The Last Trade E052: Bitcoin is Winning with NVK

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. 1970. 419-8790, 297-2000 and whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we. Sell. Hey, OK, so I'm behind. I say when we sell. 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 MVK, the founder of Coin Kite, a leader in Bitcoin security and hardware devices. MVK is also a board member of Opensats and hosts a fantastic podcast focused on Bitcoin development called Bitcoin dot Review. As MVK articulates, it's often important to zoom out and recognize that Bitcoin is already winning in terms of adoption and network growth. It has steadily gained traction over the past 15 years and has attracted highly intelligent people, from individuals to corporations to state actors. In this conversation, we discussed the potential mismanagement of assets in the cryptocurrency space and the turbulent nature of transitioning to a new monetary system. We also explore the role of regulations in Bitcoins trajectory, the embrace of Bitcoin by traditional financial institutions, and the importance of custodial considerations in Bitcoin ownership. We also touch on the future of stablecoins and the potential for open source developers to build cipherpunk tools that enhance the user experience of Bitcoin. And now, time for the show. We're live with MVK. Hey, I got. Product placement front and Center for this episode block clock Look at that mini here what is that it's. At my desk. One thousand 1781 blocks to Linux retarget. This is a stat we have. This is a product developed by MB K. I got a queue, I got a queue getting delivered to a, a random location because I, I got actually pressured from, you know, this stuff matters when people keep posting about it. You're like, well, I, I guess I have to own one or I'm outside of the club. So. Absolutely. You're not really good winner unless you have a queue. No, just joking. Everyone keeps them as backgrounds. I like looking at it through the day and it's like it's nice on the desk. Well, I'm on camera most of the day, so like I actually see it just looking at myself like. Oh, I can tell. You know, I have like 50 of them in my office. Like it's like no place. Marty's on camera during the day. He is a he's a professional influencer. And I heard something you said the other day, heard awful about everybody becomes a podcaster. Everybody in Bitcoin becomes a podcaster before it's all said and done so. Even though I think I think it's because like it's a very efficient way of getting your thoughts out, like Twitter is too noisy, right? And you know, in long form writing realistically, nobody reads. So like, you know, the, the, the podcasting really is like a, a very, very good way of, of getting the word out. And I mean, you could say I'm an influencer or a first mover. We live in the digital age. You have to own your message. Content marketing is key in this world. And yeah, I was just the first one to step out and say one of the first to step out in the Bitcoin space. I'm gonna end the message. That's right. I mean, influencer, thought leader. It's the same picture. We're doing bum bum checks today. Is that? No, I'm moving on. I don't even engage that subject. Neither do I and then I'm I'm embarrassed I brought it up, but we have a list of topics to talk about. I mean, mentioning the queue, Mike, I'm excited for you to get the queue in your hands. And for anybody listening who doesn't have contacts, NVK is the founder of coin Kite, which has been around for over a decade now building hardware for bitcoiners to secure their Bitcoin hardware devices, hardware wallets. Now NFC card SATS card tap signer and the latest iteration of their Bitcoin security hardware is the cold card Q, which is a form factor looks somewhat like a a BlackBerry, a calculator, whatever you want to refer to it. And I've been using it for months now and just want to say like in terms of like hardware, I don't want to disclaim our 1031's an investor in coin kite. Coin Kite's a sponsor of Rabbit Hole Recap, another podcast that I host, but honestly the the battery pack and being able to pass around transactions and sign transactions using NFC and QR scanner is one of the best UX upgrades I've had in terms of like Bitcoin hardware, just literally not having to plug it into anything. Having a battery pack and being able to scan AQR code with Sparrow wallet to pass back PSBTS to sign and then broadcast, it's an incredible experience. It's like, you know, I mean, we, we do this because we, we, we want to, not because we need to, you know, like we make the devices for ourselves. So, you know, it's, it's a product from bitcoiners to bitcoiners. Like, you know, it's not like focus groups on ship coiners and let's like open the funnel as big as possible. It's, it's very concerted effort into making a product that works for us. If it works for us, it's going to work for other Bitcoiners. It's it's very focused that way, yeah. It works for Bing. 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 and 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. I want to throw a spicy take out. I hesitated. I'm just going to do it as I'm curious MVK how much the queue was influenced or accelerated because of foundations harbor device and why? Why I bring when I bring it up is because I haven't played with the queue, but I got it because I was nicely sent a foundation device. And I like the form factor in this idea of like not V1, but the hardware device that had dongles and all the things associated is just like clunky and messy building on chain. You're getting old people on a call, you got to like plug in, you know, the USBC it doesn't match to the drivers and all that. So that form factor of like QRS tap signing or NFC was really awesome. And then to see you guys do it, like how much was the market? I guess where I'm going at is, was it a part of that that helped drive it and because I personally think it was, but I'd be curious and I think it's a good thing from the industry perspective because we're all like working towards a certain goal and that angle of like. Iron sharpening, yeah. So, so like I, I, I don't think it was them. I think it was Spectre DIY mostly that like that had the biggest effect on that. We we've been building the device for many years. We just sort of like never felt the market was ready for it. I think that because, you know, realistically speaking like that, that company doesn't have any market share, right? It's like, you know, there's a few devices only out there. So there wasn't enough user demand that came from that with the experience using that device to influence the market demand for it. I think the, the biggest demand from users came once Jade from Blockstream and Seed Signer both had a lot more market share and probably like, you know, 10s hundreds more market share than than the device. So those, those two devices are sort of like cheaper, less secure kind of thing. And, and, and, but they had the very, very interesting UX paths they took that that helped create some, some demand or at least rhetoric around having QRS. And, and I think that the main thing that made the QR come come to fruition was the fact that on that year that we decided to launch the queue, the, the supplier for the QR scanner found some economies of scale that were further advanced and lower the price a lot of the of the scanner. So we could economically create a product like that. The idea of the queue has been something on our bench for many years. The, the QR per SE, I don't like it. I feel like most people don't use it. It is a nice thing to have for you to check addresses, but realistically speaking, most people want NFC or USB. The problem is, and chain never created an app with NFC and, but, but you know, like and chain and chain is a small market in terms of like user count. It's, it's a, it's a much more higher net worth folks that are interested in that sort of set of trade-offs. So you know, that did it's a shape they never added an FC because you'd have made the device a lot cheaper. But but anyways, the, the point is, I, I think the, the market has evolved with more options. Another device that actually had very good UX and FC and and QR, but again, lower security threshold is Kobo Kobo Vault. I think now it's called Keystone. They also had like good UX and camera, but it was sort of like all over the place. You know, not enough people using, you know, 90 percent, 80% of the market still is Trezor Ledger, which neither have QR code scanners and and you know, they're still USBUS by Trezor with and chain as well. So we're trying to find ways to move people out of USB, if that be via QR, if that be via NFC or SD card, as long as people get out of USB, I think we're in a better place. Yeah, I'm gonna stand up for QR here. I like the QR experience in because you can interact with your laptop where most laptops aren't NFC enabled yet. Yeah. And part of bringing that up is just internally like we have a lot of individuals that, you know, want to mix between thinking through what does it look like from our product and multi institution to be able to participate whether it's holding 2 keys or one keys. But there's this also dynamic of like when you send, we joke around plastic device of a little treasure one in somebody who's holding $10 million. And as that appreciates, you just naturally like holding this device and wondering like, is this thing gonna last very long? And so that was part of looking at foundation and the queue is like, what does it look like from our product mix as we grow? But then the other