The Last Trade E051: From Charles Schwab to Bitcoin with Rich Kerr

What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extremism ever assembled in the history of darkness. 1974198792972000 and whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we sell. Hey, a payside behind. I say when we sell. Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of The Last Trade, a podcast from on Ramp Media. On today's show, we're joined by Rich Kerr, a former executive of Charles Schwab and 31 year veteran of the traditional managed wealth industry. We explore Rich's journey to appreciating Bitcoin and its emergent role in the realm of wealth management, as well as the need for Bitcoin, native financial services, institutional adoption of Bitcoin, outstanding barriers to entry, the importance of education and building trust in financial services, the regulatory landscape, custodial considerations for Bitcoin, and much more. And now, time for the show. We're live, gentlemen, back for the last trade. I had to miss last week. Michael, you did too. Nobody who's on the show right now was on last week. It's the range of the the casting group with on ramp. Yeah, I just, I haven't. Did you get a chance to listen yet with bits? I have not I I recorded with him earlier this week for TFTC though he's a a legend in the space doing doing Satoshi's work at the Nakamoto Institute. Yeah, if you if you haven't seen he has a redesign and then also I think there's maybe like .3 BTC still left to to raise. I know we participated. So if you're out there and want to contribute to archiving his Satoshi's history, you're gonna slice about. I think you need 6,000,000 sats to get over. Oh yes, yeah, I got the decimal off one. To get over, get over the hump to redesign the site, go support the Nakamoto Institute. If you're out there, you're listening. Nakamoto institute.org Donate. We need to preserve the information about the economic theory, the cryptography, the technology that led to Bitcoin, and then we need to preserve the Canon of Bitcoin. Satoshi's emails critical literature about the economic theory and technology that is Bitcoin. But you can go listen to last week's episode with Michael Goldstein to learn more about that. We are here with Rich Kerr, 31 years at Charles Schwab. What was that experience like and what led you to? Bitcoin tremendous experience. I, you know, I think working inside of a company like Charles Schwab, as big as it is, you know, it, it's, it's pretty remarkable. I got to see us emerge from being a discount broker to developing advice offerings to developing a suite of solutions to support independent registered investment advisors and family offices. And, and you know, that journey, you know, I wouldn't change it for the world. I think one of the beautiful things about working with a company like Charles Schwab is everything passes through a lens, you know, and that lens is all about, you know, what the client wants and what the client needs. And, and so when you have that level of client focus, it you develop great products, you develop great solutions. You, you advocate for end clients and advisor clients and, and really try to, to do what is right inside of an industry that is, you know, has had its challenges in the way that it serves clients. And, and so, you know, a remarkable journey. And I have to say, you know, that that journey kind of evolved, you know, different for me, most of my time has been in, in various leadership roles inside the firm, you know, whether that be our Schwab wealth advisory or, or leading all of our fixed income, both institutional and retail or, or focusing on serving in independent investment advisors and helping them grow and compete and succeed in their marketplaces. And so, you know, a good journey, something that I, I wouldn't change for the world, but you know what, you know, as they always say, you know, if you get to a place where you're, you know, you've got something in your mind and in your heart, you know, that is different. You've got to listen to it. And Bitcoin became that disrupted factor for me to finally, you know, walk away and, and, and spend my time focusing on that journey. And, and so that's what led me here. And so I'll, I'll share with you, it was, you know, 2017 and a, a very, you know, good friend and, and a person who was in my Direct Line of rapport came to me and he said, Hey, look, you know, I know that you've got a lot of experience from an asset allocation standpoint or, you know, how you think through the advice components. And, and I'm strongly considering, you know, making an allocation to Bitcoin. And I'd love to pick your brain and, and, you know, have that conversation with you because, you know, he respected my point of view. And, and I, I don't know what it was, to be honest with you, Marty, It was, you know, maybe it was that I was busy. Maybe it was that I just didn't know anything and I didn't want to look like I didn't know anything. And so there was that arrogance or that ego that maybe kind of lived a little bit there inside of the, the, the Tradfi world. And, you know, I remember saying to him, look, this stuff is come and gone, right? E cash, all this other stuff. It, it's come and gone. It there. There's no way that it scales. This is an an enormous industry that has a responsibility to protect investors and things on that nature. And I just gave this kind of canned response and it was really ill informed. And I and I think I recognized that, you know, after a year or so and and kind of reflected back, you know, this is a person that I valued, I cared about. I was, you know, an investment professional and, and you know, my, my duty of care is actually to sit down and listen. And if I was outside of my domain of expertise, I should have said, just said so, but I didn't have that. You know, I, I kind of took the, the industry talking points and dismissed the conversation and, and, and I regret that, you know, because it was a few years later that another person came to me and asked a similar question and I sat down and I just said, you know what? I don't have an informed point of view on that. And I'm, I'll, I'll tell you what, I'm going to do a little bit of work on it. You know, 2020 I started really kind of digging in for a number of reasons, right? I, you know, I think that, you know, the world has been a bit wonky, you know, certainly from a political standpoint, geopolitical standpoint, and trying to make sense of what was happening. I think with, you know, during the COVID period and, you know, I had time to, to do some work and I went down that rabbit hole and I, I, I, I'm still going down that rabbit hole. I, I, I became absolutely amazed with how it aligned, how Bitcoin, I think in many ways aligned to many of my, my, my personal values and, and beliefs. And, and at the same point in time, it evolved many of my belief systems. And, and so it's led me to, you know, challenge my, my thinking a little bit more. And, you know, to me, I think that that is incredibly inspiring to be able to feel like, OK, I'm 55 years old and I'm still growing, I'm still learning. And, and I'm recognizing more importantly, the tremendous opportunity that Bitcoin presents, not just, you know, clients of of the US financial services firm, but globally and it in meaningful ways. And so, you know, I started studying, you know, jeez, you know, Seifa Dean and Jeff Booth and Robert Breedlove and all of these, you know, people that I think have come at Bitcoin with different points of view, different perspectives and it evolves your thinking a little bit more broadly. And and then I kind of realized, OK, this is this is the disruptor that that we've all been wondering would finally come into the financial services world. I think often times we think what are going to what's going to disrupt Wall Street? And you think Microsoft, you think, you know, Twitter or X or whomever, right, block whatever might be a disruptor to the traditional ways that we do finance and provide advice to clients. And it is something wholly different, in my opinion. I don't think it's a corporation. I think it's Bitcoin that ends up ultimately disrupting the financial services world. And so the question becomes, how does traditional finance embrace Bitcoin? And to me, it's a, it's a remarkable story that that will unfold in front of us. And we'll get to learn a little bit about just how committed the trad fi world is to embracing Bitcoin. At On Ramp, we believe that Bitcoin will be the most important asset to own in the 21st century. Our Multi Institution custody solution is the safest and most secure way to ensure that your Bitcoin remains in your in your family's possession for decades to come. Multi Institution custody maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, leveraging Bitcoin's native properties to eliminate single points of failure that have historically complicated Bitcoin ownership. On Ramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey. For