The Last Trade E037: The Pensions Have Arrived with Sam Roberts & Glenn Cameron

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Jesse and I are in Texas and Michael is over in London, joined by the Cartwright team, Glenn Cameron, who's been on the show before, and Sam Roberts, the CIO of Cartwright. Michael, I'll let you open this since you, Glenn and Sam have been hanging out and talking for the last couple days. What's going on over in London? You know, well, we took a red eye from Texas last night, you know, hopped over the pond and went to meet Glenn and Sam and had some good conversations, excited to roll into this. This is one of the ones that I think I need to say less of. And we have experts in the room, asset allocators that have been looking at Bitcoin for a very long time and excited to have a conversation with them. Time as well. And Sam, before you re entered the room, I couldn't see you before, but I was telling you, I I thought I was telling you. I was just telling Glenn and Michael that the first time Glenn was on, he explained how he joined Cartwright and the interview process he went through, which is essentially you making sure that Glenn understood Bitcoin and Bitcoin specifically. And I think for the purposes of this show and just building on the first episode we did with Glenn, really interesting to learn about your background, how you became so convicted on Bitcoin particularly. Yeah, sure. So brilliant to be here by the way, and good to be live with you guys. Obviously seen you in the past on previous podcasts. And yeah, that trick question I asked them was what do you think of crypto? And I'm pleased to say you passed, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So my background is I'll take a step back and then sort of take a run up into how I've ended up here. So I'm an actuary by career choice that's since started in 98, so many years ago there. And I first started sort of having thoughts about if things aren't quite right in 2008 and that I was looking all over the place for answers to that, found myself going deep into the Austrian School of Economics. I think it's a natural step from there certainly in those days to then end up as some kind of gold bug. So I think that's a commonly treaded path. I was then focusing on my career for the next few years and then came back to I heard about Bitcoin in 2013. I did what I normally do, which is I dabbled. Obviously in hindsight, I wish I'd dabbled a lot more than I did, but sort of just tested out a little bit and then forgot about it. I didn't really understand it in reality in those days but then it rolls around to 2020 and obviously everything that was going on then central banks taking action as they want to do and into 2021 where I was then had the chance to to go a bit deeper into Bitcoin again and I took the took the path again. Pretty well trodden. I think I had a slight diversion into crypto, which I've I dabbled again. So again as an idea doesn't make any sense. I feel I have to test it out for myself, which is what I I then did. I then very quickly realized that it was a dead end, essentially to put it politely, which then helped me to come full circle back again to say, OK, so it's Bitcoin only. So that takes us to sort of late 2021 and then 2022. A key date in my mind was it was 24th of February 2022. So that was when that might have been when I can't remember the exact date actually saying that, but it was Russia had invaded Ukraine at that point and it wasn't so much that. It was more the event of the US and indeed other nation states confiscating Russia's treasury bonds. And for me that was that was a real inflection point. So I built up a Bitcoin only understanding at that point and understood about, you know, the lack of counterparty risk, if you hold it in the right way, etcetera. And for me that was it wasn't, you know, it wasn't about whether Russia was right or wrong or whatever thing. It was the fact that one Nation state had confiscated another nation states assets, just a stroke of a pen. And that for me was a turning point. So it was, it was a couple of days later I had a team meeting and I said OK, I think they were a little bit shocked, but I said OK, we now need to be thinking more carefully about Bitcoin as a serious option for our clients. My expectation, which I think I told you, Glenn, actually at that time was that it's going to take a couple of years for us to get to the stage where clients are going to be able to invest possibly a bit longer. So two years rolls on. We're almost at that to your point. And we're, you know, very close I think to to helping clients get into this asset class. So it's very exciting time. It's been a long time coming, but very pleased that we're here today. Yeah, it's it's crazy to think about somebody in your shoes, too, as the CIO of Cartwright. And you have this duty to your end. Clients may not be doing as deep of research into these subjects as you have to make sure that you're getting them the right information. So leaning into your personal journey and having to basically come to grips with the fact that crypto's noise and Bitcoin is signal, as you mentioned, the confiscation of treasury assets is a very large event that really highlights this counterparty risk exists throughout the system and Bitcoin is the solution. And then having the wherewithal and the foresight say, OK, we've got to go on this journey to develop a thesis and a process internally before we can go get our clients into this years down the line. How, like, how do you sort of pitch this to your clients now that you've spent this amount of time, 2 years building out a process, building out a thesis, finding the right counterparties to get you access and your clients access to Bitcoin? Have you been pitching Bitcoin along the way or is this a point now in time, February 2024, where it's like, all right, we have everything in order on our end. We can then go begin telling our clients about this. So we started seriously telling clients in October, Just gone. And that was in the context of an asset allocator portfolio construction. These are people. Our clients are people that look after other people's money. And I think that's a really key difference. Me personally or anyone else personally, you can dabble, right, You win some, you lose some maybe, but you can dabble and you can test things out to understand them better. That's fine. But that's not what our clients can do. In the same way, they need to be much more confident in what they're investing and much more confident they can get the advice and the proper analysis around that. So we very much pitched this as a small allocation to Bitcoin and Bitcoin only obviously, but the small allocation is also important and because it helps them to dip their toe in the water, I think also what helps the small allocation sort of from our point of view and maybe some we can dig into it deeper possibly. But in simplistic terms, I think we've got a couple of phases coming up. So we've got the monetization phase and then we've got the increasing in value in line with economic growth generally. So it's sort of what Gold has effectively done for for for a few 1000 years. You know, the old Roman Roman suit idea. So you've got two distinct phases and the advantage of that first stage is that you can justify putting a small amount in 2-3, four percent of a portfolio and you know what your downside is 2, three, 4%. But you've got this massive upside potential and I think that is what is extremely helpful at this stage because when you start plugging it into you know any kind of investment risk model, it looks very attractive. Yeah. To take a step back, I think it's always fascinating when Glenn first came on and Chris Kuiper and very senior professionals that are used to speaking the language of asset allocators, you guys have amazing positioning. There's a term inversion that Chris brings up. I was just talking the other day. It's not going to come off the top of my head, but there's this angle of being able to like flip like what would cause Bitcoin not to work or what would cause it to not, like appreciate, but to go backwards. We kind of glossed over the the, the, the, the question to Glenn about, you know, I think it was very transformative or very important to the whole process of you guys like finding a person to lead this unit. And I say that because as we're coming out East, we're gonna be in the UAE. There's folks that we're talking to in India and Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the Middle East. And this, this idea of counterparty risk is understood by them and they understand that the ETF may not be the solution, similar to what you're saying about the treasuries different angle, but similar concept of like who's your counterparty. And when we met Glenn, it was top of mind all the way up the stack. What do you what do you investor, what he offer was the counterparty the, the solution from a custody perspective? Do you, you know the delivery mechanisms, all these things that were important. And so going back to that clever question, you were either was a test there. But I'm curious, like, how did you think about why it mattered and how you had to find the right person for this whole, like, journey? Because I think that's like one of the most pivotal points to find the right person and then and the right counterparty to make sure that you could actually get the right, yeah, like solution. And we're fortunate. This is a growing area and therefore, these opportunities are more likely to come along than if it's a contracting area. And so Glenn's been fantastic. It was a bit of a coincidence in terms of the timing. So I mentioned February 2022, Glenn joined in May 2022. Obviously, we'd had some discussions before February. So that worked that, I mean that worked very well in terms of the timing. And I think that I think our clients are looking at it partly from a counterparty risk point of view and partly from inflation point of view. And they're not mutually exclusive scenarios, economic scenarios, but in some ways they can be simplified down to that. So you have an economic contraction that increases your counterparty risk, Increase your counterparty risk. If you own bonds, are they going to be able to pay the coupons? If you own equities, what their profits going to be like? If you're in property, are they going to pay the rent? So you've got there tends to be a correlation with higher counterparty risk in an economic contraction. And then of course, the flip side is that the central banks printing, creating inflation, the hard cap 21 million then really comes into its own. So you've got this fantastic combination of extreme scenarios where historically gold would have played that role. But of course now we're in, now we're in a new world and Bitcoin is I think gradually going to take over from gold in that role. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. You raise a really good distinction there that I don't think we talk enough about. In the space of, you know, people often fall into the trap of like well I if I'm going to hold a sound money asset, I might as well hold gold because it's proven and like that's going to be a better store of value and a more reliable. So if I'm going to do anything, I'll include a little bit of gold, but they're making this, this mistake, this fallacy, that of assuming that Bitcoin and gold are in a similar sort of point in their life cycle. And I think you're right to call out that, like you want that end state stability in in this asset, but that's not where we're at right now. But instead there's a huge asymmetric upside opportunity as we get to that eventual place for Bitcoin, which is many, many, many trillions away in terms of monetization in in, you know, total asset value. So you know, I I think that's a a unique lens that I haven't heard. And I think it's probably coming from your role in trying to communicate this opportunity to pensions of don't think about that end state, think about where you're at right now. And the end state is, is you know where you'll eventually get. But the the real exciting part is, you know, the monetization process that Bitcoin is still at the very beginning of. Yeah, that's right. I mean we've got, we've got a saying in the in the into the investment community which is very variations on it. But the the future is not necessarily a reflection of the past or you know something similar to that. So the idea that Gold's you know done what it's done over the last five, 5000 years, I mean it's obviously impressive, right. It should be given credit for that, but I can't invest in the past, I can only invest in the future and so I need to look at when advising clients what's the future, what's the likely future scenarios that we that we can foresee or test out or you know, envisage. And also if, well, Bitcoin in April is going to have a better stock to flow ratio than gold by a long shot, double the stock to flow ratio, right? So if you look historically at what's happened when a harder form of money into the society, well then all of a sudden that's slowly kind of eats away at everything else. So actually holding gold is a risk, right? Because if Bitcoin eats gold's lunch, if gold becomes demonetized, you certainly that argument of like, Oh well, if I'm looking for an asset that's a store of value, I'll just go with gold. What if in 20 years time it's been demonetized and now it's an industrial metal, right. So you definitely don't want to be making the mistake of saying I need a store of value asset in My Portfolio. It's obviously gold because that might be the worst thing that you can do. And then also, nobody's saying that the probability of Bitcoin doing that is 100%, right? But it's some percentage. I like to think it's a quite a large percentage probability that it's going to do that given bitcoins properties. And so if you give me, you know, 100 opportunities with high probabilities that they're going to come true and with huge upside, I'm going to take every single one of those baits, it will make an allocation to all of those things. The trouble with this is, is that you can't rely on the law of large numbers because you've only got this one bit right. But there's also the danger that like we discussed I think the last time is that because everything's denominated in this, these Fiat currencies that essentially I remember Marty joking about black hole insurance, right, like Bitcoin acting like a back hole and like sucking all the value out of these other assets because as it monetizes, that value has to come from somewhere, right? And as people and the biggest asset class where that's going to be the case is bonds, Another one is property probably the last one if it would have been would be equities because you know there you kind of I mean essentially because you're not your revenue is going up as the the inflationary nominal terms you kind of protected I mean equity has. Been a good long term like inflation, sort of protection kind of assets, bonds, definitely not properties overvalued, right. So it's, you know, the idea that, Oh well, if I want to store a value asset in My Portfolio, I'll just put gold in there. OK. So what are you expecting? A zero real return, right? That's what you're expecting. And at the same time it gets demonetized. And how much of your portfolio are you going to put in gold, right, Whereas you can put 2, three, 4% in Bitcoin, right? And it kind of it's going to have a material impact on the race of your portfolio, you know, so and you you especially like with different types of investors, right. You can't afford to be using huge chunks of your portfolio as kind of a long term store of value. You've got different objectives. You need to grow the capital or you need to hedge liabilities or something like that. Whereas with this thing, it's just kind of like the sprinkle of salt, you know that you put on top of the meal and you know you can get busy with everything else that you want to do with the portfolio and just have this thing there kind of. Yeah, it's it's so interesting that you guys marry this. You know the the first principle of thinking that is necessary to understand the value proposition of Bitcoin, but through an actual actuarial lens where you guys are evaluating this in terms of probabilities, numbers and how this works out in different scenarios. And then finally having to to filter that through the fiduciary obligations that you have providing advice to pensions because of and specifically with regard to the the mandates that those pensions have to take care of people's retirement money. And that combination is kind of unusual I think in the Bitcoin space. There's a lot of people who are in similar roles that we've yet to really see find Bitcoin. But you know maybe whatever circumstances it was that you guys in particular had that allowed that combination of three things to line up just right to to see it, to get it. And and I think to solve such a big problem in, in, in pensions of you want to have that sound money safety but you don't want to set aside a huge portion of the portfolio to provide that protection because because Glenn you're right with with gold you'd have to if you want to protect the portfolio. You got to have like 50% of the portfolio in this in this asset that's going to generate, you know, no real return versus 2, three, 4% in an asset that can provide the same function of protecting in you know, in terms of the sound money properties that it delivers. Because of the growth in this early stage in the NASCAR of monetization phase that that it also comes with. And you know that insight I think comes from the combination of those three lenses that you guys are bringing to the table and that every other pension, every, every pension allocator, every pension consultant sits in the same role and has yet to like really put together those dots. But I think that you know we're going to see a greater trend of that because once you once you really understand Bitcoin and that's the first principle heavy lifting that has to happen first, then the conclusion is this that like if you want you know it's the most attractive thing to include in any portfolio if you have the right position sizing and that's just two, three, 4%. Hence, so I think the built oh, sorry, Sam. I think there's something else that's needed as well as those three things you mentioned, which I agree with all those 3. It's willingness to think outside the box or if I put it another way, the willingness to see outside the bubble. I think we look across our industry in the UK and look at the actual profession and all that kind of stuff. And they're doing lots of hard work in lots of areas and some of it's quite useful, but it's within a bubble. It's and you need to get outside of that bubble and you see the bubble for what it is. I suppose another way to describe would be a Fiat bubble and all the things that go along with that that I'm sure you talked about before. You've got to step outside and see it for what it is and then realize that it's fine for that to be 98% of a portfolio, but you also need something outside of that bubble as well. And that's what gives you that diversification. Being out, having something, the exact potentially it almost doesn't matter, but having something outside the bubble. And to build on this line of thinking, I think I have a three-part, I do have a three-part question. How do we settle on this particular allocation, 2 to 4 to 5%, whatever it may be? What sliver of a portfolio allocation does it fall under? What bucket does it fall into? Then three, at which point do you think it becomes abundantly clear to everybody that this is the strategy that needs to be employed, Some sort of allocation towards Bitcoin? Maybe it's not even a decision that's made willingly. Maybe it's forced upon market actors via benchmark or something like that. So I mean it, it really depends on the type of client. So if it's a corporate treasury, if it's a pension scheme, if it's a charity, if it's a funeral trust, it depends where they are in the investment journey. Are they, do they have a short horizon? Do they have a much longer horizon? But initially, it's kind of like the first thing that you normally come across when you approach a client and you say, hey, I want to talk to you about this thing called Bitcoin, is that like, isn't it too volatile, right. So when you're thinking about the percentage you should put in a portfolio, you're thinking how much can I put in this thing without there being any sort of perceptible effect on the overall volatility of the portfolio, right. And what you find is you can kind of done do rolling sort of 4-5 year periods where you kind of put 2% in you back testing, right. And you're saying what I've noticed the volatility both from a kind of a standard deviation or normal volatility portfolio or from a maximum drawdown kind of perspective in the overall portfolio. And if you put 2IN, you, you can't, you can't even feel it, right? You can't see it. You can't feel it. It's like, you know, why wouldn't I do this, right? You put 3IN, it's kind of like again, not persist. Once you start getting to five right, then 'cause you know, you find that, like, so for example in March 2020 when they locked us all in our houses, right? They, you know, everything becomes correlated, even Bitcoin, right? So but bitcoins draw downs are like you know, 6070%, right? So if you got 5% in a portfolio, it's about, you know, it makes about 35 basis points difference to the draw down, something like that. If you put like, no, what? Sorry, what? No, it's about 3 1/2 percent of the drawdown if if you've got 5% in a portfolio, right, so that you start to kind of notice, whereas 2 percent, 1% extra drawdown takes no longer for the portfolio to recover to its previous high. It kind of feels like that point where you can kind of, you know, everybody stays calm. You know what I mean? You don't want people like if there's you when you're introducing an entirely new asset, an entirely new concept, all of these ideas and whatever you want it to be at a level where everybody's like, you know, I mean 2% is sort of like the allocation that a bank stock might have in a portfolio, right? Just one stock. So it's kind of like easy to introduce somebody at that kind of level, whereas if you stop talking about higher allocations, it's a more complicated conversation and you just want to kind of get people off 0 rather than asking them to do a lot more than that. I mean, this may be sacrilegious for this show, but the right allocation for some pension