Transcript+
Before we get into the episode, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. If you are enjoying On RAMP media content, please like subscribe and share as it goes a long way in helping others find the signal through the noise. Now for a word from on RAMP. On RAMP is a Bitcoin asset management platform built on multi institution custody leveraging our partnership with Bit Go and their 10 plus year track record in securing assets in Coincover, the premier digital asset risk mitigation company. On Ramp's multi institution custody is a segregated institutional grade vault requiring two of three institutions at any point in time to sign once a client's unique permissions have been met at on RAMP We understand that your Bitcoin journey is a multi generational pursuit catalyzed by the ideals of perseverance, aspiration and legacy. That's why we're proud to introduce on RAMP Heritage, a suite of private client services dedicated to ensuring your Bitcoin legacy is preserved and passed on, embodying the true essence of wealth that goes beyond mere numbers. If you would like to learn more, please schedule a consultation. As we prepare for the Bitcoin having and the next wave of global adoption of this nascent and growing asset class, we are halving all annual maintenance fees for clients that secure their wealth before the next Bitcoin epoch. What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extra ever assembled in the history of doctors 1974198792972000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say. When we sell, I say. When we sell. To the Irish exit is an American phrase. You've never heard this in in your neck of the woods. Out. I I've literally never heard that before, no. It's my move in college. The Irish exit. You're out. I I can completely imagine where it even comes from, though, that it's like, I wouldn't say a slur exactly, but it's sort of an amicable slur between between, you know, ethnic groups in, in the US where they all say they're, oh, I'm Italian, I'm Irish, I'm German. And it's actually like their great, great, great grandpa. And you need that environment to like have a reason to make fun of Irish people. Where is actually where everyone's Irish is just like, not the thing. But I I've made a lot of, I don't know if that's. I completely believe that that's where it probably came from. Yeah, there's there's Irish lads at the pub having a good time and then they go home Irish. Goodbye. It's an endearing term. It's a it's a very Maybe it's not as polite as people would say, but it's it's just like, OK, I. Swear. I'm I'm an individual. I'm going to make my own decision. I don't need to say goodbye to everybody. I'm leaving. Just walk out the door. Yeah, I agree. I think it plays on both sides. I think a lot of people don't feel like I got to say bye to the like multiple times. You're kind of like benefiting both sides of the the part, the transaction. Oh, I totally get the action. I'm not saying that the action is is like needs to be insulted or anything. I'm just imagining where that phrase for it came from, that this was something that people who again, are like claimed they were Irish, but they're not really because they're American, you know, they they disproportionately did this. And then you know, they're also not really Polish and Italian friends were like fucking Irish. Exit. Sorry, real. I just swear on this. Like. Maybe not. You're going to bleed that out and post. We can do anything we want on the Internet here. Do you guys know what the opposite of an Irish exit is? No. Announcing a retirement 10 months in advance, which is what the CEO of Vanguard did. Yeah, that's not not coincidental timing at all. So let's go over this Bitcoin ETFs. I think they surpassed even our wildest expectations so far. I think it's pretty safe to say. I think I said by the rumor, by the news, by Bitcoin, when we were talking about this, there was only one way. It's. I think the ETS remind me of just the Bitcoin trade or havings. Like all this stuff is so simple, it's so straightforward and so like, why wouldn't it be insane for opening up liquidity Like that was always the take. I think there were some individuals that might have been a little less bullish on it and you know, not naming names either here or and the Twittersphere, but it's just like common sense. Oh, I agree. But with that being said, ETS launched a month and a half ago now at this point, a lot. I mean, objectively they're a bunch of large money managers that have a 90 day waiting period before they can get in. So a lot of the activity up until this point has been predominantly retail driven and driven by wealth managers that don't have those restrictions. So the floodgates haven't even been fully open. And what are the net accumulation is 371,000 I believe Bitcoin. Yeah, close to over 300,000, I think. Yeah, so it's pretty insane. I'm convinced it's not even retail. Like I know they that Eric, like these guys talk about it, but like us as a group, how many people do you know buying Bitcoin like net new people. I don't know the ETFI know a lot of new people are buying Bitcoin that have texted me. And but I think like just this notion of people like anecdotally reaching out and people stepping into the market, I think is a different kind of bid, at least right now. Like I think these pools open to Raas and getting it on the platform and having the discussions and having to show all the the disclaimers around it. Like I don't think it turned on and then people just started buying out of the gate. I think there's different buying pressure right now that's completely unrelated to like the channels that I think people talk about from like a registered investment advisor or financial advisor just saying, oh, now I can smash by and do infidelity ETF. Yeah, I imagine I'm using exactly that language morning off all their clients. Like you can smash by now if you want. What are What are your thoughts on the ETF launch so far? Are you passing expectations? But like, I just honestly don't care at all. It's it's nice, it's nice for the price, obviously. I I I wouldn't say by by that I don't at all mean I'm bearish on it. Like clearly it's gonna juice the price to the moon and that's that's good. I just mean more it's not it's not really of of interest to me beyond that and and even that I think is like I struggle to see it as being a good thing as opposed to just an inevitable thing that that that's kind of my that's why I've been a bit confused by how excited it seems like most of Bitcoin Twitter is other than just the price because it it like obviously it's going to be amazing for the price but also obviously eventually there was going to be an ETF. So just to me it's kind of a nothing burger. If anything I can I can turn it around on you guys like why aren't you more mad about it? Surely every ETF buyer should be an on RAMP customer but isn't yet Because they, I don't know, they they're not stated enough. They haven't listened to TFTC enough. That's that's the exact thing. I went full circle and I kind of fell in your camp for a very long time. And then I realized an ETF similar to like the same mechanism somebody bought on Cash app is the same deal as somebody buying via Fidelity. It's like you buy it because it's the easiest way and then you go get educated because it's money. And that's the thing people forget. Like when it's an app or it's just like Amazon, you're just like, sure, I buy it, don't go that deep on it, I trade it around. But inevitably when the position goes from 1% to 3% to 10% because of price appreciation or doubling down, there's this inherent requirement to start to understand it. And then that's when people are like, holy crap. And we experienced this in 2021 with GBTC when people realize that to get spot exposure they had to get out of the market. And generally those were tax advantage accounts. So it wasn't so much as a taxable event, which obviously happens with an ETF. It was more of when the price is railing and you step out of the market, generally people are like, holy crap, I have two weeks where I'm in dollars. And so this whole notion of like, oh shit, like, I can't take delivery of this, I'm worried about now that Coinbase has a trillion dollars in Bitcoin, whatever the number is. Like all those things will never really happen. And in our opinion, or at least my opinion, the only way that could have happened is with the ETF. So that's why I think it's ultimately bullish is because the education game for everybody started whenever this thing launched. Yeah. OK. That's a that's a good way of putting it, right. It's it's clearly bullish on the price. It was always going to be bullish for the price. I don't think it's really bullish honestly at all for anything related to, I don't know if you want to think of it as like technical development or or frankly even adoption. I think the the best way you can view it is as an educational stepping stone. I think you need to you need to expect this massive influx of capital into the ETFs and then just sit around waiting for a massive outflux of capital into real Bitcoin. Well it's it's massive into the ecosystem like and the margins people are going to allocate to infrastructure because the ETF is there. Which translates to technological development. Yeah. True. But I mean I see that as being part of the stepping stone right. That's that's education in a in a snapshot. I think I this is I don't want to get too like bogged down in the semantics of this. I just, I like being a party pooper on this. I just. I just really don't care. I'm sorry. Yeah. But, but, but I think it is very like even if this ends up just being a dead end for this capital, like people go in and and they remain cash redeems and nobody ever takes their capital out. It does flip a whole lot of people from being anti Bitcoin to now rooting for Bitcoin and wanting the price to go up and wanting more of it and wanting to accumulate actual Bitcoin. So like I think the psych psychological impact of it is a is a massive boon for pre adoption of real Bitcoin. Yeah. And I think, like, there's a big thing that we forget how long we've looked at this space that we joked when this thing was about to happen six months ago. And like what is going on in the normie brain, that BlackRock and Fidelity are stepping