a while but it ultimately comes from individuals coalescing around you know a framework and then diligence in it and then come into a committee and and it and that's in. We've seen this with Saylor, right, because he just had, he was atypical in the governance structure that he had and being in the place that he was in, but he still had to get everybody on board. And he was able to really kind of, you know, force that through the door in the sense of here, like this is the academic literature. Here's the process. You know, you guys tell me if I'm nuts or not, but you're going to look at this. And when we all know that, if anybody earnestly looks at this, it's very, very hard to refute what's happening. And that there's not a bunch of error between 0 and 26,000 that we're at right now. There's actually fundamentals that are happening and that have been happening for the past 15 years and will continue when you look at it. And so I think that's where the the individual still will be very important and something I've always thought like whether it was Unchained or here when we had these discussions with prospective clients or just partners or or or folks looking at the spaces that individual matters so much because that's the person that makes up. The entity and they're the ones that are going to go and listen to a pod like this or share it or have the conversation and go out of their way. And to Jesse's point, those touch points continue to to compound until decisions made or I think Ross Stevens in Massmutual, another good example of the impact he's had from you know taking a stand. He was a leader in organization and then the impact he's had will never fully like grasp, but I think it just continues to compound year over year. As you know Bitcoin is exists. Yeah, that's a great point. I've got a a bow to tie on this bucket conversation. I was listening to Invest, the latest episode of Invest Like the Best Patrick O'Shaughnessy at Will England from Walleye Capital on. And in the beginning of that episode, he told the story of the robber barons during the the railroad. In the railroad craze in North America and he mentioned James J Hill specifically, which I found very interesting because James J Hill is like one of the few like Titans of industry for back in that day that I've really dug into. And he made the point like comparing James J Hill and the robber barons of the railroad boom in that period and comparing them to like the tech sector in this period. And he was like the tech guys have nothing on what James J Hill and those guys did. They literally pulled. The world with them and said, hey, we're going to make it so everybody can access North America from coast to coast. So we're going to build these railroads and to tie the bow on this bucket, like I think that's we need like a James J Hill in the investment arena to say, hey, we're literally going to pull everybody along. Here's this new bucket because Michael, I couldn't stop and think when. You mentioned like the energy like that, like when you think about Bitcoin, it's digital gold. Then you had to mention energy at the end like it's an energy play, like it's energy sector play, it's integrating with the energy sector right now. When I mentioned earlier Lightning, like it's a high tech play, like it's it's going to be the payments layer of the Internet. It is this whole new bucket. And I'm not putting the pressure on you, Lauren, but I do think we need a James J Hill. Like at your level, did you say, hey, there's this whole new bucket? You can, you can look at it as digital gold and put 1 to 2% of your hard commodities allocation into it, which will be maybe 20 bips of your overall allocation into it. But you'll make some money, but you're going to miss out on a lot of these big things. It's actually a really good corollary, because in the railroad, I'm listening to something else about the railroads and JP Morgan, and there was a lot of people that lost a lot of money. When they were investing because there was unscrupulous actors when they were actually like setting up the railroads. But you ultimately have to go. The first people through the door are not going to get it right completely. And we've seen this with like tech. We can have a fiber in the backbone being laid out as infrastructure is being and a lot of people go bankrupt. But over time, there's like fundamentals that are there and I think the same similar railroad and like this asset clause. Marty, what if this evangelist that this champion of Bitcoin that emerges, what if it is, is Larry Fink? How would you feel? About that, would you would Larry Fink be suddenly be a friend, a friend to Marty if if he is the one articulating how you know what the ESG thing we were wrong, but Bitcoin actually does accelerate those pie in the sky goals in terms of a more stable energy future. That's the thing and Larry Fink is the one saying it. How do you feel, Marty? It's fine. If he wants to pump my bags, he certainly can. But I don't think Larry Fink is equipped to be that that guy because he wants all the Bitcoin to sit in that ETF. And like we mentioned many times over the last couple of months, like that is the last place you want your Bitcoin. Because as we've been talking about the utility from the medium exchange perspective, that's being added via L2 S, like lightning, space chains, Fetty Mintz, whatever. Like you're going to want to tap into that. And he's not. Going to want people to have their Bitcoin not sitting in his ETF, so I'd find it hard to believe that he'll be running with those narratives as well. But if Larry wants to pump our bags, do it. I got my. I got my private keys. I'd love to see Peter Thiel and Larry Fink having a fireside Chad Bitcoin 2023. I think that would be quite the quite the show. Yeah that would be