The Last Trade E042: Entering a New Paradigm with Mitch Kochman

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 and securing assets and Coincover the premier digital asset risk mitigation company on RAMPS. 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 having 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 Governors 1970? 4. 198792972000 and whatever we want to. Call this. It's all just the same. Thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we sell, hey, OK. So I'm behind. I say when we sell. Gentlemen, are you choosing Rich? Every day. I'm I'm starting to I'm starting to question my whole Bitcoin maxi thing because you know, NFT Nick is making some really good points. He's on a boat. He's on a boat. He's got a penthouse in New York. I don't know, Drake. Drake seems to be picking up the signal. Posting sailor comments on his on his story, that's pretty big. He's got like, I think, 200 million followers on Instagram. Wow, that's insane. 7X what I thought. I thought it was like 30 million. I think it's in the, I think it's in the nine figures. So the figure what did he post exactly? He posted a Michael Saylor clip of what? It was him on CNBC. Yeah, basically breaking down why like MSTR from like a higher beta or whatever like from a trading and all the things is is he's breaking down why somebody would hold MSTR versus like spot, yeah. So, so that would sort of suggest that like Drake has a big MSTR position then, which is a wild world to live in. Potentially. I mean, he's got a lot of money. He's probably diversified. Yeah, good for him. Good to have Drake on on Team Bitcoin. It's I'm fine to not have NFT Nick on Team Bitcoin that that one we can we can miss out on. So David Garland, he's an NBA star, was was in a a Satoshi T-shirt showing up to warmups last week. So definitely, definitely getting, getting some of that bull market buzz back. We're not seeing. The. MSTR thing's funny because, you know, everybody probably has their friends that are, you know, aping in or family or wives their 401 KS. But I was talking with, and I'm sure, and I'm only saying this, 'cause I saw his public on Twitter is a rock star was joking around how he, he has a position or had one. And it was because he was hanging out with like, Preston and these guys in Madera, and they're like, telling him about it. And so he's like, screw it. And he's like, it's just a joke, 'cause I was just talking. He's like, it's all Ponzi. He's just like, laughing on this call because it's just like ripping, outpacing. He's like, Bitcoin goes like this and MSTR just goes like this. He's like, I don't even know why. He's like, it's all just like a joke. And then a couple of hours later I looked on Twitter. He's like, guys, the Volatility's too much. I'm stopping out my position. Like, good luck. And I guess there's a thing accrue at 2121 Crew, 'cause it's trading like 1600 a share. He's like, you guys can deal with this, but I guess that's like, it's just been this trade that everybody knew. I'm just and we're just, I don't know, I'm not in it. I'm just sitting on my little poor bitcoins. It's fascinating watching it play out because I mean you think about and where I don't know how much of it is, you know, I'd say buzz and retail buzz pumping up and and destroying shorts versus the actual valuation. But they're so levered up in that treasury. And like I'm starting to learn more the side of you know, this is just the impact of being so levered up on Bitcoin and what happens when all that bitcoins in the green. You know, there's a, there's a chance, not financial advice that this is, you know, just just how this looks moving forward. Well, that I saw an interesting thread comparing Micro Strategy's Bitcoin acquisition strategy to the Hunt brothers in the 80s where they tried to corner the silver market. Made me question like, is this something we should be worried about as an industry, like is micro strategy. I think at one point the Hunt brothers had something I don't think Sailor and Micro Strategy will like ever get to this percentage. But I think at one point in the 80s they just, they were doing the micro strategy thing where they were taking out cheap debt, buying a bunch of silver. I think they acquired something like 80% of the physical silver on the market at the time. And then they got to a point where they're levered too much and they were forced to liquidate by the government crash the price of or silver from I think like 18 to $2.00. I think you wonder though if like if they had had it, if they were trying to corner the market on an asset that had increasing scarcity and like was early stage in its adoption and it was you know still a small asset in the global scheme of things. Maybe it would have worked but it it doesn't work for silver where you where you can also ramp up production of the asset by mining more too. So, so maybe like that playbook, Playbook does work with a better asset. And of course Sailor will never get to 80%. He's at 1% now of all the Bitcoin. And it is kind of a fun thing to think about, like how many entities, how many companies or or nation states will ever get to 1% of all the Bitcoin because it's a lot more than 100 who should be interested in accumulating Bitcoin and will at some point. And obviously they can't, you know, you can't have even 100 entities accumulate 1% of the Bitcoin. There'll be a much, much smaller number and obviously the price has to go up in order to prevent that from, you know, from being possible really. Yeah. And and I think there's actually I was reading about it and it was kind of like instinctually I think it has to do with similar as oil like commodities that have infrastructure baked in along with all the different bureaucracy tied in is what like kills trying to corner and tie like peg doll or peg nominal amounts to the underlying into it. They were like sued and there was like regulation. There's all these things happening but there's none of that that exists in Bitcoin. So like, the government can do something to sailor, but like if you're just sitting in your Abu Dhabi or Saudi Arabia, like they can do as much they can buy as much Bitcoin as they want. To Jesse's point, like, it's just a reflexive market. There's no like Central Point where you can go like shut it off or don't like buy anymore. Right. Or make more of it. Yeah, that's the, I mean the other side of the coin is this just a full on speculative attack on the dollar cause news this week MicroStrategy did another convertible note oversubscribed over $800 million at a 65 BIP interest rate due in 20-30 I believe. And so we're just doing the math on Bitcoin's average CAGR over what's that a six year period? I mean it seems pretty pretty wise. Financial more than 1%, yeah. It's this happened. I had Pierre Richard on TFTC last week to talk about Elizabeth Warren's attack on the Bitcoin mining industry. But that's one thing we harken back to the first episode of TFTC that we ever recorded. The 1st guest ever had on TFTC was Pierre and go back to October 2017 and he says it pretty explicitly like at some point one of these companies gonna start borrowing money to just buy Bitcoin. And lo and behold, three years later micro strategy set out on that path and has accumulated 1% of the total supply. Will, Will Cole talks about this a lot, right? I don't know if it's Switzerland, but it's some like European. Country. Switzerland, right? They like print money from the central bank to buy equities like in this like U.S. equity like so it's just a matter of time. Yeah, yeah, it's happening first first the last trade episode or recording above the previous all time high. How's it feel, gentlemen? Mitch, what was that you were saying before we started? It's it's quiet. It is quiet. It's the quietest all time high, you know, at least I I've seen, you know being in the market since since 2017. I'm definitely getting getting some of the text from, you know, from people that we've been begging to you know, buy Bitcoin during during the bear markets. But I'd say you know as far as the IT being commonplace and you know you see it on CNBC, but I'd say friends, family, I I think largely are blissfully unaware of the appreciation we've been seeing. Yeah, I was. I was commenting before that it it feels like we're entering a new era for Bitcoin of like we're we're leaving behind the the time when an average person could stack a whole Bitcoin, you know, 'cause $70,000 per Bitcoin. That's that's out of reach for most people, I would say. And it it's kind of interesting how quiet it is and how the vast majority of people simply have yet to realize that they missed an opportunity. But I think I think that's you know people will look back on people will look back on 70,000 as cheap which is the the alarming thing about where we're at right now. Because you know every time we've gone through a long bear market and then slowly approached the previous all time high. You know when you reach that all time high again it feels like wow we've we've made it back. We're as high as Bitcoin ever goes because you know, you have this four year memory of here's the range that Bitcoin can possibly go to and and we're at the top end of that. And then a year later because of the halving that comes and the supply scarcity that plays out, suddenly the price is like 5X higher than it than it was at that, you know at that moment when prior all time high was met and exceeded finally. So, you know, I think we're at that point again where like 70,000 is going to look like 20,000 did four years ago, which is to say like a year later it'll it'll it'll seem cheap based on where we're going. And it's just so it's like a kind of sad moment in many ways, because I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I succeeded in getting some of my friends and family to acquire a meaningful position of Bitcoin, but for the most part they didn't listen. Most most of my network still doesn't have a meaningful position of Bitcoin and and I doubt that they will get to whole coiner status now. Yeah, it's gonna be hard for many people we're sitting at. I think we just dropped sitting around like $70,500. That's more than the median income in the United States right now. So I think for your average person, and as this thing runs, it's gonna get harder and harder to stack sets. I think, I think the beauty of that though is like it goes back to positioning in the unit bias like end of the day anybody can preserve their wealth, right. So we have to figure out what is new messaging of like. It's not necessarily an investment. It's literally just protecting yourself and making sure you can stack and then think about your future and retain the purchasing power so you can have some hope to build something. Because I got caught with this, like with somebody bagging groceries, I asked, like, randomly about Bitcoin. It's like, oh, yeah, that thing's too far from me. And I like, got caught because I was like, shit, like you're not gonna buy a whole Bitcoin. But like, there's actually a lot more. There is obvious value to the underlying, but it's like more nuanced than, hey, buy this, you know, as a percentage of your net worth, it's low. Like think about this because you can actually, you know, preserve your purchasing power and think about the future in a positive light then versus just