The Last Trade E043: Bitcoin Fixes This with Larry Lepard & David Thayer

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I got a calendar at 11. I I got to go do something else. So I'm. I'm got up until then, yeah. We've got an hour and 18 minutes. We're talking private equity. Larry, I completely agree with what you were just saying about private equity. Having worked at a third party private equity valuations firm that that valued mid market private equity portfolio companies. The, the way in which these companies are marked up essentially just take you look back into ADCF, you put an IRR on it and then boom, that's the yeah, that's. The value. You call it the value or you, you know, you sell your $25,000 cat in exchange for two or for a $50,000 dog to your friend and he buys yours and you know that that becomes the mark. But that doesn't mean the company's really worth what the, you know, that marginal transaction was done at. It's just a ton of that in that industry. I know, 'cause I was in that industry from 1980, early 1980s, eighty three time frame to 2004, and it was bad then. And it's it's only gotten worse, you know? And there's for each company, it's like, all right, let's look at this company and let's think of all the accounting tricks we can we can use to make it look as valuable as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I mean and you know you got zombie companies too. I mean they they kind of keep these things alive because they don't want to take the marks, they'd rather keep funneling money into them rather than take you know market to market and write it off. So there's there's a lot of embedded loss in in that area in my opinion. I mean the thing I saw recently showed that there was between 1:00 and 1:00 and two trillion close probably close to $2 trillion worth of private equity out there, which you know the the, the trade rate on that has gone down substantially. People are not buying and selling it anymore and you know as a result of that, you know it's all mismarked. We we know those values aren't real. Well. He's going to add that does a as an executive advisor and retired partner Blackstone, I have to plead the 5th on some of this. But nonetheless, and by the way, I should mention while we're at it that you know I'm speaking in my own capacity, not in theirs. But you may be aware of the Cliff Asness at AQR had called it liquidity laundering, rightly or wrongly, but but the fact is too. And Larry, you'll know this because you were in the industry, Marty preps too, that some institutional investors would prefer not to see the volatility and and so you know, they're sort of, you know, blind to it and perhaps willfully so, but and I I think their constituents want that too. But that's just my personal opinion. I think that's right. I mean, and you know some of it, I mean in in the olden days, some of it used to actually have underlying value. I mean the structures have changed so much. I mean when I was doing it, you know we had preferred stock with a you know liquidation preference and sometimes redemption clauses etcetera. And all we needed to do was have the company be worth more than the preferred stock or the amount we'd invested. And we knew like we'd get our money back and so we'd carry the, we'd carry the investment at cost and that was and that was actually a pretty conservative thing to do because unless the company became worth less than the capital put into it, you were fine. But of course that's all gone away. I mean now everyone's buying common and there, you know, there are no teeth, no clauses, no nothing. And you know this is how you get these enormous markdowns. I mean I've we've seen some private deals in the crypto area coming around. I'm not going to say what or who that in the last round, you know, we're valued at, I think it was three, $11 billion. And the the talk is that this. Yeah, it's. It rhymes with the Digital Currency Group, by the way. I meant to say volatility laundering which probably makes more sense but nonetheless the point remains that. And then by the way, while we're talking about it of course sometimes there'll be a reluctance to have it down round and so you'll actually postpone a capital rate or or engage in other sort of tricks of the trade to ensure that and some of these rounds I'm. Not going to say which ones, but some of these rounds are down sixty 7080% off the peak. You know, so it's, you know, it's difficult. I mean the the you know one used to value companies based on, you know, revenue and cash flow and you know book value and so on and so forth. And and those are still useful metrics to old school financial people. But you know as if if we saw in the.com area, it was based on eyeballs and we're seeing a little bit of the same thing this time around. There are different metrics that people are using to value these things and they're, you know, they're pretty aggressive the. The funny thing is, well, we'd like to say hopefully this time is different. We have like MEME to I don't even know. I just hear it in the background. There's just like things that are just consistently like trying to like hit DDoS your brain. And so you're just like trying to you know stiff arm them. And this like MEME token just keeps like MEME tokens keep going. You see them on Twitter, the dashboard of all the people's different like meme MEME tokens. And this idea that we're still, you know, before the having we hit this price and we got like MEME tokens taken off, like God knows what's going to happen the next 12 to 24 months from evaluation and craziness. Yeah, there's always, there's always silly stuff being done. I mean I, you know it's it's amazing to me but it we keep making the same mistakes over and over again in finance some people do anxious and. And it really just kind of goes back to that all assets have become store value buckets. You know equities in particular we we equities in real estate, we've started to treat as our savings and you know you don't expect volatility, you don't expect down rounds when it's a a savings mentality about an asset class. And you know I think Larry before we started you, you talked about how there's going to be a have to be a hell of a repricing for equities. You know when they convert to a Bitcoin standard eventually over time and you know what matters then is your SAT flow bringing it back. The actual value investing principles of what matters is cash flow. And you know that that that changing philosophy is going to be quite, quite something to live through. And you know, we're at the very beginning of it with micro strategy. Yeah. No that's right. The everything will be repriced and and and I think the price of everything in the world today is wrong. I mean it's you know that and but that's what you would expect. I mean if you if you take Fiat money and you know you hold interest rates at 0 for long periods of time and you distort things as badly as we've distorted them, you know you're going to get you know outrageous effects and you're going to get, you know, I mean you're going to get the we works of the world or you're going to get you know all the all the silly shit that happened you know the FTXS etcetera and you know they they they need to get cleansed out and they will but it's we're not done. You know I I think you can go on coin market cap and you can see you know Dogecoin is still a you know multi billion dollar asset makes no sense to me. But there it is, you know, and there there's a lot of other things in the, in the, you know, in the private equity world that have similar characteristics. Well, in addition to monkeying around the cost of capital from the producers perspective, the consumer's perspective, people are kind of forced along and perhaps this goes without saying the risk curve. And so they're, they're going into riskier investments and perhaps unnecessarily so, right. I mean because if we had an an interest rate, a cost of money that was arrived at naturally, then they wouldn't be forced to engage in, in risky behavior. If you can earn 10% of your cash in the Fiat world, then no need to go into, you know, junk, bonds or whatever might happen to be just to earn a yield. Yeah. That that's absolutely right. That's a really great point that that you know the way the system has been set up we've all been forced to become kind of casino gamblers because you know the holding a dollar or holding a bond is is a hot potato, right. We we know that you know year after year, relentlessly it's losing value. It varies any given year how much it's gonna lose, but it's definitely gonna lose value every year. And so you've got to figure out where you're gonna go to try and protect your purchasing power. And you know, there are, there are a lot of arguments for lots of different areas. I mean, you know, you make arguments for real estate, but you can't move it and it's taxable. You know, Sailor makes an argument for, you know, kind of the, the the equities of what he calls digital monopolies, which, you know, are Google and Facebook and, you know, Amazon and so forth. And and I think there's an argument for that. I think they protected you against debasement, but, you know, they're not. Those things aren't cheap on value metrics for sure. So, but you know it's it's tough. I mean everybody, I mean that's to me that's the great tragedy of Fiat, of the Fiat system. It's that nobody can really afford to retire because nobody really knows that they have enough money because the money is always losing value. And and and that's a that's just a crime and it's sad. It's very sad. I mean you can you think you're rich but but in reality you're not necessarily rich because of the price level. You know quadruples you know what you have won't buy anything So it's and you're you're constantly fighting that battle and and you get taxed on it too. I mean, you you, you know, you go and you do it, you buy an asset to try and fight that battle, but then you know just it's just protecting your loss and purchasing power and yet when you go to sell it for a gain, you've got to pay a tax on the game. Right. I've been recently fascinated with the the fire movement the financial independence retire early. People in the in their whole like they're they're basing their entire life on the assumption that if you can get enough of a net worth that you're only spending 4% of it per year, that's your safe withdrawal rate, that you're going to be fine. And that just totally ignores the possibility of of inflation and debasement of that net worth such that, you know, $10 million today doesn't buy you $10 million worth of of goods 20 years from now. And and I, you know, I have a feeling that there's going to be quite a few people who are retired now who who have to you, you know, tighten the belt or go back to work over the next couple decades is. It completely completely different or I don't even know if we want to go down this road. But I think like the fire thing, because I've seen it on the cursory feels like a very like Fiat driven think in general like that people just generally don't like their work or what they do. So they want to retire early to to do what? And I know he gets a lot of slack but, you know, 20 whatever. 1518 Jordan Peterson, I think had a lot of very great things that he said. And one of them was like, so you retire and then you you sit on it. So you so you're good and you go sit on the beach and you drink 5 pina coladas or whatever, 2 pina coladas. And then you pass out on your sunburn and you wake up the next day and say, well, then what do you do? It's like there's a lot more to life than than retiring. It's like, well, what is that? I don't know. But I think like, when you have meaning and all the things that we're talking about with money start to come back. So the world. You're not necessarily worried about retiring. You're more worried about how do you like, take the gifts that you were given and get them back out into the world versus retiring and then sitting around? And the fire movement's pretty funny because it's an outgrowth of influencer culture. It's basically a bunch of 25 to 30 year olds saying teach, teach, my fellow Gen. Z, and millennials how to retire early. It's like, I don't know if you haven't figured out yet, but like, on the same point too, Like, we're talking about retirement. That's a newsletter I wrote a couple of days ago just randomly stumbled upon The State of State Pensions a couple of days ago as of September end of Q 3/20/22. And at that point state pensions across the US where they they have a gap of $1.2 trillion. And that's only state pensions. We're not even talking about unfunded liabilities in terms of Medicaid, Social Security, private company pensions and you think about Herculean effort that's gonna be need to close that gap and there's very few things that can do that. And basically the conclude and the conclusion I came to is you look at the demographics, all the boomers are retiring. A lot of the those pension plans have shifted to an 8020 portfolio stock bond split towards the end of those life cycles for for those individuals and TLT is down 25% over the last five years. They're going to have to sell all those assets. And as you were mentioning, the only way you're going to be able to fill this gap is the print money and backstop it, which essentially default in another way. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, the bottom line is we are heading for a monetary default. You know, the the system is completely broken. And you know, as as you say, Marty, you know, fix the money, fix the world. I mean, the money's broken and it's gonna, if you think it's broken now, just wait. It's gonna get worse, sadly. And you know, everyone will get paid in nominal terms, but what's it gonna buy him? You know, I think the answer is not much unless you're protecting yourself with investments and assets that that you know address this issue, right. Well, what's even worse mentioning or referencing what you mentioned earlier, Larry, is that, yeah, you get, you get taxed on the capital gains once you're monetizing your investments and of course you get taxed a couple of times if you're receiving dividends. But the other thing, too, is that, as you know, as everyone on this call knows, there's a movement afoot now that tax unrealized gains. I saw that. I mean, Elizabeth Warren lost to go after wealthy people and and of course, you know, what's wealthy will get defined downward. I mean it's it's, you know, you guys probably know this And, you know, when the income tax came out in 1913, I mean, it was meant for just like the very, very wealthiest people, right. And of course, you know, that quickly changed. And it's a very, it's a very slippery slope, right. I mean it. If they're able to get that through, you know, Lookout, nothing's gonna be safe, you know? So yeah. Better figure out how to remember 12 words in your head. It's the only way you can save your money. I think that I think that really we all know what the solution is to this problem. And you know the the thing, the reason we're all doing this, I think is because we're trying to educate the rest of the world to protect themselves. Because it's going to be, you know, very difficult for those who don't learn this, you know, rather, sadly, I. I think the, the positive, ideally the positive here is just the game theory around attracting capital and talent that we're seeing. We know these regions are trying to track via ETF, but then also we've seen what's happened in the UAE, we've seen Florida, Texas, like other places. Ideally, we don't have to leave the United States to make this work. And there's enough. Oh. Absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. And I think I I very much believe that that the US is worth saving and and we'll be saved and we will save it. But you know it. It's also gonna there's gonna be a lot of tumult in this whole thing for sure, sadly. There is but a positive note we were discussing before we hit record. Record Ron Paul was on Tucker Carlson earlier this week, and I think a lot of what he started back in his 2008 presidential campaign. The seeds of that campaign and the ideas he planted in the minds of many young people, myself included, are beginning to to birth flowers in in the movement of liberty. In terms of people really waking up to these systemic problems, it's a combination of the ideas that he put forth over 15 years ago and the fact that more and more individuals are confronted with reality of inflation and it's an effect on their everyday life. So that's all things are insane. I I do have confidence that people are waking up. Obviously we have this show, I've got a couple other shows. We're all doing what we're doing for very specific reasons. I think we're beginning to pick up the ball and basically lead people to to the light, if you will. Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's a there's and there's gonna be a tipping point here. I mean it's, you know, all the country, the entire country knows we've got an inflation problem. You know, the other side has managed to think, get the country to think that they're going to solve it. But that's going to be, it's going to come obvious, I think in the next year or two they can't solve it and then it's really going to get interesting, right? I think. On the different podcast, you know, it used to be that libertarian nerds like us were the only ones who ever talked about Austrian economics. And now it's like really, really gaining currency, certainly within the Bitcoin movement, but but elsewhere as well. I mean, this used to be some rarefied air and now? Everybody seems to be breathing. It in. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, that's Safedine's book. And yeah, I mean, I've said many times, it's really great. It was great for me when your generation showed up, you know, it's like the reinforcements arrived, right? Yeah. I mean, I I got, I got 20 year olds talking to me about Von Mises. And I mean, and then, you know, I'm telling me I'm an old fashioned guy, 'cause I like gold. And I'm like, you know, look, dude, you know, I was into hard money before you were born. Don't lecture my ass, all right? That's a good T-shirt there, Larry. Yeah, right. That of the next Bitcoin that. Really is true in some of these cases, right? I mean. That that's really a a great point from like independent of Bitcoin, I think there's a return to 1st principles thinking and it's a it's a random thing to bring up. But the seed oil deal, like people in Bitcoin were talking about like, you know, for years and we're seeing this like back to cleaner eating. But this goes to, like, medical treatments. And we don't get, you know, too political. But there's a resurgence of like, how do we actually think about what did think? How were things done forever? And then where did we, like, insert or things started to maybe not make sense and let's actually, like, go back to first principles. And I think the money is just one part of that. We live in the world. I mean, look at, look at healthcare and the diet. You know, look at the way that that guy at Harvard was able to convince everybody that, you know that the fat was bad for you. Right. The the butter was bad for you and the beef was bad for that fat in it. We should all be eating carbohydrates and sugar. I mean that, you know, that did more damage. Yeah, That could more damage the overall health of the United States population and than anything, you know, I think in the last 50 years. And so yeah, I mean you know we've got, we've got Fiat medicine, we've got Fiat food, we've got you know Fiat jobs. The whole damn thing is just a complete, you know, it's just it's built on on you know mistruths in a lot of cases that mistruths that served somebody, you know to to make a profit. I mean you know that guy was paid by General Mills right. And and other big food companies. So you know it's it's you see it everywhere. Cui bono, right. And exactly the. But you know, once, once you develop the critical thinking skills to to get to the origins of money, you can see that in the Bitcoin movement. I mean, you know, that's why I think so many people tend to be enlightened when it comes to their diet. And as you said, I think was Marty or maybe was Jesse, you know, getting back to first principles when it comes to to medicine and across the board, it's really interesting to me that independently it seems like we're all arriving at the same conclusions. Yeah, Well, that's right. I mean it and you know, I mean first principles on government, right. I mean it's, you know, like everybody used to trust the government. I've seen surveys now that 80% of the people do not trust the government. Probably the other 20% are employed by the government. So they're a little biased in their view, right. I mean it. And, you know, I mean, it's like it's fascinating to me, for example, to watch the way the Overton window has shifted on the murder of Kennedy, right. I mean, I knew 20 years ago that the CIA killed Kennedy. There's no fucking doubt in my mind. I mean, it's it's indisputable beyond, you know, I mean, the the proof is just so obvious. It's ridiculous. And yet, you know, I used to say that to people and they thought I would, you know, I had three heads. There was conspiracies. There's as a nut job, you know, whatever. And now, you know, I mean, just yesterday, you know, Jack Dorsey was tweeting about it. I mean, you know, you've got billionaires and and you know, I mean this. You ask my kids, you ask people their generation, you know, who killed Kennedy. Oh, the CIA that everybody knows that. And and so you know, what you're beginning to see is this whole facade that this, you know, this Fiat government built up of how we should trust them and how powerful they are and how great they are. It's crumbling and you know it's very, very much the way, you know I, I look at the way, you know Russia was before Russia fell. You know, I mean they they you know it got to the point where everybody knew they were lying to you about everything and that's kind of where we're going I think in the United States. And as a result of that I mean we we haven't figured out the mechanisms to fix it yet. You know, with the voting doesn't seem to work 'cause they rigged the elections and you know a lot of issues but but but the point is we're we're, you know slowly but surely the pieces are getting put into place to dismantle that broken system. You know, I mean you've got Tucker Carlson's, you've got Joe Rogan's, you've got you know, networks that aren't being listened to, etcetera. So you know it's it's all it's all of the same thing which I think is a trend towards decentralization and you know and and a trend towards critical thinking which is not to say that all of our fellow citizens get it. You know many of them do not but but more and more waking up all the time and that's that's a good thing. And and by the way when the when the, you know the pain of inflation gets to the point where it's unbearable, which I think it's gonna is gonna happen in the next cycle here. You know, you're gonna find more and more people asking, how the hell did this happen? What's going on? Why is this broken and demanding that we change, you know, the system we've got, and that'll be a very good thing. And it's all accelerating, whether it's monetarily, socially, from a healthcare perspective, like you look at what's happening with the squatters in New York or San Francisco or Portland, whatever it may be. I mean, that was a big story this week, particularly New York woman in Staten Island went to basically kick squatters out of her house and got arrested for doing that. And not only are the powers that be not respecting the purchasing power of individuals by preserving the monetary system, they're completely abusing it. They're now leaking into social issues, whether it be property rights or the whole conversation around illegal immigration. And then on top of that, they're really attacking the productive class of the government being the unproductive class, really trying to browbeat the productive class. And that's why you see the Jack Dorsey's, the Elon Musk of the world really beginning to retaliate and say, hey, you people are systemically breaking this country that we that we've been building over the last 250 years like well, I'm starting to ring the alarm bells. And you see brave specific groups taking action. I mean I you know the truckers in in Canada as an example etcetera. I mean you know people will only put up with so much and you know and I and I think people know who's doing it to them and it's becoming they're becoming increasingly aware of who's doing it to them. And so you know the the, the, the, the other side of our trade is playing a losing hand just no doubt. And our job is to try and make that, you know, make them lose faster. Because we all have limited lifespans and we want our kids to live in a better world. So. On that point, like as fast as possible, because it is become abundantly clear to me that we're in the looting the treasury phase of late stage empire where they're literally just stealing and they're trying to make everybody believe, no, we need to do this, we need to do this. And they're literally stealing it out everybody's pocket as they're holding them at Bay. Literally stealing property, stealing, purchasing power, stealing lifespan. In terms of pushing this bad healthcare system and this bad food system on people and then pushing drugs on people as well, I think there's a moral imperative, and that's something that Doctor Paul talked about with Tucker