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Final Settlement

The New Ponzi Stack? Solana Treasuries, Stablecoins, & Crypto Exit Games

April 14, 2025 · 01:09:59
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Connect with Early Riders // Connect with OnrampPresented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering the underlying mechanics of the bitcoin protocol, its ongoing development and funding, and real-world applications of the technology.00:00-Market Volatility and Bitcoin's Position02:47-Binance's Strategic Moves and Regulatory Landscape10:31-Visa Joins the Stablecoin Consortium17:23-Corporate Strategies in Crypto Acquisitions28:51-The C

Transcript+
It all comes down to computers communicating. The information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of OK, this is actually foundational technology. What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing that that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. Hi everyone, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of Final Settlement. It's Monday, April 14th. We had an awesome conversation with Brian Cabela's and Liam Nelson discussing all things happening in Bitcoin digital assets in the regulatory front, along with the investment opportunities in the space and where to look at the signal through the noise. There's a lively conversation between Brian and myself and Liam, but Brian and myself in particular when it comes to Bitcoin dominance and where we see altcoins and Bitcoin playing long term. After taking listen, let me know what you think or let us know in the comments. And as always, you can always shoot us a DM or hit us at Ello at on ramp Bitcoin com now on do a little bit about on ramp. There's a lot of questions that have come up in this space about can I work with on ramp? Do they serve me? Is it just for institutions? And I want to clear a little bit of that up and we'll do that, you know, heading into other podcasts as well. So at its core, custody's evolving individuals have held Bitcoin for the past 15 years or call it 12 to 15 years in almost the exact same way they generally held it in self custody on these little hardware devices or they ultimately have to leave it on a third party custodian. That's ultimately what's left the asset class from being a small niche asset still growing faster than anything else at $2 trillion. But ultimately custody has to evolve with it. We have sovereigns coming into the space, we have Larry Fink talking about it displacing the US dollar. And the reality is on Rim's leading the way with Bitcoin custody evolving as well. With multi institution custody, how does it work? Well, instead of 1 institution having to manage all of your assets, we all know not your keys, not your coins. The other side of that ends up with complex management of private keys on RIM secures that Bitcoin in is a multi institution vault. It leverages multi sig. It's all segregated on chain. But here's the kicker that most people don't know about. We mix technical governance, which is IE multi SIG with legal governance. So when you onboard via our unified experience, what used to take me and my previous firm anywhere between 2 to 8 weeks to get you onboarded to multi sig takes 2 to 8 minutes. You can try via our self onboarding flow or you can reach out and schedule a consultation with us and we'll happily walk you through that. Now what's important is no single custodian can move those assets. It requires you directly to video verify with multiple institutions via again, a unified experience so you're not having to go all over the place. And the kicker on top of that is about two weeks ago, we announced $100 million policy via Lloyd's of London Insurance. Now the key component to all this is you retain transparency and control, so your assets are always there. And then beyond custody, we offer a comprehensive suite of Bitcoin financial services for today and then the future. So if you want to lend against your asset because you don't want to pay cap gains or need exposure to dollars for that diamond ring for your, you know, girlfriend turn into wife or just need home improvements, we can offer that as well as deep trading liquidity. If you need to buy or sell Bitcoin, inheritance planning baked into the solution, IRA's and much more. Think about on ramp as your private banking like partner. We coordinate key holder activity. We remove all the technical burdens from you or your loved ones, and we provide a personalized trust minimize experience tailored to your specific wealth preservation goals. Now again, most individuals will think it's all or nothing with on ramp. We recently we recently put out a post you can see on our website here, which is the barbell approach to custody. If you're interested in learning more about that, you can read a little bit about how you can retains some of the sovereignty as well as still have access to multi institution custody. Whether you need a Bitcoin or experience holder, honoring help secure generational wealth and unmatched security and Peace of Mind. Visit honoringbitcoin.com to learn more, sign up or book a free consultation with our team and we'd love to speak with you now. I hope you enjoy the show. Alrighty gentlemen. Welcome back to Final Settlement. Today is Monday morning, April 14th, 2025. Not a whole lot going on in the world these days, boys. Since we last spoke, you know, we've seen a lot of volatility. I will say, lots of news headlines, lots of fake news headlines, all contributing to various sorts of volatility across markets. But gentlemen, how are we doing today? We're good. Are we back with is this the highest signal show in all of Bitcoin when it comes to like what is actually happening in capital markets and where Bitcoin in our site? That's the goal, that's the goal. We're just talking about it. We're talking like there's obviously a lot of cool stuff happening, you know, across Bitcoin with the bit bonds and infusing Bitcoin across capital sacs, custody, insurance. But there's also a lot happening on the licensing regulatory front when it comes to stables, the Genius Act, some of the other things that are just happening across the industry where there, there's some signal that I think we kind of forget in the Bitcoin space that we have to pay attention to because it ultimately reverts to Bitcoin. But there's a long way between now and then. So that's the aim. Let's let's bring the signal every week. It's going to be a good one. I know Liam's excited about. We'll bring the noise too. We'll bring, we'll sift through the noise for for our audience because there's a lot of that out there as well. We might bring some noise. We might bring some noise. You can't, you can't bat 100, you cannot bat 100. So we will have some bad takes, but you know, that's what makes it good. Brian has some takes that you know trending Bitcoin