in to like magic Internet beans? And to Jesse's point, it's like, it's like the mask off moment of like you don't put the genie back in the bottle and it's out now. Everybody has to have a position, a good advisor that was framing overseas, his synagogues like Capital Treasury and he was like, look, you know, the meeting to bring it up. It hasn't had, it hasn't come up, you know, they're bearish, whatever. And the framing, which is like a really good framing, it's like, OK, that's fine if we're not allocating, but we have to have a very strong reason why we're not at this point because of everything happening, which is just a foundational difference in having to like advocate for it. I talked with somebody this week who's mulling over there, an investment consultancy group, and they're mulling over going to their clients. They're sold on Bitcoin internally and they're pitching it to their clients. And they're mulling over like having a document that they want their clients to sign, acknowledging that they turned down their advice to buy Bitcoin for like for like legal. Coverage. On the back end of the bullet bull market, when it runs, it's like you can't say that we didn't tell you to buy Bitcoin. Yeah, and then turn it into an inscription. I had AI had a Stanford MBA classmate text me yesterday who I've been trying to get in and he he works for, he works for a family office basically, and I've been trying to get him in for six years, four years, heavily. I presented to his his team four years ago, you know, a PowerPoint presentation. I went down to the office and did it, and they were interested and curious and didn't didn't buy any. And he texted me yesterday, You are a genius on Bitcoin, kind of like first of all, no. But where is this coming from? And he's like the price. So it's all it's the only thing that really moves the needle in terms of people wanting in is FOMO, Yeah. That, well, I mean, that's another thing you can throw in, in terms of no, it seems like you guys don't really want to want to do this, but I do quite enjoy just being pointlessly contrarian in this and and trying to poop the party, right? And do you not worry that we're all going to get outrageously large egos as a result of this? Like if people keep calling us geniuses when we like, nothing has changed. Not disturbed at all, yes. That's definitely fair and it's. Getting increasingly difficult to stay humble. We all, we all need a little Alexander the Great follow boy. It just tells you you're only man. That's Alan. You're you're spot on that. I mean that's real alpha is like you know we talked about EC and slack and everybody's like the price and like I don't get like that's the alpha is like you can have the focus of what we've always been doing whether it's 20K or 100K, but the price helps and that's why you know somewhat pushed back on the bearishness simply because you've made your mark and in a good mark and being contrarian, I think the contrarian nature for this exact moment is literally the opposite. Like this changes everything. It blows everybody out of the water in the sense of like, because it's so obvious of like what it did, yeah. I mean, yeah, you're probably right. None. All right. Thanks for coming on, Allen. It's for I. Mean yes, everybody and. We already have an example like again, going back to the Vanguard situation, CEO, forget his name, announced that he'll be retiring at the back end of this year. They made a very hard stance at the launch of the ETF that they were not gonna give their clients exposure to these products because they believed it was speculative in nature and too risky. And since the ETFs have launched, Vanguard clients have missed out on a more than 50% appreciation opportunity in terms of exposure to Bitcoin. And so people are speculating. Bitcoiners are speculating, certainly, that he has announced his retirement because the internal clamoring of fumbling the ball so bad with the big Well. Marty, come on. We're not. We're not speculating. We're actively spreading misinformation. Guys, I never know it's real or. Not you have to bend the need to Bitcoin. You have to bend the need to Bitcoin. Did he actually have the quote that never while he's CEO will they do it? Because I've seen that like I think it was. Or is that not true? I think that's a meme. It's possible. I mean, I've heard it. I I heard it right now. So I'm. Going to say it. Yeah, I mean, hey, I I'm, I'm spreading information. I don't know if it's misinformation or if it's more information. Yeah. I mean, 33 years as CEO, inconveniently the year that the ETF launches and it's the best, you know, performing from all measures, he has to step down. I think there's only one one answer there. Yeah, it it does feel, it feels very notable. It feels like hey, hey buddy. You know the the board of directors is probably thinking you know this isn't panning out the way that our guy in charge said it would. We're seeing massive outflows of capital from our platform to platforms that do offer the ETF, the Bitcoin ETF and maybe he's, you know past his prime. Maybe this is a different time, a different era, and he's attuned to a prior era of investing. I could see that conversation happening in a boardroom. And it's probably also like, he's like, I don't need this, I'm, I'm ready to retire anyway. I've been doing this for 34 years. Like, I want to enjoy my family and so maybe it was like just time to pass the baton. But it is very notable timing here. And we just started in hot. Ellen, how are you doing? Good to see you. Nice seeing you in Dubai. It's the best way to start. Start. Just think about this right before we jumped on. Actually I as much as I would like to say, you know I'm doing great, usually that's what I would say, start of start of podcast. I'm actually kind of grumpy because all my friends are in Madeira and I suck here moving houses. It doesn't look like any of you are in Madeira. Either I was watching the live stream this morning, a lot of high signal content coming out of my Madeira right now. No, don't tell me that, Marky. Come on. I'm trying to. I'm staying off of Twitter. Alan, how come you aren't? There, join the real world. Did you, Alan, did you not pull up the weather in Madeira versus the weather in Scotland and just make a, you know, an obvious decision? I I don't need to pull anything up to know the answer to that. It actually looks quite cold. Everybody was wearing jackets. Oh, that's surprising. Yeah. The no, yeah, I mean, Madeira, the, the content there is strong, I mean bull run market or excuse me bull market vibes at conferences. There's nothing better if you're at a conference when the price is bumping. It's one of the most invigorating energies that you can be a part of. I think I disagree with that and I maybe don't have a big enough sample to really draw any meaningful conclusions. But like, for example, Miami 21 was ridiculous and Miami 22 was like, oh, OK, there's like real conversations happening here. Now I I'm pretty sure this won't apply to Madeira because it it, it almost feels like throughout that cycle people learned a lot of these lessons. I mean in particular people who are planning conferences and like what kind of things they should be seen to be supporting. But I mean my my experience so far is that the bear market conferences are sadder I guess but but better quite quite clearly. I'm I'm honestly, I'm nervous for this. You know next conference season like Nashville will be absurd. I guarantee it. There's nothing better than Nashville and the middle of July. It's going to be absurd to many levels. It's going to be a hot market, literal hot days, and a ton of people in a relatively small city. Marty, you might You might need to get some fresh air up on a rooftop and do a broadcast. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And get people to stack at the top. Yeah, that's what I was referencing. Bitcoin Conference 2019, the first one they ever threw, that Bitcoin magazine ever threw San Francisco on a rooftop. That Adele had no facial hair. We were we were pumped. It was like the the mini bull fake out in the middle of that cycle. Up to 14,000. Yeah. And we were drinking whiskey telling people to smash by partying. Like like the Super cycle was upon us. But it was not. It was not. That was five years ago. Are you? Are you like? Allen, what you said about the price and being like I was thinking about this the other day, it's like nothing's foundationally changed, especially this return because we just did this sharp run to 16/8 or whatever and back up to 60. When you really think about it looks almost like a Max, like a large bar when it's just like everybody got shaken out and nothing actually really changed other than maybe we wiped CZ and you know, some players off and an ETF launched into the realities like nothing. The fuck the the thesis hasn't changed. What we're all building, I think, is the exact same thing. And so that lens is always helpful to have in it because we're not any smarter than we were back then or where we're going. And I think that's just like a a very healthy way to look at this market and how we like allocate. Person, I think. Honestly, I mean, I'm obviously kind of joking about it and I'm, I'm being a bit facetious just because it's amusing. But. But my kind of pseudo contrarianism, I think. I think where it's coming from is like a frustration with what feels like, I don't know if you guys know this expression, the eternal September like we've now, it feels like we've now very much entered the eternal September with Bitcoin. And so, yeah, again, obviously ETFs are great for price, but it it seems to have created such a, it's almost like a vacuum of what want what people want to talk about and in particular what the newbies want to talk about. When, as you say, Michael, as far as I'm concerned, nothing worth talking about has actually changed. So why are these people all texting me, You know what I mean? What I'm sure has happened to you as well. Yeah. Yeah, well. But. Let's not, let's not focus. We don't have to focus on the eternal September, like what would be a different a a big shift in the Bitcoin market particularly, particularly the market structure. Michael, you mentioned Dubai. Alan, I watched you give an incredible speech presentation at Riga. What was that two years ago on Bitcoin being Sharia compliant money? And that's one of the themes that I'm placing my bet on this year is that we see somebody in the Middle East, an Islamic country, either define Bitcoin as Sharia compliant money. I believe one has already in some layer of their court system, and not only that, but tape into Bitcoin in a big way and make a public statement about that. You were all in Dubai, or two of you were, yeah, that sentiment at all. Ellen, I'm pretty open book, so I'm gonna throw it to you and you can share as much of our conversation that we had host Dubai on this call about like our stance there and we'll use that as a jumping off point. Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, there's loads of that. We can do the entire podcast on this if you want to go down every every rabbit hole. Just back to Marty's point specifically, I think there's a distinction worth making that on the nation state, you know, adoption or however you want to describe it, that's almost certainly happened already. It's just a question of when they're going to be public about it. So I agree with you. It feels like probably this year decent odds that there will be news around that. The the point about it, I forget exactly how you phrase it. There's something to the effect of becoming legally enshrined. I think that's a bit trickier and I I wouldn't, I wouldn't hold out any particular hope for that just because, I mean, this isn't now immediately a massive rabbit hole, but because of the way that legal process works. It's nowhere near as simple as a parliament passing a law or something like that. It's it's far more of almost a theological process around which there's no consensus, actually kind of an amusing term to bring up here. It's it's very it's very sort of decentralized and and unofficial and slow as a result. You could actually I I'm not I don't want to strain this too hard and end up insulting people on both sides. But it's not completely dissimilar, let's say, to something. Like core development? Where you know you, you have many, many, no, no official central body per SE, many unofficial contributors, and for completely different reasons. Admittedly, people having a very strongly conservative bias and kind of a fear of changing anything too quickly. So that's probably far enough down that particular rabbit hole, but I I strongly doubt that will happen soon. But I actually think that whenever it does, I think it will happen eventually. I think when it does happen, the first point having happened first, will have been really important to it because there will it. It won't just be theory at that point, There'll be actual applications in terms of how people are using this new money that that can be pointed to as part of the justification for it. Yeah. One of the things we talked about Marty, that I think you'll appreciate is just the whole mining and energy component and just there's fundamental reality tied to that area of the world of of their goods and services or their their goods, their energy tied to like GDP. That just like roots you in foundation of what is value, that there's like a predisposition there than like in a lot of places like San Francisco. And not only that and the culmination of events for that particular region, events or themes, I mean it, it's the Saudi government, Aramco, Aramco, the company Saudi Aramco. They've made it explicitly clear that they want to begin diversifying their assets away from being so heavily concentrated with oil and gas. Adding Bitcoin to the mix makes a lot of sense, and they can leverage their oil and gas assets to make that that possible. On top of that, obviously timing Bitcoin has the institutional stamp of approval of BlackRock, Fidelity and others getting into the space and then timing again and leaning specifically into mining. You finally have industrial scale production of hydro facilities that'll make it much easier to mine in these climates. And so you have like those 3 culmination of events where they want to diversify away the narrative for Bitcoin is extremely strong and the hardware to actually materialize a Bitcoin strategy in terms of mining is where it needs to be for them to actually ape in. Yeah. There's another point on top of all of that too, which is I'd say even more intriguing I guess from like a geopolitical perspective, which is that they want to end their reliance on Swift as well. They've seen what has happened to Russia. And I mean to some extent it's it's been, it's been obvious that something like that could happen for a very long time. In terms of the, I don't want to get too conspiratorial about it, but effectively the US State Department weaponizing the the Petro dollar for for purely political purposes. Now, you know that that had been talked about in kind of conspiratorial tones for a very long time but now the writing is very much on the wall given what's actually happened to Russia. And so there's this is the reason I say it's even more intriguing is that I don't think you're ever going to see or certainly not for a very long time will you see any public announcements about this. You might even see the Isles in the face of the the kind of the obvious reality of it playing out. But I think that's yet another reason for them to to favour integrating various flavours of Bitcoin infrastructure to give them a payment alternative so that they can't just be shot out of global trade. Yeah. And one of the things that doesn't get talked about is the competitive nature in the GCC as a whole where they like operate. You hear it in the sense of like they run countries like their companies. But then if that that is true, but if it's to be true, then the different countries running as companies are competing with one another to one up each other. And the closest example not even close is like Texas and Wyoming. I feel like there's like a natural healthy like cooperation slash competition with you know being more forward thinking and all the things associated with Bitcoin mining, you know potentially stable coins or or things like that. And that's like on steroids over there specifically. And you hear this a lot between UAE and Saudi because Saudi sees what the UAE has done and for this multiple times, I'm sure you have as well Ellen that they want to basically 100X whatever happened in Dubai and they have the money to do it which everybody understands that part. So now that's like Riyadh is this like area that a lot of people are basically buying real estate and starting to like move to because they understand that kind of they can do it at an accelerated pace whatever happened in Dubai, the Marty's moving to Riyadh. I don't think so anytime soon, but I would like to visit, see what's going on. It is I mean intuitively to me whether it's the Middle East or some other or country in the Middle East or some other country in some other part of the world, a more developed country that's the next domino to fall. So we have the institution stamp of approval. I think nation States and Michael and Allen both make very good points where they'll probably deny it and they won't admit it, but I think they're going to get in in a big way. That's like the next wave of big adoption as nation states, sovereign wealth funds aping into Bitcoin. Allen do you feel like the the you know Zoltan Pozar or however he pronounces his name from Credit Suisse put out that that that very well written piece right when the Russia cut off from Swift and the foreign exchange reserve sees occurred that you know this is the beginning of Bretton Woods 3. The end of Bretton Woods 2. And we're entering an era now where where countries are going to be searching for outside money rather than inside money. Meaning that inside money mean meaning that it's part of the system. It's, it's inside it's, it's controlled by the powers that be in outside money is not. And I think he largely meant like oil and gold, but he also noted at the end of it that despite not being a Bitcoin bowl himself in general, that Bitcoin could be the big winner out of all of this. Do you feel like, you know, Fast forward three years, That was probably two years ago, Two years now. Do you feel like that's playing out? To be honest, I don't, I don't want to comment too much on that because I would very quickly get out of my depth. And the the one thing I would say though just in terms of tying together his comments, it's very enticing, it's very encouraging that he would do this. But I think just in general it's very enticing to start thinking of Bitcoin in the same category as something like gold or oil or oil, sorry. And on the basis of a something that's completely obvious to us, but I think isn't at all to normies and is now becoming so that it is completely tangible value, right. It's not it's not credit based like the system that seems to be unwinding. So and and I mean you've heard this kind of thing for a for a really long time and again still still out my depth more just kind of as a a curious observer and you know having read various historical accounts of this kind of thing that that it's always in the back of or not not eternally let's say, but since since Bretton Woods it's been the back in the back of a lot of people's minds that it is just inherently unstable. It's inherently reliant on politics. It would be better if gold oil, I think is a little bit trickier, but certainly gold just because of its history could have more of a role in this if it, if it could be more grounded in reality, right? Like even maybe back to to Michael's point about why, you know Texas and Wyoming and then Heidi and UAE seem to get this more because they're this is more sorry what we were talking about before we came on. But our theory, I think is that it appeals to them far more in the first place because their own economic experience is far more tethered to reality than, you know, to make a maybe a bit of a a characterizing gross characterization, you know, New York being tied to Fiat finance or San Francisco being tied to to software or something like that. So, so yeah, I mean this this kind of thing is obviously been talked about for a long time. We can all very clearly articulate why Bitcoin would be far better than gold in that kind of role. I think what's super exciting is, yeah, that that other people are the people who