The Last Trade E028: State-Led Legislative Innovation with Joel Revill

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? 1987. 92972000 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, welcome back. Short week recorded six days ago. Had Thanksgiving. How was everybody? Thanksgiving. Good holiday season. It's great. I was up in the Northeast, so it's always nice being from Texas to get out of Texas climate to like actually feel a season or a holiday. So it was nice. It was like cool, 30-30 degrees, so it was very, very fun. Yeah, it was a great, great Thanksgiving. A little bit slow getting back into it, but you know, going to make the most of this month before Christmas now. Jesse had a Texas Thanksgiving. Is that your first Texas Thanksgiving? Good question. I suppose so. Well, yeah, first one since moving back at least. And yeah, I had my folks here and you know, had to do a bit more hosting than than I had anticipated I guess. But that's that's the holidays for you. And then you got to get back in the works wing. Jesse, Marty and I were chatting about we all have to get together and then maybe we just open a bottle of wine and have a live recording when we're all back in Texas together and figure out the our our 4th guest, Maybe they join us and just do a live recording session. Hey, you had me move down here, Michael, and then you're never here. You're always in the Northeast. Don't put that on me. I I would there would be. I would I would like nothing more than to be in Texas but you know. When when you're you have in laws and on the holidays, you got to figure out where to, to make everybody happy. So yeah, I'll be back soon though. Yeah, it was a brisk Thanksgiving down here in Texas. Nice, relaxed one for me. The family came to us. I was in bed by 9:30 Wednesday through Sunday. It was a great, relaxing Thanksgiving break. But alas, it's good to see that everybody had a Thanksgiving. We're joined by Joel Revel, CEO of Two Oceans Trust. And a pivotal member of the blockchain Select Committee in Wyoming, which has created more than 30 ground breaking laws around regulatory structure of crypto assets. Wyoming is probably one of the most forward thinking states when it comes to Bitcoin and digital asset regulation. We're very excited to have you on the show today. Joel, thank you for joining us. Thanks. Great to be with you guys. I think just jump off. To learn a little bit more about you, your career before you ended up at 2 Oceans and working with the state of Wyoming to push forward these laws. What? What were you doing before you got into this weird, weird world of of Bitcoin and digital assets? And what gave you the confidence to sort of jump in and put your reputation behind this asset class? Yeah. Thanks. Well, I grew up in Wyoming, so I'm back back home in my home state, but I spent my first 25 years of my career elsewhere. I started in the investment banking group at JP Morgan, transitioned a few years later to investment management, where I spent the bulk of my career. Most recently, I was a portfolio manager at Citadel and returned back to Wyoming. In 2017 to I guess probably for personal reasons and then also to launch to Ocean Trust based here in Wyoming and it was during that time that I I was pulled into the digital assets and it was really I would credit the state of Wyoming for that the first foray into. Wyoming's efforts was through the the Blockchain Select Committee, which I was appointed to by Wyoming Governor Gordon and have served on that committee for the past past four years and then as part of. Wyoming's forward lean into digital assets to Ocean Trust has received a novel no action relief from the Wyoming Division of Banking, allowing us to extend our qualified custody status from traditional assets to to digital assets under state and federal law. So we've been sort of pulled into the the world of crypto through both the public sector and private sector. Yeah. And I think Wyoming's a very fascinating case because in Bitcoin, we talk a lot about jurisdictional arbitrage. And when that topic's brought up, it's typically under the context of international jurisdictional arbitrage. But it's become abundantly clear, particularly over the last three years, that there's Interstate jurisdictional arbitrage within the United States alone. And you have two ends of the spectrum. You have New York. And particularly the NYDFS putting out the bit license I believe in 20/14/2015 and it seems like Wyoming saw what New York did and said, hey, we think there's a better way to do this, a more free market driven way to do this. And so I guess that whether it was a direct response to what New York did or the recognition that? Regulation is needed to give people more clarity what what sort of the driving factors of Wyoming putting their heads to the their nose, the grindstone and really thinking about creating a regulatory environment that is friendly towards bitcoiners and people looking to spin up Bitcoin businesses. Yeah, I think there was, there was elements of both of those factors that you mentioned. And then additionally there's a couple of other factors, something that a lot of folks don't know about Wyoming is that it, it's it's been a leader in a lot of areas. I mean, going back in history, Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote and that was done several years in advance of of federal legislation around that. Wyoming created the first LLC, it's a little known fact. And again years before other states such as Delaware adopted the the idea of an LLC. So. So Wyoming tends to be on the forefront of a lot of a lot of issues, and a lot of these issues come from a desire to create opportunities for people to build businesses. Create economic opportunities in a with a sort of libertarian slant to it which I think kind of leads to the to the second factor which is that I think Wyoming saw an opportunity here for an asset class that that the the benefits are very obvious the reasons for the federal government to. Sort of squash innovation or at least push it offshore are obvious and somewhat frustrating. And so Wyoming saw an opportunity to to step in under the right of a state to do so and and begin to provide some legal and regulatory clarity. Joel, that's really fascinating. I didn't realize that you grew up in Wyoming. Do you think that helped in your predisposition and like understanding Bitcoin, or from like a libertarian perspective? Because it it's I was starting to jog my memory thinking of like at least in Texas growing up here seeing Texas be a leader along with Wyoming in in my mind it makes complete sense because this is just basically based on the roots of like you kind of the the knowledge and the the culture that has always been that I've known. And so I'm curious, like, did that make complete sense when you move back? It's like, of course Wyoming would embrace this technology because they've done everything else since I've I've lived here. Yeah, it does. You know, I can't, I don't know if that if that kind of personally has driven me towards the the adoption of this of this new asset class, but I think it definitely makes sense for Wyoming if you understand Wyoming's history and and what Wyoming has done sometimes. Where there's a void or a vacuum, Wyoming will step in. Sometimes it will be in direct response to something that Wyoming disagrees with. That's being done elsewhere at A at a federal level. So it does, it does make a lot of sense that Wyoming would be doing this. It fit. It fits with the the DNA of the state, which is kind of in contrast to some of the other states that have taken the polar opposite approach to to crypto in general. Specifically, New York is the the most difficult state to do any kind of crypto business in because of their bit license requirements. And that stands out to me as really the the, the, the opposite of embracing innovation because they've already set up prohibitive regulatory requirements for allowing innovation to develop at all. So thank goodness there are Wyoming's and and Texas's out there that are taking the other approach. The the other thing that's interesting on the contrast is like this whole proof of work I I remember, I can't remember she did it publicly or privately with Senator Lummus talked about the mineral rights and understanding kind of like the the the scarcity aspect of it and having to manage that treasury and thinking about well where do you put your capital and to preserve wealth and similar in Texas with oil that there's this natural kind of understanding that there are finite resources on this planet and your state and the constituents tied to it and to get that. Like you, you might want to trade that for another asset. It better be as scarce or have some kind of value attributed to it versus what we know, as you know, inflating away currency at this current rate. Yeah, that's it's I I thought that was a great observation the senator made and and it it it's probably no coincidence that you know two of the leading states, Wyoming and Texas. Are come from a background and a context of commodities and so that's I think there is something to that connection. And to dive into the particulars of what Wyoming has put forth in terms of laws that embrace digital assets and make it a good place to do business, what was the approach? For the committee, when you when you guys first started out, what was sort of the landscape you identified and how did you sort of break everything up into small pieces and begin to write legislation that that enabled business to to come to Wyoming? Yeah, right. So the first thing that needed to be done was to define