side of it and, and I've shared with Marty and I'm sure you guys have chatted about Rodolfo about just, and this is an interesting topic to get your take on a you've been probably the loudest about video verification being doomed from just like authentication independent. End of it. Yeah. And so I'd love to hear those thoughts. But the thing I keep anchoring back to is like the idea of like obviously having a private key on one of these devices and being able to authenticate in some way, whether it's, you know, leveraging movement of Bitcoin across the protocol or other things that I see these devices playing different roles in authentication outside of just participating in a quorum for your asset. But curious on the the video verification because I don't think a lot of people have heard of this taken. It's very valid. It's something we're thinking about deeply. Rather get into it early versus a lot of existing companies. This is all they rely on and now they're just like almost going to be trapped for the next decade or at least next couple of years. You know, there is a service provider I use for some, some legacy interfacing that I have to do on, on, on institutional side that, you know, they, they said at some thresholds they require video, which I simply not willing to do because there's going to be fake videos of me because AI can do that now. And also I don't want an image of me on video talking about a specific Bitcoin number because that just sounds completely retarded. Because, you know, reality is all companies will get hacked. It's a when, not an if, right? So Unchained, we'll get hacked and we'll leak those videos eventually. So it's better not to have those videos. So then the answer is like, how do we authenticate people, right? And you know, voice is gone, video is gone. So, so the way to do it is with private key pairs, right? Why why don't we use a tap signer, right? Maybe it's not for signing a transaction, but it's still a Bitcoin curve and you can preset the device send to your customer or the customer has to come pick up in person when they set up the account, right? So you have a nice solid chain of custody and they use that to authenticate into the app on top of the signature they provide with their hardware device, right? I, I think, I think that puts people in a much better place. I don't think see like biometrics, which is video or voice, It's not something you know, it's something you have and something you have can be taken from you. Yeah, if you've seen and just like talking about it all on air because they'd rather it's better they have it out and then everybody do it or or compete to do it is we have on ramp branches and we have team all over the US And the idea is as we grow you have a certain balance. You come meet a representative at the local branch and you can authenticate this as me before starting. No, that, that's nothing beats in person, right. So for example, it's funny, but I, there is a few business service providers of legacy services that I, I deal with, right? Like that, that are like either Bitcoin bridges or, or they are banking partners, right? And one of our corporate requirement is that all the KYC be done on paper, right? Like, I understand they have no choice. They have to do KYC, they need a picture of my penis, you know, but let's do that over paper, right? So what we do is we FedEx a photocopy of, of any document that they need. And if they need to see it in person, we either fly them in or we fly out, right? They check the photocopy versus the, the, the, the original and they're good to go. Like legally we've checked and, and like most jurisdictions are perfectly fair fine with that, right? How that scale for like a, you know, like a smaller, more retail kind of customer, I don't know. But for, for institutional investors or institutional clients, it definitely scales right. So, you know, I know that you have a safe somewhere in your office that has my identity in a photocopy, which is fine. And you know, remote attackers can't get that right. Worst case that happens is that burns or whatever and we do it again. But but I think that's a much more sane path forward. I think how that scales is you've got companies that, you know, if that, that becomes the standard, you've got companies that, that focus on, on that and only that. And you know, you, you outsource identity, identity verification and, and KYC just like you know, many, many firms do already today to programs to companies that, that might do that best. And I think a lot of people overkill. Their thing is overkill. But anybody that's listened to the Jenseth deal or should go listen, or Marty had a great, you know, post right after that, It's like this stuff's happening. You have never seen a digital bare asset live natively on the Internet. Like they're coming for everything you have. Well, I mean, even even like shopping carts, you know, like Treasure lost all customer information once, Ledger lost it more than once. I don't know. I think that Coin Square, an exchange in Canada lost all their customer data as well, you know, and you can't just force this to a third party that's going to lose the identity, right? It's even worse if you outsource the third party that, you know, scams people faces and whatever. That's how a lot of exchanges do it because they will lose it right? Like somebody that has it on the server will lose their identity information and it's very scary Bitcoin, right, because now somebody, you know, can can go and scam people out of their coins or go kidnap them right. So I think it's very important that, that I, I think we can already make the legal case, you know, as long as some company ends up taking this to the courts to, to prove that, you know, like online identity KYC requirements are, are actually detrimental to the, to the citizens, right? Like you're causing actual harm. That's that, that then people can sue, right? Their service providers. You know, I got kidnapped. I'm going to sue you for damages now because you lost my, my identity and my, my, you know, home address. I think we're gonna get to a point. It's just it's early, right? I mean, banks used to just photocopy your stuff. They still do. You can go, You go to a breakage, they photocopy your stuff and they put in a file, right? Yeah, I mean, you're speaking my language now. We need to abolish the Bank Secrecy Act, which all of this KYCAML nonsense stems from. And the data's out there. The the, the goal of these KYCAML compliance regulations is to prevent money laundering and identity theft and the the stat is that it's in terms of money laundering over the 1st 50 years of the BSA proliferating and these compliance regulations getting more and more insane, they've only stopped point 1% of global. I mean laundering. Flows and then you get down to the question like what is money laundering like? Does that even exist? Is that even a good? Term. Well, I mean remember the bad guys by the law use HSBC. They don't use Bitcoin, Yeah, right. When they want a money laundering, right, like the cartels require that HSBC has bigger windows for bigger bags of cash. This is a briefcase, right? There's. A. There's dimensions that are required, yes. They they ask HSBC to have bigger windows and they put bigger windows for more cash like. Yeah, they said. OK, we'll do that. Just make sure the briefcase has to be 30 inches by 18 inches and you can push it through. Speaking of Morgan, that does the the money laundering for what's his name, Jeffrey Epstein, the eye look there. We go Speaking of Speaking of a little money laundering, was it Solana, Solana ETF was approved yesterday or the DOGE? There you go. Oh no, it was ETH. It was ETH. It was the ETF. No, I mean, like, what is the biggest tax scam is like you, you whether the people go and they they buy a NFT from themselves for a lot of money and then they sell it at a loss and then they harvest that loss, right? It's like with people's pictures. I mean, come on, you know? Yeah, it is. We're getting off kilter here a little bit. But what I wanna bring it back to is something we discussed briefly pre recording and it's, I mean it's actually ties to what we're just talking about these KYCAML regulations and the the ambiguity of what a money service business is these days. What are your thoughts on everything that's happening in terms of the the Western regulators coming after open source developers and the reaction to the actions of the government over the past two months? Are we winning? Yes, I mean and people are losing their fucking panties for no reason. I mean like you know, like yes, that we have an overbearing like legal system that like mostly goes after, you know, the wrong things. Sure, you know, like we we can argue about all that stuff all day, right, But realistically speaking, I mean, there is no law on the books that says you can't have your own Bitcoin on a harder wallet, right? What what they're after is not your Bitcoin on your harder wallet. Is there after is people like evading taxes, right. So they want to make sure that, you know, when people buy and sell Bitcoin and all that stuff, they're capturing some of that. Is that wrong? Absolutely. But let's not confuse that that over burgeoning and overbearing taxation regulation and and the side effects of that with with the state saying you can't have Bitcoin, which is not true. Yeah. I mean, it's very important because the what's the IT? There's no shortage of like recent things that come out and people generally like to isolate and talk about like the one was the qualified custody, but I'm for in the trust, but