The Last Trade E027: Bitcoin’s Role in Financial Advisory with Andy Edstrom

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 1974198792972000. 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. And we jumped in, we're jumping in the deep end, the cold water, big week, Thanksgiving week here in the United States. A lot going on in the markets. CZ, they got them. Ladies and gentlemen, we got them. I think that's what Merrick Garland's going to say in a couple hours here. What do we think off the? Cuff. Off the cuff reactions to the to the Binance news. It seems. That. CZ is not SAFU. Mm hmm. Well, Andy, that's what we're talking about. It's a good deal for, Czi said. It probably went to him. They said you see what just happened to Sam Bankman. Friede's going to federal federal prison. It's not gonna be nice there for many years, many decades, probably the rest of his life. Hasn't been sentenced yet. We'll find out early next year. CZ Do you want to spend your life in A? U.S. Federal Prison? Or do you just want to give us 4 1/2 billion dollars? Yeah, it is a phenomenal precedent if you're sitting in the government's staining in the government's shoes right now. Love to love to see Max damage done to, to the first quote, UN quote victim of, of government efforts to bring the scammers to justice. Definitely, definitely. Strength strengthens their negotiating position with CZ for sure, yeah. Still a pretty good deal for CZ in my book. I mean I I don't remember what his his net worth is, but I I recall it at the peak being 10s of billions. And Marty, you were saying that C ZS on personally on the hook for only a small portion of the $4 billion fine that they're levelling against finance. So he's walking away with billions still. Yeah, he's on the hook for 50 mil. But I think he personally has to pay the CFTC and then Binance as a whole conglomerate is on the hook for 4.3 something billion dollars. So we say in the finance business is just cost of doing business, right? That's the interesting thing. Thing like what is Binance? Is the business gonna look like after this? I think it's gonna be completely neutered. KYC AM L. Compliance is gonna be through the roof. The specific charges that were levied stem from the Bank Secrecy Act, particularly dealing with Iran, facilitating some transactions for that country, which is sanctioned by the US and the US regulators. I imagine they're gonna have To Do List a bunch of the unregistered securities that they have on on their platform and I wonder. This leads to a mass exodus from finance. Who knows? Maybe it's very sticky, particularly in certain parts of the world, like the global S, where it's used as a payments rail and a bank account for many people. And then I said it, Michael. Payment Rail. I said Global South. Emerging Emerging Markets. I'll take the other side of this. I think this is just a metaphorical scalp. I think he CZ did it because it's the cost of doing business to get this bull market taken off and the ETF to happen. I think that you know we talked about this six, not six months ago, I don't know it was three or four months ago where CZ is the ultimate pirate and businessman that he takes a step back. He's still going to shadow run the company. What Marty referenced they probably do for the first three to six months until bitcoins at 100K, and then they just rip, rip it right back open and make billions and he's on the run again. Wouldn't shock me. I think, I think what we're referencing here is a traditional playbook we've seen by like Arthur Hayes, bit Max and a lot of these firms, but I think these guys are playing a different game and it's shown because they're the biggest. And been the baddest in the industry and that like I don't think they had the precedent when we referenced with the FTX was a fundamentally different charge on like I was actually like well I guess sanctions is one thing. So the sanctions and if they can prove like they were onboarding Iranian firms but they're not AUS domino style entity. So they would have different precedent. The bigger one is like if they were offering access to US customers which obviously comes with you know. Charges, but I don't think it's like SPF stuff. So I don't think that was like on the table. It's more of like, do you want us to continue to come after? Maybe it is, I don't know. Yeah, FTX, pure Ponzi finance yet to be known. That's another thing. I mean you mentioned it paved the way for the ETFI think that was one of the big hold UPS with ETF approval was hey, there's this offshore exchange doing a lot of volume, quote UN quote volume that we need to clean up. I found the quote Dylan Le Clair posted this snippet citing some of the objections the New York Stock Exchange has about Bitcoin as a as an asset and and you know, ostensibly part of why ETF has not been approved yet but the the Commission raised. The presence of possible sources of fraud and manipulation in the Bitcoin stock market. Such possible sources have included persons with a dominant position in in Bitcoin, pricing, trading based on material, non public information, manipulative activity involving purported stable coins including tether, and fraud and manipulation at Bitcoin trading platforms. So those are, you know, the objections raised to date about why Bitcoin is not a mature enough asset and market to warrant an ETF. And if you read between the lines there, I think a lot of the objection is about Binance and the purported activity there manipulating the price of Bitcoin and then engaging in some sort of outside of the rules market activity. And so that could be, you know, could be some of the main objection to date about an ETF and that may now be sufficiently cleared maybe just in terms of kissing the ring more than anything. But that might be enough for, you know, regulators to say that they've cleaned up this market and it's now safe for, you know, Black Rock's investors and the like. Yeah. And that and it that's further like emphasized with the Kraken news that came out like a day before about the SEC suing them, which is effectively that I'm saying they're not a broker dealer and they're offering securities, which is also funny because we think about the big boys showing up that they're probably going to deem these securities and then you can trade them. But you just have to go through the proper channels with these new entities that have stepped in since the recent fallout in 2022 with like Edx and Citadel and BlackRock. So it's not like they're changing anything. We're still gonna get altcoins. It's just you had a you know file file with the SEC and kiss the ring and you know. Well, I wonder, I wonder if they'd even be able to do that via the regulated broker dealers. Because if they're unregistered securities, you have to go through a whole registration process. And can you do that retroactively? I'm not sure. Completely ignorant. If you pay enough in fines, if you pay the right amount of money, right? Yeah, yeah. I think Andy's got the right perspective. He's, he's seen that the answer to everything is you can do anything with enough of a fine. That's how finance works, isn't it, Andy? That's it. That's it. Pay the right people and and the game goes on. The The Cantillionaire money printing game, which is? Every bit as big a game and quote UN quote crypto as it is in Fiat land. Yeah. In my humble opinion. Yeah, and Kraken's getting double whammy. They paid a $30 million fine early this year. Jesse Powell came out with a tweet yesterday, pretty aggressive against Department of Justice. Whoever levied the suit against them, the SEC came out against the SEC and said what the hell are you guys doing? We just went through this. We'll get back to the battle lines and fight you again. But yeah, it seems like there is a lot of action on the regulatory front trying to clean up the market perceptively and that's what people are reading through all this. They're cleaning it up before the ETF. Speaking of ETF news, that was another thing that drops I think at the end of last week. Maybe it came out over the weekend, but a lot of the companies that have filed for ETFs. Bitcoin ETS made revisions that essentially dictated that it would be cash in, cash out, and they wouldn't be offering Bitcoin in kind Redemptions, which is pretty big news too. Shouldn't get swept under the rug. We should talk about that as well 'cause we covered the BlackRock filing many months ago and that was a big part of it, that you could take it in kind. Now that seems to be completely different. Yeah, I I didn't even catch that, that that has definitely flown under the radar. That is huge news in terms, particularly in terms of like ETF investors getting access to Bitcoin itself rather than, you know, a a derivative product that isn't actually Bitcoin and has always more than fun. I think. Well, they are buying Bitcoin. I think it's the mechanism as how they're purchasing it in the open market. It's not necessarily like there's a we put it in one of the chats when Marty first shared that shows some of the like diagrams on like the proposed format. So it it definitely is Bitcoin being purchased and stored. It's just the process I think is a little bit non traditional than what was initially like thought. Yeah. But I don't think end customers could take it in kind anymore. Yeah, well, that was always going to be the case. Well, it was authorized. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, the well the the documents. The documents made it sound like end users would be able to take Bitcoin. But it was always going to be the authorized participants, which were a a separate set of like whitelisted broker dealer firms who had permission from BlackRock to do in kind redemptions in large batches. And so there are a lot of little stipulations there that were hidden, but. You know in theory the end user would be able to take in kind redemptions. But now if you're taking dollars, then you always have a taxable event. Because if you're holding Bitcoin but you have to take out dollars you you are guaranteed A taxable event when you withdraw. But in the previous world you know if you were a large enough player you could withdraw your Bitcoin without a taxable event. In theory, now, that wouldn't be the case. Yeah, they put the nail in the coffin. There was hope. That this form of paper Bitcoin would not be Roach, motel, Bitcoin or never ever kill coins shall coins exit. That's the phrase you had for GBTC for the last few years and it has proven extremely true. And now there's going to be a new and upgraded version of Roach Motel. I wonder, I'm I'm generally curious if that's a big surprise like from. Folks that have been listening to this or even this group because I I thought we had talked about it when it first came out. I remember from somebody pretty senior at one of the big banks referring to me why? Like independent of any game theory or economic incentive for Grayscale to hold all the Bitcoin from a pure logistical perspective, in KYCML it was impossible because of the intermediaries in the middle to deliver from like an O FAC compliant and somebody wanted to take their delivery of the asset and sending that Bitcoin transaction. I heard that about a year ago and it always stuck with me because if you think about like, imagine BlackRock by way of Coinbase, by way of any but intermediary you purchase, sending the Bitcoin to a address that you hold. It sounds literally impossible. Like at the stat, the current state we're at maybe three years from now from these incumbents, they'll be able to do it. But like, I I would bet AI would have bet a year ago, six months ago. And I guess we just found out last week that that will never happen because it just doesn't seem logistically possible. Yeah, I I guess, I I guess I always assumed that like if you were a big enough player that and a big enough client of BlackRock in particular, that they would make it possible for you. But now not. I mean like I don't even know who who that would really mean. Is that like CalPERS, that, like if CalPERS five years from now wanted to withdraw their Bitcoin, they would be able to wrangle that, you know, allotment from directly from? BlackRock, but now you know tax will invent instead. And directionally, I, I can't even imagine it'd be part of the process to not even approve it until that was in place, right? I think you're correct, Michael and headbutt. Well, that's, I mean that's the funny part about regulations. You think we're thinking long term here? And comparing this paper Bitcoin product to other products thesis is that we transition to a Bitcoin standard. People are going to want to use their Bitcoin. That's why we don't recommend you get into the ETF in the 1st place. Because before this news broke, we said even though there is technically an in kind redemption clause in this filing, it's unlikely that you'll ever actually get the Bitcoin delivered. Now it's abundantly clear that's. Technically going to be impossible via this vehicle, but you'd think they would fight for that in kind redemption clause just to give people hope that they could do it in the future. Now I actually think this product is way less competitive with offerings like on Ramps Trust or just pure spot Bitcoin via multi institution custody product. Yeah, I think it's a great point that like how quick they were to concede one of the most important properties. Of of the offering that they were trying to put in place. I mean that really undercuts the the like you're only going to go into BlackRock because it's more convenient than the alternatives that would give you exposure to spot Bitcoin without a taxable event and but now you know if if you're guaranteed A taxable event versus. You know, how much is that convenience of being in BlackRock really worth to you if you're investing in Bitcoin in the 1st place? Like you're investing in Bitcoin because you believe in the asymmetric upside of this thing, and so you're investing with the expectation that you'll have a large taxable event in the future in the best scenario. So. So why? Why put yourself into that vehicle versus pursuing spot, spot, Bitcoin or? And in particular an an easier vehicle, a private placement trust like on RAMP Bitcoin trust that allows for in kind redemptions without a taxable event. Yeah, and yet. It just shows how Marty, as you like to say and have been saying for years since I've heard you on TFTC, the first time we are so early. Yep. We're so early that still. Most of the people out there who will buy this ETF or frankly, who will buy any form of actual Bitcoin or paper Bitcoin or derivative Bitcoin, yeah, they still are unaware of the subtleties of these points. I guess in their defence, you know, we all forget after a while how it took a little bit of time for us to understand these these differences and. Education is it always takes longer than we think it will. This is why Bitcoin educators will have plenty of work to do yet for a good number of years here. And yeah, people just still don't know we're still so early. 100%, yeah. And this? Just highlights this insanity of the regulatory landscape too, because you think mechanically. It's just use BlackRock as an example. You buy shares in the BlackRock ETF that gets you exposure to X amount of Bitcoin, sits in the fun and one day you want to sell those shares and take the Bitcoin in kind like BlackRock has the KYC, AM L those customers, maybe they have a preferred partner. It's like alright, we're gonna redeem this in kind with Fidelity. Now to get your Bitcoin, you have to go to Fidelity, go through their KYC process, then give them a Bitcoin address to receive from. Like it seems pretty simple, straightforward. At least to me, like how they would mechanically do the in kind redemptions. Maybe I'm maybe I'm too too much of A simpleton and missing a lot of intricacies, but it seems like it could create a pretty simple process here if you actually tried. Yeah, one. One theory I've heard is this is partially why they went with Coinbase from somebody like pretty deep in the space is why they went with Coinbase if they ever need to offer that because Coinbase obviously has the wallet architecture and it's going to be already in the same like edge count. I think they have that call option to do it, but without doing it up front because they obviously wanted to sit within the fund. The thing Andy references like. The scary part is it just feels this is like we're being around the space and Marty probably knows best, like pattern recognition of the cycles. It's like. I feel like this same thing that was being discussed was about Black Block Fi's lending product and people telling not to go into it because of all the things that people knew about the asset and re lending and no bailouts and all things we've talked about that there's another topic. Oh, it's a quick it's crazy how quick we forget like last year a bunch of centralized exchanges blew up and I'm guilty of it. I feel like it just it's like it was 10 years ago that you know, we lost like half the market if not more. And I don't think people coming into this next wave or even going to remember or think about it, it's just going to be, I mean some will, obviously we're talking to some of them, but I think it's going to get swept under the rug again. And we're just going to be back to square one with, you know, centralized exchanges holding a large portion of net new clients or net new Bitcoin holders coming in. Say it ain't so. I hope you're wrong, but I think you're right. Yeah, that, that. That's just the cycle, right? Like everybody learns the hard way about Bitcoin and it just, it takes everybody burning their hands on on all of the things that Bitcoin has designed to save you from first and foremost, centralization. Everybody gets screwed by some sort of mistake there. Copies of digital scarcity. You know, altcoins. Everybody makes the mistake of diversifying and and only then once you've seen your Bitcoin holdings shrink, do you then realize, oh, this is the one thing that I want to be holding. So let's just hold that and and actually use the properties of the asset, which are why I want to hold it and why everyone wants to hold that particular asset. And that doesn't mean putting it on block fi or even leaving it with BlackRock or GBTC. You got to, you got to hold it on chain. Self custody is great if you're up for it. Multi institution custody if if self custody is not yet for you or doesn't suit your circumstances. But yeah, you know. Everyone goes through the adoption curve on their own way of like of starting from total novice to eventually incorporating Bitcoin into their portfolio as like the the base the the foundation of their portfolio or at least that's been you know my experience