are in fact qualified to to opine on these issues are starting to include Bitcoin in the conversation. Yeah, there isn't an irony there that when you grow up in in a part of the world that enjoys the exorbitant privilege of being able to print the global reserve currency out of thin hair, you are no longer in tune with monetary reality and you can't see when reality is knocking on the door. Well, it's it's interesting too for from the American perspective because yes, for the world of hyper finance in New York and the world of Hypertech in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. But I think due to the misunderstanding of Bitcoin in the early years, where people really saw it as this tech play haven't really grokked the monetary aspects or took people really to hone in on the monetary aspects of what it was it it looked like a tech play to a lot of people here in the United States and afforded American citizens to accumulate a large portion of the Bitcoin supply to date. Which is? Which Could be an explanation for why there's been altcoining for the last decade, you know? But that energy has been diverted into what else can we create with technology and cryptocurrency? Yeah. Yeah, I've, I've said this kind of thing before actually that not not exactly wrapped up in like oh, it's America's fault, but but that is kind of a funny framing for this, right, that you could, you could very easily think of of crypto in its various flavors. I mean certainly still today I'd say more so. I think we'll probably look back on the peak as being 2122, but it's basically the starting point obviously is Bitcoin, but it's then specifically misunderstood through the lens of both SF tech and New York finance. It's like how how can you misunderstand both the technology and the monetary components of this? And then you dial that up to 11 and then what you get is crypto. I think there is a, there's a poetic version of that of like who what the individuals, whether it's in China or the US and in between who gets it, like who's holding Bitcoin today versus who holding crypto in the future. And like that lens, I think it affords itself for the right people are holding it and we'll kind of like work through whatever transition or whatever it looks like and the things that are built. It's fascinating to see the past 15 years and who are their adopters and then who got in early, but it basically gone crazy and lost all their Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, then it also provides, I mean for what we do, Allen, in the context of 10/31 for me and Axiom for you, it provides us an incredible opportunity where all these people are raising billions of dollars, absolutely miss allocating it to nauseating levels, overlooking Bitcoin in the industry being built on top of it. And there's not a lot of Bitcoin only funds out there. I think the two of ours are two of less than maybe two dozen if if that many. And it just provides an incredible opportunity for us to to go support the companies, you know what it actually get the signal. I I wonder if you've ever thought about this before, actually. And I'm not meaning to shit on well, certainly on myself, not really anyone else either. But I actually think it's kind of sad that there even needs to be such a thing as a Bitcoin only fund like that. It exists in the 1st place because of the misinformation. Non not saying that ironically, but like literal misinformation spewed by crypto, that's the only reason Bitcoin only funds exist. It should just be something that competent tech generalists understand. But it isn't. At least not yet. David King's a good example of this. If you guys follow him, he's a good buddy with Max Webster. He like, actually, he understands Bitcoin so deeply, he doesn't even like talking about it because he knows like the whole kind of connotation around. He's still like scarred from, you know, whatever happens on Twitter. And you know, obviously we're we're past that. Like he doesn't like to be labeled from individuals that are building. He's thinking a bit more of like his background in technology, former Google guy, that's like just where does Bitcoin insert into the traditional world that provides it more utility. And so to your point, I think that's what like you sure kind of looks like is less of like individuals chasing a small amount of Bitcoin companies versus just like every company ends up looking like that in some respect that incorporates Bitcoin or builds. Yeah. I mean, we we. Say this, we say this all the time. I think it comes up on both sides. On the one hand, we're typically very attracted to investment opportunities where in some or other form the Bitcoin component is just obfuscated away. So. So the company is just, I can say this in entirely general almost vague terms, right. The company is providing some good or service that is dramatically improved or only possible in the 1st place because they're utilizing Bitcoin as technology. We find that a lot more exciting that obviously not name any games and like show on anybody but find that a lot more exciting than you know yeah another wallet or whatever or or just just again maybe suitably general level something that we've talked about this before Michael as well, something that would absolutely make sense if we'd already hyper bitcoinized. But you know we haven't. So the time is like you and your friends essentially and aside from anything else that's you know obviously there's an investment rationale there. But I I think you can, you can and we do our best to rationalize it on the basis that actually that's what's going to grow adoption in the 1st place. Like I I can think of all kinds of almost use cases if you like, maybe even Martin's example of you know, sovereign states, in particular Middle Eastern states getting in through energy is a good example of this. It's not exactly the kind of thing that you know we are likely to be in a position to make an investment case around. But I think, I think the logic perfectly applies of you know you're you're doing it in their case for energy. In our case it could be anything, could be like fintech or telephones or whatever. You you get involved because it is superior technology for precisely the thing you need That then encourages you to learn more about you know Bitcoin in a in a wider sense. And then it's kind of inevitable at some point after that you end up orange building and you you start thinking about it more generally. But, but everybody has something, you know every, every business in particular will will have some area they're involved in that they deeply appreciate and that it's it's frankly just a far easier way of orange Pilling as well or at least a first step right. It's not you know you don't need to tell them about the the evil conspiracy of how the Federal Reserve was formed. You just say you know if you use this your costs will go down something like that. So yeah so that's that's on the on the company side but then just in terms of US trying to trying to fundraise as well and and maybe not even fundraising just thinking about what we want the business to look like. You know we we do we do say quite often that we think it it's only going to be so long from now that it's even going to make sense calling ourselves Bitcoin investors. And it this is sort of an obvious comparison to the point of kind of being a cliche at this point but nobody calls themselves an an Internet investor right there there there was a time when that. Meant something when it was helpful to say that because it was, it was helpfully, you know, communicating the more limited area at some point, extremely limited area in which you were looking to deploy. But I assume everyone and you know everyone on this podcast and probably everybody listening to this podcast as well, thinks that Bitcoin will end up having a a similar effect. Don't know over what time horizon exactly, but certainly as it becomes more and more normalized, it'll just become less and less relevant to to specify that that's what you're investing in. Yeah, I mean, the concept of bitcoiners will fall to the wayside at some point. Yeah, yeah, it's like. Yeah, Alan you you reminded me of some venture capitalist came and spoke at at B school about you know to to a class and they they were asked like what's the number one thing you look for in A in a start up and without hesitation they said shrinking markets which is to say like I want to find something that through technology provides a service that incumbents provide at a higher cost. You know, so really the the manifestation of of deflationary technology like that's what that's what wins and that's what really has an edge in the market and that's what they look for. But also which the Fiat mind cannot compute, right? Yes. And so you're you're talking about, you're you're talking about like you know, riding, leveraging the Bitcoin infrastructure, the rails, which touches everything in order to tap into that kind of that kind of investing philosophy of like what does, how do you, how do you invest in companies that do something better by using Bitcoin than income can do? Yeah. And I did just to tie it back to Marty's question as well, that I feel like not just me but again almost every every Bitcoin focus VC has such a ridiculously disproportionate advantage in not only finding just because of the community but evaluating and and hopefully successfully investing in companies like that. For for again, I think a really sad reason it's it's not even that we are brilliant or you know, we. I don't know. I don't even see it. I I I don't. I don't think complementing ourselves is the appropriate way of addressing that. It's that the generalists should see it, but they don't because on the one hand, they just don't understand Bitcoin basically. But I think it's even worse than that. It's that they deeply misunderstand Bitcoin. They believe a lot of things by Bitcoin that are are completely false. And so they'll dismiss it rather than take it seriously. And then that's only dramatically compounded from there by all of the, again, misinformation coming from crypto that that just exacerbates the entire situation. But yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I, I think of a lot of what we do is just so incredibly straightforward that I'm just, I'm like