Transcript+
Before we get into the episode, a quick reminder that the last trade is for informational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Now for a word from on RAMP on RAMP is a Bitcoin asset management platform built on multi institution custody. We serve high net worth individuals, institutional investors and financial intermediaries with the best in class suite of products which include. Multi Institution Custody, A spot Bitcoin fund? Onram Wealth for Rias and private wealth services for high net worth individuals leveraging our partnership with Bit Go and other industry leaders. Onram's Multi institution custody is a first of its kind institutional grade vault requiring two of three institutions at any point in time to sign once a client's unique permissions have been met. Our multi institution vaults utilize cold storage, key signing and authentication at the direction of the client. To maximize security for client assets, This pioneering approach to custody is the foundation of On Ramp's financial products, which reduce counterparty risk associated with trusting a single institution. To learn more about how On Ramp can help you secure a new or existing Bitcoin position, please visit our website at on rampbitcoin.com, where you can schedule a consultation and connect directly with our team. What you're telling me is that music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of Doctors 1974? 198792972. 1000 and whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same. Thing over and over. We can't help ourselves, I say. When we sell, hey, I say. When we sell. Gentlemen, back for another episode of the last trade. How we doing this week? We're. Good. We got like a somebody fat fingered the ETF approval. That's a good engagement hack. I'm thinking about doing it from the TFTC account Bitcoin ETF officially approved. I'm not gonna delete the tweet though. What was a? Lot of attention. Not not all the best kind of attention though. Yeah, people should have known Coin Telegraph breaking the ETF news is not likely. It'll probably be Reuters or somebody like that. Yeah, and the apparently where it got sourced from was some random Telegram chat, You know, fake breaking news announcement. And then then they just like copied that and ran with it as if it was some real source I. Mean you know the best information's on those CD telegram groups? Yeah. That's where that's where Larry thinks. Going to drop the news that the was approved, but alas, we're joined by Mitch Kochman this week, the Director of Platform Sales at Bit Go. Really excited for this one Mitch, because bit go. I mean, outside of Coinbase, it's probably the only reputable company that's been around for a decade in the Bitcoin space. Mike Belshi, founder and CEO. Really popularized multi sig and have built your whole company around multi sig security and obviously we're here because the on ramp Bicca relationship has matured to a point where you guys are doing some really cool stuff. I'm sure we'll touch on that, but before we get into that. Michael and and Jesse have told me that you're the bitcoiner within Bitco. So what is your back story? How do you find Bitcoin and how did you end up at Bitco? Absolutely, yeah. President Maxi. But so came into the OR found Bitcoin 2017. My dad actually worked in Crypto VC for a little bit and really first introduction to it was price goes up and you know, was really all it was for 2017 in that bull run 20/18/19 started really falling down the rabbit hole. I'd say, you know, first I came from IBM, spent eleven years over there. The technology grabbed me first. Then really it was the the cypherpunk ethos, the libertarian, you know, ethos that surrounds it that we all sort of get engaged into. Punk rock was a important, formidable part of my my childhood and I think that sort of laid the foundation for for some of those ideals really struck a chord in me. So 2020 rolled around, I was on a sabbatical from IBMI was in Argentina, and I saw the impact that inflation actually had on the people there. And you know I think it was a it was a bartender that I was talking to that told him about the efforts that he had to go through to to buy the bar that we were sitting at and had to go you know black market to get currency exchange to you know Argentine peso the US dollar to keep you know the amount in escrow as they were waiting for. You know closing on the on the property and how we had a backpack with all his money and because you know the fees of going through a bank for for that currency exchange were were outrageous could have been robbed you know outside both times that he made the exchanges and it really kind of had that you know check your financial privilege Bitcoin fixes this moment of we can actually really make a difference here in that moment sort of thought perhaps this is this is where I should be working. Ended up coming back early from that trip and there was a pandemic and you know came back to IBM and sort of fell into what ended up being like had had been my dream job over there. I was global client exec for for JP Morgan. It was an incredible job got so much exposure to you know scale and you know traditional finance that you know the the infrastructure that that powers you know bank like JP Morgan is pretty pretty insane when you talk about raw compute power. But I had, you know, it was actually, it was one day I was out, I was taking Fridays as his paternity leave. And I looked at my son. It was the day of the Bitcoin or it's been on Thursday for the day of the Bitcoin conference. And I I looked at my son after, you know, watching the whole day of the conference. And I kind of had this moment where I wanted him to be proud of the work I was doing. And you know, I was inspired by the conference and you know, making, you know, JP Morgan more efficient and you know, saving people resources was not exactly what I had in mind for for how I I want him to view the work that I'm doing so that they made the decision to go work in the industry and you know, after but here. I am. That's powerful. It is for the kids. It's become somewhat of a meme, but I have very similar moments with my boys when I'm looking at them and looking out at the world that they're completely oblivious to. It's like, what can we be doing to to ensure that they don't have to deal with the madness that we all have had to deal with? So at least me, 32 years into my life, it's been pretty chaotic. There's three decades of my life. Michael, you're on mute. Thanks. Rookie mistake. Mitch and I have had a lot of conversations. I didn't know that about his journey, but also for more importantly about kind of you know, looking at your son and having this decision, cuz I think to Marty's point. You don't know like how this ends up. We don't know the other side. But you want to be able to look back and at least or somebody look back and say like at least they tried, at least they were doing something in the best use of the time. And so, yeah, I mean we had Larry Laparte on last week and he's another kind of, you know, kindred spirit that I think we get along with everybody on this group or on this call. And it's the same thing. Like he just never took the easy way out. It wasn't the the the thing that his peers did. But he was still there and he saw the other side and he's gonna be able to always keep his head up with his children. And so that's a, that's a cool story to hear that your son was the, you know, kind of forcing function to get you to to contribute and you're definitely contributing I'd say son and me and my wife pushing me to actually, you know follow the dream and you know. That's awesome. Yeah, we can't. We can't forget the wives. I think everybody, I shout. Out to the wives. I love you, baby. Yeah, I know how hard everybody on this call works and it wouldn't be possible without having a significant other that that was understanding. Oh, yeah, very true. Yeah. Mitch, I I keep thinking about, you know, the the thing that that always bounces around in my head is that that we are a part of some next wave of the like the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, you know, something like that in terms of advancing, asserting and advancing human freedom. And you know, the right to money and free money, money that is not controlled by anyone and that is just so important. It it it, there's no higher calling when you put it in that kind of, you know, historical context. And and then I also think about like there's there's a beautiful poem. Most people are familiar with the Ozymandias, or however it's pronounced where you know. Some great king in the desert has erected monuments to himself, but they're viewed as crumbled ruins in the in, you know many years later. And look on my works in despair as the the quote carved into some crumbled pillar. I am, I am Ozymandias. Look at my works in despair. Something like that. And. And that to me is like what we spend, what most people spend so much of their time doing in corporate America. You know you're you're building something that is you know a few years after you depart your your efforts there amount to crumbled ruins. They they they fall into disuse or you know they're papered over by some other improvements or updates and and it's like you were never there, but by working in Bitcoin you're part of something that's like. A lasting human movement for liberty that that it's just it's just night and day. And so those are the things that have been motivating me as well of, you know, the the calling of it is just a just a different level entirely. And I I truly think you know, that way I get to work with companies across the industry like anyone who is still here, you know they're working because they have that calling, they've got that edge. You know it's sort of that you know all the Liberty and American Revolution things that you're Speaking of. It's it's what drives us. And you know, those who you know who are still here are are definitely fuelled by that. Yeah, it pays to state or in the bear markets. I've been in this for 10 years now, six years professionally, and that's when you really find out who's who's in it for the cause. Who's in it for number go up and who's in it for the revolution. The like part of the revolution is number go up. You just got to learn how to be patient, not not ride the hype waves. But no, that's important. I think particularly this bear market, maybe we're coming out of it, who knows? We're hovering around 28 and a half, $1000 right now. There's a lot of good headlines out there, some fake, some real. We had Larry Fink on CNBC