being stuck on like throwing dollars in a club to make it rain. So I think we just got to figure out that and then the unit buys probably comes in at some point, right where we switched Sats or something to help. Yeah, I I do like the the meme that's been going around lately of Bitcoin is only zero point zero $1 million or less. 0.07, sorry, 0.07 million dollars, that's a good way to reframe it because that's where we're heading. And yeah at some point it it probably we probably switched to sats as as like what people talk about. But because, you know, when when Bitcoin is fluctuating between 456,000 and you know, 482,000 in a day, those numbers become so large that it's hard to like make sense of them or or they they feel it's like talking about Berkshire Hathaway stock prices. It's just not salient. And so maybe we switch to SAT SAT's, the standard. And I'll go first, we almost actually have to switch to SAT's because probably in parallel, if there's going to be technological component to Bitcoin being used in anything like consumer applications, it's going to be in SAT's. So it's just going to be a synonymous thing with Bitcoin and you need it to be like the same standard because if you have one over here with like decimal places, you know the other one over here with thousands, like I think there ends up being a a standard that's established and it's probably SAT's, right? Yeah, I'd say. Probably. But we need the meaningful appreciation for for it to not be absurd numbers that we're we're still dealing with there. You know, to buy, you know, burger with 1000 stats, you know, is a little bit tougher. But if we get that price appreciation they they it will be easier numbers to to transact with. But I do think those bear. Probably the cycle, probably the cycle that that that you know we as a community do need to figure out you know what what that unit basis is is going. Right. That'll probably be a big conversation in the next bear market. As it stands right now, one kook buck $1.00 is worth 14115 sets, so at some point this year most likely will fall below 1000 SATS per dollar. I think that's when you get into a really interesting pair, yeah. It's like, all right. Another related thing that I was thinking about this morning is I've been thinking about, you know, the the the layup for Bitcoin is to match gold. It's just such a clear path to do that as a minimum, and in my head that has been like 400, five, $100,000 per Bitcoin to match gold. But gold is appreciating too right now and with the inflation that we're inevitably going to see over the next few years, we probably are at parity with gold, around $1,1,000,000 per Bitcoin. All that, all that that would mean is, you know, $21 trillion asset class. Gold right now is like a 1415 trillion dollar asset class. So gold would just have to grow a little bit and Bitcoin grow a lot. But that would be that would be quite something that if if we're at parity with gold at that price point and that's just the beginning for what Bitcoin will eventually do that that's that's the minimum. So yeah, I think, I think thinking about that this morning sort of made me realize how how likely $1,000,000 per Bitcoin really is. Because by the time that that's you know in the cards, gold will be at that total valuation anyway, and it'll just mean matching the pet rock. If you're if you're setting setting gold as you know the the bar that we're going for here I read this week that ETF inflows just in the last two months were five times or were larger than than the last five years of gold ETF inflows. So that that acceleration is certainly happening and I think we we we might end up there as I said gold's appreciating but I think as more people wake up to you know in the we see the game theory occur on on the Bitcoin side. I think you might see some flows out of gold and you know, might speed up sort of Bitcoin taken over in that race. Yeah, a a related bit of math there. It's it's, I saw something on Twitter a week or two ago about, you know, there's like $500 million of of net inflows on average for the ETFs recently every trading day. And obviously we're about to enter an era where we're mining 450 Bitcoin per day and so, so long as there's that so so long as assuming that there's from all other demand sources net 0 inflows. So, so not negative, but not positive and the ETFs continue at $500 million a day. For price equilibrium to re establish in that in the new block reward era, price will have to go to $1,000,000 per Bitcoin. And obviously there's a lot of assumptions in there that won't remain true, but that's how close, that's how massive the ETF inflows are and how that bumps up against the increasing scarcity that's coming and puts suddenly $1,000,000 per Bitcoin like in our sights. I don't think it happens this cycle, but like it suddenly becomes like possible. I I I've got a op-ed coming out this week but the the premise of of it is is largely you know what you would describe here is we're we're seeing supply demand dynamics that we we haven't really seen in you know in previous Bitcoin cycles there's we're at all time high pre having and we're you know the the dynamics that are are are playing out we've got different buyers here than we've ever seen in Bitcoin stable buyer larger buyers coming in that don't have retail behaviors and I think it's misguided comparing you know at the risk of this time it's different comparing you know previous cycles to this one just because the the the game has has totally changed you know you've got anyone from you know your fidelities and black rocks putting Bitcoin in you know all in or you know total total funds that you know they're giving Bitcoin an allocation to. To obviously CE OS and board members are seeing you know what's going on at micro strategy and that stock price appreciation looking there and they've got you know incentive structures that are aligned to stock price increases like there will be domino stuff all here there's just different buyers and you know with with very very different behaviors and I think if we're we're looking at past cycles to try to try to get price predictions here you know for better or worse I I think you know those people are are gonna look pretty silly when when we're all said and done here. Yeah, I think things are gonna get weird when you saw. Last. Week we mentioned the fact that the Arizona State treasury wrote an official letter saying hey, we want to make it so that our retirement systems can buy these Bitcoin ETFs. This morning we saw the Patience capital which is I believe $15 billion in AUM is amending their prospectus to enable them to have the ability to allocate up to 15% of one of their funds into the Bitcoin ETFs. Their founder is a student of Bill Miller's who is a prominent bitcoiner from the Tradfi world, and I was talking to my neighbor last night is wealth manager at Morgan Stanley. We've been talking a lot about the ETFs and their impact and he was explaining to me last night that it's far exceeded his expectations up to this point just due to his knowledge of how slow these institutional investors move. And we were talking about the Arizona State treasury and a couple of their funds that are beginning to amend their prospectuses to enable access to Bitcoin ETS specifically. And like it really hasn't even started yet in terms of institutional inflows that that we can, that we can expect in the future. It's gonna take time 6 to 9 months for a lot of this to happen. So think about. What you said there with the 15% which is the, you know right now I think Fidelity, you know they're with a more aggressive fund I think was at was at 3% and might have been a little higher. But all these you know asset managers are are all competing against each other to show the best returns and you're going to see that number increase and increase as you know number goes up to you know be most attractive to the most clients. And it's it's that game theory again, if largely they're going to be competing against each other and it's just going to drive more liquidity to the asset class, once again, it's going to get weird. Yeah, we'll see. I I mean I don't know about you guys but I'm like I'm I'm incredulous. I I after so long of like believing that this this asset is you know worth a million, $10 million and it's finally starting to get appropriately repriced just just beginning to I definitely have some like emotional inertia of like I I kind of can't believe it's finally happening or finally beginning and yeah been pinching myself a little bit lately and and despite the fact that like I don't think I could really have done much more in terms of stacking. I also feel like, man, the window of opportunity closed, maybe I should have done more. Yeah, you all have that FOMO. I should have been stacking more. I should have been making more money. But it is what it is. These ridiculous price pumps are reminders, like I gotta work harder, gotta cut my cost where where they can be cut to make sure that I'm saving as much Bitcoin as possible. And I was explaining it to my neighbor last night. He was talking about how he got one of his friends in the Bitcoin they bought like $1000 at $65,000 Bitcoin. And that was like one point 5 million Sats, I think. And I explained to him, I was like, if every person on the world were to adopt Bitcoin, you'd divide 8,21,000,000 by 8 billion. Like the average person's only gonna get 230,000 Sats if it were evenly distributed, which we know it's not. MicroStrategy has 1%, Satoshi has a million coins. You're gonna get sovereign wealth funds that scoop up hundreds of thousands like. So thinking, thinking of that #230,000 sets, if it's evenly distributed among 8 billion people, if you're above that, you're you're doing well. And it's a small amount of money right now still, even with the price bumping part of. What I found was fun about the show and talking with folks is I think it's what made all In a good pot is there's people like doing stuff in the real world every day. And so you get to bring it every week and like have the conversations behind the scenes without naming the names in front. And one of the conversations I had yesterday was about like, there's this level of of it's not intensity but like in the bowl that you naturally feel and the word's gonna escape me. But it's effectively like it's not really responsibility, but it's just different when the stakes are at $70,000 and you're kind of like now you may be suggesting point, you're pinching yourself as you're like, OK, you built it for this and now you have to the the way we like and they were joking around, it's like you're driving on the highway at well, you know, very fast speed and there's like a Brinks truck in front of you and there's $100 bills flying out. Now you have to start picking them up and you only have X amount of time. And so like the the the the game and the the the game and the stakes start to increase as the price appreciates. And so there's a different level of responsibility and things at play versus when it's $25,000 and nobody's looking at it. And I think there's like this natural like uncomfortability or or friction that's like starting to be felt by individuals that are working in this space. I don't know if anybody feels like that here, but I personally have in this individual I was talking to you that that