The Last Trade E039: Institutionalizing Bitcoin with KPMG

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Well, you guys are doing some pretty important things at KPMG that we're going to talk about. I think this is a really exciting episode for us because we operate in the world of Bitcoin predominantly thinking about what we can do to push the edges of the technology, leveraging things like multi sig to make sure people are custodying their Bitcoin the right way. And you guys are sort of a bridge between the world that we're in and the traditional world, particularly with auditing, consulting. And you guys have dove deep into Bitcoin, particularly writing a piece highlighting that Bitcoin is ESG A compliant. And if you are interested in pushing an ESG future into the world, you should be leaning into Bitcoin. Before we jump into that particular research report that KPMG put out, just learn a little bit about yourselves. How did you find Bitcoin and how did you find yourselves working on these particular teams within KPMG focus on this industry? Yes, I guess I'll go first in Quan. So Brian, consalvo, I'm a partner with KPMG. I'm in our technology risk practice. I think if I go back to when I first heard about Bitcoin and my my path was not unsimilar to others, I'd probably say it was pretty late in, you know, 2017 until I finally actually started to hear about it should obviously been around what, eight years or so by then, which is kind of hard to believe. But I I I was very, very quick to dismiss it when I first heard about it. It definitely seemed very scammy on the surface. I kind of equated it with, you know, gamers who were just trying to create this own currency, which is obviously not even true. So I mean, I fell victim to some of the misconceptions that people immediately have when they hear about cryptocurrencies in general. And then it wasn't until probably 2019 or so I was at a training and sitting with some guys that I work with and they were talking about it. And I kind of just revisit, I guess I just had a sort of a different lens. I looked at it from and I was like, OK, if this is still around like this is obviously maybe there's some substance here. And I think that's when I went down the rabbit hole. And, you know, I'd say the rest is history. Yeah. And I started my finance and accounting career 25 years ago, right, duringthe.com boom. And then after that downturn ended up in housing finance. And so it's got to experience the housing boom, the great financial crisis, the aftermath and the reactions to it. So during those experiences trying to learn and about what was going on and filling my gaps to my knowledge and what I was seeing day-to-day and the policies related to how to react to that got more interested in just broader monetary and fiscal policies out there and what would be a potential solution for this in the long term. And 1st R ving about Bitcoin, it first came out now at at the time it first came out pretty early as still we're still right in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. You know it seemed like a hobby thing on the side. It was interesting but never would have expected within 10 years to see so much growth in it didn't really get more involved until much later, especially after you know a lot of it was really difficult as you as you you guys know to buy and sell Bitcoin. It was really difficult to do that. The exchanges didn't really exist early on. You had to mine it, but lately last several years, especially in 2019-2020, got more interested in and see its potential for the topics that I was looking into during the great financial crisis. And I think considering the prowess that KPMG has an accounting might be good to touch on Bitcoin generally as an innovation in the realm of accounting. Is it? How do you guys see what the open Ledger brings to the world of accounting? Well, I think it's, I think it's difficult to make the, the correlation just from the standpoint of it being a distributed Ledger, right. But if I just think about the work that we do under the accounting lens when we're auditing companies financial statements, it does make it somewhat easier to audit something that's publicly available. So when you have these decentralized ledgers, things like Bitcoin, it's much easier to go out there and have assurances over that immutable Ledger versus a company systems that can be manipulated by individuals. But I think when we look at kind of where KPMG fits in thinking about some of the the core services that we have like audit, tax, advisory that sort of thing, you know we we actually audit some of the public companies in this space. You know one of the big things that we're going to be tasked with doing and we have been is actually verifying assets that are under custody. And I think that introduces some new complexities, number of things that the audit world has not, has not seen before. And it wasn't until probably, I'd say the last four or five years where some of these companies in the crypto ecosystem started to go public that they then started to undergo financial reporting, audits and things that have to adhere to something called SOCKS, which is basically a controls audit that public companies have to to undergo on an annual basis. Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean and at 10:31 we have a portfolio company Hoseki that is partnering with Bitwise to verify their on chain assets. And so there is the ability to verify that you actually own Bitcoin in particular wallets via signing a message that says you own the private key to that that public address. And it'll be really interesting to see how it plays out like do these third party solutions like Hoseki come to market that help these companies verify. Then the whole discussion. Jesse, I'm freaking jump in. Like what proof of reserves? Like how can you actually prove the reserves and not the liabilities? Yeah, just I I find it so interesting how, you know different cohorts of people come to Bitcoin faster or slower depending on like the subject matter that they're familiar with in their in their career. And and I've noticed it. So I have an accounting background. I got a masters in accounting never never went into you know BIG4 accounting after that. But I've noticed that accountants seem to get Bitcoin or or be interested in Bitcoin a little bit faster than than the average person. And I think for me it was, it was part of partly a fascination of like oh wow, you can. This thing is designed to have a a complete audit every 10 minutes automatically And like that's just you know you you spend spend all this time in accounting class learning about all the steps that are necessary to to try to get some precision around you know accounting numbers for for public or private companies. And here's this thing that can help so much by providing this this different structure that enforces an audit every 10 minutes. And I think, I think that's you know there's Pierre Rashard, Robert Breedlove, Cedric Youngman, bunch of other accounting background bitcoiners. And I think that's part of I think accountants have a slight leg up in getting to in seeing the the potential of Bitcoin sooner than other folks because of what they deal with on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, I think a lot of people that I've interacted with at KPMG definitely get it right. Like they understand the technology, they understand how to audit it, they understand all of the nuances and complexities that come with it. Now where where it becomes a whole entirely different story is whether or not they believe in it as it actually solving A fundamental problem, which is why it was created in the first place. But I think just by being accounting experts, one of the things that you know anyone at any BIG4 is going to be responsible to do is actually understand these things. Because if their clients are going to be transacting with crypto, if they're going to be holding on their balance sheet, etcetera, they're going to need to know how to audit. It and I think the point about going more fundamental as you know like accounting one of the big innovations hundreds of years ago during the Renaissance of the double entry bookkeeping, you have two parties there and then the idea behind double entry bookkeeping is every transaction has a interaction with the balance sheet and income statement. So you can track who owns what right and that is it Equity is a debt, so that for every asset, right. And then I've heard the blockchain or Bitcoin specifically also described as triple entry bookkeeping and I'm like what I've never learned that in school what triple entry bookkeeping meant. But I think the the concept there is that you have two parties they do a transaction and you have this third party that in more traditional finance you have to hire to confirm that that transaction's legitimate right. But in with the blockchain or or Bitcoin you have these you could even be anonymous that other people are verifying that that transaction's legitimate. So you got a three party system already pre built and how it's designed and it it doesn't require that you hiring a third party that you trust and write a report to say this is a legitimate transaction. So I think that I think that's where they 2 interact and that's probably why you also hear some people say maybe the blockchain technology also has the long term legs that could impact finance and and banking and other industries. Perfect summary, well articulated that I agree that the triple entry bookkeeping phrase that you hear bandied around is a little bit hand WAVY, but at the at the core there is something