Carlson. I think there's a moral imperative to speak out aggressively against this because they're literally looting the treasury right now, stealing people's. Absolutely. And you know it, it goes to, it goes to so many different areas. I mean, you know, the, you know, the the Fiat money funds the wars, right. I mean without Fiat money we wouldn't have blown $6 trillion in, you know, in useless stuff in the Middle East. You know, trying to gain control of oil. I mean you know without Fiat money we'd probably have a a a big you know, intelligent you know nuclear power program because it's the most efficient you know, power generation source ever invented. And you know notice that China is going crazy and and building a ton of nuclear reactors and of course we're not building or decommissioning nuclear reactors. So I I found it interesting though I I thought my sailor was so brilliant and I I listened to him when I was in Madeira and he made the statement that you know don't worry about nuclear it's gonna come because what's gonna happen is AI. The amount of power that AI consumes is so large compared to, you know, even Bitcoin mining or just general, you know, compute power that that the only way we're able we're gonna be able to move AI forward is with nuclear power. And therefore what's gonna happen is, you know, the apples and Nvidias and and the big corporations that are pushing AI are going to demand nuclear because there's just no way to do it without nuclear. So I thought, well, that's kind of interesting. You know, maybe we don't have to work at it on the grassroots level. It's just going to come from the top down to these people are going to demand it and and it's so obvious that we need it. I mean in in terms of, you know, the return on energy invested, it's just it's so far ahead of everything else. It's it's it's as to be ridiculous, right? Well, getting back also to a point you just made, Larry, I think it's the the Fiat funding of wars that really gets under my skin more so than even some other things. Because here we are sort of underwriting the murder of other people. And if instead we went door to door to each taxpayer's house and said, hey, would you contribute $10,000 to this war in the Middle East? Nobody would say yes. Because. We can print the money, we do it instead, and we kill a bunch of Americans, not to mention countless others, for these wars that accomplish virtually nothing, in my opinion. Make things worse. Actually, it's absolutely right. Yeah, it's absolutely right. I mean, we need to really reimagine government as a much smaller entity, you know, the way it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. You know, I mean, the way I envision government, I think government ought to be a referee. I mean, we need, in my opinion, we need a government to, you know, put criminals in jail and have a court system and enforce the rule of law. Other than that, I don't think there's much government needs to do, you know, the whole, the whole, you know, Social Security, all all the other stuff they do I think is is a boondoggle and would be better done privately. But you know, I mean sadly we're just a long ways away from that kind of a world and it's going to take you know failure of big government on a spectacular scale which I think is coming to get to get to the world that you know that I envision you know, but I, I, you know I think if you look at I mean there are bad actors in the world and there are criminals in the world. But I think in general you know it stay at a state level that that you know that there don't need to be criminals. I mean it was you know World War 2 allowed you know criminals to get a hold of big powerful states. You know, most notably, you know, Hitler in Germany and but I, I I don't think, you know, we need, we don't need these big powerful states anymore. We can have a much more decentralized world. And you know, the average healthy human being doesn't want to kill other human beings, doesn't. I don't have any animus against, you know, people in Iraq or China or Russia or anywhere else. I mean they're they're people just like we are. And most of them just want to, you know, live their lives and raise their families, you know, and they're within that group. They're obviously criminals. Criminals need to be prosecuted. And that's why government should exist. But to me, that's about it. Yeah this is where the the the one area where I feel like I I never the Ron Paul stuff never made sense to me or Occupy Wall Street never made sense to me because the the assumption in there Larry is that that we can self impose austerity or or you know cut the fat trim back through through conscious deliberate re evaluation of what makes sense in government spending and and what doesn't And then and that special interests won't prevail in that debate And and I've always had you know had no faith in that and believe that it was a lost cause as a result until Bitcoin until this sort of sly roundabout way of reimposing sanity fiscal sanity and and austerity in a time when there's too much. When there's excess. Bitcoin doesn't allow for access, so it imposes austerity because it aligns with the interests of of all levels. Whether that's, you know, the most powerful industries in the world or the individuals, people and companies and governments are going to want Bitcoin and are going to choose Bitcoin over the excesses, the unsustainable excesses of of Fiat. And that that's the only way that that rational sanity is restored. I would agree. I mean it's a level playing field and that's you know that's the, that's the big difference, right. I mean you know the Contillionaires now you know they get to borrow at low rates and you know let me borrow at low rates and invest at 10% and I'll be rich too. And that's that's really the system that we've got today is set up to benefit a small group of people and that's just got to change. But I mean, I, you know, I think it will. And I'm I'm currently reading Murray Rothbard's The History of Banking and Money Money of Banking in the United States. And it's really makes me very optimistic about where we are now. Because if you go and read what the colonies had to do to run through monetary systems, it is completely convoluted in the sense that they need to get physical specie within the borders of the colonies, typically the Spanish silver dollar and and some gold. But like the physical nature of that made it very hard. And and I think the opportunity that we have today to really fix the system because again the the system's broken at the core because money's the most important tool and we've broken the money. And that's something that makes me extremely optimistic. Anchoring back to what the colonies went through when they were trying to figure out money is that it was hard because they were living in this physical world. Now we do have these massive problems as a global society, but we have this digital, open, permissionless network that anybody can plug into, and it makes solving that problem of money much easier on a global scale. Totally agree. I mean it's we've got the perfect tool. You know it's it's just it's absolutely the perfect tool and you know it's clearest day to me that you know everything will be priced in sats at some point. You know that that it's a better form of money and therefore it will be the base layer of everything. And you know, people will look back on this whole Central Bank era. I I saw there was a great tweet the other day. Somebody called it like it would be like bloodletting. I think it was Alex Leishman from Riverside. That's. What it was? Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna look back at central banking and compare it to you know bloodletting of of the doctors of the you know the Middle Ages. And I think that's right. I mean, you can't. You know, how can a How can a committee of bureaucrats, unelected bureaucrats, set the most important price in the world, which is the price of time and the price of money? They they can't. Well, let let's go a little a little further on that though because it's actually relevant. It was shared on the Ethereum and the ETF and this thing happening right now with BlackRock and the other institutions and then you were mentioned small consortium you have the ETH foundation like I think of them as the same thing as the dollar right you have. People. Messing with the monetary policy. But this direct path is obviously not a Direct Line. And you've talked about this a lot, Larry, and you know your history and what happened around the GFC and how the games and the rules were shifted and there's been this conversation around BlackRock and you know, good actor, bad actor, what what do they mean? But this notion of permission, less money going into a centralized entity is obviously an issue. But then also this idea that we're going to like tokenize a bunch of other assets and also you know, that's a that's in my mind, an ETF is a tokenization, A tokenized asset on Bitcoin. But then you have an ETF and that opens up that aperture into digital assets. Like there's something there that we talked about for the past year that doesn't, doesn't feel or seem right as far as the the direction we want this to go. And curious if you guys think about it in a similar light or if you have any kind of thoughts on it? Yeah, I don't know. I don't. I don't think about ETH too much. I mean, I, you know, and I. I think BlackRock getting into like ETH and like what do they position the institutional investors and how is that like the thought of that asset and that's your proxy for how you get into digital assets is via these ETFs. I mean, ETH doesn't pass the Howie test, right? I mean, ETH is a security and you know, I don't know. I don't know how they're going to let it be, you know, whether they're going to approve an ETF or not. I don't really follow that. I mean, I try to be somewhat charitable and accept that there are shit coins like ETH and all the others that actually may be doing something technologically that is, you know, worthwhile. But because they're flawed at the fundamental premise level of not being proof of work, I think that whatever they're doing should be built on top of Bitcoin because you've got to start with a sound base layer. So you know I've I've had a lot of people kind of attack me for being a maxi and and hating shit coiners. And you know I think it's, excuse me, I think it's fair to hate shit coiners in general cause a lot of them are just in it for the grift. But to be fair to them, there are some people in the digital asset space that are trying to actually tokenize and build applications that will have value. And you know, I'm not opposed to building things that will have value. I just think that building them on coins other than Bitcoin is, is a fool's errand because the monetary policy of those coins is flawed, you know? So I don't know. That's kind of how I see Ship Coin land. Well, there's a general, there's a general principle which with which I think we're all well acquainted, which is you know, decentralization is the answer. And Larry, you referenced it early when it comes to political economy. But it's true just in general. So that this open source nature of Bitcoin, I think it's the secret sauce. Anything that's centralized. I know that we all know this, but anything that centralizes is inherently flawed. Yeah I mean I think that's the whole point of also the we talked about the information and all the things that have kind of Co opted how we think Jesse before the pod was referencing the Ron Paul stuff and and the the news and the media back then and how vilified and all the things the connotations that were given to him. And the the the incentive model of Bitcoin has people adopting it. But I think that there's a natural thing of the Internet and a lot of these concepts to your point David is the most decentralized form of information delivery mechanism we've ever seen. And so you get to like it was almost inevitable in my mind independent of Bitcoin that a lot of these concepts were going to come out because they were just fundamentally true. But we only had centralized versions of how it was get and plus whether it's via you know certain books or you know 3 News channels or whatever existed for the past, you know pre Internet. So a lot of this stuff ties directly into your point decentralization and getting the information out in the to the broadest way with the most number of people. I think Murray's, you know, TFTC is a great example of that. Yeah. I mean I I think, I think in the when the history of this era is written the two biggest developments I'm not sure which is bigger in in you know order will be but will be the the development of the Internet and the development of Bitcoin because the Internet basically decentralized