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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 excrement ever assembled in the history of gutless 1974198792972000. And whatever we're going to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we sell. I say when we sell. All right, welcome back to the last trade. Happy New Year to everyone. We are now in 2025. For this week's episode, I'm joined by my Co host Michael Tanguma and Brian Cabela said on ramp and our special guest Tim Kotzman. Gentlemen, how are we doing? Very good. Happy new year boys, it's been a been a little while since we've ripped so feels good to be back. It feels very good to be back and you know, we've up levelled, we have suits on on the podcast now, Tim has showed us up. So I think next step is we have to start these boxes everyone has to put on a suit for for the last trade. Yeah, Happy New Year. I've had at least one person I've had on my pod say that they would put on a tie once we hit 100,000, so I need to take him up on that here pretty soon. And I need to order some orange ties so I can fit the bill here. But Tim, it's good to have you on excited for this episode. Really appreciate the work that you're doing in the space. For people who aren't familiar with your background, just give a quick blurb. You're the host of the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast and the founder of multiple energy focused private equity firms, including Jubilee Royalty, where you're the founder and CEO. Tim, your podcast has seen a lot of success and growth, and I know you'd only started it sometime in maybe the second-half of last year in 2024. So can you just tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, the podcast that you're working on currently and how you got into this space? Because I think it's a very interesting story that you have to share. Yeah, absolutely. It's been a wild ride because to start with the podcast, we really started it kind of accidentally in the beginning of October. And once we saw that, you know, someone actually wanted to watch it, we just kept going. And yeah, to really see one company to, you know, micro strategy and then see not just one company and then that's it, but one company a year, one company 1/4, maybe one company a month now, if not more publicly announcing that they are looking to adopt A Bitcoin treasury strategy. Yeah, probably just good timing to have a show called the Bitcoin Treasuries Podcast. My background is on the land acquisition side of oil and natural gas, which is a little bit of a misnomer because really my background is just going out and acquiring the right to develop through either a lease or a purchase agreement the commodity whether it's natural gas or or oil. So think you know Pittsburgh, PA, Ohio, West Virginia, West, TX, New Mexico. So, yeah, it was on the deal side for a long time when I moved to New York five years ago, started Jubilee in order to do the same deals, but just raise private capital, buy, let the deals cash flow and sell those deals. And then along the way, specifically in January 2021, one of my investors came alongside me and said, hey, there's this thing called Bitcoin. So four of our five close ended funds now are oil and gas related. 1 is a long term buy and hold Bitcoin fund. And yeah, really excited to just go into 2025 focusing on covering the Bitcoin treasury space, Bitcoin overall, but but specifically more on the corporate side. Appreciate that, Tim. And before we jump into the Treasury side of the conversation, I'm curious just to hear a little bit more in 2021 when Bitcoin was introduced to you, was it intuitive from the start of that conversation? And did that have something to do with the energy background? Or was there something more that helped to contribute to your understanding of Bitcoin and and the fundamentals and monetary properties that it exhibits? I think the background in commodities definitely helped, but I think I've may have even done a disservice by saying like, oh, Bitcoin is like gold or like oil or a commodity. It was more so I think the combination of a personal relationship with someone that was a real person that spent a considerable amount of time with me one-on-one through FaceTime calls in person, actually sitting down and saying, hey, I've put the majority of my liquid net worth in Bitcoin and here's what happened. I mean, just that. So because I've always said you, I can only get so much conviction from watching a YouTube video. So having that actual person. And that's why I've, you know, really enjoyed meeting so many people in the space as often as I could, whether it was, you know, going to the Bloomberg office for an event or traveling to El Salvador and meeting Max and Stacy. Or it's just like Bitcoin can be kind of hard to understand and grasp from a non tangible standpoint. So for me, that relationship, part of it was a big part of it. And then I think the other side of the coin that that really helped was the fact of that there is a scarce asset. Like, yeah, there's there's technically oil and gas mineral rights underneath every acre of all the land in the world. But in specific pockets like West TX or Leonetti County, New Mexico, you know, we were paying $5000 an acre and then ten months later we were paying $50,000 an acre. I mean, it was the same rock, but it was de risked. And I think that's, you know, some of what I'm excited to talk about today and that I've been trying to follow and really have as informed of an opinion as as we all can have without being, you know, extolling that we're experts. I don't think they're, you know, the guys that know the most about Bitcoin will say I'm not an expert. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's it's super fascinating and something we've seen for for years now is individuals with backgrounds in the real world. Effectively, whether you're building a business, you're an athlete or you're in a commodity based business, you have to deal with inputs and outputs and see inflation or see what assets come out of the earth and can be transferred into dollars. We saw this in Texas where always remember the same from a land man. He he referenced good friend Griffin Havey said it all clicked for me when I realized there was no such thing as stranded energy anymore. And you see this in the Middle East, right? We know that they're stacking. They didn't just stack to buy Bitcoin. They had to understand it deeply and they started more than likely by mining first, right? And knowing that, you know, this similar in Texas, you start mining, you transfer it directly to USD and then you're realizing, wait, this thing goes up. Now I got to go dig deeper because I understand, you know, commodities and, and energy backed money. But while that's interesting because you're sitting in in a suit in the middle of New York City, all around those buildings and and you're probably peer group or a large percentage still think of this as a trade, a speculative asset. And I think that's that difference when it becomes less, when it's ephemeral, it's academic in nature. It's hard to understand what's happening here. So just curious like how you saw that tie for you and then how your friends and other peer group are probably tell me if I'm wrong or still in that other camp of like this thing is like it's a number on a screen and I'm trading it similar to like, you know, MicroStrategy in the options and all that, But they're not looking at the underline, which is the real kind of like disruption in our opinion. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's because Bitcoin doesn't have cash flow, but I've never been in an employee seat in corporate America, which I think is a huge advantage, but it's probably weird for a lot of people to hear. So I can only assume that in the same way that most people still think in a 6040 portfolio sort of way, and maybe now we're in 2025, but it might be another 12 to 24 months before people even like regular people, the everyday person on the streets actually realizes that BlackRock is now saying like, oh, you should have one or two percent of your portfolio at Bitcoin. That probably still sounds radical to most people. So and. It takes a while to to permeate. I think to your point, like, like rock came out and said that, you know, however many weeks ago, but the average person is probably not even picking up on that. And and you said something else earlier, which I think is often overlooked or under thought about is like the social proof in terms of its its effects and its impact on adoption. In the sense that like, you know, you could read all the information or watch a ton of YouTube videos, but like hearing it from, you know, a close friend who's been in the space who's, you know, quote, UN quote, made money on Bitcoin just has a different cachet and a different ability to actually influence someone's opinion. And, and really all you're describing is like what it's often called as like, you know, Bitcoin is a mind virus. That's all that is playing out, right? Like each new note or person on that playing field groks, it tells friends, tells close confidants, colleagues, and then it just spreads. And part of that too is there's a, there's a time element to it too, right? Because if someone is in in the trade for a month, that's a less credible social proof to their friends and family than if they've been stacking Bitcoin for five years and seeing like incredible appreciation as you know, this, the savings technology as opposed to a trade. So it's, it's not only just like this web of trust that's ever growing, but there's also a timing component to like how long that person has been in and do they actually have credibility in what they're saying? Absolutely. I you kind of took the words right out of my mouth with I was just thinking you have the social proof. Could take some time depending on where the cycle or where the price someone came in at. If you buy quote UN quote the top you, you know, maybe you're waiting two or three or four years. Right, your social proof is negative for a little bit. But that should actually be a positive in so far as this is not