amazed that others don't see it. Hopefully they will one day and then hopefully all these investments will be amazing. Well, it's like going back to Michael's point from earlier, it's like we've been in this so long that we've seen it and we've understood it and internalized it, and it's crazy to us and others have not gotten to this point yet. But you have to remember, it takes years, maybe shorter now with all the information out there, but it takes quite a while to come to fully grok it. Start with the monetary properties, the distributed network and then dive in deeper, understanding how the protocol level interacts with the Lightning network, how protocol level interacts with things like Fetty Mints or single member federations. Like that's a very steep learning curve. And going back to your point earlier that the journalist should get this and you should be incorporating Bitcoin into businesses that aren't even Bitcoin first businesses. I think as venture venture funds in this space, that's going to be one of our biggest advantages moving forward is you're going to have all these companies, they're like, oh shit, we need a Bitcoin strategy. We need to figure out how to incorporate Bitcoin into our business model and into our application stack. And they're going to go to us and be like, all right, you guys know Bitcoin, you have capital. Get on the cap table and help advise me as I do this. There's two sides of that because the other side is like, there's two missing parts of like, the thing that operators or generalists have generally if they're doing it right is they have operational experience in the traditional world, which is like a prerequisite from building. So you have to like tie both together. But I think what Allen said, that's really like you were saying that they're deeply misunderstand Bitcoin And if we take it a step further, it's the foundational layer that Bitcoin allows us to see the world through. That I think you're alluding to of like they're like whether it's chasing a dollar return or just thinking about how do you build a business because you have this like unit that just fundamentally warps your your brain and how do you think about growth and all of these things is that like fundamental layer And then everything else starts to build on top of it And that's where you see this like insanity whether it's we work or all these different different things that M from it. And so it's almost like if AVC like in like whatever top tier just understood Bitcoin. And there's actually ones like that. The guys like the Palantir Co founders, Joe Lonziel and Drew Oding, which I would think is like top five VC sitting in Austin. Like they actually foundationally believe that crypto is all BS, Bitcoin is the thing. And you can actually that thesis, if you go look at their site, what they do, they have an incubator, they do like really incredible stuff. But I think that's like the prerequisite to be a top tier in the market because you got to understand like Bitcoin. But that's not enough because you have to know the current market landscape, operational excellence, who operates at the highest level and how do you infuse those together to like actually build the next generation of companies. Yeah, there's a couple others like Valor Craft. They seem to get it as well. Yeah. David Sachs is an interesting person that, like, seems to grok like foundational kind of. You can't make things out of thin air, yeah. 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. And so this is how Bitcoin is affecting venture capital. I know we wanted to talk about bitcoin's overall effect on asset management as well. Like what hard lessons is the asset management world going to learn over the next decade because Bitcoin is gaining an adoption and proliferating throughout the global economy? Could could I could I make it like 50 years rather than 10? Because then yes, I get to be a bit more obnoxious to my answer. I I I'm pretty sure we've spoken about this before, Mark. Yeah, I've definitely written about it, although potentially in a similar tone to my my chat earlier about the ETF. It might have been so facetious that people didn't take it seriously, but I I honestly believe without intending this is as a joke or or a dunk on, you know Vanguard or whoever. Actually, no, sorry. I do very much intend it. As a dunk on Vanguard, no, as a dunk on people buying ETS. Global Asset Management in the very, very long run is going to go to Max 10% of what it is now. Maybe even smaller, basically because the vast, vast majority of the purpose it serves is legitimate now, but only because of the perverse incentives of Fiat. So I I I'm phrasing that very carefully because I'm I'm not saying, oh, it's all a scam. If anything it's it's kind of a coping mechanism for the the far more widespread, more insidious scam. It's it's it allows a lot of people a way to maybe not escape the scam entirely, but at least you know, not feel its effects to the fullest that they might otherwise. But as that gradually gets replaced by Bitcoin, so will the entire purpose of most of asset management I think which which by the way was quite a quite a daunting well, to the extent is true was quite a daunting realization. When I worked in asset management, well, I still do work in asset management but now at least it's now. Now it's explicitly Bitcoin focus. When I worked in generalist asset management, I remember realizing this and being like, oh this is this is bad. Well, I mean I guess it's good for civilization, it's good for my career. It was bad. And so, so I guess the the implication there Alan is that the Cantalon effect and debt based monetary system creates inefficiencies or opportunities that necessitate or or allow for not necessitate allow for value accretion on a much larger scale than you can have in the financial system if you do not have a Cantalon effect and a debt based monetary system in action. Yeah, I think that's. Part of it, that's that's not exactly what I was getting at, although that is also that's yeah, another reason to believe this. What what I meant was more like the fact that you simply can't save with with money, right. Money is purely or almost entirely useful transactionally, but not really as a savings instrument, which is why I think it's so useful to just, you know, this touches on a whole bunch of things we've talked about so far to to to call Bitcoin savings technology. That's by far the most accurate way of describing what it does. And also not not just in terms of being accurate, but kind of downplaying a lot of stupid hype around what it doesn't do that actually lends itself better to to crypto. So with that in mind, given basically given you can't save with Fiat on an appropriately long time horizon you'd say for a couple of years, but you certainly can't save for your retirement say. It creates this absolutely gigantic need for not only a savings instrument but channelled via investment vehicles that have no business at a very time monetary premium that they now have. But I think frankly in a lot of cases they have no business even existing because they they exist at all to fulfil this, you know our SAT savings role. And so that's what I mean. Eventually, all that'll just go away because because you can save it. So savings technology shrinks the market of needing to. Yeah. I mean, the level of the level of fuckery is absolutely like insane. Like I can't even wrap my head around. It's why I appreciate like what we're trying to build and just figuring out the custody because then you can start to build up. But to Allen's point, I think about like zombie companies that go to the capital markets, like I cannot understand. I think about not to throw them under the bus, but IBM is probably a great example. I think it's understood that they're like a zombie, you know, effectively. But to be able to go and raise debt and do all these things to continue their life, like the amount of ways that transpires, whether it's economically through an investment bank and managing that and who's getting the fat check And then the people that are still working going and building things that like again I think Chamath got crap for this. But it was like there was directional to it a few weeks ago when he made that tweet about like I'm starting to fund to go just invest in companies that will rebuild like Fortune 5 hundreds are publicly traded. But at 110th the amount of like just 110th the efficiency or the OR 110th the the cost at 100th or whatever of the efficiency basically being like all these companies just foundationally aren't built correctly. And that's just one micro example of what you're alluding to from a more macro finance financial architecture, how everything has been built if there's just so much fat everywhere. I mean, I don't. I don't know. I don't know the details of Chamath's proposal, so I don't, I don't mean to. I'm not really arguing against it per SE. But from what you outlined just there, it seems like it's nonetheless missing the critical component of Bitcoin or or more like missing the the critical lack of a component of Fiat. Given that yeah you can you can go after IBM if you want you know the Boeing came to mind as as as you were giving that example too. I mean there's the point though is that there's endless examples that you you could get. You know you can go after them as a start up, but you can't compete with their completely artificial access to gargantuan amounts of capital that keeps them alive even though they shouldn't be alive on the one hand and this capital shouldn't really even exist on the other. So good luck to him I guess. But I think he he's not. The the problem is far deeper. He should just buy Bitcoin. And the beauty of that is like we will get there with like the the core theme is the opportunity cost should be Bitcoin because once it's Bitcoin then you don't end up with all that because that's like where we end up the end state. Yeah, it's interesting you you've actually, I've realized just in the past couple of minutes in the past few questions you've taken a slightly different perspective on this which again I also approval but it's it's not exactly what I meant. So it's correct me if I'm wrong, I don't need to put words in your right, but it seems like you're more interested in describing the opportunity