and what I've seen everybody else go through. You get far enough down the. Educational journey and it becomes your unit of account. But that journey requires, you know, going through all these different phases of education before you can eventually get to the other side and and, you know, reach that plateau of of treating Bitcoin as your unit of account rather than some speculative asset, which is how it starts. You know, the beginning of that journey is always some speculative asset that you'll add to your portfolio because it might juice performance a little bit and you might as well sit in GBTC if that's all you think. But you know most of the world is is. Most of the world still thinks Bitcoin is is Monopoly money. But the few people who are interested in Bitcoin, the vast majority of them see it as some sort of risk on asymmetric bet. And have yet to learn about Bitcoin as a savings technology or even the digital gold hypothesis or or you know investment case. And so everybody, everybody is it's it's not even it's earlier than than we even think because you can count up all the people who are interested in Bitcoin, all the people who come to Bitcoin conferences even. And the reality is, most of them don't understand Bitcoin as as a savings vehicle. And so that means that even the people who are interested in Bitcoin are still not yet at the place where they've incorporated Bitcoin into their portfolio, to the extent that they eventually will. And we're that much earlier to Bitcoin than people even realize. We're so early, they launched an XRPETF and we believed it for half a day. Brilliant. And for people who didn't hear that one BlackRock. Has now issued notice that it is planning to launch a Bitcoin ETF, but then also an an Ethereum ETF and some scammer out there. Some opportunist created an A XRPA Ripple altcoin copy of the same sort of filing notice and plastered it all over the Internet. And people you know fell for it hook, line and sinker for. For about an hour. Price pumped, then dumped. Price pumped, I think it was like 17% in in the space of like 15 minutes. So whoever you know, whatever I I guess what does that fall under Andy, that that's that's not it's manipulation I guess just. Price manipulation? Sure. Price manipulation. And I'm sure the SEC would love to get their hands on whoever that was. But you know the the anonymity of global crypto markets? Who knows? So I'm going to look at. Both of the last two topics. So first of all, in terms of, you know, having to go through each of our personal journeys to understand Bitcoin, I've become a total Bitcoin ageist. And what I mean is, you know. Any time someone wants to talk about Bitcoin, I just, I I interrupt those and ask them, of course, you know what, in what year did you buy your first Bitcoin? And that informs the whole rest of the conversation? Because, yeah, because if you haven't been through at least a couple of cycles, you just don't have the, the muscle memory, you know, the lived experience of the of how it's how things have gone down. And then Speaking of Ripple. So my Barber, the guy who cuts my hair, big XRP guy, and he he always wants to talk, wants to talk crypto with me and I I I exercise my patience. Last time I went in for a haircut, though, he says. Oh, you got to meet this guy who you know is I think is does deliveries from the from the restaurant next door, and the guy comes in while, you know, we're halfway through the haircut. And he just out of the blue, just starts pitching me some random crypto. Right. And I just, I just interrupt and I just probably say, OK, what what year did you first buy Bitcoin? It says, OK, 2021. And I'm like, I appreciate that you're excited about this thing. You know, I'm not interested in the pitch. Thank you very much. And of course he's, you know, he's a zealot. He's, he's going, oh, no, no, You don't understand the the huge opportunity that's coming with this thing. I just said no. So I'm sorry, Sir. You don't understand. I'm sure someday you will. I look forward to talking with you about it. Then. I'm here to get my haircut. Have a nice day. It's brutal. It's just brutal cause I've been in, I've been in his shoes in a different, you know, different life, a different version of it, a little bit less aggressive version of it, but you genuinely believe when you're when you're an altcoin or you genuinely think you're on to something because you just don't understand yet. And I've been in his shoes, I guess. You know, you just you just can't. Yeah. Yeah, Andy, we've been there. Well, never in a barbershop pitching. But you don't. Want to pitch? In offices. I've had, I've had the barbershop pitch, I've actually had the barbershop, the Barber, Ripple Ripple shill before and it's hard to tell somebody with scissors right by your ear that they've put their money in something. Something terrible that did she get away from. You want to tell your Barber to have fun staying poor when he's when he's cutting cutting the hair around your ears. Oh man, is that why you always wear earphones, Marty, 'cause you lost one of your ears to your Barber? Yeah, you just don't want. To show it the shit, Quinn Barber got me. You set him on the right path, though eventually waited till after paid had the conversation. Hey, maybe you shouldn't be holding on to Ripple. It's it's hard I I've actually I've stopped. Talking about it with my friends at all, like I I don't think that, you know, I've I've pitched for a handful of years Bitcoin through, you know, all phases of of the market and I don't think I will pitch it to any of my friends for this next bull market. I people have either listened or or they'll you know figure it out a different way. I was thinking about that more of like pitches. I was thinking about something Marty was talking he he referenced he was chatting with some folks and explaining Bitcoin versus other stuff. And I started like thinking back to those conversations I've had and then also previously and it it's there's a common thread that nobody ever picks it up unless unless they're interested. Like if they come to you and and say, hey, take like explain to me what's happening here, you generally have a good chance. But if you're going in trying to explain it, it's basically batting 0 because it just doesn't. They have to have some interest or curiosity or it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, you just end up cell phoning yourself looking like Charlie Day. And it's always sunny during the Pepe study episode. Like, trust me, yeah. It's so true. Definitely that guy. Had the same condo with a financial advisor prospect earlier today for on ramp and he he was talking about you know how he's trying to get his parents on how do you do it Andy? How do you get people into Bitcoin? And I go, I used to try and now I don't try anymore. I I accept inbound questions and I do my best. And I refer people to educational materials, some of which I have created, some of which you gentlemen on this call have created and. That's all you can do. I think that's a big part in the the Bitcoin only though. I think like we're chatting with another one. We can talk maybe later in the pod with the NRA firm. He's like, I don't know what's you know up from down and all this. I was like look what will happily educate you. But it's only Bitcoin and we can explain why and why that'll help your net clients in coming in. And I think ideally we can just start there and then you don't have to go through the pain and trying to. You're right. It's whatever the term is. It's always harder to refute BS than to than to like spout it. And so it's if we can just get ahead of like the education at the first touch point of like, this is the thing, don't go any other way. If you do, it's on you. I think you'd probably make everything a lot. Smoother. Yeah, I believe that's Brandolini's law. BS is 100 X harder to refute than it is to put out in the world. Good one, no? But this provides especially when, especially when somebody's bags are tied to it. Right, once you got a heavy a heavy load of XRP, you're done. 