works for one of the larger like ETPETF providers was in a similar boat. And I think that's kind of what also Jesse was alluding to is like, OK, now you're here and it's like this is what you've been waiting for. Now there's like, what do you actually do to capitalize? I I've. Seen the behavior change from I'd say let's first start with the the existing Bitcoin platforms that I work with and the I'd say all through the bear it was figuring out how do we build new products and there was that you know anything from you know what we bought with on ramp to Swan Vault and and you know the work I did with Swan it was all product creation and that conversation with the existing platforms has totally changed and it's now how do we how do we number one like we there was a lot of shoring down on the infrastructure and you've got you know a lot of I'd say some of the miners out there looking for 2nd and 3rd custodians you know to spread risk now that the the asset price has gone up but it's it's figuring out you know we're faces you know with the the the new fee market as you know the demand comes in you know more people are are you using and moving moving asset. We've got you know all the you know the BRC 20s and ordinals taking up clogging up manpoles which you know comes and goes. But these platforms do need to respond and be able to handle withdrawals in that environment and a lot of them offer free withdrawals which gets expensive. You know we need to be able to do send too many transactions. You know Biko just released replaced by fee where if you got a transaction clogged in the mem pool you can if you put a setting on that transaction you can you can then flip it you know with the new transaction with a higher fee to to ensure it gets processed. It's a lot of changes like that where really how do we, how do we handle the all the new demand, that's the new demand, the new price appreciation which obviously very different than than releasing new products. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you were building in the bear market. Anybody running a company out there because the the wave is coming and I think we're better positioned from an industry standpoint to take on this wave outside of Coinbase, which is obviously not as bad. I'll test it as it as it should be at this point, 12 years into its existence, to to handle an influx of users, but outside of Coinbase, it does seem like the infrastructure is more robust than ever, I'd say. On the custodian side, I'd say trading side liquidity, I think that's pretty short down. My concerns compared to the last cycle are are in the banking side and the you know obviously you've got banks upside down you know because of because of treasuries and as a as an industry they we are you know pretty underbanked and a lot of you know you've got smaller banks you know supporting you know a lot of a lot of on ramps here and you know BICCO we've got a network of I think like 6 to 8 banks supporting our infrastructure. I'm hoping you know a lot of a lot of the the exchanges out there do have that the the sort of rail so they don't need to shut down trading, you know should you know bank or or cascaded banks go under. So that's that's where my fears are. It's it's all on Fiat right now. But you know, I think slowly the some of the the banks are in like all larger banks are warming up and and hopefully there's change there. You mentioned that prescient that you mentioned that today the latest CPI print came in above expectations. These banks are obviously under stress. We had to have that private consortium led by Steve Mnuchin to come in and save New York Community Bank Court last week. But it was a billion dollar capital injection there. Deposits are way bigger than that and you imagine their liabilities are too. And so with inflation staying relatively elevated, it'll be very interesting to see what the Fed does, particularly with the context that a lot of these banks are under a lot of stress. We have BTFP being being discontinued later this month and what are they going to do? How? How do you like that, that headline that snuck in there though like Steve Mnuchin comes in to save New York Bank Corp You know like the the reality of that. I don't. I don't know the details. I don't know if how much of the details are known. But for sure, that is a sweetheart deal where Steve Mnuchin and his gang will make out like bandits. And I have a feeling it'll be subsidized by taxpayers. Yes. Eventually it definitely will be. I am. I'm looking for a headline I saw Jesse, did you see this something having to do with banks and their treasury reserves? I have not been paying as close attention to that as I was a year ago. Let me find. This headline, I'll send it to Logan to pull up well, Marty's. Looking it up Mitch, I'd be curious to the extent you know what you can share you reference infrastructure, it's public bit go supports ETFSA few, I don't know the exact number maybe you can clarify that. But then also just like from an infrastructure perspective, you mentioned the banks, but also think about like custody where we have Coinbase, we have bit go is the I think two big players cracking I think came out last week that they want to get more in the institutional space when it comes to custody. Like how do you guys think about that in like any, I don't know if it's like rumblings, but concerns or questions from clients about like that seems like another kind of just like area of the market that doesn't have a lot of options. Yeah I I I would say we definitely lost quite a few custodians I I want to be careful about about you know commenting publicly about about competition and and you know I'd say the and the competitors that that we are typically up against there are some good ones out there. But I think one of the things I've enjoyed particularly about the ETF is how the the bitcoiners on Twitter will will hammer you know any any custodian that that isn't using you know current the Bitcoin wallet tech and it's important because of the we're improving the you know the the protocol for a reason and you know if you've got you know you know Cyberhorn that's attacking you for for for using old wallet tech there's there's there's there's reasons to you know to upgrade and you can't get away with it anymore. So I I do think you know the the case I I referenced Coinbase in particular I think they did make some some changes at least in the in the short term. But I I think in general you know there there's gonna be more pressure to you know to be on you know latest technology but I'll be I I, I dodging a bit I there, there obviously you know in the custodial landscape there, there are pressures on other custodians out there right now and I think we're there will there's still some fallout to take place. I think you know it's not like a funds are in trouble sort of way but you know M&A and you know that sort of behavior. Yeah, and. And I think the core roads kind of driving is like, we have all these ETFs, what is it, 11? And there's really like 2 custodians that handle it. And thinking through like, what does that look like even from just a pure marketability perspective, right, Because these ETFs are switching around or thinking about how do they differentiate? I think it came out today, Van Acker yesterday that they're like waiving all fees, which is like always should smell like in its place. Like, I like, I think Jan's a great guy and they're doing great stuff. But it's like when nobody charges you for anything, like there's no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody has to pay somewhere for everything all the time like this, like, and so like that should always raise pause. And it's almost like the opposite is a false signal of like if you're not charging like what's happening and getting deeper and then you start looking at like custody and all the things associated. So I think that's just, it's an interesting premise in itself, yeah, I think. You know. The you know. We probably have the large players that that will be a part of this cycle. I think when Sev 21 gets repealed, which is more of a matter when not. If you know you'll have some M&A from you know existing providers, you'll have some Chad Fi participants you know enter the space and it will have you know some massive balance sheets start to get into this into this business would you when? Do you forecast that like not, You don't think you have direct, like do you think that's like a free 2026 or like? Because that's very interesting from the bank's perspective. Seeing what's happening. And wanting to get a piece, yeah. And obviously they do. I would I would be surprised and obviously it's going to be, it's going to be pretty political but I I 2026 I think would be you know reasonable hopefully and maybe that's addressed in you know the the crypto regulation that we've seen you know discussed you know that they said they were tabling to 2024 that you know is that going to happen in an election year. I think it's going to it's necessary but it it might take another I I'd say a year or two. It's pretty funny how this. All got politicized. Like if Trump wins, everybody moves to Florida and Texas. If Trump loses, we're all going to the UAE. Because like Trump was talking about this past week, right? He's like, yeah, it's cool. Like everybody uses it. And then I think this morning it's like Biden's gonna put a 30% tax on minors or something. Like headline, Yeah. I guess we could talk about that. So the 2025, the general administration projections for 20/20/25 revenue from the Biden administration came out this week. And within that 236 page report on page 72, they lay out an excise tax on Bitcoin miners of 30%. They're going to tax their electricity consumption so they'll have their electricity costs and then if Biden's administration gets their way, they'll have a 30% excise tax on those electricity purchases. And this is actually a resurgence of something they've they've proposed this in the past, I believe, in the beginning of last year, in the middle of last year. And it actually ties very tightly with the EIA survey that got next in court a couple of weeks ago. That survey now makes a lot more sense, it seems like. The Biden. Administration wanted to put this excise tax on the industry and to make sure they were generating as much tax revenue as possible, they sent the EIA out with a survey to basically identify all these mining, all these mining operations, how much electricity they were consuming so that they could accurately tax them with the they just wanted. To know more about the industry. That's all Marty. They weren't trying to figure out exactly what their tax base is and how much to squeeze out of people when the time comes take. Off your tinfoil hats, yeah. And I would I I mentioned that I recorded with Pierre last week. If you're listening to this, I highly recommend you go listen to that episode if you want to understand more about this particular confrontation between the Bitcoin mining industry and the Department of Energy. The Basically the government is coming to this problem with the pretextual from a pretextual basis where they're basically assuming that Bitcoin mining is bad for energy grids, bad for the environment, and bad for electricity pricing. But there's plenty of publicly available data that proves the