more information, check us out at on rampbitcoin.com. And it's an incredible journey. And one thing I'm curious to learn that maybe could be productive for anybody listening to this who's sitting in a position within the financial services industry that is a a bit curious. Was there something particular that you learned along your journey that provided an aha moment? Like Oh my gosh, I really need to lean into this and I get it now. Yeah, You know, I think it was in reading the Bitcoin standard, to be perfectly honest. Now, you know, I think we're all very familiar with Keynesian economics. Yeah, Yeah, I got it right back here too. It's a, it's a tremendous book and everybody should read it, if, if nothing else, just to challenge their, their point of view of the world. And, and you know, when I was, when I was reading that book, you know, you're, you're, he does a brilliant job of outlining some of the flaws inside of Keynesian economics and, and, and the monetarists and Milton Friedman and, and kind of going back and dissecting and, and in clear ways that it was actually the intervention that led to the significant problems and challenges that occurred in, in any major recession or depression. And, and so, you know, you have the people who are trying to fix the problem are the ones who created the problem. And it led me into, you know, going into, you know, the Austrian economics and, and, you know, to me, I thought it was a pretty powerful aha moment that was worthy of further study and, and research. Yeah. What? What? How about you? Well, I don't know if can you guys hear me? Yeah, you're echoing though. You figure out your mic and I can go here. The Keynesians are arsonists riding around in fire trucks. This is a good way to to describe them. I think for me personally, I think it was just because I was at a young impressionable age when I found Bitcoin 2122 and I was working in finance trading currencies, having to read central bank tea Leafs. Maybe I was just young and dumb enough reading the tea Leafs and being like this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And then finding Bitcoin and saying, oh, this actually makes more sense to me. So for me, learning about Bitcoin during Operation Twist and QE 2 and the, I think it was just the arbitrariness with which the policies were being deployed back then in 20/12/2013, juxtaposing Bitcoins very regimented supply schedule to the the chaos that was going on with the quantitative easing is what it was like. This just makes natural sense to me compared to this, yeah. Yeah. One thing I wanted to call out and, and curious to learn more about is, you know, we've been, you've shared the story with me personally and building a relationship the past few months. And this idea of dedicating, you know, it's very foreign for even three years in today's world to spend at an organization, let alone 30. And for somebody very skilled to spend 30 years, there has to be more than just profession. And what I took from from that is that there was a lot of like fulfilment, altruistic fulfilment and helping people preserve their wealth. And there was things that as AI kind of think like, I don't know, Bitcoin native, but like I don't have assets outside of, you know, Bitcoin from traditional sense other than like, you know, real estate and businesses. And this idea that Schwab is an innovator in that space that they've been out at the forefront. They've been to the extent you can't in the traditional finance space. And that kept you there along with the altruism and helping free people and Ras preserve their wealth and stay at the forefront of all the things associated with providing financial services done the right way. But then at the same time you found Bitcoin and you realized that, Oh my God, this is the thing. And that was so impactful and so profound for yourself that that 30 years and all of that in this company started to become OK, well, my time is now better suited somewhere else. And just be curious to learn about like Schwab and then how that is like impacted you because I do think it's important for the past few years of building this space, I've had conversations with a lot of individuals and it's like a conflict of an internal conflict because you have these like golden handcuffs, right? Where when you have a family and kids and in the car and the the debt from school that you can't get out of the position as much as you want to. And I've seen some people make that leap. And I think that they're probably better off for it, even if they took a little bit of step back because they're like feel a little better about their contributing and all the things that we do that lets us go to sleep at night while others, well, they kept the capital coming in. They're probably a little conflicted internally because they know they're building a system that is effectively either A, not the right system or B, going to ultimately change, as we said, is the disruptor. So just curious like how you like progress through that and think they're obviously you're in a different stance. And some of that's 40 years old or 38 and, you know, raising the kids versus a little bit older, but it's still the same process. And you still have to be able to make that choice and hang your like hat on it, knowing that your peers and other individuals are walking, watching you do this. After all of that reputation, it's it's just something that's worth calling out. Yeah, I don't know where to start on that. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll share with you. You know, being in the industry, obviously I practiced a number of things that that led to good financial help and it put me in a position. So the risk wasn't enormous for me because I started stacking and the more that I got convicted, the more that I stacked. And as you know, I, I, I, you know, I kind of, you know, chuckle because I remember it was, you know, what may of 2022 And, and The thing is, is diving, you know, below 17,000. And I'm just backing up the truck and my wife is thinking of what are you doing right? And I'm like, this is the best thing I've ever had the opportunity to buy. Like I had No Fear. Like I think conventionally I probably would have said, boy, I'm catching a falling knife here in in what would have been the, you know, traditional investment inside of My Portfolio. And I was, and I was allocating well beyond, you know, you know, I was concentrating, which runs counter to everything that I was, you know, teaching and, and, and working with, with advisors and clients about. And so, but I, but I knew, I knew in my heart of hearts, right, You know, and maybe, you know, maybe, maybe we get proven wrong. I, I doubt it. I really significantly doubt it because I started really understanding my time preference components, right? And recognizing that the Bitcoin was that disruptive, But I will share with you to answer your question, Schwab, the wonderful company, unbelievable company, because they, they, you know, to the point I, I said, right, everything goes through, you know, what, what does clients, you know, how do clients experience it and what do they want? And and you know, so if you take things through clients eyes, which is their corporate strategy, you tend to get things more things right than wrong. And and so Schwab does that with employees as well in many respects, right, like as as I needed more, you know, responsibility, Schwab always seemed to meet me and it and it kept me in that place for a very long time. But the exit was, was interesting, right? Because in my heart, all I wanted to do was focus on Bitcoin. All I wanted to talk about to clients and to employees and to colleagues alike, right? I just wanted them to take a step right and, and generate a little intellectual curiosity and challenge everything that they that they have learned along the way and, and just look at the principles of scarcity and what that really means and look at it in the context of. Of currencies that are globally, you know getting wrecked and you know that's that's that's our fate in in many respects, 35 trillion. I mean, I think there's one could argue that we're essentially in insolvent and, and, and you just don't come back from that as a, as a country. And it's so my, my, my belief was we have absolutely wrecked the purchasing power of the US dollar. There is no such thing as scarcity with a Fiat currency. And we need to start rethinking what, what money is. And and so, you know, the Robert Breedlove conversations, I think are really, really compelling to help open people's eyes and certainly, you know, helped support, you know, my, my new found and new held belief. And so when I got to the point where I knew that that Bitcoin was where I wanted to continue to focus my, my education, my learning, I wanted to go out and carry that second wave, right? You know, that altruistic nature. I always felt that I can do the right thing for clients because I had the best products, the best people, the