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. This provides a good segue to jump into Andy. Your back story recently joined on RAMP. You've been having these conversations with Rias wealth managers for years now, and I guess that's how we can approach like your history in the traditional wealth management space, why you came to Bitcoin, what your experience has been like in. For where the disconnect lies on both ends, like bitcoiners trying to pitch to wealth managers and then wealth managers trying to understand Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, by the way, Andy, welcome to on Ramp. We're excited to have you pretty awesome development in the last few weeks for for folks who don't have their ear to Bitcoin Twitter at all times we we. So Andy, I guess as part of your story there, make sure to incorporate that you know recent developments. Absolutely. Well, I'm super stoked to be here with this elite team, which is small but growing and OK, so yeah, my my finance and Bitcoin story. So first decade for me was Tradfi working on the dark side Goldman Sachs investment banking private equity fund that spun out of The Carlyle Group. And then the multi billion dollar hedge fund that was bought by, you guessed it, BlackRock. So that was first decade for me, second decade. I decided to join the family business that's a firm called Westcap Group, which does financial advisory and wealth management. And so that's been a fun journey for multiple reasons. Great working with family, you know, great. You know, sort of being my own, effectively my own boss. Working with actual people instead of faceless institutions. All of the above growing obviously, and some lifestyle benefits as well. So I found you know I was a three exposure guy on Bitcoin like many people are third exposure. Well first was an article only Economist 2013. I didn't get it all. Second exposure I think was 2016 was the Ethereum hard forks on article didn't get it at all. Third exposure had a very small a very smart friend who now is very senior in AI at Facebook. And he had a friend who he introduced me to who was raising a fund, a crypto fund of all things. And so that's how I started to fall down the rabbit hole, bought my first Bitcoin the day after the B Cash hard fork. Not because I was waiting for the fork to see what would happen, but because I was just trying, trying desperately to fund my Coinbase account. And that was when the when the money cleared or the first of the money cleared, so you know, did all coin stuff. For about a year, and then in the beginning of 2019, at the bottom or the local bottom was 3K Bitcoin started writing a book called Buy Buy Bitcoin, and that was partly to test my own thesis on Bitcoin like, Oh my God, I I bought at a pretty decent price. Price went up a lot, then crashed. Now I'm actually underwater on my purchase. What's going on here? You know, am I wrong or or does this thing actually have legs? So I published that book in 20 in September 2019. I actually met Corey Clipston of Swan I think the next month. I sent him a copy and he and I sat down and it was it was Lovett's first sight, so to speak. I immediately recognized Corey was multi talented. Brilliant. Ambitious and had a vision and so I decided to write a check into the seed round at Swan and you know was an advisor there and then was in a position to was he asked me to join the board. This was in 2021 and we had a departure. I was still working full time in my financial advisory practice and just, you know, really very, very part time advising Swan. And our the guy that he had hired, Corey had hired to launch Swan Advisor services departed. And so I talked with Corey about, you know, hey, we need to get this thing off the ground, I guess I'm the guy to do it And he said, yeah, I guess you are So spent about 10 months from zero to version one of that product, launched it into the marketplace and yeah, you know got got good traction. Of course, then the year 2020, well, late 2021 to 2022. I hope I'm getting my timing right, but let's just say a lot of a lot of things happened and and yeah, so anyway, so I ended up departing Swan a number of months ago and honestly, I'd always wanted to work with Jesse. Jesse is one of my closest friends in Bitcoin. I saw that that the team that had already been assembled, you know whether it was Kevin, where it was, you know Marty and Michael obviously on this call here, whether it was Cam, they're, you know, it's too long to list to to name everyone including our great advisor Bill, you know David, David Thayer, I was just keen. To to be working in Bitcoin again and specifically I was keen on this team and multi institution custody. I mean the events of the last couple of years just shone a spotlight on on the fact that any single custodian is a risk and it's especially it's a risk for individuals, you know, who should self custody anyway. But it's especially a risk for anyone managing money on behalf of somebody else because most of those folks are fiduciaries and they have duties of care that they have to observe. And in a world in which multiple single custodians have failed, they need a a better solution. So I think the time is now in two respects, one for multi institution. Custody, given what's already happened in the space and #2 financial advisors finally being ready I think to move in mass, that's partly because of the ETF like we talked about before. But yeah, facts and circumstances are aligning for a huge opportunity ahead for the financial advisory space for on RAMP in particular, which has multiple products not just for financial advisors. And I couldn't be more excited about doing my small part to help build the platform. Yeah. And for for context for numbers, I was just looking at the most recent. So there's $110 trillion managed by RA as recently as 20/20 as the numbers were reported. And so you think about like to Andy's point, they've been hesitant for a number of reasons. I think 80% of that wealth that's been like crypto related. So somebody that's been managing their wealth with the financial advisor, 80% of it sits outside of the purview from the the billing or the visibility for a number of reasons. And you can speak to them. But the main point here is like directionally build the right product solutions and also the timing. I think we're all aligned that there. There couldn't be a better time to get out in the market and educate advisors and give them the right resources so they can educate the end client on all the things we talk about here about preserving wealth and doing it the right way. So we're we're definitely as excited as Andy is and I think there's a huge opportunity ahead of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andy, thrilled to have you. And. It it is interesting hearing how your evolution, your journey has has had learnings even even after you arrived at Bitcoin and you know have have been a bitcoiner for some time. But you know, custody has become a a a fresh topic of of of interest for everyone involved in Bitcoin and. You know that as you say shines a light on the possibilities of of multi institution custody specifically. And I really think that we are like we are entering a new era of Bitcoin custody that is going to be all about multi institution custody because it is a superior way to custody assets than any other version that exists in the traditional asset landscape. It it's brand new to the world. And it's a very exciting time and and new wave to be riding as because of that. And you know I think it just sort of speaks to how everyone in Bitcoin is still learning. All of us on on on this podcast are are very much still learning about Bitcoin. I learned, I learned something new about Bitcoin every week. And, you know, I think sometimes people are a little bit surprised that, like, I'm on Twitter. Completely ignorant about aspects of Bitcoin, especially recently I I stumbled into a gaff of of believing that that transaction fees are the same for different types of Bitcoin transactions, but but they're different for for, you know, there's a different block space demand for different types of Bitcoin transactions based on how many. UTXOS are going into it and how and if it's multi multi sig or not. And you know that was a learning moment that I had this week just because I don't spend that much time interacting with the with that side of Bitcoin, the the really technical, you know on chain side of Bitcoin or the mining side of Bitcoin for that matter. But you know, as bitcoiners, we're all learning and. And that includes learning about custody, you know, even for for us finance professionals, Andy, you, me who think we know a thing or two about custody and custodying assets. But then Bitcoin shows a way for this digitization of value to create a superior form of custody than has ever existed in the traditional asset landscape. It's just a very exciting time, Andy. Are you cooking a Thanksgiving Turkey or what's? What's going on with that? So here's the honest answer. I actually thought this this zoom was supposed to happen an hour later. My mistake. And I had I had just laid down to shut my ass to take a nap, basically. And it's I was going to snooze for 45 minutes and that was my alarm to to wake me up me up in advance of 1:30 PM, which, oops, was an hour late if it wasn't. If it wasn't Thanksgiving week, I would have called out. It was just a funny can go on. Oh man. Well, you know, I might be a little shorter on sleep than I have been. Perhaps in the last couple weeks. Maybe on the count of things, on all the work, all the work getting up to speed here at on ramp. Yeah, Once again, yeah, it's definitely a good reason. What one thing I don't know if I shared with the the team here that I'm insanely excited about and this goes back to Jesse, the stuff he does know or he does very well is the content being produced. Because I think as we're learning from folks that we've known in the industry that even if you do go and win the quote UN quote logo at an RA and you go partner because they actually want to look at digital assets and get their clients exposure, that's actually in my understanding it's very hard. But that's almost the easy part in the equation. The real hard part is getting the advisors ultimately that are are part of the RAA or part of the wealth management team educated on the assets or assets or asset or assets if it's crypto or Bitcoin only. And like having some kind of fundamental thesis on why they're taken to their client and then ultimately having the materials to take to the end client to look at the asset and look at it from a portfolio allocation and what are all the attributes and how do you want