dominance will trend up and to the right forever and been right. So far. He feels the miss that, you know, all this crypto stuff is going to have to be built somewhere. These stables are going to have to run somewhere. Security tokens is are going to have to be built on something. And there's going to be narratives that are spun up. They're going to take a lot of people's Bitcoin from them, but ultimately Bitcoin's dominance will end up at 100%. It's just at what on what time horizon? I mean. That much, that much we agree on. And and the real Bitcoin dominance is not Bitcoin versus the other crypto assets, it's Bitcoin dominance versus every asset in the world. Exactly. And it's doing well so. We've got room to run on that one, on that metric. For sure where we want to. Start. I know we have a big list. Where we, Where we, I thought we'd start with finance. So they CZ obviously got funding or well, he's out of finance right now, but finance got a major $2 billion funding from MGXA couple months back. There was a talk about finance, working with the Trump family crypto venture and meeting with at that time he denied it, but the account has come out again. He. According actually met with the Treasury Department and discussed loosening U.S. government oversight on finance, as well as discussing a deal with the Trump family crypto venture. I, I thought this was very notable just because one, there are many different nations out there that are looking to get Bitcoin and crypto exposure, but don't necessarily know the best way to do it. But there's a lot of money to be made and I think by bringing in people in the know, both MG X, you know, some essentially view into the Abu Dhabi investment landscape as well as here in the US. Both are looking to drive the strongest returns and, and just get exposure to finance as well as digital assets as a whole. So wanted to get your view onto, you know, this deal and, and what's going on here. I'll. Let Mike start. I think I don't have any like there's a, there feels like there's a lot happening here. 1 is I think we forget that Binance really is, at least at the current level. We think of Coinbase as the darling, but it really is Binance when you think about creating the true altcoin casino and everything that exists around it. Coinbase was, you know, probably tried to be that neat Bellagi, you know, joined a CTO and that was the kind of I think that I think they only offered like 5 to 10 cryptos until he came. And they really wanted to do all of that game. But the reality is the SEC and the regulatory climate didn't allow them to do it. And finance really just was, I think the number's overweight from trading pair and flows. So CZ, one of the richest individuals, super smart, savvy. I think there's something interesting in the sense of Abu Dhabi getting investment into their insights into what they built for themselves from from that part of the world. And then also Trump recognizing that. I don't know whether it's from a sovereign perspective or from their, you know, family balance sheet and them getting exposure that they want insights into like what they're doing. Because I think there's just the first inning, what's CZ and Binance built into this whole like casino of trading all this crap. But then there's another aspect that I haven't fully baked out. Just throwing out there with, if we think about, you know, there was a lot that happened with SPF and FTX and CZ ultimately popped that that bubble. And that bubble some will make the case was not organically built, that it was built with a bunch of things that everyone called or could have seen that FTX and SPF were, you know, a little bit nefarious at worst, but at best they were, they, they were like they never had people watch them and it never felt right. But nobody said anything. And they brought in a lot of politicians and capital and ultimately, there was a deleveraging that happened that brought on a lot of regulation and a lot of things that happened post that that have ushered in what's happening today. And Binance was in the middle of that and CZ was in the middle of that. And so the question is kind of weird. And either because part of this article, Liam, is that he's doing a deal and he's giving up, like Justin, Justin's son from Tron, and he's giving up a bunch of trade secrets. And it feels like 2 things are happening. Either one is he brought down the last market, got slapped on the wrist and has a bunch of trade secrets. And he wants to make cap make money as an opportunist. So he's like doing something. Or there's the other angle where he was part of the deleveraging and this was all part of the whole charade. It's like, hey, you're going to be the Patsy. You get some money, you're going away for six months into a nice little deal. Wherever he's at, you're going to come out and you're going to, you know, own the world effectively. It's just going to be within guardrails. You can't be a pirate forever. I think we just forget a 2022 feels so long ago, but he was instrumental in the whole thing on the run up and then the the way out and now he's come back full center from like a global standpoint from Middle East to GCC now to the West. Anyway I. Mean, I would lead in the former of those two sort of trajectories just in the sense that in 2022, like, you know, he didn't know Trump was going to win. He didn't know that the atmosphere and the environment in the US was going to change. So, you know, to me, the broader take away and signal from all this is like one, it's it's knowledge seeking on behalf of the Trump administration. They want to, you know, know what CZ knows. He's built one of the biggest businesses, if not the biggest crypto business in history. And at the same time, I think it is a signal around, you know, what the admin has also been talking about around like we are going to stop what was happening for the past four years around choke point and basically just, you know, maligning this industry. Because if you, you know, rewind before FDX even existed, like finance was kind of the like unscrupulous player in the minds of the United States. They didn't really, you know, I think they tried to launch finance US didn't really work. And so they, they were always the massive sort of offshore maligned player. And so to me, this is just a massive signal of like, I don't know, we're open for business here in the US for any and all crypto companies. And this is like, you know, you know, connecting yourself to CZ in some ways, like a strong signal of that of like, you know, we're here to, to partner with and, and gain knowledge from people who have built legitimate things in this space. And really we want that innovation to come here. We don't want it to remain offshore or be scared to operate in the United States. So to me that was the the broader take away, you know, sort of details of this deal aside, it's