the the asset and then to to codify that asset in our commercial and property laws. So there's there's been now over 30. Laws that that that address digital assets generally. Probably the most important law early on was Cenofile 125, which appended the Wyoming Uniform Commercial Code to include three new types of property, digital currency, digital securities and tokens. That then kind of creates these definitions and this initial framework from which regulation can occur by the Wyoming regulator, the Wyoming Division of Banking. It provides A framework for the courts. So one of the other new sort of initiatives that emanated out of this blockchain Select Committee. Was standing up a new court in Wyoming, a Wyoming Chancery court and then it also allowed us to build additional legislation on top of that. And then it's just maybe a couple of other key pieces of legislation. I'm I'm sure you and your listeners are all aware of the and a novel new bank charter that was created in Wyoming. A special purpose depository institution or or speedy. As it's called, and there have been several speedy charters that have been granted by the State of Wyoming. Of course that the Fed has not granted a Fed Master account to to a speedy yet. And my colleague on the OR former colleague on the Blockchain Select Committee, Caitlin Long, is the. Founder and CEO of one of those Speedies who is now doing battle with with the Fed over over the the Master the Master license so. That was a key piece of legislation that is is sort of in suspended animation awaiting movement from the feds. Wyoming also created the first Dow LLC Decentralized Autonomous Organization and we continue to amend that that legislation as we learn more about. Putting in the proper legal framework around Dow's, we are working on a couple of recent pieces of legislation. Last year, the legislature passed the Wyoming Stable Token Act, which authorized the state of Wyoming through a Commission to explore issuing a stable coin. So it would be the first state issued stable coin in Wyoming. We're calling it a stable token. And a piece of legislation that we're working on right now in the current session would clarify the treatment of digital assets or any asset really in the event of bankruptcy. So it's been a been a, you know, headline grabbing issue of late with the failures of financial institutions and what happens to client assets in the event of those failures. The piece of legislation that we're working on in Wyoming would make it clear from the sort of initial client agreements with the financial institution that those assets are held in trust on behalf of the client and not to be commingled with the financial institutions other assets and providing guidance for the bankruptcy court that those assets shouldn't be. Drug along into the bankruptcy estate that they should be, they should remain the the property of the clients. So we'll see where that that piece of legislation goes that's that's currently being drafted. Now it it really seems like you guys are are a decade ahead in terms of actually providing the regulatory structure and and and guidance about what's allowed and and how things fit. You did mention in there the the distinction that that Wyoming is making between crypto securities. And I forget what you called the the other category of of crypto currencies, commodities. Yeah, currency securities and tokens, Currency securities and tokens. So I I imagine that's a a contentious issue and probably an evolving topic. But do you feel like since you guys have been engaging with this proactively that you have reached a point where there is some sort of clarity that that you think that other regulatory bodies should catch up to, you know for example, the SEC in terms of how they're delineating these categories? Yeah, absolutely. And it it is I guess controversial in the sense that we've provided one set of definitions and and whether whether that is what becomes widely adopted, you know up for debate. All of our pieces of legislation we've been or I should say most all we've been fine tuning through the course of of amendments in in subsequent years and we and we continue to do that. I I do. I do think in in fairness to the agencies the the the definitions need to start with legislation. And so I think it, I think it's incumbent upon the the federal legislature to get some legislation passed such as the Lummus Gillibrand bill that's been proposed. That would provide definitions and provide a road map for the agencies to then properly regulate these these these new assets. Yeah, I think, oh, go ahead. I was gonna say the interaction between the state legislator and the federal legislator is very interesting to watch play out. We were in Houston a couple weeks ago and Caitlin was on stage. It's like explaining the knock down drag out fight that Custodia has been engaged in with the Federal Reserve and that's just observationally a really interesting point of contention that the states are having with the federal government right now. And that's the big question in my mind is who's going to lead the way here. And as you just mentioned, there probably does need to be some definitions put forth by the federal legislator, but. I'd like to think that the Federalist ideals that this country was founded on are able to shine through with this particular industry and we can have states like Wyoming lead the way. But it does seem like there is a very aggressive posture from the federal government towards States and the custodians battle with the Federal Reserve is really highlights that contention. Yeah, there's there's an obvious tension there. And and I understand the tension. I understand the motives of those that are charged with the the federally chartered banking institutions and their desire to control the banking system. But I also believe that the states rights are critically important and A and A and critically important part of our country's history. The right for the states to maintain their dual banking system is I think more and more threatened every day. And we're we're losing a really important part of of our financial history and and an important part of innovation and creativity addressing more local needs. You know here here in Wyoming with kind of our our background in in commodities into agriculture oil and gas etcetera. The community banks serve an incredibly important role and the the the ability to innovate and and create our own banking charter should be preserved. But the you know up to this point the the the federal agencies across the board have have done their best to prevent that innovation from from advancing. And again, I I understand the tension and I understand their motives, but it's just a it's an unfortunate position that that the the feds have have elected to take and hopefully Caitlin's successful, hopefully Wyoming's successful. Yeah, one thing I think worth noting and I don't know enough about this, but I'd be curious to old to like if you have more specifics to go and it's on the around the stable token act because I think. Well, we don't, we don't talk a lot about like stable coins and and there there's some innovation there they'll be able to interoperable send you know dollars at any point in time, day night. But the thing we talk about on this podcast is like counterparty risk and where the dollars ultimately live. And then what are the different ways that you know? Potentially, you know you can have it seized, turned off, at loss of access. It still exists, but to the extent you do have to engage with, you know, stable coin, stable tokens. It makes a lot more sense to have it bankruptcy or remote and then backed by a state versus right now what we see with like the circles of the world that are JPMC tied. I think Blackrock's investor, there's a lot of this. I think most of stable coins right now are parked in treasuries. And so there's this inherent risk of, you know, tied to a certain asset based on the, you know, the increase or decrease. And the the price and are you left holding a bag of you know what could be less than worth a dollar per coin or per stable token. So be curious on like how you guys have thought through it because it sounds like a a better model. And then where it's at because it seems like another version of where Wyoming's really understanding like how do you actually build the right structure for the consumer to be protected versus like here just, you know, pile billions of dollars into this thing and then let's hope it stays consistent with the price of the dollar. Yeah, it's a, it's a it's a really interesting project to to have been a part of to be a part of. So what just to a little to wind back a little bit the history is that so from from the legislature, the Commission was created. The Commission is comprised of the governor, the treasurer, the Secretary of State and then the three of them in turn elected for subject matter experts to round out this seven person Commission and and and I'm I'm one of one of the seven and so as a Commission we've been endeavouring to issue a Wyoming stable token. We hired a director about a month or two ago. We've engaged a law firm to help us with the sort of legal interpretations and constitutional interpretations of a of a state issued stable token. And we're we're moving forward there in in my mind and I'm just you know one of seven commissioners, but in my mind we, I think we need to demonstrate two things. One is that we have a unique way in which we are viewed from from a legal and regulatory perspective. So there should be no question that the Wyoming stable token is a is not a security and it is not a