earlier this week. Saying that quote UN quote crypto is the flight to safety asset or one of the flight to safety assets that people will be flooding into as the turmoil in the world continues to increase both on the financial side and the geopolitical side of things. And alongside that in parallel, I mean we've talked about this many times in the last few months on this show, but it just becomes more pronounced day in and day out, I think particularly with the partnership that on ramp and bitco. Are announcing this week after we record this, but by the time this is live it will have been announced. I think the infrastructure at the base layer of the industry that actually gives people access to Bitcoin, the asset in the network is more mature than it has ever been and we're setting standards in this bear market that will be long lasting moving forward, which is really exciting to see. Yeah. And maybe before going into bit go Mitch, you'd love to hear kind of like so you had this journey close to 10 years, I think it was your whole career and coming into to bit go like what the process was looking at other firms and then deciding on bit go because you know there's interactions across your organization and they're world class in the sense of like it's just a different built firm. And I think it goes back to like Mike being a former Googler and just like having the operational execution chops and then it just stems from the top. But would just love to hear kind of like what the culture and how that process was because it's just been, it's been like eye opening and refreshing because I've seen a lot of people in this industry do the opposite of it and they don't exist anymore. And so I'd love to just hear kind of like how that process went and like what ultimately made you choose Bitco before you know jumping into Bitco and as a whole for sure. So I mean breaking into this industry is not easy. So really how I started it was 11 years at IBM and how do I take what I do best at IBM and then bring that into the industry so focused I was AB to B seller how do I like let's try to stay in that realm and you know repurpose that for you know broadly you know it was crypto my you know obviously my my heart's in Bitcoin but you know was gassing the net out. I I knew wallets. You know, I'd say fairly deeply you know spent some time. You know, I've been a Casa customer I think since 2019 you know, had a great multi six set up before before I came in. But I was really looking for how I can really move into the IBM of the industry. I know how to sell a, you know a solution that might be more expensive but is you know more reliable more secure. And you know the the old mantra of nobody gets fired for, for buying IBM was trying to you know replicate that for this industry especially one that you know you got to rely on your counterparty you know, being there, you know tomorrow, the next year and the next five years. I think it was it was largely largely that that that that brought me in and you know as far as you know what you know I I personally you know we do we've got quite a bit of platform business we have quite a bit of institutional business. I I wanted to focus on you know companies that were doing the you know the work of onboarding the, you know the next users you know to Bitcoin and filling out like my work actually, you know, helping those companies being the critical rails for those companies definitely you know was was the passion project for me and why I'm here. And what particularly do you think is Bitco again? It's been around for a decade, and I think hardcore Bitcoiners understand. That they're a pretty integral part of a lot of the infrastructure, particularly on the custodial, custodial side of things with their multi sig product. But and I think many people understand like the unique intricacies and sort of process that Bitco has. I don't want to say it's been like a black box, but it's almost been they've just sort of been nose to the grindstone, getting stuff done and not really worrying about others. Are doing in the space at least is the impression that I've gotten being in the space for 10 years. Yeah. So what they go, they go as a wallet company at really its core focus on you know we've got cold, cold storage and hot wallets but really known for for cold qualified custody. And and what we do is, you know, we've got an armed guard you know, with banquet vaults separation of duties where you know when Bigo is, you know signing a transaction from cold storage. You know we've got a key signing ceremony where you know there are multiple people who are going into that vault. You know, to go sign key shards and you know constitute them together to go you know half sign a transaction which then you know gets countersigned by by our HSM, different different secure location, you know take it to go broadcast to our nodes and that's how transactions get signed from cold storage at Bigo. You know it's a pretty tried and true process that's you know, I think 20% of all on chain Bitcoin transactions are going in or out of a Bigo wallet. And you know, we've been doing this for 10 years and and it really it works and that's why we're the one of the corner signs of the industry. Yeah, yeah. Having you walk through that process of like these are competencies and and capabilities that have been built over literally a decade and and coming from a starting point of extreme technical competence where you know Mike Belcher's my understanding is invented multi sig and so you know that's the that's your starting point 10 years ago and the amount of of. Process and Polish that has accumulated over that 10 year period, you know it strikes me as like this is obviously the way that people should be the gold standard for how you should be as an as an institution, as a company trying to handle your digital asset custody and. And that's part of what we're so excited about is like through this multi institution custody model that that on ramp is, is championing people get to incorporate your best practices into how they are custodying their Bitcoin via on ramp without having to build all that that infrastructure and and know how that you guys have built over 10 years. Yeah, I think, I think it's important also like bit go, and this is something I didn't know, I've learned a lot the past year. But bit Go's been successful. A portion of success is like from deeply understanding Bitcoin, the technical aspects of it, and then pushing out security to the edges. And so it's my understanding of the core offering and it was this understanding of the keys. In multi sig where whether it's jurisdictional from the protocol level or whatever reason that Bigo would participate in one of the keys but then open up their infrastructure for the exchange or their counterparty to hold two or three of the keys. And so that allows and has allowed for years different variations or flavors of custody. If it doesn't centralized the asset and then increase the risk of all the things that we've seen. And I think that just like core first principle starts the, it starts the foundation of something that can be long standing because it's it's baked in at the core of just understanding Bitcoin deeply and then just being an engineer at heart. And I think when that happens, at least from my experience and background in Mitch, you can correct me is that I think that's where the market. Sometimes doesn't really recognize or know as much of the market share that Bitcoin bit go has or the infrastructure that it powers and provides. There's some crazy stats that I don't know off the top of my head, Mitch, you probably know better like one of those like 20% of all I think transactions like daily happen via like a bit go wallet or something in that direction. But because it comes from more of an engineer focus versus like a sales and marketing, that's where it's really like the it's not to mean a pejorative like the blue collar, like the the sound infrastructure similar to what you referenced with IBM versus the the loud and flashy because it's just baked in those ethos. At least that's my perception of it from from a market participant. Yeah, I mean you got it right. I think most of our, many of our competitors have an exchange arm and you know tend to you know because they've got a retail presence in in that regard you know. They've got more name recognition than we do, but those, you know that are in the industry, definitely you know, know about us and know, you know that you know, we're a cornerstone here. Yeah, and going back to this particular bear market in this sort of shift, it seems like the perception between of Bitcoin and where it fits in the crypto is beginning. They're beginning to separate. There's this demarcation between Bitcoin and crypto that's becoming clear. After 15 years of almost 15 years since the white paper launch, it'll be in 13 days, which is hard to imagine. There has been a lot of pump and dumps, a lot of hype cycles, and it seems like I don't wanna speak too soon or jinx anything or call like peak crypto. But it does seem like this particular bear market, and especially after. The FDX debacle and Celsius and Block Fi and Three Hours Capital, all of that Terra Luna go down the list has really positioned Bitcoin in the eyes of institutional allocators as something that is unique and different than than crypto. And it seems like bit Go is really leaning into this as well at this particular point in time where it's. OK, let's focus on the most important asset, which is Bitcoin. Has there been a shift internally in the focus on Bitcoin specifically? A lot to break out on, on, on this question. I'd say at least internally I know we had some conversations post FTX that were you know well we we guess we we support 700 plus assets and as a custodian you sort of need to be around. I think there was a there there was, there was certainly an internal push to increase the the amount of this Bitcoin business that we were doing just to to ensure you know, Bitco makes money on you know one of the biggest metric is assets under custody. And if you know that metric goes down because price action for for an asset goes down, Bitco makes less money. I think there was, you know, certainly a focus that bitcoins going to have lasting power here. And in in a bear market let's you know make sure we we shift some energy. You know in that regard I'd say you know one of the you know as far as Bitcoin is a focus and you know why you're starting to see a lot more from us. Bitco has really all one of really the the critical failure points you know for for us would be you