Transcript+
Before we get into the episode, a quick reminder that this podcast 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, leveraging our partnerships with industry veterans Bit Go and Coincover on ramps. Multi Institution Custody is a segregated vault requiring two of three institutions at any point in time to sign once a client's unique permissions have been met. Our industry leading best in class approach to custody helps individuals and institutions secure new and existing Bitcoin positions. All keys are held in deep cold storage and kept 100% offline. Managed with institutional grade security best practices. The custody solution eliminates single points of failure and reduces counterparty risks, ensuring maximum security and Peace of Mind. Onramp's suite of products includes our custody offering, a spot Bitcoin fund, private wealth services and inheritance planning, and managed wealth for advisors. Whether you're new to Bitcoin or a veteran in the space, we would love to connect with you. To understand your needs and how we can serve you, please visit ourwebsite@onrampbitcoin.com or 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 extra ever assembled in the history of darkness? 1974. 198792972000 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 I. Say when we sell, welcome back to the last trade, 1st 2024, We're recording on Thursday, January 4th, 2024. We're joined by Matt Dines from Build Asset Management. With that being said, we're going to have a new format to the show, a little more structure. What do you guys think about a little bit more structure? Is that good? 2024 new new year, new US. New year, New pod. It's not the last, last, last trade. This is it was the last trade of the year. I think we might have confused some individuals in the last year. This is the TLT to be bullish on. Oh Matt coming in and providing the pod with a meme to start the year. This is the TLT you want exposure to. Matt, if you go to tltbtc.com it will redirect you to our our the last trade. That's awesome. Great donate, great domain. With that being said, we new structure of the show is where to come prepared with a few topics to discuss before we get into the main topic. The main topic of the day sure won't be surprising. What would be the ETF approval or further delay is imminent within the next 5 to 8 days I believe. So a lot of people are waiting with bated breath to see what the SEC does. But before we jump into the ETF, we're going to start with the topic of AI and its impact on the broader economy. Obviously, 2023 was the year of AI proliferation. I believe it was October or November of 2022 when ChatGPT launched and essentially provided the the economy with the first consumer app in the artificial intelligence world that that reached mainstream success 2023. Throughout the year we had an explosion of people using the products, people creating companies around artificial intelligence and companies trying to determine whether or not they should implement it or more likely how they're going to implement it into their stack. And then I think a really important topic that's on top of everybody's mind as it pertains to artificial intelligence is its effect on the broader economy, particularly the jobs market. So let's just start with the huge excitement within Tech Chart Logan. And this is pretty this is a pretty astonishing chart, especially when you compare it to the iPhone and the Apple App Store on the iPhone, which is was considered to be probably the the biggest tech innovation and disruptor of the 1st 20 years of this century. And if you look at this chart, you can see that AI using Hacker News trends is exploding above the iPhone levels that hit in 28 twenty 08/20/09. Now we must say obviously 2023. There's probably a lot more people on Hacker News, but still this chart is a bit bit astonishing. So Jesse, I'll throw it to you. What are your high level thoughts on AI as a trend? What happened in 2023 and what we can expect in 2024? Yeah, it's it's such a huge topic. I, you know when when AI finally came out, you know, with products that that people can use to implement into into their daily work and their businesses ChatGPT, my instinct was, OK, this is going to be like a classic Gartner tech hype cycle progression where for people who aren't familiar with that, that's the idea that when something is brand new, there's a ton of hype about it and then the hype can't live up to where the actual development of that tech is. And so you enter this like this lull, the the through of disillusionment where it it feels like the IT never delivered that that technology just never materialized as as something real that mattered. But meanwhile real progress is being made with making that technology better and and integrating it into the economy. And then eventually the impact of that technology is greater than the original hype expectation was in the 1st place. But but you go through that through and so that's what happens with every technology. And so you know for the last year I've been assuming that's what will happen with with consumer grade AI here and I still think that that's probably happening. But I have to admit that I think it was maybe it's just like that that this version of AI is is so immediately useful to anybody doing, doing a job that it has impacted productivity already to a degree that that I didn't think would be possible within a year. And I still have, I still have some doubts and I'm very curious to get Matt's thoughts on this about how much of the the sort of stock market rally is actually because of like productivity and the economy doing well versus liquidity. And you know having to print more more debt which the US has been doing in the last nine months in particular and which which ends up adding liquidity to to markets and things rally as a result. So I'm not really sure what's what's happening here, but I have to admit that that AI has been having a greater impact and we've been seeing it at on ramp. I mean it. There are AI tools that we use on a day-to-day basis to help us be more efficient and I'm sure that's happening at in every company right now. Yeah, man. I know you and what you guys are doing at BUILD is really finance focus, credit credit market focus. What what are your thoughts on this? Have you been dabbling with it at all? Is it something outside your purview? So for using the tools themselves directly, I mean it's a. It's a huge assist for you know, I'd say that second step in writing, you know Marty as a writer yourself, you know, cranking out content every day, you know the the way I approach it is the first step is, you know have your outline, but then the next step is just kind of filling in the body, you know, so putting the meat onto the onto the skeleton if you will. And I think just from from that element it like it's it's massive for you know people sitting in my seat where a big portion of our job is just to communicate externally. So it's it's a huge help there. But I think you know to to talk about the the rally over 2023, right you know coming out of 2022, you know if you remember Q end of Q3 there was you know we we Marcus kind of ran into the global constraint of how fast rates could rise and eventually you found out who the weakest link was. Well, it turns out it was AUK pension system and and that's where we really had the, the, the first liquidity driven rally. I would say as Bank of England stepped in with you know what we call maybe like a not QEQE if you will, just a a couple couple weeks of you know just patching up the system offering to you know not go fully ahead with the QT plans. You know give them 3/4 weeks delay for these pensions to to move around money and get their get their, you know they they had to sell something in their books. But a lot of these instruments they were selling you know private credit stuff like that that's a liquid that doesn't have a bid. You get that moved and reshuffle, shuffle the shares and you know that that created a a rally where the the pressure in dollar markets ease you know FXDXY after that massive run up in 2022 just kind of the pressure let out and at the same time you saw energy markets roll over you know for the first like the first time and they did it again recently same thing the September of that Q with the Q3 and you saw it again this year but but last year was I'd say the big one and that really created the the rally going. You know as energy comes down you know dollar a lot of the the capital and the global dollar financial system is actually deployed into these you know shipping containers. You know fill up a a tanker with you know crude or you know something like that like it takes a lot of dollar capital as as you know all of those vessels are in transit globally. So as oil. You know really sold off and the dollar pressure ease those two things created. You know that first run of liquidity and then last year if you're thinking about you know these first three days in the year of trading that we're in now last year as opposed to you know this year we got out of the gate where kind of equities are stumbling a little bit. Last year it was the exact opposite. It was just a really strong rally you know to start the year and then from there it was just kind of just momentum kind of gathering throughout the year. You had that that first liquidity squeeze in March that you know came in with the with the you know the the banking issues. But once this kind of the financial system realized that was not the actual you know credit crisis if you will that would mark the bottom tick of a of a dollar credit cycle. It was just kind of again full steam ahead liquidity driven rally. So I think these two things were playing into each other. You know to go back to the the question the AI was or is you know if you think about like the bleeding edge of tech in the economy, it's always the leader. You know like whether it's the railroad era in the late 1800s or autos in the early 1900s radio and 1930 to you know PCs in in the semiconductor in the 80s, nineties etcetera too. You know the bleeding edge right now is it looks like from a technology standpoint it's AI at this point. So those two things like the the dollar credit system and then you know the real deal, these tools are you know, real. They are going to impact productivity in the economy. They're going to have a massive downstream impact. But I'd say it's it's both of these things, you know, playing, playing off of each other right now. Yeah. Totally, Michael. Yeah. I think Marty, you've been playing around a lot of these tools and I think you've kind of fallen or seen in the camp of like how transformative this stuff will be or can be. And I had this like unlock the other day that. So the that chart we'll put in the show notes, it came from Benedict Evans, I think it was a former partner at A16Z, but he puts out a year in review and I think this one was solely focused on AI. And I think what he referenced is last year it was a lot of like what AI can do. So it was like basically describing or prescribing like, oh, you can do it for, you know, management, consulting tasks like various tasks that you saw in the market This year it was like, oh, shit, like this thing is much bigger. It was what are the questions? And this core question that he put was, is it the next platform shift, similar to like AWS coming from mainframes or like the iPhone? And when you got an iPhone, you, you grabbed it and you didn't really know everything you could do, but it was transformative and it took out like, you know, your flashlight and all these other things. And then years later you start having Uber with geolocation and the other things associated with it. And we still probably don't know all the things that it will be able to do or does it change into the nature of software and like how you interact with it when it comes to coding and the you know things you talk you hear about and how they start to like Daisy chain together and and you really being able to just dream up ideas. But then the last part is like does it take us to AGI And it's like this idea of what does that mean. And and the funny part is I've like looked into this and and I could be wrong but most people don't actually know how this stuff works. Like from the neural networks and the large language models like as the weights start getting calibrated and more data coming through they don't actually know how far it can go. And the the long of it is, is like as I started looking it's like Oh my God, this actually it will change everything and it will change everything in the same way that Bitcoin will change everything and they actually will find a symbiosis with each other because they have to. If you think about like when things change the incumbents a usually don't adopt it because there for fundamental business models. So the it's generally net new entrants that come in. And so when you have that you basically are going to have net new people coming in And if it's AI you're going to need business models around it that accept a borderless or permissionless form of money. Because if it's a weird model that's happening and you don't want it to be used, you're like well I'm not going to let you use your ACH or Visa or whatever it is in the same way. So like the the core idea is like it will naturally grow with each other and I guess where this ties into Bitcoin is a you'll need Bitcoin to pay for it. But then also thinking about like the model when we think about multi institution custody or these other primitives where they're Bitcoin native, they're generally are antithetical to the financial system as it's exists because of like the centralization of assets and how you want to hold custody and then you know build products around it. And it's a similar thing where you know these models that are primitive to Bitcoin will generally be built by net new entrants not the incumbents because it's so fundamentally transformative or disruptive to their to their existing businesses. So I don't know if that like fully crossed, but it's like this idea that both sides are so big and transformative that it will be new entrants that majority it's an over generalization, but 90% come from new business models and you you know looking at what existed but then building it at a more efficient better rate than somebody adopting it and then plugging it into their system. Yeah, I think one thing he said there in particular is very high signal, which is most people really don't understand how these large language models work in the 1st place. And actually, Alex Fetsky from the Bitcoin Times has been releasing a series of articles on TFTC this week talking about exactly this problem. And so building a large language model is not easy. And like you mentioned, the weights and the data you're feeding it and how you're feeding that, it, that data are very particular if you want a particular outcome. And I think that will be the big trend of 2024. Is people really learning how to actually build an LLM appropriately for the end use case they're looking to serve. And then on top of that, like AGI I, I actually had a long discussion with Alex on TFTC about this. He's pretty convinced and he makes a pretty convincing argument that it's just a red herring. Like artificial general intelligence, when you actually understand how these large large language models operate, they're essentially making probabilistic guesses at certain outcomes. They don't really have true intelligence at the end of the day. His thesis is that AGI artificial general intelligence is a red herring boogeyman that the incumbents can use as a means to create a regulatory Moat. And at the end of the day their large language models will achieve quote UN quote AGI as they define it. But at the end of the day it's not really general intelligence. It's could be used as a a ways to to proliferate propaganda because you're basically getting answers from a model that was designed and created in a very particular way. And so that's another big trend I'm looking forward to in 2024 as a proliferation of more open source LLMS to compete with the open AIS and the anthropics of the world. And I think that will actually open up the market for these tools. And I do think in regards to what you're saying about the convergence of Bitcoin and AI, that is where Bitcoin will shine most acutely is because these open source models are going to have to be able to monetize. And I think that's the biggest problem with these open source models right now is like accessibility. Who's going to run them? Who's going to run the GPUs? Who's going to give people access to these models and how are they going to monetize. And I think Bitcoin, particularly lightning network enabled paywalls, makes it very easy to monetize those. And you mentioned privacy Bitcoin. If you're a company looking to maintain some semblance of privacy while you're using these tools that are being hosted by third parties, instead of having to set up an account with your name, your address, your company name, and your bank account information or your stripe information, a simple Lightning Network lightning enabled paywall really cuts out all that. It's like, all right, you you give me the money, I give you the result. I don't need any more of your information. So that's a big theme to look