something to get in and out of, it's something to hold. And when I've had people reach out to me over the last several years, when should I buy it? How much should I buy? Well, I would really love if you studied it, made your own decision. And then whatever amount that you would like to hold for at least four or five or ten years is probably the amount that you should buy. Which is amazing for which is amazing for the opportunity because it's still non consensus and to the point like the Druckenmiller's and the Paul Tudor Jones. These investors have been in early, but they still aren't consensus driven. It's not like the Black Rock stepping in. And so there's kind of ties in. I don't know if this rear growing Jackson was just like Michael Saylor micro strategy is still like on the edges and it's when we see like these big, you know, the the and it's not a rumor. It's just like, you know, a meta would have more of an angle to do something given their ownership structure and cash. When somebody like that steps in, it starts to become de rest from the angle of OK, well, some larger firms, larger players are doing this. I can't lose my job now from doing it because BlackRock said 2% position versus just because one asset manager did. You guys think it's like it will take kind of a united front from the institutions saying 1 to 2%, not just like BlackRock, like end of 2024 saying 1 to 2%. And then you have like Bitwise saying 2 or 5%, whoever saying whatever, right, somewhere between 1 and 5%. But it's just not consistent and it's not everyone. Like it's not like the ETFs are widely available to everyone. That's actually not even true. I think a big. Piece of that is, yeah, I think a big piece of that is getting Bitcoin into indexing. And so we've spoken, Brian and I have spoken about this at some point on the show before. But the idea that once active managers have to compete against an index that has Bitcoin as part of that portfolio composition. And if they're actively not perform or allocating to Bitcoin or they're under allocating to Bitcoin relative to the index and that's causing underperformance, I think that'll be a very tough conversation for fund managers to have. And that'll be a flywheel effect where you'll have to see they'll effectively have to allocate to Bitcoin to at least maintain that target allocation or exposure to the index to not underperform. Then of course you could if you're an active manager and you're looking to time the markets, maybe you could under allocate to Bitcoin relative to the index. If you're anticipating a bear market or some sort of catalyst in the industry that could be negative for the price. But I think over the long term, just what we see is that the price goes up into the right. And so if you're terminally or over the long term, you're under allocated to Bitcoin relative to an index, that's going to cause underperformance over the longer term, which if people are paying you money for, they're not going to be happy about that. I don't know Tim, if. If you, it shows up on the screen right, whether it's like an attribution report on a quarterly basis or even a monthly basis over time. And and maybe the the first flavor of this we get is, is MSTR being in NASDAQ like that starts to show up as if you have no exposure there, then that's a a key detractor on your monthly attribution report is that you actually have an underweight relative to the index there. But yeah, Tim, would love your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think an announcement or a analysts note about allocation isn't getting it done. It's got to be something that everybody can see on the screen that they're falling behind. There has to be a consequence. It can't, you know, like, OK, I saw a billboard, great, maybe I'll go to McDonald's. But like once there's something to lose. And I, I think that's what MicroStrategy and Semler and the and the follow ONS are what, what you'll start to see. And that's why I do think just as a starting point to be clear, that you will see 10% of public companies adopt Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. That's what I'm saying right now. I think that could happen in the next 12 to 24 months, which might sound radical, but it's gradually, gradually that all of a sudden with anything that you're doing in life. Yeah, I think you can't, like under score the mimetic nature of like the price, this whole notion of just the number going up now that investors, Black Rock, people hear about it now they start to demand it from whoever's managing their assets. But the other aspect of this was this that came up. I think we sent it to you late when you're at Sailor's party, which we appreciate you responding to when you were there. Maybe we'll hear about that from you, Tim, but it's this calculation from the the top and bottom funds in 2024. And it's like once you start meaning the fact that these asset allocators where you're paying, you know, anywhere between what 50 to 200 bits to manage portfolio and to underperform, just holding spot Bitcoin, whether it's an ETF or, or just, you know, holding the underlying people start to question, what am I doing here and why am I not just taking the the path of least resistance versus all of these convoluted constructs? We see this in the crypto world where we have a top basket of crypto currencies are market weighted. So I think this would be another aspect of that whole, just like establishing a standard from a baseline return. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's all of the fear, uncertainty and doubt and just the amount of regulatory risk because why would everyone not adopt Bitcoin in the 1st 15 years when it's like just the best performing asset of all time? Correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, Tim, I think one thing it tied into what you said earlier just about the land, right. You mentioned acres out in West TX going from 5000 to 50,000 and and that feels expensive just as $100,000 Bitcoin feels expensive. But there's that idea that you mentioned of Bitcoin or at the in your context, the land being de risked. And I think what you just mentioned really ties into 2025 and going forward now is yes, Bitcoin is at all time highs. It feels expensive if you're looking, if you're backward looking at the price chart, But if you're not actually digging into the fundamentals, you're really missing the bigger picture here, right? Like why, why do you think you know what the answer to this right now? But I'm just just like, why would 10% of the companies that you said publicly traded, you anticipate them adopting Bitcoin in the next 12 to 24 months? Why would that happen today or this year and not happen five years ago? And it's probably in part because there is a lot more regulatory clarity. It seems that you're going to have a administration coming into office in the United States that will not be adversarial to the industry. They'll actually want to help the industry grow and have the US be a leader globally as it relates to Bitcoin. And so I do think even though Bitcoin feels expensive for someone looking at it, really it feels inexpensive. If you weigh the risks and uncertainties that exist today, compared to 5 or 10 years ago, they are far greater. It is worth calling out the custodial risk though, because Brian eloquently put, you know, until this notion of multiple institutions holding the underlying, you've always had a single point of failure, whether it's self custody or a third party custodian. And so there is that background knowledge. While individuals may not fully understand Bitcoin, they do know that if they allocate, there is a world where they wake up and the next day the institution failed. That's what 15 years objectively have provided the market. So that kind of tied into your point, Tim, of like, a yes, it's been the best performing asset, but B, you have that secondary part of like, well, it just shit keeps getting lost, whether it's I lose the private keys and in the the the tropes that are common is like the landfill in the UK or the exchange or North Koreans take it like, it's just these two versions. So people are like, well, how can I really underwrite this in a material way? And so I do think that will, will still be a stigma because again, if it comes to like a Berkshire or whatever and says, look, I want 10%, well, now how do they do it credibly? What they go and get the best people on their team to go figure it out. And they're like, well, it seems like Coinbase seems to be a problem here. If we're going to put 10%. So that's really like part of the market structure when it comes to custody and, and taking that. And this is just a newer asset so as to be looked at in a new way. Yeah, absolutely. I think sooner than anyone can imagine, you'll be able to walk to the bank on the corner. You can go to Chase and buy Bitcoin. I don't think that's what anyone's radar. I think it's going to happen go as soon as the new administration gets in there, you know, not immediately, but but then it's still even if it's too big to fail. Yeah, you want multiple institutions that are too big to fail holding one of the keys to the most important asset that you're ever going to own. Yeah, that's exactly right. Because I think there's this, there's this notion to your point of like, you know, once the banks get turned, like quote, UN quote turned on, obviously they're going to want a piece of this and they're going to want to, you know, allow buying trade of the asset, leverage against the asset. And they're going to have to figure out how to custody it. The question in my mind, which I am not fully sure of how this plays out just yet, is like, do they just outsource it like BlackRock did and say, hey, we're just going to use Coinbase as a sub custodian and allow people to access it through our platform? Or do they go the route of trying to build something themselves, which realistically could take several years to do it the right way at least. Or do they see a a third vision of the future where it's sort of a hybrid approach where they get involved in something like a quorum of institutions. And in that sense, you're