cost of all the capital misallocation that follows from this which is also true. Very happy to talk about that too. My original concern though was that to some extent this is a misallocation of capital, but I see it as more honestly, like a like an injustice more than more than the the directly, you know, economic implications is why does this industry even exist? Like there's there's a huge amount of middle men and, you know, intermediation of various sorts. That again, is why is a rhetorical question, because I know why it exists. It exists to provide a a means of saving that otherwise just wouldn't. But now we have a means of saving that doesn't require any intermediation, which actually, we've come full circle, right? This is why the ETFs are bullshit. Why are you paying these? Well, just save. Just use savings technology. And to like, go like a layer deeper into the bullshit. Like, it's gotten to such a point from a passive investment standpoint that a lot of the relationships that are built between companies and the investment managers that are running the four O 1K plans, whatever, they're just literally people taking each other out, getting them drunk, becoming friends, being like, hey, you should just come into our fund, pay our fees because you like me and everybody's doing the same thing essentially. And there is actual value, Alan. To your point this came up yesterday with a guy that's we may know Circle. They manage like $80 billion from an investment perspective. And I was telling him about some like very large institutional investors that are we're onboarding and he's like well why wouldn't they just go smash buy Bitcoin. And again I was telling him I was like this tell you told me exactly what do you know how far you're down the rabbit hole because it doesn't make sense to us. But if you take a step back and this is part of like where you know we say an asset management firm built on multi institution because at the end of the day there is value in somebody whether it was BlackRock, I don't think it's BlackRock because I don't think they understand what's happening here. But educating the buyer of what they're getting into and the price cuts in half to double down And when it appreciates not to sell and all the things associated with the asset because there's so much inherent understanding or innate understanding from this group, but that isn't there and they don't necessarily know what they're buying. It's the same example is like financial advisors, which I think in today's terms are almost like this is going to, you know, a lot of financial advisors piss them off but they're almost in my mind like travel agents in the future they won't really exist unless they're very niche. I think what will exist and it reminds me of what a lot of folks that like an unchanged or here do. And what we did was thinking about what is financial advice around the asset. How do you think about it from an inheritance perspective? How do you think about it? If you do need to access to capital markets to get dollars because you have to buy a home and you don't want to sell because of a tax gain or a capital gains, all of those things will be foundational and are needed because of the understanding of us looking at this for so long. They just take a different form and they should be paid for like it's a good value being delivered. It's just not an ETF where somebody smash buys it sits on Coinbase where they like go to 0 or whatever happened the past week. They they like, you know, incompetent in multiple levels and they're hoping that they're going to give them the Bitcoin when they want it because we know how that ends. Yeah, yeah. And then there's a lot of pick up on there too, Just that I I was very deliberate in how I said I didn't say or certainly didn't mean to say or imply that asset management just goes away. Like Bitcoin just disintermediates finance or whatever. Which interestingly, there's maybe even a good tangent there about why I hate Defy as a meme because it just doesn't, doesn't make any sense. Even even if you believe all of this, it still doesn't make any sense. I I picked 10% just because it seems like a nice ride number. I don't know, it could be 5 percent, 1%, who knows. But I think there's there's a huge number of functions of financial and financial intermediation that are extremely valuable and will will absolutely still be needed on on a Bitcoin standard. I don't know how interesting it is to like go through what I think some of these will be. And my my point is more about the quantum of capital that is forced through this system. That's what I think goes away, right Or or or mostly goes away and because currently the, the and I think actually even to your point about you know what somebody like BlackRock thinks or or does or doesn't understand about what's what's really happening here. And I almost feel like the I forgot where I was going to go with that. I was going to make fun of BlackRock, but I forget why. There's too many reasons. Yeah. The the thing that I was anchoring and I think where we're both saying the same thing and I I just try to pull back where you're given a wider aperture and I think to like zoom in for individuals that are again as deep is I think of fintech. Like I think Bitcoin is the real fintech and this idea of like think about how much capital has this. Financial technology. Yeah, but then you know how much capital from, like all the way from the fat of formation that you're talking about, investment banks and VCs and pensions putting money like to the tunes of probably trillions of dollars. It's not hundreds of billions of dollars into fintech. And what we're describing here is Bitcoin is financial technology and there'll be capital invested into it. It's just we at one one thousandth or whatever of the amount. And that takes out a lot of needs for all the different people right now playing within that capital stack. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm. Just like I'm gonna remember how I was gonna make fun of BlackRock. But I remember what it was. Yeah, no, it it ties perfectly to exactly your point. Just there, Michael, too. And it's that they I think the this is, this is almost like a truism in a sense. But appreciating exactly why it's the case I think is is interesting that they're they're acting with a very they're acting what seems rationally on a very short term time horizon. And the problem is that they've never really thought about why the circumstances they're used to even exist in the 1st place. So you can kind of see why they'd be, if not, like, super strongly resistant to Bitcoin, at least highly highly skeptical even in the context of like, oh, we can make shit load of money off an ETF, right? We can skim the flows of this, even if we don't really believe in the stock. Their entire, their entire business model. I guess that's probably the best way of putting it. Their entire business model is is predicated on a need that this undermines. I mean that's that's yet another reason I I like to be. Kind of jokingly contrarian about the ETF that I think they I think I like in all honesty, there's maybe not that much of a joke. It's maybe just more on what perspective are you willing to adopt that you you can't really be bullish on Bitcoin if you own an ETF. It it doesn't, it's philosophically incoherent. You can have a bullish thesis on Bitcoin that involves ETFs making sense. So that's another. I mean, obviously no one, no one cares. No one smashed by an ETF. Scares by this, but I think in like 50 years they will. That's kind of my point. Yeah. No, I I love that because I think it's resonates with like I just joked that it's a different they're different planets. The gravity's different. Like, we're just talking about different things, right. And like when you try to like understand this, you're like, wait, you're breathing a different type of like oxygen than when I'm at we're talking about a different level playing field and that's what you're describing. And so you can. Yeah. I think, I think it happens sooner than 50 years because we've discussed this. I think in the summer, last summer, Michael, like the ETF, when when the ETFs first started getting filed, they were becoming a big conversation and we were telling people don't buy the ETF, you're going to want an actual Bitcoin. They can call in kind at some point. Because what we're seeing is that it is turning into actual money that you can spend many different ways. And I think at some point sooner than 50 years from now, it's gonna be abundantly clear that you're gonna be able to transact with Bitcoin and use Bitcoin in unique ways. It's collateral or use its properties to do specific escrow agreements that you're gonna need the actual underlying UTXOS or access to Bitcoin on the Lightning Network or within via E cash tokens within a mint like. And I think the pure utility that using actual Bitcoin provides today and will provide in the future, it's just gonna force people out of the ETFs because they're like, I actually need to use this thing. I can't just, yeah, have it sit in this fund. And look well so, so that's interesting. I I I think obviously completely agree with the, the points about the utility. I do think to some extent though the the bull case for the ETFs kind of necessitates a bit of a bear case on the timeline of all of this. I'll explain what I mean by that. So I think the I I don't really know the details, this is pure speculation, but I I would imagine that the vast majority of ETF demand not just now but probably ever is coming from Best way of describing I guess would be something like pools of capital with no other legal option. So it's it's people who actually can't just go buy Bitcoin and and hold it. I mean actually Michael probably disagrees with this because I'm sure you have a whole on ramp presentation explaining why this is like misunderstood. But but I I would even in light of that actually Michael you should comment on this in just a second. But I I would imagine that the extent to which that's true is largely the case just at the margin and for for the still for the majority if not that not all but you know some pretty solid majority of EDF buyers. It's because like they also couldn't just have dollars, right. It's like it's trapped in this environment and