there's in the trust charter. And then the most recent one, yeah, it was money transmission. It's like these things we look at in like microcosms of Bitcoin or digital assets like this impacts everything else down through my business. Yeah, it's nothing to do with it. I mean, maybe. Has I would make the case, I don't know how much has to do with Bitcoin, but it's this idea of it disrupts. So many. Other. People certainly most threatened by Bitcoin because. Do do you know what that meme with that ad guy under the elevator with the the madman guy in the elevator and he the other guy says something that he goes turns to him says I don't think about. You. OK, regulators don't think about Bitcoin like they don't think like, you know, from time to time, a, a, a crypto between quotes, right? Like comes up like a, like a bill or something related to us comes up in their desk, right? But like 99% of the time we don't exist to them. They're preoccupied with like, you know, let's bomb someplace, you know, let's let's like, you know, like go after Landers and like other shit. Well, and what for what actually supports that is this past week because everybody thought there was like one side and trying to stifle innovation and then it like Trump says crypto and then they're like I like let it all go through whatever we don't care ETF ETH go it's taking how long has it been 10 plus years for the. But like another thing that people don't notice with the, with all the KYC shit show and, and, and a lot of this like tax sort of like this tax recovery efforts, is that like it's, this is international, right? So the, the OECD changed a bunch of rules and, and whatever the the name of the other group organization that handles taxes internationally too. What they're trying to do internationally pretty much since 2014 is like they're trying to find loopholes that like average people like dentists and lawyers can use to shelter income and, and they've been going after that. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin and, and they've been changing it so that, you know, only Halliburton can do it, you know, but like dentists and lawyers were sheltering the Caymans, you know, pre 2014 successful. So they're trying to remove those loopholes, right? And and that has a lot of consequences to KYCBSA and other shit locally as well. There's 34. There's $34 trillion in debt, with 220 trillion in unfunded liabilities. What's another trillion, Marty like? These numbers don't even like represent things anymore in real life. Now if you made $1,000,000 a day going all the way back to when Jesus Christ was born, you would not have made as much money as U.S. government has printed this year. Not even a like a very small fraction of it. It's insane. But how much does this money buy? Not a lot, not less and less every day. The SAT's per dollar number go down. Is is very aggressive right now. We're winning. Moscow Time is getting smaller on the on the block clock. I was thinking about like, I didn't run the numbers, but I was thinking directionally. If you just move dollars to Bitcoin over the past few years and you look at inflation and what you could have compounded if the money wasn't losing purchasing power, If you had dollars and we're just investing or building, you're almost just staying even. You're not actually like really winning. You know, like that's how messed up, like how bad people are from businesses and like people going backwards on holding dollars is like just by moving into Bitcoin, I think you're basically keeping keel with what how things were supposed to be. I don't know Meli, if you bought like a few, a few cycles, even DCA, you're pretty much ahead. Well, I think, yeah, that that breaks down. I think at a certain point, like call it, I don't know, maybe I think it's like epoch 3 post like the 17 after 1000 where I think that might. But then you have to take into like, if the money wasn't losing value, you would have been making money with it somewhere else. Yeah, but he was right. But that, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So like, what would that money like? There's still, you would have had a net gain if the dollars were just static. You would have still increased those dollar amounts independent of Bitcoin if it wasn't, if it wasn't inflating the supply, so. That's can you really can. Can you make more than 7% a year? Realistically speaking, no. I mean, unless you're super risky. Well, if you build businesses that are productive and you like do things in the world, that's what I mean. That's that's what I'm but that's the company's the risk, right? Yeah, it's just an interesting. I was just like basically thinking about like businesses and treasury management and it's like you have to if you want to live or you're just going to die is have your position in Bitcoin and was like looking at it's like you just have to play the game or you're not going to make it. I mean, you really have two choices, right? You either have a PhD in finance so you can beat the market or you buy Bitcoin like there's no middle ground. Like how? How is an average person out there going to like, you know, beat S&P, like the P the PhD in finance? Has structured the Solana or EE TTF because I don't think you you go further out in the risk curve because you're not even can you can't even eat it by traditional like 7 to 9 percent is not beating it. You might be like losing 2 real percent year over year at 7% or not. Exactly. It's it's pretty brutal out there man. And DCA is a terrible strategy too. I mean, like nobody should DCA like you know, you should lump by it. But anyways, that's a different most. People don't watch. Most people don't have the luxury. Most people don't have the luxury. OK, OK, some people. No, I mean they can earn and then wait a little and then buy it. Like they don't have to buy as they earn. Yeah, but my again Fiat high, high time preference box, I think most people are like I need to stash this way in Bitcoin now I'm going to spend it. It's better than it's better to DCA than to not buy Bitcoin. Absolutely. Yes, yeah. So I guess in the broader context of things, let's make this, let's make the case for Bitcoin is winning. And despite what many in the industry who, who are hyper focused on everything that's been going on from a regulatory perspective may think is an attack on Bitcoin, but you're putting forth that like these people really don't care. Things come, things go. How do you think Bitcoin? Why do you think Bitcoin is winning right now, 'cause I always say we're going to win and you hop in my menchies, whether it's on Noster, on Twitter, somebody, we're already winning. Why are we winning? Yeah, I mean, like, listen, like, OK, like this started as like literally a, a magical Internet money joke. Like, you know, like it's like it's so hard to convey to people what Bitcoin the early, very early days look like. You know, it's like you, you could either buy shifts on Silk Road or like, you know, you know, spend 40,000 Bitcoin, buy some pizza or you know, like the the idea like moon, the original moon mean was $1000 Bitcoin. OK, so we're, we're in Venus now, right? So I mean, Bitcoin is over $60,000, right? And, and steadily programmatically like making its adoption wave cycle increments for the last 15 years, right? 15 years is a very decent track record. You know, we managed to have a legacy finance interface added, which is the ATF. They were not able to prevent that. You know, majority of Bitcoin is in the hands of individuals, not institutions and that's the great majority of Bitcoin is out there. You know, we have state actors accumulating coins. We have state actors fighting each other on how they see Bitcoin D, which is perfect, right? We need flight theory for Bitcoin. You know, we have the software being upgraded and updated and garden, we have no single source of truth in Bitcoin. So that means that like, you know, somebody says, oh, we need to go this way with the Bitcoin code, It goes it doesn't. It's always contentious. The more contentious it is, the more we're winning. That means nobody can run it through. We have the the biggest computation capacity on Earth by probably 1100 X anything else. That includes every supercomputer, every single state actor owns, all combined together. You know, we have this incredibly asymmetric defense mechanism where like, you know, an individual with $100 device can protect itself and it's it's like its economic value more than, you know, a trillion dollar bank can protect it for them. You know, the Bitcoin supply has not changed its schedule since its inception. You know, like we attract a lot of smart people. The the low time preference still rules Bitcoin. You know, it's just like, it's not like every property of Bitcoin is working. I mean like I don't understand why people freaking out like it's weird. At at the same time, too, I think this was probably the most encouraging bullish week that I've seen since since I've been following the industry since 2017 and watching I I I've been on the pod a few times here calling out, but I I haven't understood the political calculus of the Biden administration attacking Bitcoin, attacking the industry just because it it hasn't made sense from. No, it does. It's it's it's Bitcoin white Bitcoin is white supremacy. It's like the you know, it's like it's a what is it? No, it's, it's a white privilege to hold Bitcoin now, right? It's just, it's just for the masses. Like it doesn't make much sense but but it sells. But at the same time, you've got, you know, 27% of Americans holding crypto are, are you, are you gaining