best service offerings, the best custodian, all wrapped in one. And I could speak with such conviction about helping them. My mission today is the same thing. It's just in a different vehicle, right? It it's how do you empower people to open their mind to something that is worthy of their consideration, right? Which is we've got an unsustainable debt load. We are printing currency at a remarkable level. There are flaws inside of the current monetary system and financial systems. And if those can't be rectified, which I believe that they ultimately cannot by themselves, then you need to seek out true hard money and protect your family, protect your goals, empower your children and, and their children. And to me, that's the same mission that I set out on, you know, 33 years ago when I when I entered into the industry. And so we still have work to be done I guess. Well, with this in mind, is that you, Michael? No, no, I think it's rich. I think you got to go on mute if if you're not talking rich. I think it's the echo in in this house. OK, you're not going to be on mute for long, Rich, because I'm about to ask a question with this in mind. Ria is obviously still a massive part of managing wealth on behalf of individuals, companies, corporations, whatever it may be. What do you think the opportunities and the threats are to Ras as it pertains to Bitcoin? And how in your mind should Ras be approaching the conversation of Bitcoin and getting their clients exposure to it? And what is going to happen if they don't make the move to begin educating themselves and ultimately their clients about this asset and getting them exposure to it? Yeah, it's interesting. It's a good question in the, in the sense that, you know, I think everybody is, is waiting for the RI as it seems to be the logical next step because they bring such scale of individual investors forward to Bitcoin. And you know, I've shared this with Michael and Jackson, the RIAA industry is, is a remarkable industry. It was a disruptor in, in many respects, right. You know, I think they really started hitting critical mass in, in the 90s and, and early 2000s and they continued to set, set the pace, taking market share from wire houses and, and, and, and winning and doing it it the right way, right? And, and, and what I mean by that is, you know, they take a fiduciary standard that matters. It's very different than a broker dealer approach. And, and it puts them on the same side of the table as their client that they need to put the the right solutions in front of the client that are in their best interest in and that rises above their own personal outcomes. And, and so having a principle based, you know, model is, is why they continue to win in the marketplace. And, and so it's my belief that they have a, a significant role, right? They, they, their phase one was remarkable. It was absolutely remarkable what they were able to do. But what's ended up happening is that the wire houses have started to adapt and started to look a lot more like Rias. And so the competitive advantage is somewhat closed or the gap. What I do believe is that they have a, a responsibility here to actually lead the next phase. And so it's my, it's, it's my take that that the Rias will come and they are going to come in, in, in a significant way once they recognize the parallels of what Bitcoin is to what they stand for. And, and I think when, when they start seeing the altruistic nature of what Bitcoin is and they start seeing the independent, you know, the disruptor, the what is in the best interest of clients, and they start putting all of these pieces together, they're going to see themselves in many respects, what they've built. And so the, the opportunity is, is enormous, right, because they can be the voice, they can be the trusted advisor that educates the, the high net worth, ultra high net worth space or the mass mass market, you know, and have a point of view and help people understand why Bitcoin not only deserves to be in the portfolio from a hedge perspective, to protect all of the wealth that they've, that they've been able to build and, and, and the fruits of their labor, but actually should have a more significant role in a portfolio over the long term. And so I, I think the RIAS have a, have a, a tremendous growth story here. If they start going down the rabbit hole in recognizing the similarities to what to in the industry and how it is. And, and they're going to move slow, they're going to move slow to, to this space, right. Broker dealers are, have, are rules based. There's a lot of regulatory controls that kind of sit in, in, in front of them and and you know, there's profit motive. And so how do they monetize it? And they got to kind of go through all of those steps and hurdles. Where is an independent RIA can sit down and say, OK, how do we custody, how do we properly control what is the what is the investment thesis around Bitcoin? And then how do we allocate and make certain that clients have not that not just a proxy to price performance, right, an ETF, but actually can control that the client has the ability to take, take possession and control their Bitcoin. And I, I think that those ownership assurances of Bitcoin are meaningful. And so, you know, I think Rias will start going down that path. I kind of tend to view ETFs as a really, really positive thing for Bitcoin because it exposes people to the price appreciation and that that's huge. But I do think that ultimately it's a gateway drug, right? That end clients will will say, whoa, whoa, what is this? And they're going to start exploring it. And you know, I think if anybody is, is it's similar to me. You put 10 hours in, 20 hours in. Next thing you know, you're 30 hours in and you're like, Oh my God, wait a second, My next. Thing, you know, you're on a, you're on a podcast with Marty Bennett. Yeah, that's. What happens, right? Everybody gets in front of Marty and tell their story. You know, whether or not it's worth listening to, who knows, But I believe is this, I think ultimately the ETFs are going to be very, very helpful in creating a mass awareness and, and, and embedding Bitcoin into, into the common, you know, conversation of our kind. And that's the whole thing. Yeah. And you're providing a great segue to to bring Jackson into this conversation because whether we like it or not, humans are very social beings and some of us need validation from others to begin exploring new territory. And I think as you mentioned, ETF, I would agree, provides an incredible top of funnel marketing mechanism for Bitcoin, the asset. And obviously the the Bitcoin ETF launched earlier this year and we've had a wave OF13F filings come out over the last few weeks that are showing who is allocating to Bitcoin, which could be used as a validation point for Rias internally saying, hey, these guys are buying it. So with that in mind, Jackson, I know you want to walk through some of the data that's been coming out of the filings in recent weeks. What are you seeing? Yeah. Thanks, Marty. It's interesting. So maybe before getting into the specifics of the data, just so the four of us and all the listeners are on the same page here. So 13 FS, what are they? They're just a quarterly report that are filed by institutional investment managers and that's a very broad scope. It includes hedge funds, broker dealers, Rias, pensions, and you have to file this on a quarterly basis if you have over 100 million in assets under management. So with the Bitcoin ETFs going live in January, we really have our full first almost full quarter of data as it relates to who owns the spot Bitcoin ETFs and to what extent and they had to be filed by March 15th. So this data, this comprehensive data set has only been available for, call it about a week or so. One thing I think is interesting, we can start with retail adoption before we get into more of the institutional players. If you could pull up the chart from NYDIG that just shows like the breakdown of ownership, it's pretty interesting. So 80% of owners are actually non filers and what that means is likely retail investors. So actually it's a little bit of a different story. And then Marty, I think it's just the other one from from NYDIG the. Aggregate Spot ETF 1 Logan, Yeah. But yeah, so it's interesting because you can see here now on the screen if you're if you're watching on video, 80% of the ownership of the spot ETFs are non filers, which likely just mean retail investors, right, because they're not accounted for in the 13 F filings. And that's actually quite interesting because that accounts to about be about $47 billion of assets under management from mostly retail investors. And another thing I'd point out too is you have about 80% ownership of retail investment in the spot ETFs, which compares to 43% for SPY, which is the S&P 500, about 62% I think for QQQ, which is the NASDAQ. And then GLD, which is gold is about the same, I think 60% or so. So we're actually seeing more of a retail adoption