great. Yeah it it it is it's worth thinking about how the guests of of you know the the Miami Bitcoin conference over the last few years have have evolved. And you know, suddenly we had Michael Saylor on stage and then and then the next year it was the the president of a sovereign nation making a big announcement. And then this year we had like a presidential candidate launches candidacy on stage, you know, at a Bitcoin conference projecting that forward. You know, it may be only a few years until we have real Titans of finance trying to insert themselves in into the Bitcoin world. As you know, thought leaders or experts on Bitcoin, because you know, by my ETF that could happen in the next couple years. I think it and I think it does happen as soon as next year where it's at the big conferences. I was finding out like the money 2020 which is a big one in Vegas last year that was 20%. It was actually surprising me, 20% was crypto and 80% like Trad 5 fintech stuff and that was in kind of what a slower market. But you can imagine that that just continues where the the Trad 5 conferences end up. Pick coin conferences. I mean, I'll just say I was in 2022 and I ran into several mutual acquaintances. From the Trifi world that were there just trying to learn. And you know some of those from a credit hedge fund that had nothing to do with Bitcoin was there just because they wanted to learn about it. And they went to the Orlando Bravo. I saw him at the Orlando Bravo presentation that he gave with with the other free, the other individual individual or part of the panel. But you know, I mean you have people kind of Incognito they're trying to figure out, you know at these conferences trying to figure it out. So it does happen. That's interesting. So be be nice to the person in the seat next to you at the Bitcoin conference. It could be a a hedge fund guy trying to learn about this asset and genuinely wanting to know more. Yeah. And I do think it's fair to to call out that while there are hesitations from institutions and intermediaries and consultants and pensions, there is also folks internally them or they're on the same wavelength of what we're talking about here like it they're there. Maybe there's there's some time, there's some committees there, there's ETF that needs to happen before they, but like it's it's all happening. It's the same as an individual. There's just a curve of like where they enter in and then where they exit or where they end up the allocation. But I do think it's it's it's a pretty exciting time from the ability that I don't think we've seen it as derested as it is ever been in the history of its existence. I mean, Lauren is proof pudding of that, right? Like these people, these people exist and I guess we've been hogging the mics here. But I do want to bring up this question which is like, do you view like actually nailing how you guys advise on the Bitcoin side of things and allocating to Bitcoin for your clients as a way to differentiate Canterbury? From your competitors out there, because if you guys get this right and you lead your clients down the right path, they're gonna be very happy and I imagine that leads to more business down the road. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, that's something we're actually thinking about, not with just Bitcoin, but other types of strategies, other things like how can we be? As forward to thinking as we can with what we offer and the service we provide to our clients. And so for instance, we've created an internal digital asset working group. It's not quite the Bitcoin working group, it's not called that yet. But you know something that we created two years ago just to get educated and to try and learn more about the space and those types of internal working groups tend to lead to? Official investment committees which lead to eventually to allocations recommendations to our clients. So kind of the nice thing about our, our position in the marketplace, you know we're not one of the larger consultants, we're not small RRA, we're kind of in the middle in terms of the the groups that we advise on and and the assets we we advise on. So we kind of have that ability to to to think of new things and try to think outside the box, but still have the scale you know to to implement proper strategies and and get kind of best execution on the strategies. Yeah, it's that. I mean that brings up another point is like scale, like you can actually come in in scale once they've made the decision of what does that scale look like running with the hypothetical that people get it and then they begin allocating accordingly. Yeah. I'd love to make that a little bit more granular. I have a question for you, Lauren. I I don't really have a great grasp on how big are the pools of capital for different types of institutional allocators, but more specifically, how? How relevant are those the those different pools of capital in terms of how able they are to move into something opportunistically like Bitcoin or you know, to be able to move quickly like in my head a hedge fund can, you know they they could they might have 5 positions. So you know if they decide that Bitcoin is one of them that it could be 20% or even more. I mean, Bill Miller has 60% of his of his personal portfolio in Bitcoin. And so in that sense like the hedge fund kind of tips the scale pretty quickly in terms of ability to move fast and and the amount of wood they can put behind the arrow. How you know illuminate me, I a little bit more on like how is that in reality on the institutional side in my head the end endowments and foundations will move incredibly slowly and they will dip a toe and incrementally go from there. I think that's right, but. Is that how you see it? No, that's right. And you know we meet with clients on a quarterly