exact opposite is true. Bitcoin mining consumes wasted energy, it makes grids more stable, more reliable, and it's good for the environment 'cause it soaks up excess emissions in the form of methane with off grid mining. And so even though the BIND administration is putting this, proposing this excise tax of 30% on the mining industry, I I don't think it's gonna pass. I think actors like ERCOT and the TVA are very clued in onto how Bitcoin mining operations work and what they provide to their individual grid systems that they'll stand up and say, hey, if you levy this excise tax, you're essentially taking out one of our most dynamic. And reliable demand sources and we need those to to run our grids in a stable and reliable fashion. This, this ties. Into the politics thing. That whole quote of you may not care about war, but war will eventually care about you. It's like we may not care about politics, don't speak personally, but it's going to care about us. And it's like command. I was talking to Lee and I know Pierre was involved. It's like at the end of the day, people have to maneuver and wield the right influential power to get these things across. Because if we don't, that's how they will end up happening with the TVA and these other participants not actually speaking up. So yeah, it's it's huge what TBC has participated. I know again, Pierre was involved in, I think Riot was involved, right? Yeah, it was. Riot and the Texas Blockchain Council? That's not a joke. To see the US government like, yeah, it's not huge. Like so the US government had to back off and and settle out of courts and now they have to go through this whole commenting process. The the the whole justification for the emergency order was completely bunk. They literally broke the law by by like the the amount of days that people had to respond to the survey was like off like outside the letter of the law. They they're claiming that, like, this data isn't available. But riots and other participants have responded to letters from Elizabeth Warren over the last two years asking for this data. They gave it to her. She obviously didn't read it or acknowledge it. And then they don't have any justification for this outside of they don't like Bitcoin. So like the the whole reason they're doing this is not because they truly believe that Bitcoin mining's bad for the environment, bad for grids, bad for electricity pricing for residential consumers. They don't like Bitcoin 'cause they can't control it. And the Elizabeth Warrens of the world are really pushing for a CBDC and Bitcoin and the Bitcoin mining industry are in the way of of facilitating that transition to a central bank digital currency. And so they're gonna ignore reality and just try to brute force all this regulation and excessive taxes through the market. I highly recommend anybody go. I I read it last night. The 2025 general Administration revenue projections. Just search. Just control F excise. It's insane how many excise taxes there are. Like Bitcoin mining was just one industry they want to levy an excise tax on. Like the government has completely lost control of their spending and they're really clamping down and and trying to tax the shit out of everything. But not to be confused. With Pierre's tweet, because that was not real. I was on a call the the day and somebody sided and I was like, I looked at it. I was like, this doesn't look official. The big Bitcoin in like, right next to the US government logo. Yeah, he. He clarified that yes, I made these charts based off of the assumptions the government was making, but it. It's pretty amazing to think about. Like, Can you imagine if if the government had tried to levy an excise tax for Internet traffic for like Yahoo or Google or Amazon in the early days, You know, like what would, what would have happened? Like it's pretty obvious to think about it from from that thought problem perspective. But like those companies would have set up shop in a different jurisdiction. You know, they wouldn't, we wouldn't have Google or Amazon in the US. They'd be Canadian or they'd be you know Auk based company or something. And and the the reason the US won with the Internet and became the home, the global home of Internet development and Internet companies is because we had like loose guide rails for allowing innovation to blossom before stepping in with detrimental regulation and and taxes. So you know, I hope that the truth prevails here, Marty. And I think it's to Michael's point it's like it's thanks to Texas Blockchain Castle Council and and Riot and folks like that that are putting in the fight and to to surface the truth about how Bitcoin mining is actually good. And so long as a rule of law prevails and you know the the the people in decision making places in the court system follow the rule of law and are interested in the truth rather than corruption, then I think we win this fight. But it you know it has to be fought. No, it's a very. Good point. It's. It's. I think that was one of my biggest worries. When the EIA survey first came out, I wrote a newsletter about it was like, do not respond to this, like we have to fight back. And I was very happy to see that Riot in the Texas Blockchain Council stepped up because that is the biggest threat to Bitcoin and always has been is complacency and apathy. And I do think because of the nature of the federal government and how overarching it has become, many individuals think it's not even worth an effort to try to push back. But I think Riot and the Texas Blockchain Council just proved that like, no like that. There is a rule of law. There are judges like Jesse mentioned that Will we'll follow the rule of law and all you have to do is take some effort and and push back and say no, you're not doing this to us. And in this case, the law prevailed, the truth prevailed, and that's the other thing. We have the truth on our side. We have the data, we have economic flourishing happening in areas where where Bitcoin miners enter an economy. And that's another thing on top of all, well, the truth in that regard we have to really lean into is the the truth of the matter. That if Elizabeth Warren and the Biden administration get their way in pushing the Bitcoin mining industry out of the country, it's really not gonna do anything to Bitcoin. It's gonna hurt American citizens and you can eventually try to shovel in the CBDC, but life finds a way. Americans will find a way to get access and use Bitcoin because it is better money and your CBDC is destined to fail. And so that is the proposition you have to put forward to the people pushing against the industry is like, hey, this is happening whether you like it or not. If it doesn't happen here, it's going to happen somewhere else and eventually it will come back here because Bitcoin is the best money. And so do you want to shoot yourself in the foot and have the American economy miss out on the proliferation of this incredible technology for the next decade, 2 decades, a generation, whatever it may be? Or do you want to accept reality and let Americans prosper from this reality and actually innovate and lead in terms of Bitcoin? What I don't understand here is and 1st thank you to you know to Riot and and everybody who who helped push against this and grateful for you guys in Texas blockchain council too. But the the political calculus involved and it's you know for for the last several years of the, you know, we've got 20%, you know, it's it that number's I'm sure higher as we've been picking up you know, people but 20% of Americans out of that whole crypto at this point you've got more onboarding to, you know, you know via the ETF as liquidity pours into this ecosystem. And you know that the demographics for for those holders, it's going to skew younger. It's going to skew towards more towards the, you know, more the left and you know the the Democratic base. I don't understand, you know how you know who's running the numbers here that this is going to be politically favorable for them. Because I think you've got the majority of people who might be even pro this probably not listening, probably voting, you know in in that direction anyway and you're just losing meaningful number of of your voter base when you know margins are are razor thin, you know and we're in 2020 and probably will be in 2024. It's just it doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. I already said it very diplomatically. It was nice, but it was just like, it's just like has to be said. It's like it's pretty sick. Like what Jesse was referencing. It's like you're going to stifle, it's like a double whammy. You stifle the innovation and then you just harm people like because people literally work at these places like in town. It's like it literally worked. And you're like, Oh yeah, we're just going to like kill you on inflation. We're going to kill you on all these things and we're going to take away your job well and. There's a negative externality ripple effect here. Yes, you target the Bitcoin mining industry, but if you're successful in pushing them out, like it doesn't only affect the Bitcoin mining industry. Think about the electrical infrastructure that's being built to supply electricity to these Bitcoin miners. I mean, you're talking about a lot of heavy construction jobs, a lot of electrical engineering jobs, a lot of jobs within ERCOT On the pricing side of things like this is not confined to people that plug in and operate ASICS. Like there's a very interconnected industry growing around just the the production of Bitcoin via Bitcoin mining. It's not only going to affect Bitcoin or something like gigawatts worth of capacity in line. And ERCOT is working hard to get the construction teams and electrical engineers in place to build out that infrastructure. If you were to levy this excise tax, all that would be rendered moot overnight and you'd have to fire a bunch of people that are outside of the Bitcoin mining industry. Yeah, you know, I. Think about Texas and freedom loving. You know another place? It's pretty. Freedom loving is the City of Brotherly Love, Delphia. Yeah, we gotta give. You guys, a huge shout out with the launch of branches. I swear probably 40% of like inbound last week was from individuals living in Philadelphia interested in getting involved, meeting the team participating help it out, which is really cool to see and it was people from across the spectrum, people that are stacking Sats to executives at companies. So we got our John friends and and Jackson who lives in Philly along with our advisor working on some special stuff for I think the April meet up and then maybe some stuff this summer. Yeah, I mean, despite what many will say about Philadelphia, that spirit of freedom that was imbued in the city during the American Revolution still exist. It's a little faint. It's a faint flame, but it can be. It can be harnessed and it could grow. Marty, would you say New England or Philadelphia cares more about freedom and patriotism? Philadelphia. I see. I had to throw out the Philly props because, you know, we kind of we rag on it a lot. You see the pictures of the zombies on Twitter, so there's a lot to rag. On There's a lot to rag on. We got we got to be objective about the state, the city and what's going on. But I have hope that that flame again, that flame