it's more of like a signaling thing in my mind. That's kind of what I thought. Yeah, I mean one other last point too is. It's. You know, the Trump family is obviously getting into Bitcoin in a big way, but you really want to get close to where the money is and, and over, you know, have some sort of visibility into what's happening there. I mean, the US essentially governs all of the banking and you know, the Trump family obviously needs to be close to the movement of money within crypto too. And so by just, you know, one, having the inside knowledge and being able to get into rooms with everybody that understands where the money is moving is going to be helpful. As well as if anything, you know, kind of is happening that they don't necessarily like or support. They're going to be able to get in that room and be able to speak with them pretty immediately about, you know, what's going on here and, and how can we kind of shift the, the window here? So I think it's, it's definitely interesting that more and more people are paying attention in a, in a significantly larger way. What's next? What's next on the list? Next we have Visa is joining the Paxos, Robin Hood and stablecoin consortium. So Paxos Global Dollar Network, which includes Kraken, Galaxy Digital, Anchorage Digital Bullish, which owner owns Coindesk and Nuvi. They essentially I can turn it over to Mike a little bit here, who's our local stable coin maxi. But essentially what's happening here is there is so essentially buying group of number of different firms that don't necessarily have exposure to this industry that are coming in and trying to necessarily compete with both Tether and USDC. So can can turn it over to you Mike, to get your thoughts here. Yeah, I think, I think there's a few overarching thoughts. One I think directionally is Stripe for being as big of a firm as it is processes like 1% of all B to B transactions, right. And so like nobody's really built anything just for efficient use of capital flows. So that's like an obvious big use case for, for stables, but then the other one is just the net interest margin play. So I, it makes me when I think of stables, I just think of now anybody can become a bank, effectively a digital cyber bank because you can spin up based on your brand and whether it's you doing it. I believe part of the Genius Act is going to have the ability for non bank issuers of stables. So they'll have certain capital requirements and regulatory requirements, but you won't necessarily have to be a financial institution or bank. So think Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple. So that's interesting. There's the other aspect where anyone else, let's just say they don't have the technological requirements, even though it's not much, it's a lot of it's open source. You could just white label like a circle or some other and then, you know, generate and split some of the fees and use their tooling. But it's all bullish for Bitcoin in particular, because that's how we've seen the precedent that Tether and Bitcoin from a global perspective was the trading pair. It just allows the digitization of a dollar and then to get in and out of BTC. So I think it's, it's super fascinating. I think the other part that will, it's going to tie into it just like how Tether tied into crypto is like security token offering and all the stuff that's going to be built on the blockchain. It's just going to let people also get access to all of that. And so I think there's two sides to it. Yeah. And the last part is the consortium play. I think that that everyone's just trying to figure out their model, right? You want to get involved in the create redeemed. You want to get involved in like efficient management of like merchant interchange fees along with like how do you build the largest Moat? We saw this back in man, I think it was 19 with Libra. Feel like some of these players you just referenced were part of that initial consortium trying to figure that out. So there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things happening here. And it just feels like, again, I think it was the Alex Dorn quote we quoted 2 weeks ago, everyone talking about SEC versus CFTC when it comes to like the market structure framework. And while it's important, it's really going to be this like stables bill that's going to just open up capital flows globally and change kind of banking as we know it. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think it's the main reason for that. I think it's just it's easier to wrap their arms around like from a government perspective, it's like, OK, we're going to we're going to enable stables this, you know, digitization of the dollar, allow us to spread dollar dominance. Like it's an easier pitch, I would say to, you know, Congress, whoever needs to pass this bill as opposed to like, you know, more of a crypto market structure type legislation. I think this is just kind of a layup for them in some sense where it's very easy to get sort of bipartisan support for this kind of thing. Question for you guys, which I didn't understand from this is like, what is the purpose of the consortium? Are that would would they be creating a single stable coin as like a combined unit? Or is it like everyone's going to issue their unstable and we're going to have Starbucks USD coin, Amazon USD coin? Because that's what I struggle with that. It's like, well why do you need thousands of different stable coins? I think they're coming together to issue one just because that's going to drive different better liquidity. And I think that's ultimately what really drives a lot of the usage of these assets. You know, when when you look at the crypto market as a whole, what you've seen in terms of demand for for payment innovation is mostly just like, you know, Bitcoin, where there is a large market cap and it's fairly liquid and everybody wants to save in that. And then there's also the US dollar, which has a really large market cap and everybody uses it in the US for, you know, almost daily. And, you know, you need to have liquid markets behind it if you're going to want to transact in it because otherwise there's no narrative that would make anybody want to store store value in it. And so, yeah, exactly transacting between 15 different branded stable coins on a daily basis is going to make no sense. And so I think rather than, you know, going after and trying to be a mid market financial institution who is competing directly with Tether or Circle who already have, you know. A head start and gain some market share. I think that they need to come together to work together and that way they can both, you know, find other financial partners. Yeah, I think there's another, there's another aspect of it is that makes sense. And also just on economies of scale, because I wasn't sure, but yeah, the global dollar network, the USDG was