you know that is the special sauce of like having a third party who's necessarily verifying the the double entry accounting that is going on. Yeah, working with alien technology. You guys are are learning how to deal with this too and incorporate. I guess that's another interesting topic we can talk about before we dive into bitcoins. Role in the ESG imperative is how do you see Bitcoin maybe not disrupting but being incorporated into what you guys do at KPMG? So if at all I yeah, no, it's a good question. I think a lot of that will be driven by how much adoption we see from from clients, right. Like at the end of the day, what our clients start to do and what they plan to do will drive where KPMG and other consulting like firms decide to upskill their own employees and where we see the opportunity. So I think it's really driven by the companies themselves in terms of where KPMG starts to play. And and on what Sung Kwan was saying about, yeah, the the double entry bookkeeping occurred in the in the Renaissance. And and I remember from accounting classes probably an accountant's indulgence of claiming that a good part of the economic boom of the Renaissance was fueled by this innovation in in accounting that enables business on a larger scale and a more like a more professional scale than than was previously possible. So you know, like accountants I think have a reasonable claim to say that that innovations in accounting enable a renaissance and we might be seeing some additional renaissance unfold as a result of the innovation that that comes from triple entry bookkeeping and what that enables for business globally. Yeah, I think to that point on historical aspect of the global adoption and how accounting helps with that, modern accounting could trace its roots back to the the railroad boom 1800s. The reason why is he had all these foreign investors like Europeans funding companies that were doing business in the United States which was a growth country at the time. Right there was the developing world that's considered developing world back then. And so you needed it to have accounting statements that accurately reflect balance sheets and income statements and cash flows as well to look into that. And so I I think with your point about Bitcoin and other technologies is how do you help with cross-border global type of trade transaction and investments and have trusted reports that you can rely on to make business decision, investment decision even to even know like if you're making a return or not because you can imagine even back then invest all this money into something, how do you know you're actually getting a return. So I think that's that's part of the long history of accounting and and and blockchain could be a big part of that future. Real quick before the the report Marty's question about getting involved in Brian, your response about the companies will dictate like I would imagine historically look like somebody looking at a Coinbase and diligence in consulting looking at like them as a counterparty is a big part of the business. But I'm actually curious on the other side of it, if you guys think about external parties or companies looking at firms to get best practices on like bringing custody in house rather than going external. If you have a sizable allocation it starts to be get become meaningful. It's like maybe I don't have a counterparty that sits I think about custody because it's technology and I can you know think about best practices or cross-border or other angles around this technology. Do you guys see any of that or how do you think about that and preparing for it? Because I would imagine that's where a large part of the market goes, where you know every company you know we talk about becomes a Bitcoin company in the sense you have to start to incorporate some of this technology just because it's a better form of technology for cross-border treasury, whatever it is. Do you see any of that or have any thoughts about like how you prepare for that? So I would say in terms of bringing custody in house or using third party custodians, I'd say that's somewhat of a nuanced kind of view at the moment. Again, I think if we start to see a significant amount of adoption going forward in terms of corporate splitting on the balance sheet, more companies starting to transact in crypto and then custody becoming an even bigger topic than it already is. And yeah, I mean that that certainly could be something that we start to take a position on and something that could be kind of incorporated into certain engagements that we deliver. I guess one area that I think about that that would become pretty relevant is some of the due diligence engagements that we do that could be something that we evaluate and I know we've we've even helped company evaluate certain custodians in in general. So kind of like a vendor assessment. So I think that's something that we could we could definitely do and maybe something to a degree that we're already doing. But in terms of that being like a core service, I think that's where you know, we would just have to wait and see. Yeah, yeah. It's valuable. It's valuable information, if you can advise correctly on that, because as we've seen throughout Bitcoin's history, there are some that do it right and some that that do. Not, yeah, I think. I think the big thing too. And and this is probably something we'll we'll get into at some point is I I still just think there's so many people out there and so many companies that if they were to get into crypto somehow, I just don't think there's a huge appetite for a lot of these people and a lot of these companies to to do self custody. Now my hope is that that changes over time. I do think that sort of the ethos of Bitcoin is that you are self sovereign, you're you're custodying the assets and you're removing any counterparty risk. But I think the way it's currently structured today, I mean I remember when I first took custody of my own assets, like it was kind of daunting. And I and I think about people right now that, you know, take my parents for example. Like I don't think, I can't even begin to think about trying to explain maintaining your seed phrase and and all that to them and have them feeling comfortable doing it. So I think hopefully, again that will evolve. I think it's going to be something where the next generation, maybe it becomes more inherent to them and something that is just second nature. But I think where we're at right now, I do think it's still so early that there's just people that when they finally take that leap and if they do start to buy any Bitcoin or any other cryptos that they're just going to feel much more comfortable keeping it on on exchange. And I think that's just the reality of of where we are right now. Yeah. And I I mainly bring it up because it's been in previous discussions like Bitcoin's obviously very emergent. So us as individuals are the 1st to take self custody and there's been a proliferation of collaborative custody partners where people can participate. But whether it's us as individuals running big companies or it becoming pretty obvious like and without naming the name, there's a company out there that holds a lot of Bitcoin. Yeah, who better who better to trust or at least participate in that trust than the entity that's holding that versus an external party solely? And so it just seems like a logical progression. As education grows, it would go in that direction. Yeah, I and I, I definitely think that we need more custodians out there, whether it's collaborative custody type solutions like you just mentioned, Mike, or even centralized custodians that we have today. Because you're right, there is one primary one out there and the more that grows the more centralization risk we start to, we start to see. So hopefully that will start to evolve over time. Nation states, I was just going to say nation states as well. We got Latin African kind of rolling Bitcoin sitting in North American or potentially North American just like a lot of cognitive dissonance on like where the asset sits versus their stance on that. So you I I would imagine you start seeing the entity participate more and more in the governance effectively in on chain, yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if this, how this pans out. The idea of self custody is just so difficult I think in the world of traditional finance because you take a company today even the cash on their balance sheet, they don't self custody that cash, they don't have piles of cash in a room. It's it's held at another entity, it's an obligation to the other entity of the securities that they have pretty much any financial asset, it's effectively being held by someone else on on their behalf And so it's an obligation, right. So the idea of getting into some custody that you actually own the asset and control it without the need of somebody custodying it for you is, is a foreign concept. So I think it's a very difficult leap to say hey, not only get exposure to Bitcoin, let's say as a treasury asset, but late you should self custody it as well. I think Brian's probably right that the more likely middle ground is that they'll rely on custodians. For them, it's a little bit closer to what they're familiar with today. When somebody holds cash on their behalf, for example, Yeah. And and obviously this is what we've been so focused on at on ramp the last 18 months of building out like another version, another model of you know multi institution custody where where where we believe that it it preserves some of the attractive benefits of self custody namely that the end user retains control without