information communications. I mean, anyone could be the New York Times. Now you can get on the Internet and have your own pod, you know, look at Marty and and you can exceed and and do better quality work than, you know, big networks, right. And then and anyone can communicate with anyone. It's all decentralized. And then of course, Bitcoin's just the the monetary version of that. So I think when it's all said and done, you know, people are gonna look back and say that was the beginning of of, you know, what fixed the world. I mean, we reached peak centralization in World War 2. You know, we killed 50 million people in seven years or something. And and it showed the dangers of centralization 'cause you get a big powerful country like Germany, you get an idiot running it and, you know, you go and murder 6,000,000 Jews. I mean that, you know, centralization is dangerous inherently, as long as evil people exist and evil people always exist. So decentralization addresses it. Right. Because the people. Sorry Marty, but it's often the very people who seek high office Who are the ones who? Necessarily want. In office and Hitler sort of the, the, the. Oh, it's yeah. It's almost a perfect correlation between the people who want these jobs and the people we don't want in them. I mean, I've often said we'd be better off picking our elected representatives out of the phone book. I mean, I wouldn't. Say that? Yeah, I would trust my stupid neighbors over the people we lack. I mean, they're stupid. They're not evil. You know what I mean? They're they're good hearted. They're just not very white with cases have. You ever Have you ever been to an HOA meeting? I I'm much so sure about that. Oh, that's it's the sociopath of the microscope. Plenty of them. And. And yeah, I know what you're talking about. Though yeah, like and it's going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole really highlights that centralization is not only a problem of money, it's a problem everywhere else. It's like a big point in our lives. My wife and I is really on the food side. We were talking about that earlier and she my wife has gone full down the rabbit hole of making sure we're eating as cleanly as possible. And one of the ways in which we do that is we go to basically a farm stand around the corner called local pastures, and they have a bunch of beef and milk and cheese from local farms all around the Austin area. And it highlights that, like this distributed nature of food delivery is much better. Like the food that we eat is insanely more healthy, tastes better, it's a little bit more expensive, but it's worth it. But going back to the main point of centralization, like you can at the Federal Reserve Board run a monetary system. You can't have four major slaughterhouses run a food system in the healthcare system. You can't have three major pharma companies run the the solutions for for medical ailments. And it's peak centralization. Larry, you said World War 2. Like, I would argue like maybe in the last two decades we'll look back and say like this was peak, peak centralization. Outside of force and money, it sort of metastasized into every point of our life, whether it be food, healthcare, the university system. Yeah, you might be right. It it the, the Fiat world really got, you know very centralized in the last yeah. You. Got to be careful with calling tools. I can't help but. On top, on Fiat World, because it just gets, it keeps getting worse. Yeah, that's true. I feel like it. You know, once once the USSR was no longer keeping us honest in terms of like like like high school fitness. You know, back when the USSR was a threat was was taken seriously. Like we were cultivating fighting ready men and making sure that that was part of what we were doing in high school. And you know that comes with like a hardness and you know like tough life principles and values being instilled in our younger generations. And then, you know, that threat goes out the window and everybody relaxes, kicks their feet up and opens a bag of potato chips and and you know, 30 years later, it's not looking so good. It's. A great point because generally somebody would say like, how do you get from those two? But they're direct in the same way. No. Generally people haven't been worried about the border. They're like let people in, but then they don't care about the border of their your own house anymore. What Marta is referencing on the squatter and that's like 12 months, right? You're like incepting in this idea that borders don't matter. And it's like, well, of course you're like, it's OK over there, 'cause it's not in my city or state, but now they're in your home and you're like, how do we get here? And to Jesse's point, it's like we, like, took away, like fitness and health and now it's like, well, no, you send somebody off or you're trying to, you know, build a society that is strong and you're like, how do we get here? It's like, well, you started over here. Well, it's a slippery slope. I mean property rights don't matter in California and go into any store and steal less than $1000 and they won't even prosecute you. They don't have time, you know, I mean it's it's it's a very, very slippery slope once you decide that the standards are are loosey, goosey, right. It's it. This is an interesting theme. I heard something today, Jesse, or this week, that was like really transformative. And just like how I think about what we're doing here is there's a guy that's joining us that became a client, great guy, holds his keys, probably majority holds his keys, and we're in a marketing meeting. He says, I I like on ramp because it's a version of I want to believe in a world where we still trust institutions And I. And it hit me very hard simply because I started to think, and I'd be curious because I know this is going to be like polarizing thought. But this version of if we all hold our keys and don't trust anybody that inherently, whether it's explicitly known or not, is baking in that we can't actually trust anybody. And like, that's not like, I think it's almost like seems like AI don't know if cognitive distance is the right word, but like. And it's the opposite of building a more prosperous world. Because in reality, just like from coordinating economic activity, like you have to work with other people and you have to like cooperate. But I think this ties into what we're talking about here is like we want to build a better world. We have to like think about it in that way and like some of these ideas around. Yeah, I I think, I think you you you're always going to have to trust people. I mean I have to trust that the farmer is not giving me bad food that's going to kill me and and and reputation is always going to matter. And I I like Reagan's line towards the Soviet Union back in the 80s where he's, you know, he said trust but verify, right. And I think that's I think that's really where bitcoiners are. I mean it. You know, we can trust. I mean, you know, you're not going to trust Sam Backman Freed. I mean, we all knew he was a bad guy from day one. But, you know, you certainly there are. I mean, trust and reputation are built up over time and and that's a good thing. And and that's absolutely essential to a functioning society. I mean, you can't, you know, I don't want to have to test my food every time before I eat it to make sure the food producer hasn't poisoned me. I mean, you know that. That's ridiculous. I've got to buy it from people I trust. Yeah, and that's that's one of the bad memes that's permeated in some Bitcoin circles is this idea of trustlessness, which is not the case. It's Bitcoin provides us with a way to have a trust minimized money system where you can always fall back to holding and securing your own private keys yourself and minimize the trust you need. But in that relationship, you still need trust. You need to trust that you're going to be able to competently access and and utilize your your private keys and so like it works on a scale from there. I think that's the beauty of Bitcoin is that you can always fall back to that extreme trust, minimize position. But from there, you do want to build trust and I think that creates an incentive system where as you're operating throughout the account economy or counterparties always understand that you have that trust minimize fall back option of falling back to holding your own private keys. And so they're incentivized to provide a good service and gain your trust in that economic interaction. And it's like the small details of that trust minimized base that we're all working from that can really build a flourishing economy imbued with a lot of trust between individual actors in that economy. Well, and I was just saying in the centralized world with instant communication, you know, a breach of trust is like instantly, you know, broadcast, right? I mean, so the the, the bad actor can't live for long, right? I mean that's, and that's a good thing. And Marty that that's such a profound way you put it because that's like what was baked in and and I think some of the stuff was known but the first trust we did was the idea that like A you shouldn't have a centralized custodian holding the keys but then B, the mechanism to be able to take delivery is very important because the underlying properties of that or what give Bitcoin value and and this at the time was pre ETF and now we're post ETF and we still have the same problem around you know whatever came out this week it's like 90% of all the ETF assets that with Coinbase. But then the notion that you also can't have that point to you which you drove on, it's like keeping people honest and knowing that your bitcoins there, which I think that's where like we feel confident and I think everyone is podcasting. If we're going to be successful in all of this, the right things need to be built because the way they're being built today are don't feel like sustainable if this thing actually is successful. Yeah, Marty and and and Michael there nailed this. Bitcoin creates this, this shift in the landscape of trust that Marty beautifully said how it pairs it back to like you can fall back to trust, trust, minimized stance, but then we have to build from there. We have to build the sort of economy, the industry, the the landscape that we want to see that that works for how humans are set up. You know, we're set up to place trust in individuals and entities that have earned trust and have a good reputation in order to do things that would be hard for us to do ourselves. Whether that's growing your own food or you know, financial services that are built on Bitcoin where you're trusting the company to do something that that you could do yourself. It would be very, very hard to do. And you know that's the the ethos that ON RAMP has been built with is you know versus an ETF where it's cash creates and redeems. So for everyone listening, if you have a friend or or family member who's thinking about getting a Bitcoin position and they're just going to buy the ETF, they should know that currently it is cash create and cash redeem. So if they want to ever take control of their Bitcoin, if they ever want to graduate to self custody, they have a taxable event when they sell their coin, their their ETF position and then use those proceeds to buy real Bitcoin. That's a taxable event because they're not allowed to withdraw Bitcoin from an ETF as it as it currently stands. But the On RAMP Bitcoin Trust we set up with that specific first principle in mind that people should be able to withdraw their Bitcoin without a taxable event. That should be a part of how any of these vehicles operate And so we made it that way. So you know, let your friends and and and family know that if they're thinking about taking a position in an ETF that maybe they should talk to to on ramp instead and see if that's a better fit. Especially with our our our approach to custody with a multi institution custody where we're not giving our coins to Coinbase. We are holding those coins in a multi sig fashion where 3 institutions each hold one key and none have unilateral control over the assets. And so that those are the two big differences versus the ETFs that you know we designed this vehicle the way it should be done and the way that Bitcoin should be advanced and and this should become the standard. And so we're we're making it that that way at on RAMP. So, you know, just a little pitch there for everyone out there who's who's wondering what's the differences between the ETFs and on RAMP Bitcoin Trust. 