of the ETFs thus far, which some, some people may take as a negative, but I actually think it's quite positive and it's indicative of what we should expect the next couple of quarters because it actually is very bullish. I only expect this number of 80% to trend downward as institutional investors really start to, you know, the first they leg into a position, they make a small allocation, they do more research. And then like any of us, right, we've we've all gone through the process of you know, maybe it starts with a 1% allocation and 5/10/20 some of us might be at 90% allocation of Bitcoin and that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen overnight really. So in terms of what I think we'll see going forward is that 80% number will continue to decline quarter over quarter. We'll see the 20% which is accounted for for hedge funds, Rias, broker dealers, other types of institutions including pensions. We'll get to that. We'll increase as we go forward. And one thing on the retail piece that I think is interesting is so Bitcoin's been around for 15 years. And as we all know, each cycle there's been material growth of the ecosystem. So, you know, there's more solutions for people to buy, secure and spend their Bitcoin. But Despite that, I think the 80% adoption of the ETFs by retail really shows that there's still maybe a gap in the market for Bitcoin native services. Because you would think that I would have thought that maybe there would be more institutional players purchasing the ETFs because they need a compliant, you know, security exposure to the asset. And I thought that individuals maybe would have had their fair share of opportunity to to purchase Bitcoin over the past 15 years. But really the data is showing otherwise. So if anything, I think that speaks to a lot of capital already just being trapped in, you know, retirement accounts into brokerage accounts. Maybe not everyone wants to open up a Coinbase account or you know, a river account. These are great options. If you want to own the asset, you need to purchase it through some exchange, right? But then certainly not everyone wants to self custody, which I think all of us on this call, we've done self custody for a number of years now and we recognize there's a ton of merits to it. But at the end of the day, it may not be the end all be all for widespread adoption of the assets. So I think it's just interesting to think about, you know, all the different financial products that will be both Bitcoin native, but then also let's say more traditional finance native products. And it'll be interesting to just watch how this develops over the next couple of quarters, specifically on the retail side. I could take a pause there before getting into any of the institutional stuff just to see what you guys think. All right. Intuitively to me it makes sense. As Rich mentioned earlier, there's a lot of internal process that needs to be worked through before a lot of these institutions are able to actually hit the buy button. So it would make sense to me that it's heavily driven by retail in the beginning as all these different wealth managers are learning about Bitcoin, educating their advisors about Bitcoin and giving them the playbook. Like, all right, here's how we're communicating it to our clients. And I mean, I just know anecdotally, I think I shared this on the show a couple of weeks ago, but my neighbor's a wealth manager at Morgan Stanley and he's expressed this to me like yes, we we can't, the only way we can buy the ETF for clients is if it's directly solicited. If they ask us to allocate to the ETF, we're not, we're in a pure non solicitation. We're not in the non solicitation phase where we can recommend it. But they are going through the process internally to get to the point where they will be able to to recommend to the clients. Yeah. No, I totally agree and think we're all the same page in terms of just the incremental allocations that happen by these advisors and fund managers. For the first quarter, there was about 800 firms on the advisor side that were represented and it was about $4 billion of capital. So just to really show how early we are, there's 10s of trillions of dollars in the managed wealth space in the US alone. There's only $4 billion that have been allocated to the spot ETFs from this cohort. And like I said, there's 800 firms, but there's nearly 15,000 investment advisor and broker dealers that are in the US And there's one chart that really shows like the allocation. Yeah, this is it. So the number of entities by allocation size, this is fascinating because out of the 900 or so total firms that were captured in the filings, about half of them, the allocation is less than $500,000. So I really just think that at the end of the day, this validates what we're all speaking to in terms of this allocation will start small. It probably started first with the principles of the firm and then having to get comfortable with Bitcoin. Maybe they owned it's spot already or maybe they allocated to the ETFs and did their due diligence before starting to recommend the ETFs to their clients in a very to a very small extent. And this really just shows that there's a ton of room to grow here. Again, there's I think $150 trillion of wealth in the US. So to think that a Bitcoin is still 1.5 trillion as a global asset. And then B, that there's about 60 billion, I think in AUM. And the ETFs just shows how even though we, we may think that the institutions are here, in reality, the data is going to look totally different in the next, call it, 12 to 24 months. And again, I really just expect that the that the ETF ownership will start to shift away from retail into institutional hands. And Speaking of which, we saw the State of Wisconsin pension board make an allocation in the first quarter of $160 million and that only represents A10 basis point allocation of their total portfolio, which is $150 billion pension. I think they're the 8th or 9th largest pension in the country. And again, this is just very indicative of how this process goes. Initial allocation will be small. The due diligence needs to happen. There's still some I think concerns as it relates to centralization of custody with the ETFs, among other things, cash in, cash out and not being able to redeem in kind. But this is how these things happen. And we're going to just see a a much larger adoption among advisors. And Marty, to your point and and to Rich's point earlier, a lot of these firms can't even solicit to their clients. So they have to only take inbound interest. And then I think even some larger wirehouses like the largest wirehouses in the country, some of them I don't think offer any products. So even if their client asks them for it, they still will not be able to put it into their portfolio. So there's still a lot of red tape as it relates to adopting these ETFs. 11 Jackson, that was a great summary and recap of what's happened in the past. You know, I guess call it a little over a quarter. I'm curious, it's evident like, you know, the institutions aren't fully here and there's a process. I would almost make the case it's similar for retail because when you broke that 80% down, and I'd be curious, rich you being closest to this, historically, how many of those retail buyers a were cycling out of or just traditionally already in like Grayscale coupled with or were in proxies to Bitcoin, like by way of, you know, miners as an example. And then also were Bitcoin holders that had money trapped in other retirement accounts that allocated to the ETF that had been waiting. And the reason why I say that is because just anecdotally, I think everyone here doesn't know people buying this ETF, at least personally, I don't going in and like from a net new retail buyer that's going and just buying ETF Bitcoin because they didn't couldn't get it on Coinbase or whatever. And so that's just I guess an open question to everybody. Specifically to you, Rich, like how much do you think of that 80% is net new buyers versus people cycling out of different positions that were already like Bitcoin holders just looking to increase their position versus net new? I, I don't have any data that would tell me one way or the other, to be perfectly honest, me either, you know, Mike, my, my, my instinct is actually you probably do have quite a bit of net new in, in here versus cycling out of a GB TC or something of that nature. I, I think, you know, there, there are plenty of roadblocks that prevent people from actually going in and opening a river account, opening a swan account, opening a on ramp account, right as an example. And, and, and just actually buying the Bitcoin. It's that's a big step because people are don't fully understand necessarily what it is. They may not have done the work as a retail investor. They may have heard, Hey, you got to get some Bitcoin and then they start hearing about FTX and you know, you know, issues and challenges and and so when you when you say, OK, well, jeez, where