initially stood up. And I think you maybe mentioned this, Liam, but there was like Galaxy and Anchorage were a big part of it that set. And I think there's a, the distribution is 1 big component around like creation. So you need different, you know, Visa obviously is a, is a large distribution network, but then around economies of scale from whether it's interest, treasury, buying or whatever else you're going to be able to get from like having that corner of the market. So like circle has its, its dominance tether. And I think everyone's trying to place their bets like obviously Fidelity coming in is another big 1. So we think that there's just different thesises around how can you actually get scale find it. I think that goes back to the contextualizing that if Stripe, as large of a company as it is, only has 1% of B2B payments, that the market opportunity is insanely large. And so there's probably a lot of different use cases or different segments of the market that will be available or up for grabs. Agreed. Next on the list we're focusing on on some crypto assets. So right now we have Jan over who skyrockets like 1000% after they completed their first Solana purchase. So they bought 4.6 million worth of Solana and they announced a private convertible note and warrants with plans to acquire Solana. So it sounds like they're doing the. Solana strategic reserve. Or or the micro strategy playbook on Solana. Thought I'd get your thoughts here on on the strategy here, how it will go. What are your initial reactions here? It's kind of hilarious, but very reminiscent of 2017. What was that? The name of that company was like, it was like blockchain ice. Like they just added blockchain to the name. It was like some iced tea company in Long Island or something. Arizona Is it Arizona iced tea? Or it wasn't Arizona it. Was like some Long Island, yeah. It was some random like iced tea company and they're just like, alright, blockchain iced tea and it skyrocketed 1000%. So that's what this looks like to me again, like, I mean, I also just question of like, you know, who's who's driving this? Like who? I've never heard of this company, but I would imagine so I had to guess. The people that were driving this decision have massive Solana bags and like it, it, you know, it they have that inherent bias of, yeah, we're going to stack Solana on our our company balance sheet to behoove our our personal bags. That would be my case. No, you're exactly right because I didn't go deep there, but they were backed by Arrington and a few others. And the first thing that came to mind was because I don't even know if it's, it might even be there and it wasn't on the first headline, but multi coin. Because if I was, you know, going to run an altcoin fund, you would go to a friend or a friend of a friend that you know has involvement. And then you effectively are saying, Hey, put this on your balance sheet. We'll give you X amount, we'll give you some equity and the fund, whatever it is, make this announcement. So my my CZ take was the most well thought out. But it this ties back to it in the sense that sure, CZ didn't know that that Trump was going to take office. But there's just a reality of this is a longer conversation around the market blow up or the market growth in 21 and 2. And then the the deleveraging. It was something very odd around it with the amount of capital destroyed and also the amount of regulation that just perfectly came in right after. And so with that in mind, CZ was very big. I think Binance becomes 10 to 100 X bigger. And the reason why is because of this. So the problem with all this crypto stuff and it's sad and it's why we focus here for investors. And then also an on ramp from private clients and being stewards of individuals wealth is ultimately we all know the end state is Bitcoin dominance appreciation story. But from here to there is so much nuance and capital going to be lost. And so peeling that back is OK. So corporate treasuries put other cryptos on their their balance sheet. They trade like, you know, altcoins. There's one aspect. Other aspect is all these firms now can create stable. So now you have it in your wallet application where you can just go back into this, into whatever this ticker is that looks like an altcoin you're trading that you take it a step further. And now you're going to let people lend against this and stake these assets and do all this stuff. And like on the margins, I don't, I could see how there's some reason for an efficiency with like a registered agents with private placements and how you have to transfer controls and like why a public blockchain could be used even though it all has to go back to a central source or record. I could see like small enough efficiencies one there or that's at least a story that'll be told to the market is and then that's how you just build this like Ponzi on top. And then ultimately the signal will be found and people will move out of some of their gains or losses into BTC and we'll end up there. But this is like this notion of 17 ICO crisis or ICO feel like the next wave is going to be IC, OS mixed with the leverage of all of the lending that happened with three AC. And the next two or three years are going to be longer bull cycle. But a lot of just like carnage outside of that because most people have never seen any of that that are going to come into the space. Yeah, it's go ahead, Liam. No, I was going to say I'm, I'm on Brian's team that we're Bitcoin dominance is going higher relative to other crypto assets. You're going to see a lot of these other crypto assets try to, and I think Genover was the first one that is trying to implement the Sailor strategy playbook, but with another blockchain and trying to, you know, essentially Dr. more volatility, which should then drive the ability to issue more shares to acquire the underlying asset at an accretive rate. But if the underlying asset doesn't necessarily have the same value accrual narrative as Bitcoin, then it's just built on a sound on an unsound foundation, which I think is, you know, how many of these companies are, are evaluating their their strategies here moving forward. Yeah, it's well said. It's just, yeah, it just does. It takes into account the thing we talk about this internal and we market it on ramp is we take into account like everyone just knows what we know and it's just not the case. And so like there's a reason why there's things floating around across people's inbox to invest in treasury companies all over the world. And they're like oversubscribed and they say like, fill this out and it's limited, but they're not. Those people aren't buying Bitcoin. Yeah, Right. So the other thing with Counterparty is so it's just like, it's like all that makes sense on a long enough time horizon, but between now and then, it's just there's. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, you're right. It, it, part of, it is part of it's just human nature and greed and a lack of understanding of, of Bitcoin specifically and saying, you know, even if the, even if the own individual's personal goal is to acquire more Bitcoin in the future, they may take higher risk. That's on all this other shit in order to, to accomplish that. And the reality is most people don't have that foresight of, of that's their actual plan. And it's, it's more just human nature and greed of, of thinking. If you're early to something, then it could be a creative which there is evidence to support that in in the broader crypto space, generally speaking, because it, you know, the whole sort of VC crypto landscape has been this remarkably efficient vessel to pump and dump and basically sell on, you know, sell on retails heads after you've made your gains. Like that didn't exist prior to crypto, right, Like you had to. There was, you know, longer vesting schedules. It was more difficult to get out of equity positions. If you have a liquid token, it's much easier to to profit on completely bogus idea that then you know, six months later you're selling to retail as the next big thing. So I think that has also driven a lot of this mentality is like to some extent in short time frames and for certain, certain entities, IEVC firms, it has been a creative strategy to do all this shit. And you just made the case for exactly why dominance won't, in the short term, go up because that means that just humans are going to change their nature because how are they going to jump from that to like, I'm just going to store my wealth in something then that only has a, you know, small, you see what I'm saying? Like a lower time preference. Everyone just going to jump to it. Like they're going to go to the thing, touch the stove at the grandest scale because it's also going to be pushed to them by every brokerage and every firm. That's the idea, yeah. We'll we'll see. We'll see. I part of my argument on the dominance thing is like the the narratives, the crypto narratives this time around have less direct value accrual to the largest tokens. And in order to compete with Bitcoin on a dominant scale, it needs to be like the next 9 below it that are competing with it. Like if you have small little shit coins that are like going from zero to 100 million, like that's not making a dent in Bitcoin dominant. So you would need like the Ethereum solanas of the world to actually be capturing value accrual from things like stables and real world assets, which is where I sort of doubt that that direct linkage. Yeah, well, they all these stuff have to be built on those block chains. So that's why the value accrual, because the narrative would stem from it. Yeah, but that's, that's not, it's not in actuality how the these these tokens work. Like if people, if a lot more people use Ethereum, like the Ethereum price doesn't automatically go up. It's not a direct relationship. There's not value accrual there necessarily. Yeah. But I would say that it actually the more people that use Ethereum, the more it goes up, not because of the mechanics, it's because the more awareness that it's using. It's the same way like Solana and the tooling and like the different applications they have are able to fund more. It's like the more companies building on it, it's actually this. So the more companies that build on Solana or Ethereum or whatever means that they have larger marketing budgets which you can effectively throw these different conferences and go and do deals with ex firm and then they further perpetuate that notion of value being delivered. It has nothing to do with the underlying economics, it just has to do with more people using and building around it, IE. Ripping, right. But I think the the person, the individual or the entity that is now diligencing that linkage is different than prior cycles would be part of my argument as well. Like it's not just a retail crowd that's buying into every narrative. There's hopefully, and maybe this is just too optimistic on my part, that there would be some amount of critical thinking and diligence to understand that if a bunch of stables and real world assets get built on Solana or Ethereum, like it doesn't necessarily mean Solana and Ethereum go up in price. Yeah, this is this is going to be a fun one. I hear the argument this can be a fun one. Like for us to have ongoing, any of anybody's listening in the comments wants to share where they think dominance, but it kind of resembles a little bit. We could talk about it in a different show, but like venture Bitcoin, venture capital, where the notion is like from an unsophisticated angle, it's like, oh, early stage tack. I want to get into like early lightning, Fetty Mints and all this stuff. But the reality is there's like no use case for that for probably the next three to five years from a commercialization perspective. And so somebody will come in saying, oh, I get an early. Like there could be like a small chance where if you got in early and then because you fall forward, somebody may acquire it from like a banking perspective or you want the team, but the reality is not really a lot of fundamentals. It's almost like a trade that's like an angle of this, like there's some money to be made to from the crypto stuff, but ultimately become a trader and like that's where people, that's how people think as well when it comes to like equities. Right. So. We shall see We. Shall see. So we want to transition to the nice transition to the TVP report or where were you going, Liam? Yeah, it was just I don't want to talk too much about the the crypto space too, but the there's one last one that is worth mentioning, which is OM. It's a real world asset that Yeah. So I. Hadn't heard of this prior to this weekend, but allegedly apparently this was like one of the darlings of the real world real world asset crypto space. It's called Mantra is what I think. It runs on Cosmos which is some blockchain. More of the story is market cap of like 6 billion, it goes down 90% in like 30 minutes. Now there's allegations around the insiders held 90% of the supply and so some of those coins started moving over the weekend. People got a little anxious about that and then it started sort of just a cascade of selling once those coins started moving. I think the team has come out and denied it, but it seems fairly cut and dry given that they controlled a massive amount of the supply. And so this just goes to show, I think a broader theme that we've talked about and we'll touch on with this TVP report that I mentioned. But basically, you know, there's been so much venture focus and funding on the crypto space. And part of the reason for that is that dynamic that I referenced around just it being an effective vessel for pumping and dumping things that have no actual intrinsic value. And so the result of