know. If there was you know some sort of you know technical issue soft hard fork that happened in Bitcoin and we needed you know the, you know the technical team to go support that. And because of that you've got absolutely outstanding you know tech like technical resources that we've had from you know Jameson Lobb to Brandon Black to you know our Bitcoin team is outstanding here. And I think we had we had a moment where. We we you know very much believe we've got the best commercial wall in the industry. And we we have the thought of how do we not just secure assets in those wallets, but how do we actually help companies build products and services. And you know, actually productize and put those wallets in the hands of the most people actually do the hard work of you know, onboarding bitcoiners here. You know focusing in a post FTX world of. You know I think a narrative in the next you know cycle is going to custody is going to matter. You know whether you know multi institution custody like what we're talking about on ramp to you know what we did with Swan Vault where the infrastructure you know behind you know the Swan key and that key signing to you know what we're seeing you know at Unchained in that announcement. I think we need solutions. We need to do a better job as the industry to to go provide solutions to to, you know. Help onboard those retail users and have them feel better about, you know, the story that we're telling here. So I think because of, you know, opening up those wallets, you know, there was a bigger presence that at least we had. You know, if you read Bitcoin Miami, you know, Bitco was everywhere and we had the same with Pacific Bitcoin. I think we're we're doubling and tripling down on the the Bitcoin, Bitcoin only, Bitcoin first base. Yeah, I got. I got AI, got a great tote bag from Bitcoin Miami that has Pico on it. But yeah, you know I keep thinking about how if we're if we're really going to, if this is turning into digital gold and it's still very early in that monetization process bootstrapping from zero to matching gold, let's say of $12 trillion, we're at 500 billion. So we're still early in that process and. To get further into the adoption curve we have to cross the chasm. You know the the the spooky metaphor there of like how do you go from your early adopters to your mainstream. And the way you do that is not only through like effective marketing or propagating the value proposition of Bitcoin, but the the tooling has to get better. It has to get easier, more secure, more reliable and. I in my mind Bitco is like at the forefront of that process of making institutional capital more comfortable with Bitcoin as an asset. Because Bitco is, you know, creating better solutions for for feeling confident that you know your your Bitcoin is going to stay in your vault until the time when you decide to to move it. And you know with FTX and. Prime Trust and Fortress trust the there. There has been ample reason to to doubt that that's the case. But the way we're going to get past the chasm is because the Bitcoin native companies who are doing it right, Bicco first and foremost in my mind, are creating that tooling to make it easier for people to take the leap into Bitcoin. Yeah, I think that's a really important note because ultimately what we're talking about democratizes the ability to build a business or a company and all the things that Mitch referenced on the different styles of custody, they're all right and they're all wrong. And that's why it's so controversial when it comes to custody, because it's always moving all the time for everybody and for whatever reason in the industry. And it hasn't been like gotten through yet where everybody believes there's a certain form of custody that should exist and it's just not true. Everybody has their own unique risk factors and will continue to change based on whatever is personal or the price appreciation and everything in between. And so bit go instead of saying this is how we feel you should do it or you have to build or leverage our solution for X. It's like hey, we believe that this native you know technology along with keys are important and we talk about it a lot. But it's like very often externally do I hear it talked about where like hash rate, you know nodes are important. I think keys are right up there. I think it's 1A1B1C because of the fact like if all, if you have all the hash rate, you know decentralized, but you have the key sitting on 2 exchanges, it's not a good situation. And so it's just cool like to see that as part of the guiding principle of how you guys think about infrastructure. Yeah, I mean, I we have the most, you know, decentralized money, you know, really. That that the world has ever seen and how it exists today it's sitting on the most centralized you know, financial systems that we've ever encountered. You know where your exchanges are. You know for the most part, you know, holding the actual assets themselves and you know they're the broker dealer. It's it's a it's an absolute mess and. It's sometimes sitting in like in text files, as FTX revealed. I know. So I think and it's because of that, that you know when you talk to you know most of the population out there, your normally friends that you know, we get laughed at and we've got to actually build these rails properly to actually make this, you know, a success and let us actually win here. Yeah, it's like the beginning of 2000 A Space Odyssey or 2001 A Space Odyssey when Bitcoins just let that black. Rectangular. Yeah. Monolith that people are like slapping like what the hell is this thing again? Almost 15 years in it feels like, oh like if we're really going to practice what we preach, eat our own dog food here. Like when we would talk about a Bitcoin standard. Like Bitcoin has these native properties that allow you to create these new financial products and ways to interact with them. Like let's leverage the tech. And again, I do think it's important to really. Beat this dead horse. But like, it feels like this cycle particularly has really driven that to everybody's, the front of everybody's mind where it's like, OK, the Mount Cox, plenty more Bitstamp, FTX, Celsius, Quadriga, Voyager. Like they all simply did not know how to manage keys. Not only that, they didn't know how to architect. Sort of a a risk design like a a way to mitigate risk by leveraging Bitcoin's native multi sig properties. And I've been saying this for two years now. Multi sig, multi institution, multi sig I think will be the standard moving forward 'cause when you distribute that key risk, it's first layer via multi sig and then second layer multi sig via multi institutions, you're just really dispersing that centralized third party risk cross. Your security set up? Yeah, maybe that. I was gonna say maybe that ties into to the extent is what you you can share willing like we could talk about you know our interaction and kind of like this coming across you know what we're working on and you know you really leaning in along with the team and how that kind of plays into what Marty just talked about. So I I think I read this in a in an on ramp you know press release but. It was a quote that you guys had that you know this is this is the first asset that you don't necessarily, you don't only have to worry about the actual asset price going to 0, but you can experience a you know a loss of the actual asset and you know have your balance go to 0 because mismanagement of keys and I think you know that strikes fear in in a lot of you know Ras and you know asset allocators but. I think you know the setups you know looking at multi institution custody and you know division of that counterparty risk. I I don't know how you can have a fundamental understanding of Bitcoin in the asset and not think this is a better model. You know the ability to, you know you've got a two or three key signing structure where you're relying on 3 institutions and. Something happens to institution #3 or one and you know working with the other two institutions to go you know move to migrate to another wallet where you've got a you know another sound institution holding a third key I it it just simply makes sense. You know when Michael you mentioned when when I this first came across my desk and you know I first started talking to you guys, I think you fundamentally. Got that. You know, I think you know this idea of multi institution custody is not not necessarily new, but the unrelenting focus on doing this and building this the right way where the you know, the user is in you know. Can there there's no situation where where these funds can get moved without a user's permission to you know truly building the company you know with with this as the mindset and you know the core competency and that's what you're calling a market with. I just you know I saw the vision. I saw, you know, really the unrelenting focus on, you know, that core competency and that's why you guys stuck out to me. And I think to really help listeners visualize this, who may be a bit new to this concept as a whole. I mean just think about the banking crisis that that happened earlier this year started actually probably this time last year and rolled into the the first quarter of this year, second quarter actually I can imagine you're a Silicon Valley Bank customer and you're. Hearing rumors that there's a run on your bank and you're scaring to get away? Move your funds, set up another bank account to move your funds to, or move your funds to a bank account you already have set up and you're worried. And luckily for those customers that got bailed up by the government, they were made whole. But you can easily make the argument that that's not going to be true moving forward for all the banks. Obviously we had wamu fail. In 2008 and a bunch of others but this set up what Bitcoin enables be this multi institutional model is God forbid it happens but we would be naive to think it's not possible down the road. If you have your your funds secured in two or three multi institution, multi sig and one of those institutions has a run or they just simply go bankrupt seek you don't have to freak out as much as Mitch said you can move your Bitcoin using the other two institutions. To a secure wallet, add in another key into that quorum, another institutional key, and then be set. You don't have to worry as much. And so like really comparing this to the incumbent financial system and banking infrastructure, like it is a step function improvement on just Peace of Mind in terms of knowing that your funds are relatively safe compared to the banking system