do I go to get that? Is Coinbase going to be the next? I don't know, right. You know that a retail buyer, there's a million things that would prevent them from doing that. What they do know is Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, right? They know who their broker is. And so they may say, hey, look, I, I, I, I'd like to take a position in this and they, and think that they have owned Bitcoin when in fact they owned a security that owns Bitcoin and, and they have a share in that fund. But that being said, I suspect that there's probably a reasonable amount of, of people that were feeling opportunistic and, and, and, and, you know, the industry hasn't really done a great job, although it's evolving at a fairly, you know, aggressive clip of, you know, the retirement account scenario, right? I mean, I went through that myself, you know, trying to figure out, OK, I want to roll over a certain percentage of my, my 401K And, and how do you know, I know I knew what I needed to do, but I was kind of vetting the different IRA productized solutions in the way that different, you know, companies like a swan or River or on ramp or Unchained of we're, we're actually doing IRA accounts. And, and so you have to go through a due diligence process to say this is the right situation for me. And so the ease of actually putting Bitcoin into an IRA at a traditional custodian, you know, I bet you there's a pretty significant chunk that got allocated that was net new that's on no data, just a, just an observation of and an instinct. Yeah. And if it helps, I think there was about $26 billion in GBTC before the spot ETFs and now we're at about 60 billion across all the different products. And I agree with you, Rich, I think I, I touched on it quickly as I was going through the retail data. But I think at the end of the day, there still are a lot of people out there that will not participate in Bitcoin beyond owning the products from traditional financial firms that they trust, right. And, and it takes, it takes a while for these new firms to establish themselves and build trust in the market. And I, I think that even though maybe between the four of us, we don't know a ton of people who are purchasing these products and maybe they're just not in our circles, right? I think that there are a lot of people who maybe want to start with a very small allocation in their portfolio. And they're not going to go through the trouble of going to Coinbase. You know, when they all, when they only read about people getting their accounts hacked and phished and they don't want to do self custody because they, you know, read about people diving through, you know, trash to try to recover their, their hard drive. So I do think that there's a lot of bias towards convenience as it relates to early adoption of these products. But I agree with you as well that as people become more educated, they will seek out better vehicles. And I mean, ultimately that's you know, that that's what we're working on at On Ramp is we're we're betting that the market will become more educated over time and and will seek out better ways to own Bitcoin. Yeah, I, I, I think that's absolutely right and you know it. And I'm a good proxy for that, right? Like I would never have had a problem owning the ETF. You know what, four years ago I'd be like, OK, all right, I'll, I'll own the ETF. But once you kind of start to understand, you know, what Bitcoin is, you want those ownership assurances and then you start thinking through how do you properly secure? And you know, I was so proud when I got my treasure and I, you know, moved everything to cold storage. I thought, oh man, that's, that's a big deal. And you know, then my wife said to me, she's like, wait a second, how is Bitcoin ever going to scale to mass audiences around the globe on these little key fobs? I, I don't see it. And she's right and she's right. That's one Ave. and it's a, it, it, it's a perfectly fine Ave. by the way, but you have to understand how to protect, how to secure, how to instruct others, you know, should something happen to you. And so there's it, it's fraught with, with, with its own challenges, right? And you know, the treasure maps and all of those types of things. And, and so it's not right, you know, for probably 98% of, you know, common everyday people and, you know, so how do you get to a place where you can think through how to properly secure it and be able to, you know, enjoy all of the benefits of, of ownership assurances that that come with Bitcoin. And so my, my thinking is that ultimately people will find that way because there may be a catalyst, right? There may be something that creates A level of urgency to wake up and actually get educated and recognize that that there's been some really, really good thinking and evolution in the industry to help people solve this problem. And, you know, I think on ramp is a good example of that, right? They've really thought through custodial implications and, and how important that is. And, and they still stay true to, you know, the, you know, I think the trust minimization, you know, elements that I think are, are really, you know, core to, to Bitcoin as well. Whether you're a seasoned bitcoiner or brand new to the asset class, On Ramp provides a best in class private client experience to ensure that your Bitcoin remains accessible, secure, and in your control. You'll have a dedicated advisor to guide you every step of the way. If you want to meet in person, we now have On Ramp branches in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Nashville, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Los Angeles, and Denver, with more on the way. Check out on rampbitcoin.com/branches to learn more and get connected with our team. Do you, I'm curious your thoughts on the market structure because I just had this thought of referencing like the ETF is, it's great, but it's actually really kind of like as we know like 10 years from now, we'll laugh at how the ETF is centralized, like convinced, right? So it's like we just took a wrapper, we parked all at Coinbase. It's like that doesn't seem very innovative when you really break it down. But if you think about the edges and let's say Vanguards over here, that won't adopt anything right now, right? And that's that side and they're having the problems. How do you, you know, generate revenue and all the things associated Bitcoin and then the other side is complete. Other side is like an exchange, a Bitcoin only exchange that would not even let you. They won't even custody it. They just send it to you directly. Like they're that tied to the fundamental ethos that starts to like move, merge together, right? Just over time naturally, or they, they have to like, I don't want to say merge together, but this idea of all traditional financial services have to play ball or go away if they don't do something in Bitcoin would have been crazy to say six months ago, but now it's like kind of evident, right? We saw the Vanguard CEO get replaced like this natural. You mentioned disruption is coming and there's a lot of things traditional finance got right and you know, the market structure, understanding client services, all that. And there's things that the Bitcoin companies have gotten right. How do you think about how that market structure starts to get intertwined to deliver products and services as as you've seen at scale? How like how? And this is, I don't have a thought. I'm just more curious, like, given your background, you've played in both lenses. Now you've had to go down the rabbit hole and figure out how to use a Trezor. And you've also worked in onboarded, you know, thousands, if not larger Ras and millions of probably clients. How do you see that starting to like merge? Because we're still very early in this whole story. I love your guys thoughts on this as well. I to be honest with you, I, I almost think it's going to be one of two things either a, you know, melt your face off kind of upward movement in this 5th epoch. Then all of a sudden everybody starts paying attention and doing holy cow, right. And that, that fear of missing out, you know, moment is going to come, you know, either for, for institutions or custodians or individual investors. And, and it may all hit simultaneously and, and force a, a closing of that gap, if you will, or it could be something more significant, right? You know, I think that there's been concerns of Black Swan events and boy, you could just throw a dart anywhere in the world and, and recognize that, you know, there's, there's some significant challenges. And, and, and that could be, you know, you know, currency collapsing, devaluation, inflation going through the roof, you know, missteps by, you know, central bankers that that cause, you know, significant disruption in, in, in, in an economy, Any of those types of scenarios could, could play out, right. I mean, it, it's pretty chaotic right now. And, and so knowing that you've got, you