forward to. And then in terms of where we are in the hype cycle, I do think it is, we are still in a bit of a hype cycle. I think 2023 brought with it insane valuations for AI companies. Any buddy in Silicon Valley left a big tech firm to start an AI company got funded with insane valuations out of the gate. And I I find it hard to believe that most of those companies are going to be able to provide the value to their equity holders that that actually justifies those valuations. And so I do think that's where we are in the hype cycle where people were just able to slap AI on a business plan and get a lot of money and crazy valuations. I think there will be a massive correction there over the next few years. And then it as it pertains to actually using the tools, I do think there is a lot of signal and like you mentioned, Michael, we've been using it a lot at TFTC as a means to accelerate the amount of content that we can put. On our site, and I've been very public about this, I'll talk about it here as well, but we've been using ChatGPT and assembly AI. So ChatGPT obviously everybody knows is the chat bot provided by Open AI, and then Assembly AI is a transcription AI service. And so the problem I was having trying to use ChatGPT to help us put content on the site is that it would hallucinate a lot. You'd you'd give it a prompt and say, hey I want to write, I need help writing an article about what a Bitcoin UTXO is and ChatGPT would just go scrape the web and go to a bunch of different sources and then give me something that was completely incoherent and I'd had to spend over an hour editing and it really wasn't worth the time. But now with the combination of assembly and ChatGPT via tool called parse prompt dot AI, which is founded by a friend who reached out to me, it's like I have this tool think it could work for you. What we do is we now take audio content where that's podcast YouTube videos, predominately podcast and YouTube videos. We feed them into Assembly AI think it's a transcript of that audio file. And then you tell chat GB TI need you to write me an article specifically on this content and the hallucination essentially goes to 0. And so you can actually get good valuable content in written form that I can then put on the site. And so this is an effort to accelerate what we're trying to do at TFTC, which is curate what we deemed to be high signal content in the realms of Bitcoin, economics, culture, finance, health, all that stuff. And we've been able to accelerate me one man team writing one article a day to anywhere from like 8 to 15 articles a day just using this tool. We're creating a process around it. And so there's definitely signal there when you utilize the tools the right way. So I think that's another thing that will materialize in 2024 is people getting more familiar with this and getting smarter on how to combine and utilize these tools to get the correct outcome. That actually provides a a more productive business at the end of the day and it certainly worked for us at TFTC. Those are two tools that we use. And then the other is mid journey to create images for the thumbnails. And I've I've gotten really good at prompting which has been a fun fun learning experience over the last year. But I do think there's definitely signal, there's definitely a lot of use cases and there's definitely a lot of noise too. And so I think 2024 we're going to begin sifting the signal from the noise and the trends people getting smarter on how to build LLMS open source competing with closed source AI. That is actually one of my goals in Q1 of 2024 is to transition away from ChatGPT and mid Journey to more open source models because I like to I I think they're actually reaching parity with these closed source models and I do think the trend if it continues, we'll have open source models being better than the closed source models. So that's one thing I'm looking to do rather quickly here in 2024. And then that begs the question, what is the effect on the jobs market? And that brings up the headline from Google, which is in 2024 due to their utilization of AI, they expect to lay off 30,000 employees. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned it just for yourself, right, like how deflationary. Imagine having like how many people you'd have to hire to run what you do. And and Jesse mentioned some of the stuff we're working on and like the number, the sheer number of like from an efficiency perspective. But you teed in on a a key concept, Marty, about the open source and the the models. You can imagine a world where like it's every day you kind of look at Twitter and somebody posts about a like ChatGPT or one of them being like 2. Whatever the angle or ideology or political side is, it's like 1. It's skewed in a certain direction. So you can't even like be confident the information you're getting. So the open source nature is important. But then you kind of dubbed, it dovetails into well, how do you pay for that And that's where like an operation choke point, this stuff all exists where then we'll can you pay with your Visa, can you pay with your credit card, can you do that? And that goes back to the disrupt, the disruptive nature of these technologies. And then when you start to to play with the incumbents, they kind of are able to say, hey, like, you know, maybe we just can't accept your visa because you're providing some of these like API feeds that are given information that we don't think is is good or for whatever reason. That's why that symbiosis with like Bitcoin and AI is like a natural fit because you need a border, a borderless, permissionless form of currency that's also digitally native, right, for for obviously artificial intelligence. But that's where it just feels like natural to like tie in together, which is also applicable for this whole pod of like where this is all going. Yeah, and that's. Sorry, Jesse. It's so interesting that he here, I mean Marty's at the forefront of a practitioner use of AI and and deploying that a lot of things in there that that I found very interesting. And I guess first and first and foremost is Svetsky's position that it's at red herring and the ATI isn't really possible. And I and I agree with that, that reflex to be wary of how this ends up being used politically because that's certainly going to happen. But then my, my neuroscience background, I, my undergrad was in neuroscience has me pretty convinced that the brain is just a machine, just a series of switches. And you know, that becomes a philosophical debate of like do you believe that the soul is, is separate from the brain or do you think that the that the soul is the unconscious product of this machine, this very real machine, just a series of switches and. And I believe the latter. So if you believe that, then it's possible to create a brain, basically, and it's possible to create consciousness, the soul, the soul. The soul's the prompty, the soul's the prompter, Right? The prompter to do things. So you know anyway that I've I'm deeply in that camp as a result of studying that stuff from a from a biological point of view and in all the it's all just synapses and and condition. Neurotransmitters and. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's all very interesting to me and but you know at the at the same time maybe that's the the hype cycle in in in a way too. I agree with your point about valuations being too high potentially to to deliver real you know real economic value And that might be a part of what's happening right now that we're kind of at that Gartner tech hype cycle peak before the through of disillusionment in terms of the economics of this technology. But it could also be that you know people are going to be disillusioned that oh you know what it seems like this this technology just hallucinates all the time and and doesn't have any kind of consistent consciousness that that emerges And so AGI is not possible. Meanwhile like the technology could continue getting better and better and these models turning into full brains basically. And then you have AGI emerge several years from now and and it's all fascinating to me because I was most interested in this stuff about 10 years ago. The book Super Intelligence by Nick Bostrom was kind of mind blowing for me back then and it predicted all this. It predicted the the, you know, it sort of dovetails with the singularity as near hypothesis of as you have this exponential growth of technology and Moore's law continues, where does that lead to? It eventually leads to a point where computers become more intelligent than humans and then computers become capable of making better computers. And then that really, you know, creates the exponential, A singularity moment where beyond that you can't see, you can't predict what the world is like because suddenly progress is taken over by computers instead of humans. And so that's the whole idea of the singularity. And that's what, you know, these tech luminaries for the last 20 years have been pointing towards. And part of the predictions that were in place at least 10 years ago were like this slow progression of of, you know, artificial intelligence in niche categories. And then those niche categories broadening until eventually it's AGI and then and then you sort of reach the singularity point and it's weird that we're like it's playing out. I mean I don't know if it's exactly on the timetable that was predicted 1020 years ago, but it sure is playing out in terms of the how it feels this the world just feels to be changing at a faster and faster rate as as tech becomes you know software hits the world. And so I don't know, I agree that 2024 will be all about refining and improving on this stuff. And you know a whole lot can happen in, in one year. And so we might find a greater degree of change over the next 12 months than we saw over the prior 12 months. Yeah, it's gonna be. I would. I was gonna say I'd 2nd that I think what what you guys raised that point about the the regulatory Moat, right. You know, we so far the narrative we've heard mainly in the op-ed pages about kind of reining and regulating this technology. It's been about the left tail wrist right. The the Skynet scenario Terminator. Yeah, it gets holding the nukes and Oh my God, that's the the existential risk to humanity. But I think there's something even bigger when you like listen to Marty's story about what he's doing with TFTC. Like his his use of these models is basically like having another team mate, right. And you could think about that as they get more and more specialized. It's like 1 model is hyper trained for one task and then that that impacts organizations, you know like so instead of like the post industrial area, you know like the, you know post World War 2 era of how corporations and businesses designed out their their hierarchies, right. I mean it's just like a, you know, a tree where you know maybe each each individual in the tree has six direct reports mapping up to them and then down to the bottom of the node where you look at the org chart. It might look like something like a Christmas tree in terms of the organization structure. But as you go through this, this is like this AI and this, this you know begins to really integrate into the the rest of the economy. Like this is going to, this is going to play in like to to all of our social structures, the existing kind of financial position of of organizations as well as you know the the, the public sector which we can get into later. I mean it's well known that that there's serious problems there. And also I think you know you think about the the the dog not barking right now that everybody's kind of aware of is what's going on in commercial real estate, right. There's a lot of, you know, skyscrapers out there that are just impaired properties. But I think what that like what it boils down to is like our social. This is going to change our organization structure. You know, Marty mentions what he's doing at TFTC. Yeah. Compare and contrast that to what the version of TFTC looked like in like the 60s and 70s. I'd say be like the Rolling Stone magazine would be a good comp. Like it's a, you know, an operation, you know, media entity that that tried to capture the, the cultural zeitgeist of all these big things that were happening in the 60s, seventies and and all of that. And I think that's what TFTC has its finger on the pulse for, you know, right now in this era, but now instead of, you know, a massive media operation with hundreds of employees, you know, sending these writers all over the world to get the story, you know, Marty has himself and I don't know how many employees you have, but it's it's, it's not hundreds, it's it's more like 1, maybe two like you. And then you can get all this other work done. And so you're doing the same thing with, you know, just a much lower footprint, right. And that that trickles in that like everything indirectly. If you think about it like it's office space, like now we don't need to fill up, you know, floor in Manhattan with an office for Rolling Stone. Now it's Marty and TFTC and you know, one room off the Commons base, the Bitcoin Commons down in Austin and everything that kind of trickles down through that. But then it's also like the knowledge worker, right, that's been the base of the this big boom in the kind of the post 1980 world. As you know, the boomers kind of fully entered the workforce in the 70s. And then as they really hit their stride in the 80s, you know, the the, the, the, the primary beneficiary that was like this, this knowledge worker, right. And a lot of these tasks weren't, you know, really high brain activities that a lot of these people were doing. Like a lot of it is just operational paper pushing that is going to be the lowest hanging fruit for not just the AI like the semiconductor and and the Internet have already eaten a lot of the the the the easiest jobs kind of to automate and manage. But now we're going to move up into like the middle market and you know maybe front office part of the stack in terms of like the financial industry footprint. So then when you take it to that level you're like all right, that's going to make this office CRE problem you know materialize as it already is and then that's going to impact the banks and the financial sector. It's also going to impact the fiscal position as you think about like that taxpayer, right. This AI it's basically a a quasi teammate it's it's your new direct report right as you as one individual one human takes advantage of these these tools and and can hyper specialize that those you know what we call them like synthetic workers they don't need benefits. They don't need a four O 1K, they don't need health insurance and they don't you know there's no good way to tax there's no W2. So the real tail risk, like, yeah, sure, maybe they get a hold of Skynet and you know, we all blow up. But I think it's even more in front of us like all of this. So, you know, the faster this integration happens, these organizations and existing kind of social structures from the bottom to the top, like at every scale of society are going to have to absorb this. And it's just going to be one of these periods it looks like where there's a massive amount of change not just in the like the the, you know as Jesse was mentioning, like the singularity is near. The technology is going to get better and better, right. We have tools that can make better tools now but then the speed and the pace that this system has to that our existing systems have to adopt to this massive change like it is it is I could I the way I see this the only way I see it is escalating like it's going to become more and more front and center so that that left tail risk of the nukes firing. I I don't know that that's the biggest thing to worry about right now. It's the eye on the ball is like how do we all of our institutions, like what would be keeping me up at night if I were a policy maker in Washington, DC, is how do I keep society in line and and you know maintain some sense of organization as this massive kind of phase shift takes place. Yeah. We're we're we're entering the it's a massive acceleration of of technology deflation right and what what Booth always writes about and and and Matt to your point like we're going to see the re emergence of Ubi as as some necessary political agenda because there's going to be a lot more people out of work because AI has taken their job and how do we support these people. We should we need Ubi and we need to print money to to help you know retain society as we know it and so that's going to come roaring back and and overall like you you touched on something that I hadn't really thought about before but AI is is really going to cause the shift away from the knowledge economy that we've known that the that the boomer world was based on and back and Bitcoin is a big part of this story because I think it shifts from a knowledge economy back to a capital economy or it's going to be all about like how do you deploy capital to to create a product and and and good by leveraging AI and so Bitcoin becomes the foundation of a new like capital based economy after this transition period that we've had over the last century really of of a knowledge based economy. Hard skills and hard money are the the the next next decade. I