exists in the bellies of of many Philadelphians. Maybe not at all. But many. We we joke with Jackson. Because he goes to Dubai, We're always like, he's never going to come back. You go from the streets of Philadelphia to Dubai, you know, like, what am I doing? Another Philly song on the streets of Philadelphia. Yeah, we'll see. We're going to save Philly. Philly's going to save itself. It's a it's a very hardened population. Well, that's the. That's the positive threat of what we just talked about TBC. It's like not who. It's not you then who step up. You form, you go to the John, you become part of the industry, you saving them a better form of money and you have a fighting chance to fix stuff. Yeah, yeah. I don't think the buying, I don't think this excise tax is going to get through. States will stand up. And even if it does get through, I could see states like Texas and Tennessee being like, yeah, you don't have to pay that. If the federal government comes and tries to shut it down, we'll we'll protect you. That's interesting. Angle you're. Not going to get those. Moonshine, moonshine, Moonshine. Miners down in down in Texas. People to seriously consider it's just like, what are you doing with this tax money? You're gonna tax me 30%? And then what do we Let's look at the national debt. Let's look at your revenues, Let's look at the interest expense on that debt. Let's look at the result of you issuing this debt, taking that money in and then allocating it. Is it really, really producing a good outcome? Like, no. Like, I think as American citizens, we need to begin seriously thinking about, like, what are we getting for our tax dollars? Why do we even need to pay taxes? You can print the money. Is this a big humiliation ritual? I think. A big I think. Buchelli had, I think. Didn't Buchelli have a a talk about it? He did, yeah. At CPAC, he was basically he he basically gave him the playbook. He's like you. You pay taxes. It's a humiliation ritual. They can just print the money. This is why inflation's going crazy and they're gonna have to print a lot more money. I mean, again, CPI is high. Jesse, I'm interested to get your thoughts. And then Logan pull up the tweet. I found what's going on in the treasury market. So they're they're changing the like what it can be defined. They're changing the leverage calculations within Basel 3 and taking treasuries out of the necessary assets that you need to count in this leverage calculation. So this is essentially creating an opportunity for limitless, limitless purchasers of treasuries as future issuance begins to surge because they've got to roll over a bunch of debts and then begin paying off the interest they've already accrued. So you basically have the cap coming off of the treasury market. Like it seems like they're tapping out. They're like we need as much liquidity as we can get. All right, banks, you don't need to factor these into your leverage calculations anymore. Go buy as much as you want 'cause we need you to. It it's it's more than a full time job just to keep up with how the goal posts are are quietly moved because you know there's there's that there's this latest thing there's the fact that banks are have been on AA0 reserve requirement you know fractional reserve banking model. So nobody had no. Reserve banking, yeah. No reserve banking model. You know they change, they keep changing the money supply calculation. They they changed the methodology for it from that the M2 to M2 SL which which inserted a few ways that they can adjust it without publicly changing you know how it's calculated it'll just show up as at slightly different numbers over time and at first it was the same and and they will have will have the ability to pull these levers over time to manipulate what they have to show in terms of the money supply numbers that they are obligated to report. And three examples are just endless supply of like goal post shifting stuff, you know and like BTFP and all the other acronyms that they're managing to put out to have off balance sheet expansion of you know of central bank balance sheets. Sounds like Aetherium when you're describing the inflation, it's like how it's really that, right? It's just like security after through sufficient. Complexity. Yeah. I mean. This is far beyond sufficient complexity. This is. A. Rube Goldberg machine that would make Rude Goldberg blush The the US financial system and the banking system it's. The best we've got. What was it like? Was it Egypt that just like, completely? Was it Egypt Debugged. Yeah, it, it manipulated interest rates and they had a 50% devaluation overnight and what can? Go wrong here when you're incentivizing bankers to then go buy treasuries again, and then you know if inflation does go up and you do have to raise rates. You're gonna have. Underwater banks again, we're just rinse and repeat what we just went through. Well, that's the. Big question right now it's because inflation is still going up with rates high. They've signalled that they want to lower rates and now like this seems, which is interesting too because it's Basil 3, which is international reserve laws. So it seems like the global banking system's like, ah, fuck, like we kind of do something here And like, So what happens, like you do, you take this out of leverage ratio so you can actually like for right now like buying a bunch of treasuries like adds to that ratio. After this gets passed, it's like, all right, you essentially had what we deemed as high leverage yesterday, not as high leverage anymore. And so you just sort of shove it under the radar and let people shovel into this, Mitch, to your point. What's gonna happen is they're gonna just like flood the market with liquidity and Dr. asset prices up. And it seems like a Hail Mary to by the Fed and the international bankers to like be like we just need to get these asset prices up so people think they're rich And I don't see how this ends well at all. I was just laughing because, like, none of this stuff should be controversial or like Tinfoil Hattie. And it is because it's just numbers. And I was thinking about like all in. I was like, those guys are smart. They should talk about it. And if you go down the list of those guys, like one of them knows it but can't say it because he made his money in the world. So he has to play the game. And then you start going around and some of them know it all the way back to, like, you go to that archetype that's like, Oh no, everything's fine. It can never blow up. And that's just how we, like, look at the world. It's like some people know, but they're like, I made the money here. It'll all get figured out. And then you go back and it's like, you know, it's to somebody else. And they're like, oh, yeah, this is like, this is crazy. Like, how could the government and the dollar and all the things that, you know, people talk about with the integrity of it ever happened? And there's just not like an earn. I don't know, just like working through like, this is not that hard to understand, that it's not sustainable. For some reason, if somebody listened to this, it was not initiated into like Bitcoin or understanding that there's some value around it would think that what Marty or we just talked about the past 3 minutes or 5 minutes is absolutely insane. Yeah, and there's not a lot to talk about this either. So this is like one of those. Things. No, I mean even from like, like the Wall Street Journal, like, like, all in guys. Like they'll touch that third rail every once in a while, even though I want to consider it a third rail. But they'll go where other people won't. Like the fact that they're not talking about it, nobody else is. It's this guy, the the Fed guy. Like like hey guys, did you notice this is going on and? I mean, I I put out a, you know, a national debt article about a year ago and and they pulled it up on the All In podcast, the charts from it. And Chamath said this is a nothing, this doesn't matter. This is fine. This is fine. We're actually going to go issue 100 year bonds. That's what we should do, yeah. I mean his his point of view is I, you know I think, I think it's easy it's easy to like tell yourself that oh this is a a cherry picking of data and like oh if you look at this on a like a GDP adjusted basis it's it's all, it's all fine, we're still, you know we're still growing but then you show that chart and you you show the fact that debt to GDP is now 130%. And and Lynn Alden has done some great work on how when you get above 100% that tends to be kind of the death spiral where like countries don't get out of that they don't they don't dig out of that hole they that eventually is a one way train to a a soft default usually on through through inflation of defaulting on the debts and even that I think from Chamas point of view is like well that's fine because we're still the the best country and people are going to want our debt. That was really his. His take is people want our debt. People are are hungry for our debt, hungrier now than ever which is in my opinion pretty myopic because yeah, it's the as, as I guess as Greg Foss likes to say, it's the US dollar is the the the best looking horse at the glue factory. It's you know it's stronger than the competition. But none of them are good because they're all Fiat based and they all have enjoyed several decades of running up debts that that nobody's has any intention of ever paying, and the bill is going to come due eventually. And meanwhile, simultaneously, there are scarce assets like gold or Bitcoin that can be the escape valve for people trying to save who want to not have their savings inflated away right from under them. And you know, for some reason Chamath doesn't see those that that set of facts laid out and connect the dots to to show that, oh, we're at the end of a long term debt cycle. And the fact that the US is the most attractive debt issuer on the global stage today doesn't mean that our national finances will be fine. 