to think about it from a from a time scale. And where I think our team that's assembled and being assembled along with the content is uniquely positioned for that. Because it's one thing to go again when the the logo quote UN quote and work with the wealth management team, but the other thing to empower them with the right resources, education, the terminals, a component of it to really provide that in client. One, it's only Bitcoin. But then two, here's all the information to really look at it from different perspectives that we all know. There's no silver bullet in the space. It's really putting it all together. And so I'm really excited about that because I don't know if it's really been done well yet. I think Fidelity's probably the closest and they're really picking up steam, but I think that's personally like something I'm really excited about. Absolutely. One of the one of the truisms of the space that was true years ago and it's still true today, is education, education, education, I mean. It's it's the topic is so multifaceted, so complex, so difficult for people to understand, you know, plus just the basic cost of admission in terms of doing, doing the work. I mean there it's like anything, it's like any learned set of knowledge. It's yes, if you have someone pushing great content at you. Just like having a great teacher in school, you know, much reduces the difficulty of absorbing the information, that's super important. Just as of course is, you know, effort, expenditure and engagement on the part of the learner. And so somewhere in the middle of those two things is where learning and understanding Bitcoin occurs. And yeah, it's got to, it's got to happen on both ends. And fortunately, fortunately now fortunately we've been watching Marty for, I'm listening to Marty for long enough that we all have some sense for things that work and things that don't work in the in the educational area. And so yes, we, we have a very solid team that's been educating people and talking with people about Bitcoin. For a very long time, and I think that's a huge leg of the stool for the success of on ramp. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. There were, there was many educators before me as well. But no, that's, I mean, I've been doing this podcasting, writing newsletters for 6 1/2 years now, which is hard to imagine, hard to believe an old veteran now, but that's the one thing that makes me most bullish over the course of that six years is the sea. The amount of content creation and people can besmirch the the industry of content creation, but it does have a lot of value And that's one thing that is really bullish over the last 5-6 years particularly is that there's been a ton of high value content creators that really understand Bitcoin and more importantly how to articulate it to different audiences. Because my flavour of delivering the message is much different than Andy or Jesse or. Peter Mccormick's or other people in the world and people really resonate with particular ways of portraying a message, which is important. So we've had many different types of educators come to the market over the last five years portraying the message in a very particular way that resonates with particular types of people, which is really good. It's just going to help speed things up as we move forward. Yeah, I I think that's that's like a it's a big part of how this all goes is every year, every cycle, really the barrier to understanding Bitcoin drops because the events in the world help help make the Bitcoin value proposition a little clearer. But I think bigger than that is the quality of educational resources. And and the number of educational resources keeps growing and you know we're all collectively homing in on on you know the core message at least to people like us. You know I I think I've improved as a as a Bitcoin educator. I'm sure Marty and Andy feel that they get to the to to the nut of it a little bit faster or. With greater ease and and brush aside all the noise more effectively when communicating the value proposition of Bitcoin. And we're all doing that as an industry where we're doing that as an asset class. It's becoming clearer and clearer what this thing is and that only continues. It's kind of hard to imagine Bitcoin education getting better and simpler. But it it will, it has and it will continue. And that will reach so many more people. And you know, all the all the people that glaze their glaze over when you talk about Bitcoin. Eventually the the message will become so simplified and so clear that that will get through to them and that glazed overlook will be instead the epiphany look of of realization. Yeah. And that's my hope. That's my hope guys. It's working. It's gonna keep. Trucking one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time. Slowly but surely, more and more people will come. The waves get bigger. People will stay get larger. The amount of people who stay get larger. Yeah. And and the people who take take the risk are rewarded. And then they, you know, a cycle later. They're they're the people that other people listen to. You know, like like I, I was talking to a a wealth manager earlier this week who has his clients, small group of his clients, a pretty heavy allocation to Bitcoin in particular because he wants that before the halving. So he's either going to be proven very right and, you know a lot more clients are going to want his advice, or we're all wrong. This is going to be one of the other and and the halving is coming along to to mechanically show us who is right and who is wrong. Yeah, that's it. I was the the one of the conversations I was having earlier in the day today with the financial advisor was on that topic. His perspective, he was talking to his business partner, his senior partner really into whose shoes he may step, you know when that person retires. And the conversation was, you know something along the lines of his partner saying, you know, look I understand you want to put this in the portfolio, you know, so that your clients portfolios perform well given the facts and circumstances and likely we're in a bull market and the halving and the ETF and all the positive catalysts and he corrected his partner saying no, I don't think you understand. Yes, this is for the benefits of the of the clients, but it's also a defensive self preservation move for our business as an advisory firm. Because if we miss this opportunity after it's been, I don't want to say this obvious, but it's been apparent for a long time what value this asset Bitcoin offers. You know we're going to. We're going to be in a tough spot if we, if we miss this opportunity essentially a second time around, a second cycle around, you know, it was, it really wasn't on the radar 2 cycles ago, but last cycle it certainly was. And yeah, we're we're finally getting to the point where really honestly, fiduciaries are probably negligent. They're certainly negligent if they haven't done their research and understood Bitcoin, you know. Advisors have every right to do their proper due diligence and the research and reach the conclusion that Bitcoin isn't appropriate for their clients for whatever reason. That would be a surprising conclusion, but in theory they could. But yeah, at minimum they need to be educating themselves doing the work, and I'm pretty confident that those that do the work. Are going to end up accumulating, buying and accumulating on behalf of their clients. Andy, can we like expand on that like game out, How do you see this at least next cycle playing out? Because I know like the last cycle there was a lot of Ras kind of getting set up and then FTX happened and they basically all hands off and like, all right, we're not touching any of this. But like do you see price appreciation and then wanting to get in because they're looking at raising, you know, fees and assets under management? Or is it, you know, kind of bottoms up from the end client being like you need to hold this thing or I'm going somewhere else effectively, like what takes it away from being radioactive? Because that's where I feel like that's the part of the market that's most radioactive where you don't know. I was just chatting with one again before this call and he was like, I don't want to keep you up to the to the recording. I was like, no, no, it's perfect because this is getting me set like to go and in that term radioactive came up because I didn't know how to position it with him because it's the one persona that can be like we're never touching that. That's insane And he loved that like term. So I'm just curious like how do we get past that or is it just going to be multiple cycles before we we kind of or is it a graduate suddenly type thing? Yeah. Now Michael, I I love that question and it's obviously key key to the development of the business and the industry. And look I was, I'll be the first to say I was wrong. I thought last cycle we were ready. That's right. I went and and I built a product in anticipation of lots of demand from financial advisors on behalf of their clients and yeah, then. Then FTX blew up and and three AC before that, you know Doquan and all the shenanigans. So I thought that cycle was a cycle. I'm even more confident this time around though, because not least because the four year cycle has maintained, not least because SPF just got convicted on all counts