mean, just to put some numbers on all this, Matt, while you're speaking, I went to my assembly Open AI and Parse prompt cost. It's cost me $250 over the last month and a half to create more than 100 articles where if I had to pay staff to do that, it would have been thousands of dollars, easily so. So we we probably need our own. We need to do AI dedicated, you know, or themed TLT. But one thing that's like to play this or what you mentioned about like singularity, it's like there's this natural thing that you're doing Marty, that I think is really important and it's kind of like tricked myself into this new pod with final Settlement is getting ahead because we've been so busy working here. And I fundamentally believe that like unless you kind of adopt these tools, you just start to move. It's just like Bitcoin. You start to move behind like in in the world because it's so crazy and transformative and that we look at the deflationary nature of it and the layoffs and all the stuff. It's like if you want to keep pace, it's like getting ahead of understanding the tools, how they impact you. And then I think like for a while, right. It doesn't naturally transition to just no humans are involved in a lot of these tasks. It's just you're augmenting your personal skill set coupled with these tools and that's how you kind of like make the the, the the Cliff of like who's still around and who's not. I think is an important function or like kind of take away from a lot of this is it's not all like doom and gloom. It's like, obviously this is just a natural part of like deflationary aspects of technology, but there's an important aspect of just like starting to look into it because there's a lot of ways to play it where you can benefit. Yeah. And I guess that's the big question. I mean, anchoring back to the Google headline of their plans to lay off 30,000 employees this year because of how AI is affecting their business. I I think that's the big question. What is out there? Does this lead to like a hyper deflationary event that has a a fallout of the job market or do these tools incite something where you have like 1000 roses bloom? Like are these people get laid off, you know, to recognize that they got laid off because of the AI tools and view that as an opportunity to go start their own AI company or start their own business. Maybe not even directly related to AI, but knowing how to leverage AI, which I hope any Google employee would know how to do to go start their own business. I think that's another big question that will begin to get answered in 2024. Is this something that's an existential crisis to the job market? Or are we Luddites and this actually turns out to be something that is making many more people extremely productive and able to go feed themselves because they can leverage these tools? I think it's an ebb and flow kind of thing. If you worked at Google, there's not a lot of places somebody after they get laid off from Google can go and do their brain hasn't worked for for for a while. You know there's 200,000. I mean it's just it's just a fact like you go the the golden handcuffs are a real thing when you these firms hire people so they don't go out to compete or they sit and roll and do the performance review. Obviously that's just a generalization, but it's a reality for a large portion of like just in general like companies. I think too there's an element where it's it's if you get out in the field and you go experience trying to, you know, go stay at a hotel right now or stay at a resort whatever like or go to dinner with your family. There's there's a almost. It's, it's pretty clear like a shortage of employable workers at like the what we call blue collar jobs, right? Like the low value ad jobs. You know traditionally over the last 40-40 years that you did need a college degree for of a class, an economic class that's fallen behind right over this massive bull market and financial assets. There's a shortage now of that type of worker versus you know, where the economy's kind of like shedding jobs at the the white collar sectors of the economy. So there's something massive going on where, you know, this big shift in where society is allocating its its resources, including our human resources, right. Is going to need to take place because like there's just, you know, it's pretty obvious now there's all these impaired office skyscrapers across the the metros in the US And I don't I don't know of too many markets where it it isn't an actual problem. Is is telling you like it's giving signal that there there's something even bigger that needs to take place in terms of where our society has misallocated resources That goes down to where where we've trained up workers, where the college degrees have been. You know what what people have been majoring in and you know where where people have been, you know, kind of funneled into for economic opportunity. You know as like the Luke Groban type of thesis says like we don't have enough you know plumbers, electricians, home build, etcetera and there's just going to be a a massive shift that needs that looks like it needs to take place and. It hasn't been possible, it hasn't been possible to make a life as like a like a hotel worker and and you know provide for your family because of the last 40 years of bull market and financial assets and how that has impacted the price of everything but that. And then that becomes what Bitcoin makes possible again of like you can live a life of a blue collar life of saving Bitcoin and seeing your purchasing power grow over time because you have a good money and you don't need to go to college to chase a high a high paying job. Which has been really the only like viable strategy or has emerged as the consensus only viable strategy over the last 40 years in particular. So you know, but I think that trend, I think that that kind of wisdom only percolates in hindsight. Like after there's there's literally a generation's worth of economic data that then people from you know parents passed down to their children of like here's what worked for my generation, that's what I wish I had done basically. And and so I think you know 20 years from now we'll we'll get people saying you know what just just accumulate Bitcoin and forget about college and be a plumber and and maybe that's, you know it doesn't all start in 20 years. But we'll have a a slow transition back to that being like a a a prudent a bit of advice to give to the next generation. And that all makes it possible to to to restore what has been a gutted blue collar class. So hopefully, hopefully the blue collar workers find Bitcoin and incorporated it into their financial planning because that makes it possible to be a blue collar worker and thrive. So I'm hopeful, But you know, we have to reach them with education too. Yeah, the romantic in me likes to think that this will enable people to focus on more virtuous endeavours like building beautiful things, beautiful sculptures like over break between the last two recordings I was home. I flew into Philly from Austin and got dropped off at 30th St. station in Philadelphia to head up to New York for a pub key event that I was Co hosting. And just sitting there I was. I had to wait for like 45 minutes and 30th St. station. And if you've never been to 30th St. station in Philadelphia, I highly recommend you take the trip. If not only when? Was it? When was it built? Marty, if you. That's it was 30th St. Station. It has to be a turn of the century, like Bose Arts or Art Nouveau or or maybe Art Deco kind of building right back 19. 33. Yep. OK, so art deco. Yeah, probably. It's a beautiful piece of architecture. Hopefully we can get back to that with this. I I think we have to find a silver lining in this. The white collar workers are certainly about to see mass extinction, if you will. It seems brash, but if having used the tools myself like it's happening, there's nothing we can do about it. You can be a Luddite and try to dig your feet in the ground and tell the government to slow things down, but it's not going to happen. We're going to have to get back to building beautiful things. And I do think this will shift people away from the software world towards the physical world, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. It will just be if you really. Think about it. It's a practical, obvious thing Like if you look at it like a pie and like if everybody's here in the white collar and then you have all these tasks and things that need to be built. And historically for hundreds and thousands of years we've had this filter like we've just outstretched that via like money and all the things we know that you have to start going back to like people have to build things, you have to deliver services. In the real world, it's it's a, you know it actually shouldn't be that kind of like crazy that we say this or like the market is like starting to change. It's like we all have to get into the the, the circles of our confidence and like what the market needs. Yeah. And and that's because the money and and investing in general has made it so that you can't aim for anything but the top 10% of jobs. Like there's just no, there's not. There's no way to thrive you. Know the funny? Hard to thrive. A funny example that's just relevant here is the 2 smartest for sure the one. The other one I haven't worked with but talked to more mechanical that I've worked in in my limited career, called 15 years, were Mechanical Engineers. They had to go into like Tradfi because it just didn't pay. And that was what society told them. One was from India, the other one went to Carnegie Mellon and they were the smartest people I ever met. They didn't even want to be doing what they were required to do and they were the best at what they did. They wanted to be out, like working with like kind of like prints and all the things associated with it. But they were there, like working with numbers. And that's because of what Jesse just related to. And there's so many people like that all over the job sector globally that are just forced into these functions that they weren't based to. Like Marty's point, it's not even necessarily a romanticism. It's just a reality that people build things when they're not worried, like beautiful things when they're not worried about like being able to, you know, live paycheck to paycheck and if all the things associated with come with like a bad form of money. So this is definitely going to happen. It's just going to take time, Yeah. I mean the oh, there's. Chiefs not. Go ahead on that one. Go ahead. I was gonna say just to piggyback on that, Michael, the chief investment officer, the fund I worked for out of college I worked under was a Russian cosmonaut and immigrated to the US to to write algos for like hedge fund indexes and stuff like that. This is, yeah, it's the joke about new. I mean yeah, we we we've kind of experienced this as you know the in the 90s all of the the the PhDs, the Quads kind of like got pulled in by Wall Street, you know to create new exotic derivatives or price and create some you know a really complex formula so we can create a new instrument to trade. We've kind of seen the results of that. We we saw this, you know, subprime crisis where we, you know built these models and created the AAA credit securities that the financial system needed. You know at the base layer of the system you you need a AAA, you know, credit asset to keep leveraging on top of the system. And we saw it just completely fall apart in 2008. So we know we're building, you know, where where where engineers are trained to think like in the laws of physics that these are like, you know like honest discoverable truths of the universe. It's not the way you know financial markets and humans, you know at the end of the day kind of operate in practice. But I just, you know had this thought, remember Isaac Newton, right. The the peak quant of all time. Right. There's only a few others who hold up to that name like maybe Gauss you know a few other Einstein like they're they're the best, right. He went through the same thing. I forget what role he had maybe as like chancellor of the ex checker in England or maybe he was the head of his universities endowment. I can't remember who it was but he got roped in massively by I I think it was the South Sea bubble and at the end of the day, like he just threw up his arms and was just going to complete disgust. He's like I can calculate like the masses of heavenly bodies and you know, all of that, but it's like at the end of the day like I cannot calculate or comprehend, you know, the the decision making and financial markets of of like the behaviors of mankind. So this is, you know, other bubbles, you know, throughout history is it's like kind of history rhymes not repeats, but there's there's nothing new under the sun As as much as you know we're talking about this. The term we used, you know, 5 minutes or 10 minutes ago to call this was like a mass extinction event, you know, in in the economy and the, you know, knowledge worker, the white collar sector economy. It's like I wouldn't, I wouldn't. Call it that like just because it's it invokes too much sense of fear. I I would I think and panic. This is something you know the economy is like we've been through. There's there's precedents for this. It's going to be painful. There's going to be band aids ripped off and people are going to need to adjust. But we'll make it through and and you know, I've heard you know Marty, I think he did a podcast with Parker talking about the the GFC in 2008 that was a massive rug pull. You know for people to deal with Like just the financial sector got bailed out. You know the bonuses continued for the industry like no one faced any repercussions for the for the mistakes made over you know the pre financial crisis era or or the decades ahead of you know I'll thought out decisions that ultimately LED there in policy but at the end of the day like the American working class whether you're white collar blue collar like you got rug pulled off of that one. So you know as much as you know we're talking about this, this is a big technological shift that's underway and accelerating. But you know we've we've survived worse. I think or heart like the I don't want to say as bad as it is, I can keep digging and hitting rock bottom. But this is just like how the world works. We have to adapt. We have to integrate this into our businesses, into our economy and that's that's really the only way to get to get through this is to get like cross that bridge, build the bridge and get to the other side. But yeah. The Isaac Newton was I. Appreciate that extinction event. It's a bit, it's a bit too alarmist. I agree, Matt. That's actually one thing in 2024. I'm not trying to be doomer. Need white pills. The white pill is we're going to get back to building beautiful things. There will be some turbulence between now and the beautiful things being erected. But as Matt mentioned, this has happened many times throughout history. And Marty was not kidding. 