you know handing over coins to a third party custodian. But it fits in with the model that entities and most individuals frankly are used to of you know not having to take full responsibility for how they're setting up and maintaining their own custody set up and instead interfacing with with a portal to their coins that you know feels familiar. It's a it's a legal relationship with the business even though that business doesn't have you know unilateral control of their coins. It's you know and and that's the way that it retains some of the attractive benefits of self custody. So there's you know it's it's obviously still early days for for custody for this type of asset class and and it's very exciting to be a part of building out these solutions that are better tailored to where businesses are at in terms of what they're used to their their competences, their their capabilities. You know most businesses are just simply not ready to set up self custody because who's going to hold the keys and how you going to manage that. That's a that's a gigantic hurdle, a whole learning curve to to get up in order to take on self custody. But it's possible with this model, multi institution custody to preserve the benefits of custody without having to spin up. You know a giant organizational leap in terms of how you're approaching your own treasury and security around that. I guess the thought experiment really stems from like Google and Apple. If they decide they want a sizable position, why wouldn't they just get a couple engineers to figure it out? Like, I mean logical progression to figure it out themselves are the smartest people in the world versus sending it across, you know, through the Coinbase and like you guys figure out. It's like we probably have smarter people to do this. We already have an example of this with Tesla. They forked BTC pay server. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, that's right. That's why I like I I also actually anchor to there will be first principles thinkers that will only actually take sizable positions in a format like this because they will take the position that I can't give up unilateral control. It's like, if you think about us as individuals, I think about my own journey and only being able to have a sizable material position if I could anchor the keys to the real world and know that they don't get up and walk away and plug themselves in. So that same concept starts to grow from like 1 to 2% to 10%. You have to start thinking about like actually how do I make sure that this doesn't end up, you know, in a landfill or, you know, hacked. And so that's how you start to get to these like concepts we're talking about that generally seem foreign at first. But over time, you start looking at this thing and realizing, OK, like this is a different asset. So now I have to treat it differently from a pure custody perspective. Yeah, it's fascinating because we just spent the 1st 20 minutes of this conversation highly focus on the custody aspect of Bitcoin. But there's it's multivariate, it's dynamic. We could spend 3 hours talking about custody alone, but then you have the other parts of the network and particularly what you guys focused on in your report, which is mining, which is where the physical world really connects with Bitcoin in the digital world that that it's providing us. It's very energy intensive. I I've been in the mining industry for six years now. It is one of the most masochistic industries on the planet. I believe it's highly competitive. It's cutthroat, but it is invigorating because you have this intersection of the Bitcoin mining industry in the energy sector happening right in front of you and it's just infinitely fascinating. And yet there are many misconceptions about how Bitcoin plays in the world of industry. And I think the report that you guys put out, Brian, that you co-authored was really important because we've been fighting this energy consumption debate as a Bitcoin mining industry by ourselves for for some time now. And I think the report that you guys put out, particularly stamping KPM GS name on it, is a very strong arrow in the quiver in the narrative battle that we find ourselves in. And so I think transitioning to the ESG report, why did you feel compelled to write this particular report? And what about the mining industry made you comfortable putting your neck out there and putting KPM, GS name on this, saying that, hey, Bitcoin mining is actually an imperative if you care about ESG. Yeah. So I lead one of our emerging tech Co ES at KPMG. And so one of the things that we focused on for the past few years is, is just crypto in general. So that's kind of how I got into this space a little bit at least as it relates to KPMG. And then if I Fast forward is probably early in 2023 that I came up with the idea that, you know, there's I think the criticisms about Bitcoin mining are obviously well documented. And I just thought, look, there's there's a whole other side to this coin that no one seems to really be talking about. Obviously the Bitcoin miners are saying it and they're pounding the table, but there's probably a lot of people who just aren't really willing to listen. They probably view it as a a conflict of interest or you know, something to that effect. But there just seem to be a a growing list of benefits that Bitcoin mining offered in terms of, hey, look, this isn't just a matter of Bitcoin uses a lot of energy, which I think even that can be somewhat debatable. I mean, yes, it's it's energy intensive, but I mean what's what's a lot of energy? I mean, if you think about it, I think Bitcoin by most estimates are somewhere like 1/4 of 1% of global energy use. I would say that's pretty minuscule. And so then for us to be focusing our climate efforts on that, it just seems to be, I don't know, I I don't see a lot of value there. I mean, even if you just wiped Bitcoin mining off face of the Earth, I mean, in theory you didn't really save a whole lot. Now the other side of that is you'd probably be doing a disservice because as we caught out in the report, there's just a number of ways that I think Bitcoin mining is actually assisting with this, this climate issue that we're faced with. We can go through them. But I mean I think one of the biggest things that I think people really just don't recognize is when you think about all this renewable energy that we have, which I think renewable energy is in the United States about 15 ish percent of of energy production, which is a relatively low number. But then the other thing I always call out there is Bitcoin mining as a whole. It's estimated to be somewhere in the 50 to 55% range for renewable energy. So that what's that? That's nearly three, four times more renewable energy than the average mix we even have to begin with. I think that's pretty important detail that a lot of people seem to forget. And then you get into things like demand response, you get into the ability to mine with flared gas and methane from landfills. Those are pretty amazing examples of how Bitcoin is actually reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that get emitted. If you look at just flared gas and mining with methane from landfills. And I know that's not something that's really being done at a huge scale just yet, but methane is like 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. So I think if we're going to look at ways to solve climate issues, like I think many experts have signaled that methane reduction or mitigation is one of the most important ways to do that. And I think there just seems to be numerous examples of where Bitcoin mining can fit in and actually help solve some of those problems. And I think we tried to do kind of a layman's explanation of that in the paper, going through some of those examples where it's being done, it's being done quite a bit in the United States. I mean, one thing I always call out too is the vast majority of Bitcoin mining domestically in the US is being done in Texas. Well, coincidentally, Texas is where the most renewable energy production is located. I don't think that's a coincidence. And I think when we get into the supply demand mismatch of these, you know, solar wind energy sources being intermittent and the fact that if we don't have a buyer at a certain point in the day and then demand may peak at a certain point in the day, there's a lot of waste energy that you can't just turn off a solar panel, you can't just turn off when wind turbines. That's one of the benefits of fossil fuel burning plants is it can scale up and down. So if you're going to have a transition to using more, you know, solar wind sources, I think you need to be able to find ways to to monetize that. And I think that's what Bitcoin miners have been able to do. Yeah, look, pull up that last chart again. I mean, Pierre, Richard from Riot was tweeting about this yesterday. Perfect segue to these charts, Brian, because if we look at the pricing throughout ERCOT yesterday and went negative because wind and solar production was extremely high throughout the day. And so for anybody out there is unaware of how Bitcoin mining helps solve this problem, if you have negative pricing, you're essentially on the hook for that. You just turn on a bunch of Bitcoin miners and use that electricity to mine Bitcoin and produce revenue instead of having to eat the negative pricing throughout the day. So it really fits uniquely in this arena to solve this particular problem. And then another thing like I, I think the amount of wind and solar that's come on here on the grid here in Texas has been immense over the last few years and that's highlighted