in dramatic fashion, so that. I think period is hopefully behind us. Yeah. I think the facts and circumstances we already talked about with finance losing market share with Coinbase, you know, at one-on-one side being sued by the SEC, but on the other side, you know being offered the potential carrot of getting all this custody business from the ETF. ETFs, plural. So anyway, but how will it go? For sure there's bottom up demand. I mean, how many times does Bitcoin have to not die and come back from the dead for clients to pay attention and demand either to own it or to understand it, or you know, to have it included by financial advisors in their portfolios. That's for sure a big part of the situation. Another part of it is, yeah, the more and better educational resources, it's easier for financial advisors to get up to speed. A major part for for FA is yeah, is being able to bill and collect fees on this stuff. Obviously they'll be able to do that with the ETF and a Schwab account, but that being paper Bitcoin is a with a single custodian is a poor substitute for actual Bitcoin with multi multi institution. Multi SIG custody. So yeah, I think that I think that all of these, I think of all of these factors as being significant and just you know just pure size. I mean if this bull run turns out the way I think it will, the way probably all of you in the room here think it will, I mean that puts Bitcoin on the map as a multi trillion dollar asset class. That's pretty hard to ignore. It's at that level. It is the perfect combination of too big to ignore, but also still tiny in the grand scheme of global assets of hundreds of trillions of dollars. You know, close to a quadrillion dollars in global assets, you know, a few trillion is is still peanuts. Doesn't move the needle so. It's, yeah, it's it's all of the above, the market maturing. Who knows, maybe maybe we get more sovereigns involved in this cycle. Clearly we're going to get institutional money and clearly we're going to have just more average investors, average people that want to save their money in something that is limited supply, not something that the government can keep praying more of. Yeah, I I've like. A scale that on one side keeps having pebbles added to it. And you know at some point there's a tipping point, right? And Andy, you mentioned you said a word earlier, you said the word negligent and that I found that very interesting. At what point do you think it becomes negligent for wealth managers, financial advisors to not be? Getting educated themselves or talking about the possibility of a Bitcoin allocation with their clients. Yeah, so I went public on that score I think a couple years ago. I can't remember the exact time frame, so my feeling is that we're already there now. The counter argument would be well, OK, but since then there have been failed custodians. You know, there have been ruggings. There have been, there has been some ongoing regulatory uncertainty. Some would argue, although really if you do the work on Bitcoin, you see that Bitcoin is basically a regulatory Teflon. So I think, I think someone who would argue, no, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't negligence several years ago for those, you know, would highlight those reasons. But yeah, I think that with custody solved, I think that with Bitcoin's price correlation to stocks and other risk assets, you know, reversing back towards 0 like it used to be, you know, it was it was an uncorrelated asset and then it was correlated for a while and then uncorrelated and then correlated again and now it's uncorrelated again. So over the long run, uncorrelated, yet there have been periods of time when the correlation has been higher with other risk assets. I think that factor helps. And yeah, I think that I think that getting some of these prosecutions and legal issues behind the industry are all supporting facts, argue in favour of it being negligent not to at least do one's due diligence and research on Bitcoin and arguably to to own it in in all client accounts. Certainly I've felt that it's negligent to not own Bitcoin for my clients. And I have, you know, felt that way and and executed on that feeling for several years now. I I think it's romantic when we talk about the negligence or like treasuries need to hold. I think what ultimately happens is the game theory just plays out as it's supposed to where like to going gaming out. If a client's hold 1 to 2% right now, if we're seeing 80% hold them off platform and it's 1 to 2%. And based on what Andy referenced, we did A5 or 10X well that now that's 10% potentially of the client's portfolio. And at 1 to 2%, I think like when I referenced, I'm, I'm working through this as Andy was saying, it's like we said radioactive. And while it's radioactive, it's kind of like radioactive because those those people are the loudest. And so it's probably less radioactive for that segment of the market. It's more of mutual, but it's mutual to maybe negative. But because it's only 1 to 2%, it's like, well, what's the upside in going and investing in infrastructure resources for it because. It's only 1 to 2% and I don't mind it being off platform if I just get it out of my way and I don't even want to bill on it. But then if it goes to 10X, if again staying still, there's no more demand from clients like capital outside of the account or net new clients. Now it's like, well I'm missing out on 10% and on a book if somebody managing you know a couple 100 million. That becomes a material from what you're paying. So I think like does that make sense Andy on that could be another driving force is just basically the clients a balance. It gets so, so high relative to their overall overarching portfolio that they're like, hey, bring this in house, we have a solution for it and we can now Bill. Yeah, absolutely Michael. I mean imagine yeah the client who has substantial portion of their overall assets in Bitcoin and their financial advisors. It's still pretending like it doesn't exist. You know like can't can't talk about it can't acknowledge its existence like Bitcoin. What that's like what is that like the word Voldemort. Like it can't, can't be uttered Word that cannot be uttered. I mean it's it's it's it becomes ridiculous as you say when the numbers start to become material for the client. The other thing I'll add too that comes to mind is narratives and and FUD. You know, I think it was almost two years ago I published an article on Bitcoin Magazine and the title was something like Bitcoin is the most ESG friendly investment in my client's portfolios. And people at the time thought that was nuts. I mean that was sort of peak peak blowback in terms of, you know, energy usage and and the environmental narrative, Marty. I know that's near and dear to your heart. And I've actually been surprised at how quickly and thoroughly that has reversed. I used to get questions and comments from multiple clients, the moaning basically energy usage of Bitcoin as well as you know, criminality in Bitcoin and obviously that's just been factually erroneous for years now. But I have been surprised and pleased at how quickly the narrative has shifted to the OR in the correct direction, which is, which is the opposite of where we were in terms of the the narratives and the FUD just a year, year and a half ago. Yeah, it it, it's such an exciting story, you know, like Marty, I know that you disagree with with all things ESG, but. And like I'm I'm I'm thrilled to see you know the positive spin of of Bitcoin as like a as a as a good ESG quote UN quote good ESG until they. Rug you, Jesse, until they rug you. So we're. Going to rug ourselves. Yeah, well, you know, like, like, I love, I love hearing the arguments about like, methane capture. Like there's no other use case that really it really makes sense to try to do methane capture for and make it economic. But here's Bitcoin to like plug into your landfill and capture methane. If, if that's what everybody is worried about, here's Bitcoin it it just, it plugs in to satisfy just panacea for for environmental concerns And you know, whether or not we should be focused on that at all. Different story, but like, I just love that, that there's an exciting narrative that people can can focus on with regard to some of these hot topics that that people care about. I agree with that. But only up to a certain extent. We discussed it last week. The the one thing I worry with the Bitcoin mining industry catering to ESG is the particular line of thinking that we're gonna incentivize the build out of wind and solar. And as we discussed last week with the 1st 20 years, 22 years of this century and what Germany did to more than double the capacity of energy generation, but actually reduce actual generation over that decade while doubling prices. And decommissioning nuclear, coal and natural gas plants, Like, that's the one thing I worry about is if you cater too hard to the ESG and you go along with it, like, yeah, we'll build all your wind and solar. That, number one, is not going to be economically viable in the long run because those things are heavily subsidized. And if Bitcoin's successful, the subsidies go away and your mining operation becomes unprofitable overnight. And then number two, more broadly speaking, it's just not good for the grids. I don't want to. Dive too deep into this and right under ESG