Wyoming issued currency. It is a stable token and there there should be no kind of legal or regulatory question about that. The second thing that I think we need to demonstrate is a a clear and transparent proof of reserves. You know, getting to your point Michael about some of the less than transparent and risky assets that some of the reserves have allegedly been invested in. So Wyoming would would through our treasurer's office be managing the reserves in a in a very transparent way, you know providing audits and attestation of of the reserves available for the token holders. So we'll see where that goes. It's you know I, I, I, you know appreciate the fact that it's it's not a topic that that you address regularly. But in some respects it's it is a a significant innovation for the for people around the world to have access to essentially AUS dollar payment rail that they wouldn't otherwise have access to because they're blocked from either U.S. bank accounts or from holding U.S. dollars. This allows anyone with an Internet connection potentially provides anyone with an Internet connection to have access to to U.S. dollars into into U.S. dollar payment rails. Yeah, I think it's a great point. It's one I never even thought of. Like if if you get censored from your JP Morgan Chase account for whatever reason, you're just out of your bank account access. And we've seen this happen time and time again, like the fact that you can have access to another, you know, banking partner or ability to get access to dollars. Even as AUS Citizen, we're seeing more and more of that happen. Yeah, the the, the stable, the stable tokens in general has have always struck me as like a like an intermediary innovation like. The, the metaphor that comes to mind is, you know, when we went from the the digitisation of information, we went, you know, we went from, for example, film back in the day, you had to go to a movie theatre to watch a film. And then you know, we had digital media physical formats that developed cassette VCR tapes. And then DVDs and that allowed for Blockbuster to develop and become a thing. But that of course that wasn't the end state of this digitization of information. That was a stepping stone and it ends in in digital streaming. And to me the stable coins, stable tokens seem like a like a innovation that allows for like a a new form of rail. For Dollar Settlements, when ultimately this may you know the digitization of value may be leading to, you know a a more transformative and comprehensive overhaul of what form of currency are you using as your savings account and transacting in in in my opinion, ending up in. And Bitcoin being the preferred savings account for for folks that they would then use the lightning network and so on to transact in. But but of course that there's plenty of of room for massive innovation and transformation of existing rails in in in the meantime and with this intermediary stepping stones phase of stable coins leveraging. Leveraging block chains and connecting that to dollars, which is still what the world wants it, it seems like there's that's going to be a a mega trend for the next couple decades, even though I think ultimately that you know Bitcoin supersedes them. I think that's a great point and I you know without making a judgement on what our ultimate reserve currency is in in this world it would appear at least in the near to medium term that people are going to want U.S. dollars and people need U.S. dollars and and and as a result I think that while we wait for the the the world's sort of ultimate decision on what is the best store of value and what is the best kind of reserve currency. While we wait for that to happen there's there's no doubt that the demand for U.S. dollars will continue to be significant if not potentially grow with the with with the adoption of of U.S. Dollar back stable stable tokens And again that that it it's it's serving a lot of people in an in a very important way and providing them access to to the dollar and to payment services that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. And it it's some really interesting stats that that you know our friend Nick Carter shared with me which just goes to the point that the the market cap of of stable tokens or or stable coins might be relatively small in comparison to crypto generally the other layer one tokens. But if you look at the velocity, the transaction volume and sort of the the dollar velocity stable, stable coins are actually significant share of of the market 7080% now of the velocity of digital assets is is in stable points. It's a it's a really I I think I think your point was a good one. I think it's a it's a really important intermediary step that probably becomes the way that we digitize the dollar because again this is just one person's opinion. But I don't think that a a central bank digital currency is tenable in the United States. I think the ability to censor is too great for the for the US to accept. And so I don't, I don't see that happening in the US and therefore I think that stable tokens or some derivation of that in the future is is likely how we digitize the dollar. Yeah, I go ahead Mark, I'm. Gonna say it's very interesting because it puts the US government particularly in this weird position where the success of stable coins has acutely highlighted that there's a lot of demand for the dollar globally and the the innovation of sending these stable coins over. These block chains is undeniable. The quickness of settlements, the ability to send it internationally at a moment's notice is a step function improvement in the wiring infrastructure that exists today. But with that being said, to date, the people leading the charge in the stable coin world are what we would deem in a lot of way, pirates that really operate outside the purview. Of the US government, tether obviously being the biggest example, the largest stable coin in the world. And now they have a massive treasury balance sheet which holds a lot of treasuries. So they're somewhat systemically tight. Not systemically, but if they grow large enough, they they're great. Bidder for U.S. Treasuries. It's it's in the interest of the Treasury. Yeah, the point being is that the US government's in this awkward position where it's obvious there's a lot of demand for dollars. Stable coins are. Providing utility that helps supply that demand with dollars internationally and yet they don't have complete control over it. So I think that's a big question with stable coins, stable tokens moving forward is how does that particular market vertical evolve as much as they would the government would like all these stable coins to be very tightly regulated. Seems like the free market is like, hey, we prefer these stable coins provided by what you may deem as pirates. As shown by the the price of tether. Historically I I did a deep dive on this like four years ago and historically the the average price of Tether is like 1.001 dollars, which is to say that there is a little bit of tiny premium for Tether because it, you know, it allows access to people who are unbanked and so that that's your way to to hold dollars. And it also there's a little bit of of a desirable quality for the pirate nature of of tether in the sense that it's less sensible than than the dollars held in the bank account and that's desirable to some people. So it's a funny thing that like because they're outside of of playing playing completely nice with the US banking system, the the market has actually. Showed a vote of confidence or or or desire for those attributes, which is pretty funny. It's basically the utility function, right? Like Bitcoin's price appreciation is that desirable aspect of its utility against other, you know, currencies. But I think what, Joel, what's so fascinating it hadn't dawned on me, is we have a lot of discussions here about, you know, this intermediary part is a part that like, we we, it's probably the most important, 'cause you can't get to the end state without getting through the intermediary. And like, what are the trade-offs? And the this CBDC, like we effectively already are on digital tokens. If we think about it where they're just like really crappy because we can only send them between 9:00 to 5:00 and you know it costs 20 bucks and you know it gets a black box, you don't know when it's going to land. And so it's a wire, it's the banking system. And so tokens start to add to, like the OR the. Whatever the crypto, why there's been demand for USDC and Tether have provided utility there. And I think we all agree and that the market's probably starting to agree that like we go to this interoperable nature and it's, it provides more utility and we're seeing more of it globally. The problem is as we've seen with the SP VS of the world and I don't want to put Binance there because Binance has been fine, but FTX is, is in this new world counterparty risk and brand identity starts to matter because failure actually can really happen. Failure is like a thing that. Historically we've seen with banks it's like, OK, somebody gets bailed out a made whole. But this whole like Wild West of digital assets goes back to what we start to talk about of like free banking reputation. And it's like, well, OK, so we're going to a world where you're using these tokens and now to Jesse's point, will tether has certain attributes. Well, what better counterpart is then? Is there a state as your free bank or the state back in your your token, which hadn't really dawned on it, always thought of like, OK, we'll have JPMC and their consortium of who they hold the coin. And maybe it's another firm