some problems when when you, when you're overly dependent on these two sources. That's the beauty of Bitcoin mining as well because when you have negative pricing there, it's negative for natural gas, nuclear as well. And so you can put large mining operations behind the meter during these negative pricing events and just direct the electricity to the mining operation to create revenue. And so it has become abundantly, it's been clear to me for six years now. That's part of the reason why I joined Great American Mining. We were doing flare gas mining in the Bakken. And it's just like this, all this energy is being wasted, whether it's on grid or off grid, and it should be monetized. We want to make. I think the narrative should be we need abundant energy sources if we want to continue flourishing as a society globally. And with that in mind, we should just be as efficient with the energy that we're producing, whether it's off grid or on grid. And Bitcoin mining is uniquely suited. There is no other application that can solve these problems due to the fact that bitcoin's a distributed network and you can have downtime that's not going to disrupt. The rest of the network, which is cannot be said for any other application. Yeah, I think that's sort of plays into the demand response, Marty, right. Like and that's something that the average person and I put myself in that category prior to writing the paper, like really didn't have a good understanding of. Like, that's the challenge with understanding how Bitcoin fits into this is when you start looking at energy markets and things like that, like they're very complex, They're, you know, most people probably couldn't even tell you how their electricity is generated, where it's actually coming from. They take for granted the fact that they walk in their room, they turn on the lights, they turn on their stove, whatever it is and they have, they have energy. But I think, you know, and that last graph you pulled up, I mean you can see a very obvious peak throughout the day and then sudden decline in the evening for solar. Well, where's the rest of that energy going? That's where I think Bitcoin mining can fit in. I think the fact that miners are able to Co locate, I think that's the other big characteristic that the average person doesn't recognize like you can't do this with other industries. You can't have a hospital that just shuts off power because demand seems to be increasing throughout the day or some sort of other industrial plant. So I think they play a very important role just given that they're a flexible user of that energy and the fact that they are very price sensitive. This was a big theme for us out in the UAE or in the MENA region in general in Saudi Arabia, it was estimated there's a guy from Saudi Aramco that's running a venture firm out there. And I'll butcher these numbers, but directionally I think he said over the next 30 years they're supposed to add like 100 gigawatts and a large percentage of that is going to be in renewables. It's just like a natural kind of skate valve for like Bitcoin mining. And they're already looking at it. And we've seen this like in Oman and Abu Dhabi, but that's just like one region of the world that will be, you know, looking for that kind of demand. Yeah, it it feels like, you know, Brian, Brian, you hit on such a core part of this misunderstanding just generally in the public. It's like people assume that their electricity is just a commodity and that it flows you know without without problems from from a plant thousands of miles away all the way across the country without any loss you know to plug in to wherever it's needed and and that's just not how electricity works. The physics of it you know the electricity needs to be there. There's lumpiness it's not evenly distributed and you know you you touched on how the methane methane mining is is an example. I think to me it stands out as like the the single most exciting thing for with regard to Bitcoin and the environment of yes there's a lot of synergies with renewable energy installations and and incorporating Bitcoin mining into the business case for whether or not to put in those renewable energy installations. But when it comes to methane mining there's there's nothing out there that Marty talked about. There's there's no other use case that can be that flexible that nimble in terms of geography and Co location that makes it possible to justify capturing methane in landfills. There's there's just no point in capturing methane at a large scale from a landfill so that you can generate power on site except for Bitcoin mining. And so Bitcoin mining creates this use case where it makes sense to capture and use methane and and you know Brian to what you were talking about that's that's like the the low hanging fruit really in terms of Bitcoin in the environment. If people are concerned about reducing greenhouse gases. Here's this ready made application that that does something that no other application on the planet is capable of doing because of how nimble and it is in terms of its flexibility with time and also geographic location. I don't know if you want to dig in a little bit more to that, but to me that feels like you know when you were digging into this report, that probably stood out as as something that people aren't talking enough about. If if you care about the environment, if you care about reducing greenhouse gases, this should be a major topic. Well, Brian, before you you hop in, I mean we have a great example of this yesterday. Chris Alfano from 360 Mining is right out the door here. In the comments he tweeted out that he got a cold call from a natural gas producer, I believe in the Marcello Shale up in the Northeast. That was saying he's only making $0.30 per MC per MCF for his gas right now. And if you were to take that gas instead of set it down the pipeline, sell for $0.30 an MCF and divert it to a generator to produce electricity to mine Bitcoin, you can get like $10.00 an MCF right now. And so that's the beauty of this particular solution is that it provides a free market economic incentive to solve these problems. You don't really need intervention from the government or subsidies to solve it. It's just pure economic greed that can solve these emission problems. Yeah, I think that's a. Can you guys see this this chart? Yeah, Logan's going to try and pull it up right now. OK, so while he pulls that up, this is an excerpt from the report and it basically just gives a breakdown of, I guess, sectors in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions that they're responsible for. And as you can see, tourism by far is the biggest and you even have gas flaring here, which is pretty huge. That's an order of magnitude bigger than Bitcoin, just the the gas flaring in the landfills alone, which is substantial. I mean just think about if you were to really start to scale mining even more so than it is now and you can start to reduce the amount of methane that's being emitted into the environment. What I I like that you said, Marty, is this is all done through just basic incentive structures. There's no government subsidies, There's no handouts here to make it work. I mean, look at tourism. Tourism is massive. I don't think anyone on the planet is going to be willing to not go on their annual vacation to another country or flying across the United States, wherever it may be, in order to start reducing their own personal emissions. I mean, same with the fashion industry right here. I was actually very surprised at how big this number is. But the bottom line is people always want the, you know, newest set of shoes that come out. They want to constantly update their wardrobe, etcetera. Like these are things that have massive implications on climate. But what people I find really want to focus on is this tiny one down here, which is Bitcoin mining, As if that's going to have any sort of impact where I think anyone should be able to look at this chart and realize, OK, if we really want to make a dent and climate change like these big huge. Bubbles here are where we need to focus our time and energy, not the tiniest ones. Now obviously that doesn't mean that I'm suggesting that Bitcoin mining should just use whatever power it possibly can, but I think obviously is the paper alluded to and Marty you can probably speak to given your expertise, is the fact that it's Bitcoin miners are consistently seeking out the cheapest price power they possibly can. Obviously, the price of their electricity is the biggest input and what is ultimately going to drive their margins the most and where we've seen them start to do that is through primarily renewable energy sources. And where we have stranded and wasted energy, that often is a byproduct of renewable energy sources. Yeah, it's. I mean, when you run the numbers in bull markets, even when natural gas is in a bull market itself, like even when it was trading around like 10 to $12.00 towards the end of 21, it was more economical to mine Bitcoin with natural gas toward the peak of the bull market last year, then send it to send it to the Bitstream. Obviously, Bitcoin mining didn't divert a material amount of natural gas, but that is a variable that's entered the equation that can be added to the tool chest. So these energy producers, they'll make them more efficient, make them more profitable and then give them more optionality to build more robust operational stacks incorporating Bitcoin. And I think that's why it's very important that you guys wrote this research piece and that we're having these conversations right now because obviously with Elizabeth Warren and the