parade, Jesse. But that's but. But I I think it's an important it. It is an important frame because this reminds me of this is a little controversial but Malay, if that's his name the the president he went viral with a pretty crazy 2 minutes but he references you don't negotiate with these people. The reason why you don't is because of the concept Easy, easy choices, Hard life, Hard choices, Easy life or easy conversations. Hard life, hard conversations, easy life. It's like if you get ahead of it and you frame, it's supposed to waste or not waste, it's supposed to use lots of energy and that's good. And then you break it down, then you back into OK, well maybe it's harder up front, but then you set yourself up for success further down versus the the catering or whatever reference. So anyway, that's just more of like the positioning that it can be. It's similar with the Black Rock stuff. It's like, Oh yeah, it's great price pumps until everyone gets rugged and they're like, oh shit, we should have had the hard conversations. Yeah. And speaking with, I mean we're talking about somewhat internal bullish catalysts, whether it's education, the ETF imminent approval, finance getting pushed to the sidelines, the the thrift, the grift, excuse me leaving the industry, but externally too, I wrote about this in the newsletter last night, like the geopolitical situation is really. Setting the stage for a Bitcoin pump because things at the international foreign exchange level are really beginning to to get frothy. You had Saudi Arabia, their, their Minister of Foreign Affairs basically come out last week and we're going to go on a tour to try to push for de escalation between. Gaza and Israel and explicitly mentioned that they're gonna go to China first, saying, hey, China in our mind is the most important geopolitical partner that we want to convince for this particular issue, which is a big signal it's not the US that they're gonna go to #2. Right off the heels of that announcement, China and Saudi Arabia announced that they're opening up a currency swap line of $7 billion over the next two years and that they're going to. Begin settling trades outside of oil. Between the two countries and their native currencies, $7 billion is a drop in the bucket if we're speaking about global assets and global markets. However, it is a step in a direction away from US hegemony and Saudi Arabia really leaning on US. And then on top of that, rumors are beginning to spread that China is underwriting loans in Latin America. In Africa, particularly for raw materials, energy resources and they're giving these countries dollars up front, but on the back end they want to be paid out and yuan. And so at the international level you can see the the steps away from the US dollar reserve system for the world beginning to to materialize in the. The drum beat of Saudi Arabia joining BRICS countries gets louder and louder, which is just gonna be incredibly chaotic for global currency markets. And as we've said before, we should expect this to continue this trend to continue. I would argue that it's the wrong solution. I don't think Saudi Arabia, China, India, the BRICS countries are gonna be able to create a formidable Fiat currency that is better than the dollar or. Better than more importantly, better than Bitcoin. Like I think the solution to this is the apolitical monetary rails which which is the Bitcoin network. But there will be a period where due to the geopolitical pissing match that the the world powers find themselves in, the group will try to defect from the US, create their own currency that will inevitably fail, and then people will realize how Bitcoin was the answer the whole time. And that's a massive tailwind for Bitcoin adoption over the next decade. That's it. I couldn't couldn't have said it better myself. I really like the way it's playing out to, which is probably all of us at one point thought that hyper bitcoinization was happening right now, right now being some point in the last however many years, and at the same time that the dollar will lose market share to Chinese Yuan or other countries, it's still so dominant that it's likely to take a very long time. And this gives more time for companies like us to build on Bitcoin and also for the protocol itself to continue to harden. And so yeah, I am simultaneously bearish on the dollar in the very long run. And yet not that bearish. You know in the in the short and medium run I think the dollar probably has a lot of legs left. I think that as maybe you were implying Marty, you know in in a in a world that's become more multi polar, people want different options and if you want different options maybe one of those options should be Bitcoin. But oh by the way you're probably not going to dump the dollar anytime soon. Oh, and also if stable coins continue to flourish, that's incremental demand for dollars at the same time that Bitcoin is taking market share from everything. And so, I mean it's it's it's kind of a perfect story and process of evolution for Bitcoin, which is it's not happening too slowly and it's not happening too quickly. It's sort of the Goldilocks scenario at the moment. I granted that could change at any time. Who knows what the future holds, you know, maybe it'll be a a more violent transition that of course that's possible. I hope it doesn't go that way. I used to worry more about it going that way. I actually worry less about it going that way. But that's just my two cents and and my perspective on how I think it's most likely to play out. Yeah, we're we're all afraid that it hyperbic organization's going to happen and it's going to be too jarring for the world. But it turns out people are really slow to realize the value of this, the value proposition here and slow to adopt. And so it kind of works itself out. But Marty, what you were talking about all these, all these events right now, this is what Zoltan, Zoltan Pozar was writing about? Almost two years ago at Credit Suisse, when Credit Suisse was a thing and the the Ukraine war had just broken out, and he wrote this incredible piece proclaiming the death of Bretton Woods 2 monetary system and the beginning of Bretton Woods 3 monetary system, which he characterized the time as as a shift from inside money. To outside money and it's a little bit of ambiguous term, but what he meant was that for the last 30 years the global reserve currency and and and currencies that you know all the all the big currencies have been somebody's liability. You know you you hold U.S. Treasuries, that's the global reserve currency and it's the United States liability. And that is fine so long as there's stability and and no risk of any kind of default soft or hard inflation or, you know, throwing your hands up and saying I won't pay it And now with cutting Russia off from the SWIFT banking network and seizing their foreign exchange reserves. Suddenly that era's over and that that's what happened almost almost two years ago now. And Zoltan pointed out that that means, you know, the the global monetary system has to gravitate towards a a new de facto for what is money and what will be used as reserve currencies. And the shift has to be away from liabilities, away from inside money and and towards outside money. OK, money that has value. Outside of the financial system, meaning commodities, meaning things that that have a a a market value because they're commodities, they're tangible things that people need and trade for. And he meant oil and gold. And he at the very end of that note observed that, you know, he's not a Bitcoin bull. But if any asset stands to gain from all this, it's probably Bitcoin. And here we are watching that play out now with, you know, the with Argentina having so much problem, so many problems fiscally that they've elected anarcho capitalist politician, which is a very interesting and sort of exciting development. A libertarian is now president of Argentina. And is a Bitcoin bowl. And what does that mean for Latin America? Because we have El Salvador That has already shifted. Was already dollarized, meaning that the dollar was legal tender there. And they added Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is also, you know, an official currency of El Salvador. They have. They have too. Could that happen to Argentina now? Maybe. Maybe they dollarize, maybe they also add Bitcoin because you know if the if the if Malay follows through on that intent and then then you're talking about Latin America, seeing these Canaries really countries that have had weakness in this era of inside money. And and El Salvador, you know, was a was a broken state for so long that the populist, populist appetite shifted towards let's change it, let's let's radically shift and let's try something new. And that has led to, you know, to Bitcoin. And the same might be happening in Argentina. And as those cases prove prove fruitful, more of Latin America may may follow. Other Canaries in the global monetary landscape, I mean countries whose currency are not as strong as the dollar, but I guess not as weak as El Salvador as old currency and and Argentina's recently. And so you're you're seeing this this shift in real time of the dominoes falling, the Canaries falling that that caused a a shift away from U.S. Treasuries or other even weaker currencies than that. And towards the the the case for a bricks based oil and