that exists now. I'll take a little further too and say that, you know, in this scenario where Silicon Valley Bank happens, you're OK because the government's going to step in and and save you because they control the currency so they can make more of it. And it's just kind of the, the social contract of of of Fiat money is that governments are going to step in. And that's why. That's why you're all right with this system. And obviously Bitcoin doesn't allow for that. And so making the transition as a user, as a as a saver, saving your value in a currency that the government will step in and help you and transitioning from that to a currency where nobody can step in to help you ever, that is a non starter unless the the systems in place for the. Security of that asset in the new system are vastly superior to what exists in the old system and and I think that before multi institution custody that in my opinion was not true for Bitcoin of like there's risks in self custody of you might screw it up or you might accidentally reveal too much to some prying eye. And get your funds stolen. Self custody has risks. On the other side, the third party custodian has risks too. Like that's what we saw with with prime trust, with 4th fortress trust, with FTX, with with all of the others that you listed before. Those were centralized custodians and they screwed up and users in this world. Are left holding the bag. In the Silicon Valley bank world, the government steps in to make it so that you know nobody's left, no end user is screwed. But in Bitcoin, the end user gets screwed by by centralized custodians who screw up. And so with both of those models, self custody and 3rd party custody, there are risks that make it unattractive or hard to a hard pill to swallow. You're taking a risk. Setting things up and you better, you better know that you're you've done it right yourself. That's in my opinion to date the best approach has been self custody, where you have to invest a lot of time and energy into setting to learning what you need to do and then setting it up right in collaborative custody. Solutions like Unchained or Casa have made that easier, but it's still hard and there's still risks. But now? Looking forward going into a multi institution custody world that was simply never possible in the in the dollar universe in the traditional asset landscape. Because only with this kind of asset, a truly digital asset that's rooted in cryptography are you able to have this two of three custody solution that's not possible in in the traditional world and that two of three custody solution that Mitch was was talking about where if one. One of those legs of the tripod goes out, you can swap in a new one. And that level of assurance I think in in my mind takes the the quality of the systems of of custody in Bitcoin world. It creates that order of magnitude improvement on custody that's necessary to go from a world where the government can step in. To a world where nobody can step in, but it's OK because it's so much safer and and more secure than than any previous form of custody ever. So I think that's, I think it's like a tipping point in custody for Bitcoin. And that will enable the maturation of the asset class and the adoption of this asset because it it lowers the barrier to entry for people who have been, you know, scared of. I don't know if I trust crypto. Because FTX happened, but I think you know we're gonna see multi institution custody emerge as the gold standard because the FTX scenario can't happen if you've set it up right. Thanks for tuning in to the last trade. If you're enjoying the show and want to dive deeper, check us out. At on rampbitcoin.com where you'll find a full suite of institutional grade research and analytics. Including our recently published white paper, Bitcoin's full potential valuation and our new tool, the On Ramp Terminal. Now back to the show. Yeah, I think, I think it's exactly right. I think, I think what we're talking about here is actually like to get a little meta in the sense of like the custody. It's always. The cat's out of the bag independent of of on ramp and and Mitch will speak to this and and maybe we can give even more insights into what we're working on. So he can explain, you know, Betco's involvement and why they've invested in this infrastructure. But I think taking a step back, I think Bitcoin's very hard to understand for a lot of people because. Half of it is just assuming that if they took the time to invest in understanding it, it doesn't really matter because it can all go up and smoke either way. And so Mitch alluded to and I don't know if it was in a blog or if we if it made it to a draft, but there was something we were saying or like playing around with the wording of like never has it been before where you're like looking at an asset then maybe you want to allocate to and then you you possibly could be a zero the next day because of misappropriation of funds or or leverage or whatever it is. And so to Jesse's point, like if you live in this world where it can always disappear and you keep hearing the number of 200 million wallet addresses, 200,000,000, but the reality is it's like one 100th if lot less of that has material exposure to Bitcoin because most people have it as a flyer and it's like, oh, it can always disappear. I don't want to take possession because I have messed it up, but the exchange, if they go under, it's just like whatever. And it's this chicken or egg with whether it's institutions or individuals and like, do I really even want to like go down this rabbit hole or understand it. It has been the best performing asset, all the things we know. But this reality of like it can just be taken at a moment's notice and there is no recourse. And we know there's no bailouts, but then to the point of increasing redundancy. And reducing counterparty risk starts to bring a different kind of market structure for individuals to step in and then I'll and feel very confident in like, OK, so the custody of the assets similar to if I bought Amazon stock or if I bought gold, you know, Counterparty risk I think is going to come to the forefront in all things just given the the nature of leverage in the system and that some people just can't are going to be left holding the bag and it's going to suck. And that's where I think counterparty risk in Bitcoin starts to really make sense. As a like a value prop that most people discount. But it's a different story. It's more of just the fact that like you can get exposure to something and know again, there are no there are no perfect solutions for custody. In my mind, they're perfect trade-offs. And there is a reality that things can happen in in multi institution that still have your Bitcoin lost. But our vision of the future at least on the on ramp side is that as the market grows and reputations and trust is built. It's similar in financial institution in like the free banking world where those who fulfill their obligations, those who fulfill their security requirements and all the things associated with, you know, storing cryptographic material and fulfilling the obligations will be the market leaders. In participating and then obviously those that have the TXT file in the drawer will not. Jesse, you mentioned a few weeks ago, I think it was something along the lines of innovation in the custody space has certainly lagged what's what's possible on chain and you know in the asset itself, you know Mike actually said something similar at Pacific Bitcoin last week or two weeks ago when? He said you know we have the infrastructure in place to to handle billion dollar wallets and we we have few at BECO. What we don't have in place is you know what's going to be required to for the trillion dollar wallet and when the industry actually grows there like we all believe it does and it's things like multi institution custody. It's things like time locks, you know, God forbid a key is lost. You know, new ways to recover them. And it's the things that we're going to be focused on over here to, you know, and. The businesses like you guys that that we need to enable to, you know, place the rails down right now in this bear market for you know, the rapid appreciation, you know, we expect to come in the years to come. Yeah, time locks, mini scripts, vaults, covenants, whatever it may be. I mean, out of that list, I think mini scripts the only thing that's possible right now. But things that bitcoiners are talking about on the line, things like covenants, there's no innovation. There's no innovation on Bitcoin. That's that's all happening elsewhere, Marty. Let them think that, let them think that. I love that people think that gives us more alpha, more time to accumulate. But I think it's important to note pulling on this thread even further, like the existence of multi institution custody. I mean we were analoging it to the incumbent banking system. And yes, Michael, I know you mentioned there still could be some pitfalls within this model and ways to rug people, but I do think. The fact that it exists and is out there creates an incentive structure that really reduces the likelihood of this because it becomes much harder. And you're sort of forced, since you're in this quorum with other institutions that had their own reputations that they want to preserve, like the the likelihood of fuckery, for lack lack of a better term, goes down pretty significantly. I think that's exactly right. Like Jesse and I talked about this and I think we both have coalesced around a vision of this will be a little controversial in this call and it'll be for a while is like multi institution, it doesn't have to be two or three, it can be two or four or three or four client participates, ultimately ends up where 80% of Bitcoin is custody. Long term Bitcoin ends up is money. But the important part about self custody and the fact that you can spin up a wallet or set up a multi sig wallet or collaborative custody where you hold unilateral control. Keeps everybody honest. It's that valve that you can take the asset out and you can always prove when you want is that gun, you know, to everybody's head saying like, hey, I don't have to trust you, I can actually take it out and then bring it back. And that's like if you guys listen or Mitch, if you heard the Glenn Cartwright. It's been so fun. Doing all the stuff we're doing because we haven't announced all the products and the services we're going to build around multi institution from the ground up. But then it clients coming our way saying hey like we're we've been looking for this like we've been looking for a fund