basis typically. So that's four times a year, right. And so there's a lot of things you need to cover if you're only meeting with the client, you know, 4 * a year officially. You know, obviously we have discussions and conversations quite a bit with groups, you know, on an ad hoc basis. But when you're talking about a whole portfolio and you're trying to add something new to that portfolio, it takes a lot of cycles and a lot of education and getting folks comfortable with the decision. And to your point, Jesse, on the ENF side, it is more gradual and slower for a few things. One is you typically have several trustees and board members that have various opinions that have different backgrounds come from different areas, different industries that need to come together to make a consensus on that on that decision. So we're as an advisor, we're recommending something, we're not making that discretionary choice for them, right. It's at in the days the clients decision whether they want to invest in something or not. We're doing our best to bring forth the best opportunities to them. But at the end of the day it's their decision on the advisory side. And so a lot of it is getting consensus, make sure everyone is well to speed on the value proposition and is well enough educated to know what they're investing in versus on the family side, you usually have one or you know just a few different decision makers where they can just make that decision right away. They don't have to really worry about bucketing as much. And depending on their willingness and ability to take risk, that allocation can kind of vary. And so yeah, it's gradual. It's definitely a toe dip at 1st and then as folks get comfortable you know it can lead to larger allocations. But just to give you like a sense, yeah, I work a lot on fixed income and credit and we've been advising clients on private credit more recently and that's been a two to three-year process from when we started talking about it with clients to now getting actual commitments and and and and allocations to it. And that's something that's been you know private credits been around for 1015 years prominently and in the in the community and but just because it's a new asset class and something that clients haven't had previous exposure to, it just takes cycles, it takes reps. So hopefully that gives you a sense of kind of the timeline and why when you hear institutions are coming okay, there may be a few people who believe in that, but it just takes time to get through all the different cycles of that. What do you think takes more time in where the apprehension lays more with the fundamental understanding why there's value or? Why they could whether there's an allocation makes sense because you can look at results but then it's like, well, why would they continue or do you think that there's there's buy in there or there there there's more buy in there. But then it's like how do you safeguard it? Because all you hear about is how everybody loses their Bitcoin. And I know it's not a, it's not one way or the other, but like just what your instincts tell you or what you've seen, Where do you think is harder barrier for for somebody to to crock or understand? Are you referring to just directly with Bitcoin in terms of why it's hard to get over that hurdle of allocating? Yeah. And just like the not necessarily the with Bitcoin, but I guess we can focus on Bitcoin is just looking at the asset and thinking through, OK, let me think, you know, in my mind I picture this as somebody looking at it and says OK, well this has been the best performing asset. It's done this. We've seen it go up. I can get it, but then I don't know if I make a material allocation that it's actually going to be there is all I hear in the news is how it ends up in landfills or whatever. Or it's the other side where it's like I don't actually fully grok. Like how this can have any value in quote UN quote intrinsic value. And so forget about custody, custody like somebody's figured it out. I just don't buy into that like where do you see larger barrier and I know they both exist, but like just in your mind what do you think takes longer for somebody to in the institutional space to really? Feel comfortable in making any kind of allocation? Yeah, Yeah. I would say the latter is definitely a bigger piece because if you don't believe in the thesis, it doesn't matter. Everything else doesn't really matter, right? You're just gonna automatically dismiss it and not do the work or look into it. The custody side and the rug pulling and the bad actors that that's hopefully our job of figuring that out before we even bring that to a client. So if that happens then our client's allocated to that or got exposure to that on our watch. Shame on us. That's why clients hire us. And so I'd say the bigger hurdle is just understanding the value proposition, the role it plays and the differentiation has to other assets in your portfolio. But isn't it a little bit of like a chicken or egg thing? Because a lot of folks, at least from the individual side, hesitate to. Look at this, because of the rug pullings and it goes to zero and not Bitcoin. But like that it's like which cryptocurrency do I go to? What if it's not Bitcoin? What if it's the other one? Or how do I secure it? Cuz it ends up so they never actually go down to even start the process on the diligence or looking at it as an asset class. No, I think that's fair in a way though. I think it's kind of self selecting, right? Or or you're gonna, you're gonna find whatever fits your kind of preconceived narrative or notion behind it. So, you know, if you look at the block fives and Fdxs of the world, you'll say, look, there's the evidence that this is all just, you know, nonsense, you know, discounting the 14 years prior of or or