that establishes it similar to free banking on the currency. But what if it's a state that's making you whole or saying that these dollars are backed here and if it fails or there's ever question we'll be able to you know make that that seems a lot more interesting in my mind than going to a third party that's a you know private entity. And I think to the last point like we're Joel's referencing is with this intermediary part, it's like we have trillions of dollars I'd have to get in. And so there's going to be some form of intermediary spot, whether it's through bank wires or stable coins that are going to be held depending on the period that's up to the end person and where they're moving assets and how they're thinking about into Bitcoin or anything else. But these will be a functioning part for the next 10 years, at least in my mind of how, like people will transition over from like analog to this quasi digital currency before moving into Bitcoin. Yeah, those are all great points and I I agree. And you can see it's somewhat it's being done somewhat quietly, but you can see among the existing payment networks how much activity is taking place to essentially create private loops of their own stable coins. So you know, Onyx at JP Morgan, PayPal has issued its own stable coin. The Visa has numerous different initiatives that they're working on. Citibank has some initiatives that they're working on. I saw an announcement recently out of Deutsche Bank that they're working on something. So the idea of tokenizing deposits or tokenizing trade, you know, letters of credit or trade credit, it's it's all sort of the same idea. It's it's using distributed Ledger technology to create a more efficient payment rail that's backed by some asset, you know, dollar, U.S. dollar reserve or otherwise. And just, you know, is is the best way to do that through a private network controlled by 1 private institution, is the best way to do that through a state or is it through, you know, federally issued tokens such as a CBDC? So I I think that that we're going to, we're going to get to watch that from from the front row over over the next few years how that plays out. Yeah, it it's it's exciting that it is kind of free market capitalism right now and in terms of all these various stable token products coming to market and it and make no mistake they're coming to market right now because. Because of how profitable it is to hold treasuries. You know, if if you ingest a dollar and turn that into a treasury yielding 5%, but you're promising a dollar back to the holder of that token that you're minting money. And that's what Tether has stumbled into now as interest rates have risen. And and every bank would love this to, you know, stand up a new, a new product line, a new vertical to to mint money in this new exotic way. So you know we had to benefit from from watching that free market fight play out And in in my opinion, hopefully, hopefully that free market landscape continues to evolve without without the government coming in and saying no, you're not allowed to. It's going to be a singular CBDC because I believe the free market delivers the best forms of innovation and and so it's exciting on that front. Joel, I wanted to ask about. Real quick, Jesse. Before, before that, just one thing. We just stumble on how Bitcoin becomes like a global reserve asset. Because as I was thinking about this, it was like, well, if you're going to back it by dollars and then eventually if the dollar's depreciating or reputational like somebody doesn't make you whole, then you leave that system and you go to the next partner. It's like, well then. Maybe you want a better asset to bet back at 20 percent, 10% and then I was thinking well who would do that? I was like well Wyoming would probably do it first to have 20% in BTC and then 80% dollars like starting to think through. But if that ultimately is where where this goes and that that's how you start to build the credibility of you know if that's where this heads and you build the credibility of your dollar backing into and then it will goes from a 1% allocation to you basically it's it's 100% backed by by Bitcoin. Well, I think to that point, Jesse, what you're saying about. Entities like Tether holding Treasuries on their balance sheet and minting free profit as their stable coins are only redeemable for $1.00 one to one. That's could be a ticking time bomb too, if U.S. Treasuries, the man for them internationally begins to wane materially, which seems like it may be happening like the you find the situation where. It's a good trade now, but it potentially may not be two years, three years down the line. As we know, rates are up above 5%. We need to refinance a third of our national debt over the next two years. What? How does the market react to that? Does a recession come quick enough to justify a lowering of rates, which makes that refinancing of all that debt more palatable? There's a lot of these questions and landmines on the horizon that I can see. Yeah, I I think in like Tether's business model, you have to hold to maturity to make that make sense because you can't be like selling, you know, like when interest rates rise and then suddenly the value of the treasuries you're holding drops. You can't, you can't, you know, realize that loss you got, you have to hold to maturity. So I think they they probably have to do that and they're probably banking on you know enough demand for the number of tether in existence just keeps going up and to the right. So you can sit on your older treasury bonds into maturity while buying new ones which are issued at the increasingly higher rate. As as the that sort of that spiral plays out and the yield the market requires for holding a a treasury bond increases then Tether benefits from that. The the irony there is that the the user of the tether is the one who is losing out the most because they get, they gain the benefits of this payment rail, but they suffer the debasement of the value of their tether, their U.S. dollar, without getting the benefits of holding U.S. Treasury. So it's kind of funny that in in to Michael's point that might be how you backdoor into you know some entities offering up stable coins that are increasingly backed by Bitcoin. And if you can withstand the, if you have the bankroll to withstand the volatility that comes with that, that ends up outperforming even the the US Treasury scenario in the assumption that we're, you know we're entering a a a period of inflation greater than the yield on on U.S. Treasuries, because that has to happen in order to inflate away the debt. You. Can see yourself blend. Yeah, we kind of went off the rails, but you could see how that you would blend part of the treasury return coupled with the Bitcoin allocation. So it's not an offset if you like, you're depreciate if you're being and this is kind of like the battery stuff, yeah, you're validating. Something we've been debating for like 6 months. Yeah, but this is like state. This is state level. This isn't a private this would be like but yeah I hear you and and that's different that I was gonna ask Joel was and and thinking about this like you know Michael talked about and Marty talked talked about Interstate jurisdictional arbitrage and you know we're seeing international plays El Salvador trying to become a a home of innovation for for Bitcoin in particular and do you see that do you see this as like a as a a major initiative for Wyoming to differentiate itself in terms of the future of commerce in the state versus other states. And what comes to mind is the effort, the various efforts that California made to to make California the the native home of the Internet or even Delaware to be the the home of corporations. Is this, is this a play that Wyoming is setting itself up to be a, you know, a major player in this landscape for the 21st century? But yeah, that's certainly the motivation for the the state to to be proactive around the legislation and and the regulation of of this asset class. But I I think it it's kind of just one layer of multiple reasons why Wyoming becomes an attractive place for either builders or investors in in in digital assets in in addition to the sort of forward thinking legislation and the thoughtful regulation I mentioned, we we've also stood up recently the new Chancery court. But you also combine that with the Wyoming LLC laws. The Wyoming has among the best, if not the very best, privacy laws in the United States, asset protection and creditor protection laws, and no, no personal or corporate income tax. You know, in addition to capital gains and trust in the state tax, so it's very, very low taxes in in the state of Wyoming as well. So this is, to me, just kind of one more reason why if you're building in this space or you're investing in this space, Wyoming becomes a very logical place in which to do that. Thank God for Wyoming. We need a no. It's truly important that I think that's one thing. Historically, in Bitcoin, if you have this massive opportunity, the whole conversation we're having around regulation is important. But it's also funny because we have this incredible technology at our fingertips that allows us to erect a new financial system with properties that are again a step function improvement on the incumbent. System that that we're trying to transition away from. And yet there are regulators at the federal level really don't get it. Even at individual state levels that don't seem to get it. Or their donors line their pockets in a way that makes it so they will never get it. And it's a big confidence game at the end of the day, in my opinion, particularly