only then responsible for holding one key. So it it it also de risk it from the the perspective of if you're entering the space as a financial institution or a bank, Like do you want to then be become a single point of failure yourself? Or do you want to be involved in a quorum where you only have 1/3 of the counterparty risk and you actually can't lose client assets if you were to screw up your security around, you know, your single singular private key in that quorum? There's actually an elegant way there where these banks could get involved sooner rather than later in a way that isn't just outsourcing it to Coinbase. But yeah, that's still an open question in my mind and how that plays out. And also like the timing of when they get the ability to actually execute on any of those ideas. Well, there's a few things to pull on there that are super relevant. Like Tim, that's pretty astute that you're saying like banks, you'll be able to go down the street because I hadn't thought about that, but it's true. We'll be here sooner than we all imagine because they tried for this. I don't know if you guys saw around the the recent Operation Choke .2 point O stuff that I think Nick Carter was first sided with calling out knighting back in 21 had established a partnerships with FIS and one other intermediary that effectively serves as the tech layer for the smaller kind of like credit unions and other banks that don't have the operational or technical chops to build the infrastructure from like a web applications and other things like that. And it never really took off and the assumption was that because the market didn't really want it, but we know that these credit unions, these other smaller banks are trying to compete with a large 4. And so the assumption was or there was some in the again, a lot of this stuff to understanding is kind of like it's not to the purview from the rest of the market because all these things are confidential. But some of the stuff that's come out with the Silvergate and Metropolitan and Signature banks with the proceedings that it had been stifled by the administration from actually letting them bring that to market. So we know that if we take that the demands there and if the administration is friendly, you naturally can start to see that. But the second part to that, which is what we run into is it's really takes sophisticated first principle thinkers from an individual to a financial service firm to say, well, why am I going to focus only on Bitcoin and think about that? Because most players are going to come in and look at digital assets as a sector and say, well, I need to support it all. And that's how you end up with like fire blocks and multi party computation and using Coinbase and like all these things that are still like 4 layers deep into understanding this space. So we still have, again, we're still early a long ways to go and most individuals are probably going to just like adopt A fire blocks Coinbase bit go kind of like throw it all, all there, let the clients pick. And we kind of know how that goes because every cycle is kind of rinse and repeat of newer things that are flashy and shiny from a unit bias compared to Bitcoin. And so it's just it's kind of a long, long term bent that we have, but it all ends with like kind of Bitcoin as the the blue chip. Yeah. And I just remember there were several announcements that, I mean, they were public announcements of like Coinbase partnering with PNC Bank. And I would go into PNC Bank and say, oh, when are you guys going to announce something? I have no, like we have no idea, you know, on the retail level. And it just, it seemed like it was a little bit of a like I was, you know, several years ago, like excited. And it kind of turned into this false start because of everything that you just mentioned. Yeah. And from a consumer side, there's going to be more demand for Bitcoin going forward. I mean, certainly has been in the past four or five years as people need to have a vehicle or savings technology to preserve their wealth, right? I mean, none of us, I'll speak for myself at least. I don't use a savings account. I don't think I've ever had a savings account. My checking account that I try to hold as little amount of dollars as possible pays 0%. And so naturally people, especially millennials, Gen. Z, if they're thinking about saving for the long term, they're looking for opportunities to actually preserve and grow that wealth for the long term. And Tim, I think it'd be great if traditional financial institutions do step in and recognize that Bitcoin has mass appeal already with these younger generations. And everyone will be able to win because people will be able to park some of their earnings into Bitcoin and grow that for the long term. And then these banks and other financial intermediaries will be able, will be incentivized to do so as well because they want to, they want to go to where the puck is headed, right? And they want to make money from a new technology or new asset that that is only having an exponential adoption curve. So I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens there. But I do feel a little bit uncertain as to what the timeline is and what those integrations look like for traditional finance. One other sort of correlated to what you just described, Jackson is like it's not just people waking up to the real, like the monetary realities of, of this asset Bitcoin and why it makes sense as a long term savings tool, but it's also like the degradation or the erosion of like what has worked for the past 20 years. So whether that's just piling into SPY or other index funds and, and, you know, fixed income, like, I think we all know pretty intuitively why it doesn't make sense to to own fixed income going forward in a world where just the, the, the unsustainability of the debt is becoming ever, ever more clear to the market. And, you know, mathematically that the, that, you know, that principal paid back at the end of these these bonds is just going to be worth way less and buy you way less. So in real terms, you're, you're getting wrecked effectively. And then on the equity side, it's like, yeah, they're still going to be individual companies who are able to outpace inflation over the next 1020 years. But then it's it's on the, it's on the individual to be a stock picker at that point. And the problem with indexing, while it may have may have worked or at least kept pace with inflation over the past 10 to 15 years is we've all seen those charts of the, I forget what the exact numbers are, but the, the level of concentration of attribution of, of returns. So contribution of returns in the, you know, S&P is like five to seven companies, right? So it's like you're not actually diversifying your wealth in a basket of, you know, American companies. You are really just betting on five to seven companies and hoping that it continues to go well for those folks, right. So it's, it's, that's an ever more precarious assumption. And then the other side of, you know, if we just are thinking about a, a traditional 6040, which insanely or amazingly, it's still like, I would imagine recommended at a lot of advisory firms in the Triadfi world. Like I don't think that they've come to terms or come to grips with the fact that that may not work going forward. And so I think that's probably still standard practice to like have that sort of baseline of a portfolio and you sort of flex that up or down based on risk appetite and and, you know, probably the age of the investor, the underlying investor. So that's just that's the other side of it, right, Jackson? It's not just the attractiveness and the de risking of Bitcoin, the asset, but it's like the precarious nature of like, OK, well, what else are you going to do with it? How else are you going to preserve wealth for the next 20 years? At Onramp, we believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset of the 21st century. The hard part is securing it, right? There are shortcomings with keeping your coins on an exchange, but also with setting up your own self custody arrangement. Onramp solves for these concerns. Our multi institution custody solution maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, ensuring that your Bitcoin remains securely in your possession and provides built in inheritance planning to ensure your family is protected as well. Onramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it as a compliment to your existing self custody setup. For more information, check us out at onrampbitcoin.com. Yeah, for sure. And Tim, I'd be curious then to transition from the dynamics that exist for us as individuals into corporate treasuries. Then how do these same themes, or maybe if you could explain first just how you think about managing a corporate treasury and from the research that you've done and from the businesses that you've built. And then how do you see Bitcoin kind of fitting the bill there and and playing a key role in corporate treasuries this year next and and for the next decade? So the interesting thing kind of putting aside the ideal custody solution is that putting Bitcoin on your balance sheet, especially now that we're in 2025, you have fair value accounting. I mean, if you can figure out the custody part of it. And you know, let's even say we're after January 20 and you know, maybe we're at the end of Q1. Like it, it's, it's not that complicated to put Bitcoin on your balance sheet for a public company, for a private company. You can literally go to hope.com and like download materials on how to do it, like micro strategy has open sourced it. I think the, the opportunity, hopefully not the challenge, the opportunity is just, you know, for those companies to be able to communicate what they're doing effectively in the market, you know, just publicly telling the story of, of why they're doing it and, and, and and so on. In the beginning of 2021, I started putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet of my holding company and my 3 operating companies. And I just bought Bitcoin in those entities. So like I, I think that's the kind of the, the catch 22 is, is it too