that is you see things like this get funded. And just a week ago, they announced $100 million raise from like some pretty notable names like Brevin Howard's on that list, the Mac, couple others that are like legitimate institutions funding this $100 million round that then gets, you know, exit polls, you know, scam polled on the weekend. It's just like this is this is how capital is destroyed, destroyed as you're referencing, Michael. It's like there's poor incentives first and foremost to allow this money to flow to these terrible ideas. And then there's no real accountability because, you know, this is 1 investment in a portfolio of many and you hope that one does 1000 X and you don't really care if one of them was exit scammed as long as you can, you know, tell a story to to your investors about it. But you know, it's just we've seen this many times before, but this was a pretty large 1. So I thought it was was worth raising like 6 billion just evaporated overnight. Yeah, I mean, This is why I keep harping on it. It's not to be annoying with about the like dominant stuff, but it's just, I feel it every day when we talk to people at the largest institutions on what we do around multi institution, why they would want to participate in long, long term, how this will work. And they can't wrap their head around like crypto versus digital assets to assume that like they go to that and Demac is one of them because I mean, I'm not an NDA or anything, but I spoke with them. They're an Emirati based real estate firm, huge, and they were interesting in like crypto for payments. When we talked, it was like meant to be a call about Bitcoin. I don't even know if it was about balance sheet or thinking about it from an investment perspective. This was over a year ago, but we saw this already play out with the pensions in different institutions in the US that there's just a world looking for yield and a yield meaning something over the real rate of inflation and the S&P 500, right? That's like what alternatives effectively are. I was talking to somebody about this that's in the space and they're like alternatives gives accessibility and all this like, no, it's just getting further on the risk curve because effectively people have not been able to hit the return benchmarks and profiles in the S&P and the bond portfolio. And so this is going to be an example of it. In the same way, we all agree here that we're in for some like kind of tough times from inflation. There's a nihilistic nature of, you know, individuals not being able to, you know, protect their wealth and all that. So to assume that they're just going to go to the thing that saves them would be great. But it's just like not how it works. They're going to go to the thing that looks like you can give them 1000 bagger. And this is part of it. And it's why we do this. It's why we're investing. And then also from early writers investing in a Bitcoin as a hurdle rate, because ultimately that's going to anchor us to the most prudent allocation of capital to return the capital to ourselves and our investors. And so this is just an, it's fun because we're at the early stages, the fringes. And I, there's no other place to rather be. Because ultimately, when it all becomes known and understood as Bitcoin's a hurdle rate, then this will all be obvious. But we're like 10 plus years away from it. And there'll be a lot of money for those that get on the right side of it to be made, and then a lot of money for those on the wrong side of it to be lost. Speaking of money to be made and lost, TVP Trammell Venture Venture Partners is a Bitcoin and I think they may do some crypto focused in venture firm. They came out with a 2024 report on the state of the venture capital market focused on Bitcoin. There were a couple of interesting parts in here that are worth discussing. 1 is the number of precede transactions in the market climbed by 50% in 2024. But interestingly, there was another part the the numbers weren't all universally positive, which was across all rounds as high as series B. The total capital raise declined 22% in 2024. There are a couple other interesting Nuggets in here, but those were the 2 that I thought were were most interesting. So I was curious if you both had any opinions on, you know, the state of the market here at the moment and looking at the Bitcoin venture capital space. Yeah, I was going to pull up the slides. Just give me a second here. They've done this report now for two or three years. And the one slide that always catches my attention, and I think they tend to focus on a lot as well too, is what I was sort of describing earlier around just the amount of money that still goes to broader crypto as opposed to Bitcoin specifically. And I think there's a few takeaways from this one. It's, it's those incentives which have referenced, but beyond that, it's, it's, it's related to that. And what I mean is basically, you know, it, the appetite for investing in Bitcoin specific companies hasn't historically been as large as crypto because there isn't a perceived, you know, as as large of a perceived ROI on on Bitcoin businesses, IE it's, you know, it's pretty difficult to make money be a profitable, long term sustainable business operating solely in in the Bitcoin space. And so I think it's reflective of both of those dynamics. But what you can see on this chart is, yeah, basically just, you know, despite the market cap at dominance of Bitcoin. There's just a massively larger amount of both deals and dollars invested in, in the broader crypto space. And I think in the next slide they show this is changing sort of slightly on the margin, like relative to last year with with higher deal count and and amount of dollars to to Bitcoin specific companies. But it's still, you know, relative to the broader space, pretty de minimis. So that's the most interesting thing to me. I think it's, it speaks to the opportunity for for what we're doing in terms of, you know, actually operating with one, Bitcoin is a hurdle, right? But two then searching for companies that actually have commercial viability and the ability to make money, which historically, you know, Michael, you've talked about this, but like historically that hasn't been the case necessarily for the the Bitcoin specific venture arena, if you will. Yeah, Chris and Matt and the guys over there are good friends and they've, they're the oldest, if not the second or third oldest Bitcoin only venture firms. I think Stillmark might have been after them and they're so they, they've been around for a while and this has been a big theme. It's partially why I got into the venture space was maybe taking a step back to contextualize what Brian said. It's $100 billion roughly from 2012 to 2024 that's been brought into the crypto space. 