schemes is zero, yeah. And I think ultimately it comes down to normally it comes down to time horizon. So if they they're different types of pension schemes, you know you got DB and DC over in the states as well as you know we've got the same over here. So DB actually once it gets well funded enough, a final salary scheme or a defined benefit scheme, you can pass a whole lot over to an insurer. So actually your time horizon to invest is until you can afford to pass it to an insurer and for some schemes that might be, you know, might be 6 months. So actually they won't even have any, particularly with the rise in bond yields generally that has actually improved the funding position of a lot of fun and salary pension schemes. So a lot of them are in a good position that actually they just want to lock down as much risk. They shouldn't be having equities, they shouldn't be having any growth, Which to your question Marty, that's where it fits if in the growth allocation for fun and salary schemes. And so you just want to move them across to insurance and low risk. And all you're trying to do though is make sure people get the pensions they've been promised. You're not looking to do anything fancier than that in a secure way as possible. However, there were other schemes where they might have 10/15/20 years to go, in which case then they do have some equities, they do have a growth portfolio, in which case then some kind of allocation to Bitcoin within. That makes sense and I think that's probably the, that's the category where it's, it's, it makes sense to get off 0. That, that that's really, that's really interesting that two very notable things you include there that what the conclusion that you guys have come to is that this fits in the growth category of any portfolio. And and I think I certainly fall into this this reflex I guess at this point of oh it's you know it's a sound money asset, it's a scarce asset, it's a hard money asset. It it's its own thing really it's a 6040 zero like that zero should be higher. You know you have your your equities, your bonds, your hard money and everybody overlooks that category. It should be its own thing but you guys are cleverly putting it in a growth category. So you're thinking about it as a replacement for like a growth company stock and and that's very notable and informative for anybody who who's trying to think about how to justify where to include Bitcoin in their portfolio. And then the other thing that that I want to follow up on is so makes sense that you know six month timeline, six month horizon pension scheme, Bitcoin doesn't make sense. It's it's too volatile the the possibility of like a March 2020 event is non zero and you don't you can't have that 10 years plus there the the growth will bear out. You know if the thesis is right with Bitcoin. Where do you draw that line though? Is it? Do you? Do you, you know, subscribe to OK for your cycle Is what you need to live through or is it different in your minds? So we've said the minimum is 4 years, right? So that, but obviously if it's longer, it's better. Ideally you'd want longer than eight years, so two cycles, right? But but four years at a minimum, I suppose it would also depend on where you started, right? So if we have a massive bull run now in the next 18 months, which is kind of what I guess we're all hoping and expecting, that's you know if then a client came to us then we'd probably dollar cost average in and we'd probably kind of do that you know put in. You know we would space the, the the kind of entries wider rather than kind of doing them quite quickly. And if it's going to take like 2 years to get them in and they've only got 4 years total horizon then it kind of doesn't make sense, right. So then you need a little bit of a longer horizon because definitely I mean I think it's, you know, it's we we talk a lot about investor behavior and psychology and stuff. And with an acid like this, it's definitely going to bring out the greed, right. So we're going to have that blow off top at some point and then it's going to you know crash to you know a level which is much higher than the last time it crashed, right. But nevertheless, if you get in at the top, it's not going to feel good and it's not going to be good for the portfolio. So I think you, you know, like now and we've even kind of said this in our communications to our clients, it's ideal. Nobody knows what the future holds, right. But it's ideal if you really like an asset and it's had a bit of a tough time, that's the time to kind of make an allocation. Not kind of. When everybody's going, everybody and their dogs saying I've got to get some Bitcoin, right, then it's probably the time to say OK, well, it's kind of, you know, get in, but very kind of gradually and slowly. We might be getting too much into the into the nuances possibly but I think it's it's not just what you think the time horizon will be. It's also how certain can you be that it will be at least say four years or or whatever number you pick. So there are, you know if you've got a a defined benefit scheme that's that's taking lots of investment risk. You think the time horizon is 10 years, but actually you turn around 5 minutes later and equity markets have done really well and bond yields have shot up and they're, they're fully funded. They can go to the insurance market straight away or they're close and that the company suddenly has some cash and throws it in and and then you can go to the insurance. So if you've got these kind of uncertainties around the DB scheme, then it then creates uncertainty about the time. So it takes a lot of thought to make sure that it's right for each particular scheme and that's DB schemes in particular. And then there were other types of scheme as well where I think it also gets quite interesting and I think comes back to your point about sound money. So if we move to like define, define contribution, we call them over here or money purchase. So the company and the employee throw some money in a pot and the pension is whatever it buys whenever that member retires. In that scenario, a small allocation can make a lot of sense and in fact often they're not buying and annuity at retirement, they're continuing to invest it. So actually the time horizon could be not just the 20 years until they get to retirement, but maybe another 2025, thirty years after then. So we're talking about a really long time horizon there. Yeah, that's actually important part because you're referencing the the time horizon and whether it's explicit or implicit because you guys fundamentally understand what's happening. I feel like you're educating beyond any time horizon and and wanting them to think much longer than whatever is on their benchmark. Be curious like how you guys try to navigate that because historically like institutions have been effectively exit liquidity for the system, right. They see it running and then that's when they get in and then they're burned and they're like what did I do? And so that has to be at the, you know in the back of your mind as you guys have been educated and be curious how have you thought about that and try to get in the under the underside of something we think about a lot at on ramp. It's about these institutions are made-up of individuals and so it took you going through O eight took Glenn having his background we'll maybe save that one for for beers. I don't know if we need to discuss publicly how he got to be the way he is, but but this idea of it starts at an individual and it feels like as much as it's talking to the pension, it's also the individuals that are there and helping them see it. Anything you guys can share there I think is is helpful because there's a lot of people that listen that are having these conversations across the board, whether it's family members, their treasury and institutions, and they're all trying to figure out what is the right and there's no silver bullet, but you guys are navigating this in real time. So anything you can share there would be nice. Yeah. Sure. I mean, so it's always interesting, right? Because there's that moment where you say, OK, Bitcoin could be right for this client and now you've got to contact them and it's usually an e-mail, right? So you've got to kind of, you know, in this e-mail, say them, I want to talk to you about Bitcoin, right. And I've been pleasantly surprised, right? Because you, I would say 9 times out of 10, they're like, OK, let's have this conversation. You know, I think maybe maybe what it is, is that, like, intrigued, interested, you know, just curious. Want to learn more, right. There have been instances, like with the head of corporate treasury, where we contacted him and he sent us back a chart of Bitcoin. And said look at this thing, it's so volatile or whatever. So then we send them one with a logarithmic price axis saying actually you should think of this as like something in the adoption phase and that like you know, you want to look at percentage changes in the price and you can see in that logarithmic kind of price curve how it's slowly being adopted over time. And then he came back and he was like we don't want anything that isn't backed by anything or something like this, right? And so you don't always win, but nine times out of 10, they're willing to have the conversation right? Well, the important thing there is that he didn't just ignore your e-mail, he came back with questions. So I think that's where a lot of people are at. You know everyone goes to their own journey and learning about this and sometimes that'll be what do you mean it still hasn't died yet and that will that will get their interest. So it's it is quite interesting how different people will take different boots in there and I think whilst we're in the monetization stage, which I mean could be who knows, I mean a couple of decades maybe, could easily be, yeah but equally no one knows. So things could happen. Actually, I find quite interesting the, the impact something else can have on itself sort of in a circular way. So actually it might speed up the adoption of Bitcoin because it exists. I know that sounds a little bit circular, but that's sort of the point in that because there is an exit route, it means that people run faster towards it, which then leads more quickly to the collapse of the existing system into Bitcoin. So I've seen some people say we could take 3 generations and that's to do and it makes sense. It's about people, it's a psychological way that people think about these things and are they used to it and so on. But I suppose, yeah, I'd like to be alive for the end of it. So it's some ways quicker the better. I was thinking about the point Sam's making, about maybe happening, you know, like, like Parker, Lewis says. Gradually. Then suddenly. Right, right, right. You remember when it was like March last year when all the banks were kind of in trouble and Credit Suisse basically went to the wall. And I remember, I can't remember if it was on this podcast or one of the other ones, Marty, where you showed that chart where the bank stocks all like going down and then at exactly the same time Bitcoin going up, right. And we've been looking at like setting up corporate treasures with access to Bitcoin and actually having software to kind of plug into the normal corporate treasury systems and stuff. And the company that we're talking to, who's got the technology to do all of this stuff, like kind of told me without mentioning names, they've already got like companies with more than a billion pounds in Bitcoin, right. And so, like, I was thinking when that stuff was going down, like, imagine you're a big company and you've got like a few million in cash in the bank, right? How? How do you get it out when you know the proverbials hitting the fan? What do you do? Like go and say please give me, like, you know, big, you know, I don't know, briefcases or something full of cash? I want to get it out of the system because I'm afraid, right? But with these kinds of systems, you can just say, just buy Bitcoin with it and now you're entirely outside the financial system, right? There's no way that anybody can debase it. No one can. There's no con outside the bubble, outside the bubble, right? And so I wondered if that is what caused because there was also this VC. Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah, and he put out this note to all his investing companies, say, yeah, like you know, buy some Bitcoin for for situations like this so you can still make payroll. So I think so that's one of the things that quite interests me is this sort of escape route idea. So by and suppose you know, so in corporate treasuries for example, if they've got a small amount in but they've got the infrastructure set up to then make a quick allocation if they need to. If they start from scratch, you know it's not going to be 5 minutes to to get their money out of the banking system or or some of it or you know just to reduce their reliance on certain banks or whatever it might be. So that escape route for corporates I think will be really important going forwards escape route for individuals. So in particular you know we're so we're investment advisors and employee benefit specialists. So we can, you know there's loads of interesting things going out there but we can only focus on what we're we can do what our skill set is. So on employee benefits, the what we're trying to set up is a Bitcoin employee benefit system or you know, ability to do that. And one of the reasons I like that is because it gives individuals an escape route. It also, you know if you've got no exposure to something, you've got limited interest in learning more. If you've got, even if it's only £100, a $100, whatever, you suddenly you're interested in it, disproportionately so, but you're more interested in it and therefore you'll see the headlines, you'll read more reports, you'll maybe read your book. Yeah. One thing just to anchor like this is common practice from business continuity. When that that Silicon Valley Bank I was with Marty that weekend when it was happening, I remember vividly thinking about like, holy crap, like they have to, they have to figure this out by Sunday because it was just going to be anarchy on Monday and they did that Sunday night. But it's this idea of like you gave enough people the time to think about what if I don't make payroll? Like what? What are all those things? It's almost negligent not to have some capital outside and everybody has their own balance sheet whether it's an individual or a business. And so to have those rails, even if it's a river account in the US or a coin corner account in the UK and maybe start playing around like you're like you're referencing. It's like this isn't a conspiracy that the banks just like have not given people their money. It's it's true they they shut them down. It's not a, it's no question about it. And so to not question or think about what is your options, whether it's a pension or an individual, it's almost just like you know, at your own risk at this point. We are seeing live the flipping of the previous view, which was I don't go anywhere near Bitcoin. It's too volatile, I've got fiduciary duty, I'm looking after other people's money. It feels like gambling and we're sort of in the process in the middle of flipping to a situation where it is actually irresponsible not to consider it. And I well, the quicker that spreads the the better I think because you know we want to protect our clients as best we can from these risks and they're, you know, they're big risks out there. We. We we we were talking to trustees of a funeral trust and what happened was they got into this sort of quite tech heavy equity fund at the end of 2021. It was kind of like the beginning of the investment journey, right? To peak. Yeah. And then they they, it literally like crashed like 40% on them, right. And then they're like kind of lay trustees. They're not like investment even, you know, investment savvy. So they were like like this is too much. Peloton peloton's like peak 2021. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they were like, OK, we want our money back. So they took it out, right? And then they put it in the bank. And which bank did they choose? Metro Bank and Metro Bank ran into trouble and had to get recapitalized, right? But there were a few days there where the money was in the bank and they didn't know if the bank was going to be OK. So that was kind of like their experience was. They took the 40% haircut and then they might have taken the rest of it if they didn't fulfill them. And it's like a whole Fiat adventure, right? Because you, like, put interest rates at 0 prints. A whole lot of money. Hand it all out, right? All these techs growth stocks goes through the roof, right? Then inflation roars, Then you raise interest rates, then they all come crashing down again, right? Then you have all these banking crises and whatever. It can be more obvious that you need something like Bitcoin. Glen, you got to be careful. You're going to get Marty all riled up. I'm thinking because I'm thinking, I'm thinking back to last March when this was all happening, we had a number of companies in our portfolio 10/31 that were exposed. I mean the Bitcoin industry as a whole was probably the most exposed because of the lack of access to banking relationships and banking relationships that did exist. The the banks that failed at Silvergate Signature, Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic like those were top three banks, the 1st 3 for for the industry. And so people were moving quickly and a lot of them were buying Bitcoin and putting it in something like an Unchained vault or holding it on river. And I think it's important to highlight here too like yes you eliminate that third party risk as well. But diving back into like the long term strategy, there's also it's an exit from this third party risk. But if Bitcoin does what we what we think it's going to do, particularly in the context of something like a venture backed company, it could extend your runway into the future. So you start by allocating the Bitcoin to eliminate that third party banking risk that exists. You hold Bitcoin on your balance sheet and then the price runs and you wake up for eight years from now and like holy crap my balance sheet is 5X or the the Bitcoin portion my balance sheet is 10X which has allowed me to have significantly more runway and you can apply this to a pension or any type of fund for that matter in the future. Yeah, it goes from being defense to offense really quick. Yeah you get yeah you you get a lot when when you buy Bitcoin. You're not you're not just getting gold you're you're getting gold plus growth plus you know something that sits outside of the bubble outside of the system and and benefits in in the event that there's trouble in the system and you know and plus you're getting the you know you're buying a a stake in the Internet of value in the early days of the second part of the digital revolution in my opinion to complement the Internet of information that we already have and assume is is everything but it's actually half the story. There's so many things that you get when you make an allocation to Bitcoin and I think that's part of like when you guys are running through your actuarial tables and seeing like, you know, what if this is 2 to 5%? Not only is the volatility acceptable, but you get all this incredible performance out of it too. It becomes something that so long as your time horizon is long enough, it becomes a bit of a no brainer really. If not a no brainer, then at least a hugely asymmetric upside bet. Yeah. And what are we trying to achieve for our clients? We're trying to maximize the return for the same amount of risk or we're trying to have the same return and reduce the risk. You want assets with this kind of risk profile, not all, but you want a bit and that's exactly what we're talking about. 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 onrampbitcoin.com. We look forward to supporting you on your Bitcoin journey. But Glenn, I don't invest in crypto. I don't invest in crypto. What do you guys say to that? Cuz that, obviously. Neither do we. Yeah, we don't either. Yeah, is I would imagine that's the response but can you expand on that because that's something we obviously get a lot when we're we're doing outreach we're having discussions is I don't invest in crypto and and. So right up front, whenever I talk to people, I say everything I'm going to be saying today is not about cryptocurrency, right? It's we. We need to make a distinction right up front so that you don't make the mistake of me talking to you about this asset and you going away and thinking I was talking to you about cryptocurrency, right. I was not talking to you about cryptocurrency right? I told them if you hear any of these terms NFT, Web 3, blockchain, crypto, right. I'm not talking about those things, and I suggest very strongly that you stay away from them because at best their sortof.com companies if you want to be generous and you know kind about them. But in reality, the very vast majority, if not all of them are scams or there's some kind of way that the banking system or whatever is going to kind of Co-op them and they you're just going to have the same thing over again. Right? With block chain, private block chains or whatever where they essentially like, Oh no, it's all safe because it's a digital Ledger and whatever. But there's only like 3 nodes on this Ledger, and when they get into trouble and they need to bail the system out, they'll just create a whole lot more digital tokens, you know? So I try and kind of separate. And then three hours later, we start the presentation. Yeah, yeah, but but, you know, it's it's like kind of making it clear that like there's always like to say to people that all of this other stuff is just people copying Bitcoin. That's all they did. Like, right? And then and so the only real thing here is Bitcoin, right? Yeah, and if if you view Bitcoin as far out on the risk curve already, just by looking at just a pure market cap comparison, you'd have to be even crazier to allocate to broader crypto. It's way further out on on the risk curve compared to it. Actually helps, actually helps Marty. It helps that our clients are more cautious as they should be because they're looking after other people's money because then it's you've got OK, crypto currencies and then you've got the one which is the well, I mean obviously they're ones that came before it sort of known as the first, isn't it, but there were ones that came before that. But