votes by attacking crypto broadly or are you losing them by attacking and the answer? Is you're losing. Them because the people outside don't care. And with the SAB 121 vote that happened last, you know, last week, seeing Democrats come across the aisle and say, Hey, there's a bipartisan majority here that, that is supporting the issue. I, I think, you know, the, you know, it was two weeks ago the Biden administration came out saying they were going to go veto this bill. I, they started feeling the heat. They started feeling the heat on Trump coming out. And we're watching the game theory play play out a lot faster than I thought it would the national level, the presidential level. And you're seeing crypto become a a truly presidential debate stage issue. And you've got the Biden administration now backtracking, approving an ET EE TF you know, in over over the course of three days. All of a sudden, it's not a security after two years of attacking it, but they now realize they're in they had the incentive over, you know, until November to go pump number go up any way that they can to to not lose these votes because they feel threatened in the five states that matter in a presidential election that they're going to lose voters as a result of what they're doing here. And like we're this is the game theory. This is what we go on these pods, you know, every week talking about the incentive structure of Bitcoin. This isn't playing out. They're fighting for our votes to in in trying to do their best to to increase the number right now so that, you know, they can make people forget what happened the last two years. Is that true? I like, I'm curious, like it sounds good in my opinion. Mitch and Mitch has been pinging me about this all week that it's insanely bullish. So we had him on to talk about this exact comment and others, but I don't know, it feels too obvious or too simple in that. Form yeah, I am on the mallards camp on this reality is the banks don't want to buy more shitty paper that doesn't pay them. So you know, they want, they want to cut like it's the same shit that happened in 2016 with the Icos that all the VC large funds wanted a cut of the crypto market, right? So A-16 Zed caused that pump, right, with all the, the ICO insanity. So now I don't think it's about votes. It's about like the, the, the scammers have way more money to lobby than Bitcoin does, right? When, when they were talking Bitcoin, nobody was with that effect against politicians. But now that the scammers are behind crypto and and have to fight the politicians that that battle is going to get fought in one right, because the scammers are much closer to the money printer in the contillionary fact that we are right. So they will go knock on the door of the representatives was saying, Hey, do you still want to like, you know, get get that cash that Sam is not going to give it to you anymore because he's in jail for your next election. And they're like, yeah, you know, I'll I'll take it. And and they're, you know, they're it's the playbook of Wall Street, right? Like I mean there there really is no difference on that. But there there is the path that it helps us and and I I agree. Oh, absolutely. I mean like you. Know, yeah, you're saying the same thing. We're saying the same thing because what? They just don't care about Bitcoin, they're just to care about dollars. Exactly. But what I don't think enough people in this industry realize how much of A detriment Seb 121 is for for I'd say, you know, as the plebs and the people still have access to cheap Bitcoin here. But the same time, you know, your corporate treasuries, they've got to get comfortable with Coinbase's. The bit goes of the world in single party custody with institutions that you know, are are crypto native to be to be custodying their, you know, their treasuries here because the Bank of New York Mullins and state streets. They don't have the opportunity to step into the space because of SAV 121 and it's just it it hasn't been worth it for them. And you've got all these, these these backwards incentive structures of how, how large companies would have to hold their Bitcoin and, you know, trust single party custodians, you know, try to figure out ways that they can be covered on, you know, insurance or, you know, balance sheet recovery, you know, in case of loss. And it's just, it's not the way this industry scales. And if we want to get the corporates involved, the way that adoption is going to take place, you've got to let these companies with larger balance sheets step in that they're comfortable with. And yes, they're absolutely going to make money off of us. They if that's what the ETF. You know you're going to have this is the thing. Yeah, I've been harping at this for a while, right? Like I, I find this anti ETF like thing that bitcoiners do extremely childish and sort of like very like almost ignorant in a way. Like the, the reality is like we have to get economically big and fast and if we don't get killed, OK, and it's not going to be pretty, it's not going to be on our terms. You know, it's not going to be nice. Reality is like, you know, monetary systems or, or assets or whatever you want to call it, you know, if they don't get big, they get killed. And, and you know, if the ETF is how like a lot of this, this entities coming to Bitcoin and we suck that value in and we become more powerful, then so be it, right? Like we're going to need 50 things like that. What do people think was going to happen when Bitcoin gets big? Like, you know, like a, a big teachers pension fund is going to have a gold card in the office. No, right. Like that's not how like all these legacy systems work. Like these things need to to happen in in in a way that's possible to them. Is it? Is it great for them? No, because they have shitty paper Bitcoin. But it's better than than no Bitcoin exposure at all, Right? And and do this force a centralized Bitcoin a bit? Yes. Is that great? No, but it's also better than Bitcoin getting killed because it didn't value fast enough. And I, I totally agree. And what I see here, look, I, I don't think anyone here is, is, is going out to go buy the Ethereum ETF or like it's, but what I see going on is we're getting wins for the industry, broader crypto. What does that do for, for Bitcoin? That provides us insulation and the when the industry gets attacked, you know, it's, it's going to be on the outer stuff that or like the the edge cases that are getting approved here. You know, whether it's Solana ETFs or what, whatever it is, it's we're, we're we're providing layers of, of insulation that they're they, they, they. We're going to become more untouchable because the like assets are going to grow. Assets are going to grow for the industry. It's going to be more meaningful businesses to the black rocks of the world, to the teachers funds out there and the pension funds. And it's we're, we're growing fast. Just like you just said. It's it we, it's not bulletproof, but it's the more we become part of the stories for these companies, the revenue models, the, the harder it is going to be to, to, to break it. Well, I mean, yeah. Besides, you know, MVK is like we are winning in the sense of MVK live through these cycles and I remember previous cycles building other businesses of like everything get they eat it, they eat themselves. Like you know, it's a lot ETF will effectively eat itself and then everybody's sitting there and the people that were doing it the right way exist and then you just take larger market share. So you just have to stay around long enough. Which is part of the other. And this gets to something that Michael, you and I talk a lot about behind the scenes and bringing this back to SAB 121 particularly the problem with SAB 121 is that the regulators were expecting banks, if they were to custody crypto to hold the same amount of dollars. They had to basically have the same amount of dollars as crypto. And like one company that did this went under. I mean, not this is not why they went under. They, they basically folded, decide to shut their doors under their own volition with Silvergate. I mean, they had to do this. And it's just completely insane when you consider the fact that these banks are 0 reserve banks at this point. They don't even do it for their dollar assets. But now that 121 has been passed and it seems like they're going to allow these institutions to hold Bitcoin on behalf of their customers. That then begs the question is, do we think that they will recognize that this asset is wholly different? And will they turn into just like block fives on a much bigger scale where they're like, oh, we can just lend this out, get yield, give it back to the customers and have rugging's on the scale of which we we have not seen maybe since Mount Cox in terms of Bitcoin lost on the balance sheet. So like I think that's the big question. Like everybody's happy at the institutional level that this bill has been passed, but I think that's a big question. Do these institutions recognize what they're working with and how bad are they going to mismanage this asset, if at all? You know, I mean, Supergate was scam, but let's not even go there, you know, like they, they, the government didn't like them, so they made sure that they don't exist anymore, right? I mean that that's the truth about Supergate. But, but going back to this, you know, the, the more freedom we have and the further we, we, we have this, this freedom options, the more freedom to scam the scammers are going to have too, right? And it just still man, the, some of the Bitcoiners argument against