100 billion, right? It's an insane number. And for Bitcoin, it's more than likely less than a billion. You can just put directionally for easy numbers to contextualize 100X while Bitcoin sits again at the market dominance of 6570% and and all these other cryptos naturally just kind of fall out and then you have another crypto that comes about. So it's just complete value destroying destruction of capital. But then the other side of it where there is again large opportunities is ultimately, so you have this hundred X and what happens is when people that's where you don't see a lot of Bitcoin companies even get started or funded. I think it's happening more because what has happened and this happened to firms in the space you look at like let in and cost and firms that started as Bitcoin only and then ultimately their venture, their VC's asked them to go further on the risk curve because it's very hard to make money in Bitcoin outside of trading fees and then custody and custody has to look differentiated and our thesis to make money IE multi institution, there's not a lot of capital being made. And so back when I was building Unchained, there was a lot of investors that wanted to come in, but they would only come in if you supported Ethereum rehypothecate collateral. So you needed somebody to have the underlying ethos and understanding of it. But that's not really just enough. If you're going to allocate capital in the space prudently, you have to also understand how to operate and what's commercially viable and what people will want to spend the money on. And so very often, even in the Bitcoin ecosystem, a lot of capital gets thrown out on ideas and things that look like traditional venture bets. That could be 1000 X's, but the reality is that's not how Bitcoin's adopted because it goes in this accelerated business waves and you can't really just go scale up and hire a bunch of people because that's its own form of destruction of capital. And that's what's happened in the past five years. And so it's influenced a lot of how we build on ramp and then how we build with our portfolio companies that are early riders is thinking through what are the picks and shovels, infrastructure that'll be used globally. But then ultimately how to use economies of scale and build in a prudent way that can return Bitcoin. Because one of the concepts we talk about internally and that it's going to become another main theme is a lot of people in the Fiat space and the traditional space will tell the number of headcount. We all know that's BS. That's already a narrative we're understanding, at least people in this kind of side of the fence. It's like number of people really is a negative, not necessarily positive. I think that same notion, a cousin of it will be the amount of capital raised or the amount of capital deployed. Because you'll just look at your amount of capital you raised and somebody will just back test how much Bitcoin that is. And then now you have to forward look and say, well, let's say Bitcoin's only 150 K. That means you have to bring back a billion dollars in exits in Bitcoin at that time. People are going to look back and like this makes zero sense. And the alternative is going to be how much Bitcoin could get you equity in a business. And so is it one Bitcoin? Is it 2 Bitcoin that gets you 10% ownership? And so anyway, I think those are some of the themes that we'll be playing in and some of the research we do and then stuff we talk about here. Yeah. One other thing that I thought was really interesting too, and you kind of alluded to it was about the number of preceded investments was significantly higher. And I think that is a positive just because they're more Bitcoin only investors or Bitcoin Angel investors that are just high net worth individuals that, you know, both want to support the ecosystem. But then there's no shortage of good stories that can be told in terms of how to make money or, you know, new tactic that can be built that doesn't necessarily already exist. But there's, you know, some commercialization questions. But it's interesting going out across like the total number of total amount of funding being down about 50% from last year. Just because, you know, people are either intuitively or actively starting to look at Bitcoin as a hurdle rate, especially if they're Angel investors, right? They don't necessarily have like a fund. They're just like considering should I invest in this company or should I just hold the Bitcoin myself? And if the companies either they're successful and they understand how to allocate capital and that generally means, you know, putting a large amount of their, the capital they fundraise into Bitcoin in order to extend their runway and need to raise less capital fewer times, IE like micro strategy at a really large level. But there are a ton of smaller early stage companies doing the same thing or less successful companies. They may or may not put Bitcoin on their balance sheet, but they're going to be raising at a round that's lower than the additional or than initial rounds in Bitcoin terms. And so many of that at that time, many Angel investors or even funds will just look at that and be like, well, I could have had more Bitcoin had I not allocated to this. And so it doesn't necessarily make sense for me to double down here. It's just interesting to see more people either intuitively or naturally looking at Bitcoin as a hurdle rate, especially the angels. Yeah. I mean, I'll say that probably some of the downtrend in investments has just been because we've kind of been in this like proxy bear market, even though the price has risen, we don't know a lot of people stepping in to buy this is more institutionally driven or sovereign driven. And so I think a lot of that percentage of investment really comes or less investment comes from just the excitement and frothiness in the market. We haven't really seen a lot of net new Bitcoin companies as well and things that have commercial viability. It's always weird to me and I don't really know why it is because I think that there's like Geo Geo opportunities across the world when it comes to on ramps and thinking about like in the like on ramp from Fiat to BTC in interesting ways. And then the other side of that. So I guess I'm taking the, the, the alternative take to what Liam shared, because I think Angel only invests only increases because you would look back and theoretically the opportunity size for somebody holding Bitcoin is, has been greater before, not now moving forward, it's less of an upside, but also the wealthier someone gets, that's the optionality and that's where they either start to build a business or invest. And I think what excites me is as more investors holding Bitcoin are theory even more sophisticated in my mind. And I don't mean because I think somebody that adopted Bitcoin in 2010 or 11 for better or worse has a couple of screws loose, right? Because they just caught it, they saw it