2024 New Year TLT The Last Trade is an AI podcast. Yeah, it's an important topic and there is obviously an intersection with Bitcoin And obviously if you're a capital allocator out there thinking about how to the place your bets in the in the financial markets is going to be a big disruptor to that strategy. Because if you're heavily dependent on commercial real estate cash flows that may not materialize the way it has in the past moving forward due to how this is going to affect the job market. And with that I think begin transition to the next topics. But let's just talk about the job market a little bit. We have this chart up here of quits verse hires and they seem to be hitting they point that would signal that many people are wary about losing their jobs and they don't feel confident enough to quit and go find another one. So they're not worried about losing their jobs to worry about finding another job. They may be stuck into place that they don't like, but they're not quitting as aggressively as they as they were in the past. If you're quit, you're confident you can go find another job and then on top of that hires. Both of these quits and hires are below pre COVID levels. So people are holding steady in their jobs and then their employees are not employers excuse me, are not hiring as many people. And this is an interesting chart to juxtapose with the jobs data that came out today, the unemployment data that came out today that's also reaching pre COVID levels as well that that you had it up there, that that one right there, next one, no other way. Logan's looking for it. There you go. So this is an interesting topic. We're getting two different stories from these two charts. One is that people aren't confident to quit and companies aren't hiring. But here, the unemployment claim claims data that was released today came in pretty low back below recession threshold, firmly back below recession threshold. So how are you guys reading the juxtaposition of these two data points? Jesse will throw it to you. But that last one kind of throws me for a loop. I don't know what to make of that. I I'm I'm really not sure. I mean part of part of what confounds all these employment numbers is sometimes you have you you have people with multiple jobs or picking up a second job and that shows as you know like a like good positive employment data. But it's really people struggling and and pushed to find a second job just to fit in some extra hours to make some money. And and so that is an additional layer in in all of this that I don't know what to make of. Yeah. So I'm not sure about, I'm not sure about this. I'm curious what Matt has to say on on employment data right now. Yeah, so the the BLS numbers like the the big print that markets watch is the the monthly NFP print out farm payrolls comes out the 1st Friday of every month. So we'll get that tomorrow as far as this recording, so we don't have that one yet. That's a massive like lagging indicator. It's a it's a model estimate. They don't actually go through like the, the BLS and gathered, you know, W2 data and be like all right, how many new ads did you have? How many like? It's not a precise calculation by any means, like the measurement is horribly inaccurate. It's it's a model and historically you can see this in the data they go through. You know your initial print like we'll get the December number for NFP job creation on Jan 3rd. You go through two different revisions or updates like over the next ensuing 2 months. So you have three months before the December number is locked in and I use air quotes even like it's this is completely ridiculous. But they're not locked in like you see this. They go back and restate after the fact and it can be like 5-5 to five to 10 years later and restate the the let's say drawdowns or or job losses in a in a recession versus you know the expansion and and the business cycle kind of uptick. So the NFP numbers are just like if you're using them as a speedometer like they're terrible you they don't tell you anything like in real time the continuing claims numbers and new unemployment claims, those are better because like they're consolidated from the state level like like like so you have kind of a a more of a bottoms up kind of real time snapshot and they're reported weekly. They're still noisy but if you kind of you use a moving average like it gives you a better signal from week to week. It could be you know there might be noise from the data collection itself. It could also be let's say Google, like if you have one big employer in a state and you know here in Washington state where where I reside say Boeing was going to do some layoffs. As you know, hey, we see plane deliveries or plane orders, you know, slowing down. You might see like a big, a big, you know, abnormal jump week to week. So you could actually just get some some noise that's actually kind of real activity like it's not measurement error but it's just coming from like the the sample and just idiosyncratic decisions from business to business. But those continuing claims numbers are actually kind of better as a as a signal to where the economy is in my opinion than than just watching NFPS and seeing where it comes into month to month. Now the markets, you know there's the equities and bond markets just are hyper attuned to respond to that NFP print as they come in 1-2 and three it's it's it's kind of like the beauty contest if you will and we're we're judging people based on you know what they look like at age 20 as opposed to you know maybe where they are in life, 3040 year olds, whatever in terms of what they've actually accomplished and how how it actually plays out after the fact. So this will create a lot of like noise and markets, but it's not really a reliable signal if you're if you're basing asset pricing on on those reports, but financial markets are doing that. So it it makes it hard from week to week to really get the picture month to month if you will over the short term to see what's going on. But as the bigger, longer term revisions come in, they've are like you already saw the BLS revised down prior months of last year for job creation we claimed happened. And you. Know the first few quarters of the year. Those got revised down and that was after the 3rd and, you know, supposedly final print. Once the facts are rewritten, you'll see the economist come out and, you know, put in some new final estimate and and lock the number in stone. And it just kind of begs the question, like what was the real truth? Like how do you know, 'cause now you're going back and basing this on a model like do we go back and, you know, collect the W twos and see the real data? What was, what was the actual number? It just I I I think in my opinion it just goes to show how hard it is to technocratically manage the like an economy from a central planning standpoint from the tops down based on policy decision. Like like from an office in Washington DC where you're trying to micromanage all of this and it kind of bundles bundled into that question is like how we manage monetary policy. Right now it comes from you know a board of people sitting around a table at the Eccles building or communicate like one interest rate and then manage this whole thing. It's very hard to do. Yeah, it's all kind of backwards looking too. I mean jobs numbers can can be looking good right now because sentiment is kind of good right now because we've been in nine months of positive liquidity that has caused markets to surge. And so I I kind of have this, I have this sneaking suspicion that we're in a bit of like a dead cat bounce sentiment wise right now. Like the rally right now doesn't to me. It doesn't feel real like or or sustainable I should say, like are we really going to rip to new highs right now with what's going on with the deficit in particular and and the national debt. And you know the AI explanation is like OK maybe maybe it's real productivity but this I don't know I I have this sneaking suspicion that we're going through the same emotions that 2007 into 2008 had with like people saying oh we we had a we had a little gully and things are recovering and it's all good and people actually fall for that sentiment. You know and and you get caught in a in a bull trap where you're you get bullish and sentiment feels fine right when you shouldn't. That's a little bit doomer on my part I admit. But I just don't see how we're going to the stock markets are going to rip to new highs. But you know then again it it comes back to liquidity and and if if we're in a QE environment because we're printing fresh debt you know deficit spending is is the name of the game maybe that's what's going on. I I I don't know. I'm a little perplexed at how stock markets have been so positive. Well, 'cause it's just. It's easy, right? It's just. So just it's just so dislocated from the fundamentals, Matt's gonna be able to more eloquently explain it. But but from a pure just like looking at the market, those numbers, I like the first chart because it basically supports what we all have felt. Or if you ask anybody, people are getting laid off and they can't go find jobs, but everything else will say otherwise. And that's like the fundamental when you think about like interest rates rising, like natural cost of capital increases, people spend less, so companies make less. So they have to let people off. These are just like natural order things. But the stock market and the charts and the Fed speak will say otherwise. And I think that's the part that's confounding on your site, Jesse, is like well, what's happening because we're at all time highs. But then there's all this like weirdness around us that doesn't feel good. And I think that's natural, right, because like we're feeling it and seeing it in the market, but the actual stock market is saying otherwise. So how to judge where stocks are like? That's just the Keynesian beauty contest. Like one of the best, like you know, just to say what Kane's got right, like talking about it, it's it's really castles in the sky and trying to come up with valuations like as much as people think like equity markets are the hardest thing to predict, like a lot of it is based on like sentiment. You. Know as opposed to, you know, people who think they're rational, value driven investors, you know, like. Dogecoin. Thing out like it's like. Dogecoin in. Practice. Yeah. Here's what we like here. Like it's as far as trying to get your bearings on where this thing is like dig deeper into the financial system like the commodity, Marcus, are a great signal. And then I'd say like interest rates and then we can talk about. Building a case. Like the the Bitcoin case for what we know on top of that. But. I think like going into the base layer like down to the studs of the financial system, looking at interest rates right now, right we've been paused like we've been flat it, you know fed funds 5.25 to 5.5 for now. 2. Quarters right. Rates like they're done hiking like from all intents and it would take something abnormal versus all the other rate hike cycles we've seen in you know the the rich data sample era. I'd say like post World War 2 for another hike to need to be done here. Like something pretty significant would have to take place, but if you're yeah. But but historically the the crisis hits like 10 after the they pop hiking, right. So we're still like within that normal time frame of like, oh. Yeah, totally normal on schedule like this. I mean policy might at this point actually be a little bit ahead of of the actual business cycle where they have some some room as opposed to being on their back foot. But I think if you're if you're looking at signals for like like rates need to come down like you're you're seeing it like with the like we know with office CRE like there's a lot of issues there on the rollover from the 2021 trot or vintage of of deals that came out like yeah and it makes sense right. You had this the massive fiscal and monetary like impulse like unseen from from Q 3/20/20 that was trickling into the system. So you had a ton of bad deals made and so those are gonna get roll over and refi and I was listening to yeah the CIO of Muddy Waters last night he's made a case for for a short on a Blackstone mortgage Trust where I think he said 73% of the loans. And I don't know if that's loans like by count or loans by by principal value in the portfolio can't finance out of their net operating income either sulphur just a loan without the spread or sulphur plus the spread of their of their debt financing costs. So that's 73% of their portfolio they they've assessed as analysts is going to be in trouble rolling over on you know commercial properties like the skyscrapers and and and metro America throughout. So like rates are going to need to come down from that angle on bank balance sheets and you see it in the federal deficit as well like the interest expense on the chart you go, Fred and look that up like it's just a vertical line up. Yeah, it is massive that spike gets taken. So front end rates and the debt refinancing rates, there's the need from the borrower standpoint like it has to come down, it's not sustainable and if you're looking at the financial markets like for for the capital markets desk like within the banks you. Got a lot? Of signals that's like they're they're going to come down as many people are in still in the we're higher for longer camp it's just a matter of time in in my perspective. So you got the like the the one year overnight index swap rates right the the the these are derivatives contracts if you will or swap agreements between counterparties. One leg pays fed funds overnight over the term of the contract, the other pays a fixed rate. That rate is coming in massively. It's it's way inside of fed funds now. It's been plummeting since September and it's following the two year. And you know. The lower duration or maturity coupon treasury bonds like they're coming in, you see the six month bill auction, you know over the last three weeks and December has come in about 25 BPS which is like that's the equivalent of one rate cut, right. And then you've seen sulphur turbulence pop up like it's not Q 3/20/19 by any means yet, but you're starting to see silver spikes as we the system starts moving from an excess cash phase position to like now we have an excess collateral. So it's kind of as Nick Bhatia described it, he had the best analogy here. We're going to run out of pawn shops who are who are willing to to lend dollars into the system like there's too much collateral, not enough dollars available for for short term financing. So and then on top of that these quarterly refunding announcements to where you see where the treasury issues coupon bonds like 2 year, three or five year debt that's spiking up. So the treasury is reallocating its supply into the 235 year type coupon auctions. And so that's bottomed which has over the course of you know 4 decades kind of signaled the the top of a of a rate hike cycle. And from a borrower standpoint that makes sense, right. You wanna start deploying in as as raising more more debt there and extending a little bit out as rates start to come in. So as far as equity markets, I have no idea. Like I, I don't know like as just here trying to tell you is this risky here, is this, you know, double top, whatever, I no idea. But where you can actually build some sort of foundation and get your bearings like find a compass, like look to the interest rate markets. And then from there I try to build up my, you know, my thesis or positioning if you will on what's going to happen off of those things too. So take it from there, but we get into the meat of the topic. So the the Treasury shifting towards dead on the shorter part of the curve, they're basically assuming like all right, we'll lock in high, high rates for 2-3, five years with the assumption that rates will come down and then we can issue longer data bonds at. Lower rates, it's, it's, it's, I mean it's kind of the opposite. It's like they they're they're showing they're going to borrow more there because they see rates coming down and that's the signal. It's like we're going to start stepping that up because we need like rates need to come down, OK. And then what? That's gonna do too. I mean, we've seen there's all these treasuries out there with like massive mark to market losses. But as rates come in, I have no idea what's gonna happen to the long end. Rates like that may stay. You. Know relative ballpark you know we're at roughly 4% now we were at like like we were hitting five right back at the end of September, long end may still stay volatile like we you know base case right now probably don't expect to see the long like the long bond coming into like 1.25 like where it was at the lowest of 2020. I don't think the long end investor at this point like trusts the that to like a 30 year debt instrument at 2% from the US Treasury to be able to maintain purchasing power like that bridge has been crossed. They've taken too many losses going to that island they're not going to do it again and and and bid that thing to 1.25 like it maybe that happens if it's like absolute panic like we get a something worse than COVID at the bottom of this credit cycle. But I think the the lessons learned and the pain inflicted like I don't see it going there again now where front end rates come in and they they you know base case they do come in. I don't know how far they go, but this whole effect like it's going to make all of the debt they issued in 2022-2023 at these higher rates that's going to kind of pull up their balance sheet capacity and it's going to kind of pull in a lot like let's say you had a five year bond issued in 2029 that's a 2025 maturity. A treasury it was just due that like 0 basically took massive losses in in 2022 and 2023 but now it's kind of pulling to par and those and then the rates are going to come in as well. So you're going to get more kind of buoying on the bank balance sheets and the financial system balance sheets so that you know expect that you know base case to create more capacity for more credit creation and we have you know some continuation. It's going to be weird. We talked about all this kind of strange new stuff in AI and commercial real estate, all of these dynamics that the system has to deal with. But as we go through this cycle like they're going to have some capacity to to try to absorb all of those things that they need to to tackle. But I'd say this like this is going to be like their their, their menu, like what's on their, their plate. If you're like a lender or if you're at the US Treasury or you know one of the key players in their system, I think your, your, your docket of work is like harder than most, if not all of the cycles. Maybe not 2000. 2008 was like, really hard to deal with. But this one's gonna be more of a challenge, I think, in terms of like the lineup of what you have to go through if you're sitting at one of these desks. Yeah, in the cycle ahead. Trying to keep the Rube Goldberg machine. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll create another four letter acronym and you know, problem solved, right? Well, that's another interesting thing to look out for in 2024. That's what they do with BTFP in a few months here, that's. That's coming up on renewal and another interesting impact there like it's based on this one year overnight index swap rate and that's come in like massively. So you can go and post your one of your 15 different government agency bonds that are allowed on the list of collateral that they accept. You. Can post it take out a loan now on a rate that's come in a lot like it's sitting at you know something like with A4 handle and you can go redeploy that into another interest bearing instrument earning. You know still you can get five somewhere say whatever, but there's just a lot of that, a lot of that BTFP borrowing is just kind of balance sheet arbitrage to pick up free money right now. But I think in the months ahead, like if there are real problems and you know what we're talking about the loans that are underwater impaired that need some sort of work out, expect that as we come into mid March to to start to become more of a bigger issue is that that that needs attention. Does that continue as some sort of perpetual facility or do they, you know, close it down? What not, do they roll it over something that we're gonna need to see a resolution on? Yeah. It's interesting. When you issue these new four letter facilities, it creates these R plays that were probably unforeseen at the outset that have externalities of their own that you have to deal with on the back end. Yep. Yep. It's all I'm just thinking again Rube Goldberg machine that's what it seems like and they're scrambling to keep it all together. Can they We will see. They've proven to be able to do it up to this point. But with that in mind transitioning towards last couple topics that we have for the episode we're going to end on the ETF. Before we get to that stepping stone to that, there was an article out in Bloomberg when it dropped dropped January 4th. Today this morning city alumni plan Bitcoin securities that don't need SEC approval. So the new offering called Bitcoin Depository Receipts will be similar to American Depository Receipts that represent foreign stocks. A start up called Receipts Depository Corporation, Very Creative or RDC set of plans to issue the first Bitcoin depository receipts to qualify global institutional investors and transactions exempt from registration under the Securities Act of 1933. Known as BTCDRS, the offering will give institutions access to Bitcoin securities through US regulated market infrastructure and cleared through the Depository Trust Co, according to a release from the company. So right before an apparent imminent approval of the Bitcoin ETFs, the SPOT ETFs and a group of city alumni are launching this Depository Receipts product. I've never heard of these products. How do they work so? It's a great, great summary there, Marty. It's kind of fills in a few kind of gaps on my map on understanding what this thing was. But I heard a couple keywords there, global institutions. So this is going to be U.S. financial institutions selling this product. And then I was like who is the customer here? It says it says global, so it'd probably be X like outside the United States, offshore entities. So if you think about who does this benefit, right, you're getting private keys, you know, the UTXOS, the the, the Bitcoin. It sounds like right now is, is DTCC cleared. The Bitcoin is going to be to be, you know, custodied. You know what do you call its home? It's going to be US domicile is is my understanding here. So you get the US capital markets, all the rule of law, everything that benefits investors and why besides the economic growth and we can talk about the bullish case for this country, everything we have going for us like within the positive column you get those benefits in terms of capital markets and the United States has kind of the most well structured robust capital markets I would say in the in the world. You know you have a lot of competition from London, Tokyo, Singapore etcetera. But this is still where global capital wants to allocate. So I think that's where this product is and part of the theme as we get into the Bitcoin ETF and what this means like we can talk about the cash settlement. I my read on this is the big capital markets players are are they're they're awake and they want to see the the real capital stock. And at this point, you know, maybe they're not all convinced that Bitcoin is the real capital stock. Jesse, was this before we were talking or during the interview you talked about the shift from kind of a financialized economy into like a capital economy. I think that's what this is. You want the UTXOS fitting within the borders of your nation state. So I think this is, you talk about the the ETF, these 13 ETFs that are looking for the approval window to come through. I think this is part of that theme like this is going to become more and more pressing of a challenge as more and more nation states enter the game. Marty, you've done a great job talking about this you know and the and the follow-ups to El Salvador going first and 2021. You know what you talked about with Bhutan, what you talked about with Oman, you know entering the mining game there been another one like UAE like there's there's other nations are. Getting at margin, yeah. Yes, I think they're real. I think you need the Bitcoin ETUTXOS inside your border if you want to actually have a a capital base inside of your society's economy. Jesse, thoughts on this? I I yeah I'm unfamiliar with the this type of instrument so I I I suppose it's it's like a clever way to have like a fund like vehicle but it's unclear to me what the like stipulations are in like redemption policies and and who knows what but yeah I think I think Matt is keying in on this seems like a a play for leveraging all the attractive qualities of of having a a structure in the US which is beneficial to to the US ultimately in this like in this race that people don't seem to know we're in of where it's going to be the the native home of Bitcoin. Hopefully it's in the US because that'll that'll be that'll be our our international advantage or add to our international advantages for the next century if if if we managed to achieve that. So thankfully capital markets are waking up to needing to set up this infrastructure because there's an opportunity for them to make money. But you know, I think it actually has this geopolitical advantages if if people earnestly pursue building Bitcoin infrastructure here. Thanks for tuning in. If you're interested in exploring any of these topics further, or want to learn more about how we can help you secure a new or existing Bitcoin allocation, get in touch with our team at on rampbitcoin.com. We look forward to supporting you on your Bitcoin journey. Yeah. It seems like, Matt, what you said, people at the institutional level are recognizing, all right, we need exposure to this. I think this product's pretty unique, particularly that you'll be able to track the UTXOS. They'll clear through DTC, which is interesting, an interesting development, which hasn't been brought to the fore until today. And then this tweet came out which signals that this trend is definitely growing by Mardi party breaking a pattern is emerging. Other funds registered as securities already trading on the NASDAQ are mending their prospectuses that they can now expose 15 to 50% of their AUM to Bitcoin through the spot Bitcoin ETFs. Here we see Advisor's preferred trust filer CIK 00015565 O Five can now hold 15% AUM spot Bitcoin through Grayscale GBT that would be there ETF. The fund may invest up to 50% of its total assets to indirectly gain exposure to Bitcoin through shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Pro shares, Bitcoin Strategy ETF and Bitcoin Futures contracts. Don't need to read the one quadrillion. I love it at the. End But this is essentially like the amending of prospectuses to include Bitcoin into the buckets that they're mandates allow them to invest in. Yeah, people, people have been wondering like OK what? Who cares about the ETF? Like you can buy Bitcoin yourself. Like what does it matter? This is why it matters because the the ETFs create a a viable vehicle for funds to deploy a portion of their capital into Bitcoin exposure which results in in the ETFs having to buy Bitcoin to back that that capital. They have to you know they have to actually buy the Bitcoin. So this is how you know this is how I don't know who who's running this fund. It could be a small shop. It could be a medium sized shop or a big shop, but that sets a, you know, that's a precursor to what's coming I think of of every fund saying, oh shit, OK, we can't just have our usual strategy in in in this era where Bitcoin is monetizing. We need to add in another pillar to our investment strategy and have Bitcoin be part of our allocation. And then and then they're all going to amend their their terms like this and give themselves the flexibility to do that when when it's a bear market and you know, Bitcoin has drawn down 70%, You know, maybe that happens three years from now from from a peak of 200,000 and we'll have another drawdown. And and then these funds that now have a vehicle, the ETFs that they can use and have amended their prospectuses can come in and say, all right, now is the moment we've been waiting for. Let's pile into Bitcoin. And now you know. Now you're talking about setting a setting the price floor three years from now in a bear market because Wall Street has woken up to this thing is going to keep happening. It's beautiful. Yeah, a couple weeks ago on the last turn, I can't remember which guest it was. We were talking about our commodity funds going to allocate in and it comes down to like a portfolio manager and the investment committee. Someone has to like recommend that that decision like it has to go through a process you don't just you know on a fund it's not like you you know hey I'm going to buy Bitcoin as an individual you're just like I'll just open a Coinbase account or whatever an Unchained account, let's go with that route or you know sign on with on ramp etcetera and make a decision like you've got to go through a process to get this done. But the reason you would do that is because I either want to buy or sell it like I I see the the market and at the end of the day we're all judged as a you know a fund manager on our on our portfolio returns against our peers, right. You want to get into the top of the category so someone sees you know whether they you you would make this decision to allocate 15 to 1550% in long because you see that as you know a performance enhancer if you will like to get in front of that. So then you're looking at you know stepping in front of you know your peer group and hopefully generating excess returns. So as this, let's just say we have a Bitcoin bull market that we're in. We've already gone through I believe the first wave of it, but it's 2024 kind of you know proceeds and we work through this. You're going to see the portfolio managers and investment committees who make the right decision rewarded for it coming to the top of their peer group. And you know at the end of the day, this is all about capital returns. So, yeah, bullish case and this is just another capital route pulling in towards ultimately like buying UTXOS. Well said, Yeah. And that's and that's from you know you're you've been in that seat. So you know the incentives that are at play for every portfolio managers like how do I get an edge? How do I get a promotion because I've delivered performance And then here's this low hanging fruit. Yep. So here's here's a like a untold secret I think of the the fun fund industry. If you look at the big passive players, BlackRock, Vanguard, you know they're maybe you throw in like I don't know ATA Crab or like T Rowe Price or something in there. There's only like 3 or 4 who are growing as we've shifted like the the dominant paradigm since I'd say like 2000. Sometimes like you've seen active phasing out and you know they're just the shift, the capital shift like a lot of like 4 O1 KS, that constant monthly drift. Like you just have a, a a recurrent and consistent bid for passive. The active fund managers, you know Franklin Templeton are like predominantly active. They're actually not attracting capital inflows and it's it's been like since the QE era, since the GFC, you know it's like the entire twenty 10s their their AUM growth has been coming almost entirely from price return. And you know you think about why like QE happens that pushes financial assets up and they're not attracting inflows. So they see this this problem like how do I beat this bid for passive which is primarily coming into or manifesting through bidding up equities and and was until you know 2022 bidding down bond yields or bidding up. Bond. Prices that's all started to shift in the last, I'd say 1218 months or so. But part of this ETF route I I believe is is you know searching out you know if you will that alpha, that performance etcetera so. You know, we'll we'll. See what happens. You know, I think everybody on on this, this panel is, is bullish on Bitcoin for 2024 and would be making the same decisions if they were in that seat. But this is one of those kind of strategic business decisions that you can make from from seat to seat from a fund like this and it's very hard to differentiate yourself from your from your peer group 15 to 15% like 50% is a massive allocation like if you're a multi asset manager and you're spreading between equities, bonds, whatever. I think I hope it works out for them like and they time the trades correctly. You know if they time it wrong they're going to bid it, they're going to buy it. Like buying at the top of a Bitcoin cycle right in front of that 85% drawdown can be devastating. So like what? But they wish them the best. Yeah but there's there's bound to be you know we there's a bunch of people on Wall Street who have been paying attention to Bitcoin and and have at least gotten down the rabbit hole enough now to be like OK the having this increasing scarcity thing that's happening pivot you know QE environment seems to also juice Bitcoin and and everybody's expecting that pivot and there's the ETFs. So like there's all these reasons to front run right now. So I don't like if I was, if I was a portfolio manager trying to like better my career, I would probably be willing to bet my career on Bitcoin having a big 18 months and. Maybe that's. What's going on with a few of them? Yeah. Do you think they're that sophisticated or like I think a like the concepts Jesse mentioned like I don't even think having we talked about 21 million, I think having in 21 million probably there's 15 to 20%. But the question I was gonna ask is how much do you think micro I could see them looking at micro strategy instead of like that's interesting they. Could have already allocated most, most of them. It was probably within policy to allocate to a mid cap company like micro micro strategy or you know you got to catch that like time your trade well get your entry right, be there before you're buying into a bull off top. Otherwise if you like, if you have the right thesis but you're terrible at execution, like the results can be pretty bad from the the standpoint of like what can happen. So like I don't want to sound like I'm putting anyone down here this is not a negative here. But if you look at El Salvador's allocation into Bitcoin like you got to pat them on the back for making a bold move taking a big risk like going out there. But BK Lei like it was 3 weeks ago I think he published his trade botter if you will. I don't he didn't put the actual trades on, but he put the green dots on the line of Bitcoin price where he was increasing his allocation. They. Were buying the entire way down on you you know the last cycle they they they got in on the announcement at Bitcoin conference 2021 and we're just adding to lots on dips but you're buying into a market like into the lows but it's it's lower lows and lower highs. So what they're doing is like averaging down losers, average losers, sorry to be so that's I think it's a Paul Tudor Jones saying and what they what, how it actually played out in practice is they were like massively down and then they didn't increase their position into the bull market or into the like the bottom of the actual like cup and handle that's forming. They didn't have any buys after November 22. And two, as there were opportunities that you know increase your position size at a lower cost basis in a market that's now moving like it's trending up. And the net result was like from their holding period of like let's say June 2021 to December 2023, they got outperformed by T-bills. And so if you do that as a fund manager and I forget which ticker symbol this fund was, Marty. If you get. Your timing wrong here and these guys are starting from an allocation of 0. So all of the everything from 1517 K that we were at the end of last year to where we are now at 4045, Yeah, we think there's more bull run ahead, but they're going to be buying into the let's say second and third bull waves of a you know traditional bull market. And so the risk is you're buying into the like a blow off top and then you're going to be down and. A bunch of people will do that. They will. And and you're not in a seat like Nayabukele. I think he's got his seat kind of locked up. But if you're one of these portfolio managers and you put up a bad performance like you're you're going to get pulled off the off the basketball court or off the field and like you're going to be out of a job. So you can be right on the right asset class with this massive bull market over 15. Years. But because the