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, so just give. Credit to Chamath he he's very smart. I think he does know when you go around the list. I think for sure he knows. I think Sachs potentially the problem is it's the whole thing show me incentives. I'll show you the outcome. And the reality is all of our incentives and we're talking a book that we believe to be true and our businesses around it. So we could talk about it. At the end of the day he has investors. He has a bunch of businesses. So we can't talk about these things because they're just like completely not kosher from a number of respects. Be in the proofs in the pudding. Like it's like he's carried Bitcoin since what, 2012, 2014, whatever. He like ceded GBTC, like he called it schmuck insurance. Smuck insurance from what? Like you know the the dollar. So I think he knows what's your point, Jesse? Like they anchor around this whole idea that it's OK because we are the world reserve currency and so we'll get out of it. And there's some some truth to that. But I'm pretty convinced like him and SACS have an idea. The other side of it is like the other side of just the general populace. That's like this is all I'm saying. It can't happen because they're just like haven't even dug deep enough. Forget about Bitcoin just to know about like the structure of the US government, its fiscal situation. Yeah. Like, he's brilliant. Like, I can't imagine. Like Chamoth. He's like probably smarter than all of us. Like, come on, like, I don't think he doesn't. It's like you don't think so yourself. So short, Michael, But you don't say like I don't. I don't think he doesn't understand the fiscal situation or it's untenable and like it's because it's just numbers. I think he literally has to play a game of being a billionaire and like not getting kicked out of the group for saying the things out loud that we're saying because we're our incentives are aligned to be OK with it, so. So I'll give, I'll give him benefit of the doubt in a different way that I think explains it. I think he has an incredible belief in American exceptionalism and and productivity through technology. And I think that that is his North Star and that he thinks that that solves everything long term. And I I think that that's like a very noble point of view and I think it's a commendable like very American point of view of like we solve this by through capitalism and I think that that you know it's the it's ultimately the yuppie elite mentality of like the world is great. I have faith in in our institutions of capitalism and and the financial system and we solve this by doing what we've what we've always done because America's great and I. So I think that like, like that's the trap that he falls into, is having too much confidence in American exceptionalism and productivity through technology and generally. Like these people are right until they're not. Like, you know, it's it's not like, you know, the conversations that we're having are are new, you know, yes, you know Bitcoin is still, you know, 15 years old. But you know the gold bugs were out there saying the same things for decades. It's just you know, it's a tipping point and are we at that tipping point now I I think we're getting there. I think you know bitcoin's the exit valve. We have the rails to you know even through the through the ETF for all this liquidity to to to use that exit valve. When Alden said ETF and and our eyes was as an you know an API integration you know to to bring liquidity to the you know from traditional finance to the you know to the to the to Bitcoin. I think all the stage is set and we're just we're just sort of sitting here watching are we at that tipping point Jesse have, have. You seen this? They haven't told some authors a new sheriff in town. I don't know if anybody can see it. Logan, should you pull it up? There. You think it's here? Boy, that's that's funny. That's in the Wall Street Journal. I love it. Yeah, well, that. I mean this and this also ties into like the game theory of Bitcoin. At some point, yes, they have to play the game now and posture a certain way, but at some point there's an inflection point where it flips. And again, if you're an early adopter, an early advocate of Bitcoin over the traditional debt based financial system, you're going to benefit massively. And so there will be a point at some point, I believe in the next five years between now and 2030, where these types, the Chamas of the world, are basically making a calculation in their mind. Like, yes, I've I've had to posture this way for this amount of time. But it seems like the the right bet to make now is to posture the other way. Like it's all fucked. We need to get on Bitcoin. And then you you make that transition, you get on like Elizabeth Warren. 'S bags are very heavy right now, basically, yeah. I'll give Chamath a. Little bit credit he when in 20 was it 2020 one or 20/22 to 20/20/22 when you know the the inflation prints were out there and you know there was the signal that you know we were we were headed for a downturn sorry it was 20/21/22. He he was trying to signal to you know American population that you know this you've been you've been children of you know a 0% interest rate environment and you know you've got to I remember that it it impacted me hearing and hearing his words you got to look you know be able to look at your family and and know what you're holding and and be confident in that. And you know, sure he pushed a lot of specs and invested a lot of those companies, but at the same time he did exit and he was trying to sound, you know the the, the warning signs that that was coming. Yeah, and. And the other thing I'll say about Chamath is that, So his, his Bitcoin story is pretty remarkable to me. There's some article I think in like Vice or something from a decade ago about about him getting into Bitcoin. And he, he got into Bitcoin because he was on a private jet flight from the Bay Area to Vegas with Wensis Caesaris, who is the patient zero of Bitcoin in in Silicon Valley. And so he got just a A1 on one orange Pilling from like, you know, the legendary Bitcoiner who I think probably spun it as like this is early digital gold. You have a chance to, you know, bet on this new technology and you're going to want to have a slice of it and Chamath put, you know, bought a bunch of it just as like a tech bet, I think. And so he's been unbelievably right and has a huge Bitcoin position and has held on to it, to his credit. And I think that that. Creates. This sort of phenomenon that you often see with like the OG bitcoiners is a lot of them don't actually understand Bitcoin, but they were early and they were right enough to buy some and to hold it. And so in their mind, they're extremely confident that they they get it, 'cause obviously they get it. They they were early, they bought it, they held it, they know everything. But you know the reality of it is you can be right for the wrong reasons. Like the the the Winklevi twins, their whole thesis is Bitcoin is digital gold. And so they bought some when it was like $11.00 and they were going to hold on to it until it becomes digital gold. And that was enough, like that was enough for them to make a billion dollars because they've been holding on watching that thesis play out while not understanding that Bitcoin is turning into much more than digital cult. And I think the same story is true with with Chamath and and I think that kind of plants the seed of like being very wrong about the the current state of Bitcoin and where Bitcoin is headed because you were so right in the past that it doesn't matter. You don't have to pay attention anymore. Yeah, you're going to be forced to pay attention and really dig into what's going on here. What's happening, what else? What else caught your eyes in in the news this week. You're on mute watching the. Watching volatility come back to Bitcoin Right behind you, Marty. I know. Was a. Was a 71 not long ago. We're at 69. Five now, yeah. The having it's kind of strange. It's surreal, like the price action pre halving. Yeah, we'll. See. Who knows? Are we above or below previous all time highs? Is this a fake out? I guess we passed the previous all time high with authority this week. We're now still above it right now sitting at like 69500, barely above it. But what are the dynamics? Typically when we pass the all time high, it's usually like up and to the right and you don't say hello to it ever again. But outside of 2017 when we went below that but. For for that matter, it usually does take a couple weeks to decisively breakthrough like the the prior all time high. There's usually a pattern of like getting above it, dipping back below and then, you know, takes a while to eat through that. Everything's a little different now, though because of the scale of like net inflows from the ETFs, like $500 million of demand a day. You know, the the 10X, what we're mining every day in Bitcoin demand, eating through available for sale supply. Again, I think that, you know, one of the major misconceptions that that people fall into is thinking, oh, there's 21 million Bitcoin. So what's the, what's the big deal with 10,000 Bitcoin being gobbled up per day by the ETFs? The truth is there's there's not 21 million Bitcoin available for sale at these prices. There's, I don't know, 500,100 thousand. Like, obviously there's there's different nodes of supply as you work up the price chart because people become willing sellers as they hit their magic number or they start to scale out or whatever reasons. But you know 10,000 Bitcoin a day is is a huge percentage of of what is available to be purchased at any price point. And that again that's a much bigger delta versus what we see after the halving where the halving creates like a 2X imbalance and and right now we have a 10X imbalance before the halving has even come. If if we're, if we're in dealing with the same scale of inflows, you know 10,000 Bitcoin per day on average at the halving, then it's suddenly a 20X imbalance. So in the we're in the past we've been stuck at prior all time highs for two weeks because we were dealing with a 2X imbalance and that took some time to eat through things. I I think it makes sense for us to eat through much faster when we're dealing with a 10X imbalance. So I I continue to think like it's still up or sideways only so long as ETF demand remains where it is. Like I like I don't think this is like a a a summer 2019 scenario like Barty has been scarred by where we pump off the bottom and and rip until there's euphoria and then and then you know dip for the next several months. But I think this is real and sustained. Yeah, I think. I think it's like truly a like global asset in the sense it's always been global but the global liquidity pools opening up like today it was like Thailand's SEC approved and then London Stock Exchange or approving Etns. So like all of these different vehicles or star or countries starting to have want the capital to accrue to their country or like we talked about the Hong Kong ETF and so like what would change is the main question for it to go in the opposite direction because it just looks like a one way trade which is. Why on on Jesse's point of you know how we normally perform at an all time high. You know obviously we did have the leverage wipeout you know the you know the first time that we you know we we touched on on 69 K again a week or so ago feels like a lifetime ago. The I just I'm really careful about comparing what's going on right now to to what we've seen before because I think in general like you know mistakes can be made and you know you think you know something and and you know you get you get rugged one one thing I've noticed that to pivot for a second and I'm interested for my for Marty's take on it is you know in the the equities market I've definitely seen a divergent in the the the Bitcoin correlated stocks and you know you've got you know your micro strategies you know mooning you've got your coin bases up and you've got that side of the fence. But I think going whether it's going into the halving or some of the other, you know, whether it's sovereigns coming into the space or you know a lot a lot a lot of heavier money. But your your public miners have not been performing the same way and you know have had a lot of downward pressure on on their prices and some of that was pre ETF. But it it seems to be happening again Marty, how do you think that that that affects things you know coming out of that having the miner's ability to raise money, you know going into the, you know this new cycle and then you know post having environment? Yeah, I don't want to talk my own book, but that's