that has reduced counterparty risk or be able to take delivery. And so to the point of like this cycle and what you guys are building for and what we're building, it's like we, we think it's a very opportunistic time because the market's going to come back as we know it with a vengeance. Probably greater than anything we've ever seen in the past 15 years. And all the right tooling is going to like start to, you know, surface to the top because people have recognized like, hey, I don't want to get rugged again. It is amazing I I get to work with most of the the large Bitcoin platforms out there. Amazing watching the building that's going on right now as the rails really are getting laid for for the next bull run, you know, companies focused on you know. Make like when FTX happened, everyone was trying to figure out how do we still trade. You know with market makers, you know going down and liquidity drying up, you know we have to build the redundancy, resiliency to make sure that doesn't happen again. So between, you know, the large players building out, you know second, third, fourth options, you know to keep trade going. To, you know, rethinking business models and you know, custody solutions. You know, like what you guys are doing, what's quit Swan's doing, you know, figuring out how to actually do lending the right way. You know how to do that on chain. How to, you know, do that where you know you're, you know, there's no really, you know, risk of, you know, the blow UPS that happened over collateralization like. These are the things that are getting focused on right now. It's beautiful watching. It's like really inspiring and Brofoot should be a part of it. Yeah, I mean the the fascinating thing is I said a lot about the the meta and like the market perception ahead because of just having lots of conversations the past, you know three years and onboarding. And I I feel the same way about what I'm about to say on, I don't think there's another firm honestly on the planet Earth that's doing or would have done what BET Go's doing. We can probably get into like what they're doing with on ramp, but it's because we've talked to the fidelities and the BNY Mellons and large scale firms. And while they're doing a lot in digital asset ecosystem, they're still mired in the in the first principles thinking from their old world of financial services and you want to control and hold all of the asset. To be able to do what you want to, whether it's re lend or control or charge on it. And the problem is that we've seen over the past 15 years of Bitcoin's history like that's just a recipe for failure and disaster because that's not what the asset wants to do. It doesn't want to centralized for a number of reasons. And so to see you guys building like that, it's like it, it makes sense from a Bitcoin angle or from somebody that's like native, you mean call it go as far as crypto native? But once you come from the old world, it's like why would you ever do anything like this. And so it's just a that thought hit me because I don't think the new leaders are the leaders that end up building the financial products of the future. I I feel like few if any will be incumbents because it's such a radical shift in how you treat an asset and risk as we've seen like Block Fi, you know, God bless them, like they're just going to be a poster trial because it's just. The exact model that you don't want to do, and I just fear like a BlackRock is going to be blocked by at orders of magnitude larger, same concept centralization, doing potentially some other things that are going to paper BTC. And then at the end of the day, if you get caught offsides, there's a bunch of people left. Hold in the bag. I think that like the reason why, you know, we did this, you look at Mike's background at Google, Lookout companies based in Palo Alto, you know. Heart of Silicon Valley, it's technology is you know in our DNA it's at the forefront here. You know we open source all our wallets. It's because we know it's the most secure way to do it. And you know, really at our core we're able to sort of think with that, you know, disruptor, you know, mindset of you know, we've got to make sure we're still here and you know, knowing that. Like you said the the asset you know is decentralized and you know and wants to find that home and you know I hope the market plays out that that that is the case. We've got to play in that world and I think we can we can kind of see around that corner and you know make sure you know at least in the Bitcoin space where you know if if we're not you know the the sole custodian of the asset, how do we make sure we're the best key agent in the industry and you know if you know. We're making, you know, less money doing that. You know, perhaps we actually 34X revenue because more capital is actually coming into the industry because they actually trust the infrastructure and the models that are being built for for custody. It's a long term bet, but I I think it's good for the industry and I think it'll be good for big CO2. Completely agree and it's Michael. You mentioned the incumbents. I think that is going to be the innovator's dilemma that they. They are confronted with and Mitch you just made a great point like it is counterintuitive particularly if you're using incumbent business models and trying to apply them to Bitcoin. Like there is a very strong case to be made that yes doing this multi institution custody model and sort of splitting up fees. Let's just be frank like this. This is what's gonna happen if we go to this models the. Fee structure that exists in the incumbent world where one institution holds the assets and reaps fees from that like that's going to get sort of shattered and split amongst many institutions is creating these new business models in these new fee structures that that work within this new paradigm due to the fact that we can build these models with Bitcoin's multi sig technology and. That is going to be a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow, and I agree with you like swallow the pill early and have the vision to recognize that it is worth swallowing the pill. Because the market's gonna be so massive that even if you're getting smaller fees in a multi institution model, the overall revenue is likely gonna be larger in the future 'cause we're going to be dealing with one of the most important, most valuable assets on the planet. Yeah. And maybe this is a good time to take a step back because I think we have a lot of context for what we're talking about. Maybe the audience does it and then the ultimately the innovator's dilemma that Mitch is sharing. I don't know Mitch, do you want me to like share or would it be helpful for you to from your from your eyes what we're working on in your part in it? Why Why don't you go for it? I'll fill in the yeah something. OK, we can leave it, Logan. Like this. We can turn it in a conversation. I think I'll we're gonna record. A more focused pod on what we're launching in the history. So this will be just like a paraphrase and and Jesse please jump in or I'll defer on some aspects of it. But when we launched on ramp we had this vision of you know multi institution with that it was a differentiator and it was more important like just in the same way from a Bitcoin first principle that we talked about with Mike like you just don't want to have unilateral control, you don't have unilateral control from a risk perspective like imagine any of us having to go to sleep at night. Managing billions of dollars and they're under your provision let alone you know from whether it's the government any reason, you just don't necessarily want to be have that. But also from what we've seen in the market and this is before a lot of the the blow UPS that we had started with this like vision close to over a year ago now, but then adding a few other components to it which was like the GBTC situation with the you know spot price and trading at a discount or premium. And this fact that like funds don't allow for delivery and there's like natural precedent, you know bitcoin's a commodity. We embarked on this journey, Jesse and I with his background managing a fund and mine managing you know onboarding individuals to multi sig that there was a better way to just reduce that. And so we started you know the first spot Bitcoin Trust in the US or in Nash internationally that was leveraging this multi institution model. The problem or the issue with it was that we were directing the clients like we had the keys split up Bitco's core model. There's others that are out there like it. Bitco holds a key Kingdom trust into this new model. Coin Cover will be announced as a partner and then on ramp and that's what we were in the process of building. We launched that. We had a lot of demand. We brought on clients, we had international demand for different products. And so we started to look at, well, what are the other things that we're doing here and that. Crawl like what are the core principles we're doing and we came you know obviously Bitcoin only we're building this brand that we believe is going to be trusted in the space that ties to a lot of Jessie's and our team's content that helps and educate. But then this multi institution is a core pillar around it. But we were still and I don't actually even go know if what we were doing in the sense of if we were going to go with that model because what Marty alluded to is the hard part, getting the keys separated is actually the easy part. It's like it just takes recognizing them. We can all set up our own multi institution. The hard part is getting a financial institution or somebody with a track record like bit go to say hey I will participate but not only will I participate, I will own the client relationship and I will actually onboard them and I'll leverage you know the things that I can share a little bit make Biko unique in this situation. That was the part where Mitch stepped in, saw what we were doing. I was like, oh, this makes sense and. I'll just give a teaser on it and Mitch, we'll explain more. But Biko's unique positioning in this and why we really think this unlocks large scale allocations and also movement of custody funds at the, you know, incumbents. I would think of calling base as as an incumbent at this point. Is the simple fact that we can never unilaterally direct any of the institutions to move funds in the way we've set up. Our custody structure always requires that the client not only gets on boarded with multiple institutions and Bitco will have their own, but then at the end of the day they have to do the same