know, wars happening all over the place and threats of wars happening all over the place and, and you know, a, a very tricky needle to thread for central bankers, you know, to either sink an economy or to, you know, let runaway inflation happen. And, and you know, it, it, it's an interesting dynamic in my mind. And I think that that could cause a very quick closing of gaps. The question becomes is, is trat fi, you know, in it's a traditional finance companies, are they prepared? Are RIAS prepared to think about how to integrate Bitcoin into their offering? Do they have a strong point of view? Are they steeped and educated? Do they can they bring that education forward to to the client? And this kind of goes back to Marty's question, what, what, what's the disruptor for him? Where, where's the where's the risk for him not having this thought through right? In my opinion is the massive risk because they are the trusted advisor to their clients. And if they don't have a point of view and some kind of risk element enters into the fray that, you know, maybe a Black Swan event or it may be something that, you know, is pretty obvious. If they've missed that, that client is gone, right? That client is gone and you lose either they're going to to make a decision independent of that RIA, which means that, you know, that trusted advisor just got, you know, is now just advisor and not necessarily trusted advisor. And there's a big difference. And so, you know, my concern is, you know, especially in the RIA space, I do worry about my friends and that, you know, that are in that space and, you know, have they thought through what does a business model look like, what it is an operating model look like? What type of research and, and tools and who are the trusted voices in the space? Because you got to, you got to, you know, go through a vetting process and, and really understand who is, is trusted, you know, to educate you if you're going to educate your own clients. And so to me, those, those, those pieces need to close very quickly or ultimately they lose market share. Either that the client does something independent, right and opens up that you know, on ramp account or you know, whatever, or they go to an advisor who has a defined point of view and you know, and and can really help answer the questions that they have as it relates to to Bitcoin. And I think that that's what happens. Yeah, and completely agree. And sorry if I look distracted. I was looking for a tweet from yesterday so that I could directly read the tweet verbatim. And I'm going to have to paraphrase it, but I think Jack Dorsey spoke at AJP Morgan Digital Summit or something yesterday or the day before. And to this, this point, this line of thinking, he made that clear, made this clear on that conference call. And they asked him like how, why are you focusing on Bitcoin and why are you building all these products? And he says we need to disrupt ourselves. Bitcoins going to happen whether we like it or not. And we want to be at the forefront of disrupting ourselves. And I think Block is a great example of an incumbent, not necessarily wealth management, maybe some would consider it wealth management for retail investors via something like Cash App, but their whole umbrella of companies, would it be Square, Cash App, not what they're doing a spiral and Block working on Bitcoin mining products, custody products, Lightning products. I think it's a great example of a first mover incumbent recognizing this threat of if we don't react to the fact that Bitcoin exists and is going to continue existing increase in adoption and cater to the market, we're going to get left behind. And to your point, Rich, I think in the wealth management space there needs to be conversations like this happening behind closed doors that they haven't already happened, aren't happening right now. You got to start having these conversations because as Square has proven like if you are a first mover and you actually do leverage the native properties of Bitcoin and can provide good end services and for Cash App now via their Square terminals, you can automatically turn some of your your profits in the Bitcoin and hold it within Square cash app. You can send receive by Bitcoin in many different ways on chain lightning. And I think that's a great example of an incoming company that disrupted themselves and is well positioned moving into a phase of continued Bitcoin adoption where they will not only be able to survive, but probably thrive since they're on the cutting edge. And when it comes to wealth management, yeah, all these companies should be figuring out how do we do custody, how do we do reporting, how do we do inheritance protocols, tax advantage accounts and again, leveraging bitcoins, native properties to make sure that you're not concentrating risk with one custodian particularly. Well. Yeah, complacency is a killer right now and I think people are disrupting themselves in their own, let alone company and put best to the side and actually say I want to be something more sustainable over the long period because you're right, Bitcoin is not going to slow down or wait for them. I'm sorry, Michael. No, I was. I was going to allude to that. I Murdy's example of square is really important because of the Bitcoin only focus, because it's only one part to adopt like digital assets or go into this realm, which is the jump. But then it's understanding the signal of Bitcoin because I think maybe it's part of the segue for like the regulatory landscape in this opening up potentially a Pandora's box of, you know, Solana ETSI think yesterday we're on CNBC and we were on a call before this and explaining like this notion of maybe it's quick monies or it's money quick in the short term. But you're damaging not only a reputation and all the the the from a wealth management and the altruism and all the things we talked about preservation of wealth that we know that these things do not have fundamental underlying value. And so if you come in with the wrong approach, not only you solely in your brand and reputation, you're also like hurting the end client, which is ultimately going to leave. And I think this is just an important facet of like this is not a casino chip, all the things that's very serious. And when you focus on it at the core and to Marty's point, going very deeply, like vertically integrated, then you can actually and anybody with serious money wants to work with somebody that's specialized because when you're specialized and you start to focus on, OK, well, let's talk about custody. Well, custody, obviously we all know multi sig is native to the protocol. But if you're supporting a long Telecrypto assets, you have to use inferior custody solutions, which ultimately leaves your investment at risk. And this is very straightforward and simple. And as people hear this, that for the first time, it's pretty strict. It's pretty like it's pretty obvious. But The thing is, nobody tells a story because they're not incentivized to say it for all the reasons that we know. And it's just important from a consumer behavior risk factors because we're going to see if this Pandora's box opens and it looks like it's opening, this importance of education and all the things that we've been talking about are just going to become that more. Important, but it's also going to be a large opportunity size for people building and Bitcoin only and understanding it because over time we've seen this is that every cycle people disappear and then those people that are still building the right way are still there taking more and more market share. So it's always going to be a longer game, but that's where that time preference comes in, yeah. I have a, I have a thought on that. I think, Michael, you made a lot of great points. First and foremost, for my personal experience in the fund manager world, when I did manager research, it would cover hedge funds and then private assets, so private equity and venture credit, real estate. We were always looking for managers that were specialists. Like we pretty much never allocated or approved generalists onto the platform. It was always looking for fund managers that really do like, you know, drilling down from 1 industry to a sub industry to like a very small niche. Like we would always pursue those types of opportunities because that's where the real conviction is. And that's where the, the, the alpha is at the end of the day. And I think to your point, Michael, like there's just such a lack of incentive as it exists today for people or for firms from the traditional world or crypto or Bitcoin native companies to focus specifically on Bitcoin. Because there's just a lot more money, quite frankly, to be made at the moment in, you know, creating all types of securities and financial products and always trying to find like the the next sexy thing with all the bells and whistles. And I think I'd be curious if you guys agree or not. But I think it might come back to just like how