part of the reason we announce and the proposed merger between Cathedra and Kunz laden last week. I think up until this point of Bitcoin's history outside of micro strategy, retail investor didn't really have proxy exposure to Bitcoin outside of Bitcoin mining stocks. So historically, Bitcoin mining stocks have been that equity of choice or basket of equities of choice for retail investors to get indirect exposure to Bitcoin. And historically, up until this year, I would say the mining stocks had a very simple strategy that was tried and true, which is go out, raise a bunch of money via debt or inequity offering to the market and then buy a bunch of ASICS, increase your hash rate under management that you're able to publicize, and then the market will reward you by pushing your stock price higher. I don't think that is going to work moving forward. I think analyst especially and even retail investors to a certain extent have begin to better understand these mining businesses. And yes, you can go raise money, buy a bunch of ASICS, make that announcement and have a larger hash rate under management as a company. But is it profitable and is it actually returning your initial investment of capital in a timely amount of time? And it I think it's proving over time that it's not the best strategy to just APE and a six increase your hash rate that does not lead to the best profit margins and return of shareholder equity in the long run. So I think moving forward, I'm, I'm not, this is not to say that mining stocks are dead. It's to say that they really have to begin to focus on revenues and profitability and margin much more smartly. And so I think what we're going to see moving forward is the separation of the strategy of just raise money, accumulate ASICS, announce it to companies that are really focused on return on invested capital, high margins and optionality in terms of revenue streams. So companies engaged in demand response programs that have additional revenue from participating in that will probably fare well. Those that get Direct Energy exposure have the optionality to either mine with Bitcoin or like 360 mining is out of the Commons. They have the ability to mine Bitcoin or sell natural gas to market at any given point in time. So that revenue optionality being able to go for the revenue stream that is going to produce the most revenue. Natural gases are high, natural gas prices are high. It's like, yeah, I'll sell natural gas back to the market over mine Bitcoin that'll make my company more profitable in the long run. At Cathedra with this proposed merger that this sort of the idea that we went with is how do we diversify our revenue streams. And with Congress laden, we are able to do that by building infrastructure, hosting infrastructure very cheaply since we can build it so cheaply. Since Congress laden can build it cheaply, you get a quicker return on your initial invested capital, which leads to higher profit margin in the long run. So Long story short, I think the tried and true strategy of raising money, buying ASICS, announcing it, stock price goes up. I don't think that's the game anymore. I think the market now that it has optionality in terms of indirect Bitcoin exposure via the ETFs and. Stocks like micro strategy, it's really going to force the mining industry to to not be lazy with that strategy and actually run good businesses moving forward that focus on margin, return on invested capital and growth that is manageable you think over. The long run, this is probably a good thing for Bitcoin and that there's not, you know I'd say I'm sure there will always be a responsibility here, but you know over leveraged miners and the incentive to to over leverage, you know and caused some of the issues that we saw in the last cycle. Yes, I. Think this is the market's natural forces? Like basically forcing miners to be more risk averse with their companies? I don't. Know mining anywhere near Marty, but like what you just described sounds like this ends up in a barbell approach where anybody that looks like Riot looks like a sovereign that has access to you know, money, printer and energy at 0 cost and then the other side of the barbell which is smaller, more modular. Is that correct? Like where this all ends up trending. I think so, yes, and I think. Just based on what you described right. Because like Riot and all these are were proxies to get exposure. So that's how you could get capital markets. But if nobody's gonna address. Why I pause here? It's like, 'cause I don't know if it's like barbell, 'cause I think it's gonna be like a spectrum of different business models, right? Like you can have the demand response side of things, the revenue from pure prop mining and then revenue from selling electricity back to the grid. What we're doing, it's like a different strategy Cathedra where it's like we get prop mining revenue with the optionality to participate and increase revenues when bitcoins in a massive bull run, but we also get that steady revenue stream of the hosting and infrastructure fees that we get for building out Rackspace and I mean barbell in. This sense, like what you're describing a cathedral, is probably like 1100, if not more than Riot. And so you end up with these like two sides of strategies that make up the majority of hash rate. But there's no at. All that's. What I was going to. Say is like because I don't think necessarily, I think it'll there'll be like a wide spectrum. I don't think it'll be like Barbell where it's like you're either on this end or that end. I think there will be a pretty diverse mix of business models between those two size of participants. Where like you think about it for Cathedra, its proposed merger goes through like we have that steady revenue stream. And because the return on investment vested capital is very short in terms of the capital outlay we do to build the infrastructure versus the revenues that pay back that infrastructure from the hosting fees like that's what Kunz Laden's done up to this point is achieved pretty good scale within two years just reinvest those cash flows to build out more infrastructure. And so you I think that actually like it's a much more efficient way to grow a business. It's just to use operating cash flow to funneled back into reinvestment of the company and expansion of infrastructure. So I think it's again thinking creatively like a new way to actually build a mining company to scale without having to dilute shareholders massively or go into insane amounts of debt. Obviously there will be a mixture of all three of those things, investing cash flow, raising money via the public markets when the opportunity presents itself and it's is advantageous. And then a mixture of debt, which would probably be the the smallest portion, I imagine would be the smallest portion because we know due to the variability of revenue from prop mining doesn't make sense to go into insane amounts of debt. The world's changing. It is for the better it's. It's good. I mean, it's just a maturation of, oh, the mining industry again, like the, it was very easy between 2017 and 2023. It's probably up until this year to just be like, Yep, we're raising money, price, Bitcoin's up, We're gonna issue a bunch of shares, we're gonna take in a bunch of cash, buy a bunch of ASICS, add it to our PRS, and the companies were rewarded for that during the bull market. But they overextended themselves, bought too many A6, weren't able to plug them in quickly enough, and then during the bear markets like a shit. This actually isn't that great of a business. Hope that answered your. Question, Mitch. It did. I I've learned a a remarkable amount on the mining industry from you in you know TFTC over the last couple months. So I appreciate it. These are just my thoughts. I'm sure there are many in the mining industry that will have different, but that's what like Michael, to your point about the barbell, I mean that's what Fred Teal is really pushing right now. Like a lot of the big box miners are saying, if you don't have 10 XA hash of hash right under management before the halving, you're not going to have a business, which I don't think is true for everybody. Certainly there are many cases where that would be true, but I don't think people are actually thinking about this creatively and thinking really smartly about their actual cash flows and how they're creating optionality for those cash flows. I don't think they will succumb to go under after the having because they don't have 10 XA hash. I think there's a lot of posturing from the big box miners trying to project like, yeah, if you're not a big box miner like us, you're not going to survive and basically trying to convince potential shareholders to invest in them over smaller upstarts sounds. Like, we need to get Tom and Drew on the pod at some point, yeah. Definitely. I got I got I. Got one more for us on A, it's a totally, totally other angle, but you guys see Jamie Dimon this morning saying that he'll defend your right to smoke cigarettes and help defend your right to buy Bitcoin. And are are we in the midst of of one of the, I guess the the the bigger pivots in in Bitcoin industry? Yeah, obviously Larry Fink was a big one for us. But you know Larry Fink wasn't as vocally, vocally against us. But this, this seems like a a slight turn, you know, starting to form from Jaime here. You know what? Life? Was better before the smoking ban. So it's nice to see he's gonna defend their right to to smoke cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the slow. I mean, think about it. He's the CEO of the largest bank in the world. I believe. Is JP more the largest bank in the world or just in the US? Probably the world. Hideous. The world, I would imagine. The world. I think. He's he has to back step and readjust his priors if Bitcoin is gonna have massive success like you don't get your job if you if you're fighting against if you Peter Schiff your way towards $1,000,000, I don't think that's gonna look good for him I. Don't think the 3rd, 4th and 5th order effects of what the ETF being announced were not contemplated and known before being announced IE the banks like remember Marty we had you had a call one one March Chris morning we were in California and there was things happening. I think this is like this ETF thing was once it's there, it's like all lights go, like banks are here that you know what Mitch was talking about. They're going to roll back the requirements like custody. Like it's just, it's just. It's going to take some. Steps. And what that means is very high Bitcoin. And then that means that banks have to participate and they have to get fees and that whole game and you just had to take out a couple of CZS and a couple you know little little slap Brian Armstrong on the hand of your mind now. But you look like you're you're independent just get it all locked and and loaded and you're it's, you know like you said things are gonna get weird I think like the things that are gonna happen at least like the the perceived like oh like now it's gonna get weird. It's like, I don't think it's like that. They knew the demand before, like we know this, that people, institutional investors were interested in BlackRock to BlackRock to get exposure to Bitcoin, but they were apprehensive because of the market structure. So they