in reverse order and whatever permissions the, you know, principals or parties set. And then the other aspect is Bitco and the the way that they're utilizing their key. In that in this quorum has really never been done and I'll maybe hand it over to Mitch if he wants to kind of share like a little bit more about that it's. Funny you guys mentioned Innovator's Dorm that's been sitting on my my desk I I was trying to really step back and think is this is this technology that that that is disruptive or or is it sustaining for the the existing players and you know. To be honest like what we built on the the PSBT side which is how we how we accept 1/2 sign transaction you know from from on ramp so bitco can counter sign. And for any listener out there, PSBT stands for Partially Signed Bitcoin transaction. Appreciate it. You know, it's not easy work. You know, everybody in the industry is running different tech. So, you know, adopting that standard, you know, was difficult. You know, we're we're there now. You know we continue to innovate on it. But I I do think that you know if this is the model of the future. And I personally, in my heart of hearts do believe that you know, the existing incumbents are going to be left behind and you're going to have you know, new players that that come in that that truly you know, understand, you know from you know that that this matters, how to set up companies to to be key agents rather than you know. True custodians, you know, in the way that we do it, we're we're holding, you know, the freakies and you're going to see companies, companies die as a result if this is. You know the future here. Yeah, it really does come back to, yeah, I I think BICCO makes you having the innovator's dilemma on your desk shows that you guys are are approaching change in this industry from the mindset of Netflix as a as a mail order, DVD business or whatever. However you would call that seeing you know oh there's a shift to digital streaming that's going to happen and we're going to get in front of it versus being a blockbuster, which I think I think will be the fate of a lot of traditional custodians, people who are unprepared to adopt A mentality of multi institution models. Because because there's a long history of of you know the best way to do custody is to to build your fortress and guard it well and hope for the best. Put some keys on the Swiss Alps. You know, just, yeah, bury them on the mountains. And guard the hell out of them and and that's that's been what's been best because you know that's that's why we have. That's why we built banks and and vaults to put the gold in because you know, put put them under it, put it, put it in a big vault with some guards. And that's the best you you got in the physical world. And there's going to be a lot of people, a lot of institutions who come from the traditional finance world in in particular, who are unprepared to accept a a changed model of the best way to do custody in the digital landscape is through the collaboration of multiple entities. That's that's completely paradigm breaking for how custody has been done. And I think it gives a big advantage to companies like bit Go and on Ramp who are inherently thinking about it from you know a digital first mindset. And they're prepared to to take on what I, what I think will become the, you know, the gold standard in in how custody is done for any asset, because Bitcoin can be custodied, vastly better. Orders of magnitude better, more securely than traditional assets because of the properties that we're only just beginning to unlock. Yeah. And I think it'll be really interesting to see. I agree. I think we all agree this is going to be the standard. And what I'm very fascinated to find out is how quickly it becomes the standard because that's I think if we truly believe this, I think it should be our goal as individuals in the space and operators in the space to make it clear to the market that this is superior. And we really, we can do as much marketing and explaining as we want via this show and all of our materials that we send to prospective clients and content to educate just individuals out there. But I do think at the end of the day for this to become the standard, there has to be that that mental light switch that goes off in individual market participants heads that says no, I got to demand, I'm demanding this like I'm not interacting with a company that does not custody Bitcoin this way. Yeah. I think that like we have a really unique perspective on this and this is where we focus our our where Mitch appreciates is like we're building this firm from the ground up around this vision, a multi institution and the reality is. It's not available for everybody and the reason why it's not available for everybody because it requires a lot of like when you think about the institutional overhead and it's it's very often thought right, like Bitcoin because it's digital. You shouldn't trade for execution. You shouldn't pay for execution. You shouldn't pay for custody. But like, there's a whole slew in the same way that you know gold has between exchange and commissions, from the time it either gets out of the Earth or like the London bar to the time you buy a coin. There's a lot of things in between. And the same thing that happens when you're cryptographically safeguarding and running a business. So there there's fees associated. Where that ties in to is, I think it starts there. I know it starts there. I believe it to start there because institutions can pay for that and because the upside is so great in Bitcoin that it will be justified. But then just like any, like, you know technology, you start from the top end. And then as you be able, as you're able to, not only as you're able to just innovate and refine and have better processes, it starts to get democratized. And why I say all of that is to Marty's point about, like, who's going to recognize it? The reason why people aren't going to recognize it right off the bat, some will and we see it is because there's a big fallacy in the industry and it doesn't ever get talked about. I'm excited to bring up is that custody has been subsidized by Fiat, money and venture. Every business that runs a custody shop that doesn't charge for it is is paid for and is practically losing money and at in one point. So This is why people lose like their keys or why I like custody. They use it as a loss leader. And so when you do that, it's like hard for people to perceive why would I pay for custody? Like I just keep it at X so they can't charge for it. But the second you start to differentiate and I'll go as far as saying the one thing for sure people should pay for is custody. If it's differentiated. And you feel comfortable that the Bitcoin will be there because the delta between 27 K and wherever we all think Bitcoin can go, whatever your benchmark is. Is worth whatever the bits as long as you know that you feel in high confidence this is the best solution for you. And so that's the that will be the equilibrium shift or that mindset shift in the market is you should actually be paying for custody because that's how you keep the asset and most people have not. And so these firms that either hold in your Bitcoin, participate in Bitcoin, if they're not profitable, they you don't know who's going to hold that firm. At the end of the day, that's your counterparty. So they could be acquired by somebody they could go out of business into. You always want to know like where the assets are. Our individuals paying for that because that's your, that's your ultimate, your counterpart, it's facilitating the economic, you know, equivalent of a transaction and signing. So anyway, I think that's where the custody mindset is going to mine. Set is going to shift is the people that can pay for it, the people that recognize it. And then ultimately as these other firms that aren't making money with custody, say, hey, why don't I just participate 'cause I already built all this infrastructure. And so we'll see it in the crypto world and then ultimately the financial world, if you can sell it good enough. It's like you don't have to build, you know, $10 million worth of infrastructure, participate in the key quorum, build the right, you know processes and now you're in the economy and now you can start generating revenue and you don't lose your your flow of dollars out to the coin bases of the world. So I think it's going to be a burn, but yeah, that was a long way of saying I think that's how this plays out. It's not right off the bat, but for the money it'll it will be. I do think that like you're going to, like you said, you're going to have people who realize right away this business model. I think you know, credit to you guys, you know, for knowing that you know this solution is going to have a lot of value. There is a differentiator here and you know. From a monetization standpoint, you know making sure you know you're not doing this as a loss leader, you know and you know running you know some venture backed company where you know you, you know you keep that that operation going. It's it's knowing what you have making sure you sell it to you know for for the actual you know value that you're bringing and you know really good on you guys appreciate it. Yeah I think that's that's the under discussed thing is the multi institution makes sense in our head but the end of the day like new custody models or or one at the margins like you have to get the person that's like they know Coinbase they understand it and and it's it's this visceral feeling we talked about it a lot at Unchained when you like it's it's very it's it's eerily similar to venture in that if you're allocating money. And you're not in it full time and LP won't give you their dollars because those are their full time dollars. In the same way that unless you like know the model in and out, whether it was like the in your head or you use it or it was, you visually understand it at the margins with the new custody product, you have to be able to translate that to a person parking their their wealth, their dollars or it just looks like. Because I've sold a lot of things in my life, whether it was like at Google or at Wework. It's like you can get good enough to fake things, like you can get good enough to be dangerous. But when it comes to like real wealth and money, people know. Exactly. That's like the one thing that they can look at and say like he this, he, this guy doesn't know exactly what what's going. And that's where we're excited about this because this is like all in our brains. This is like years of culmination