early? And then is it too late? I mean, we're right at that point with this new administration coming in. So yeah, intrigued to hear what you guys think any stumbling blocks might be. Well, I think the that ties into that is like the math is the math, the value props, the value prop. I think the thing that has historically been a problem, something that Leishman's identified, I don't know if I'm going to correct get this exact term. It calls like the authoritarian orange dictator at the firm, somebody that has like controlling. Think about your private firms, you're able to go and buy no questions asked. When somebody has an individual thesis, it's one thing. But when they have to drive consensus at a board level organization is when you kind of run into the buzz, buzz saw. And then ultimately it's like, well, status quo, status quo because you're not going to like ape into a position. So now you're like over 1%. It's the same thing we see with Raas. While they believe in it may be all in, are they really going to risk theirs, their firm's credibility or their credibility to go put 2% in a portfolio? So it's just this weird problem like catch 22, right? Because once you get the exposure, now everybody likes it unless you know, goes down. But I think this ties into like curious with your podcast and the segment that you're kind of like crafted of listener, how that area of the market is tuned in like to this asset class. And how do they think about the ETFs and the de risk? And are they looking at it as like that's interesting. Is it more of folks that have came in via the MSTR because it's just a public equity that's super volatile and now they're hearing about why it's volatile, which is, you know, the Bitcoin underpinning it. Like how is that kind of interaction been from the like anecdotes that you've seen? Because I think that's a lens into how the the conversations and how individuals at the highest levels are thinking about it. Yeah, even just to the True North live streams that we've done, the MSTR True North live streams, there's so much noise and people talking about like that they're getting wrecked and they're leveraged and they're losing. You know, they're like now irresponsibly poor. And it's like, how are you going into 2025? You know, irresponsibly long, irresponsibly poor. But when I have private conversations, you know, I especially one older gentleman that I've had on the show that's coming out shortly, he said, you know, Tim, I really think this is like important and entertaining and all these different things. He's like, but like, I'm just never selling my micro strategy in the same way that a lot of people are never going to sell their Bitcoin. So to try to answer your question, I think it's still early as far as me trying to really get a read on what the mindset is of basically the listener for what what the material that I'm doing. But certainly what I've been trying to do is just put as much education out there like, well, here's the CEO of a leveraged ETF and here's what they have to say. And here's the CEO of a public company that is putting it on the balance sheet and here's what they have to say. And you know. You think there's? You think there's an element of like? Kind of research, yeah, go ahead. You think there's an element of like MSTR or even the the leverage versions of it being like somewhat of a gateway drug to actually understanding the underlying like that? That's my sort of gut instinct is like there are a bunch of people in Tradfi who maybe played around with stocks in a brokerage account who have come to MSTR, gotten involved in these these circles on Twitter or wherever else. And to your point, like over the past few weeks, maybe they feel like they got wrecked because what it top ticked like 550 or something like that and is now back around 300. So they see that extreme volatility in the stock because it's a levered proxy to Bitcoin. And maybe they realize like, hey, maybe I should just own the underlying and maybe they learn more about Bitcoin and its fundamentals as opposed to just this levered proxy. Do you, do you see that at all? Or have you seen that in terms of people coming in sort of like first and foremost to MSCR without a real understanding of the underlying and just enjoying the volatility until it goes the other way? And then maybe they wake up and realize, hey, maybe I should just understand Bitcoin and buy and hold that. Yeah, I think it's almost certain that it's in both directions with Bitcoiners. And that's what I really enjoyed about some of the guys that I've been on live streams with is they say almost every single time we get together like we own Bitcoin and we're not touching our Bitcoin and then we own MicroStrategy. So I think it's a Bitcoiners seeing what else is on the market. And then there's, I don't know if you would call it retail, but someone that's more equity based or more traditionally looking at a GameStop or Tesla or something that looks shiny for a moment in time that may or may not have fundamentals and then choosing to do that research. And I think to your point with the volatility, it's going to be this almost, well, it's just this never ending roller coaster of like, oh, I should have gotten in sooner and it's over. And oh, I should have gotten in sooner and it's over. And yeah, I posted a few weeks ago. I was at the post a post office on the Upper West Side. And I walk out Saturday morning. There's two guys in the mail truck and I, I literally walk backwards and I'm like, were you guys just talking about micro strategy? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, oh, I actually have a podcast where we talk about that a lot. They're like, what can I, you know, I'll follow you on X? And they're like, yeah, I mean it's so, yeah, it's run so much. It's probably over now. And I'm like as I'm walking away, I just said, I think we're just getting started. So I like that's kind of where that thought came from is like the volatility being the feature in the same way that the marketing department for Bitcoin is the price. I think that volatility with micro strategy will on a faster clip than four years, bring people into Bitcoin through these equities potential. I think I think that's the right take. I think there's a notion and everyone knows the ideological dogmatic version of just buy Bitcoin, hold your private keys, leave everything else alone. The reality is the world has gotten that like that should be right, but the problem is the world has gotten so crazy that these products are a symptom of how people need like this notion of clown world that the holding an asset that appreciates by itself is just not good enough. So you need some dividends, you need some convertibility, you need all these different things to make it leverage, to make it make sense. And so that kind of ties into the past week where it makes sense and has legs, these convertible bond ETFs, because it's effectively giving clients that may not be interested in Bitcoin, but interested in downside protection with a conversion into something that has, you know, some proxy for the appreciation of the asset without direct ownership. As like interest is like the Strive ETF and Bitwise that I can see that as a, an angle from a wealth manager to go to their clients, say, look, this is the the thesis. This is the angle. You have downside protection into the, the businesses, but then you have the upside of the volatility and the conversion. Like, I think these are all these little funnels, but then as somebody sees that they're like, wait, what? What's happening here? And it's the same stuff as it happened for the 1st 15 years in Bitcoin. You buy it for like X gambling or to buy something nefarious. And then you're like, wait, this thing goes up. Then you dig into it and you have to come in all these different angles. The levels have just like heightened given the where it is in the in the, you know mine share and the liquidity of the the public markets here. Yeah, I, I, I, yeah. No, absolutely. My mind, it's kind of stuck now on this. You know, I feel very blessed that I met one person that had been, you know, May of 2017 to me meeting him in January of 2021. You can definitely call that a cycle. But like, what are the chances of me meeting someone like that out of all the people in the world? But what if that volatility of MicroStrategy and the that social proof, to Brian's point, happens every couple weeks, not just once every four years? And like maybe you'll be lucky enough to meet someone that actually has had an experience over four or five years and then actually cares enough to take time to explain something to you. I think that could be pretty powerful. Tim, did you dig in at all to the, the announcements from from Shriver Bitwise around these convert bond ETFs? Anything, anything noteworthy to pull out of those? I didn't look through any of the details, but just generally, you know, I think my, my assumption would be like market cap weighted. So it'd probably be predominantly MSCR bonds in there and then some of the smaller firms that have adopted Bitcoin Treasury strategies and and begun to issue convertible debt. But what's your take on on those and any takeaways from any anything you've read or or researched on them? I have not had the opportunity to go that deep. I I definitely will be in preparation in a few weeks here. I'm going to be interviewing Matt Cole, the CEO of Strive. So yeah, definitely need to get up to speed on that. And yeah. Yeah, I think Brian, the TLDR my understanding is the Strive is investing in the bonds and then Bitwise is I think the the baselines like the the treasury of a publicly traded company has to have at least 1000 BTCS. So they're. Going directly. So they're just going into the equity of once I got it, yeah. Tim, what are your thoughts around or how would you describe what or how would you back I guess your prediction that 10% of the publicly traded companies will adopt Bitcoin on their balance sheet in the next one to two years? And second part of that question would be, do you see other companies using a similar playbook that MicroStrategy has with at the market