with this Interstate jurisdictional arbitrage, we need states like Wyoming, Texas, Tennessee. Florida to stick their necks out and say no, we're going to be open to business here. We're going to allow people to innovate. We're going to allow the free market to lead this innovation because we recognize that the state is not going to be leading this innovation and I I don't think it should be discounted. The the act of sticking the flag out there, it just instills confidence in others to say, hey, they're doing this, Wyoming's seeing a lot of success and. Bringing in a lot of businesses into their borders. And I just, Joel, on that note, I just want to thank you for all the work that you and the committee have done to really stick your necks out and push this forward, just if anything to instill confidence in other states. And on that note, do you view what the committee has put forth in Wyoming as a blueprint for other states to adopt, or are there more intricate nuances at individual state levels? That would prevent somebody from adopting this as a blueprint. No, I would hope that and we would hope that other states will adopt what Wyoming has done and that's already happening. We're seeing it with other states. And Texas is making a great name for itself in in in doing a lot of the similar work that Wyoming has done and and we hope that honestly I'm I'm you know I don't I don't sort of comment this I have a traditional finance background we're on the on the private sector side we're building a firm that is very much meant to. Look and feel like bringing digital assets into a traditional finance platform and I'm I'm I'm hopeful that there will be federal regulation at someday. I hope it's thoughtful, but but I think that having legal clarity and federal regulatory oversight. Is is critical for the US to remain competitive in in innovation and it's critical for the success of this asset class. And and I just you know just to get kind of technical for a second on we just look at the look at the price of of crypto since the since the finance overhang has been removed from the market. So you know, I think. I I I think the the more clarity we get from regulators the the the healthier this asset class is going to be. Now there there could be an they could overshoot in some way and screw it up. But I I, I have faith in. In the process that that eventually they're going to get this right and and this innovation and and they should and that that's going to position the US in a in a great place. I just hope they hurry. Yeah, totally agree. I I hope that, I hope that the US gets to enjoy the same benefits of being the home of the Internet with with blockchain, Bitcoin in particular. And yeah, I you know, I. It would be the biggest fumble of all time. I mean American citizens hold the most amount of Bitcoin compared to the rest of the world individually I'll say I'll say something a little controversial in in the Bitcoin community. I I I don't think it's you know, I I think it's part of what on RAMP is embracing or accepting. Is that my view is that for Bitcoin to become the, the path for Bitcoin to to to win it involves embracing some amount of regulation in order for the mainstream to be comfortable enough to adopt it. And you know, 'cause that's how it ends up in people's pensions, in people's four O1 KS and and and that is antithetical to what the, you know, earliest crypto anarchist adopters would like. And and and there's this sort of vestigial belief that you know, if we hold out and everyone will have to bend the knee entirely to Bitcoin. Yeah, that's that might be right. That might have that might happen if if, you know, there's absolutely no compromise whatsoever and bitcoin's mechanics continue to play out and the dollar continues to the base. However, I think there's greater risk in that path because of the possibility of persecution or draconian backlash when Bitcoin wins without any sort of regulation. And so I think in incorporating regulation and and part of that is is increasing adoption among regulators and and and senators. I think that is a a path, a more conservative path that that involves some amount of of compromise, but really it's about evolving, it's about growing into the type of asset that the mainstream needs Bitcoin to be in, in order to have it on their balance sheet. And so you know, I I think it it's a bit of a controversial statement in the Bitcoin community, but I think that regulation is the some amount of regulation and hopefully it's the Wyoming type of regulation is Bitcoin's best path to success. Yeah. And just to just to add to the controversial statement, I'll go as far, I'll go even further and say it's the only way Bitcoin succeeds is through regulation. And the reason why is from an order of operations, the way they get the capital in is through a framework and structure. Now on the other side of it, are they going to be happy with what they unlocked and and it's and it's permissionless nature, probably not. But that's that's on them like we we need. To play the part we have to do the things we have to create the products and vehicles to get capital in. And then on the other side of it, what they think they're creating or or going to control. You know, I think TVD on how that ends up. But yeah, I think that's an important function that Jesse's outline is like we have to, we have to make this look like we talked about this backing into Bitcoin as a reserve assets like well, stablecoins are here. Eventually people wake up and it's like, well, what am I holding? Maybe I need to choose to return a little bit. Now your base. Is 99 one? And over time it's 10%. And next thing you know, it's just accepted that this thing is backed by Bitcoin. And then maybe you're using Bitcoin over time and maybe that's 30 years from now. But you can start to see a framework for how that actually happens. And there's trillions and hundreds of trillions of dollars of capital that have to flow from the hard asset or whatever the asset is into some intermediary into BTC. And that's where all these things have to coexist. There's no world where hundreds of trillions of dollars just jump into Bitcoin and you're just like, oh good, now we're now we're good to go and and and there needs to be regulatory framework for people to hold those stable tokens comfortably. But Marty disagrees. Yeah, I will hardly disagree. This is define it as money. Let the free market take it. I mean, there's already pensions holding Bitcoin. There's already endowments holding Bitcoin. Like if you have the will, you will find the way. Many people have done it already. Billions of dollars worth of capital has been allocated to Bitcoin on behalf of institutions. It's just. We have the wimps out there that are waiting for Daddy government to give them the OK. I don't think you should wait for that, because if you give them the OK, they're gonna want their cut and their cut's gonna be too big. Marty, do you think there's a greater chance of persecution or draconian backlash with your preferred path? Certainly. But if bitcoins are going to succeed to the level that we hope it will succeed, people need to grow some nuts and realize that when laws are unjust, they should not be followed again. To step up, instill confidence in others, and say this government's turned into a tyrannical, A tyrannical operation. It's just wholeheartedly we have what is going on right now at the federal level with all the printing of the debt we're at the looting, the Treasury stage of the end of the empire. Should not bend. Bend the knee to these drunken tyrants who are drunk on debt and they need a way out of that debt problem. Bitcoins gonna be a good way out and I think we should push back against the regulators and hand the decisions back to the States as much as possible, right. I yeah. Maybe that's the form of of battle that that you know is worth fighting the. Stanford MBAs aren't aren't willing to fight, you know? Well, the Stanford MBAs are generally not willing to fight this battle. I. Will say that, Oh no, it's it's entirely true. The Stanford MBAs are you know still living in the Obama optimism about the federal role and and I think that I sure hope that we get some more free market competition from Wyoming to to Tether to El Salvador. You know you have these different forms of of experimentation that are happening and and only possible if you don't have a top down dictate from you know the the singular entity telling you what how things are gonna be. So on that front, I agree, Marty. You know it's gonna end up telling us how it's gonna be the Elizabeth Warren. All right, we should transition. We should. We should transition to. The I'm sorry. I Joel, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't make you aware. But my my oldest hopped into bed with me at 3:00 AM and I went to bed at 12:30, so I'm going around 2 1/2 hours of sleep riled up. Marty's alter ego 's coming. 