just looking at the actual technology itself, right. And and and how you can actually custodate yourself. So yeah, it's not right because. It's something I think a lot, a lot about because we hear the number of 200 million or whatever that hold Bitcoin. But we know a majority or large portion of that or somebody that has 50 to 100 bucks on Coinbase. And I feel like a lot of that individual or, you know, entity that it's a flyer because it's just like, oh like maybe this could work out, but maybe it couldn't because history shows that all these bad things happen. And so it's like how do you like? It's just this interesting like dynamic or paradox of like, I can't look into it because I just it's ephemeral and there's nothing tangible related to it. So I can't actually think about going deeper. But then there's the other side. So it's no, I think that's a good point because privately you can do that. Like you can own 100 bucks of Bitcoin in cold storage and say I'm just gonna have this as a hedge. I don't have to tell anybody about it. It's not very much of my total net worth. If it does, great, awesome. If it doesn't like, it's private. I don't have to say that I lost a bunch of money owning Bitcoin versus if you're a public institution and you go through a formal IC process and you have it on your portfolio and everyone, all your stakeholders can see it. Now that's a different story, right? Because now there's the public opinion and and the the fact that everyone knows whether you did well or you didn't do well by owning that investment. So I think that's part of it too. And that's probably what some of the differentiate you see with institutions versus individuals. On an individual level, you can keep it somewhat private. At the institutional level, everybody knows, right, pension plans, they have to make everything public of what they own. And I'm sure you know the groups that own the FT X's end and block Fives the world that was not. That's something they'd never want to have to go through again, I can guarantee you that. Yeah, the whole concept of career risk is one of the biggest hurdles here. There's people that lost their careers because of FTX and Block 5. And ironically, it's like it's folks working at pensions and endowments. Seeing the Ontario teachers union, was it make that misstep that probably keeps them from wanting to touch Bitcoin? Ironically there, you know. Well, you go back to the the individual. This is like Lauren, what you were saying made me like, really think about credit to fidelity. It's like career risk, like Abigail Johnson 2014, like mining, letting people use it in a thing. And I did a quick search like, I mean, we knew this, but it's like, it's her grandfather's business. Like, of course you're going to pick the right thing no matter what anybody says because it's your family's business. It's not like this academic, you know, just ephemeral, like, well. If I make the, you know, like whatever the term is, nobody got fired for, you know, choosing Apple or whatever, it's like she doesn't care about that. She cares about like my grandfather's gonna care if I lose his business or if I don't like pick the right decision and for them to like be the first they're. So it's just cool to see. But then also it makes sense that it's like it's a family owned entity. So you're gonna, it's gonna be a different tie versus like the career risk of making the decision. Yeah, but this goes back to the other point we were. Mentioning earlier, at some point in the future Bitcoin succeeds like the career risk of not getting in becomes higher than the career risk of not getting in. Yeah, and it getting in. Excuse me? It seems to me like like people like Lauren are are providing an awesome service of being willing to engage with this stuff and and actually take it on and say you know what, this has merit and this belongs in our clients portfolios to the extent that they're willing to have that conversation. And that right there is already differentiated it. And to me it seems like a way to, you know, if you're, if you have differentiation in the investment world and you're picking winners and we think bitcoin's going to be a winner, that that's such an opportunity, a career opportunity, not just a career risk. And you know, like, I hope that I hope that people hope that institutional allocators are getting advice from. The Laurens of the world rather than you know the the Super senior tenured advisors who you know are like Charlie Munger or or Warren Buffett and their attitudes towards towards Bitcoin because that's not those aren't the people who are going to win in this arena. And you know, I, I just think it's a career opportunity for, for Canterbury, for. People like Lauren and hopefully the institutions find that signal in time or they get on the train as it's leaving the station, you know, like that's fine too, yeah. I know we're brushing up on time here, but I do want to throw out a question to you, Lauren, about like, we are pretty in Bitcoin. Like we're. Financially, socially, professionally, we're all in. And there's this side is well known sort of phenomena like there's a Bitcoin bubble, we're in it for somebody who you're in Bitcoin too, but you're also pretty involved in the traditional asset allocation space. So what can the Bitcoin bubble be doing better to make your job easier? That's a really good question and it's definitely a bubble. And what the nice thing about being out here in Nashville now is, you know I've been trying to go to feed the Bitcoin Park events and meeting some people out there and it's a 180 departure from my day-to-day job. And the other people I interact with in my in my day-to-day for for good, I mean and and people across the border are great, friendly, nice. But you're right Marty, it's a bubble. Twitter