equity issuance as convertible bonds? Or do you see them just maybe a more of a pure vanilla treasury strategy as it relates to accumulated Bitcoin on the balance sheet? So curious to hear your thoughts there because I frankly don't know a ton about it and don't have many strong opinions as it relates to pubco's adopting Bitcoin. So I'd love to hear your thoughts given your background in the podcast. Yeah. I mean, my opinion is that as MicroStrategy and similar and Metaplanet and and others continue to have this track record of success and then you potentially have like somebody besides Tesla, which is a whole point unto itself. Like people kind of, I think forget like Tesla has Bitcoin on their balance sheet and it's just been sitting there for years since 2021. So it's not like there's been no adoption in the top tech companies. But I think as you see a notable company that's a larger company even put in in, you know, it's just an announcement. It's not a significant portion. I think that will be as much of A warning shot to the market as as anything else. And I know that there are big corners behind the scenes, you know, continuing to advocate for that with the top tech companies and other companies. So in the same way that, you know, if we're at 1% Bitcoin adoption and if we have nation states putting it as part of their reserves this year, I just think that one to 10% move could be a lot quicker than you might initially think. But yeah, that's just my my kind of position on it. Yeah. Why haven't we seen Michael Dell come out and put it on Dell's Dell's balance sheet that that's been bugging me for some time now. It seems like he's clearly a bitcoiner, clearly gets it. I think he probably has enough voting control to like get it done. Why? Why haven't we seen that yet? Yeah. I don't know that it makes sense from a financial aspect and especially if you have enough control. I mean, I just said I have to think, you know, from like, put yourself in their seat. OK, Well, if I have enough control, it makes sense financially. And whether or not you're super passionate about Bitcoin or not, like some of the reality here is like the announcement is the announcement from a couple of days and then like everybody forgets about it. Like how many people have talked to you about Tesla holding Bitcoin in their balance sheet over the past three years? Probably no one, which is not necessarily great, but they're like the announcements great, but like the the the track record of it is is greater I guess. And the political, the political capital internally you have to run without calling out a firm. Like there's a very large asset advantage firm that's been involved in this space, but they've had to segregate the entity that, you know, deals in Bitcoin than the traditional firm. Because even if they have controlling the family is controlling, you know, shares in the entity, you still have the natural bureaucracy that's been built in the stigma around Bitcoin. And so even if you can get it through, it's like, is it where it goes back to the RA and all these things? It's like this catch 22 is it's still so small. It doesn't move the needle that you can have all the conviction in the world like we do. But then it still comes down to like you have to operate the business at the highest levels. And I'm not saying that's the reason for The Dells not, but you can see how that like turns into a big friction point before making a move. But as we've talked about whether it's like SBRSETFS further integrated into the traditional financial system, it gets a lot easier until it just becomes the status quo. And then it's like, why don't you're benchmarked against it? It's like, why don't you have a position here to offset against inflation or margin compression because of inflation? Yeah. We'd love to talk about the strategic Bitcoin reserve, Tim, because I think that will really solidify the case for more corporate adoption, right? If you see at the highest level, at the political level in the United States that there is going to be a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And then of course, there's states that have legislation introduced as well. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts first and foremost, just on the probabilities that you see as relates to at the federal level and or state levels. And then how does that tie into your overall thesis around Bitcoin treasury adoption? Yeah, great question. Topical. I just, I don't know whether I've drank too much of the Bitcoin kool-aid. Like my favorite Celsius to drink at the office is the orange flavor. Like I can't make this stuff up. But it's sometimes I just get kind of exasperated when I'm on social media and they're like, the SPR is not going to happen. It's like like when I say, have you been paying attention? Like, yeah, being kind of sassy, but it's, I'm also like, have you like seen any like, like read what's going on And then like tried to put like 10 different things together to form your own opinion because I'm, I might not be right. But like, like just from an educational perspective, you have Samson Mao who is saying $1 million Bitcoin is the baseline. I mean, he's literally focused on nation state adoption. Is there anyone else in the space that they're like basically full time job is nation state adoption? Like I think he's like that's what he's doing. And then you put together that Cantor Fitzgerald has come out and said we are going to allow you to borrow against Bitcoin. We own a shit load of Bitcoin. Like those are direct quotes from Howard, right? You have Ross Stevens at NYDIG and I think we might get into this even further later, but they're like, hey, we're going to loan against Bitcoin. And I'm sure there's there's several other announcements that I may have missed or that are forthcoming. You have like Michael Saylor, Fong Lee Sharish, like they all seem pretty excited and pretty confident in where this thing is going. You have all of the other publics. You have Donald Trump himself, the incoming president, saying, number one, don't sell your Bitcoin #2 yes, we're going to do something like the strategic oil reserve. Well, OK, could just be a political statement, but I don't think so. Because then you put layer on top of that. And that's what I'm talking about. Like maybe like actually go, like all I'm trying to do is gather information and then put it together for my own opinion. If you look at the clip from one of the most recent Anthony Scaramucci interviews, like we have the votes for the SBR like but actually if Biden wouldn't have vetoed it, we Saab 121 would have been repealed. So like, I don't understand where the negativity is coming from. Is it because the price like went back under $100,000? Is it because MicroStrategy didn't go to $1000 in 2024? Like where is. Like it could just be, it could just be PTSD man. Like people are just like inherently negative and and want to assume the worst. Yeah, if people, because I mean we talked about this in the circles that have been in Bitcoin for a while, is there are a lot of people that have been loud about Bitcoin, both positive and negative, very short, very, very short Bitcoin like they just don't hold it anymore, right. Whether they were trading altcoins, whether they just have never been a believer, like the notion that the US government or any government could put this on a St. reserve is so it boggles all thoughts of like, I missed it, the trades gone, it's gonna run away from me. It's like, how can that happen? It's just, it's like it's this old notion of why you want anyone to get a little bit of exposure because you can naturally look at it in a favorable direction versus to the point you're saying in a negative light. And I'm sure like everyone here on this pod, there's every conversation and every hinting that this is going to happen. It's a geopolitical thing. There's a great report that's this is being released on Friday that's coming out today, which is Thursday that ties in from a geopolitical perspective, why it makes complete sense and why the SPR is going to happen or some form of it. So yeah, I mean, it's an incredible, it's going to be an exciting 2025. Yeah. And also to Tim, to your point on like some of Trump's statements, I feel like there's been a handful of them over the past several months. And yeah, they could just be political posturing for the same time once he's in. And if if he if he does, if he backtracks on any of that or doesn't do anything or, you know, it's perceived as if there's not going to be an SPR that will impact the price. And, and he, according to sources close to him, is viewing Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin akin to how he views the price of the S&P. And so if, if he doesn't now act on some of these things that he suggested or, you know, and it's not just him obviously suggesting these things, but if he doesn't act on it or at least follow through with a portion of it, he's going to see that like the price is going to react to that. He's not going to like that. So he's going to be my, my base case is like, yeah, he's going to follow through on most of this because he wants to see the price go up because he's viewing that as basically a, a barometer for his success. Absolutely. I mean, what does he have left at this point besides legacy? Like there's OK, you want to make some money, you want to be recognized and then you want to leave a legacy. I mean, that's literally like all of the levels of leadership. So whether you like the guy or not, I mean, you would think that's what he's playing for. And based on every historical detail you can pull up. Yeah, like he's literally saying in private conversations, Bitcoin is the new oil and he wants the S&P to go up. He talks and brags about the S&P going up during his last administration. So yeah, we everybody wants the number to go up. It's going to go up anyways. And to the fact of if you can have a way to borrow against an asset and it's de risked and allowed from a regulatory standpoint, that in and of itself I think is encouraging for the price. Because I don't know anyone that actively, unless they're a trader