we've been in a long cycle of securitization and more and more financial products that exist in the Fiat world as a result of the basement and all the issues that we know. And people have kind of forgotten that financial services could be very straightforward in the sense of you need to be able to 1st build around custody and then, you know, inheritance and potentially some sort of active strategies and, you know, checking accounts, saving accounts, like all this fundamental stuff that really there's no money in it anymore. It's all been kind of compressed to 0. So everything is moving toward the most exotic financialization possible. And I think that kind of comes back to our job as well in, in terms of helping the market understand that we need to 1st focus on building a, a strong foundation when it comes to custody because there's been like 1/2 a trillion dollars of Bitcoin and crypto losses due to poor custody and whether it's, you know, just lost, stolen, hacked, etcetera. When it's that, when you're building on the foundation of sand and people aren't used to paying for custody, I think all these other things just pop up and it's just like a a confluence of perverse incentives that exist in the industry. And aligns with something I say quite often, which is there's an order of operations to the ultimate success of Bitcoin, the way in which we think could be successful. And most people looking at this, again, probably driven by a life, a life lived in the Fiat system is, Oh yeah, number's going to go up. You just buy this thing, it's going to go up. And that's all I have to do. It's like, no, there's actually hard work that needs to be done, like you alluded to Jackson on the front end to make sure that the system is robust enough and don't have as many mines as we've had in the past with Mount Cox, FTX, Celsius, whatever it may be. Like these are examples of companies that have done it wrong, but they're for every example of a company that's done it terribly wrong and exploded. There's plenty of companies and I think they're beginning to outnumber the the terrible companies. Now they're doing it right, understand these core principles and to the point that was made earlier, like it's just doing our best to get out in front and educate and make sure that the companies that are doing it right are getting access to the people that are looking to get Bitcoin. And it is, I would argue, our moralistic duty to do that so that people don't lose their wealth. Yeah, And I love this conversation. We've had a lot in the past year and this was in my mind always part of the vision for on ramp in this is we know all the Bitcoin holders like there's other self custody. It's like when we say these concepts and some of it's to them, but the reality is like the idea is there's so many people that don't hold Bitcoin outside of the, the cohort that does. And all the money and these concepts have to be disseminate it and get get to them in a like a faster time frame. But then also to take it further is allocators. And we've had these conversations behind the scenes that this compression is 0 is real in the traditional finance space and it puts people out on the risk curve. And it also works because compression is 0 on custody and other assets is because ultimately, like in my mind, if something bad happens, you can reverse it. Somebody hacked your account. It's all, it's all good. But we know that's different here and there's no bailouts. The problem is when you start building on that foundation that things compress to 0. And that's baked in when you're a large incumbent institution looking at how do you make money in Bitcoin, you just assume that custody goes to 0. And even the exchanges that are in the system assume custody is 0, even though they spent all the money on it because they're looking for trading fees because that's the only way we've determined how to make money in Bitcoin. So then you have to, if you charge for custody, which you want to because you invested all that money and you do deluded yourself because you got to go raise the money and invest the infrastructure. You can't because you lose the trading fees. And so then you naturally inherently have a less secure solution. Maybe not always, but we've seen it historically with centralization of exchanges as a matter of it's Bitcoin only or not still centralization of the of an asset that is very distributed. It's kind of antithetical to the model Point going is now you're an incumbent, you're looking at the system, you're like, well, there's no money in custody. So I got to go figure out something else when that's fundamentally, I believe a fallacy. It's just that we haven't seen differentiated custody and you should pay for custody because ultimately it's been the difference in somebody holding Bitcoin or not holding it into the longevity you're seeing. It's it's growth. And so this idea and part of, you know, our plans are as you go back to the market, you actually say there's room for margin, there's room for custody. And the end story is great for a client because it's do you want Bitcoin at 60 K and to get to 600 K, you have to pay some basis points for that and it's required because nobody's told that story. And that's where we keep seeing people get burned and the capital gets lost. So anyway, that's a long way of saying like this, I think episode and going forward, a lot of things we do is really like, how do we bring the existing system to understand that they can actually make money and provide better services than an historically been thought of. And it's not raised to 0 charging 15 basis points on an ETF because everybody knows there's no such thing as a free lunch. You get what you pay for. And if you're not paying much for it, then at the end of the day, something will happen at some point. I love the idea of just really honing in on digital bearer asset at the end of the day. Like that in fact, in and of itself is the reason why paying for custody makes sense. It might not make sense in the traditional world where everything can just be reversed. But in a world where we have a $1.5 trillion global asset and historically I think it's the numbers, $400 billion of crypto and Bitcoin losses to date, that's pretty considerable. And it's worth paying whatever it is, you know, however many bips, if you're going to have exposure to an investment or savings, however you want to categorize it, that will appreciate potentially 25, fifty, 75% in a given year, right? Like it, it's, it's kind of de minimis when you compare what you're paying for custody, what you could potentially have as a return over the next 10 or 20 or 50 years in in Bitcoin as this monetizes. Party, I haven't shared this with you, but this is really controversial take as it would hit me when I was driving. Maybe not controversial, but it's that the more successful coin base is the more destined they are to fail. Like the more the more assets that they bring on is whether it's honeypot or just the obvious, you know, why would, you know, holding too much Bitcoin not be a good thing? You know, but people don't generally think in that way. So they're assuming like it's the larger it gets, the Lendy all the things. But it's actually it's like the larger, the more assets that are accumulating every year, the more ETFs that are housed there, ultimately the more likely it is to not end well for the people having the assets custody there. Well, I mean, the rest just increases significantly for them. And like if they have one slip up anywhere in their business, particularly on the custody side, maybe it doesn't materially affect a majority of their clients, but it affects and that sends a signal to the rest of their clients like, oh crap, when you get out of this. I mean, we've seen this in the Bitcoin industry, particularly in the Bitcoin mining pool sector with G hash in 2015, when they got 60% of the network hash rate, they were running a good business. They were running such a good business that everybody wanted to put their hash rate at this mining pool. But since they accumulated so much hash rate, it scared the crap out of the market because of the threat of a 51% attack from this pool. And even though they were running an incredible business, everybody left because they just didn't want that concentration risk at the mining pool level. And you could see something happening here similarly. And I've already heard behind the scenes that a lot of people working at these ETF issuers are already acutely aware of this concentration risk of everybody putting their Bitcoin with Coinbase and are scrambling to to find other, other custodians to diversify their holdings between. And So I think if they slip up, it's going to send a signal error where it's like, all right, we need to get the hell out of here. And even if they don't slip up, I think the concentration risk is always in the back of everybody's minds. It may have just been the most convenient option to get these ETFs off the ground. And