volatility and the candles are so big, like you can really shoot yourself in the foot here if you don't know what you're doing. Funny enough, more people, more portfolio managers will get burned by this. Then we'll get promoted because of this. You know, the ones that add Bitcoin, the ability to add Bitcoin to their funds because people are going to buy the top because everybody's new to Bitcoin and everybody learns the hard way how this thing actually works. And the sharpest like you. Become wise six years later when you have already deployed all all your capital. Yeah. And the best in the business like and I'm not that like Paul Tudor Jones, like he was allocating him like a long time ago, like he's already front ran like the rest of our peer group in the position. So now you're working into the lower, like the middle of the stack or the bottom of the stack, and this is where this is where mistakes can get made. Yeah. Well, 12 months from now is when. 12 months from now, Yeah, right, right, right. Well, which begs the question, will these ETS be approved next week? And if so, how quickly will the capital flow into these assets in an attempt to take advantage of the gains that we think are ahead of us, not investment advice? Yeah, Michael, you've been a bit quiet. Continues to be yes they'll be approved. I think it's like 95% chance there's you got to allow some possibility of like a backroom you know lawmakers decide this is mission critical to the dollar and they're going to fight it through some shady last minute measure. But I think barring that it it goes through next next week and and it's a nothing burger for day one. Well, actually there, there will be volatility. It'll be like you know a Doji candle or it'll go up and down on day one That would be would be my bet lot of volatility but no real economic substance because no major capital inflows And so that you know the price of Bitcoin won't sustainably be impacted I think day one, week one, month one, quarter one. But and now that those channels are open for capital to flow into Bitcoin through those avenues that's very real and will be cumulative over time and will add to this to the demand side four months before the supply side of the equation gets cut in half. You know new supply issuance gets cut in half in April. And so I, you know, I think that the impact of the ETFs over the the next 18 months will be very large in terms of amplifying price discovery to the upside because it will increase demand, make it make it possible for a whole lot of capital to access Bitcoin during the bull market. And so that'll amplify things to the upside. But I think that people need to be prepared for complete disappointment in the first month in terms of like, oh, ETF was approved. It didn't seem to matter at all, but it will matter in a cumulative basis. Yeah, Matt, would love to hear kind of just what I'm already started with and like how big do you think this is? Like in reality, there's a lot of takes and, you know, buy the news, sell the news, bye, bye. You know, all the different. I'm curious, like what are your, you know, being in the markets and also being a bit being involved in Bitcoin, You feel like you have the best lens of like how big this actually is with all the institutions going to be marketing dollars? Yeah. OK. So just first point like the the event, like the sell, is it a sell the news talk to like a lot of trader types. We'll. Kind of pitch that which that's fine like as a long term holder into this allocation I think you actually you want that right. We haven't had any retracement in in three months like it and it's it's pretty that's a pretty long period you know across bitcoins history and and so like yeah, it'd be, it'd be great if you know the first let's say 4 weeks, I get announces, it feels like a nothing burger and we get some drawdown that would be fantastic. I think it's actually needed a healthy 20% retracement. You know what, hopefully not a 50, but let's just see something like that happen. If it does materialize that way, great. But I think the case study like that to look at on what this means for opening up a public fund that's you know the it's the closest thing you can get to a UTXO Alex allocation in in an exchange traded fund type of vehicle. So now that that that's opened up. Yeah this is better than what the markets had before for what is in all intents and purposes like an inferior product actually owning the UTXOS yourself and like holding the keys. And we know that everybody on this call if you're listening to last trade and you're you're looking for on ramp solution for you know working towards that that that end end game but you need some hand holding up for up front too. It's like all right you you have those type of investors who realize a lot of the benefits of of global censorship resistant you know transparent immutable public Ledger money like that's what you need. But for a lot of people they don't realize they just need something that's going to be a store of value for their wealth accumulation over their lifetime whatnot and it needs to be in their portfolio somehow. So they're going to go the easy route whatever it means like it's just going to happen is this big. I think it's actually massive. I don't know I don't want to put numbers on it like you've had you know other podcasts where like they put out a price target like irrelevant case study this Invesco pro shares Bitcoin strategy ETF. It launched in October 2021 basically top ticked the the like the second wave of the the last bull cycle this bit O ticker symbol actually look what's going on there in that adoption you've seen all right it it underperforms Bitcoin by I think it's underperformed by 6%. So you have a fee drag like it charges 95 bits. So it's a pretty heavy cost like from an expense ratio standpoint across other fun category like it's it's peer group whatnot. And then you've also got the drag, it's not buy and hold UTXOS where you just park them and you know very little overhead. They're buying Bitcoin futures which you constantly have to roll and the the drag from that is you've got to actually roll over as your future is coming up on maturity. You don't want to actually hold it to cash settlement. Usually what you do is you'll sell out of it and then extend out and you'll roll it into let's say a a longer term future and then you just have to constantly water your garden there. That trade will typically cost you money in terms of drag just because when you roll in and buy the long like there's usually a price gap there on like the the 12 month that you're rolling into is going to be priced higher than than the front end and then and then that's even after like. I think up to like 50% of that funds allocation is put into T-bills because you have to post those as collateral to leverage up and buy the futures. So even with T bill rates at multi decade highs like I think it's going back to like 2007. I think since you've you know that type of era pre GFC where you've seen front end rates hit the levels they are now, they're still underperforming by 6%. So it's an inferior product if you will. The only thing this Bito fund has going for it is it's it's an exchange traded liquid vehicle that like retail customers with their assets parked in a broker deal dealer can allocate into a Bitcoin exposure. Like everybody on this call would probably say like yeah, it's kind of Bitcoin, you're referencing the Bitcoin price, but it's not Bitcoin, it's not actually UTXO exposure. All that aside, if you look at share count for this fund through the bear market, it's increased 2X, it's doubled like they they seeded it with a billion dollars, market cap is up to 1.73 billion and that's after price return is dragging that down 40%, it's 2X the capital inflows and a bear market. So this ETF is telling you if you build it and this is like a terrible product in my opinion, people in like they're going to allocate in. So then what happens now if instead of futures and 50% treasuries, what happens now if you have that same value prop and now you've got UTXOS and to to to believe that it's going to be like a nothing burger over the longer term. Like let's say it's four weeks, it plays out as Jesse kind of envisioned there and it doesn't happen right away. And it actually the market moves the opposite of the way you'd expect like it's it's a retracement we're down. I don't think the fundamentals when you look at the case studies of of these other ETFs that are out there like you're going to get capital allocation in. And the other thing is like I can't remember when they launched the short version, so the Bito goes long futures. They. Launched another fund bit bit EBITI that is short the future. So it's like this is for people who want to short Bitcoin. It did not attract share count creation like capital's not flowing into it in a bear market where that one would have actually been up. They they, I think they actually got it out the gate after most of the draw downs and Bitcoin was actually done like it didn't launch until like end of your last year roughly right. So they like it's been Bitcoin's been on a bull like it's been up trending since. So the the end were like the interest in going short Bitcoin wasn't there. So I think it's it's pointing out this sign that there is a lot of demand that wants to come in through this channel, that wants to allocate in and belong Bitcoin exposure. Yeah, I don't think anybody's bullish enough other than maybe like other other than maybe caps, Caps, Odell, who's back. Yeah, I don't, I don't think. I think this is like the the chef's kiss on both sides of the market where you get fidelity Black Rock and everybody under the sun that looks as their Lord and savior kissing and saying this is the thing, everybody's been scared. They even thought it's for drug dealers and all all the things associated with it. And then you get the other chef's kiss, which is oh, and you buy this in the way that you're used to buying it. You don't have to go and send the wire to Coinbase. You don't have to do all these things. It's like what else? And if that is to be true what ends up happening is the thing we've all talked about is you don't need global adoption. You need one, two, 3%. The market penetration and the reflexivity of the asset does the rest. And now we're just off to the races and that's effectively what's what's going to happen. So I think it's by the news, by the Bitcoin, by everything. Like it's it's it only goes One Direction. The fund management industry loves this. Like if you look at all the ETFs out there, I don't know how many there are like I did, I did some analysis. Let's say there's 2000. Like if you try, if you segment them out by what they actually invest in like you have equity ETFs, you have fixed income ETFs and you have like the other most of it is equity and fixed income ETFs. Like if you look at the iShares suite, it's like we have LQD corporate bonds, we have an emerging market bonds, we have mortgage back like you did. They slice and dice the entire pie up and it's it's pretty much all saturated for like the segmentation like fixed income, like there's a couple of firms who's trying to do it a little bit more granular. They're like all right now we'll go corporate, we'll do the slice and dicing based on rating. So this is the AA one to three-year usig corporate bond, you know market or maybe they'll split it up like there's financials and there's non financials like they're trying to micro segment even more there. But for all intents and purposes like the equity slices like large cap, mid cap, small cap, emerging markets, domestic, you're like it's all been sliced and diced enough like it's pretty much maxed out. There's no like and and the industry you need gold plated records, right. You're looking for hits on the wall for. Oh yeah what does it say 8000 like that's worldwide. Yeah. So if you look at like New York Stock Exchange like the US like it's some fraction of that but it within equity and fixed income, there's honestly too many like we're beyond market saturation and equity and fixed income. So the ability to create more gold records like a billion, you need billion dollar AUM products that are like that's a that's a really profitable investment product for the financial services industry. Equity and fixed income are tapped out and then you get into like the alternatives, the multi assets, those are hard, right. It's it's really hard to go into like a distribution pipeline and say like you need to like come by our 6045 and it's like there's already a bunch of those too and they're like commodity funds. You've seen like go to the CBOE or CME and you look at every futures contract, you've seen those put into ETS now too you can go get gasoline like as a retail investor you got I need to buy like UGA gasoline in future. I need the oil fund like the US and like they've already done this like it's it's already just like covered ground like it's it's already saturated. But then the the rare bird that stands out in terms of AUM growth that what broke through and is generating a massive amount of revenue. It's been the GBTC like this, this over the counter or this weird you know like pink sheet what started out as turned into this massive hit product cash cow. And there is nothing else that looks like it in the data sample from like the economic perspective of of like a fund. So what they see here, like there's only what 13 asset managers who've gone out of like 50, a hundred that have scale and matter. So the penetration of those that see it and want to make this play, it's not even fully kind of baked in that all of them are going for at once. But at this point like 13 of them are. So they see the economics that hit product and this is where there's too much money to be made. You, you, you've got the Wall Street players who are now going to be communicating to regulators and you know, Washington, DC and like, I want to see this happen because we can make a lot of money. Yeah. And that's actually a great call because that's on the institutional level. There's the RRIA side as well. When Matt references like tapped out on flows is like the goal of RA is to bring in assets back into you know their clients. They're managing, bringing more and more capital. So they'll bring new funds, new products to the clients and hey, are you interested. And the idea is not to move over assets from existing positions within the portfolio that they're managing, but to bring net new assets selling that property. So you know whatever that sits outside of the Ras purview and now you have this like fund whether it's the ET, the BlackRock ETF fidelities where you can basically say, hey now you can pull in net new assets. And then once it starts to be recognized that this thing absolutely actually juices your AUM and overall percentage, you can bill on. That's a whole other side of liquidity from individual high net worth investors that will get plugged in this And Ras haven't been incentivized to do this because there hasn't been any kind of product that they can actually feel good about, let alone you know get that that that chef's kiss again. So, yeah, I think there's just no shortage of little pockets of or large pockets of capital that start to feed into this as this thing gets announced. Sorry, you're saying that Suzu was just two years too early. The Super cycle is upon us. Wait, wait, Marty, how how do you feel about the ETF? I'll take the contrarian view and Jesse reference it. I would not be surprised if the Treasury Department comes out Sunday night with an emergency statement that Bitcoin is a systemic risk to our national security and financial system. Max Kaiser just tweeted that. Did you see that? I tweeted out last night he was talking. He just tweeted. Something similar about basically saying ETF is going to be. I don't even know how true this is, just what a tweet came out. It was like a delay because of self custody rules or whatever. I would not be surprised. I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's like 95% chance that it gets approved, but the mental preparation I'm going through right now is preparing for some disappointment late Sunday night a a Ninja launch of a Treasury statement. For the audience just to like you know, it's like Marty and Jesse have been around in this space for for a very long time and what what you do when you've been around long you you basically hedge your your excitement and all the things. So that is where they're coming from and and I was going to share that and Marty saved you for me. He's like well you know I'm just parrying my excitement the the you know you always want to be prepared for the downside because this happened and and basically to everyone here and probably a lot of people listening 2021-2022, we thought this thing was doing you know crazy numbers and I think we were just a like to your point about Suzie I think we were a little early it was just a little like you know Wall Street said no no we gotta we gotta wipe the floor with you guys and you know get our our spots set up first before we can let this thing really run. And I think that's what effectively happened the past 18 months and now we're we're on the precipice of go time. Yeah, I think they're they're. Maced. Oh God, I was. Gonna say if I'm being like I I think