is a bubble. Definitely. I haven't spent enough time or much time on Noster, but I would probably say that's a bubble in terms of, you know, kind of getting the same tropes and and thoughts. And I I would say, yeah, I I think there's a different level and spectrum of how people view Bitcoin and the importance that Bigman plays in their lives. And people can tend to get pretty dogmatic about that. But you also have to live kind of in the realm of reality of where things are today. And you know, the best way to get people on board and to understand the narrative is to be patient and to try to connect, you know, what's going on on Twitter and you know the thoughts and and and and all the stuff that's happening there with the real world of how people think about investing. And. And it's a good question in terms of how do you kind of bridge that gap, right? Because it is in a way, very two different, very different roles. And and in many regards, it's how social media is today, right, Like depending on your ecosystem or echo chamber, you're only going to see things that kind of pertain to your role view on things. So how do you kind of bridge that gap? I think maybe it's just being open and patient with others who are trying to understand maybe where you're coming from now. It's a good question. So you're saying we shouldn't tell people to have fun staying poor? Probably not 100% of your net worth and Bitcoin That it's just. That might sound reasonable and fair based on the work you've done and everything, but to the normal person who is not in this every day, they're gonna think that's absolutely insane. I agreed. Yeah, yeah. I wonder what the meme will be in the next bull market. I mean, Udi came up with the have fun staying poor and it hasn't. It doesn't feel like it's aged well. It was quite a a moment of of bull market arrogance on the part of bitcoiners to embrace that one. But I'm sure there will be another one, another meme that emerges in our in our euphoric, our brief euphoria that happens in the in the bull markets. And you know when we spend 90% of our time and and sideways are down pain. Yeah, I would also mention maybe, you know, in terms of there's a lot of drama that happens on Twitter, right, People with different viewpoints and a lot of going after people like that doesn't show well either from the institutional side. Like people don't want to see that drama. They don't want to, they don't care. People don't care. It's about like proposition of the of this asset. Like I don't care about the back and forth. Are you trying to one up somebody on Twitter? Yeah, so. I I remember when I was still, I was still an Altcoiner and I was starting to be like, okay, maybe the bitcoiners are right and and I checked in on Bitcoin and it happened to be at a point in 2018 or 2019. It's probably late 2018. When there was like a Bitcoin cruise and like that was like the big event of that week or month or? Whatever. Yeah. And I like, I like, checked in on that and it was a bunch of drunk douchebags, you know, on a cruise fighting with each other, like, you know, verbally. And I was like this. This clearly is not the signal. Like this can't be a good asset if these are the clowns who are associated with it. And that's really just Twitter, you know, That's what Twitter is, is 1 giant like verbal fight like that. Well, there's also the clowns in the the, the just in this asset class like I always talk about from an operator perspective and like coming from, you know, big companies, you think of the Googles and Weworks like in all of that. But there's also like the formation of like the firms, if you think about like. The big firms like Block Fi, Genesis, TCG, like these were the marquee firms and Wall Street is just literally just is going to mop the floor because they they they blew themselves up and now they're about to step in. You got edx, you got BlackRock, you got you know Fidelity, Schwab like they're coming here and just like like okay we time to go and it's just like it's it's showing like these guys had you know very little. It's one thing to be a tinkerer. And to come in and and get be early but you know it's like that saying where the person you know you can give somebody like some money or whatever they can win the lottery but they're quickly gonna give it back if they didn't earn it, if they didn't deserve it or whatever the thing it's like very similar like you could build a great big business or in if you're in the right time. But if you didn't actually like, if you were just writing tailwinds versus had fundamentals, you've seen it just like completely evaporate. And so that's really like I think the next 10 years as the market infrastructure works out and you have the right operators and executors, we'll see the real like Googles and Amazons of this next 20 years that are going to build long term sustainable businesses and moats around them. Yeah. No, no, I think, I think that's exactly what I was going to say. Michael, too is like we've talked a lot about this recently and I'll be the first to put my hand up. I've been in the middle of these Twitter brawls historically, but I think the last year particularly. I really resigned myself to a try to stay out of that as much as possible. I get tempted, I get pulled in, pulls me in every once in a while. But really my focus has been like, all right, I believe in this like it's going to happen. But if it's going to happen, we need the critical infrastructure that is going to, number one, get the world there. Number one, show the world that there's utility and fundamental value here. And the number two, get them on boarded into the asset and the infrastructure that the leverage once they're in. And that's like heads down building. Like there's too many conferences, there's too many stupid Twitter