it's the one that that works and has the press and the network affection all the rest of it. So if you combine that and then we can help them through the sort of what is money angle and then it's really, well, it's the perfect money as long as it doesn't get killed. So it's all about so it's like the perfect asset for someone to do it. OK, you got to assess what are the chances of it getting killed and if you get comfortable with that, I haven't found anything convincing myself yet, then it doesn't matter, nothing else matters. So that makes it a bit easier. Yeah in in that sense it's it's the perfect asset for for everyone to be holding in in pensions in particular. Sam, you touched earlier on on how I think this that my understanding of it is is correct that for defined contribution plans schemes it it can be a little bit easier to justify this type of asset versus defined benefit plans. And to me it's it's it's almost a shame because I I don't know if it's, I assume it's the same in the UK that here in the US we have a lot of underfunded defined benefit plans and the the US government in particular has a huge burden of of unfunded liabilities into the future. And from my perspective, I don't see any asset that helps close that gap except for Bitcoin. You know, and I think that that Bitcoin could be the only thing that saves a lot of these under underfunded defined benefit plans if they can wake up to it fast enough and see the value proposition, which most of them won't, but you know that the opportunity is there for for those who can. Any any thoughts on that? I think you're right. I mean, I think the underfunded schemes by their very nature will tend to have a long time horizon because you expect it to take a long time to pick up the returns from equities or or whatever the growth assets you've got. So they would naturally fall into that category of having a long time horizon and therefore should naturally fall into the category of a small Bitcoin allocation makes a lot of sense. So I'd hope that a lot of them take up on that because we are, you know we are going from A1 era to another era I think for lots of different reasons. But one of those areas is moving and we have been doing it for the last 10-15 years or so is moving away from the defined benefit provision, pension provision. Certainly Uki don't know enough about the US, and in some ways that's quite sad because that industry provides a huge amount of certainty and benefits to a lot of people. It is not perfect by long shots and you're relying on sort of a lot of investment complexity to try and beat your bond returns, beat your inflation to provide those benefits. But then that's where Bitcoin slots neatly in. There's been a move to the money purchase again over a similar sort of period as employers stop providing DB and they start providing DC and that is a natural step, I think a flawed step, but I think a natural step because it's the company saying I can't take this risk anymore, I need to pass it on to the employees. The trouble then is the employees are taking on the responsibility of investing. So I like there's in fact I think there's a video with you sitting next to him. Marty, there's a great, I think he said it a few times safer, Dean has said, talked about how not having a proper savings, he says he's much better than me, by the way. But but it's along the lines of, you know, by not having a proper savings vehicle, it forces people to invest. I think it also forces people to spend because they don't know what else to do with their money. And people are then trying to understand stuff, which I mean, it's very, very complicated. It's complicated for a lot of investment professionals and the whole idea of you go to work, you do your job as a doctor or teacher or whatever it is, and then you've got to come home and you've got to be an investment professional in the evenings just to retain the money that you've earned. It is ridiculous. And that was, I guess there's a few things that I suppose really struck me. So I mentioned the bubble. I suppose I was thinking of Jeff Booth when I was thinking about that and say for Dean saying that about the investing and savings and having effectively you need to have two jobs to keep the money you earned. And I think that ultimately the truth will out. So if markets can be distorted for a long time, and I'm not just talking financial markets here, I'm talking about pension provision, markets can be distorted for a long time, but eventually the truth will out. And the truth is that if you've got an asset that is the perfect money and doesn't die, it's and particularly once we get to the second stage which is you know, just roughly obviously it's not perfect nothing, life is perfect of course it essentially tracks economic growth then that is like the perfect asset to have in a world of uncertainty that we all live in and we're never going to get away with that is life. So I can, I can see, you know we could be many decades away from that. But I can see a scenario where the truth comes out through you know of DB and DC and and some of the hybrids that have been created which are even more complicated than either DB or DC to try and mitigate some of the risk. And then you end up in a position where actually most employees they want to go to work. They want to just focus on doing a really good job. They want to take their salary and maybe some of that is in Bitcoin, maybe some of it is in the local currency. What, whatever, you know, that will depend on the situation at the time and that it could easily be where we'll end up. Now, there's a huge amount of vested interest to get through before we get to that stage because you don't need a lot of investment advice to be able to do that. But you know, as I say, ultimately the truth will out, and I'd much prefer to be on the right side of history than to try and artificially keep the existing system in place or be part of that. Yeah. And I, Sam, I think I agree with you. I think this is going to happen much faster than people imagine because you have all these forces at play, whether it's the macroeconomic headwinds that are going to just hit markets globally like the the. It's becoming abundantly clear that the Fed's rate hiking regime may be coming to an end. We had Jerome Powell on 60 Minutes last night saying it's probably going to happen. It's definitely going to happen at some point this year. You have the increasing knowledge of Bitcoin and understanding of Bitcoin globally, and then you have these systemic problems that exist throughout pension systems, fund systems, whatever it may be. And once the cat's out of the bag, people realize this and they start flooding in, there's not going to be any turning back. And this gets back to the point at which Bitcoin becomes like a benchmark that forces pensions to allocate, which forces them to sell positions in other parts of their portfolio to buy Bitcoin, which hinders their performance, the the, the assets that they're selling. And I could see just a crazy feedback loop, sort of virtuous cycle to Bitcoin monetization happening rather quickly. And then on top of that you have all the social developments in terms of people being more aware of inflation than they have in in multiple generations. And understanding that the institutions that are supposed to have our backs and look after us, whether that's the government, the media, big pharma, the banking system are are are corrupt at their core. And I think there is this incredible culmination of events happening to produce an inflection point that sort of slingshots Bitcoin to the reserve asset of the world. I would say in less than 15 years. It's funny because Jesse, you said it's going to take decades. We're already a decade and 1/2 into this. I think from launch to reserve asset would take like 30 years, one generation that would be 15 years from now. And and Sam said three generations, which is also possible. I mean, anything in that range would be incredible. I mean, one thing to add though Sam alluded to is this idea of that you reference safe about people don't have a good form of money, so their habits. And that's like, that's the scary part and the pervasive part of it. It may take longer because that's like a psychological thing and the way it manifests now is you need your yield. So like getting somebody into bitcoins only like half the journey, right, Maybe a little more. But then there's this idea of like the the Bitcoin is the yield. You don't need to do anything with it. And we know how many people in 2022, in 2021 don't have any Bitcoin anymore. And that's gonna be a long, that's already a distant memory. So the next cycle we're gonna see, I think if we all probably agree, we're gonna see the animal spirits again. And so this idea is that it's an asset, but you're a sucker if you don't do something with the asset. And that's the concern of does it happen that fast Because there's an education that goes in and the thing that it's really like, it's kind of the annoying part of all this. And Sam, you alluded to, it's like this reality of getting to the other side of like you just do what you were supposed to do, whatever it is that you were given from a like skills perspective and the money just protects you from it is a is a very like long thing to pick up. And so most people like what do I do with it, what I got to go out, I got to trade it, even the even even Bitcoin like the whatever appreciation year over year. And so that's the kind of part that I don't know if it happens as fast as we want it to because it's still a psychological thing that you just like hold it. You don't go and do something else with it, cuz that's what, that's where you end up losing the asset. I think it's what it is, is it's not so much about Bitcoin, it's about the rest of the system. So, like, so in the UK we had like in the way the government likes to measure inflation 13%. I don't know if you guys have seen this website true inflation where they kind of like create their own inflation baskets, right. And they call it 20%. Actually there's no real inflation rate because it depends what you put in the basket, right. So it's different for everyone, but but The thing is everybody felt it in the US here, right? And so when those kinds of big systemic things happen, right, and everybody's like, hang on, what the Hell's going on here? That's what I think more of that can make it make the Bitcoin adoption happen faster, right? Whereas if they're just stealing kind of 2% or 3% a year, then it's going to take longer, you know, and I also think that because of the four year cycles, you're going to have these kind of waves of adoption, right? So I, you know, like with each new cycle you'll have like the people that kind of FOMO in at the top, right? And then it crashes and you know, half of them more and probably 80% of them don't stick around, right. But you got kind of the snakes. But I think what can really speed it up is if, because I think it is a real, a very real possibility like we were at a investment manager, an LDIA liability driven investment manager the other day. We were talking, we were getting, they were talking to us. And there was this one guy who all he does is, well, maybe not all he does, but he just looks at like interest rates and inflation rates and swap rates