this is like a nice release valve almost. But it's again it's not you know it's not real Bitcoin. It's not like going all the way. And so in terms of linking that to the timeline though, the way I see this unraveling and the and the reason I just picked 50 years, again it's just it's like a round Number, but it's suitably long that it's difficult to think about it is that I see this unwinding by people not contributing to pension plans in the 1st place. So it it really takes an entire it. This won't be the only reason obviously, but I think this will be the most important reason on a sufficiently long time horizon that because we have this savings technology now which is we've just never had in any of our lifetimes, people will choose to actually save. And one way you can actually interpret this, I guess is that they'll in doing so, they will be starving the beast, right? The capital that would otherwise have just naturally flowed into whatever ETFs, mutual funds, all all kinds of active passive management, trillions of dollars of most of which is useless intermediation. Now actually just goes into money instead. But I think that takes, I don't know, 50 years is exactly the right number to pick. But you know it it takes a a life cycle of workers opting for a different way to save. I think that's that's like the cleanest way of understanding it. So that's why I'm kind of bearish on the on the timeline, yeah, there's a. A few things there. One is so Marty's wife listens and you know she he's promised 8 to 10 years because she's tired of him hanging out with his Internet magic Internet friends. They want to Marty has a small Latin American country. He's going to to buy with his his his Bitcoin on the price. But another eight years. Yeah. The the funny part you referenced, Alan, is there's a lot of like like corollaries to like past, you know biblical and like not even yet like in that side of. But there's this like notion of you got to be out, you got to like wait for almost like what you described as a a group to pass before the next people will understand it or like adopt it or fully embrace it. But then the the ETF thing is really interesting because I I've found like when you build in this space like the closer you tie to like Bitcoin or the the protocol or the the history and experiences that Unchained where you start to really like tie into like a lot of the Saints or like the the notion of I guess it's a Sunzu quote but wait for the long enough by the wait long enough by the river for the body of your enemies to float by And it's like you think about exchanges and all the things happening. And another one I think of is like the Bitcoin ETF for specifically you reference on ramp or or any like buddy building custody is it's almost good. Unchained is a great example as well. It's good if they don't release if they don't let you have this escape valve like you can take delivery and it's it's good if they let you and it's good if they don't and for obvious reasons if they don't then people are going to learn and go other places. And if they do the beauty is like people or at least my thesis is like they're going to need help and they're not going to go to Coinbase like they would just leave it with the ETF. So then they're going to go search out solutions. And then we talked about this with KPMG last week. It's like I see a, a future world where like again, let's say Michael Saylor, somebody like him is holding a large position like $10 billion into Bitwise or, you know, whatever. ETF might as well be the same right there at Coinbase. And then they wake up and they say, well, why don't I participate in this governance effectively and why don't you know in a three O 5, four or five, whatever the number is. Why does an our organization sign the first transaction between 10 controllers, whatever that looks like And then some they if they come to that, they're going to need somebody to support them with that process. And so I just see that would be the the valve regardless of if they let it come out because Blackrock's not going to do that. Like, no, I mean, there's very few people are going to do that because that's just now they're built, they want to centralized and hold the assets. So I don't know if that helps in like the framing of like how I think about this playing out. But either way, they're gonna get educated and they're gonna be like, holy crap, BlackRock holds a trillion dollars. This is not good for my position because if something happens, that's a zero on my book. And that's why I like very bullish on everything we're building. Because we've seen this happen with Block 5 and nobody thought it would go to zero and then it goes, it goes to 0. Yeah, yeah, I think the market's gonna force this. I mean, just look at what happened. Was it 2 days ago now at this point? Like Queen Base could not handle the the trading volume, they their systems went down. You couldn't buy, you couldn't sell. You're seeing $0.00 asset balance in the application, like if you're an ETF. I didn't know that. That's quite funny. If you're an ETF custody with this company or if you're a buyer of the ETF that is custodying with this company, you're like, what is going on here? We need, we need to make sure not that all this risk is not concentrated within this one company. So I think to your point, Michael, the participants will begin to force this like, hey, if you want, yeah, my business, you're going to have to play in this model. Yeah. To to be fair though so so this is an interesting point to again be a bit bearish but for a more serious reason rather than just pseudo contrarianism. Right. And I I do Michael, will, I guarantee you Michael knows what I'm about to say significantly more detail than I do. So I encourage you to push back on this, but I I do wonder if there's the, the kind of the glass half empty view is you know, OK, yes, all these somewhat inevitable failures will encourage people to think it through more thoroughly than if anything I think that goes to what we talked about right at the start in terms of them being an educational stepping stone. But how much will not be able to escape, like how much will go in and will never come out regardless of how educated everybody gets. I don't know. Do do you have a, do you have a comeback for that, Michael? I have a very strong one and it's kind of, it's scary. I don't even want to say it, but I will because I don't care is I think that there's a real world. There's a non zero chance whatever goes in never comes out. Yeah. And and what happened? What you're agreeing with. Me even more never comes out and never comes out in Bitcoin and dollars or just Bitcoin. The Bitcoin gets out there. Are you saying that it's getting confiscated? Is that what you're trying? I've been in chat with you. I've told I've told you that that I think that there's a non zero chance whatever the ETFs are we like it's basically forget about the ETFs that whatever 21 million obviously we all know it's arbitrary number and we think in our heads it's 17,000,000 we end up with our 16 it could be maybe 12 or 11 or 10 and this could be a real reason why I think there's non zero chance. Like I think it's that like I fall in your camp, Allen, like in my heart and my, you know ahead of like where you're coming as staunch like this is not good. But at the same point I really have to build a business in the real world and like from this perspective and you know the the products and services and the reality is when you meet people where they're at, they don't want to hear that. So you got to explain that. Yeah, of course. And all of it. But there's just, it's true, like I would tell anybody that it's like you go in and it happened like the the beauty of all the things we're saying. We're not pontificating for the sake of it. It's like we saw this. We told people this at previous firms whether it was Genesis, which I guess maybe they're making people whole, but in some respects not not every respect. Three AC, Celsius, FTX, we can continue to go and it's going to happen again. It's basically the basis of what we build this for is because we believe orders of magnitude of carnage are going to happen in you know two or three years when the market the, the fun part about this are not fun but I've been having this conversation is you know, it'd be like well why would you think it's going to happen? And the easiest answer is the same people that were running Block Fire FTX or running these exact same products. Yeah, yeah. I thought you were going to say something even snarkier than that. I thought you were going to say why don't you think it's going to happen? Yeah, there you go. I I think that's I'm so bold for Alan on that that. Pushes them to again actually start going deeper and like force them out of the, you know the I wouldn't. I don't need to be insulting but non Bitcoin. I was going to say the Fiat attitude, but it's just you know the the pre Bitcoin legacy financial system attitude of you know, it's slightly different to the point I was making before about all these intermediaries. Now it's more like custodians, right? Like these assets don't really exist in any meaningful sense without the custodian's involvement, but now they do. So like why are you putting it back in the box? No. And it's, I mean, we've seen this, I've seen this person, I saw it this week. I told the story on Rabbit Hole Recap yesterday. But it is important to us because this stuff will happen. We've seen it many times. We've predicted it many times. We talked for years about Block Fi and the fact that their lending practices were extremely risky and likely to blow up. Celsius was a well known scam behind the scenes. And then FDX was just obviously a corrupt institution. SPF had no idea what he's talking about, if you actually have listened to him during his interviews. And so you have examples there. And as we're talking here like it seems like there's a similar trend taking place right now, even though there may be an institutional stamp of approval on these things. Like I would not rule out the likelihood that the Bitcoin is mismanaged in one way or another, whether that's taking it and lending it out for DGN traders to do something with it, whether the government confiscates it. But you have this ability via multi sig setups like the ones that on