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. No, is I mean there's a good transitionary period like period to talk about Two Oceans Trust and what you guys are doing. I mean this is the service that 2 Ocean offers to your clients is probably one of the last bastions. For individuals, particularly high net worth individuals to protect their wealth in the in the world, that's getting increasingly chaotic. Yeah, Yeah. And actually to just to add to that one part of like tying the last segment into this is for sorry I have a dog because I don't know if you can hear it, but it's basically like high net worth individuals and capital coming in. If you don't have a framework for how do you legacy plan, They just won't come in. We we know some of them already like ourselves that have hundreds of millions of dollars that unless they know how to put the capital, the the Bitcoin from a custody perspective. But that's only half of the battle and knowing who your counterparty is there because we know how that's important. But then the secondary part is, well, what is the framework? How do you map the existing framework from revocable trust, your revocable trust and legacy planning to this new asset so that it's there if it's a generational asset like we all believe. And if that's not there, then people's capital doesn't come in. And so not to tie back to that conversation and tie it to what Joel's doing is what and it's important to bring the framework from the old world, the the, the traditional world and how do you map it to this asset in a professional way so these individuals can come in and actually plan around it. Right. Yeah. Well, and that's there's an interesting. Tension that exists between the traditional way of managing assets through generations which you know we we have sort of trust and estate planning and there's a there's a natural there's a sort of an inherent tension between that and this original ethos of crypto being a self sovereign asset and the the reason is because to. And to unlock the benefits that come from strategic planning and and those those benefits are you know kind of clear succession planning, avoiding probate, minimizing your your tax head from kind of a trust in the state planning perspective. So that can be done at a state level that can also, you know, be a federal gift tax exemption. The privacy and the creditor protection, all of those benefits are unlocked through through kind of sophisticated the strategic planning, but requires that the individual setting up these plans relinquish some level of control over the asset and and that's that kind of inherent tension against this notion that it's a self sovereign asset. So that's. The fun stuff that we get to explore with clients on a on a daily basis, yeah. And how how have you seen that? Like, I guess there's there's really the two sides of the the market that you serve as the existing client, which is probably easier, right? Because it's like this is like every other asset, here's your counterpart, here's where it's stored. But then it's really that area the market that comes in that's native that has accrued wealth that's like wait now you want to you know take delivery or or position where the assets custody because of the actual like legal requirements from setting up trust and how does that conversation generally go? Yeah, so as you pointed out they're they're kind of over generalizing here, but there there are sort of two client types that that we work with. The 1st is the call it kind of crypto native client who they've created their wealth through crypto and there's really not a a learning curve. Around the asset itself but there again gross over over generalization here but there may be less understanding or or less education around succession planning and and being thoughtful about asset protection and. Tax planning and so that's that that's that kind of tension that that exists which is getting those clients comfortable with the idea of a a sort of more institutional approach to to custody and introducing a third party trustee into that relationship which which is necessary to unlock those benefits. On the other hand, we have clients that have come from kind of traditional. Wealth generation that are looking at this asset class for the first time. They understand the sort of need for trust and estate planning, for succession planning, for asset protection, but have questions around the digital assets. How safe are these assets? How safe is the custody? Can My Portfolio withstand the volatility? That's you know, inherent in the, the prices of these assets. And so there's 22 very different conversations that we're having with these, with these two types of clients. And on that last note on performance, I think it's a good opportunity to pull up the research piece if you have it handy, Logan, to really dive into these numbers. We were discussing it before we hit record, but we talk about. About these numbers a lot within the Bitcoin industry, but it seems like there's still a disconnect between the return profile of Bitcoin historically and the understanding of that return profile in the investment management space and. And and Marty, what is this document we're looking at? It is the revisiting the case for Bitcoin, which is a a. What was the letter? A blog post put out by TU Ocean. Joel. Yeah, maybe Joel. Piece we wrote back in May, it was actually a follow on piece to the original piece we've done a year previously and the the catalyst for it was the you know the crypto winner, the big sell off in in digital assets. And so we thought it would be interesting to go back and revisit the analysis we had done. In in in light of the of the sell off you know so you know if you dial the clock back to May Bitcoin and you know the various other crypto were were near their lows and Despite that fact there was still a very compelling argument for the inclusion of in in the case of this paper it's Bitcoin that we we focused on. So a very, very strong argument for the inclusion of Bitcoin in a traditional diversified portfolio. And that's. What are the? Advantages there, Joel? Yeah, so twofold, really. There's one is, is the performance of Bitcoin. And I, I, you know, think you had a, a table up that you were just showing. But if you look at the price of Bitcoin relative to, yeah, that's it. Relative to gold or relative to the S&P 500? Back over a three-year, A5 year or a 10 year period. Even back in May when it was well off from its highs, Bitcoin was well off from its highs. It had still on a compounded annual basis, significantly outperformed these other traditional asset classes. So that's kind of #1 and then #2, which I think is a A. Very much misunderstood part of of the of the argument. Well, here let me just because you've got it up on the screen, let me, let me let me jump back and just if you keep it right on that chart, this is an analysis we did which is we started with a traditional 60% equities, 40% fixed income portfolio. That's on the far left of the X axis, so 0% Bitcoin 6040 portfolio and the three lines represent three-year, five year and 10 year compounded annual returns. And then we reran the analysis, adding ten basis point positions to Bitcoin up to a 10% position in Bitcoin. And you can see the significant impact that the the allocation to to Bitcoin had on a historical basis. Even a small allocation like say you know, 5% allocation to Bitcoin on a on a 10 year basis almost doubled the returns, the annualized returns and again that was. When prices were significantly lower than than they had been or where they are today. So the second argument here is volatility, and this is the piece that I was mentioning is is somewhat misunderstood. Bitcoin, to be sure, is a volatile asset. And it's more volatile than the other traditional asset classes, however, because it is. Has carried historically a very low correlation with traditional asset classes, adding a portion of Bitcoin to a diversified portfolio. You know, at the levels we're talking about between sort of 0 and 10% not only didn't increase the volatility of the portfolio, but in some of the smaller allocation amounts it actually decreased. The overall volatility of the portfolio, so even though you're adding a more volatile asset because of the lack of correlation to the other assets in the portfolio, the overall portfolio volatility actually decreased. And for those that spend their time looking at at at these sorts of things, you're you'd be familiar with the sharp ratio which is a measurement of return versus a unit of risk. So it's a, it's in my opinion the best, the best measurement for risk adjusted returns and this is a sharp ratio, so 36 month trailing or three-year trailing sharp ratio which is the amount of return you generated over the preceding 3 years versus the amount of risk that you assume during that period of time. And the higher the sharp ratio, the better and a benchmark generally. Is you want to generate a sharp ratio consistently greater than one. So with with with Bitcoin this is just Bitcoin alone. You can see the sharp ratio has been historically above the orange line here, which is the the 1.0 sharp ratio horizon. 