gold backed currency. And meanwhile, Bitcoin just keeps getting stronger and keeps being the actual solution that people will eventually find as they search for the best kind of outside currency in this new Bretton Woods 3 era. Yeah. I think this is an important discussion because most people would think, like, you come on, we're going to, you know, Bitcoin wins. It's all game over. And this is really nuanced in the sense of, like, if you look long enough, you see how that plays out. But then there's this intermediary period and it's a very long period, probably 10 to 20 years. And I think about it like what Andy and and Jesse were describing. You know Marty, it's like Bitcoin sits in the center and then these like 3 currencies oscillate around and it's the dollar and then it's whatever they create and then it's gold. Whatever they create is like this quasi CVC. And it just continues. Like as people get educated and rugged, you just keep taking more and more of the market share. And we're just going to keep going back and forth. And Bitcoin's going to do. I mean, gold's going to do its thing. And then people are going to wake up one day when they get the tungsten and, you know, tons and tons of it. They're like, wait, why are we transferring this thing around? And planes and they're shooting them down and they're like, oh, it was Bitcoin the whole time. And we're just watching them, like, try to create Bitcoin and they already exist. But to Andy's points, like, it's kind of exciting. I'm grateful after you look. Longer at it. It's like we got time to build stuff and you know, not be scrambling and it's less chaotic and we can sit here and do this and educate and then build products and services and and so it's it's fun that in my opinion it's gonna take a little longer, 'cause I think it's a natural course of things. And selfishly, it'll allow us to stack more sets, you know? Yeah. And and the risk of persecution is higher if if it's more sudden change, the gradual change is is much better for Bitcoin holders in that sense. When, When Marty? I remember a few years ago making the astute point that this stuff takes time. What was there a singular moment in your mind when you sort of came to that, that realization with respect to Bitcoin? Or was it just learned, you know, over time by you? I mean, the old patience is a virtue falling back to that number one, but no #2 really understanding. Like Early Days New York of the of my show and my newsletter really diving into bit devs and the protocol development. Like it literally to build out the infrastructure that will onboard people takes time. I think that it's interesting 'cause it really runs in parallel to the education piece that we've been talking about throughout this conversation. It's like they both take time. And literally, if we're gonna onboard billions of people, it's gonna take time. To build out the protocol infrastructure and the layers on top of it and all the tools and services that help people get on board and on the Bitcoin, that literally takes time to build that. So was it Bitdev's New York when they're pulling up the list of bips and you realize that a lot of these things have already been on the docket for years, and maybe this stuff's gonna take a while. Yeah, I mean getting changes in the Bitcoin happens at a a a glacial pace. That was really internalized, going to bit devs like I remember my first bit devs ever was January 2015, couple months after I moved to New York from Chicago, and they had just announced SegWit there, like how it would work, you know, it wasn't until 2 1/2 three years later that it actually got implemented. Wow. Yep. Which in the. Grand scheme of history is not that long. Feels like a long time though. A lot of things happened in a few years in Bitcoin. Yeah, this time last year, this time last year feels like a decade ago. And all the exchanges and everything, just it was literally just a year ago. Yeah, that's insane. Gentlemen, this has been great. Shall we wrap up Thanksgiving week? What are we thankful for? I'm thankful. That I only have to eat Turkey once a year, and that every other day of the year I can eat beef instead. That's good. I'll, I'll go. I was gonna say it earlier when we moved on. One of the things that really exciting like going back to getting a little sentimental is why we're gonna win is the financial advisors like, I don't know and maybe I'm missing an asset. Maybe you can be honest where financial advisor is incentivized to have purview and bill on the assets and direct relationship with the client and never have I seen such obviously like the importance from the OR the recognition of importance from a financial advisor for their clients to get exposure in the right way when you're in these like networks. These groups where I had met one a couple years ago and I'm in Pittsburgh visiting family and I met with him in person and he told me at this coffee shop that he meets after work and sets up the treasure for the the person outside of work hours and outside of the billable hours to get them set up in the right way. And there's those are individuals all over the country probably all over the world doing that And so outside of family and and all of that being thankful, like I'm just thankful for the people in the space that are very interested and and willing to go out and step outside and that's why we're ultimately going to win is because you can't like stop that. Like there's no there's no there's an idea that's just like always going to be there. So yeah. Me too. And several of those advisors who are doing right by their clients are personal friends and I'm grateful for them also. Yeah, I I'm grateful for a lot of things. New chapter right now for me moving to Texas and a lot a lot of excitement around all that and and the family is. Is is happy and and settling in so that's really the the story of of this Thanksgiving season for me but to to bring a little bit of Bitcoin into it because that's what people really care about. I I just realized we I think we are now well depending on block average block time going forward we are at or just under five months until the next having. So once we're in four and change that feels awfully close. And I'm thankful for that. You love the having. I love the having. The having is the having is Christmas. The the feeling of Christmas when you're a child. That's that's what the having is for me now. And it's all the more special 'cause it only happens once every four years. It's not even every year. It's Christmas. Time's the Olympics. It's. The Olympics, The presidential. Yup, lines up a presidential election season. Which I think is why I think it's that's why it's four years cause how many years are you in college, high school? Four years. Four years. Olympics. Four years. World Cup. Four years. Presidential election, four years. There's so many rhythms in in life that I think that's why Satoshi was like 4 years seems to be Lindy. Let's go with that. I guess I'll wrap it up here, yeah. I'll echo what you said Jesse thankful for my family, wife, two boys, mother, brother, sister, tough year for us personally lost my father, but I think the the family support, the friend group support and most important my dad was really passionate about what we are doing here in Bitcoin. And so I'm thankful that we have something that we're passionate about to work on, really go for. Makes it easy to wake up every day. Gives you a purpose in life, happy to have purpose. There's a lot of people out there who don't thankful for that. We're thankful for you Marty take take taking the the load off our shoulders and we get to show up and and you steer the conversation so. You guys aren't half bad, so I'm don't sell yourself short. Half good, though. We're gonna get better. We're gonna. Improve. Yeah, Yeah. Next. Next Thanksgiving we're gonna be half good. I like that. Half good. We get the quarter. Good. Half bad quarter. OK. I'm kidding. It's a pleasure. It's been fun doing this. Thankful for the show. It's been a new addition to my content. Sweet, I guess you could say. Portfolio. How about? Portfolio, Content portfolio. And I've said this before, but it really allows me to scratch an itch that can't really scratch on rabbit hole. Recap it all the time, or TFTC even for that matter. So. Thankful for this, gentlemen. Enjoy your Thanksgiving. We got to blur out blur out, rabbit hole recap on this. So if anybody you know there's a lot of listeners that may not hurt have ever heard of it. We don't want them to see Marty Jones and. Go check it out. This is top of funnel for rabbit hole recap. This is If you're listening to this, you've already eaten your Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully it was a good one. You enjoyed it. Hope you're safe. Bitcoin safe that you're doing well out there Michael. You look like you want to say something, Michael. I was just gonna say I didn't know if we were gonna drop this before Thanksgiving. Like it's a travel Wednesday. Do we? Do we decide on the air right now? Just forget everything I just said and go for it. And enjoy your Thanksgiving, Logan. We're dropping it tomorrow. All right, gentlemen. As always, it's a pleasure, Andy. Thank you for joining us. Pleasure's all mine stoked to be a member of this elite team. We're gonna do great things. We're gonna win. We're gonna win. Love it. See you guys next week.