the ETF is like, you know, you're going to have the scam coin ETF and then they're going to make us look bad. Yes. But you know, if you have the low time preference mindset, you know, we're going to have the next 80% crash. You know, we're going to get Bitcoin gets the $1,000,000, you know, every pension fund buys it and then it crashes 80%. And then there's going to be, you know, screaming on the on TV that, you know, crypto is evil and it could cause problems. And look what happened. And you know, and people are going to say that you have to make the laws that the price can't go down by law or whatever. Or, you know, it's going to be too big for them to take away from us anyways. You know, it's, it's going to be very messy. It's going to be very, very messy. Like, you know, you don't just replace a monetary system, you know, like, in any pretty way, like, you know, look at, look at like gold had 5000 years, right? And, and, and like, look at the amount of like killing, fighting and, and like stealing and, and, you know, faking it. And that happened through, through this time, right? And then, and then look at the amount of shit, how many places they bombed and raped when they when they ended the gold standard. Look at the 70s and 80s, what countries, first world countries did to other countries that had gold, right? So it's like, you know, this is just a path, right? You know, it's not like for the people that want to be aware while the thing happens, you have to be mindful that, you know, shit's going to be Massey and and if you don't want to, like if you don't want to accept and then close your eyes, stack your sacks and go do something else and don't pay attention. But like you screaming on Twitter that the scammers are going to have ETF and that's bad. It's not going to change the fact that the scammers are going to have an ETF. 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. It's important like the the messy dynamic is what I think people are afraid of not knowing order. It's a it's a proxy for volatility, right? Like fiat's dampened volatility, but volatility always exists. And so then when it doesn't fit in the box because certain, you know, rules around privacy and you know, the idea of money laundering and it gets mixed up with, you know, the the KYC and what you know, samurai was going through or other firms or people leaving when you can make the case certain people were probably either going out of business or leaving either way for this. And it could have been an excuse. Like all these things happen and they get lumped into certain reasons versus this stuff's going to be naturally messy. To your MV KS point, like there's a lot changing in the world outside of Bitcoin. And so it all starts to look a little uncomfortable, but you have to just recognize that. And we've lived in a world there. There hasn't been a lot of volatility historically outside, you know, the past four years have been a little crazier, more volatile, but this is just how it's going to move for the next next decade. And you have to be prepared and you have to plan accordingly and have redundancies and all the things that are involved to like actually make it and not be in jail and play by the rules. There's something you said with, with Peter, which is like you have to have good accountants and you have to have good lawyers if you're going to, you know, want to operate, because you have to have people that make sure that you're, you're playing by the rules. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, like you can't change the world from jail, right? Like really like, you know, like and you wanna have a life and, and you know, you have to exist and there is no freedom in any country, right? Like, you know, some countries, you know, like you have the freedom of shooting somebody entering your house. Some countries like to like have less KYC requirements. But like, but at the end, every country that we have in the world right now is common in. So like you have to play within the environment you're in to, to have a reasonably fulfilling life, right? And, and, and sort of like hopefully build as fast as you can, like power and, and ammunition so that you can like fight way, fight your way through a better world, right? Like, it's not like the person screaming in front of the government office that changes the world, right? I want to like first the, you know, talking about those builders like the win this week. I think about the all the like it was cathartic because at Bicco, my job was working with all the builders in the industry or as many, many as we could. Hundreds people that I saw affected by sulfur gate and signature going down as a result of the government largely fighting us to, you know, all the wells notices that were served and all of that compounding over and over again every single month to, you know, the, I think the the SECK, you know, losing, losing against grayscale was, was the the first chink in the armor. But this felt like that it was cathartic that like for once, we weren't being fought against and we were actually being embraced the way that, you know, we're, we're voters in this country and, you know, we should our, our our vote should be fought over. And it it realizing how much it helps all those builders out there. Yeah, Marty, I think you're totally right. I think the, you know, there will, the, the amount of bullshit that we're about to see from the traditional finance system where they're going to be lending, you know, the Bitcoin that's sitting in custody. That's absolutely coming. Michael, you're right. This is just like that cat's going to be out of the back. This is the world we're operating in. So we don't have a choice. It's it's going to be there Will there be failures to the degree of block fi? It'll be worse. You know, you're going to have traditional financial institutions that are getting hurt here rather than the block fives of the world. So it's all coming. We're we're absolutely going to see a cycle again where, you know, where we're going to see the appreciation. We're going to see the people who come late to the space. We're going to see them get hurt by, you know, over leveraging in the system. We're going to see, you know, it won't be NFTS this time. It'll be mean coins or whatever the hell it is. But there, there will be, you know, the reaching out on the risk curve and the people who get misguided, you know, and find shit rather than, you know, actually, you know, finding, finding the way that money potentially could be stored in this industry. And we're going to go through it, rinse and repeat all again. But it's when these traditional financial institutions are coming into the space, it's just I, I, I keep sitting back to we're getting protection with, they're going to help us get big. They're going to help us provide really get sticky where where they're not like the the attacks are not going to to to be able to come in the fashion they did the last couple years. It's it's new. I, I wanna, I wanna be, I wanna be clear, I wanna be clear. My comments on SAB 121 weren't like, I don't think this should have been passed. It was like, I'm an accelerationist. I'm like, let's speed run this shit. Get the get the Come rocket ETF out there. Let people speculate on it. Let all these companies blow up. The reason bringing that up is for the listener. I do think we do have the potential. Obviously that's what On Ramp's doing. It's what you're doing. Your small part at Queen Kite, Rodolfo, is there is a right way to do this stuff and to like educate the listeners of this, like now that this is now that this law's passed, like this is all possible. However, we do have ways in which this could be prevented and the market has to demand it at a certain. Can we just like at least acknowledge? I think like this is another truth that the cleaners refused to acknowledge. Is that like, you know, Bitcoin is available to everyone, but it's not for everyone. The majority of the people are going to use Bitcoin the same way everyone in the world uses dollar, right? Like, you know, if you, if you, if you are a Brazilian government, you know, that's dollars with risk Brazil, right? Like there, there is no such thing as other currencies in the world. It's all dollar. Like the euro is dollar because at the end of the day, for you to build that truck in Europe, they're like dollarizing that debt to either the external countries debt or their own debt as a company, then buy commodities. They're all dollar assets, dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar that you, you know, it's going to be the same as Bitcoin, right? Eventually you're just going to have Bitcoin being the underlining of everything, regardless if you have a gold card or Bitcoin in it, right? You're just going to be more ahead if you have the underlining asset. But at the end of the day, you know, that's the path, right? Like, and, and you have to accept it like there is only two quadrillion Satoshi's, right? And and that's not enough for everybody because, you know, it's not equally distributed. You're going to have 1% of the world population, which is already 100 times better than the current distribution and having the majority of the the Bitcoin and yeah. And this is where like it gets messy and the the point is really well taken in the sense of like both things can be true in the sense of it's good for the industry to Mitch's point. But then to Marty's, to answer your question directly, like this is foundationally why we exist and why like took, you know, the opportunity to build. This was after FTX and seeing