Department of Energy really focusing in the very small bubble that you highlighted on that last chart. Like we need to get this narrative out there because we are reaching a point of maturation in this particular off grid space. Companies like Upstream and Giga really stepping up their manufacturing prowess and building the data centers and the generators that will enable this market to flourish off grid. It would be a damn shame if the government were to step in and stamp it out right when it's about to take off. Yeah, I think one thing to note maybe maybe because we're so into it. So it's fundamental problem that we understand is that I think for the average person they may not realize how difficult it is to store the energy because everyone has batteries. So they might think that any energy that's produced can be stored and used later, right. But as you know that's not really the case even with battery technology, you can't store all the energy that can be produced. So the electric grid is designed to be, you have to build it to be to produce the peak and that creates an efficiency because if you're doing that and looking at the doing an investment, if you're all your profits are at the peak, but then you start losing money at the troughs. Well, where where is that extra demand going to come from to to make something look like it's a good investment like building a renewable energy source. And so I think that that's the other aspect to I think what I've been talking about here is that it helps with the investment decisions. If you want to invest in other sources, this helps make that look more appealing. And some of that energy that's that was produced with this is not necessarily wasted because a lot of this energy can't actually be efficiently stored. And maybe one day there will be some technologies that allow that to happen, like any amount of energy produced can be stored and used later. But that's not really the case that we're out today. No, it's it's insane like the efficiencies of Bitcoin mining. So on the economic side of thing like the time cost of capital when you're building out these generation assets is massive because you have to build out the asset, you have to build out the substation, this is on grid and then you have to build out the transmission lines and all all that takes a ton of capital and a ton of time and you're not making any revenue on that investment. But between the time you break around to build a generation asset, get the substation set up and get the transformer lines interconnected with the grid. Now with Bitcoin mining, build the generation asset, build a substation, and then put a Bitcoin mining operation behind the meter as you're building out the transmission lines, which can take 12 to 18 months, so you can begin making revenue 12 to 18 months before you would you would have otherwise if you didn't have this option there. So the economics from a capital allocation and investment perspective make a ton of sense. Yeah. I think one of the things that I was exploring when I was doing the report is where do we have examples of Bitcoin miners being part of the capital raise for these renewable energy sources? And my understanding and the feedback that I got was the problem right now is that some of these miners just don't have the creditworthiness for investors to kind of use them in as part of some sort of power purchase agreement. So they're going to be the primary buyer of that electricity from day one is given the creditworthiness of those miners. So Marty, I don't know if you have any thoughts there, if that's something that is a a, a problem now that will start to resolve itself as these miners kind of start to build their credit over time. But I mean some of these these companies are are public U.S. companies. So I found that kind of hard to believe. Yeah. I think as more of these larger publicly traded miners begin owning more of their generation assets and the substations themself makes them more creditworthy because you can use those hard assets as collateral. And that makes a a much better case for a credit investor where they're like, all right, well, maybe we don't believe in Bitcoin, but if we have these generation assets as collateral, we feel comfortable writing the check. And then we, we have seen an example that's actually recorded with Jamie Mccavity, who's the CEO and founder of Corment. But it's on the opposite side of of the cycle that we're talking about. So he bought a wind farm in West Tech, West TX and their substation assets, but he bought it. This wind farm's 12 years old. So they ran out of their ability to leverage renewable energy credits there. They they took them for 12 years and they weren't able to take them anymore, which made it completely uneconomical. So he was able to come in and say hey let me, why don't you give me all your generation assets and your substations and we'll do that as an in kind equity inject injection into Corps Mint the company and then we'll come and bring our mining operations and and make this wind farm profitable. Yeah. That's really interesting, I think. I agree. I I that seems like an example of something we'll start to see more and more, especially with some of these existing energy projects that might fall by the wayside or just proved to not be economical and that's where miners can come in and provide they have the capital to do so. And I think we're we're correct me if I'm wrong here Marty, but I think we're sort of seeing that in like an isolated experiments stage in Africa with like gridless compute putting in micro hydro installations that are entirely based on like we're going to, we're going to invest this capital to create this hydro installation because we're going to be Bitcoin mining. And so if it works in that scale the the first principles of it, of it are sound and it it can and will work on a larger scale eventually. But I think that that is very exciting to me because it's sort of the tip of the spear, I think, in terms of of justifying energy installations because of power purchase agreements with Bitcoin miners. Oh, you guys are going to get me running. And if you think about the set scale, you know companies like Satoshi Energy and Sonoda out there that are really working on the accounting side, partnering with Bitcoin mining companies and utility companies that are their counterparties and trades. And you can envision a future in which instead of getting invoice for your power consumption at the end of each month and having an N 30 and 45 payback period, you can literally mine Bitcoin and use the lightning network to pay your energy bill as you're consuming it. Like we're we're not only talking about efficiencies at the physical layer, we're talking about capital efficiencies in terms of how you actually pay your energy bill and how you capitalize utilities companies. And this will open up a bunch of capital for these utilities to begin reinvesting in their operations more quickly to make the overall grid system more robust. 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. I can learn out on this for for quite a while It's it's I I think this is the most bullish part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Obviously 21 million scarce asset you can self custody your wealth and prevented from being debased is extremely exciting and an innovation that will probably not be repeated or there. There won't be an innovation as as great as Bitcoin for some time. But this particular intersection of the energy sector and Bitcoin mining, I think people are sleeping on it and I think it is going to drive an energy revolution that we'll look back on a century from now and be like, holy crap, I can't believe we were doing things the way we were before Bitcoin existed. Yeah. The programmatic streaming of value is very underpriced or understood right now. That's like 1 angle and energy. But that goes across like the world and like how general net 30 or whatever settlement is generally been. And once that gets unlocked, like we haven't even like we squint, we know like you know interchange and that's like a kind of a consumer thing. It's us to change where we don't have full scale adoption. But there's a lot of other things that I think will play into it, whether it's like reinsurance or what you just referenced with Sonoda or other kind of like capital movement from countries that it's harder to get out for whatever reason. There's a lot of ways that, like streaming lightning will help from a friction perspective and capital movement. Because it unlocks a ton of capital. With these utilities companies, you have to put up massive deposits because they don't know if you're actually going to pay your bills. And if you have a Bitcoin mining operation and you can say, hey, here's how much hash rate we have, you can look at the network hash rate, the difficulty and basically calculate what are what are payouts going to be on a day-to-day basis and have some assurances that you're actually going to get paid. And we can set up the contract in a way where as we get paid, you get paid as well. Yeah. Night and day efficiencies in in capital markets and energy, you know which will be a tailwind, just an ongoing tailwind indefinitely for so long as as Bitcoin exists which is pretty exciting And and I I guess if you take it to the extreme that's where people get excited about like this is how we we build the Dyson sphere of you know like this is how we incentivize like unbelievable scale energy production and and and that's linked to societal progress to civilizational progress. And so it's to me that it's Bitcoin provides a ton of hope for individuals