ramp provides to actually take control of your Bitcoin and reduce this risk and eliminate this risk. And I had a buddy who called me on Monday, he got SIM swapped on Sunday and he thanked me because two years ago I convinced him to move his Bitcoin off of the exchange he was using and into a multi sig Volt It Unchained. And the reason I told him is he's a public figure and he's talked about owning Bitcoin and I'm like dude, you're a target. You've talked about Bitcoin publicly, you're pretty well known like you are going to get attacked in the future and that is exactly what happened. And he texted me to thank me for telling him to get it into a secure a secure custody set up with Unchained. And this is going to happen time and time again in many different ways. The thing I'd be careful in that one is it was good for now. But like I think we all agree we're in a like bear market for whether it's statism or the just like you know what I'm sorry, bull market for statism and overreach. And also in the same way of like degradation of, you know, just we all walk around cities and we see kind of, I don't know if it's famine is the right word, but like despair and and you see that on the Internet, it manifests in the Internet form and that's why you want to protect the asset. What concerns me is being loud about us holding our keys. And and it's not to say not to do it or whatever. It's more of like I talked to somebody the other day in South Africa. His brother was tortured for his Bitcoin because he knew, they knew the process. They knew how to like it was just a whole OTC transaction went wrong. But it's this whole notion of like where that will not not happen as the price goes into orders of thousands of dollars. And so this idea of like because we have our keys and now they're split apart like our families are not, it's not something we want to be loud about even though it's a good like thing to say off the exchange. It's like we're still so early that what's good at 40K won't be the same AT400K or 4 million. So anyway that that's just a a notable thing. And then Alan, I really like your position on there. It's like tell me why this wouldn't happen. It goes back to what we said earlier in the calls, like tell me what your position is on why this, why we shouldn't have a an allocation. In the same way tell me like why the ETF or any centralization will work out well and Brian Cabela's from our team said it really nicely. It's like we have the most decentralized asset we've ever seen and we put it on a centralized custodian. Like it doesn't even make any sense. Yeah, I mean I agree even further than that right. It's it's obviously agree with that framing of it. But and and Marty mentioned this before in terms of you know various utilities let's say of of actually owning it that it's also natively digital. It's it's arguably the first and only the kind of the only natively digital asset, and you're you're also just forcing it back into an analogue wrapper like. Why? Yeah, I I joke around. I say the only difference between Bitcoin and gold is multi sig. Yeah, that was a good idea. I've said, I've said a similar version of that several times that that you can't multi say gold. Yeah, again, usually in just kind of a snarky way to, like, make people think rather than making an actual point. You probably could. You could have a vault with three keys, 3 individuals. Yeah, it was a golden. Turn it in one place. Like it's true. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's no, no. It is hard like timelines and thinking how quickly all this will evolve, whether it's on the capital formation side and the price of Bitcoin or the utility side and what you can do with Bitcoin. It's fun to think about because I mean on the utility side, I see it every day. There's new apps coming out that you can interact with very easily. That again, we're in a bubble. We've been in this for a while. We see it clear than most people on the planet. It's like, holy shit, this is a step function improvement on the way I was interacting with apps that exist in the incumbent tech space. Just because you add some Bitcoin to it, maybe add noster or something else, and it seems like things are happening quicker. And then you also have the tailwind of the maybe, I mean, societal degradation is one way to see it, but another one way to say it, another way to say it is just the complete collapse of confidence in institutions. And I think that introduces A catalyst where people will be more receptive to looking into Bitcoin and using Bitcoin. Yeah. No I I. New ways to do things. That's huge. I I think my only I don't know what's the best way to put this. I was gonna say my only issue with it, but I I don't disagree with you at all. It's more like my concern about it even being true in the 1st place is that I've always found that is a terrible way to advertise it, right? Like, nobody, nobody wants to hear that everything is going to shit. Like if or if they are willing to hear that, they're certainly not willing to hear, you know, they just sit through the lecture on how everything's going to shit. Then you're, you know, you're going to fix it with your magic Internet beans. Like that's that. That just pushes them over the edge. So yeah, I mean, I completely agree with the the facts of the case, if you like. I just have no idea how to make that argument. I I I kind of feel like it almost came across in the way you said it there, Marky, that probably the best way that works is people just making the argument for themselves, like all coming to a similar conclusion about that. Yeah, I mean, that's what's happened to the up until this point is individuals coming to their own conclusions. Like, hey, all of us at one point looked at what was happening. We looked at Bitcoin. We're like, all right, I'm going and playing over here. That'll happen, I think, at an accelerated pace. And it's hard because you can't completely disconnect the state of the world from the value prop of Bitcoin. But I agree, messaging's important narratives are important. And that's why I'm excited to see all these new applications and use cases for Bitcoin coming to market. Because it provides the opportunity to pitch Bitcoin and optimistic like like look at what you can do with Bitcoin that you can. Well and to and to Michael's point. Right. To reach people where they are. Right. If you can. This is this is I mentioned this in a completely different context before in terms of like what we like to invest in. And if you can I'm trying to think how even how sneaky you can be about it. If you can actually get somebody to use something or to start using something fairly continuously on the basis that it just works right or is just is cheaper or whatever. And then at some point you know pull back the curtain is like it was Bitcoin all along. Like that's that's great. That's way better than what was I said before. You know, whining about the the conspiracy of the set up of the Federal Reserve, or, as you know, as you brought up now, like pointing to how everything's going to shit like that's. There's very few people you can meet there. There's a lot more people you can meet by it just being useful. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think the people coming in as an exciting component because price is the forcing function for awareness and a lot of these discussions in people and companies will be exciting at the next wave. And I'm actually, I would say this after the thing, but I'll say it now. I'm pretty bullish on Allen being on the the last trade. You know you're going to have to do do this again. It's a nice like different take than to help it. What's that? It's much more laid back since we all know each other. It's much more laid back conversation and. Well, laid back, but there's like a healthy like pushback and contrarian take of like let's let's think about it in a different way that I think, I think listeners are going to like. I think this was a good that's a good Rep. You you got to take that with a pinch of salt though, because keep in mind my proclivity to do that very much comes from Twitter rather than like real life or it being useful or anything. I just well, that's why. I just want. To kick the hornet's nest a bit. No, that's why. That's why it makes good because instead of just taking it, we're like, wait, let's let's really dissect. Are you saying this just to say it's ruffles and feathers or there's the validity and and I think that's what we've done kind of on this, the set episode? Yeah, And for anybody who has not read the incredible research pieces that Axiom puts out, make sure you go read those. One of my favorites is the one that Theo Mojane wrote on. Oh yeah, yeah. That's recreating money market funds. There's there's three of them and I think they're all good, but. Yes, Eric Yanks and then your piece, right and my one was? The first one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go read it all. It's Orange is the New Green, I think was my favorite. We'll all have to get together soon. I think me and Alan might be looking at the UAE little part time go go visit and then Marty wants to go out there, so. Are you getting a place in the UAE too? I don't. Think he would get a? Place he's flagged, isn't it Right, You got to get places everywhere. I'm not a so do. You know society is collapsing, Martin. I'm. I'm not going anywhere. America will be the best scene of freedom. I will die on that hill are. You going to be in Texas or you'll? Probably will literally die on. That. Yeah. Oh man. Get stabbed by some some on the street with. The machete shabbed. By some shit coiner. I should have went to Dubai. Well, Alan, thank you Michael. We have anything else we want to. No. Thank you guys. No, it was awesome. I'm. I'm looking forward to doing this again. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Good luck with the rest of your move. I know it's literally the worst activity in the world is is to move. So thank you. I don't envy your position at all and hopefully you get some time to to enjoy part of your weekend this weekend. I will do my best. Yes, I will. I will stay off Twitter. I will temper my FOMO. I'll maybe go outside. I'll enjoy the real world. That's nice. Get some fresh air. We'll be back next week. See you guys.
Transcript source: fountain