and all of this kind of stuff. And he was basically giving us his kind of analysis of where the government is and how many gilts or or UK government bonds they're going to have to issue. And I've seen similar analysis in the US and like the imbalance between demand and supply and you know, all of this kind of stuff. And I think we could see a huge it's kind of a financial crisis in the normal system, you know, And then it's sort of like the response to 2008, but this time Bitcoin exists and then all of a sudden it sort of bursts into the the consciousness of the masses. Yeah, we need to be careful there, don't we? Because we're not saying that Bitcoin is the reason for the existing system to explode or explode. It's going to do that anyway. What we're talking about here is how can the least number of people be harmed when it does blow? And whether it's productive companies or whether it's individuals, from a sort of a philosophical point of view, I want as many people to be unharmed as possible. And and the way to do that is to have some exposure to be gone. The way to do that is to have gonna escape route to have learned about that escape route. And yeah, no one knows the exact timing, but just be ready. But actually, so that goes back, let's go pre Bitcoin because this goes back to 8. Can you walk through like I think and correct me if I'm wrong, you came to this realization before Bitcoin about the system and inevitability. Can you walk through like I think most of us I mean we're at least on the the pod come on regularly. We were very young you know to like have a full obviously understood something was not right. But to know that it was a system that was, you know, born into and you're you have to pay taxes and go into, but explain like what your realization was in that. Yeah, So it was. So it's a realization that there was, there was, there was too much debt the way that money was created, you know faction was our banking but also from the central bank and sort of how that system operates creates certain vulnerabilities to the system as a whole, which is why we get business cycles and all the rest of it. So it was an understanding of that, and I suppose it was sort of realization that it didn't seem to be widely realized, which is why maybe why the whole system was kept relatively together. I suppose it was gold was the old obvious escape route in those days, and obviously it was fairly well publicized, but even then that didn't get, you know, huge inflows. What was the second part of your question? I was desperate for two parts. You know what it was for me, right? Was that it was like so you you're an investment professional, right? And back then, so at Carver we think very long term strategic. So we're not really thinking about tactical asset allocation or anything like that. We're thinking you know 20 years or whatever. If it's short horizons, well then we're basically not in growth, right? We're just matching liabilities. But back then I was working and I've worked at a number of firms. We were thinking more tactically, more kind of short term, right? And for me it was the realization that no matter what analysis we do, no matter, it's all meaningless because at any moment the central bank can just pull out a massive money bazooka and make all of our analysis meaningless, right? So it was like the right thing was not to be invested in this or that or whatever. And then all of a sudden they just make us look like idiots because all of a sudden everything goes, you know, rocketing up because they've just kind of debased the denominator. If the whole risk on, risk off depending on what each central bank said at that particular moment. I mean, it was a little bit silly. I mean, what? So I like Marty's optimism, if if I can call it that. The 15 years. I think the mistake I made in 2008 was that the financial system cared at all about what I thought or when I thought it. So the mistake I made was that I've just found out all this stuff. I thought, Oh my goodness me, I didn't realize this, how the system works. This is going to fall apart, is it? It feels like it should fall apart tomorrow, but of course it's clung together for well over 15 years actually. So will it cling together for another 15 years? So I think I'm a lot more skeptical about my own ability to predict timing on these things and hopefully get the direction roughly right. I mean, it's also like quantitative easing, right? That was kind of the first time that I. It's like, what is this thing? OK. I've got to figure out what this thing is. And then you figure out that they just creating money out of thin air and then, you know, and then buying. It's like, hang on, like, I spent four years at university and then another three becoming a chartered Financial analyst. Nobody told me this was going on. You know what I mean? And then you're like, you start to question everything that you've learned, right? You know, and yeah. Yeah, in the actual exams, no mention of the Austria economics at all. Yeah. And and no mention of the money bazooka that that changes everything. And and so you guys were living through this experience in 2008 of like wait a second, all the value investing that's based on like actuarial math and and you know actual numbers of like what our future cash flows and what's that worth in terms of you know, PE ratios. All of that goes out the window. If suddenly there's a money bazooka and and risk on, risk off, is all that then matters? Is the bazooka turned on? Is it bazooka turned off? That becomes all that matters for, for, you know, portfolio construction. Well that and that's only one facet of the manipulation is the money bazooka, which is a massive manipulation. But then like going back to O 8 like another form of manipulation was rating agencies. Like you could make all the actuarial analysis that you want to based off the bond rating of the commercial backed mortgage or commercial backed securities you're buying. But at the end of the day, if you have one stakeholder in that flow, essentially lying, which the ratings agencies were, just completely borks your models, no matter how good of an actuary you are. Yeah, good film that The Big Short. Yeah, I remember going to an interview at SMV where so I'd I started my career as a bond trader and then I worked at a investment consulting and investment technology firm, American firm called Wilshire Associates. And then I wanted to leave there and I started interviewing around and one of the places I interviewed was at S&P to rate CD OS, right. And then this was before the 2008 financial crisis. And I always remember that interview because I would have been one of the guys at S&P rating these things full of subprime mortgages, AAA as AAA, you know, because we'd like basically kind of had all these tranches of and you know, they remember that CDO squared, so CDO's that held CDO's and just crazy stuff. I mean like how can you not look at all that? And you you got into this industry thinking, I'm a clever guy. I've learnt all of this really important stuff and like now I'm going to, you know, go and add value and kind of use my brain and all this knowledge and stuff. And then all of this stuff just makes a complete mockery of the whole kind of thing because basically just buy anything because it's better than having the money in cash, right? It's and. But it's but it's worse than that, isn't it? So I only know about the rating agencies from watching the big shorts. So I don't have any inside information there but if the big shorts correct then it was pretty awful. But it's more than that. It's, you know, by changing the interest rate you're you're manipulating everyone's economic calculations and creating these boom, bust, bust cycles and creating these periods of hardship and distorting. So we wrote AI say we wrote Glenn, we got someone else to write some of it, and Glenn wrote some of it. We're most of the way through a series that we're running through a series of articles called What is Money. So what we realized was that we could go out there and try and talk about Bitcoin. But actually we've missed the stage because most of our industry is very happy talking about equities and bonds and property and all the rest of it, but don't actually understand what money is. And so we felt that actually we needed some education there. So we had we've got ten articles in me, so seven. I think the 7th 1 comes out later this week, three more to come and it steps through various different things which you'd expect us to. I can't remember them all now, but one of them is the cancel on effect and I for me that was a. When I learnt about that however many years ago that I thought that was absolutely fascinating in terms of how that works and just another distortion of what happens when you mess with with the money and who benefits and who doesn't. And it's not a it's not a value judgement, it's for each individual person should. What's that? It's an essay on economic theory by Richard Cancelling. Cancelling. Very good. So it's, you know, each of these articles and and each of the underlying theory behind them. They're not value judgments, you know, it is for each individual reading them or you know, in their daily life to make their own judgments. We're not, we're not saying that they should be thinking in a certain way. What we're all we're trying to do is say, look, there's some information here which you may not be aware of. It is up to you what you then think about it. And some people may be happy with those distortions in or manipulation of money flows. Other people will not be. So we're going to have a variety of clients with a variety of views. The one we're putting out this week is how modern banking works, right? And so again, we're not telling people what to think. We're just telling them some stuff they might want to know. And then they can make up their own minds, right? So, you know, do you realize that when you put the money in the bank that they're not keeping that money, in fact they can give it to other people and they can create as much money as they want, subject to demand given interest rates because the reserve requirement is 0%. They there's no such thing as fractional reserve banking in the UK and the US, because that fractional reserve implies they've got to keep a fraction of the money that you put. They don't have to keep any. So just be aware of that. We're not telling you what to think about that. Maybe you think that's a good thing. Right. And and that change happened in March 2020 and and you know was a temporary fix to provide liquidity to the markets that four years later we still have. In in the UK they did it in the late 90s. Oh, really? It's been that way for that long. Wow. Do you guys feel like you're a little bit of a Canary in the coal mine then with everything that happened with the gilt market recently and the intervention that had to happen to stabilize things, a little bit more volatility over there? Yeah, well, it was like, so misreported that whole thing, right, Because it was like, oh, the pensions would have gone bankrupt, right. We were like, no, the base thing that can happen to a defined benefit pension scheme, which is the large majority of where the assets and liabilities are in the UK when interest rates, when yields on bonds go up like that, it's great