in in how they're saving their their money, but it also provides hope on a civilizational scale. And I think that the, I think Marty's right that the thing that we sleep on that we under appreciate is the extent to which this will fuel technological and civilizational advance because it incentivizes energy production by by by identifying all these areas where there's opportunity for greater efficiency or for turning waste energy into real energy into electricity and using it. I'm creating a market for it. And you know, so having KPMG and Brian having you dig into this and and and highlight the the fact that you know what there's there's a lot of really exciting substance here. And and this is not exactly what the a common narrative about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining has been. I think is I think it's been a breath of fresh air for Bitcoin miners who've been kind of on an island trying to trying to set the record straight and have been unable to. And so I guess I'm curious, Brian, if if you want to share a little bit about like what the process was like for you as you were digging into this and trying to raise awareness internally at KPMG. Also just in general in in in the you know BIG4 kind of landscape of of thought leadership, what was that process like for you? Yeah, it was. It was pretty interesting, right? Like I had been part of some teams that have published things before, but nothing of this scale, nothing that I think maybe when it against some mainstream views, right, like some of the the stuff that we've historically done, it's it's pretty cut and dry. But I think this presented A viewpoint that, you know, maybe some people might disagree with. But I think one of the things I really tried to focus on when I was doing the paper is to not put anything in there that wasn't based in facts, right. So if I was going to go through the paper and give examples of where Bitcoin mining is is is providing value to the climate issues, then you you wouldn't really, I wanted to to structure so that you couldn't come back and disagree with me. It's not an opinion I was offering. You know, I I didn't want to have it be you know something where I'm promoting Bitcoin like go out and buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin's going to go up in price, nothing like that. So I really wanted to make it so that it was fact based and that if you were going to, you know, there was a, there was a couple scenarios where, you know, we might have softened the language, we might have used certain words that because this went through so many different reviews, especially 'cause it was a larger piece, you know, naturally you get that many cooks in the kitchen, everyone wants to to tweak this, tweak that. But I'd say by and large, I mean the, the, the firm was very receptive to it. And like I said, it was just there was nothing in there that you could disagree with. And I think that's, I think that's where I was able to get the powers that be comfortable with it. And so, you know, they asked some questions and we, you know go back and forth a little bit, but it was a relatively painless process I would say. And on the other side of that process, actually publishing and releasing the research report, what was some of the reception that you got? Did you change any minds that people who were previously skeptical say, all right, you're making a good point here. Yeah, that's a good question. So one of the thing there was obviously a ton of outreach once the paper was published. I think a lot of people really appreciate it. I mean, even people from within the firm were reaching out to me directly saying it's great that, you know, we were basically writing something along those lines. I think, I think for me though, I always told people like who I'd really like to hear from is who kind of went into that paper as a critic and came out sort of a proponent. And I haven't really heard many examples of that. And it it could just be because of the reach I have or don't have where I just don't have access to some of those people or I just haven't heard about, you know, somebody saying, hey, this changed my mind. But you know, I I've told people on a couple of the different podcasts I've done that those are the people I really want to hear from. Or even if people have a view that they disagree with, like let's let's have a dialogue about it, you know, if nothing else, that's what I sort of aim to do, was to to create more dialogue and not have it be such a polarizing topic because it really shouldn't be. So yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of been the way it's all played out over the past six or seven months. Well, I'll jump in. I'll say, I'll commend you. I think that report moved the industry forward. There's a lot of concepts that go discussed in in closed doors or behind the scenes and I think generally you know that this term and I think it plays into a lot of things in sales where you're always going to have somebody that's going to buy, you're always going to have somebody that's you know. Pro. Bitcoin or pro understanding the report and then you're always going to have somebody that will never buy or somebody that's always going to like be antagonistic to the report. But the reality is you're looking at the margins in that middle group and helping either them instinctually or intuitively what they thought. But putting it in a succinct way is what, in my opinion, that report did. And putting the name around it like a KPMG and having it well articulated you. There's a lot of individuals from the circles that I've run in and I'll let Jessica and Marty, you know, chime in that it added a lot of validity and I don't want to say confidence but credibility to what they already knew and had been hearing. But to put it in a succinct package like that. So yeah, it was. It was awesome to see and it was a big driver for us to be able to share and share some of the concepts that we've been talking about, but have it again put together in a very concise fashion. Yeah. And before, before this report, you know, kind of what was out there from a credible source was really the, the Cambridge report that that I'll say in my opinion was a biased bit of analysis that was rooted in falsehoods. That's my perspective and it was very, I think, I think now there's two credible things out there, which one is that Cambridge report, the other is this KPMG report, which is rooted in facts and paints a very different picture. And I think that that moves the needle right there and I think will be the start of a trend, hopefully of people, you know, from credible organizations taking an objective look at Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. Yeah. And I think there's a reality of like we have to meet people where they're at, even if like the framing or where you kind of kind of want to go against the framing because we don't fully agree with it. At the end of the day, if you don't meet somebody where you're at, you can't actually get them to where you want them to be because they'll just never start. And so there's just like, it's like you got to like, it's almost like almost losing the battle personally to win the war long term. And so that's what I really loved about. It's like, I think a lot, even on this part. I'm going to talk about it here, But there's probably some concepts in the framing that maybe people wouldn't. Yeah, we didn't necessarily agree with. But I think it's very important to meet individuals where they're at and then let them kind of go down and pull on that string because we're never going to get them right off the bat. It's just enough for them to start looking down the rabbit hole and understanding how this really changes a lot of these dynamics, which I think that's what the report effectively did and maybe was part of your goal as well. Yeah, it's. About 100%. That's a very good point because once you see it, you cannot see it. It's like and you have to get people receptive to actually seeing it in the 1st place and meeting them in the middle is probably a good strategy as somebody who has employed the antagonistic strategy in the past. I love it means there's like the two. One that's been coming around, probably been around for a while, is Bitcoin doesn't waste energy. It utilizes wasted energy. And then our friend Griffin Habee, who basically said he had dawned on him, he was a land man in Texas and said it really was like instrumental or his mind chef mindset shifted when he realized there was no such thing as stranded energy after Bitcoin mine. Like these little concepts really like get somebody's mind thinking about, like, what are you talking about similar? Important I heard Alex Gladstein the other day on a podcast framed it as not not. Bitcoin mining is wasting energy. Like if you have this energy and you're not going to use it. Because there's no other use case for it, then you're wasting it. So you might as if you have otherwise wasted energy, you should be putting it to work, generating some revenue with Bitcoin mining. Yeah, that's a key theme of his recent article Stranded, which I thought was just so well written. And I think it's I posted about this on LinkedIn but if I don't know how anybody could read that article and it's it's a long form article but I don't know how anyone can read that and come away and still think yeah this Bitcoin thing is is a waste of energy. I mean it is literally helping 600 million people in in Africa that don't have electricity. And I just think that's just remarkable. And I don't think it's something that people have an appreciation for, especially some of us that, you know, live