like wants to actually sell their Bitcoin. I find it hard to believe that traders or even whales are are really selling huge amounts of their Bitcoin. You know, unless they somehow think they can buy it back at a discount. Yeah, One thing that just came to mind, I'm just kind of piercing this together. As Tim, you were mentioning some of those points is if you actually look back to the California Gold Rush in the mid 1800s, I think it was like 1848, I published a piece about this probably 18 months ago, but I'm just piercing together some of these things now. And so when those initial findings were in I guess what is now like kind of Silicon Valley area, back in the mid 1800s, there was a lot of initial skepticism that there was gold in California, right? And that skepticism remained that people started making a lot of money discovering gold. People from other parts of the country were coming into California to to extract or identify and extract gold from the earth. But there was actually a kind of a widespread disbelief of the American public until it was President Polk's statement as the State of the Union. I guess later that year, in December of maybe 1848. I have to look at the numbers again. But it's almost like similar here where now that you have the incoming president of the United States posturing and signaling that there's going to be a Bitcoin strategic reserve. That's kind of like a President Polk moment in and of itself related to the California gold rush, right? Where now if the once Trump is in office here in about two or three weeks time and they move forward with the strategic Bitcoin reserve, that's really going to open a lot of people's eyes. Because even myself, I mean, I want to believe and I want to agree that it's going to happen. But naturally I'm a skeptic. I'm an adversarial thinker, right? I'm a bitcoiner. I think some somehow or some way we're going to get screwed over. But I feel like there's a lot of data and evidence and incentives. Most importantly, human, human beings are incentivized now to push forward with this. And I do think that this will be kind of similar to what we saw in the mid 1800s as it relates to the gold rush. Absolutely. Yeah, I think somebody brought up the gold rush recently where it kind of does a little bit breakdown in the gold rush is like once it was done, a lot of the area was depleted and there wasn't a lot built like it was stuff built there and then it kind of like was gone. We're like this never ends. This is the gold rush that starts and then you continue to build services, the asset grows. It's still in its monetization phase. The, the, the point where I think people get screwed over and it's worth calling out is because we talked about it a few times, is that the banks and everyone stepping in, I think State Street last week, it's been kind of known, but that like was publicly about building out their own custodial setup and some other financial products is the lending of the asset isn't just like a de facto like it's going to work, IE you got to lend against, you know, another financial instrument. You can manage the volatility, You know, something happens, you have bailouts, you have all these different like mechanisms to ensure that the, you know, lender, you know, whoever's on the other side of the trade is made whole. What we've historically have seen in Bitcoin, when you lend against the asset, the individuals that are naturally building those businesses come from, you know, traditional finance backgrounds, Wall Street. They ultimately have never seen that level of volatility before. And they also are not familiar with how the counterparty risk is measured and being naked. And so I do think that while institutions are going to come in, there's going to be a lot of tears and blood with that volatility. And so when you pick your counterparties, you're just going to want to dig deep and understanding the custody, how it's managed the loan to values, like just we had a lot of experience previously and doing this in our previous firm. And, and there's a lot that goes into it. It's not comp, it's not complex, but if somebody comes in looking at it just like as you're familiar with MSTR and its volatility there and you lend that asset out a few times, you may wake up and, and be offsides when the market, you know, naturally course corrects and basically every, everybody ends up with a zero there because the person that lent the Bitcoin and then you be your counterparties. Can't, you know, deliver the Bitcoin or the dollars I. Couldn't have said it better, I had nothing to add. Tim, I'm curious. And so I feel like we touched on a lot of the topics that at least I wanted to cover today. I did see recently, but maybe you've been saying it for a while now that you have a thesis of $1,000,000 plus Bitcoin in 2025. And so I'll come out and say, naturally, I'm skeptical of that, not because I don't think that you've done the work, but I just kind of look back to 2021 and I've always been skeptical of super cycles and people saying that they have their price predictions in general. But I do think that this time does feel different. Again, I'm going to be adversarial until I see the the strategic Bitcoin reserve be announced and and go into motion. But I'd be curious, how do you kind of arrive at that number or that ballpark just in general? And is it mainly around the strategic Bitcoin reserve here in the United States? Is it sovereign game theory? Is it corporations? What do you think is like kind of the primary drivers? I'm sure there's multiple, but you know, what are you kind of paying attention to this year and how did you get to that, that figure for 2025? Yeah, I think it's a combination of everything we've discussed. I think the primary drivers in my mind are one, sovereign adoption and two, the ability to borrow against your asset and not having to sell your asset. So when you have sovereigns buying the asset in a defensive manner on a defensive footing, I think that could be explosive. And again, I think I'm misnomer because whether it's trad 5 firms or Plan B or other models, I mean, a lot of people are calling for somewhere between 200,000 and $1,000,000 Bitcoin this year, which to be clear may not be a sustainable level. But even if that's a blow off top, that would be, I mean, just the number itself being a 7 figure number, even half $1,000,000 Bitcoin would obviously be really interesting. I just don't think it's. I don't believe in the diminishing returns theory and I don't think it's that. Far of a reach based on past cycles where yes, it was a smaller number which would go into the diminishing returns aspect. But you know, A10 to 20X over a couple of years is just not that much of A move as far as historical, historical norms go. So I think yeah, sovereigns, corporates and then the ability for everyone and and not just the ability, but to actually have holders being marketed to of like, hey, you don't want to sell your Bitcoin. We know that that's your position. And here's a product, here's an Ave. for you to actually be able to do that with at a reasonable rate, with a reasonable counterparty that you don't have to worry about. Like, well, I can borrow against it and I hope I don't lose it. You know, hopefully that can largely be behind us. At least that's my hope. I like to, just on the, the topic of valuation and, and price prediction, I think it's helpful to always reiterate the, the Jesse's work around global, just global asset value landscape and, and the 900 trillion of assets that exists. You know, at a, at a $2 trillion market cap, Bitcoin is 0.2% of all assets on Earth. So if we just take that and say, OK, 10 XS to a million, that would be 2% to me that like 1% sounds more likely for this cycle. So that'd be like 500K. But what that doesn't assume is any sort of like multiplier, right? Like that's just like a, a clean transition of, of capital into the asset, which is obviously not how it works. So that's how you could get to, you know, some larger numbers is just through any sort of multiplier effect of that capital flowing from all, all those other buckets into Bitcoin. So I, I think you're right, Tim, in that like the general range people have been talking about is anywhere from 200 to 1,000,000. I feel, I mean, I feel like that's, that's somewhat reasonable. It's just, it's all a matter of these various variables that we've discussed around continued adoption, continued sort of air cover from a political, geopolitical perspective for corporations, more corporations to get involved. And, and then what that ultimately does is it all flows down to the individual, right? Like if, if the individual normally sitting on the sidelines for the past 15 years sees the government buying Bitcoin, they're probably going to think they should have some. And, and all of the other adoption to this point hasn't gotten them over the edge of, of thinking that. But the government buying Bitcoin might be the thing that gets like the masses over the edge of being like, all right, fine, I I should at least have some of this. So, yeah, like it, it could be explosive if, if all those two things, those things do occur. But like I said at the at the beginning, like I, I always just, let's just tie it back to the, the total numbers and like the, the landscape and, and what realistically we could achieve this cycle. 