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. We don't have to go farther with this organic, you know something. I was respected and Marty and Matt from the Pods talking business on air. I think it was always fun to hear and part of what Jesse just described was this last night in Slack was thinking about the ETFs and all the stuff going on and realizing like just how bad of products and and what we created and was like we should really create a narrative for our network. The network on this podcast, the network listens to podcast and people just know fundamentally that people will maybe not go by spot to start but are going to go to the ETF and how do we like build what Jesse just described, what Marty just described. It's like into the models of people's brains that are known. They're going to ask about what where should I get Bitcoin? Of all the underlying reasons that Jesse just explained why we would explain it to them or why they would refer somebody and so did David and Marty who advisors and and close to what we're doing. I'm curious like how do you guys feel about that from just like the messaging standpoint and how we should drive? Because historically we haven't had a singular like focus on a certain product that we're doing. And also like a cohort and this is also a cohort that we're just not generally like seeing right now just because I mean we do see some, but it's not like a concerted focus. We see a lot of like on the custody side because people naturally want a better form of custody. But curiously like that, that pitch that Jesse said. And how you, how you guys would feel about us getting behind that in a heavy way and if we can like, mobilize the people that understand what's happening and that there's a better solution out there? Well, I might say that you know, ETFs may be useful and an interesting sort of tip of the spear moment for folks who haven't yet been exposed to Bitcoin and in for instance A donor advised fund or a non self-directed IRA. It can be a way to at least be introduced to to Bitcoin. However, I think we're all well acquainted with the, the, the merits as previously discussed of doing it in a more pure and and secure fashion. And and so I think that's where on ramp comes in because you know you're you are using more than one custodian. And by the way you can also do what I did which is to create a self-directed IRA and then you do as you please. You're not sort of locked into whatever Charles Schwab or somebody else wants you to do. And so I, you know I think there's room for both. But on ramp is probably the next step in the evolution within at least you know my demographic. I'm not sure by the way how Larry feels about this, but within my peer group I think it's still, you know, even now a heavier lift is becoming less of a heavy lift, but but it's not sort of understood, let alone embraced within this group. However, you know, given this, this age bracket, this is kind of where the money is. So and furthermore a lot of us work for big institutions, so that too can be a point of entry. But that's, I guess, kind of where I stand. But I would anchor back to the trust. Minimized. I mean, right, not go to Marty Jones here, but it's like you mentioned earlier, a lot of the ETF Bitcoin is held with a single custodian. That's a lot of trust. Right now it's hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin worth of trust in one institution, which just doesn't make sense. And if you're thinking about making allocation of Bitcoin and you're thinking of the potential worst case scenarios in the future, I mean, I think that's a pretty low hanging fruit. It's like you have the centralized entity and there's many ways in which that centralized entity could be attacked. It could not even attacked could mess up. It could. I don't think it's going to happen, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility. Lose access to the private keys that secure all that Bitcoin. It's a big honeypot for governments to point at. And and that's one institution that a government would have to go to and say hey you need to sign the private key and move the Bitcoin to this address that we control. And so again going back to the the anchor of trust minimization, it's in this model is multi institution, multi sig, it's less trust in a single institution. A trust is distributed amongst many institutions which increases the bar at which an attacker would need to get at your Bitcoin. So just from a first principal security perspective, knowing that you can wake up in a decade and the probability of you being able to access your Bitcoin via a multi institution, multi sig set up versus a single institution single sig set up. I think it's just a no brainer in my mind. But obviously I've been in this industry for 11 years and understand the nuances to all of this and I think that's the big hurdle that anybody pushing this multi sig, multi institution model needs to overcome is helping people understand that these properties exist in the 1st place and they are superior to a single sig, single custodian set up. Yeah, it's all education. I feel like this is a big part of we've kind of means Bukhali and El Salvador taking delivery of their assets, right. Because I think that was like a narrative like wait, you're sitting here, you know everybody hates you and as far as like the, you know UN or the IMF and then you're putting your Bitcoin, I think it was rumored or or it was known that it was at Coinbase. And so this angle of like just natural education around centralization, the ability, it doesn't have to be like anything crazy. It's literally we hear it all day long. People just get hacked between their phone and Coinbase and they don't insure that. They say they insure it you Nobody gets paid out because your phone you pressed the wrong button. Yeah. And and on the I, I guess when it comes to Coinbase, I I feel like this is many people won't feel this way. But I feel that there's a greater risk than than most people realize or or think possible that Wayne Base's Bitcoin is at some point seized by the US government. And I say that because if we are dealing with what we we think we're dealing with here which is the the shaping of the new monetary world order that will last for a very, very long time. The stakes are incredibly high. And you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier, if if you believe that the US government, the the CIA was capable of killing the sitting president with JFK, then what's? What's one more cardinal sin here of, you know, just seizing the the coins held by one company, nationalizing one company, and seizing those assets that currently aren't worth a ton in the grand scheme of the world but would secure a government a couple million Bitcoin. Yeah. To take it a step further, it's completely logical to believe that people if Coinbase was a solution that Bitcoin works like just like it's their it's like the greatest level of cognitive dissonance and the understanding of like what happened to gold that it can't hold all the assets like. And so we talk about you know multi institution, all these things. It's like just take possession of your keys in any way you can if you want this thing to be successful. It's like literally the I think anybody is worth their salt will say and then you figure it out from there. But even on a Ledger I would could be more convinced and I'd be scared to wake up and realize that I just can't get access and that's all they can do. It's like literally just say no because we didn't like that you logged on to Twitter and said one thing. Yeah let me make a couple of points. I mean one I I just I've I've watched Coinbase since inception and I know I wouldn't be comfortable having coins stored there based on you know the way they crash all the time and and behavior etcetera and and so I you know unfortunately I have some coins and unfortunately unfortunately just it's a fact but I have some retirement accounts that I can't free up and so I I have some coins that I've purchased through retirement accounts and I I like Fidelity's custody solution much better than Coinbase's. So I'm in FBTC and we recommend all our clients that you select that you know over the black the Black Rock product. But I let's go to what Jesse was talking about because I I think that's a very interesting question and I find it interesting, I think Sailor. He's doing a very nice job of talking about digital property. I mean he's smart enough to know we're all smart enough to know that ultimately SAT's are going to kill the dollar the the the dollar is going to hyperinflate and we're going to be on a SAT based standard. He knows that. But he also knows that politically, you know, that doesn't serve our interests to say that and to lead with that spear. And he's he's taking the Jeff booth piece of what's Co-op the other side as much as possible and just call this digital property And yeah, the dollar can Co exist. No problem. Turns out it's very, very inferior as a form of money. But you know we'll deal with that later. Well, here's the thing. Once it gets critical. I mean and and and by the way, you know what just happened with the ETFs is an enormously positive thing because the big pools of money obviously could not go into this asset because they weren't going to buy treasors or ledgers or cold cards and self custody. You know, for their boomer clients, they just weren't going to do it. But now it's a ticker symbol and they can get 20 VIPs on it. And so they just, you know, put in the order and off they go. Although ironically, I heard yesterday, you know Morgan Stanley, if you're a Morgan Stanley brokerage account client, you can't buy a Bitcoin ETF. What they're trying to do is push you into their managed Bitcoin product where they will try and dampen the volatility and they want to charge you 100 basis points to be in that. Isn't that amazing? I mean and and the same is true actually, Edward, you know, a similar thing is true at Edward Jones. It's a big brokerage firm and they are Edward Jones is not letting their clients buy these ETFs. I'm just like I'm stunned by that. But but you know bottom line is these ETFs created the ability for the average financial advisor to say, yeah we'll get you some Bitcoin And and of course as we all know that's a huge deal and and it and it removed the notion that the government hates this thing and they're going to shut it down. I mean, among a lot of my normie boomer friends who have money, they were like, yeah, OK, you may be right, but doesn't matter. The government's going to shut it down. Well, suddenly that argument's not so relevant with these ETFs and ETF approval. And so to be honest with you, I was kind of shocked that they did it. And I, I think, you know, the three judges that approved, you know, that that ruled in favor of GVTCI think those guys are going to go down as heroes because they're the guys who kind of more or less pushed the SEC into taking this position. But, but let me keep going so we get further down the road and you know this is existential for them, right? We're we are playing for all of the Fiat and the money marbles and you know we get down the road and the dollar really is kind of failing and you know bitcoins at you know, 600,000, you know, going to a million and you know gold's at 4 or $5000 an ounce and inflation is raging. And then the US government kind of realized, you know, holy shit, we're losing control of this entire monetary system. And the reason is these alternative assets are, you know, they're they're they're exits that we're letting people get on. And and and the more they get on it, the more Gresham's Law kicks in. And sooner or later, we're ultimately all going to lose their jobs, be wiped out, and the currency's going to be worth us. And so in order to protect the union, protect the country, protect the dollar, protect all of us, we got to stop this shit. And it's pretty simple. We're going to tax gold and silver and Bitcoin at 80% a year and you know, maybe we're going to seize these ETFs and just make it illegal. And of course, you know, there'll be a huge constituents of us that'll cry foul. But, you know, there'll be a big difference between the people who have their own keys and their the 12 words and and the ability to go anywhere in the world and protect their wealth. And the people who have their money siloed in their system where, you know, Coinbase can one day wake up and say, yeah, I know bitcoin's trading in $1,000,000 but the last price pre that was 200,000 and we're gonna cap settle you out at 200,000. We'll send you 200,000 for each of your coins. We don't care that it's trading in a million tough shit and and and I mean cause the same thing could happen in gold too. I mean, I I think that the natural gold price today, if you compared to the 1971 standard would be 80,000 an ounce because they're all kinds of paper gold derivatives have been created to hold the price down. And so when you know, when it, when the shit hits the fan for the federal government, and I think it will at some point I think we can expect