we'll see go time but you like you mentioned you've been around the block. So wait, which is it? Is it a big deal or? Not, I think it's obviously a big deal. I mean, I think like Matt said many times like you should. It's much easier to get direct exposure to Bitcoin. Maybe it's not easier, but I think it's worthwhile and that's what you should do. The longer you've been in Bitcoin, the harder it is to get excited about this. Marty's been around longer than me. He's he's less excited than I am. But. Then you go full circle like Matt's 10 years, and then you just go insane at the bat. Yeah, he now, he's just ready. He's ready for. That's that's the goal is to not go insane, and tempering expectations is a good way to do that to prevent that insanity from but. At the end of the day, the oh, go ahead. After 10 years of of every ETF filing being denied and everybody like losing faith that it would ever happen, it it really does appear to be a week away now. Yeah, and a retracement would be nice and healthy for Bitcoin over the long term. I think like this whatever executive order or whatever this Sunday night scenario at the end of the day you're looking at a sovereign you know balance sheet of treasury like it's it we need answers like to the to the problem that we're in like the the fiscal position of the United States like it's you know, hopefully we're not past the Rubicon at this point. We may be, but you know where I'm going out here. Treasury needs, Wall Street's help, like Treasury needs, capital markets help at the end of the day to finance itself, to keep society running, to keep the goods and services flow like to keep to to keep the, you know, the country running if you will. So you're looking for solutions and ultimately like you can't just you could try this but just hammer hammer it down by a dig like you're not doing this. But at the end of the day the economics need to need to prevail like capital markets that's that's what it's all about. It's resources finding their highest and best use efficiency etcetera. And if you don't follow those signals and where where you know returns happen, like ultimately like you're just going to run into a problem like continue the direction of where this problem is leading us where we're just eating our seed corn going deeper and deeper into debt and the whole thing won't work. So that you got to play along if you're Washington DC, if you're Wall Street, if you're London, well like whoever like you just at the end of the day if this thing works, you're going to need to align and and come on board. And I think with the big name like the, the big players in the industry like you're seeing that like we talked about when I was on in last June, like these signals you were saying like the key personnel from like Citadel or had like just big name hedge funds like Bretton, Brevan, Howard, setting up the market, making desks in US and in England etcetera like Edx and Elwood Technologies. The signs were there that the capital players like they wanted to go here because at the end of the day they need growth like their income statements, their balance sheets, they have to work too. Otherwise if their balance sheets are unhealthy, like Treasury's fiscal position is not going to get any better. So at the end of the day, like, everybody's going to respond to incentives. Like once they come around and, you know, a lot of times we take these feared paths that, you know, run straight onto a, you know, run our heads into a brick wall, It's like, oh, that didn't work, but you got to, you got to find actual solutions that that work. So yeah, even if it's a Sunday night, you know, edict, whatnot coming down, like over the long term, you got to, you just got to flow with where the water is going and you got to fix the problem. Yeah. And they're and they're smart like we we talked about it before the show started the Hong Kong ETF and close to approval there and then we see what's happening in the Middle East region and like Dubai and like the capital's gonna flow to to Matt's point in one in a direction whether it's approved here somewhere else. So there's game theory behind a lot of this as well, where this is gonna get approved. Yeah, and the, I mean the incitement for me to send that tweet out to mentioned here today with Kim Parker and I got lunch yesterday. I was asking his opinions, and if you just juxtapose the imminent approval with everything the Treasury, Elizabeth Warren, the bank executives have said over the last few months, like it just doesn't, just doesn't align. And I completely agree, like if these people were smart, they would let the capital flow to where it wants to go. But I think this administration particularly has proven that they're not too wise. And that's why I put at least a 5% chance on a Ninja Treasury statement at some point over the weekend to try to stomp this out. I don't I think it's unlikely but I I do think it's a / 0 probability. And just to highlight the numbers that you were alluding to Matt, I I've heard about this last night in the bent trying to put you should mention yesterday was January 3rd 2020 four 15th anniversary of the Genesis block being mines were 15 years into Bitcoin. I took the opportunity to put this 15 years into perspective, particularly from the US monetary base and federal debt situation. If you zoom down Logan right below this chart, the the next chart like this paragraph here, it's actually pretty crazy If you go down a little bit, if you look at the ratios of like M2 to federal debt over the 15 years that Bitcoin has existed. So in January 2009 the ratio of national debt to the M2 money stock was 1.29. We did $10.7 trillion in debt to 8.3 trillion in M2. Today that ratio is ballooned to 1.6334 trillion debt to 20.8 trillion in M2. And as our friend Parker Lewis likes to say, there simply is too much debt and not enough dollars to service that debt. And this becoming clear and clearer by the day. Go down there was like this is like the astonishing set to me. Or go up between the two charts. I think I put it in. Let me see. I'm sorry. Yeah. So put another way, 68% of the debt that this country's accrued over the last 248 years was added over the last 15 years or 6% of the country's lifetime. Like, that's mind boggling. It took 233 years to go from zero to 10 trillion. It's taken 1510.7 trillion taken 15 years ago from 10.7 to 34.1. Where we stand today is that 68% of the debt that the United States has accrued since we declared our independence in 1776 has been accrued in the last 15 years since Bitcoin launched I. Was gonna ask about the you referenced some of the like politicians and Jamie Dimon came to mind about like some of the the comment team made and then finding out they're an authorized participant. Matt I'd be curious like, 'cause this is like A2 Fer. I know we've gone pretty long is explaining or sharing what do you think's going on with like a Jamie Dimon insane, like talking out two sides of his mouth effectively. But then also kind of going into the minutiae of like the cash crates and like what they where the authorized participants sit and how these ETFs are going to like work in practice. Because I think that's been a big topic. And I think all the ETFs that are gonna be approved are all cash creates or redeems. And just walking through that I think would be be helpful for us, but also the the listeners. That is still here, he's just checking checking a text message. OK. We lost Jesse. We'll use this. We used this opportunity now because he's still in the stream. OK, we we'll use this opportunity to to let you guys know that Jesse just Irish exited on us. He had to leave to take on other obligations, but we're still here and Matt is back. Did am I back? Good. Yeah, I know a call just came in. I had a red button. But then, yeah, the app, it was hard to get audio back on. Can you guys hear me? Yes, Sir. OK. So, yeah, Chase coming in as an authorized participant, there's not all that much business impact there. I mean it's just like the the ability to create or like increase or decrease share count on the Ledger and a lot of parties can do that. What that effectively means is like how how the structure of the ETF actually plays out. So you have the share count right and the way that like the the retail investor or like you know the brokerage customers will allocate into shares, they'll just buy and sell through their through their brokerage. One of the key things like that's going to differentiate the 13 ATS is going to be liquidity like they need to get their bid ask spreads down to a penny and that'll that'll be an early signal on who's which of these 13 firms are, are winning, right. Because they're not all going to be winners like in a in a in an industry or a kind of like niche where they're not competing on anything other than expense ratio and you know maybe liquidity. Under the hood you could be like as like which ones are rehypoticating, which ones are not. But that won't be apparent to investors on day one. They won't, They probably won't be thinking about that. It'll just be those two up in front features if you will AUM two like that you won't allocate into a fund that's only got 10,000,050 million, 100,000,001 with like on its market that's where size begets more size. So I'd say those those 3 dynamics will be like the primary if you're going to allocate and that'll be your choice on who you buy from or it might be you also have an existing relationship with like let's say BlackRock, your pension plan, you you like. BlackRock is kind of your consultant or advisor on your multi asset allocation. If they come in and recommend to your investment committee or your board, it's like hey buy this buy our IBIT ETF right for your Bitcoin allocation that will steer in clients from there but how do you get there right to out compete the other 12 offerings or you know it could be more as other firms realize it's like oh hey black rock's having success. If I'm Vanguard, you know I can claim you know and stick by my my kind of logic on my mass like we're value investors or our thesis is just on the market how to play and that's it. We're not going to go in well, there's going to be business that you're losing and giving up because of that. So it will, it will come into play. But as far as like the cash creates go, they're all going to be sorry, they're all going to be cash settled for create redeems. There's not going to be any in kind redemptions. The prospectus for for BlackRock now reads it says we may if they can obtain regulatory approval add on in kind creation redemptions in the future but that's off the table for now. So what does that actually like amount to at the end of the day like if you had had in kind cash creates and you're an authorized participant, what you could do is trade Bitcoin for shares and that opens up another arbitrage route for you as a capital markets desk. What do I mean by that? Let's say that the share price of IBIT shares or whatever ETF is above the NAV, like you're still going to be able to arbitrage that that out. Like you see that with every ETF these like the market makers and APS they're always trying to to whittle away the arbitrage between the the underlying assets and like let's say the number of like the UTXO count per share and then the market price of that. Like they will still engage in those shares or in in that level of arbitrage. But there won't be the ability like if you're Chase you're involved with markets across the world like every asset class not just equity fixed income. Like at this point you're in commodities markets like there you've seen headlines in 2023 about how JP Morgan got spoofed on a nickel delivery and I think it was Europe and there's just like rocks in the in in the on the pallets or packed in the pallets on the delivery on the delivery that we're supposed on physical settle that we're supposed to be nickel. But it turns out like yeah you got hoodwinked. But in that landscape your capital markets desk is can try to arbitrage like if you think about it through Bitcoin what is the cheapest way to to acquire a UTXO like traditionally so far it's been you use stranded energy right. You set up a mining operation and you mine Bitcoin and you find the lowest cost to to to produce you know one Bitcoin and whatnot and and you sell that in the market and that's your profit margin as a producer. Now if you had had in kind creation redemption, what you could do is set up a series of arbitrage trades like down to verticalizing like down to the studs, the energy resource and the ASICS and and the foreign exchange cross-border capital where you could arbitrage like all the way down the value chain and and and get all of the profit from you know basically 0 up to spot price of of UTXOS. The, the reason to like the demand coming in the inflows like the bid for for these Bitcoin ETFs that enables that as well. So the capital, the more capital you get on the demand side coming in through that route the better off you'll be in terms of being able to capture as much of that spread between your ability to produce the, the raw commodity and that price you could sell it at. That's not going to happen right now. Like that's not getting approved. And the reason is like the regulators see like the the that whole market is not ready right. Like when you look at energy cross-border like cross-border commodity trade like it's still as much as capital markets have kind of progressed over this 40 year bull market era. In our lifetimes, like we're in the most financialized economy that's probably ever existed, there's still a lot of just cut corners, you know? Booby. Traps that can get you in the commodities trade, you know those type of trades that even, you know materialize in like the biggest financial institution in the world, JP Morgan Chase can get hoodwinked on on a commodity trade. So it's like it's clearly not there where we can where where regulators see that they can put that whole kind of or open up that whole mechanism where you're not just going to get some sort of just, I don't know what else to call it like other than like just breakdown, malfeasance, whatnot. So they they kind of realize they can't police it and they can't ensure integrity like if they open up that route. So at this point, what's the next best thing like, OK, we're just going to do the settlement, cash settlement. What that actually kind of boils down to the APS are just they're, they're cash processors. They don't actually ever touch Bitcoin, right? They're just taking in shares and they'll either kind of put them to the portfolio manager or the it's actually like the fund administrator or like they call it the transfer agent who will adjust the share count and they're just settling, settling cash where it actually comes into play. What it actually means is the the portfolio manager behind these funds is the only ones who's going to be making the actual Bitcoin to dollar transactions. And it means like basically they're they're not an active player. They're they're not timing price. They can't go out and just post bids and wait for the liquidity to come to them. Can't just post offers, wait for the liquidity to come that way. You know both ways they've got to every time they buy and sell, they're going to have to cross the bid ask like they're going to have to hit the bids, lift the offers. They're just completely passive players. So where the value actually flows in this case is to the spot market makers in UTXOS and dollars and that's where these headlines were talking about last June with all of these key personnel. It's like wow, they they opened up these market making desks and in Bitcoin and they they're also all coining or you know only use four letter words and call them what they are. They're also going to do that. But the Bitcoin USDA market is, is where the interest is and and tying that down and while all of the headlines like everybody was following ETSETSETSI think we were missing the kind of the forest for the trees on what was really going on. The capital markets desks were moving into market making on Bitcoin UTXOS and and dollars. So that's that's the that's the big deal. I think the the elephant in the room is I mean it it's it's ultimately good like you're going to have more liquidity in the Bitcoin markets more capital flowing in but it it's just I don't know it's it's it's changing like you're getting the the professionals involved in market making and and Bitcoin which is you think about this is where it needed to go like we had and you can say Binance CZ like they were you know Marty on RHR you you and Matt have talked about like CZS kind of a different breed than the FTI like he's been a bitcoiner or he's been in the space longer still made a lot of like short term decisions to go after you know the altcoins all that dumping on retail. But you saw the real kind of fly by nights come in I'd say like the between the 2017 cycle and the 2020 cycle where you saw like FT actually show up out of nowhere that's all been pulled away I think and you've seen like the big players now are going to enter the the market making space. So I think that's the that's the key tie in I think of what what's really happened or like the the main crux of it that I think a lot of us are missing. It's the the maturation if you will or the absorption and