77% of the observed periods you would have generated a greater. A sharp ratio greater than one and the median of of these observations was a 1.6 which in and of itself is a fantastic sharp ratio. Just owning Bitcoin has generated a much better sharp ratio than than traditional assets. And so as a comparison and and generally you kind of think of the market as being around A1 sharp but the that 6040 portfolio that I mentioned earlier was. You know, it tends to bounce around that one mark. So Bitcoin all by itself has generated better median sharp ratios over time. But when you add it to the 6040 portfolio and this graph you've just pulled up here shows that same concept which is the far left of the X axis is 60% equities, 40% fixed income and then as you move across the right. To the right we're adding incremental allocations to Bitcoin. You can see what happens to the 6040 portfolio to the sharp ratio by adding these small increments of of Bitcoin. And you know, I this is, you know, not for your bit Bitcoin maxi crowd, but if you're thinking about a a traditional wealth manager or traditional high net worth family. And you you look at the the gain and sharp ratio that that you can pick up from going from zero to just a two or a 3% position. What you've done here historically is you've actually decreased your volatility and substantially increased your returns by adding a small portion of Bitcoin to a diversified portfolio. And and you know again looking at the 10 year or the blue line on this graph going from. A10 year historical sharp ratio of seven of .77 up to up to A1 that's that's very meaningful and again that was at a point in time when Bitcoin was on its lows. So we'll be we'll redo this, this analysis maybe at one year again and it's just interesting to watch this over time, but a a very compelling argument. For traditional for you know, traditional wealth managers. For traditional high net worth individuals, they're just investors in general to to consider adding a small portion of Bitcoin to a portfolio. Yeah, that that's that's the most comprehensive sharp ratio analysis I've seen with Bitcoin. And and it it presents the whole case. I particularly like how you break out because too often it's just a sharp ratio. But you broke out, you know, here's the performance side of it and you see that on the graph it it's quite linear. Increase of of Bitcoin allocation results in better portfolio performance over all of your selected time periods. And I and I guess that's how BlackRock ended up running a similar sort of analysis and landing on the optimal allocation of Bitcoin 86% or or whatever it was because that's you know that math plays out in that way. So you you got the performance, pure performance of it but the volatility piece? And and doing the analysis of just of just volatility and how increasing you know a percent or two allocation to Bitcoin decreases overall portfolio volatility, that that's the Holy Grail that's everything that you're looking for in in portfolio construction and and all wealth managers have to do is just read this analysis in order to understand the case for Bitcoin in a in a in a well-rounded portfolio. It's so counterintuitive to the narrative around Bitcoin. Yes, Bitcoin in isolation is highly volatile, but as the pure Bitcoin chart showed, the median sharp ratio is well above one. But you can see if people don't really dive deep into what's actually happening here and they just look at it at a surface level, they can see the volatility and maybe assume that it. Doesn't add any benefits to the sharp ratio of their overall portfolio. Well, it's all about sizing too. That's just the crazy part about the volatility case. It's like just size it appropriately where the volatility doesn't matter. And then we all know once you have some exposure, it's it's kind of when the floodgates open. Joel, the the thing that I really appreciated and it's a great report, but it was the timing of it. It's we very often it's very counter to like when you see all the education research comes out, it's when the market's flying. And I just remember it's the summer and you're kind of you're building and nobody's talking about Bitcoin and there's very little your research and reports and it came out, it's like, hey guys, this is still here. This is the time you should actually be paying attention, you know, educating yourself and also allocating. So that'll always be implanted in my head. I just remember the summer when everything was quiet and it was like all this stuff is, nobody's talking about it and you guys dropped that report. A career of investing. I've developed a strong superstition around it, so I actually think I reverse jinx the market by by putting that out. That might have marked the low. So we appreciate, we appreciate your service. Our wives appreciate it. Yeah a a lot better than Bank of America put out like a pet peeve analysis of of mine at the very top of the last bull market. They they ran their analysis on on what's the multiplier of capital inflows to Bitcoin and how much that how how much each dollar of capital inflowing to Bitcoin increases the total value of all Bitcoin and they came up with like a a multiplier of like 100 and 120 X something like that But but what they're looking at is the sample of you know. Bull market mania. So, you know, and then they're extrapolating that across across time. And so we know that still shows up. People say, oh, Bank of America says that every dollar that flows in increases the value of Bitcoin by $120.00. And. And that's just not true. It was true for a very finite moment in time at at the worst possible point in time to be doing that analysis, which is of course when they did it. Yeah. Yeah. When that analysis, when that when that analysis gets accepted is sorry. No, I'm sorry Michael. I was just going to say that the the, I think one of the the important drivers of that analysis we did was correlation and and correlation itself moves over time of course and I think that because. There is a lot of attention paid to correlation when there are draw downs. There's a perception that Bitcoin is a risk. It is a risk asset, obviously, but but when? When there is a risk event and all risk assets are sold, Bitcoin is sold and there's a deleveraging effect that that affects all risk assets. And so I think the even my own perception, I think just people's perception of the correlation is much higher than it actually arithmetically is because it's you know for for a couple of weeks every year these risk assets all move in lockstep. But it's the other sort of 50 weeks out of the year when and we've seen a lot of it over the last few months, haven't we, where the equity markets and and crypto almost seem to be going? And an inverse relationship and and it there really is a very very low sustained very low correlation between Bitcoin and and these other assets which is a wonderful thing to have in a portfolio for generational wealth. Yeah, I was just going to allude to what the report made me think of as we had Chris Hyper who leads to the research team at Fidelity on a few months ago and this is one of the things he I was really excited about once the benchmarks were established in the wealth management community of like the certain percentage allocations and that was just like you just check the box is really when the the floodgates you know open for capital to come in and so it's just 1% return or 2%. So it sounds like that's similar in line with your, your your kind of like thesis on where kind of the market starts to understand you know a small allocation can really outperform the market? I think it really depends on the client Michael. You know I you know for the for the Bitcoin Maxis. To be sure if we extended that graph out past 10% the. The returns and the sharp ratio keep going up and to the right. So it is this is this is not meant to and and by the way I have an irresponsibly high allocation to Bitcoin personally so. Joel, I've heard. I've heard it goes up forever. I've heard it goes up forever. But I I I can't confirm so but I think if you know when when we're talking to clients who you know our typical clients who are ultra high net worth families and and foundations. And they're investing in an endowment style of investing which is to to have a diverse set of uncorrelated asset classes that will generate some income for the foundation's needs or the family's lifestyle needs. But then sort of outpace inflation over a very, very, very long period of time that that's the goal. And when you're talking to clients like that, then when, when you can make an argument that historically across these 35 and 10 year time periods, not on not only are you increasing your returns significantly your your numerator, but actually at a 2 or 3% position in the portfolio, you're actually decreasing your risk, your your volatility, your your denominator. So that just becomes an easy argument. You're getting a win on both the numerator and the denominator if if history continues to repeat itself. Do you do you feel like there's been a a shift or or do you see a shift coming in terms of this becoming the accepted wisdom that you know the the math is out there that that people are at this point potentially being irresponsible for having a 0% allocation to Bitcoin when the math suggests that A1 or 2% allocation makes a ton of sense. Do you feel like in the in I guess broadly in the wealth management industry that the? But this is finally percolating through no I don't. I I I believe it. I know you three do and I I suspect most of your listeners do. But no, there's a, there is still a healthy healthy amount of skepticism amongst the traditional traditional finance folks. And you know and I think a lot of it is the the narrative that the the Elizabeth Warrens of the world are are putting out there. The, you know, it was used to fund terrorism narrative. You know there's been a lot there's been there was a lot of publicity around that and unfortunately there's been very little publicity about walking back the false analysis that went into that statement. But so no, there's still a lot of of skepticism but I I see amongst the traditional high net worth investors but that's bullish to me like that that's you know again going back on my career there's a couple of things that you want, you want a lot of people who are still negative on on an idea and you want volatility. And so that's you know these things that that you might look at on the surface and say are negatives those those actually to me are that's the kind of potential energy that still exists in this in the prices here. Yeah, that creates the. Enjoy what you just I know we talked about a logo for the pod but the the on ramp terminal that what you just described was the genesis behind investing in that tool to showcase