in developed countries that, like we said, we we sort of take for granted the fact that we just have energy at our fingertips whenever we want it. This is something I wanted to say earlier, but I think it's imperative that we begin putting like simple first principles, energy curriculums in schools like people shit like it is arguably Bitcoin and energy, Money and energy are two of the most important tools we utilize as humans on a day-to-day basis and most people don't understand either of them. This goes back to like a first principles education problem as well. I think you have a bunch of people who just take all this for granted. Their money, the fact that they can turn the lights on and they don't know how it works and it leads them to make bad decisions in the long run. Delivery. Yeah. And and on that the Africa point, like I, I, I, I come back to the 20 years ago, The Economist ran a big, you know, big addition about the dark continent and like why is it that Africa just isn't developing? Like what is going on? What It's such a shame. Like why, why, why is this happening? And of course, you know, didn't really address the like root causes of like the the colonial like frank system and how that's a a major impediment to development and progress. And you know, it just stands to me as like the system that has been in place, the establishment, the establishment and economic incentives have prevented Africa from developing at the same rate as other continents. And now here's this thing that is providing the you know the the base infrastructure layer necessary for economic development, abundant electricity and bringing that to to a continent that has been at the dark Continent in in the perspective of of the economist which is sort of the the flagship for the economic establishment. And that should be celebrated and and I think will be but it it's just not clear to people yet that the the incentives that are actually there are there and that Bitcoin helps achieve these these dreamed of goals that the status quo has not been able to offer. And Jesse? I believe we've talked about this book before, but Jesus de Soto think for like another part of this problem is private property rights. And the layer below all this mining infrastructure is the fact that these individuals can now hold Bitcoin, and Bitcoin will respect their private property rights. And from that foundational core, you can begin to build a more advanced society. And so with that in mind, I mean, we can keep talking about energy. We talked about custody, We talked about energy. What are you guys looking forward to in the next three years? Obviously, we have the ETF approvals earlier this year. It seems like we have a tailwind of adoption coming our way. How are you guys at KPMG positioning yourselves to stand out against the crowd of auditors and accountants and consultants that can actually advise companies of Bitcoin becomes more widely adopted? I think for me, one of the things I'm kind of really keep an eye on, it's just where some of this regulation goes and there's been a number of different bills that have been introduced, some that could be pretty problematic for the industry. There's been, I know we have like SAP 121 which I think could potentially be repealed just given the conclusion that the the GAO came to get given that it didn't follow the Administrative Procedures Act. I think. But those are two things that I I kind of point to because like even SAV 121 has made it very difficult for let's say banks for instance to transact with crypto because it just has huge implications on what it does to their balance sheet. Given that whatever customer liabilities they're going to be responsible for custody, there needs to be a corresponding asset that they have. So I think that just becomes very cost prohibitive. So if something like that were to be repealed, that could kind of be a boon for the industry. And then just like I said, seeing where some of these regulations go, what these bills look like if they ultimately become law, I think those are some things that I've personally seen with companies that I've been speaking with that are keeping them on the sidelines for the time being. I was going to say I saw the American Bankers Association and other group of consortium leaders basically banging on the door saying you need to let us get access to this. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask to the extent you're comfortable, if you can dig a little deeper lesson like SAB 121, but the American bankers and I saw cursory like, is it their interest in basically custody and getting some of those fees that they've been basically not allowed to participate in because of that rule. Was that like the notion that they want to participate in custody for some of these ETFs? I can't speak to it mainly just because it's just not regulation that I've, you know done a deep dive into like I kind of understand the cursory points of it. And also like the digital asset any money laundering Act, which I think was, I think what you might be also alluding to. Those are just ones that I know are in progress right now. I have no idea which way they're going to go in in some of those implications. I I just don't have the the wherewithal to go too deep into that might. Yeah, I think you know when you when you talk to certain members of the Bitcoin community, the ETFs could be a little controversial because it's not you know, not your keys, not your Bitcoin concept, but self custody and all that. But but another way to think about it is if the ETFs could lead into greater adoption and and people participating into it, the the more the industry can feel comfortable using it. Maybe, maybe that's a way to get into this space. You have more proponents for it then you have a more balanced view I think ultimately in the regulations. And so that's I could only think be helpful to helping out the debate, right. Because if you if you don't have like these vehicles like the ETFs and greater like institutional adoption of it or people wanting to be economically incentivized to maybe custody it for example, then then you just you really just it's it's easy to get somewhat run over, you know. So I think this helps with a more balanced discussion about the rule makers and the regulars and even Congress about where things are going. I think just more people into it to help with a healthy debate is is useful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100% goes back to meeting people where where they're at, like that's how they consume financial products and now you have banks wanting to potentially custody it. Like, there you go. That's the right right. But I think the way what it seemed like where the bank started to back off was, I think it was January 2023, there was a a joint letter issued by Federal Reserve, FDIC and the OCC. And I think that was sort of a shot across the bow of basically saying, look, we'll allow you guys to do this. But if you read in lines, they're saying we really don't like you doing this. And I don't think the risk was worth the reward. This was also, you know, shortly after FTX it happened, I think this was several months after that, if that. So I think the industry as a whole just sort of had a huge black eye on it. And I think big banks will probably just think, you know what, the risk isn't worth the reward. But I think that's a little over a year now. I think a lot has changed. I think the the industry is kind of rebounded substantially. I mean the ETFs were a big part of that. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out this year, especially being an election year or if anything really doesn't start to change until after the election. Yeah. And that's your point is all the finances risk and reward, right. And then with things like the ETF potentially they'll see more reward, you know the financial money managers, banks, lenders. So there's that. You know, if it was all risk and no reward, they would not touch the space at all of course, right. So I do think that these new products can help on the balance that equation more that get them interested in the space. As the affable Michael Goldstein once said, the only winning move is to play. And it seems like the banks are beginning to realize this like, hey, you got to let us play. It's it's important. But as you mentioned Ryan, like obviously a lot of the froth in our industry, particularly crypto not necessarily Bitcoin has scared a lot of big players from from entering the market because they look at what happened and many failures of of the last 15 years and they say holy crap like what is going on here, billions of dollars of shareholder equity washed out overnight in many instances. And so that has the industry's, the incumbent financial industries guard up like should we even play with this? It seems like they're losing a lot of money over there, which has certainly been the case. But as we know companies like on RAMP Unchained, other companies that are really exhibiting best practice in terms of custody and securing customer funds and acting as actual fiduciaries that care about securing their their customers funds. Like there is a right way to do it in a wrong way to do it. So based off the lessons we've learned over the last two years specifically, I think, how do you navigate the conversations with potential clients of, hey, here's what these companies did wrong and here's the right way to do it? Yep. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think to tie into what Marty was saying, I'd be curious like from institutional like allocations and volatility, just like how do out of those conversations or how have you seen them go for somebody coming in and saying digital assets, help us understand what's happening here because I feel like that's a big like concept just overarching whether it's a grand law or a large institution, company, corporate, treasury, it's like there's something here, it won't go away, but I can't see the forest through the trees. Like how do you do you guys engage in that conversation, you guys engage in like portfolio allocation, sharp ratio, like any of the studies that have been put out there on like how this can actually benefit from preservation of wealth? Well, I, I we're not financial advisors, neither is our firm. But we have clients who are. And I I think what you're alluding to, if you look at, I think it's an interesting discussion when you think about this more from a portfolio management allocation perspective, because if you're like let's say a true believer in Bitcoin, you have 100% of your net worth in it. You have, you have a different view, right? But what if you look at it more from you just want to view this as as an asset class and with efficient market hypothesis out there there's there's reasons why like passive investing and SP500 index has gotten popular. It's not like people are in individually looking at all the companies and assessing how much cash flow this generating. They're just buying the index and and in the past these indexes didn't exist like they weren't there weren't easy way to transact to buy an entire market weighted index And then ETF showed up about 20 years ago and and now it's become a very popular way to invest. And so from a market allocation perspective, you know, look at the S&P 500 popular index that people invest in is what about 42 trillion I think roughly market cap and then bitcoins roughly around a trillion. So you know, do the math, that's like a little over 2%, so like 2.3% or so. And so just even from that angle, you know, there's should you have Bitcoin in a portfolio that's well diversified. But the efficient market hypothesis would tell you that it's very hard to pick individual assets or even time the market and consistently beat that over the long term. And so from from an allocation perspective, I think is now this is an easier way to transact in it through the ETF, although that's not exactly Bitcoin, it's at least a proxy for it and hold the Bitcoin then would people at least consider it as part of their allocation for portfolios? And I think I think the answer is is probably and I would like to caution though that somebody who's been investing for 25 years, I remember when the IT was really hard to buy gold and the gold ETF showed up and we generally you don't see gold in a lot of people's portfolios even though efficient market hypothesis would tell you probably should own some for diversification purposes, right. And so we'll we'll see that. I think gold and Bitcoin are very different though, right. And so maybe Bitcoin could become get more traction than gold did in in that context of like these broader portfolio allocations. And I think there are, there is one firm in Canada that started adding it into their general funds, total Rasa return funds, which is interesting to see because they, you know like if they have 6040 portfolio of stocks and bonds maybe add like a percent in Bitcoin and that's just part of the overall allocation. So people investing in those funds for example, may not even know they're buying Bitcoin, but they're just buying exposure to the overall market, right. So I think that will probably start, you see that more and that will drive greater adoption because you're not really just making an investment and hey, I'm going to put everything into Bitcoin. It's just again just part of an allocation. Your your other question about well could that impact treasury assets on companies that's that's an interesting one because you know companies are going to be a lot more depending who they are. They have shareholders that have boards to convince as well couldn't fit within the risk management policies. I think as you see more adoption that it can matures then it just becomes an asset that just feels like something they should at least consider and then that's where you know firms like us can help out about the regulations around that and how and the risk management processes around it. But I think it's going to be a process to get there. One thing to note, you also mentioned sharp ratios and you know that it'd be interesting to see too going forward because a lot of those analysis that are out there, they're like the last five years that show fairly good sharp ratios relative to other assets and somewhat low correlation to things like 6040 portfolio, the S&P 500. As these ETFs get bigger and they're held by investors that also own let's say bonds and stocks, will there be greater correlations and tightening in the sharp ratios as as they are owned by similar investors that own those other assets? Right. Most of the five year history of they're showing these Bitcoin studies that you didn't have that there as much. I know there's ETFs in other countries, but they weren't that large. And so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Where is Bitcoin will be continue to be a unique asset that you should incorporate into a portfolio to improve your sharp ratios and correlations or will they actually start converging? We'll we'll see. I think that's a big question. A piggyback on that, that I know Jesse's pretty interested in is like the FASB rules for accounting. Like do you see that changing in this upcoming year from like corporate treasuries and them adding to the balance sheet? Well, I I think there is already has been a a change. So about that around fair value accounting it used to be and this is actually a little bit outside of I know our firms has expertise in this is a little bit outside of what I typically do day for day. But I think the problem with the issue with the existing rules was the way it was treated in that you'd hold the the value at the the impaired value. So not just the the fair value but the lowest part of that fair value if it gets impaired. So the the value and when Bitcoin value going up so much it's just highly undervalued on your on your official US gap balance sheet. And so the the change that's coming up, I think there's a is a option to early adopt it, but the the change really I think probably later this year or next year. This year. Yeah. I think some kind of could early adopt, but I don't know who is going to do that. The option right now and then and then it's mandatory at the end of the year, yeah, it's going from intangible property which you only, you can only impair to to fair value, yeah. Right, right. So then the fair value for. Micro strategies quarterly earnings calls will will now start to have a bunch of you know, realized or unrealized gains from from Bitcoin appreciating which will flow through to their profits which will change the narrative around micro strategies Bitcoin strategy. Yeah. I think in general with the fair value accounting, there's two things to note, especially for an asset that's been, if you've held it for a while that's been impaired so much the, the, the additional date of adoption, that would be a pretty sizable increase in your balance sheet if you hold a lot of Bitcoin, right, because the fair value is just so much higher than your book value. And then to your point going forward with all the new quarterly reports that come out, the change in the value would go through the income statement. And so that can create a lot of volatility. I'm sure analysts would look at it as like here's core earnings without the impact of the fair value change at Bitcoin and this is what it looks like with it. So you you'll see this impact both on the balance sheet and income statement side. So I do, you know, there's a lot of companies that are pushing for that change, peers and the FASB agreed with it and so that that's coming up. So that's a big change. Exciting times. I think we're going to win, gentlemen. The the tailwinds are behind us right now. Heading into a halving. Mining economics heading into a halving are the best they've been throughout any cycle we've got. The ECB came out this morning trying to besmirch Bitcoin. They got ratioed and community noted out the gills. We've got a good technology here. It can, it can help us preserve our wealth, help us verify assets. It can help us become more energy efficient. You guys have anything we should wrap up with before we leave here? Yeah, I think we covered it. I feel like we could have gone another another hour or so, but I guess that's par for the course of these conversations. So thanks a lot for having us. We enjoyed it. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having us to talk and want to let the Bitcoin community know that they're that we are doing services in this space. And I know that the maybe common knowledge. I I think you mentioned you have some relatives who used to work for the Big four and they're just shocked that some of the Big Four are into it. So I I think, hey, at the end of the day, we're going to help out our clients and if clients are into this space, that's what we're going to do. Yeah, we should. We should all get together at the The Bitcoin Takeover next month down here in Austin, if you guys can make it down. Yeah, I'd like to, Yeah. There's a number of conferences coming up that hopefully we can we can meet in person at. Yeah. Well, I look forward to shaking your hands in person instead of looking at you through a screen here. Yes, Likewise, keep crushing it, Michael. Jesse, we'll be back next week.