1 to 2% of global assets feels reasonable if governments around the world are buying it. Yeah. And to your point about 1 to 2%, let's rewind to last cycle where it was mostly, if not all retail. I think there was no actual way to borrow against your Bitcoin without getting wrecked. I'll save that story personal story for another time. And it was a very hostile, extremely hostile regulatory environment. And and not just in the US. What about China like banning Bitcoin mining? Like what if you would? What if you just wouldn't have had that and a few other tailwinds? Maybe you could have gotten to 100,200 thousand dollar Bitcoin a couple years ago as a as a blow off top. And then what would we be sitting here talking about this time? What we'd probably be talking about like $2.5 million Bitcoin. But you don't see that number really anywhere. So like people think I'm being extreme or maybe not doing my research, but I think I'm being reasonable and conservative in the $1,000,000 Bitcoin. Yeah. I mean, maybe this is a good, I don't know, Jack's industry or Thunder, we're in the new year. We have a few, a few segments, one that we'll all do this podcast is the single point of failure of the week. Just, you know, calling out where assets were lost or something was not a line from like a market structure, whether it's an exchange custodian or individual like foot gunning themselves. So it ties into Tim wanting to hear maybe the, the story that you referenced. But before that, I, I would take the other side simply because of that like a market structure to go from effectively, you know, we've been in this consolidation for a while between 20 to 60 K and we couldn't even get to past 70K or whatever the last market cycle was without people just blowing themselves up. So you have going from again, let's call it 6020, whatever the number is, we we went back to 17 to go to a million with like a lot of the things that are positive catalyst still need to be baked out and refined and not blown up to consume all that money. And then on the other side of it is like these individuals or not prepared. When you think about it, most people like a Bitcoin sitting in self custody on a plastic device in their house and like what does that look like from a risk factor when the rest of the market knows that these things are sitting on their person? And what does that look like from all of the different third or second and 3rd order effects of three hundred 500,000? Everyone here being loud about it, right? There's just a lot of like in the middle ground and so like an example of the single point of failure and then you guys jump in. Brian Jackson, if I get this wrong, was I think a week ago there was an individual that so it was Ledger. Yeah, exactly here. The individual had, you know, been stacking, saving Bitcoin, I think got almost to a full Bitcoin and you know, these devices, there's some made better than others. Some are the the best in class. I would say it's probably a cold card. Cold cards trade off obviously is you have to be somewhat technical. Doesn't take a lot of technical expertise, but it does if you're going to put a large percentage of your net worth. And point being with this individual, he was using a Ledger. Ledger is one of the worst, if not worst devices to use. But I would say a disproportionate amount of the Bitcoin that said in itself custody is in a Ledger simply because of how long they've been around and their brand and market penetration. They have a really bad user experience in the sense that the the screen is obviously small and the the address goes back and forth. But the real fundamental problem where this individual ran into it is he thought he had a seed phrase. He did not know where the seed phrase was. In the meantime he's going to do some transition or move assets and the pin on a Ledger has three tries and so after the second one it gives you a warning. If you get the third pin wrong it will like null out the device and so you have to effectively re set up the device with the seed phrase. He forgot his pin because he hadn't used the device as most people don't do. Went in and did the third thing, wiped it out. He thought he had the seed phrase somewhere. Comes to find out he doesn't also have the seed phrase. Loses all of his Bitcoin. So those are just some call outs and thinking about redundancies, checks. And then also just when you think about any material wealth that you have in the space, you always want fault tolerance and redundancy built into it. Meaning if something happens to One Piece, you're still in the game. Yeah. Just some more context on like this is a, this is a segment that we've been talking about for some time, single point of failure of the week, because it's we've only seen these instances, like the one Michael just described accelerate in the past several months. And, and part of that is just a function of, of price. And then as the price appreciates, more attackers, more criminals are waking up to the fact that Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument. And like the, the real importance of, you know, us bringing these stories to the fore and talking about them and discussing them is because Bitcoin as an asset is very different. It has these unique custodial properties, which means if you're securing it yourself, that is not only your responsibility to continue to, you know, make sure that that setup is is done right, but also protected in perpetuity, right. And so as criminal networks and and adversaries become more attuned to Bitcoin is held on people's devices in their homes, these attacks are these attacks are only going to increase. And so people need to be extremely vigilant if there are, if they are going to be keeping material amounts of wealth, you know, secured in their homes with their families. Like it, it's just something that is super critical and just different like it's, it's different from any other asset. You'd have a material amount of wealth in that you have to be thinking in this super adversarial way. And so obviously everything we're doing it on ramp is attempting to solve for a lot of this by taking the responsibility of key management away from the individual for at least a portion of their their Bitcoin holdings. And so there are other ways to sort of solve for this. We think our custody solution is a great one, but the reality is that we are only scratching the surface of these types of attacks and these types of sort of vectors for people losing their Bitcoin and, and just tying it back to like the importance of it. It's like this is a digital bear instrument. It's finite. If you screw it up, if you lose it, if you foot gun yourself or the exchange that you're holding on it, yeah, holding gets hacked or you get social engineered. And we've seen a ton of those instances as well. It's just gone forever. And so like it's, it's very different than any other asset that you'd be storing wealth in. And, and back to, you know, Michael, your earlier point when we were just talking about adoption, it's like these realities are why we're not already at $1,000,000 per Bitcoin because there, there are these extreme custodial realities with the asset that we're just beginning to grapple with and, and figure out better solutions for. And so I just wanted to give that context for this segment that we're going to be doing going forward to just highlight these. And it's really, to be totally honest, it's, it may come off as like FUD or fear mongering, but it's really that is not the purpose. The purpose is to just highlight the, the, the serious nature of, of holding material amounts of wealth in this asset and, and what you need to be thinking through and how to defend against it. But yeah, Jackson, do you have any thoughts? Well, just to add 1 one other piece on that, to Brian's point, like a lot of this stuff we talked about, we see we've been a little hesitant to share more of it because it does come across as whether it's talk in the book or FUD. But the reality is ties into the like it's effectively, there's a broken part of the market structure in Bitcoin because the only thing you ever hear people talk about is you have to hold all of your wealth in 12 or 24 words on a plastic device or you have to leave it on a custodial ETF. And there's effectively a better way now. And what ultimately is going to happen, we know it's going to happen. We've seen this as the price appreciates. We hear about it anecdotally. The attack vectors grow. And because we're just starting this segment out, we'll do A2 four. I pulled this other one up because we have no shortage of these like in our Slack channel where this one was an influencer that was allowed online about holding Bitcoin. And I guess they were chasing his wife. She she passed away in a car accident because the bad actor was looking for, I guess the kidnap or whatever. But when I say there's a broken part of the market structure, it's because in no world can you take Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk's family member them and tell them to liquidate all of their shares or move all their houses or whatever assets that they hold and move them into the person's name. There's all of these different like measures in between that like that taking place and then the perp getting found or the assets being moved. But in Bitcoin, in digital assets, that historically hasn't been the case. So if you take somebody or their family member or their house, you have it's that digital bearer asset. And so when we look at 15 years from now and the assets millions of dollars fully believe that we'll look back during this period be like, oh, that was kind of strange that we just like held all of this on our person or we left it with Coinbase. And it's just because the assets been so small that we haven't had that market awareness yet. So we're kind of peering into the future. It's our view. And if if we're wrong, then I just don't see how any other angle really comes about our views, any other angle if the assets millions of dollars will there needs to be other constructs that exist and our job is to help and kind of like paint that picture and provide the products. And, and said another way is we'll look back and say it was insane that we allowed a single point of failure to exist in our Bitcoin setup for our, you know, material amount of our wealth. And that is whether it's either side of the spectrum, self custody, foot gun being, you know, attacked in the real world, or you're holding it on a single entity. And, and something happens there where you where you end up with a zero. In both scenarios, you have a single point of failure. And so if you can work towards eliminating the single point of failure, you're de risking ownership of the asset full stop. Going forward, you can feel better about it into the future. You can reduce your own personal attack surface in the real world and just feel more confident that you have redundancies