for the defined benefit pension schemes, right? And actually because with liability driven investment funds, you're using leverage, right? So it's like when you're hedging the interest rate risk using leverage, you need to meet collateral calls as the price of the bonds falls and the yields rise, right. So that's where it's the issue came. But the thing was then the Bank of England kind of stepped in, right. So everybody got knocked out of their liability driven investment funds because they couldn't meet the collateral calls quick enough, right? And then once they'd all be knocked out, then the Bank of England comes in and buys all the bands and drives the yield that was the. Problem that was the problem would have been it been absolutely fine otherwise. Actually a lot of pension schemes were licking their lips saying this is awesome, I can buy bonds even cheaper and I want I want more bonds and the bank. If the bank could come in and said we're going to. I think yields were about 5%, maybe just under 5% at the point in time. If they come in and said we're going to cap yields at 5% or 5 1/2 percent or something like that, then actually it would have been a right. It would apply for time because the problem was when you got any leverage fund, you call for call for cash, you need at least some time to get cash from A to B and that that was that was the the difficult bit. So if they just capped yields, they didn't, They just said we're going to come and buy some. So mass, as Glenn says, I mean it's so frustrating how you can have such a big player who does not understand the market or how it operates and think the worst thing is they think they're helping that unbelievable. So the proof that they were not helping define benefit schemes is that I'm trying to remember the numbers now something like they bought bonds in particularly in particularly in October 22 and they bought around £19 billion worth of of UK government bonds and that that drove the yields down by half percent or 1% or so. The plan stated by them, to be fair, was that they would always, they were short term, they would sell them back to the market. So they bought them for £19 billion, they sold them for £23 billion, so they made a profit, which goes back to the UK government because of the way it's structured. So we've got to ask. Pensions. Where does that 4 billion come from? So they basically manipulated the market to take £4 billion from UK pension schemes. There'll be some other entities involved in that as well somewhere, but we're talking primarily UK defined benefit pension schemes and then they think they're helping. And then the newspapers. I don't know if who told them this or whatever their story is, the Bank of England saved the pension schemes. This is your life on central planning, yeah? Definitely the the headlines we got over here. It's almost as if when you're adding additional intervention into a market, it causes problems. Amazing, right? If any someone had thought of that before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, because you know like when the the Soviets that it in Vietnam, it clearly works very well. When you worked great. The more you do have it, the better things go. So yeah. And I wonder if I mean for the pensions that do come around and adopt Bitcoin and allocate a certain portion of their portfolios to it, does Bitcoin's performance give them ammo against the government that may want to stop Bitcoin or intervene to say, hey, either this is really helping us, you cannot ban this, this asset or try to prohibit with proliferation. It's literally helping us fund pensions of the individuals that live in this country. And then #2 like, hey, we don't need your help. We've we've found something that's doing really well for us. Just leave us alone. We've got this figured out. You central planners don't understand. I mean, I wish we. Don't need you. I wish that was true, but we're not at that point yet where they kind of like you know that that's my view. I know that's your view, Marty, but I don't think they're just thinking, oh, OK, well, we could get a really good return out of this thing, but they're not looking at it as a way to hold the government account. When you say, hey, if you keep doing this, then we're going to do that or. What what about the cousin of that in in the sense of like BlackRock in the the SEC and large bodies approving it, How is that influenced? Have you seen any movement or just interest? I mean, when I mentioned it to people, so we we've kind of we actually, so we have investment monitoring reports that got every quarter and in there we usually we call them hot topics, OK. So it's like 3 things that we want to get out to our client base. And in there, we did a piece just 200 words saying, you know that the landscape of investment has changed because of the ETF launches. And you know we mentioned BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Why? Because these are brand names that they know and that they trust. And so it's sort of like and when I've had conversations with people and I've mentioned the ETFs, everybody that I've had a conversation with is aware that this happened, right. So I think that's kind of confusing people because it was like I every time I read about Bitcoin, it was used by criminals. It's bad for the environment. It's a Ponzi scheme. The government saying stay away from it, da, da, da. And now BlackRock and Franklin Templeton and Fidelity have just launched these ETFs. So it's like kind of like now I don't know what to think, right. So I think that's helpful because yeah. There is, there is, there will be an inflection point at some point in the future though I think to which is helped by the Black Rock ETFs and I think to to Marty's point as well. So each pension scheme, so each each pension scheme trustee board must think only of their scheme. They can't think about why than that it's looking at the investment advantage disadvantages of having small allocation etcetera, right. So that that's what they must be focused on, otherwise they're not carrying out their fiduciary duty properly. However, I think it's a wider point that the more pension schemes that do this for their own reasons, but the more widespread it is, the more it is difficult for then the regulator or the government to act well, intervene, I suppose in some way because they are hurting, they're hurting, whether it's the companies that sponsor those schemes or the members, they're hurting them by taking that kind of interventionist action. Which are affected with their constituents, people supposedly voting for. Them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you'd hope that the voters would recognize that. And this ties back into the Bitcoin employee benefits, right? Because if you're a member of a defined benefit pension scheme and the scheme rules say you get inflation as the government measures it, or or they can stipulate it in the rules, they can say the retail price index, the consumer price index. You get that, but only up to 5%, right? If it's higher than 5%, you don't, You don't get the rest right? But also the 5%, is that even real right? So the defined benefit, the sponsor, the company behind that scheme is only on the hook for the rules of the scheme, right? But the members are relying on that for 30 years of retirement, right? And so if real inflation is 10 or higher and they're only getting five of the sort of metric that the government's come up with or whatever, they could be 5% poorer every year. You compound that over 30 years, right, All of a sudden you're going to, it's very nice having a defined benefit pension scheme, right? But it's not near the end. It's not going to be nearly as good as it is in the beginning. And yeah, so even if we put Bitcoin in a portfolio, we're really only helping the company, the sponsor, because they're only on the hook for the rules of the scheme, right? So you want people to have access to this thing outside of their pension to make kind of to make up for what's going to happen? To think of it as a, think of it as a 2%, right. So let's go back to that 234 percent maybe if we end up in a position where they've got most of their pension provision at least over the next few years and most of their pension provision through DB or DC or whatever it is and then 234 percent outside actually that's probably quite a healthy position for a lot of individuals. Agree. I think to your points about it accelerating or almost it's like it feels like it's accelerating the sense of like high net worth individuals. I think of my mother-in-law who retired and and I always like Egger on because every year I'm just like you have less retirement and like you can feel it, you go on vacation, it costs X, it's not and it's not 5%, it's 10 to 15 if not more. So you start to look at like, OK, I had this defined amount and it historically was enough because it was two to five and you felt it. Now you actually start and that goes across the board and that's not slowing down since 2020 that's that's just exponentially increased given money printer. Exactly. I mean it's quite funny. Yeah. So the inflation linked gilts, yeah, they used to be linked to RP. Well, they still are linked to RPI, but I think it's what's a 2032 or 2030. They they're changing the thing that it's linked to, to CPIH, OK, which is consumer price index and housing. And then if you look at the level of RPI and the level of CPIH, of course CPIH is lower than RPI, right. So but it's like the story is no, CPIH is a better, more accurate measure of inflation. It just happens to be lower, right. You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, it's like you think about these things like a logical human being and you're like, come on. We just need to look at rib eyes, like whatever the rib. Eye is. It's a pretty good index. Oh, that's my basket. Yeah. It goes back to Glenn. What you were saying earlier of like the the four year cycles, it sort of caused people to go through their own steps of of the adoption process. You know, and maybe you get in at the top in one cycle, but you you learn and then the next cycle you DCA and and then suddenly you are building a position and you're becoming a Bitcoin adopter like in in earnest. And every individual goes through their own process. And that also extends to organizations and to, you know, to pensions who are made-up of individuals who are decision makers and folks like yourself who are, who are providing advice to these organizations. But everybody in the world is going through their own adoption process. And it's a series of steps where at first you ignore it in 2013, then, you know, 2017, you're like, Dang, I should have gotten some. And then 2020 happens. They print a bunch of money. You're like, I don't know this, this feels wrong. Or Sam, in your case, you know, Russia's foreign exchange reserves get seized and that becomes like, all right, there's something wrong here and and I need to take Bitcoin more seriously. And then of course, you know, going into the future, there's not only the guaranteed mechanics every four years of the next having causing increasing scarcity, causing the next price run or you know, the next supply demand, price disequilibrium that forces price discovery, that causes, you know, a price run and and people pay more