to institutions wealth managers or clients. Why there's not a bunch of error between zero and the current price of Bitcoin? Because. To the uninitiated, they're just looking at it. And to Marty's points, like the common trope of, you know, past results are not indicative of future returns or or however the phrase goes, it's like that thought that, well, OK, so this is the return profile if it continues, but why would it continue? And we all know why it would. But somebody else needs to go and do that research and see all the different. Core fundamentals, how they're just going only in One Direction, whether it's mining, hash rate, nodes, transactions. So, yeah, we'll get you over that access because we'd be curious as you think about it from an institutional perspective, what are other metrics that individuals you think are going to be interested in seeing we can start to incorporate to give like the right tool into the market? Yeah, Michael, I'm happy you brought that up because I wanted to interject and say, yeah, let's deal, Matt, in this. Like past performance is not indicative of future returns, but like. Just look at the set up here. I think the estimates are like 80 to 150 million people globally adopted Bitcoin in earnest. That's a very small percentage and probably over overestimating the total amount of people actually hold Bitcoin. We're still very early in this. There's 8 billion people on the planet, governments are proving. To continue to be fiscally irresponsible moving into the future, the world is becoming more interconnected. You have this peer-to-peer digital cache system that can connect the world. And then on top of that, I really don't think, and Jesse, this is your favorite topic, but people don't understand how many Bitcoin has already been distributed, the market and the fact that we have another halving coming up in five months that's going to reduce the supply inflation that's being introduced to the market every block. And those factors, whether people want to recognize it or not, more and more people are learning about Bitcoin, becoming more confident in it, putting their savings in it. There's less Bitcoin being distributed to market and governments are proving to be woefully irresponsible with their fiscal policies. And I I also would add to that you know, but very good list of of kind of the the the bold case thesis. I would add to that that I, I do think that legislation and regulation it's grinding slowly, but it is going in the right direction. And the the Lummus Gillibrand Bill is you know maybe it doesn't pass in the near term, maybe it doesn't pass in its current incarnation, but I think that it it will eventually. I think that we'll probably see stable, stable token legislation soon you know in the next year. And I think that that over the course of the next year we're probably also going to see a spot ETF approved. And so I just I it's it's for our clients who are investing for periods that are in in kind of decades and you think about what's going to happen from a legal and a regulatory perspective it it is damn near inevitable and once that happens then I think the opportunity for for these handful of digital assets is significant. And you know I think I think that you know my my personal view on Bitcoin is that it maybe it doesn't replace the dollar in in my lifetime, you know as a as a reserve currency. I think the importance of the dollar is probably is demonstrating that it's sustainable. But I do think that it replaces gold for sure. I think it becomes the reserve asset of choice for for investors looking for a hedge and and I think you know, I don't know if it's Ethereum or something like it that's programmable that you kind of think of not as a currency or as a store of value like Bitcoin. I think you think about it as an operating system. So in the same way that we sort of look at investing in Microsoft today, I think that's how we'll think about protocols like Ethereum. It's it's an operating system. It's it's a program. And so I I these digital assets I think have a very asymmetric set up right now for all the reasons you listed. Joel, from your cohort from a previous life, what percentage do you believe knows that there's only 21 million Bitcoin? I I think this like answer is, is one of the most bullish things. Yeah, it's only about 30% and that probably is is, is. Being very kind, I think that you know 1/5 to 1/3 of the market at best who's controlling capital knows that there's only a 21 million Bitcoin. You know there's. If that's not bullish, I don't know what is. And probably 10% of those realize that 19.5 million have been distributed to the market already, right? And and very few realize there's a having coming, which is the most exciting part. We have to really figure out how we're having efficient market theory, doesn't it? When? Oh, it sure does. Everybody knows it's gonna happen and then it happens and it goes up and it's like, Yep, that wasn't supposed to happen. I was. I was taught, I was taught at Stanford. They taught us weak form efficient market hypothesis and and I always thought that something was off about this because. You know how how were how were any how was anybody a a a better than average investor. You know how did how did Stan Druckenmiller do so well for decades if if every if there was a level playing field and you know all information was incorporated into into prices accurately. It's just not reality. That's not human nature. And then here comes Bitcoin to like amplify this this problem. And sure, it manifests as understanding asymmetry. But that the efficient market hypothesis doesn't allow for understanding asymmetry. And so boom, it's a shot across the bow for that whole hypothesis. And yeah. Joel, we learned last week was kind of, it was mean knowledge to Marty and myself is that the having is like Christmas to Jesse. And so now we have to figure out what our having event will be because it's going to have to be special. We can't let every four year Christmas. Come and go without doing something special. So we'll have to plan around that. We'll we'll let you know, I'll make a note in my calendar to send you guys a fruitcake. That would be amazing. The. There's a lot of people planning having parties already. I'm like see how much hash rates coming on the network. You're gonna you're gonna be having a late having party by by the time it comes. It's actually the market update of the week. I read a newsletter last night. It is. I know we talked a lot about mining last week, Jesse, but I didn't run the numbers on the hashray growth. Hashray's grown 27% in less than three months between September 6th and last week. It grew from like 383 XA hash a second to 450 something I believe. Brutal, brutal for miners. And another incredible example of there's a there's a fully transparent metric that shows you what people are doing with their dollars. Their CapEx spend right now, they are investing in this thing and you don't, you don't get that in any other asset class. You don't get to see transparently what's really happening in terms of investment into gold or any other commodity. You piece it together, but here it is, you know, unfudgeable. Yeah, and I mean just to put. Bring that one up. That would be interesting to just throw up on because I I just pulled it up. I hadn't seen that look at the minor revenue. Yeah, minor revenues going up. It was above 40 million temporarily with the mempool congestion last week or a couple weeks ago. But no, just to put this in context, 27% growth in less than three months. What took 14 years and eight months to get to a certain point, the network just added more than 1/4 of that in less than three months. It's pretty insane. Yeah. It's like AUS government debt. Yes. Yeah, we. 6 trillion annualized over the last few months in the additional debt. Incredible. Surely sustainable. Very scary. It's that's, I mean we don't have to die. Well, that'll be a whole another half hour discussion that we don't have time for. But I do. I I I think people are expecting it to go longer than it may go. The debt situation, that's all I'll say about that, but. Joel, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an incredible discussion, Your experience in the traditional finance world and now the work that you've done in Wyoming into Ocean is extremely insightful and I think the listeners of the show are going to get a lot of value out of this conversation. Well, thank you. You're generous with your compliments. I, I, I appreciate having this chance to chat with you guys. Thanks for including me. Yeah. And I just want to apologize for letting the tiger out of the cage earlier, going over to sleep. It's good to have that back and forth though. It's good to have a little spice in any podcast. Yeah, that was great. Oh, no, Joel, appreciate you joining. And I think there's really a need it's it's something we're trying to embody an on ramp of like I don't know, professionalizing is the right word. Maybe it is, but it's just. Thinking about how do we bring these concepts to the market in the way that they want to meeting them where they are, whether it's through custody, education or conversations like this. I think that they're really rare and it's just because we're so early, there's nothing really special about us. It's more that we're just early. So putting all those together right now, it's a little bit foreign, but over time, it'll just continue to be the norm. So I appreciate you joining in, coming on and giving us your expertise with the space. I appreciate what you guys are doing too. Thanks for including me. All right. We'll see everybody next week.