so people took the the path of loose resistance. But I think once the doors are open, everybody's through the gate. Now they're thinking, OK, how do we reduce this concentration risk? What's your take on the regulatory reversal and the opening of Pinter's box? And I saw you guys have fit 21 on the list and the only I haven't read the bill, I've seen clips. I saw Tom Emmer really putting forth an argument that the bill is going to enable not only financial institutions to custody Bitcoin, but it's going to preserve the right of individuals to custody their own Bitcoin and transact in a peer-to-peer fashion, which sounds great in the speech form on the Senate floor. But I've heard rumblings this morning that there's some stuff in the bill that may not be great and so. Well, I mean from like the the ETH side, like the ETH ETH potential ETF and this the SAB like more just like a directional changing less of the fit bill. In like it's, it's, I've learned 11 years in to link as much as you want to say like this is stupid. I don't think people should be doing this. They're going to do it anyway. They're going to find a way. And I've become more convinced than ever that if anything for Bitcoin specifically, I I actually think it's a good thing in the sense that it creates so much confusion on the regulatory front that these altcoins act as like a diversion tactic while we can go build out Bitcoin infrastructure the right way. Would not recommend it, but and has it even been approved? Wasn't it supposed to be approved yesterday? Yeah, I think, I think it was supposed to, to your point, it's a it's a real interesting catch 22. It's like it gives the overhang to build. It's just an interesting, like, change in sentiment, I guess. That's been so different historically, Yeah. I think one thing's clear. Whether I agree with the tactics or not, I think it has been fun to watch the shifting of sentiment on Capitol Hill around it seems like who knows how much of this is just pronounced? Not pronounced, but like, what's the word? I'm looking for a very small group making a very big noise and it's affecting people on Capitol Hill. It it does seem like that the politicians are scared of pissing off people in the crypto industry, which could work to our benefit. I just find it funny if it's all like that simple that you just need Trump to say crypto once on a on a video and everything just shifts. Like if it's that easy, I mean, I think we're going to have a it'll be easier decade than we expect. Didn't I? Didn't I take campaign Bitcoin? So I think he, I think he's starting to to bring some of that forward. But that being said, I don't know. The. And a quick question for you, Marty, how much of that is, you know, the crypto community applying pressure on Capitol Hill versus Wall Street, recognizing how much money can be made in creating product, regardless of the quality of what that product may bring to the end client? They, they see the, the, the, the, the enormous success of the flows and the asset management fees. And, you know, I, I, I tend to think that it's, you know, those phone calls that may have swayed it. Michael and I were chatting about this. I, I don't know that I trust, you know, the, the political class as the career political class at all, you know, and so they can be easily swayed. And when they are easily swayed, it makes me wonder if it if there's not deeper pockets that may be causing that versus massive population. That's a. That's a very good point, Rich. Maybe it's a case of Wall Street making calls behind the background, like, yeah, let the crypto Bros think they did this and got going back to like the Fit 21 bill. That's, I mean, the rumblings. I have to dive in. I haven't done it yet. It was like a diversion tact. I was like, yeah, you guys are going to get a good bill pass. It passes. And it's like, no, actually like Wall Street can actually handle this. So good luck with self custody. Who knows what the bill actually said versus what the politicians were saying it was going to enable. I have to dig into that. But very good point. I find it hard to believe that the politicians are like, oh, the crypto Bros make a lot of sense now let's just pass this. It's people like, hey, do you want to do you want your next campaign funded? Let us get these flows. Yeah. I mean, that ties into the banks being able to custody this stuff, right? It's all connected together. I mean, these are both summits. Yeah, that's a interesting time. Great time to be alive. That's for sure it is. We're coming up on time here. Rich, is there anything else on your mind that you think we should bring up, whether it be in the context of how the wealth management industry should be approaching this, where you think we're going just more broadly over the next one to three years? You know, I, I think this is the scenario, right? If you think about how Bitcoin evolved it, it came so organically. It, it was really driven by individual investors, people that, you know, step forward and, and hit a level of critical mass. And, you know, then you saw, you know, the El Salvador's of the world that brought a lot of valid validation. It's hard to think that an entire country would would stake their stake, their economy to to something if there wasn't something they're worthy of investigation. And then you have the corporate, you know, side right with there's always these toe dips that happen. You got a nation state and then you have a, you know, corporate treasury and, and some really interesting things that Saylor has done from a financed perspective and how he's educating the world on that. And you just need that second mover and 3rd mover. And then all of a sudden, you know, things start to explode. And, and I, I do believe in many respects, you know, Bitcoin is kind of sitting there going, OK, RI as let's go. You know, family offices have certainly moved. I, I saw the graphic that that Jackson had put up, but that's just that's ETF, right? Family offices probably moved years ago to Bitcoin and, and, and have that cold in cold storage. But RI as are are inevitable. And I think it's an enormous force and it comes from a credible source, right? You know, Rias have stood in a a higher and more principled plane. And and so it, it stands to reason that they will be the ones who lead the charge. And, and I that's my thesis. I just think that, you know, they need to have the right education, you know, throughout their firm, they have to think about their culture and, and how it integrates into their culture and how they speak to it. They have to have the right research and tools and build it into the way that they serve clients. And once, once they've got all of those kind of pieces figured out and the custody and all of that, I think, you know, you have this really, really wonderful story that will start emerging on, on the bridge between, you know, traditional finance and, and the Bitcoin world. And there's nothing but enthusiasm on my side because I see, you know, largely that, you know, all of all of the, you know, all of the things are lining up correctly. But the question is, is who will be the survivors in that story and and recognize the opportunity that the threat certainly provides. Rich Rich hit me with the the best pitches. At what price does your client deserve Bitcoin, Mr. Advisor? Well, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it's that's a pretty powerful thing, right, When you think about it, you know, they say that everybody gets Bitcoin at the price that they deserve. The question for an RIA is what price do your clients deserve? And and when they start thinking about that, they're going to be like, oh man, let's move. My clients deserve everything because they built everything so. Yeah, and I think, I think more examples of yourself, Rich, somebody who's been in the industry for decades, steps out and signals something is undeniably going to turn heads from what's in the industry. Like, wait a second, Rich just went over there. What's going on? Like maybe I should be paying attention to this. So I think every rich car out there that that plants the flag and says no bitcoins here you should be focusing on it just accelerates this process a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. Excited. There are some really wonderful people inside of traditional finance to be honest with you, very, very good people that have meaningful and purposeful missions to really help one another. And I think that as they as they wake up and recognize, you know, what Bitcoin can represent and you know, hopefully they hear the same call that that maybe I heard. Awesome. Well, Rich, I really thank you for your time, Michael Jackson. It's a pleasure as always. This was an incredible conversation. We'll be back next week. Thanks, Luke. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Ramp Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit on rampbitcoin.com/contact. Schedule a consultation with one of our private client advisors.