what was coming from like the existing incumbents. We're building centralized entities into MV KS point. You basically ultimately for for a long time, you either had a cold card or you had Coinbase, right? And I know it sounds hyperbolic, but at the end of the day, like it's Coinbase, FTX, Block 5, Celsius, BNY Mellon, like it's all centralized custody. And so if you have orders of magnitude larger carnage in the future with the existing market structure, because they will re lend it and they'll do all the same things. Because in my mind, nothing's changed since 2022. And it's kind of crazy that nobody talks about that, that we will see all of those losses and those will be individual. There'll be a lot of people, there'll be institutions that are made-up by individuals. There'll be individual losses. So while it's good for the industry, it's also bad in the sense of a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, but it's also messy. And that's just part of this process. And so part of the education and conversations is figuring out all the different ways that you can store your asset, knowing the different counterparties, all the things that we talked about. So there's like, it's all right and it's all wrong in the sense like it has to play out this way. And it's just like, do you want to play with the way I think of it like gravity, you either like live in it or you know you, I guess you don't. You either have to kill yourself or just like go in a corner. But the point is it all is going to go in One Direction whether we like it or not. You just have to play. With it, I think, Mike, what's your point? Like I think the most important thing now is this, like with Bitcoin, you don't need permission to own it, right? With everything else like ever, you needed permission to own it. And if gold they come knock on the door if I can take it too. So at least you have a thing now that a person can go and buy it, you know, without any permission and and like quietly too, right? And they can travel with it. So we can enter this new massive world in a much better place as individuals, right? Like so, so how can how can this not be better? You know, how can this not be winning? Like everybody has this opportunity. And and at this current prices, even if you're somebody in like Africa, you can still buy a little bit of Bitcoin, right? That's not going to be true in 10 years, right? But you can still buy the underlining asset even if you're very poor. So, so like it, it's hard not to be like bullish on this. Yeah, you can. Yeah, still by the underlying asset of, of something that I I I keep coming back to it. The the, the where our votes are being fought over here in the US and there are so like you saw the dynamic last week or this last week of, you know, when when Biden got bullish and, you know, started to to talk about the the Ethereum ETF. What did Trump do? He accepted crypto payments to try to change the narrative and and become more positive. You know, crypto in that direction. It's going to go back and forth. These people are are Lombardi's got guns over there. Yeah, the only winning move is to play. It's like. Exactly. You know, this is many years ago, OK, 2014, I think they were trying to get politicians to accept Bitcoin, OK, for political campaigns because if the politicians had Bitcoin, they wouldn't make Bitcoin illegal. In those days, you could make Bitcoin illegal and kill Bitcoin. It worked. It's this same mechanism. It's like these guys have bags. Nancy is not going to make unrealized cap gains on stock because she is a big stockholder, right? Like we want all these assholes to have the assets so they don't master them. And when in the world, though, can someone someone in Africa or wherever they are in the world benefited from game theory that played out where you know, they're holding an asset? And then you've got presidents, potential presidents arguing over who's going to increase their value in buying power more. The dynamic is totally changed. This is this is never existed before and this. Is the game here? On that note, Mitch Logan, pull up the tweet I put in as we went live breaking news. Not that one. Oh yeah, this one. Marathon Digital partnered with the country of Kenya to harness their underutilized energy assets to mine Bitcoin. So we have a public private partnership between the Kenyan government and Marathon Digital, publicly traded miner here in the US to basically mine Bitcoin with their excess energy assets. I mean, it's, it's pretty insane, right, that you can monetize stranded energy remotely like it has never been possible, right, to like because you have to take that energy, right, put in a capacitor or put it in a line and to take it somewhere else, right? And you have a lot of loss to do that. And you know, now it's like, hey, oh, look, I have a hole in the ground. It's not doing anything like, but it has energy in it. You put a minor on the Internet, it's like, boom, I'm making money. You can't compete with these incentives. You can't illegalize profit. Like like I think this is the part that people don't fucking get it. It's like you can't make profit illegal. Like communists have tried. They always fail like you know, people will find a way to make a profit. They want their freedom credits right and and, and like, and they will try to rope in the politicians who are all corrupt, you know, on their 'cause right, and then and then you can't. It's just the incentives are impossible to fight with. It's just that every single sort of like more moral, ethical way of, of like storing money and, and monetizing the money, right? Have always been things are less moral or, or, or, you know, ethically not great or, or they were not extremely monetizable, right? And, and, and, and that's why we always lost like, you know, it's like, it's always been this choice. It's like, do I have to be ethical or I want to make money right? Like and with Bitcoin, it's like, fuck you all. I'm just gonna hold my Bitcoin into appreciates being moral in my corner. Like I've got to be sitting on my little tongue flourishing, you know, until you all fucking fight each other to death and sort it out. But number go up and it can do number go up actically, right? You can't fight this. Fucking incentives. Yeah, I mean, that's a key thing that Marty's been talking about. He brought up the other week about what's more important, it's like the banks or the energy sector. And he made the case and I think it's the energy sector because once you have the energy, when that's what powers the world and you tie it to Bitcoin. And it reminds me of this quote because everybody talks about the UAE and what's happening in Dubai. And they say like, UAE is like a speedboat, like you can move and it shifts fast. And Saudi Arabia is like. Like a battleship, and it takes a while to turn, but when it turns, it can like take over the world. And this notion of like when they start to grok and they're starting to get there and they start mining Bitcoin and leveraging a lot of the excess energy and a lot of the renewable stuff that they're powering over the next decade. Like those incentives from a geopolitical jurisdictional perspective just completely wipe out a lot of this, like conversation around, oh, where am I going to live? Who's going to be fair? It's like everybody wants your Bitcoin and they're going to make it known and you're going to have a lot of places to go in the future. I mean, and, and if you have your shit coin in mining, they're all going to have to move to proof of stake because the AI companies are going to pay more for computational GPUs then they will, right? So they're all going to move to proof of stake. So they're all fully capturable, right? Bitcoin, you know, you already have all the tendencies of money to become monopolies. So like Bitcoin has that going for it. It already has the lending, right? It has the computation. So nobody's going to like come for the king that way. You know, it's again extremely bullish. Well, and to add to that, so this is something you're really passionate about. You know, Marty is like this whole idea of Noster and all the open Internet is like starting to think about you have price and then so utility of the assets better right on an open network standard. But then you have price and those are going to converge where the person wants Bitcoin. So they naturally are going to adopt it as a price appreciates. They're going to just opt in for these other avenues that aren't, you know, Twitter or aren't these other like open standards. And so these things are both like combining together and it's not one or the other that comes to the market. They literally just like grow together at the same. Time, you know, like contrary again to you know what the feel good people think it's like. It's not like, you know, Bitcoin documentaries or you know, freedom loving stories that get people to adopt the technology. It's number go up. You know, number go up is the best marketing that Bitcoin has. Don't tell Rockstar that he just put a good documentary out. You know it's a. Great documentary. He feels great for us. I love it right, but but I am not the 99% of the people who had do not give a flying fuck about this stuff, right And and and what's cool is that like, you know, number go up is going to get them. Yeah. And what's going to do that? It's giving the ability for financial institutions for Apple to go buy Bitcoin that's going to make number go up. U.S. government saying we're not going to go dump the, you know, the, the Bitcoin that you know, we've seized. We're going to hold on to it as