of like all the things we've been working on to say, like, OK, this is where we see the market going. And so, yeah, we're we're incredibly excited to have it out. I think like like similar to you know what we do today in you know some of the companies that we're you know positioned against like true cold storage, you know is in, you know how I outline, you know how we store keys and vaults like that story works and you know it's got 10 years of working and ultimately like obviously that stuff's more expensive and but when you know we're treating these assets like they're going to be the trillion dollar assets, you know that we believe they will be. And you know when you're talking a couple of bits here and there of of you know difference in cost. I you know as long as you're talking to an audience that understands the value of what they're holding. I you know, I do think you know you're going to have people who get that right away. And then slowly, probably as price goes up, you know, you'll, you'll see more demand and see more interest and more people that get it, but you know. It's now. It's really the time to go lay that foundation and do this the right way. No, I mean just when the price starts ripping, that bag gets really heavy, metaphorically, and and it weighs on you and your mind. If at one point you you get a bunch of Bitcoin, the price is low. You write down your 12 word seed phrase on a piece of paper, you put it in your sock drawer. The price runs 10X that. That piece of paper's on your mind. Pretty pretty much all day, every day. And then that's when for me personally, that's when I was like, all right, I need to spin up and unchain, vault, distribute this, get this risk out of my mind. But you like when you bring in institutions and the type of capital that we're talking about. Like if I as an individual think that bag is heavy, you can only imagine how heavy it gets for for large institutions that are fiduciaries on behalf of hundreds of thousands, millions of individuals. And go ahead, I. Remember when I had my castle wallet for the first time? It was 2019 and I had, I had moved the funds over. One hardware wallet, I had a three of five was already distributed. And you know, I was sitting there going to bed at night and you know, realized that one of the keys was my phone had two at home. It's like someone you know, you get the, you know the, you know, whatever the two dollar $10 bench attack, like someone can go take all these funds and this was. You know we were we were starting to rip you know 2019 on price and you know if I, as you know somebody who you know is a lot more native having these fears have screwed this up to the degree that you know I've I we've got a critical point of failure here. You know, how are we going to onboard? You know, the next users who who are not as native, we've got to make this a lot easier. And really think through these problems a lot better than we have. Yeah, I think that's the interesting point 'cause it's the same dynamic or concept. I listened to Mike's talk and it was, it's really good. It was cool to hear, you know, his supporting of people at Bitco that you know, the the Bitco mafia that seems to be building outside of Bitco, but then also him thinking through like trillion dollar wallets. We don't use that term a lot, but I guess with the amount of dollars we're gonna be using it more. But the same way of a trillion dollar wallet, how do you build a business? It's like, how do you build a custody solution for yourself, like as an individual when the price to Marty's point goes at 10X or 100 and we just like aren't prepared for that as individuals. Just we've never seen it. But then it happens and you like start freaking out. And that's where I always anchor back to. It's like do we really like right now, you know, leverage collaborative custody personally, but there's a certain point. Where I think about to Mitch's points, like if somebody knew, it's the whole it's like Michael Saylor and Balaji, where biology references that there's never been a bill until Bitcoin. There's never been a billionaire like a true billionaire that you can, like, move a billion dollars whenever you want at a moment's notice. And that's powerful, but it's also scary because if you wake up and somebody knows whether you're early or somebody's date or gets late or whatever reason that you have a bag of Bitcoin. Do you really want it to be known that somebody can pick up your child or that somebody can pick up something in course you or manipulate you into being able to affect control of the asset versus today? If somebody wants to do that, it's just impossible because you have to go to the bank, you got to call, you got to, you know, there's a bunch of things to do to really move money in size like that. And so I think that's just not fully understood. And and what we talked about before, if you set up your own custody, everybody can do it. It's not rocket science. The problem is it takes a good while. It takes a good while to set it up and then it takes a good while to understand where all the backups are, how you can reconstitute, how you can recover if somebody goes down, if you have a collaborative customer partner, what happens if they go away. And that that's not, again, rocket science. The problem is. Most people have a lot of other things to do and they don't have the six plus months to make sure that they do it and where it gets really heady. As we all know, this turns into money. Like at the end of the day, this thing ends up being money. We go from 2% allocations that people have or institutions, the 10% and 50 and whatever the number is. And it's OK to leave it on Coinbase when it's 1% or 2% or 5%, but if it starts becoming like your entire net worth? Or you really feel comfortable like leaving it right underneath the desk, you know, in your setup or whatever the case may be. It just all starts. It gets really, as Marty said, the bag gets a lot heavier, even though it's digital. And that's the idea of building this. So whether it's the day somebody realizes or when it's the price, 10X is there's just a solution ready for them to be able to trust? Yeah. If you're new to this industry, you're getting in in this bear market, just let this be a warning. That bag gets heavy if you don't secure it properly. We got to you got to embarrass Mitch a little because I don't think all this stuff we're doing happens unless Mitch and Mitch and and Mike. But Mitch like recognized it and also like really saw the vision of where this can go and why the importance of it when you were alluding to your Casa. Like there's a lot of stuff that happens that's path dependent in this process and in all things. And you had all those like things already in your head. It's like. Oh, this actually makes sense because again, we're tell Bitco. But the reality is it still takes individuals to, like, recognize things and be able to champion them. I. I appreciate that. Like, I don't know, stepping back into, you know, my story and you know what got me here. I was trying to see how I can figure out how I can use my skills to, you know, go help Bitco in adoption in some way. And I was selling software, so you know, really the. Ability to help Bitcoin companies and to you know really enable you guys to get to go do that hard work at you know, I I couldn't imagine you know a you know greater privilege and you know better thing that I could be working on. So I'm grateful for you guys in doing the hard work and you know let me navigate the the big company here. That's what I was doing at IBM. That's what I do here and go. Try to make you know meaningful change by by enabling you guys. You tell Mitch is a bitcoiner, 'cause he went directly to the $10 he like accounted for inflation. With the $10 wrench attack, it was like. It's Brooklyn, Brooklyn wrench prices right now wrenches are not part of the core CPI. So yeah, no, it is. So I guess I don't know if you guys talk about this internally a bit go obviously I haven't been involved with the day-to-day conversations that you guys been having between each other. But like in terms of how the opportunity like what opportunity lays before bit go like how do you guys view yourselves like 10 years out, 50 years out, 100 years out, like what types of institutions are we building right now, whether it's bit go on ramp TFTC 1031, like what, like how do you see the mark that we're beginning to leave now looking again 1050, a hundred years out? I mean I think it's the future of money and future of finance for you know I think Jesse mentioned you know this is this is you know American Revolution like I think we're all doing work that you know we'll be we'll be in history books one day and or I hope so I I think we're going to win, but we're going to win. If we're keep doing the work we're doing I think we're gonna win but it's it's building in this bear. But ultimately you know how this shakes out. You know which institutions you know bubble up to the top and you know have lasting power. I I kind of, I go back to you know the the Jack Mallers, Jack Dorsey, you know, thought of same team and it's making sure we don't spend the time bickering with each other, you know. Yeah, I think it's important to call each other out when when we screwed up. But it's being collaborative, it's helping each other, making sure, you know, we focus on the broader goal of, you know, sound money and you know, making the future that we want here. We keep our eye on the ball there and sort of keep that, you know, revolutionary spirit, that grit that we've all got that powers us to, you know, keep waking up every day and doing what we do. I think we do, yeah. People see it as naive, crazy, bombastic, but you gotta think big. We gotta dream big here. The the world as it stands today, as we mentioned earlier, is a bit chaotic and we need big change. And I don't think it's crazy. We're bombastic or hubristic to say, hey, we're gonna change the world. We're gonna create these institutions that are long lasting and that people will look back centuries from now and say, holy crap, look at what they did back then. You should have that type of mentality in this industry. I was actually, I was having a conversation this morning sort of about negative effects of social media, you know, and, you know, go into, you know, the Israeli Palestinian conflict and sort of how the spread of misinformation is damaging. And, you know, psychologically. And I sort of, I view, you know, social media sort of like Pandora's box and all this negative, you know, consequences. Are are coming out of it. But at the