the legacy capital markets of of the the Bitcoin market making. And then also I think the other element we talked about this before is like where do the Bitcoin actually domicile and find their home. And I think the the nation states now have realized, you know we know at least some El Salvador, Bhutan, Oman, et cetera have disclosed publicly and made decisions that they're acquiring and holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets. But this is a play. I believe, without saying it out loud, that US capital markets are realizing the importance of having those UTXOS, the Bitcoin custody and domicile within within the United States. So. Because it's cash. Settled the Bitcoin can't be arbitraged. Like you cannot construct the trades to arbitrage. You know what we talked about it. If you wanted to let Bitcoin create redeems come in kind where those Bitcoin could just leave and and leave the country if they if they wanted to. Now they're kind of, they're contained, they're domiciled, they're they're going to be custody I believe with Bitcoin, with Coinbase. I think if I have that right, correct me if I'm wrong and then you know from there it's it's kind of a a Roach motel is the way this is set up. The Bitcoin aren't going to leave when there's a sell order, dollars go out the door. The actual Bitcoin that the portfolio manager at BlackRock or you know, Franklin Templeton or Invesco, whoever, they're going to sell the Bitcoin into the spot market and then it's going to live on the balance sheets of whoever their counterparties are, which is also US entities. So it really is a kind of compartmentalization of the of the capital stock, you know, in my opinion And and I think the the kind of elephant of the room, the last time we went through this, like I mean 1970s, it was all about where's the gold going to go. Like we shut down Bretton Woods in 1971 because too much gold was leaving the country. We closed the exit doors. It's the same thing in the Great Depression, 1933, he had executive order 6102. Private individuals can't hold gold. It's going to be all kind of mapped in the Army's going to defend it at Port Fort Knox. I think we'll realize as we go through these big transitions in the global monetary system. The signal you're looking for is the nation states are going to be looking to ensure that the capital doesn't flee their country. And first thing is make sure shut the barn door and make sure you know more of your cows and horses don't get out. And I think the next move if you want to do this well is to attract more capital in. So this idea that you come in and shoot yourself in the foot and and Treasury issues in order like you can't do this. This is this is this is a threat to the this is the threat to the the fiscal position of the United States. I think it's it's probably the exact opposite. If you do not attract capital and or or you can contain it but you don't want to make it too heavy-handed because if you if you if you make it clear that your exist like you're implementing capital controls that's a sign it's going to be taken as a a dog whistle. You'll be like I need to get this out. I need to get my gold out of Nazi Germany. I need to get my gold out of Japan but not as an individual is what you'd probably be thinking in those countries the way to do it. Well if you're thinking for the long term you want your I think you want your nation state your your society to prosper is you've got to attract it in. So I think this is a key moment to to get it right. We'll we'll see with the with the decisions made ahead. But yeah let's just a little bit of thoughts on the the cash settlement. I think it is a big deal as you know there's a there's there's reasoning behind it and it's big things are at play that. Was a lot of things. Well, that that that now that's made me think we're thinking these people are playing 40 chess. Maybe all the posturing by the Treasury and Elizabeth Warren and Jamie Dimon has been a misdirection play towards international markets. Like, no, we don't want it here. So to say they're playing 40 chess, I'm like, you're just in a massive, like you've gotten yourself in a really bad fiscal decisions with like, especially like the decisions made after the like. The 1998 kind of global Southeast Asian debt crisis is where this kicked off. Like, we've just been putting ourselves more and more in a bad position ever since. You don't give up your queen on like move four or like just like trade like rooks for pawns. And like, everybody's doing that, but like to claim like you've been playing the long play all along. It's like I. Don't. I don't know. Like if I were, I'm not a chess grandmaster or anything. It's like you doesn't make sense to to make those moves and put yourself in in this kind of position like this far behind if you will in the in the debt situation if you were really trying to play well like 40 chess analogy. The thing that came to mind when Matt was talking with like it's like basically Geopolitical Capital silos and the Hong Kong reversal. Remember like they took a hard stance on the crypto and the banks last year and then that like randomly kind of pivoted post ETF approved. Like one of this chatter started. You could if if this like thesis plays out, you can start seeing these like markets whether it's India, Asia Pacific, Hong Kong, we've seen it going on in the Middle East where you start developing these like financial products and you start to bring in the capital flows specifically Bitcoin into these vehicles versus other offshore vehicles. Just pause and just reflect right now like Marty you're 15 year pace. Isn't it just mind boggling that this is where we are right now? Like this thing that started with one guy and start like 2? Nose with Hal. Finney and it's like it's gone here. It's like this tells you something like how people are aligning about around or the biggest entities in the world our nation states are now kind of having to address and and come to deal come to terms with aligning around this consensus mechanism is is what's actually going on. It's pretty it's. Beautiful. It's pretty crazy. And doesn't it make it feel like 21 million really isn't a large number, you know? It's just the number is arbitrary. It could have been two, like we'd fractional and we like it'd be sliced up. We call the unit of account like sats or you know, whatever. But yeah, just got to pick a number. There's. Only going to be 21 million freaks. If you're listening out there, it's going to be a lot of people trying to get their slice of the 21 million after next week. This has been, we're two hours in now. This has been incredible. All right, this I like this new format. Michael, are you pleased with the format? I love it. I think. I think there's a lot of things that Bitcoin will touch and and and individuals want to hear how it touches it. Like the AI thing I think was great. I think we probably just got to people. I don't think we or individuals have 2 1/2 hours to spend on on pods with all the ones coming out. So we'll we'll get better on the the timing. But I yeah, I love being able to talk to about some of the other stuff that tie into Bitcoin. Yeah, we'll have to work on the timing. Jesse's a very busy man. He only has an hour and a half for us. Jesse Irish exit, yeah. He ghosted us. Yeah, he. He ghosted us before we ghost the audience. Gentlemen, any parting thoughts? Parting notes things we didn't cover that you think we should touch on before you wrap up. Matt, do you feel comfortable? I don't want to do the price, but like what? Give me, give me something, give us something on like where, how big this cycle goes? Like how? Like how should we think about it as compared to I? Don't want, I don't want you to mention price, but like how high do you think it goes? Maybe it's less about price, it's more about just like adoption, right? We had, you know, Sailor last year we had El Salvador. Like where do we see this entrench into like, you know, global like culture, all the things. In this next wave. I don't know, I haven't really put too much time into coming up with a price target. I'm more just kind of I try to watch flows and kind of the the waves if you will like it. It's more than it is today, obviously top of cycle. I think the last one interestingly you know people talk talk about the top of the last cycle, this is a weird one because there was a double top element. The first peak came. It was like right as that China band was coming, right, Which was? Marty, you had no. Timelines, but June of 21, that was the first peak and that was really what you would call like the technical peak of the cycle. From there we were, in my opinion, we're in the big retrace now. You got the rally from I forget how how low it dipped in that intermediate from like 60 K the first time and then it hit it again like it went down to maybe like 40-30, I don't know somewhere in there. But that next rally from like 30 to 40K back up to like a new all time high at 65 K My perspective on like what was actually going on in the capital flows of market etcetera, what two things, one, the money printing and the fiscal stimulus was so strong in COVID like the embers just wouldn't burn out on that process like we're still dealing with that. So that gave a massive like continued tailwind. But then I think you're also looking for in terms of that like the the, the, the rally, right, the bear market rally, which was in my opinion was that second wave at the double top that really the, the top tick of that market was the launch of that Bito ETF product. And then capital flowed in. We talked about how it's an inferior vehicle, it's inferior product, but capital flowed in. Share counts up 2X over the two years or so it's existed. That tells you. It tells me and and and my read on this like this underlying bull market like that only happens where you have like that that bear market rally that can overshoot that top if the underlying bull market is like extremely strong. So I think that's that's what I look to for Signal and it's it's pretty Dang obvious like the longer you've been here paying attention like there's there's something going on in Bitcoin it seems to be there's a. Pretty massive bull market going on over the last 15 years. You know what we've seen so far, every cycle peak is considerably higher than the previous you know cycle top. So no idea where we get to in the blow off or or in the the final phase. I don't know, you know how this bull market cycle ends. Like we won't know it until it materializes. Like no one saw the the China ban coming like in real time unless you had some sort of like inside information and you knew they were working on implementing it. Like the market was picking up those signals but you didn't know what the headline was that would chop it off, right. Same thing with the ETF launch. You might have had a sense that that product was coming out the filings, we weren't watching it to the same degree that you know the the Twitter, Audi or whatever the X audience is, just they're just on these ETF launches like there's nothing else going. Like they're putting so much attention into that. But it wasn't that way for the for the Bito ETF when it launched. So like that whole point like the underlying sentiment of how people are going to behave. I have no idea what they'd drive price to this next cycle, but I the the actual waves like underneath this thing, like there is a lot of energy behind this thing so who who knows like where it goes to and I think if. If. You're in it for the long trip like the long term, and you're using this as your store value. It doesn't so much matter. Like don't let the don't let the highs push you like you know, past your emotional peak. Or don't let the lows you know stop you out parting thoughts. Tsunami. That's what I heard. Hey, props, I know Japan had that earthquake. It's not. It's no, No joking matter. Those are dangerous. Yes, I mean. I was trying to throw a little joke out there. Hearts, I know. Heart's out to Japan dealing with that, that crisis. Japan. Indonesia. Yeah. Not trying to be, not trying to do inaugurate the impact that actual tsunamis. It's. Not a good thing you got. To be careful, you got to be careful out there. With that, Michael, anything? No, it's it's awesome, Matt. I appreciate you jumping on. I think your analysis is great. I think we'd probably get muted volatility to downside based on long term holders and retirement accounts where it's not like you people just selling out. That'd be a quasi prediction versus the crazy 80% retraces we've seen previously. Yeah, yeah. And if. The Boomers retirement accounts allocate the Bitcoin, then they unfortunately pass and pass it along to their millennial kids or Millennial because they're really alright. Double down on this. Buy some more of this. Here's a great point. I heard a non bitcoiner make on a podcast last night. Talked about sentiment. Like the last time Bitcoin was at 40K people were a billion and this was like on the way down, like Bitcoin conference 2022. We didn't realize the depths of what was ahead of us, like all of these lending failures of Celsius, Block 5, FTX, etcetera. And now that you know bitcoin's back at, you know, 40K. But sentiment's not where it was. Like I know within this call, like these individuals and then you talk to bitcoiners at the at the conferences like they're incredibly high sentiment, like their convictions were just like steeled with the the banking crisis and we're like what happened with SVB whatnot and like just just reinforced all of their core convictions. But if you just talk to the general public right now, bitcoin's not at an all time high. There's much lower sentiment than there was the last time we were at 40K. So I think that tells you like just understanding where you're at in the, in the big picture of this of of this current cycle where we are and no idea how this one ends. They're all kind of different, but tells you, yeah, keep keep riding the trade. Yeah, yeah. I think the flows not to go to, but the flows Barney like we've been looking at this for so long, I think we forget that. Like sending money into Bitcoin is like sending into a casino from like a market perspective. Like you have to sell from one place, you have to get the cash and then you're moving it to Coinbase or a Kraken. Like what is a Coinbase or a Kraken to the general audience? Like you might as well be sending it to Bovada or wherever to gamble. And this idea that like if somebody even wanted to trade it requires a lot of work. It's like, let me just wait till the ETF from a retail perspective and then from an institutional perspective, they can't do it either way. So like the idea of that this thing launches and then it just kind of like hangs out there for a little bit. What we're talking about earlier is I just don't see it because it just feels like it's the product that needs to be in the market for the flow to actually start to move. That's a great point, actually. Glad you raised it, because like a lot of the firms who popped up with them, Bitcoin focus. Bitcoin only like you know, the Unchained of the World, whatnot like they were not going the altcoin route and shilling doge to your e-mail list like you were giving up money. Like you were choosing to forego like the the marshmallow on the table so you could get more later. But I think, you know, just opinion here but like that long term decision making over the last five, seven years. Yeah, like the most, you know, 55-6 year olds like the broader population. As you work your way up that S curve of adoption, you're trying to breakthrough more than the, let's say, 1 to 3% of people who've adopted Bitcoin at this point. If you want to get the next 1020, I'm sorry. Like my mom's not going to go like she doesn't want to view this as a casino. She doesn't go to casinos like she. That's not what what works for that person. And so you know the the financial institutions, service providers like that who are just focused on Bitcoin only I think that becomes an asset in this as opposed to foregoing the Marshmallow, you know the in the last cycle and the cycle is basically sense Ethereum, you know showed up, it's been well I guess you had Litecoin even before that and stuff like that. But there was always that element of as Michael mentioned, yeah, I'm I'm gonna sell my my holdings and whatever I was storing value in before and I'm gonna move that to the casino. Like no, no, if you're looking for broader adoption like the people aren't going to do that. So I think that's if we're making hot takes for 2024, I think that's it's when the the firms and entities who successfully passed the marshmallow test and prior cycles I hope, I I think the cycle ahead is where they can get rewarded for that. That's a thesis right On RAMP, our thesis at 1031 TFTC. Don't eat the marshmallow. Wait. Wait for the mountain of marshmallows. It's. Poison. It's poison. It's. Poison. Yeah. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. Eyes. Here. That's it. It's. Been a pleasure. This is a great way to start the year. I guess we'll have may we may have some closure on whether or not the ETS are approved by next time of record. So next week should be interesting to come back and join us at the last trade. Thanks guys. See ya.
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