a strategic treasury reserve. That's what makes number go up. And everything I'm seeing over the last couple weeks, that's that's the, it's starting to move us in that direction. Yeah. I mean, I think the US government's going to dump the coins and then buy the ETF, but that's a different story. Well, that's it's like the it's like the meme with the the guy behind the guy or whatever. It's like the US government is the ET they? Can't help themselves. The government was. Completely confident. I disagree. You know, I I have some of like the I I. Do think you have? Was that? Disagree with what? The the, that, that they would dump it and buy the ETF. I, I do think from a national security standpoint, you know, that red software, it's on the, the, the shelf behind me. I do think we have, we have friends in, you know, in the government that, that understand some of the, the national security concerns of, of maybe keeping, not, not holding on to that Bitcoin. And I, I do think there's a little bit of infighting right now between, you know, between different, different branches that potentially hold on to some of that. Part of the problem is the mandate. No, no, it's even legally the mandate of all this. This government entities that, that acquire the Bitcoin from people forcefully. They, they have a they, they have to sell. It's not a choice. They have to, to, to, to forgo the asset. And then what happens is it's other entities of government that are involved in other things that buy the asset. They can't just transfer from 1 branch to another. It's, it's, you know, it's government incompetence like, you know. It's money. We talk, we talk about this like I don't, I think of Coinbase and whatever Bitcoin they hold as the government. Like I don't think there's any difference in the like if you don't have, if you Coinbase and the ETF is holding the Bitcoin, then it's the government's. And whether that line is tomorrow or three years or five years, there's a there's a certain point. Like, I mean, Condoleezza is a board member at Coinbase, right? It doesn't get more deep state than that. Yeah. Or at least was interesting. Yeah. Those guys are not playing to lose. They're incompetent, Spock, but they're not playing to. Lose. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you see this with their partnership with the IRS, the partnership with the Hacking Team back in the day, their partnership with USDC. They're trying to be the compliant government friendly. I mean their partnership with Feather, right? I mean, they told Tether, OK, you guys can all have anything else. It's not Treasury. It's Tether becomes the 16th biggest purchaser of U.S. Treasuries on the planet. Let's just say that they have full freedom, right? Yeah. Yeah, they don't get talked about it enough. Like you can't move that amount of money through a banking system without having certain relationships. It doesn't. No, I mean helicopters show up. Like, you know. Helicopters show up, those Apaches and Chinooks show up for a lot less then the it's true. But we need companies like this doing it like they pave the way so that like the builders in our like you need the coin bases, you need the tethers to go cozy up because that allows the framework for companies like on ramp to, you know, to come into the space and and go do this better and. It's the framework, right? Like this is this, the Bitcoiners need to shed this framework of like thinking that we have some agency of what people are going to do or not do. It's like we don't allow or disallow Coinbase to exist. Like fuck Brian, right? Like, I mean, those guys are horrible human beings in that entity and they hate Bitcoin. But but like it's not in our control. Like, you know, in this free market that we're building, you know, to like have any agencies to like, you know, they can't exist or they can't exist, right? People normally argue about these things as as if we have any agency. We don't, right? I mean the the incentives are such that they exist. It is funny though, on Twitter, people thinking that they have the agency of these sort of things, but they they did grab the popcorn and watch. That's that's that's all you can do. And I think we come. 20 days started. Sorry. No, no, go ahead. I was just going to say, I think they conflate the agency of them versus the agency of themselves because we're saying both the same thing. It's like the market's going to do, the market does. You don't have to participate in it and you shouldn't because you're probably get rugged, which is the. Point. This leads to a good last topic too. It's like while all this go is going on and MVK won't put words in your mouth, but I think we're aligned in the sense that we think a lot of the regulatory quote, UN quote, regulatory clarity and Wall Street getting introduced provides cover for people building out cypherpunk tools like whether that's on chain be the lightning network now, these chomi immense, combining all of this with Noster, like we could look up a decade from now. And while everybody's focused on institutionalized white glove Bitcoin, you have this movement of open source developers building out sci-fi tech that is fundamentally better from a user experience point of view that enables people to actually like use Bitcoin in a truly sovereign and, and as a medium of exchange over over these protocols. Yeah, I mean you know, like we like money is not very good, even the best money is not good if you can't coordinate commerce, right and and the comms are all compromised and and censored, right. So if you can't have clear means of coordinating that commerce and price discovery, then then money could die. And so like, we can't depend on Twitter, we can't depend on anything that's centralized, right? Like we've learned that with money that you cannot depend on a database to have a fair monetary system. So Bitcoin exists and exists outside of this centralized sort of like dynamics. And, you know, for a long time, we didn't have a solution to go around like Twitter and to go around e-mail and, and things that are sort of like very, very centralized or have centralizing tendencies. And, and Noster resolves a lot of this, this problems, you know, and, and I think the two combined like give us like, you know, a superpower, right? Like you can now coordinate price, discover and exchange, right? And, and I mean, you don't need anything else to build civilization, right? The rest is just people being people and sorting shit out. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? What can you break down? The something I'm working through is like the idea the E cash is 1 component, but the dollar peg and this idea of the guys working on it, like one of the angles from the use case is just because people aren't used to seeing sats and the numbers in decimals. So that this natural way to receive the dollar kind of obvious gate. What's happening in the background. And then if you want to get out of it, you know, obviously need the edges to get into back in a Fiat. But like where you see the use case there if there is a use case, because I know this left this, this stuff just like started to get, you know, more popular the past few weeks. But curious like how you guys are thinking about it. I I think there's like two parts to this. One is we have the unit bias problem, right? But don't worry when, when SAT dollar happens in the next few years that resolves that problem. The the issue is like, you know, the best shit coin in the planet is the US dollar, right? Like what people want is not Ethereum, Solana or any of the shit or even Bitcoin, but they want U.S. dollars, but they want freedom dollars, right? And if you are in in pretty much any country on the planet, there is no freedom dollars unless you use cash and even then you know you're losing on you're losing if you try to store it. But people for commerce, they need stability, right? You need to know that your contract that you signed today has similar economical purchasing power in six months, right? Otherwise, like if you ever dealt with currencies that are very volatile, it's a fucking right. I mean, Canadian dollar lost like, I don't know, 30% in the last few years, right? It's very unpleasant to the business in USD denominated that if you were doing a Canadian, a Canadian underlining transaction, right? So you know, for business to operate, business needs to be concerned with that contract being similar in six months so that they can close that trade. Now you can't do that with Bitcoin, right? I mean, like it's very difficult to to to price out six months in Bitcoin for you to do that contract. So what do people do is they use tether, right, because tether is freedom dollars. I mean, at least kind of, I mean they, they, they block a lot of people, but a lot of people get through, right? And so think about Tether as the old school Swiss bank account, right? It's like, you know, it was Frank denominated. Really, you could have US denominated at a time, But but the point is you have you have a stable coin. That's what U.S. dollar is and the demand is high for that. But people need freedom, which the dollar doesn't offer anymore. So what you need is how can you dominate, denominate in USD but still have an underlining freedom asset, right? And people are trying to do that with Bitcoin. It's complicated, it's tricky. You can get very fucked because the price moves so much. So, you know, creating those hedges is tricky, but the point is you can now create a stable coin based on Bitcoin. It's as as risky as it is, but the people using those, those those freedom dollars on E cash