and fault tolerance in place where you're not going to be out of the game because of a single point of failure. And so that's just to reiterate why we why we want to highlight this stuff. Intend this is like an angle of the market structure that allows for the price to actually grow. So it's kind of a meta angle, but like we hear from this and this was always kind of the ideas. As that wealth concentration grows, it becomes very uncomfortable if you already are uncomfortable with the custody solution. So imagine you have a million, it turns into 10 million, it's 95% of your wealth on a Ledger. Well, it's natural human like psychology to say, let me clip off a little bit to go buy something else because if I lose it all, at least I don't have that. Like we hear this group of clients of ours, but then they're ultimately like, no, I feel very confident in this solution so I can let that grow. And so that's part of this like natural market structure of like, well, if you don't feel confident because an ETF is still paper, you still have the taxable gains, you can't take delivery. Well, you're going to clip a little off and go into something else. So that's a component of like just naturally building more robust solutions. Yeah, I think we could probably have an entire pod just dedicated to this aspect of it and stories around it. Because part of what? Like, I'm a curious person. I always want to learn and obviously continue to educate myself. So along the way, since 2021, I've attempted to buy Bitcoin on as many platforms as humanly possible. Sitting in the state of New York, some of those platforms were not available to me and that probably saved me 10s of thousands of dollars, if not multiples of that. But also just having that experience of like if you buy a bunch of Bitcoin on Cash App and then you want to sell it and take it off, well, you can only pull so much out per day or per week. And so that's some kind of safeguard, I think for someone that's getting started and go, which is by the ETF or just have it in self custody. OK, those are solutions. Just have it on Coinbase. I mean, I don't know anyone that is getting phone calls from scammers saying they're trying to like, basically get their login to their BlackRock or Fidelity account. But I was walking on the beach in Miami just a couple days ago and I'm declining a call and they're leaving a voicemail pretending to be Coinbase trying to steal my Bitcoin. So like and like, it literally happens to, I'm assuming hundreds of thousands of people every single day. Like, why is that where we are? That's not OK. That's not where I want to be. I want to have some in self custody. I want to have some somewhere that I can not have to ask somebody else permission to get to it, but I want to have most of it in a solution where I it can grow by 10X and 100X and 1000 XI don't feel very confident in the solution. And I think that's where the multi signature multiple custodians really comes into play. And until you have a little bit of that experience, you're probably it's probably not going to be important to you. But for me now it's extremely important. I mean, it's just ridiculous that, you know, we're kind of at this point where literally people can be calling your phone trying to steal your Bitcoin from you. And like it's, I don't even have that much on Coinbase, but that's what's happening to me. So I can only assume that's what's happening to a lot of other people. Yeah, no, it's, it's very true. And the idea if we're right about we're being, we're early for Bitcoin right point 2% of the global asset landscape, then we're also early for Bitcoin infrastructure custody and solutions in the market. And so there's just a recognition that not to to rehash the same points, but if we're early in Bitcoin, then we haven't seen all the solutions that will be brought to market and there will be a need for more resilient solutions to protect the asset from when it moves from six figures to seven figures to 8 figures. And so that was just a recognition for building this business. Of course, it sounds like we're talking the book, but I chose to join on Ramp because I saw the value in the solution for myself as well. And all the reasons that we discussed today is why I use on Ramp for my personal custody for a portion of my stack at this point, majority or yes, certainly over 50% of my stack. And I'm OK saying that because I know I'm protected from the risks that I have to worry about if I'm using self custody. And so I'm OK with being forefront and transparent about it because I'm not subject to the same risks if I use a multi institution solution. And we flag the single point of failure of the weak, not because it's funny or not because we want to make light of it, but it's because we don't want this to happen to more people. And so it doesn't mean if if you're someone who's thought through your self custody set up for hundreds of hours and you're very diligent about how you manage your seed phrases and geographically disperse assets, then that's great. Maybe you can continue to do that and maybe you're in the point 1% for people who can do that. But the reality is most people who have gone down this path have really not given it the time and attention that it deserves. And myself included. I mean, I, I did it for a while pretty half assed. And I'm fortunate to have not lost a serious amount of Bitcoin. Of course, I've lost some along the way, but I think this is just a call and a reminder for people that if we're all going to be bullish, we think SBR happens. We think that Bitcoin price is going to be multiples of what it is today, a year or two from now, that we just need to think a little bit more seriously about how we manage the asset for ourselves or for businesses. Yeah. And Tim, the exciting part about our relationship, if folks haven't, you know, maybe picked up, we'll be sponsoring and partnering with you on the Treasury's pod is growing together. When you think about like we talked about the stick version of why folks use us as like the foot gunning security, but there's also the carrot, which is like, this is a financial instrument, This is Money, this is an asset and individuals are going to want to treat it as such and they're going to want to buy some. They're going to have tax advantage accounts, they're going to lend against it. They're going to want to do all these things that we have planned or currently have in the market. And so you just need a private bank to be able to do that, then you can trust that understands the space because at the end of the day, like ultimately this is a innovative, disruptive asset. And if you take like a 2D version of it, IE how everything else has been done, you're pretty much on a long enough time horizon not going to be pleased with the results of your counterparty. That's just what 15 years has shown objectively. And so our approach is mixing that traditional finance understanding, you know, the capital markets, but then infusing that Bitcoin lends enough to keep everything honest. And an easy. The example of this is you generally want to work with a custodial partner or collaborative custody partner that can't unilaterally move the money or lose it. Like that is a very like, fundamental philosophical thing that's very simple, but you only see a few firms in the space do it because it's ultimately then telling you like, they at least understand enough that if anybody ever came to them, the worst they can do is not sign or lose a key, but they can't lose your assets, they're OK. And that's a different shift than traditional finance holding the asset net interest margin and all the things that we've seen kind of fragment the underlying infrastructure. And if you go and park this digital bear asset in that infrastructure, it's just a recipe for like heartache at a certain point on a long enough time horizon. At least that's our stance and that's what we build towards. And a lot of the folks that understand what we're saying love it because it's like how they've been thinking and they've been sitting on the sidelines with that metaphorical pet rock looking for like solutions like this. Yeah, I'd really invite people to learn more about these sorts of solutions. I think without going into a long 5 minute detail explanation, the fact that there is the ability for someone to have as part of their plan the like it that it would require in person verification in order to move the asset is huge. I mean, you talk about some of the wealthiest guys in the world. Yeah. Like there's no one person or one institution that you could just be like, hey, like give it to me. Like, well, I literally can't. So like talk about being able to sleep at night and feeling secure and feeling like you have a a solution on your side that is literally like once you're educated on it and understand it, then you can appreciate it. And yeah, really excited to be working with you guys and appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, it's a topic for another day, but it's also a great discussion around the like, Can you imagine any other solution for corporate treasuries? Like they literally have financial controls for this exact reason, for somebody not to be able to send wires out and then leave the firm or have some kind of turn. So as Treasuries adopt this, you're they're going to actually have to do risk it as well. Well, Tim, appreciate the generosity with your time today. I know we went a bit over, so thank you for carving out the time to to speak with us and really excited about the partnership we have with you. For those who are not familiar with the work that you're doing, where would you like them? Where would you like to point them to to to find out more? I'm on X, formerly known as Twitter, just under Tim Kotzman. And yeah, appreciate the time and we look forward to 2025. Thanks, Tim. Awesome. Thanks, Tim. Thanks boys. 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 Rat 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 onrampbitcoin.com contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private client advisors.
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