or or we have to at least game theory out that they might take actions which are, you know, in our view completely illegal, completely wrong. I mean it's, you know, I mean it's my grandfather was enraged by FDR in 61O2. And yet, you know, he packed the Supreme Court and they supported him on it. I mean it's, you know, the the government, remember the the job of the government is to keep the people in the government in power. It's not to do what's best for the rest of us. It's to protect themselves. And so when this gets to the point of being serious and existential, I think you know those people who've moved into this. I mean I I try and get my clients to get into Bitcoin but if they're not ready to buy a Trezor you know the the second best solution is to be in an ETF is at least they'll get the price appreciation. Then I start working on them about how they they've got to get out of there and get into it get into holding their own you know coins and self sovereignty. But but I think this I think Jesse, you're right. I I, I believe this is going to become, excuse me, a very important issue as what we're talking about here develops. Yeah. It was very well put and kind of like the road map because I think we we we often say that why it's a problem but breaking down exactly why it's a logical problem is helpful. So I appreciate you going through that, Larry. And it's the dynamics of Bitcoin are very interesting too because we're lucky today that most Bitcoin is held in self custody and keys the people control and is really a race against time and price because it's the price of Bitcoin is up. Like thinking about how powerful the government is and what it can do to try to force bitcoiners into a corner like they're in a race against time in regards to like the price going up. We had a really interesting event here at the Commons last week. Bitcoin Urbanism led by Tour de Meester, Kelly Landon, Austin Tunnel and Tour gave a great presentation and it's like if you look at the top 1% right now in terms of high net worth individuals, individuals that own more than $50 million worth of wealth in the world. Bitcoiners make up about I believe one to 10% of that right now. But as the price goes up, we take a a larger share of the high net worth individuals in the world and at some point there's a flipping where as we know, money talks in this world. And if the price of Bitcoin gets to a certain point, bitcoiners will be extremely wealthy. At which point you begin to use that wealth to affect change in the political economy, whether that be making the government smaller or just investing in private enterprise to compete with government, government programs. And I think that's something that the government is highly aware of is whether they admit it or not as they're looking at the price of Bitcoin. And they have to intuitively understand if we get this gets to a certain point, there's going to be a bunch of freedom loving, extremely wealthy people that are competing with us on the market. And I think that will factor into their decisions about what they do with these ETFs and and. Well, the beauty is, they hold. Custodians they. Hold Bitcoin as well, right? Like they have to at a certain point like Senator Warren or whoever is the you know token person of the the week or month that hates Bitcoin is probably having to pump their or pack their bags just in case it takes off. Marty would you said it because I know we have limited time in it. It's a Segway or part of like what you just mentioned for Larry is quote the Raven. Well I I don't know like how many people listen and I know Marty you know of him. I thought it was Philly. Guy. Oh, so, Philly Guy. Oh, we, yes. That's. Very cool. Because I think like he's an interesting angle for a number of reasons. One, what Marty just tied into of an existing you know call it trad fi, you know person that's looking at the macro traditional markets hated Bitcoin. He came at it from a number of and the reason I'm bringing it up is because I like heard him talk. The only reason I listened to his pod Larry is because you were on it I think multiple times. And I heard how like much he just he hated Bitcoin and how crazy he how crazy was. It was actually an opposite signal for me where I was like, and if this guy doesn't get it, how can I listen to anything else that he talks about. But then to see that like 180 shift. And then I had a guy reference, so I should listen to the pod that he did with Peter McCormick. And he talks about, you know, just how he couldn't get in the have fun staying poor, kept him out for so long. But then he finally sees it and how the mobilization of the GameStop and all this stuff and people's like mental and emotional capital and physical and human capital has been targeted the wrong way anyway. I thought it was a compelling version of what Marty just described of like at a certain point the just narrative is shifting slower and slower from people that were didn't believe this to get there and we're and he seems like just this this interesting point in that because he was so against it. Well, if I could interject here too, I think Chris says the name for Quatre. Publicly. Chris Irons is his name, but David, he's from Fishtown, Philadelphia and he he said he's Tradfi Michael, but he's really trying to bring like a blue collar perspective. Like if you understand where he's from in Philly, like Fishtown, that part of the Philadelphia area, it's very blue collar. A lot of union workers and he's trying to like put forward a voice for this blue collar demographic. And David like like being from Philadelphia and coming from a family of union men. Myself like these are the types of people that should be getting into Bitcoin 'cause they feel beaten down by the system having supported it. Particularly, union workers have voted for a lot of Democrats historically who have inevitably made their life worse with their fiscal monetary policies. But that's what Chris said on What Bitcoin did is really encouraging in terms of really lighting a fire under the blue collar class who may participate in Occupy Wall Street but really didn't understand the solutions, the problems in the 1st place, let alone the solutions that would solve these problems. That is really good signal that Chris is on this and pitching this message to the union workers of of Fishtown, Philadelphia who are looking for a solution to these problems. He's a smart guy and I've been on a show a few times because he's a gold guy and and I always kind of thought to myself you know this guy's going to get it eventually. I just got to keep working on you know and he's just too smart not to and he's open minded he and he, you know to his own credit I mean he he says you know I'm just an idiot you know trying to make it in the investment world. I mean I think you know to me the the humility is always the issue that that stops people from getting it. I mean you've got to have a certain amount of humility to you know, to accept it and to understand it And the people who don't accept and understand it tend to be you know kind of arrogant people. You know, I I think of records or I think of. Well. It's been, you know, his piece on his conversion of Bitcoin I thought was really interesting. And we bitcoiners, and it's been said before, need to be careful about sort of doing victory laps and stomping on people's faces when they finally come around. And it said kind of like welcome them with with open arms instead. Because you know it. It's a, it's a it's an act of humility to come around and say, hey. Look, Sailor. And they thought it was thought it was bullshit. And you know we've all, we've all. And I I know my my conviction on it has grown over time. I mean I, you know I started with some conviction and and now I'm, you know I've got raging conviction but but I, you know it took, it took time to go down that path because you know there are risks and you want to understand them fully and you want to see things you know develop in the fact that you would expect. Jesse would love this, like on the body explains. You know they have fun staying poor. Kept him out and then he's like, once I got in, they're like, fuck you you idiot, you're only in 10% you. Can't win You can't wait until you're 100%. All in you're. 100% in, yeah. And that hundred, you know, you gotta remember, 100% is not the appropriate allocation for some people. I mean, it's in your 20s and 30s. That's fine. I mean that you know if you're, if you're not. Investment device you've got. Meaningful wealth. You're Boomer and you're 607080. I mean it's, I mean, you know, it's rough to be 100%. I mean the the thing does have drawn outs, right? Yeah. Yeah, and I mean this Harkins, back to the beginning of the conversation. We're talking about the gap in that exists in the pensions right now. Like I don't think anybody expects these pensions to ape in and put 100% of their allocation in the Bitcoin and being insane. But I think on this tip like it is important for bitcoiners to have some humility ourselves and say, all right we have to recognize that not everybody's going to ape in like we have. And thinking of the pension specifically like I think it is again going back to moral imperatives. It is moral imperative that we try to give the people who believe they're going to have some funds and retirement to be able to enjoy their lives on the back end of it to actually do that. And I think it's a moral imperative to convince these pensions like, yeah, you don't have to buy a fifteen 2050% Bitcoin allocation, but you should seriously consider getting some allocation to make sure that you can provide your pensioners with a retirement fund at the end of the day and. It's just it's it's meeting people where they're at. I've always deeply respected Marty from like we were forged when you think about being around and Marty even before in the fire of like all the craziness that happened. And so I think we generally have like tough skin when you want to go and meet people and hit them over the head. But the reality is like people just don't respond to that. And if we want to bring in the people with capital, we have to. And part of this pod and a lot of the things we work on aren't necessarily built and they just hardcore ethos of somebody if you went on, you know, Bitcoin, Twitter. But the reality is all the money sits outside of the system. And so we have to bring it into this system. We have to start with like how do we meet them there? And the ETF is the greatest example because we said everything about Coinbase, but at the same time, we need the ETF to get to the other side, even though it's the thing that will lead itself. Absolutely, Yeah. Now the ETF is not the endpoint solution, but it's an enormously positive thing because, you know, people put money into it, they'll see it go up and they start to wonder why. I mean, it's like everybody's journey, I think starts with a modest allocation. And as you learn more and get greater conviction, you know, your, your waiting goes up. I mean, well, the other thing that happens is your waiting goes up naturally because it appreciates the damn much. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm well over 50, you know, 60% now And part of that and maybe approaching 70, part of that's because the gold shit I hold hasn't really moved much and the Bitcoin, you know, has gone up 150% this year. So I mean, you know, eventually, without even selling any gold, I mean, Bitcoin could eventually become 90% of my assets because it's just gone up so damn much. What a terrible problem they had. Yeah, right. It would really suck. Well, it it is kind of annoying because I'd like the gold at least keep, you know, some pace with it. I mean gold appears to have broken out here and I I think the whole notion that gold is, is not going to perform in nominal terms is wrong. I I don't Bitcoin is stealing share from gold. There's no doubt and it's a much better vehicle and it's a faster racehorse. But I think that, you know in a Fiat world, I mean we're talking about this in another call. I did it yesterday where, you know do they compete with one another And the answer is of course they do. But, but really you're still talking, I mean at Bitcoin at 1.3 trillion, gold at 12 trillion, you know, and Fiat assets, financial assets at 350 trillion, I mean that's the elephant, right? I mean, you know, the elephant is the 350 and where the hell is that gonna go? You know, not whether a little bit more of it goes to gold or a little bit more of it goes to Bitcoin. I mean these are still, you know, a pimple on the ass of the elephant and and that's why, you know, they both have so much optionality and upside. And you know, I I fully expect Bitcoin to be $1,000,000 a, you know, a coin and you know, I'd probably expect gold to be, you know, 5000 an ounce or maybe 10, I mean which is you know, nice performance from here, but nothing close to what Bitcoin has done and. I know. Entry point I I've been suggesting to people you know, like why not just especially like smaller endowments and so forth, but also just friends, Why not start with a low AA low single digit amount? Absolutely right. Yeah, that's what I always say. I mean, the only wrong allocation is 0. And I said, look, you can't afford to, you know, you've got investment assets. You can't afford to lose 2% of your assets. Come on, you know it's it's going to zero. You know, you can put 2% into it and then just give me some time and let's let's see what happens. And because you know, you're gonna, I mean, investing is about, you know, not experiencing regret. And if I tell you about it, explain it to you and you kind of intellectually get it, You know, if it goes up to hundred a hundred X and you knew about it, you're gonna. I mean, if you didn't know about it, that's one thing. But if you knew about it and decided not to do it, it goes up 100 X, you're gonna experience regret. I can assure you that thing. David and you know we have to wrap in a few minutes, but I'm curious if and you can take time. Either one is on the the gold side and getting gold people involved 'cause they know that's been a discussion. But the other side is the plug. I think you're gonna be at the Bitcoin John with Lynn and and if you wanna share that 'cause if this Philly, Philly thing keeps growing stronger. I didn't even know Quoth was from there. We gotta have him come and and we'll reach out to them to join. But if you wanna talk about that before you wrap up and Marty, sorry, that's. Good. Yeah I mean it's it's April 1st right Marty in in Philadelphia and and what's funny about Philadelphia is we have like this locus of hardcore bitcoiners there and and so yeah Lynn Altman will be speaking and for those who aren't acquainted with the term John, it means like thing in. Philadelphia. So yeah, Marty's a native as a mice so it should be a great gathering. And and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn in mentioning that Thomas at Pub Key and some other folks are hoping to maybe establish an outpost in Philadelphia. So in any event, look for that as a as a new competitor to the likes of Nashville and Austin, some other Bitcoin epicenters. Jackson from the team I think is gonna meet meme it in existence. He's he wants, he needs an outpost in PA. So. No, it's it's happening. Philly again, we've talked about this many times in this show, gets a lot of Flack, but that spirit of freedom still lives on in many of the citizens of Philadelphia. That's honestly like where I'm from. Originally from Philadelphia, but more to Delaware County, a suburb like a lot of the blue collar workers there get it and are allocating to Bitcoin a lot of. I'd say it's it's it's easier to orange peel, blue collar people than it is some of these Fiat, you know trade trade guys. I mean they're just they think they're they think they're smarter than they are. I mean the the average blue collar guy gets it. If you ever go talk to the ATM owners like the largest ones, the Bitcoin ATMs, they'll tell you exactly that. Like from just a like they see the videos because they explain how these things are just biometric machines, right? Because you're always making sure you're getting games. So they see the people coming up, truck drivers, all the things with dollars to convert into Bitcoin. It's a whole world that we don't even like know about that. This, this actually goes back historically too. I've got a lot of, you know, just kind of blue collar workers who've done work at one of my houses as an example, you know, painters and plumbers and that kind of stuff. And it's amazing. Before Bitcoin was just amazing. I I've talked to them all because I was a sound money guy and I'd say how do you know, how do you save your rent? Oh, I buy silver coins. You know, I, I, I, you know, I I, I know the government's screwing up the money. I just, I buy silver. I buy gold. I'm kind of like, wow, you know, I mean, this this guy's a plumber, but he gets it. You know what I mean? He totally gets it. And. And it makes sense because he's not completely disconnected from the world he sees. Real work. Yeah. He actually does well, honest work. And he, he understands that the government prints money and dilutes the value of his work. And so he's like, yeah, they can't, they can't print silver. I'm. I'm buying that. Yeah, I can get it. The blue car guys have a distrust of government and and the system in general and the the white collars have the trust in the system the. Yes, that's your model. Yeah, exactly. The Yep, we have a lot of high cost elite. Well, pull up, pull up the chart from earlier, Logan, we can add on this. This is why they have a lot of trust in that system 'cause they're incentivized too. There you. Go nice it's. Been very good to them. Yeah, it's been very good to. Them it has so this is so. Yeah, their network exactly tracks the the, the, the M2 supply. It's just absolutely amazing Chart and. It's really sad. That's like inverted productivity. Like it's the. Opposite of how you guys should keep going without me. I've I've made another commitment to another guy to do a call at 11. So I I got to hop off. It's really been great, David. Good to see everybody else. We all know great to be a part of this and happy to do it anytime, but I got to hop. OK. Thanks guys. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. Oh. Should we talk SO? By the way. No, I'm kidding. What? Was that morning? So should we talk shit on Larry now? I'm kidding. Yes, that last topic and and you're having mentioned Andrew who's running for Congress down in Florida, Andrew Cuban, you know there there is a more benign path forward rather than sort of accelerating the the decline of of our, the good old USA, which is you know if we can get people into office who understand money and it could happen, we already have a few. You know, we could see a flipping of of sort of the political attitudes toward Bitcoin. So it's not necessarily the case that we'll have this sort of government protects its own kind of outcome. It feels like Trump's kind of there, right? Like just some of the narrative, some of the things he's been saying. Or four years ago, remember it was such a big deal when he tweeted about it and he was like, I don't like any of this stuff or whatever. And then the past couple quotes they've gotten from, he's like, oh, yeah, it's a currency. People use it. I'm cool. It's cool. It's cool. Yeah. We've been talking about this for a while of like, I think like Senator Lummis sort of proved that if you like, if you harness the power of this community, people who care about Bitcoin or digital assets more broadly like that can be a powerful ally for you and and and help you get into office and stay in office through fundraising and and and and votes. And then so you know that kind of established this precedent. And then we saw RFK make his big splash at at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami coming out like with great very sharp talking points in favor of Bitcoin written by some Bitcoin handler behind the scenes. But you know that that made a big splash. And then Vivek also sort of aligned himself with Bitcoin and Bitcoin interests. And in in that way, all elected elected representatives or candidates see how the Bitcoin voting bloc and donors can help them. And so, you know, politicians are fundamentally interested in that and they will adopt what helps them and they will stand behind that because it matters to the people that are funding them and voting for them. And so that's how, you know, even Trump is having to recognize that the winds are shifting and maybe it's in his interest to soften his stance and then potentially even embrace crypto. You know, he won't get Bitcoin. He'll he'll just adopt. You know, yeah, I'm friendly on crypto if it suits him. But you know pretty soon that'll be just a a boilerplate standard for any serious political candidate that if they want to get the votes of the the millennials in particular and and you know also across the demographic spectrum but I think probably disproportionately with the millennials they should talk this up and and stand behind it. And so, you know, I think David's right that, like, it's not that it's the incumbent Washington positions versus the disruptive Bitcoin positions. It's it's that politicians will adopt whatever is winning and whatever helps them win. And we eat, you know, we eat DC from the inside in that way. Well, and if you think about it too, if a politician were actually really smart and wanted to leave a mark, they would embrace it wholeheartedly because it's like the path of least resistance of fixing the systemic problems that lie before them. Like if you look at the national debt, you look at the the monetary situation, you look at what's going on in the energy sector. Like Bitcoin fixes a lot of these problems naturally if you just let it proliferate. So if you, if I were a politician thinking smartly about this and I wanted the path of least resistance to fix all these problems, I would open up the floodgates and have examples of that. Look what's happened to El Salvador over the last couple of years. Look what's happened in other parts of the world where Bitcoin has been embraced. And so I think that's what would be really encouraging to see as a politician recognizes that it's like, I've got a lot of massive problems to fix, and I'm just going to pick the path of least resistance, which is embracing Bitcoin. Which makes sense like that. That's how it would play out. Simply because if we believe Bitcoin's the most beautiful alignment of incentives and how it works, it would makes, it would follow that it would have a transition. It's not popular to talk about because it it feels too nice. It sounds like too great to be true. But like where this actually does play out with Jesse, describe what we're talking about here actually does work out, which would be be very bullish for kind of like humanity and like where we're heading over the next couple decades. Well, Marty and I have talked about this a little bit, but I think too as Bitcoin goes up in value and and and Bitcoiners enjoy higher net worths that we ought to, in anticipation of that moment, think about, you know, how we might support, in this case, political candidates who kind of get it and then and then also freedom friendly organizations. Marty is aware of them involved in something called the Global Liberty Institute. But there are plenty of others too, that well, Students for Liberty is 1 Human Rights Foundation, obviously, that are doing great work whether or not they're directly involved in Bitcoin. As Students for Liberty and Human Rights Foundation are, we can use our wealth to support organizations that are pointing humanity in the right direction. Yeah, it's an interesting Trojan horse. It's come up a few times. It's something we have to work on like helping even, you know, large organizations just take the donations from wealthy individuals that have become wealthy in Bitcoin from a taxable perspective as the way you start that process, right, Because they they naturally see its appreciation. So I think there's a lot there where capital starts to form and move and aligning those incentives into your point if the right people would have the right money and then you can actually affect the right change. Yep. It is the path of least resistance. It's a dream of the day the political class, political class wakes up. They look at everybody pissed off about the immigration situation, the energy situation, the private property rights situation, and they're like, oh God, this is in all consuming, all-encompassing problems that we have. No way we're not gonna fix it. The traditional route of printing more debts and issuing more dollars. Like let's pick the path of least resistance. Let's just embrace Bitcoin. This is this way I can take care of it. And This is why I'm really, genuinely excited about the Philly PA stuff because you can see like the inkling of it. We saw this in Texas. You just need the seed and then it starts to grow and grow and the meet up grows larger and then you have advocacy groups and people start there. And then obviously you guys are friends and so like, you guys are tied. That's your home. Like you want it to be successful. And so it's just like literally starting there. And so I think it's going to be one of the biggest or we're definitely, probably the biggest for this month. But ideally it grows on that and somebody else wants to go, somebody else comes in, a politician shows up and this is literally how it happens. It has to start with like that individual. I think