that are backed by Bitcoin, they don't need that money for a long time and their alternatives available to them are horrible, right? What's the alternative to that for an Argentinian person, Argentinian peso? Good luck with that, right? Or, or somebody in Africa somewhere, like good luck to that using your local currency. You don't want that shit. So the demand for stable dollars backed by something they have access to, to have those stable dollars is only going to grow. And E cash is absolutely perfect for that. E cash is free banking, right? And, and we all know the free banking, you know, like it or don't like it is a very natural demand, sort of like a service, right? Like there's very natural demand for that because people need credit or you need credit to create stability on some hedge, right? And, and I think E cash is going to feel that issue very well because it can, it can always be cleared between the mints on Bitcoin that'd be lightning or on chain. So, so sort of like sorry for the roundaboutness, but it's kind of important that like we, we recognize why the stable dollar is important and, and why the underlying thing that holds the dollar is important. No, that's helpful context. I mean, it's why I've thought for a very long time, and I don't know if this would be controversial take or not, but a lot of these E cash mints look a lot like on ramp or term because the reality is whether it's the consumer wanting to know who's running it and the like, idea of exit scam. And all these things become a lot less likely when you have not only a single custodian that can't unilaterally move and rug you, but they also have laws and regulations and balance sheets that protect it. And then as it starts to play around with this like dollar denomination, as you know, when it's 10 million hundred million, maybe nobody cares, but you're talking five $10 billion now people start to care and you have to be able to, you know, navigate the accounting, legal and tax perspectives from it. So yeah. Of this term called Million mints. So when you move the trust to the edges, right, that's what the cash does. And if you have a million mints each holding $5, which state actor is going to go after a dude holding $5? It's sure there's going to be selective enforcement, whatever, right? Like, it's not pretty, it's messy. But reality is you can't shut down a million mints each holding $5. Like good luck. And that's the idea behind this, as well as when you think about ETFs and financial service partners as we work with banks and other things step in, they just hold one of the keys in a quorum for their own partners and they can't rug themselves. And they also can't be rugged because they don't have unilateral control. And he's just spread that game theory. Two parts of Rodolfo, he doesn't know his involvement in this business. When we first were bringing this out, I showed him it in his mind, you know, most people looked at multi institutional like, what do you what is this? He's like, oh, of course, like this makes complete sense. And the other one was, I think it was in Utah at a beef steak. I brought up, we were talking about, I think you and your wife referenced the last trade as like this is just the last trade. And obviously this is the the name of the show. It was, it was a mutual, I think you may have said it first or we were both talking about it, but the idea wasn't solely mine. And I haven't, I don't think anybody knows that yet. So you're very foundational even in this show in the last trade. I. Appreciate it. I mean, it really is right. I mean, once you buy Bitcoin, you don't, you don't like you might, you might have to spend some Bitcoin to do things, but like nobody sells Bitcoin to hold. There's nothing else. Or to or to buy gold or to buy stock. Can Can you imagine like who's selling Bitcoin out there to go buy some NVIDIA? Like nobody's doing that. They might, they might just like have new cash flow that they are locating some to NVIDIA, but nobody's selling Bitcoin to buy NVIDIA. I I think you're wrong. I think it is happening unfortunately and but I don't think we're, I think it's our. I think he just boxed himself. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to. So I think this is actually this podcast. Now, no, no, now we're going to have to wait for two parts. We're going to kind of quasi rug. I don't want to. There are a lot of people short Bitcoin that we thought held, you know, or you know, talk about being having. Oh, absolutely. Everything is a large. Yeah, So you, everybody's on Twitter, you look at these large exchanges and you think people there holding Bitcoin they like might have zero Bitcoin. That's all, all I'll say about that. So maybe he did docs himself in his NVIDIA position. You heard it here, Mitch's NVIDIA Maxx. Mitch's an an NVIDIA Maxx. We're going to spread that rumor. I, I, I So number one, I think you think about like the ETF flows, like those people are 100% selling Bitcoin to go into something else for whether it's rebalancing. Or, Oh yeah, but that's not Bitcoin. That's not Bitcoin #2 like they're, I mean, messages with friends that, that don't, that, that we've dragged into Bitcoin that don't totally understand it yet focused on, you know, maybe they're up 10% and they get out and go buy something else. They, they, they don't get it yet. It's the last trade happens not when you first buy Bitcoin, it's when you actually understand it's the last trade. So I, I, I think there's. Let me put it to you this way. Yeah, I, I think I don't want to sound like goal posting, but I guess it should have qualified that comment a little. Think about it this way. I I don't think a single person like who has Bitcoin in a hardware wallet right that they took self custody is moving that Bitcoin back to an exchange to buy NVIDIA. Totally agree. Totally agree with you there. You know, and that's what I would consider a bitcoiner. The rest is just in for the ride, right? But I'm talking about the people who actually took self custody of it, right? Like I, I, I can't imagine that flow. I I, I seriously cannot imagine a person doing that. Yeah, it's a it's too early. They had their earning calls today, right Mitch? What? What's how? How good did NVIDIA do they? Crushed it. No, I I think it was up like 10% yesterday. But. People are saying. What do we think? Are they, are they in the next Enron? I've seen people say. No, the next Enron, that's real. It's real. Like the amount of fucking silicon those guys are selling it, It's it's absolutely lunous. Like you can't do AI without that. It's like, it's like somebody just discovered oil, right? And, and, and like whatever thing you need to do oil say steal, right? Like they're the only people who have the best steal. Like think about it that way. Like you, you just, you can't exist in this new attack. You doubt them for now. This was an amazing pod and it's very different than our regular pods MVK. So you just know that I think some of the listeners are going to appreciate and some are going to be like, wow, that was that had some range from the the last trade. But the reality is this there's a lot of pragmatism and like first principles thinking that go into this minus, you know, a little of the shit coins and and the cursing. It's OK, but. Appreciate it. Beep all my curses. Beep all my curses so you guys can keep it. Nobody told me it had to be. No, it's it's, it's better when it's authentic so that Marty, Marty knows. Beep it. It's all good. Beep, we're. Not gonna Logan's sitting there shaking his head like I'm not spending time to go through and beep all this. There's a lot. Of beeps the So I guess what would be the parting note for anybody that you think is listening to this podcast? Institutional investors are trying to navigate the space. How should they be approaching this? I, I, I think that, you know, like it. It's very difficult for a person in an institution to be the person who sticks the neck out because you lose your neck if the price drops. But, but, but the, the truth, the uncomfortable truth is like, you have no choice. You're going to be buying Bitcoin. So better buy early cheaper than buy later expensive. And you know what, if you lose your job, it might be a great thing too, because you buy some Bitcoin and you might be in a much better place later. You know, you, you drown your your, your firing pension package into PTC and move on. There is no avoiding it. You know, your company depends on it like you, you can't. It's like saying you have treasury strategy and you don't have SMP 500 on it. Like, you know, like you would sound like an insane person. It's no different, no different. And and it sounds all insane now. You know, it's all very comfortable for me and these other three crazy people here to to talk about the stuff with so much certainty. But you know, you either keep the take the leap of faith and and be ahead, or you know, just be dragged later. Yeah, anybody's listening is unaware of MVK Queen Kite, what he's built. We just sat down with an with an OG for for an hour and a half. You're getting high octane alpha, a builder in the space too. I mean, you are a rare breed of somebody who's been building in the space for over a decade. Most people don't last that long. We're. Having too much fun. It is a lot of fun. Yeah. Michael, Mitch, anything you guys want to end with? No thanks for joining. And like MVK said, you can't find economic reality, so you better figure out what your strategy is. As much Bitcoin as possible. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. 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