same time you're truly, you know if we bought this right, but you've got the free distribution of ideas and that democratization did not exist beforehand. And I do think that you know the ability for that information to to truly spread, for Bitcoin to truly spread and you know, global S regions that you know truly be the most. I I think will ultimately be that that positive that comes out of Pandora's box. And you know, changing money, changing the world is not easy. But we do need, you know, rails like social media, you know and you know, free exchange of ideas to to make that possible. Yeah, it's another paradox that's like weird because you obviously need the Internet for Bitcoin, but it's just like the Internet if if you, let's pretend, you could transfer Bitcoin over the Internet, but you don't have social. I don't think you see the same growth as fast as it is, you know, like the the proliferation of like content and all the what's that? No way. Yeah, but as you're saying like it's just part of like the whole thing. It's a double edged sword which we should probably give if we're gonna embarrass everybody. You guys can do me is we're gonna you know Congrats to Marty and getting we're talking social media his new media brand out that where I was initially thinking about this was you asked what do you think about like a long term. And the fun part is like all these things just need to be built, right. It's not like we're thinking and maybe we're we're obviously biased, but we just generally believe like there's a lot of broken stuff and it's not that hard. I mean it is hard to fix, but it's there. It's like going to the gym. It's like it's not complex, it's just you got to do it. And the way that the money's broken and infrastructure's broken is the same way that news and media and the content and the incentive models are broken. And I think Marty's working on fixing that. And so Congrats to see any truth for the common around and then pumped to see where it where it goes. Thank you, Sir. No, that was, I was going to piggyback on Mitch's comments. Mitch's comments. I've actually been very relieved that I've been busy getting that launch out over the last two weeks, particularly because it's forced me to focus and not pay attention to the madness on social media right now. Again, no, it's, I think it's, I mean Michael, you and I have talked about this for years, TFT CS been standing there and there's definitely something that we can do with it to blow it up and really. Again, eat our own dog food and inject Bitcoin into it and change the content monetization model using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. And due to our partnership with Mash, we're really excited for where that can go. We've already seen some really cool stuff and really good responses to to what we've done. It's one of those things like you said. We've been staring at this. Me and you personally have been talking about this for years. It's like, all right, somebody's just got to go build it. It's going to take work. It did take work. We've got it out there now. And the response over the last 24 hours has been pretty incredible to see it, especially after the TFTC episode of Recorded with Lewis from MASH Like that got out there. And there's people like in the incumbent media and they're sure you're like, oh, I finally get it now, even though we've been talking about it and writing about it for years. I think we just need to get something out there to show people, yeah, people discount the value of the idea. It's really the thing in this space and never experience it. If you have it and it's not there and people like a couple people say you like, that's a good idea. Why it doesn't exist. It's not generally it's it's 'cause it's a dumb idea like 'cause somebody already done it in a in the regular world. But in Bitcoin world, it's just because nobody's done it yet. We're that early. So yeah, it's it's very cool to see that people are recognizing it. Yeah, but we're we're gonna win. It's gonna take time. So Mitch I identify with your, your like measured we're we're I think we're going to win we're on the path to winning whereas Marty comes in and and Michael with the extreme confidence that frankly I find very encouraging because it's too easy for me to think about focus on how we could possibly not win when in reality it looks like we're going to win. Mentality is everything. I've I've coached a couple championship teams and mentality is everything. You literally have to have a winner's mindset. We're going to win. I think if Coinbase held all the, if Coinbase held all the Bitcoin, I don't know if we'd win. That's what we had to do, what we had to do. That was the we got to do something if, if you, if you spot a hole. That's what I'm focused on because I, I, I don't think being digital gold is winning. I think fixing money is winning. And you know, if we're just a Black Rock ETF and. You know, people are making money because you know price goes up and you know bitcoins are, you know, an X percentage of, you know, someone's portfolio. I think that's wonderful. But that's not winning. It's, you know, doing the actual work that you've got, you know, recheck your financial freedom or doing the work that actually helps. You know, those in, you know, debt reading countries, you know, ours being one of them for the future, but like, you know. Being in Argentina hearing those stories like that's who we like these people need the exit ramp here and you know if sure networks going up is great but you know actually you know letting people giving them a a you know an exit valve of of non sovereign money I think that's winning and and I think that work started but it's it's building the rails now it's. You know companies like on RAP and it's companies in those regions and you know making sure that the, you know this market cycle we don't get an FTX making this actually reliable where you actually can, you know average person, high net worth person have that you know exit valve that you can feel good about. I think that's winning and that's why you know, I. I see the companies doing the work. It's inspiring. I we need to you know keep notes of the grindstone, keep doing it. But that's that's where the reservations come from. It's like look I I get the, you know supply demand you know the economics of this this thing's going to a million or you know whatever feel dollar you know forecast you want to put on it. But you know, working is a different definition for me, and I do think we get there. We're gonna end it there. We're gonna win. We're gonna win anything you guys wanna wrap it up with? You know, I'm, I'm gonna send Mitch an article after this about Bitcoin in the American West, 'cause you got me thinking about that. It's all about, you know, the nascent infrastructure slowly being built out and you go from trading posts to to roads to railroads. To to, you know, integrated Hwy. system and we're still in the trading post era of of Bitcoin infrastructure development, but that is how we win. You know, I feel different jurisdictions in America are certainly fighting against it or if you know institutions. But I I do think, you know, at its core ideal wise, you know, I Bitcoin is American, you know and I. From an ideals perspective, this does feel like a revolution. You know the way that, you know we read about revolution in the history books it's it does have a lot of that ethos and I think it's a pretty cool thing to be a part of. Yeah. Tied into the the Jesse's comment about us being confident it's like I'm really excited about all the stuff that's happening and and it's going to be a journey but it it was thinking of like what we're doing is honestly the like mostly sexy thing that you can ever imagine during this monetization. We're just like figuring out how you fucking store the Bitcoin and and it and it and it hit me, it's like thinking about what's going to happen and I always anchor back to David Bailey he he said actually on Marty's Pod years ago. It's an all time classic too, if you haven't listened to it. But he said the real party starts when the dollar ends. It's always stuck in my head because we talk about like Marty and the the media and like the incentive model and like all the different ways that the incentives and we talked about it last week with Larry and accountability like that vision of the world is just so incredible. We can't even fathom and like to get to that other side. And the way like capital formation happens in businesses and like returns and all and cost of capital like all those things. We never have gotten to live in that world. And just to be able to see like little glimmers of it and participate even if you don't see the other side like there's nothing better I can imagine if you doing. Because we know, like we know that it's there, like we have the, we can see the map, like we just got to like stay alive long enough to get to the other part of it. I mean like, but like bringing it back like the for the kids aspect, like imagine living in a world where you're not trying to outpace inflation, You're not trying to, you know, worry about being an asset allocator every day of, you know, sure I'm bringing in my money, but then I got to worry about, you know, how I'm going to, you know, outpace inflation and you know, make sure my net worth is, you know, growing up to you know, support the living standard I want sounds like a great world for for for the kids that hopefully we're building. Yeah. We gotta do it. If not us, then who? If not you, then who out there listening? I know you got some ideas. I know you're sitting in that that cube smashing some functions into Excel. You're about to get replaced by some AI you need to pick up. You need to pick up your your hammer and get to work in the Bitcoin economy. That is true. Please e-mail us. We have the best people that have reached out cold. So if you're interested we have a we have a mission and we're also going to be with Bitgo and Coincover in Vegas hosting a a few events. So please reach out. You'll find a way to reach out to us if you're interested. We'll get you on the list. Marty we got a course and to go. Still TBD but hopefully Marty will be there with us. And yeah, I headed. I headed you our our Vegas plug. Better get to Vegas. You get by the time this drops you get you get 3 days. So if you're in Vegas for money, 2020, Oh yeah, be there. A run on the, you know, Vegas flights? Post this pod. It's gonna be nuts. All right, this was fascinating. Let's go record another podcast. We'll be back next week with the last trade.
Transcript source: fountain