Kita is a big part of that Matt good friend who started the John meet up and took that stance of like, hey, I'm going to put a, you know, show up to a pub show up under a tree. That's how the Houston meet up started. We literally showed up under an oak tree and then people start to come. And I think like per capita, the Houston meet up probably still is the biggest meet up in the country just because there's 7 million people in Houston. But I think this is a broader point like in any city or market, like you just have to like put a flag out, throw it out there and people will start there everywhere. I was in Palm Beach meeting folks won't mention who And and it's funny because there's a lot of high net worth tried fine individuals that made a lot of money in in Wall Street and they all live like literally a joke and feel like they're like can throw a rock and hit each other's houses. But they don't talk to each other simply because of the old world ostracized or would like put them as you know not basically talk to them if they ever brought up Bitcoin. So there's just this version in the meet space world of like somebody has to take a a chance or put it out there that they're available to meet or build that community and then it just starts to snowball from there. Well, that was actually a beautiful thing. Just a moon from Fetty gave a presentation. He's known here in Austin as the godfather of the bit that's meet up. He moved down here I believe in 2019. And like you said, Michael didn't meet under a tree but met at the library here in Austin. There was three people at the first meet up, then there was seven people. Then there was 12 people then Unchained, stepped up and said come to our offices and that eventually led to the Commons. And he was explaining how like just planting that seed and building this community really helped him start come to the idea to start Fetty and then in this office in the Commons and the the community that he built in Austin. Eventually he and the Mutiny guys did the first ever lightning transaction between two different Fetty Mints, which I think will be looked back as like a profound innovation in Bitcoin. And so point being is like we start small. Three people in the library, 10 people under a tree. And five years after Justin did that, he's got a whole company, he's got a whole, we've got a whole community here in Austin building different companies and pushing Bitcoin forward. And it literally started with four people at the the Austin Library. Well, the other constructive thing about these sort of organic communities is that, you know, as maybe this is too strong a word, I'm not sure. But nonetheless, as rage builds because people sort of sense that something's wrong, you know, just tearing down statues and and setting fire to buildings is not going to be the solution. And so if we can build these communities and and explain to them why a lot of these social phenomena have happened and that at its root it's it's about sort of the flawed money. We can direct our energies in productive fashion instead of sort of this, this unbridled and misdirected anger that we've seen over the course of the last several years. It's positive. Sum is the creative part. Like this whole world generally, everybody's taken from somebody else at the benefit. Like the more we all figure out how to get everybody else involved in doing everything we're talking about, we all win. Yeah, that's right. Exactly are. We gonna win, Marty. We're winning. We are gonna win. No. And it's positive. You see it within the industry too. I mean we don't have to go too much deeper into this conversation 'cause I know we all have time, but I think that's the beauty of this open permissionless network as we see it at 10:31 with the portfolio companies that you can be building a company in a particular vertical and highly focused on that, but you can benefit from what other people are doing. I mean men pulled out space is embedded in most companies within the portfolio are using them for block explorer or back end enterprise solutions. You think about what you guys are doing at on ramp and all these other multi sig, they benefit from the hardware wallets and the PSBT standards that are set. Talk about integrations with the lightning network. You don't have to go build that yourself. You can leverage the hard work that other companies have done in the mining space. Companies like upstream data are are benefiting prop miners who don't want to build the infrastructures. There's this like big positive sum symbiotic relationship just between the companies building the space as well. It's a it's a great point why like altcoins are always in my mind like part of the reason why you shouldn't have a value properties like the interoperability is which you're describing from like open networks where we know how the Internet works. It's very similar like from a custodial perspective right. You shouldn't take as pretty simple don't take centralized or decentralized asset park it with central custodian. But the natural ability for multi SIG to be an interoperable lets you build on these different webs of trust. And I like to think of them as like Daisy chaining, like the integrity of the custodial solution because if one goes out or is under historically you're basically have 0. You, you know you have a goose egg, FTX block, 5 Celsius, we can go forever. But the idea is you take that trust out of there. And so that's why like I think just from like a pure just first principle like you can't even custody any like crypto asset in this way because every custodian has its own proprietary implementation of multi party computation. So you're literally have to trust one entity or you're going to take delivery and just from a like network perspective, it's always be flawed just at that base level. And so this interoperability just on the custody level and if any minutes play directly into this as well when it comes to multi say and who's holding those keys and the interoperability between the E cash tokens and Lightning are very similar. It's just a more resilient, robust network if you care nothing about money. But just looking at it from a network perspective, like one is naturally flawed because of that and the other one has like the open ability to continue to grow. And guys, so while I have a moment Speaking of private companies, I know that at least one of us on this call is Co founder of VC fund and and I work for a firm that that has involved private equity. And so and by the way is an LP and a few VC funds, an advisor to one and and an investor and a whole bunch of private equity vehicles. My stance on PE is probably not quite as harsh. It's maybe Larry's is. I mean I think we can all comfortably say that the people on this call are invested in and involved in funds that you know mark their their underlying portfolio companies in ways that reflect their honesty and their honest as the day is long. But but you know the incentives are there to acknowledge the earlier point to do otherwise but I think it's really dependent upon the firm and thankfully the firms with which were involved do it correctly that. Was a very nice disclaimer, David, I appreciate it and those. Might want to clear that up for every. I think for for it was joking. I think like the the reality is it's just like everything we're talking in generalizations. There's a lot of people doing a lot of things the right way from across the board. It's just from an overarching level, there's incentives that are misaligned that we're recognizing so. Yeah, I mean and Bitcoin in the venture space within Bitcoin, like I think outside of 1031, even like with all these companies like the ethos and the permissionless nature of Bitcoin really is imbued in these companies as well. Not only that, like the recognition that we're moving to this Bitcoin standard. And so when you're allocating money from venture perspective, like you want to give it to companies who aren't just going to, you don't give companies money for growth at all costs. It's like, no, we live in a Bitcoin standard. Now you run with the assumption that you live in a Bitcoin standard. It's you need to get revenue, get profitable, run as lean as possible and provide extreme utility to your end users. And I think that flipping of the approach to venture capital with the Bitcoin standard standard lens is gonna have profound effects on company formation and fundamental value for consumers. At the end of the day, yeah, you throw in AI too makes a lot easier. It's not a lot easier, but that's a whole another dynamic to it. Yeah, sure. I'm I'm looking forward to seeing you guys this summer. Marty and I have chatted for multiple years about 'cause I have to go. You know I don't have to My my in laws are in the Northeast. So I go there. I go out there in the summers and have it made and I realize it's just a thing in PA like I guess everybody has a a shore house. So I know Jackson's down there. I think Eric from Pick My Talent Co, you guys, Kita. And so I think there's even some rumblings of a maybe a John ending up at the beach over the summer. So I don't know if I'm talking out of turn now, but you know, I don't think Matt would mind. So I don't know, David, I don't think. I don't think this Texas boy can handle the Jersey Shore. I probably can't, but you know, it could be a bit of a. Culture shock for you? You've already sent me photos. I think if if the photos of you know it seems very familial and and seems like a good time and I'm you know the the idea is if we can get like a little group there and we can start to like incept the the the minor virus that is Bitcoin. I think the angle that Matt's coming at is very smart to have more of like personal finance versus like macro or like trad fights. Like how do you just think about your own personal wealth and how can this I think is a very nice you know, nice summer summer white wine and a conversation about protecting your wealth. Is it Is it nice you're? Waiting wine in Ocean City in South Jersey generally, Marty, I'm not sure. It's Spiked Spiked Iced Tea is here again. Actually, Marty's wearing a Yeah Service supplies cap right now, so he's representing a little bit. Ocean City, Yeah, great surf shop. It's a great small business. Example of a great small business that we need to protect. Yeah, that's right. But I like that idea, Michael. So let's see if we can bring that to fruition. Yeah, maybe pub key will be there. I'll just you just gonna you're gonna look Bitcoin's already like in in getting into PA It's all over. I was sort of misty in South Florida. That is ripe for the plucking. That whole area is just, I mean, everybody down there ought to be a bitcoiner. Yep. It's crazy. It reminds me of California when we go out there from like N LA or New Chester would know better. But like when I grew out there, from a client perspective, it was like from Northern LA all the way down to like San Diego. It was just prime, like Bitcoin. People that didn't talk to each other knew each other. And I remember going down this past month and it was like Miami all the way up to like West Palm. It was people all like, they're like reaching out. And I met them, but they didn't know each other at all. Like, nobody talks to each other, 'cause they don't know. Yeah. Yeah, it it's a it's a world defined by how do you protect your property and and your wealth and and Bitcoin answers that and so it it it is prime right for the picking. And I don't, I don't think you, I think you're too humble to do this yourself David. But I think what you're doing to really get people who are liberty focused and freedom minded, that should get Bitcoin but have not. Have not stepped over the ledge yet to really get them to notice like hey, everything you're saying would be a lot easier to to It would be a lot easier to affect change in the way in which you want to see change affected if you added Bitcoin to to your strategy. And I think that's going to be extremely high leverage and powerful Moving forward is really getting these liberty minded movements to understand that if you actually want to bring liberty, liberty to the world in the digital age, you need a Bitcoin strategy. Yeah, Well, thanks for saying So the there are a few opportunities in life, maybe only one when you can actually affect positive social change and also perhaps make a lot of money. So this is it. So I'll climb. Aboard. It's a great way to finish it off. It's so true. Yeah. Gentlemen, this was a fun, a fun Rep. Thank you for joining us, David. Larry, you're not here. But thank you. If you listen to this in posterity, I'm gonna give an official thanks. I was joking earlier. Talk shit on you. Yeah. Can't wait to do it again. And we're gonna win. We're gonna win. We're winning. Thanks a lot guys. Thank you, David. See ya.