knew who was going to come in before it was launched, right. And so that's why we don't hear like from retail because the retail's not buying Bitcoin right now. I mean some is, some are, but just point of like a lot of this stuff that's going to happen and I don't think it's just like going to like surprise a bunch of people including banks, the, the. Fascinating thing from my like vantage point of Bitco is so you've got all you know the banking sector and traditional finance starting to wake up to the space starting to build their own infrastructure starting to you know if SAP 2121 gets rid of repealed they'll start doing some of the things that bitco does right now the same time your platforms you know anyone from you know your your Bitcoin exchanges to the on ramps of the world your you've got to stay one step ahead to differentiate and obviously you know pushing the the narrative of of actually owning your Bitcoin and I'm I am of the camp that one day you will be able to withdraw you know your Bitcoin from an ETF but it's just a question mark down the road but the the same time you've got to keep innovating and staying you know those couple steps ahead of the ETF. So how do you do it. It's whether it's the multi institution custody being you know being an absolutely differentiated product and and you know better than you know how the the ETFs are are custodied you know to you know be building you know products and withdrawals on on on lightning which you know even if ETFs were able. I think it'll be politically popular not for a couple years but you know obviously you you've got the you know the chance of obviously the fears that everybody has that the US government can go knock on Black Rock store and take your Bitcoin. But the same time I I do think it will be politically popular to you know to withdraw to you know and the black rocks and fidelities of the world are going to want to open that up because you know maybe the the fees should you know that much higher to actually withdraw Bitcoin. There will be money in this and I think money is going to drive you know that you know that that behavior and I know that's that's not exactly a popular point but I I do think you know it's more likely than not that you know this sort of closed loop does open up. But I I think largely I'm excited for the the innovation that takes place to you know that bad, you know rebels against you know the the the the traditional you know finance route to getting your Bitcoin. And I think we're always just starting to see that. Yeah, again. It's gonna take time, My neighbor last night. It's gonna take nine months, Then it comes in and then we get the sovereigns coming in too. The the meeting between was that UAE Prince and Bukaylee. Very interesting. Very interesting. Wonder what they talked about? Very deliberate Twitter post with just from from Bukaylee with just the eyeballs looking and that was it in a video and that that that's saying something, yeah. Here's how you suppose the record. We got Saber on yachts with Bezos. Oh yeah, I forgot about. That Did you see that, Morty? I did. Yeah. It. And you know, like I was thinking about that recently, that if you're Bezos, you probably don't respect a ton of people. Anybody. Just generally. But you, your peer group is like minds who understood the Internet early and and then did heroic things to build a business and and make a fortune in that space. And Sailor is in that small group. So it's Bezos has got to respect Sailor's vision and what he says is important. So you know that puts a little more weight behind it when you, when you think about it that way. Yeah. We're. Getting in the Bezos circle. I mean, they've been around for a while and what he's. Just been market selling billions of dollars in my in Amazon stock like I wonder what he what he what is he buying 8 billion. Dollars worth, I believe well. And everyone was watching that thinking it was a top signal for the market and it potentially could have been because you know they they the, you know a lot of the, you know, the tech execs were doing that in 21. You know, Elon was doing it too, and perhaps he's doing it, you know, not as a, you know, market top signal, but as a, you know, exit valve signal, yeah. Jeff you're very well off, man. You've got billions of dollars. You've built an empire. It would it would be terrible to see you end up poor because you get caught in this. They'd. Probably be welcoming here and see Jeff if you if. You want to come talk? It's just exciting. I don't know. We. We. Have a pretty full calendar on this podcast. I don't think we can fit Jeff Bezos in. Yeah, you know what? Maybe next or? Sailor. Or Sailor. I don't think we can hear him talk about, you know, MSTR ripping. If you cancel me next time for for Sailor or or Jeff Bezos, yeah, I'll give you that. We have a we're. Gonna need the we're gonna need we got like the yin and Yang because I I think sailor you know is is favorable to Jesse and his charts and his leverage them in some of his discussions but then our our good buddy Marty and him have a little bit of a contentious relationship since the the my contentious it's not. Contentious, but I've only had Michael Saylor on TFTC once, and it was in 2020-2021, and we basically fought the whole episode because he was pushing ESDI was telling him like it was deep. 2020, it was COVID, I remember, because it was literally like everybody's locked down. And it was 2020. One, because he didn't get into Bitcoin until 2020. Oh yeah, 21 and then with Feinstein, right? Yeah. And they yeah, I got, I got attacked. I love, I love all, everybody involved. But we had we had a gentleman's disagreement. He was saying like, just eat the burger Marty. Like ESG is good. Like we're ESG. And I was like, oh, she's terrible. I don't want to be associated with all. And for what it's worth, I mean Michael Saylor's Bitcoin buying strategy been validated over the years. I think my comments on that podcast have been validated. Yes. She's complete horseshit and the market is running away from it. You don't say it's not a currency. He says it's also not a currency. So you got to like, look what they do and then look what they say. And you got to like, take them with grains of salt. You can't. You know he doesn't think bitcoin's money. I I think he does. I think he's, I think he's well. No, I mean. It's obvious I'm. I'm joking. Like, he knows it's money. He can't say. He can't say it publicly. Like he literally can't say yeah, and again going back to. What we're saying like Chamath and then like had the balls say it, we're in control. We're not in there with them. They're in there with us. Sack up. ESG is bad. Bitcoin's gonna be money. There's nothing you can do about it. Get used to it. We're gonna win. That's. True we we. Straddle the the we straddle the line here on some of that stuff. But that is actually like pure alpha, like there's conversation. I mean, that was a bad trade for anybody that was buying anything ESG related. That was not a good trade, even though 24 months ago they would have called you like, you know, a crazy person. Why don't you care about the guy? The environment, Marty? I want you to care about equality. I do. That's the thing. ESG I I read it like it's I sent this tweet out yesterday. It was hilarious that over the last five years people have been calling Bitcoin a Tulip bubble craze, while one of the biggest Tulip bubble crazes was actually inflating in front of them. And it was ESG which told you that it was a wise investment strategy to neglect reliable energy infrastructure and target diversity quotas. Like that's that's how you're going to get a return on your money. Just decommission all the reliable energy that got us here and just make sure your board's constructed to people who do not have merit. But check off some boxes, we're going to win. Got Marty treated right at the end Here they're. They're in here with us. We're not in there with them. I'm not going to be apologetic. Bitcoin is taking over the world. We're going to consume more energy. It's going to be used as money. The government is overspending. They're wasting our money. I do not respect them at all. Bitcoin gives us the tool to just give them the big little finger and say this is a you're. Completely. Right. You're completely right, Martin. But I'm glad that staler is taking the Bitcoin's just property. Don't worry about it. It's the meeting. It's meeting people there. No, no, but it is. It is the meeting the people where they're at. Because like, it goes back to if Sailor told everybody that, like, then you wouldn't have the next. Yeah, you wouldn't get bases. On board you wanna? Get bases. But we're going back real quick. Just as a funny anecdote, there's like. Assumption. The world is. Looking for high tea? The world is looking for alpha and you just basically say the government is messing up everything. Bitcoin's here to fix it. Like, if you don't believe it, have fun staying poor. We're going to the moon. You get part this. Is at the end, so hopefully like either we we don't have to club move it. Most people won't make it to the IS. There's this anecdote and it's great. I don't know if you guys feel it, but I I talked to my like wife in laws about you know like things going good and you bring up all the stuff and I get so excited and and all they say and this and they say is maybe they like say maybe or they're just very like even keel like you just explain it. And in 2021 or whenever this all this stuff started on ramp. I brought up all this, all this stuff ETFs and my mother-in-law goes, you know, just have a question. Could you ever go work for BlackRock or like Fidelity? If it doesn't all workout like she meant in the most, like compassionate way. It's like maybe this doesn't work. Can you go work there right now? All I could think of is like what you're saying, right? It's like they'll never let us work there. They'll. Just like they'll just like never let us work. I mean, obviously we'll never, but we never think anybody. Wants we never want. It's a funny thing. It's. Like, it just pulled the clip. They're like, yeah, you know, Marty just, like literally went on a monologue about how we're all like, it's like, no, we can't, we can't go work at BlackRock. Raise your tea levels. Gentlemen, come on. We have the truth on our side. The truth prevails, I mean. You know, there is a objectively, I think, lower tea levels across, you know, all populations in the world. So I think that these are just acts, yes? I do have to run here. I got somebody hopping in this room in 5 minutes. Gentlemen, Mitch, we all have to. Run before we get cancelled, we're. Not gonna get cancelled. That's the thing we can't be, Can't be fearful. This is a buttoned. Up crowd. Marty, we're we're speaking to. We're meeting anybody. Anybody listening? Is still here. Loosen your buttons up a little bit. Live a little. It's gonna be fun winning. Winning is fun. It's gonna be incredibly fun. We're gonna have a lot of fun. And also. Stay humble, stay humble and. Send us notes. It was nice to get all the emails from branches. If you're interested in getting involved in anything we do or working in the space like, we appreciate it. So send us a note, we'll we'll respond and get you in touch with the right people. Do that. We'll be back next week to read your notes. Enjoy it.