attention to Bitcoin for that period because that's how human nature works. There's that guaranteed to happen every four years. But, but looking forward, what will be the macroeconomic events like Russia having its foreign exchange reserves seized like the banking crisis and and BTFP stepping into to save those banks like the COVID stimulus or or like you know, 2008 and and Occupy Wall Street's inefficacy, you know, and because of it not addressing real problems. What are the what are the events going forward? There's recently, there's been some major event every year that has awakened people like Sam to like, you know what this is? It's time to take Bitcoin seriously. So what will be the next like series of events going going into the years ahead in addition to the halving that we have coming up in three months? You know, and and it all points back to Glenn, what you were talking, you know, earlier about about every cycle there's some incremental slice of the adoption curve that comes into Bitcoin or progresses to the next stage of their Bitcoin adoption process. And the culmination of that is this, like 3 generations of behavioral shift away from how things are today to eventually just save your money in Bitcoin so you can work on your career and don't worry about investing because it takes care of you because it's, you know, finite absolute scarcity and it tracks with overall GDP growth like that. You know, and we're in the early stages of this process. It's and then that's the end state. But, you know, it's exciting that Sam had this series of events move him into a position of adopting Bitcoin for professionally and who who will be, you know, coming down the Pike because BlackRock, you know, maybe that's the event right now that's happening, is suddenly Wall Street is switching from negative to positive on Bitcoin because of the marketing that comes with an ETF. And over the next year or two, there's going to be a lot more people pointing at that and saying, you know what? That was actually the start of me learning about Bitcoin and coming around to it. So there's this lag effect between events and then people becoming bitcoiners. Sam's a recent example, I guess, of the Russia event triggering. You know what? I'm going to go on a two year long search for? What's the right way to get my clients to take Bitcoin as an allocation? And you know Glenn was was the the instrument of making this all happen. What happens going forward? What's the two year lag from from the ETFs coming out now, the having coming in in April and who knows what macroeconomic series of events into the future? So you, you know what we've been hearing a lot about lately? It's kind of bizarre, right? Is so we had this government minister on Sky News like whether this very well known TV presenter here in the UK, Kate Burley or something like that, asking her, asking him about comments that the general of the whole British Army had been making about potentially needing to get ready for a major World War and that we need we may need to start conscription again. Right. And I was watching this and I was thinking what the hell are they talking about? Like, where's all of the sudden this coming from? You know, like, what are we getting ready for? Like all of a sudden? Like this is the plan, like. And he's saying, yes, we've got to get ready like as if it's inevitable, You know, like they come in like somebody's going together. Yeah. And then and I think what that's about right, is always when the system's collapsing, right, Because you mentioned the unfunded liabilities, right. We got the same problem over here. It's just kind of different numbers, but relative to, you know there it's like it's. Like 300 trillion. Trillion or your 300 trillion here, it's like only like 8 trillion but relative to the side of the economy, right? And the given that the total dates only two trillion, right. It's like you realize that if I'm a political party or politician, right? There's no way out here because I can't tell people, oh, sorry, I know you put all that money into National Insurance or Social Security, but I can't give you what I promised you. Well, then, then then that's a next politician, you know? So you realize there's no kind of way out and the games kind of up, right? We're at that point now where the, the, the explicit liabilities are so high and then there's all the unfunded liabilities and whatever. And so you need to use a a, a World Economic Forum term, you need a great reset, right. And so, well, how did we have the last great reset, right, because what happened is we kind of the, the British pound was the global reserve currency in 1913 and they kind of did the stealth kind of QE to fund the First World War. Then because they lied to the public, they had to go back on the gold standard at the same rate they caused deflation, right. Then we had a worldwide Great Depression, right? And and then we kind of did the New Deal and all of these kinds of things and whatever. But the game was kind of up. And then we had a World War and then we had Bretton Woods, right. And then we ran that for 1970 till 1971, which was kind of a quasi gold standard, but really not a gold standard role. Then we went from 1971 to today on the sphere standard. But even the game with that is now up, right. So now we've got to like create some huge calamity where it's sort of we just erase all of that. And then at the on the other side in the rubble we'll kind of like create some new standard which will now be, you know, some CBDC or and you know it'll be, oh, because of cyber attacks. You have to have a digital identity. And you, you know all this is what it's starting to sound like because they saying that Vladimir Putin is like now a rest to the whole of Europe, right. But he's still stuck in Eastern Ukraine just fighting Ukrainians, right. So, like, how is he all of a sudden a threat to Europe? So when they say things like this on national TV and it's these very senior people and stuff, and they're absolutely illogical, they don't make sense, then I know there's a plan. So we're going to rename Glenn Glenn Jones. Glad I I'm picking up what you're putting down. Marty. 'S there like, yeah, yeah. War is the greatest jobs program humanity's ever known. It's. I was going to go for something less extreme, but it sounds sounds quite weak now. No, I was going to I think there's a shorter term I I so I think the next, I think the next wave will come from the institutions. I think that is where it'll come from and that's sort of what I envisaged a couple of years ago that we needed to get ready for. I think they'll be crying out for, yeah, OK, not very much, but the small allocation we've talked about and I think and what will trigger that, I don't think it'll be the halving so much, although that might put it on the front pages a little bit more, which is helpful. I think it will be the next wave of inflation. So we, I mentioned earlier that one of the key risks that Bitcoin helps to protect against for institutions, it's counterparty risk and inflation risk. And we are obviously I've got no insider knowledge on this, but just sort of applying some Austrian School logic to it. We are coming to the point where the interest rate rises we've seen are going to lead to some kind of contraction, possibly serious contraction, you know that the tide goes out etcetera. And then the government and the Central bank and not just in the UK, but I guess in quite a few countries, is then going to be faced with the decision that it's been faced with quite a number times before, which is does it allow the economy to to, I was going to say collapse them, but sort of return to a more sustainable position really to unwind the excesses that that shouldn't have been, shouldn't have happened in the 1st place or does it print to push the future out a little bit further. And I think we'll probably see one and then the other. And so therefore we'll see a sort of a reminder of the counterparty risk that corporate treasuries, pension schemes, etcetera face, the institutional investors generally the counterparty risk that they face and also the inflation risk that they face. And we'll see them in fairly short succession because I think that's what I think that's why a lot of pension schemes and their companies were more willing to take action in 2023 to lock in some of those high, high interest rates that we saw on bonds is because 2022, when bond yields were very low, was recent in their memory. So I think it needs, it needs that, it needs for a general sort of awakening to a particular situation. It needs like 2 events within recent memory. And I think that's what there's a good chance that we'll get over the next, who knows, you know, but six, 1218 months maybe. And then hopefully that will mean that more people are thinking, OK, I think something doesn't feel right. It's going back. It's that feeling of uneasiness that well, I don't know if it's the same for you, but I think it's probably the I'd suggest. It's the same for everyone. To take action to do something, you need to feel uneasy about your current situation, and it's that which then forces you, subconsciously or otherwise, to take action in a certain direction, to try and ease that uneasiness, make yourself feel a bit better. And one way to do that is of course for these kind of things to learn more about Bitcoin. Yes. Do not be paralyzed by fear. Act simple act. Just be reading some information about Bitcoin to develop the confidence and then take another action which is gonna get on your personal or business balance sheet or pension balance sheet, whatever it may be. Yeah, and if you wanna learn more from Glenn's understanding of the system, you have to come to to the UK and visit him and take him out to dinner where I think we're getting kicked out of the studio but looking forward to eating steak and and hearing him expand on some of his Marty Jones. Kinder experience. Go with what Sam said. Know what I said. I I love Sam's pivot to the actionable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the there's the short term and and maybe the long term, which are not incompatible between what you guys were presenting. But yeah, I would love to hear more about that over a pint of bitter with Glenn and Sam. I'm jealous. Yeah, yeah. I I think the key if if we're allowed to leave you with a sort of a key message from us, I think it's that this monetization phase that we've talked about that is what creates a huge opportunity for institutions to dip their toe in the water. It's not going to be around forever. So ACT. Because big Bitcoin is what it is and you can't stop it. So it is inevitable. And if it's inevitable, it's going to monetize. So we don't know how long over what period it might be. Five years might be 15, it might be 50. Doesn't really matter. No. And they're and they're not making any more of it. There's only 20. More than so. So. Well, they are still, but only very little, but yeah. Less, less, they're making less and less of it. Who's making them, Glenn? Well, I'm extremely jealous. Jealous. The FOMO is real right now across the pond. You gentlemen go enjoy your dinner and the conversation around that meal. And it was pleasure meeting you, Sam. Glenn, pleasure talking to you again. For everybody out there listening, we'll see you next week.