fights. It's like, all right, we have the tools at our fingertips. Go build the tools and let the tools show the world what this thing can do. Instead of you screaming at the world what it can do, you actually have to go build it. And that's part of the reason why on RAMP exists and why this podcast exists and want to blow smoke up our own ass. But that's part of like what we're trying to do here is be that that bridge that tries to break out the bubble. Talk to people like yourself, Lauren, to be this bridge of like, hey, we're not all completely crazy. Yeah, it's building, but it's also to your point, creating long term relationships with people and building trust and that takes time. That's not done over Twitter, right? It's like having real world conversations, discussions like this, and that's how you're really gonna get people on board, is building that trust and having a long term thought process to it all. Yeah. There's also real opportunity cost with noise and distraction. So you can always find out, you know, say like show me where you're, don't tell me what you're saying or like show me your portfolio. It's like, don't tell me what you're saying on Twitter. It's like show me what you're doing. To Marty's point, it's like you spend all your time there, like how much time can you really be? Or you could be doing a lot more if you didn't have the focus split 5050. So it's it's just a real world application of like, focus. Yeah. Well Lord, I want to thank you for for joining this for joining us this week. It's been extremely illuminating to get your perspective and I I do think the institutions are coming meme, if you've been running with that. I think this discussion is a good level setter to understand how these institutions actually move in the pace at which you can expect them to move, if they ever will, into this asset class. So thank you for your time today. And before we wrap up, if you have any sort of parting notes for the listeners out there, there's anything you want to get out there that you think we should touch on before we wrap up? No, thanks for having me. This is great. Glad to be a part of it. It's nice to be on APOD guys like this, which is a departure from my for my day-to-day. And no, I would just say, you know, it's. Yeah. In terms of Bitcoin, I think it's just continuing to. To do the work and get the story out and and and and educate and you know we're still it's a meme too we're still early but it's true from education standpoint across a lot of very smart sophisticated investors. They just need the education on on what Bitcoin actually is and the differentiation between that and other digital assets. So for those who are in that seat, or. Are you know have kind of a voice to do that as they just keep going and keep continuing to just bring out information and educate. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. And just to add an echo to that, we really enjoy like speaking for the guys, but me like enjoy these discussions and it's exciting to like start to have them with the level and caliber of what you guys are doing. And so I'd encourage to the point of like interest. Jesse and the the team have put a lot of good material that can empower individuals and entities to go and share and start to have the conversations and we welcome the reaching out. We started to get inbound from folks that listen to those podcasts that are interested that are further have their institution or their firm further down the curb on getting the education to the end end kind of like allocator. And I think there's more out there, but it's like there's always some, some folks have more initiative or willing to kind of stick their neck out and reach out. Like we welcome the cold outreach, whether it's via e-mail, via the website, via LinkedIn, because we have all these materials and they're ready to go. And we have a lot of exciting things planned for this month, the next month where it's going to really round out all the things we're doing that will be able to support folks like Lauren, institutions, pensions, endowments, high net worth. So it's really great to have Lauren on. And then as a teaser next week, we're actually going to have somebody from the Fidelity Digital asset team joining. And they're really excited to share what they're working on and some of the stuff they're seeing with the ETF wealth management. So I think we'll make September and October partially institutional because maybe there's an ETF coming sooner rather than later, but don't know anything in particular. And and yeah, I would just sort of add to what Marty said before of like institutions are coming as a meme and this is how it actually happens, but. They're still coming and and in fact it's it's just slow. It's just gradual. There may not even be like a gradually then suddenly in in in this situation. It might just be gradually little bit more, little bit more, little bit more. And the institutions that are arriving right now, the institutions that are coming and and arriving in the next 18 months, are the ones that regretted missing out on 2020-2021. And I think have been doing their due diligence since then or or getting ready, laying the groundwork, getting the investment committee on board and that's a small, that's going to be a small group, but a bigger group than any prior institutional adopting group. And so that's the nature of this thing going forward. It's gradually, but it's happening. So the institutions are coming. It's just not all at once. You heard it here first, thank you guys for joining us this week. Lauren, thank you for your time. It was incredibly insightful. So thank you. And we will see you guys next week where we'll talk about Fidelity filing for an Ethereum ETF. See you then.
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