that early. And so alternatively, somebody that investor is holding Bitcoin that, and this is kind of again, our thesis on the stuff about people we hire and the people building is somebody that has 10 plus years of professional experience in a certain domain and has certain expertise. And then it generates wealth by holding Bitcoin will either be more likely to build a business and need less capital or just build it themselves. Because I think that's how we go is to a flatter world, not a like centralized golden handcuffs, golden type world. But then also people will just be naturally more likely to spot opportunities that are less like moonshots and more commercially viable and deliver value. IE maybe the bit bonds idea, even though I don't really fully fully know how a commercial viability of bit bonds is, but William's transition. Well, that too before before we transition there. It does make sense. And to your point, there haven't been a ton, ton of commercially viable businesses that have been created today because everybody wants to build the product for themselves. Like what is the gap in the market? And I know that this is something that I wish existed and and could apply to me. And really early on, it was, you know, complete cypherpunks who, you know, were looking what is the worst possible scenario that could happen? Always thinking about being extremely paranoid and making sure that there could be literally zero way that anybody could get your information or anything like that. And that's just not necessarily always how things can scale to the rest of the world. And so as newer people come in and they can see an area where, you know, Bitcoin and financial services can compete with banks in a better way, they're just going to naturally out compete them, especially when they have that experience at the banks Oregon other financial institutions. So yeah, it's it's 1. The cohort of Bitcoin investors changing will inevitably cause the difference in Bitcoin businesses to change as well but with that on the big bonds piece, it was interesting to see Pierre Rochard not necessarily bit bonds exactly but he's founding the Bitcoin bond company. His goal is to provide transparent financial products that help institutional investors access bitcoins long term growth. It's I'm not completely clear at this point what the product is going to look like based on what I can find online. He put A1 pager out there and we'll be speaking with Pierre next week to learn a little bit more about what exactly the product looks like. But essentially my understanding is that it will be an SPV. There will be lenders who can receive some nominal dollar yield and there will be leverage Bitcoin exposure. You know, Pierre has been at the forefront of this essentially speculative attack for over a decade now. And that the whole thesis is, you know, if there's a finite amount of some asset Bitcoin there and an infinite amount of Fiat or dollars, you should, you know, hold the finite asset and go short the infinite asset in order to acquire more wealth over the long term. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I love the idea for the company. What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean, because there's not a ton of info, I'll, I'll probably defer my my thoughts until we have him on the show next week. It'll be great to to do a deep dive with him. But on the surface seems like a a very interesting idea. To your point, Liam, like you know, Pierre, I think is is primed and and the perfect person to do something like this because he's been talking about these dynamics for for a decade, as you mentioned, and and so very excited to see what what he's cooking up. Also, just shout out, I do really appreciate and like their their branding and aesthetic. Very clean, sort of tratify esque wealth core if you will, which I'm I'm a big fan of. Yeah. I think something we talked about before is we don't plug in F external pods. Maybe we can do it in the newsletters we have going out, but Pierre and Michael revamped the new podcast, going back to their writings and it's really fantastic. Something we need to, I don't know if we do a write up and like get people to listen, but I think it's it's really fantastic for individuals either that are coming into the space. They want to go back to like the first principles of like why Bitcoin exists and what's wrong and just the under the first principles of just like, you know, economics. But then also just for somebody that's been around for a while and that you just need to go, you know, either reinforce or go back to the basics. To your point on this one, we would love to where it's going to be exciting to hear where Pierre is coming from. The thing that I'll call out that gets a little missed on institutional adoption for bonds or like credit facilities is ultimately how they're positioned to the institutional investor. There's a lot of discussion around inserting Bitcoin and debt specifically around real estate. And I don't necessarily, it's not that I'm not excited about it because I do think middle to long term Bitcoin helps in the deleveraging of this over leveraged system. And but the kicker or the caveat is it helps deleveraging for productive debt, not unproductive debt. And a cousin of that is going to institutional investors and saying, Hey, I'm going to take some of your capital, buy Bitcoin and dollars. It's, and the idea generally is like from an institutional perspective as well, you can reduce the volatility, but the idea is if you can reduce the volatility, well, you can just buy less Bitcoin. And the other side of it is most people need to get over the Bitcoin hump. So even if it's a small amount and it's wrapped in a sexier wrapper, it's still very hard for them to make that leap. And the best way I can describe it, and this might sound hyperbolic, but it really isn't. It's like you're selling a snake and then that you sprinkled some poison on it because that's how they look at Bitcoin. It's like, man, like I still think it's poison. I don't see, I see as a risky asset. So you're giving me this stake, this like capital and then you're going to sprinkle it on. I'm not saying for this. I'm just saying in general, like going to institutional capital and explaining, Oh, I have a better version of Bitcoin. You still have to sell them on Bitcoin. And then if you get them there, they're like, well, why don't I just buy spot Bitcoin and then reduce that? And then because you're layering on assumptions as well, which everyone knows, if you're investing, you want to reduce the amount of assumptions. So you need Bitcoin to work. You need the execution of the bond. And then if you're investing the capital, I'm curious where the capital's getting invested. Is the private market feel like operating businesses or is it going to be just in the treasury market? So again, it's just a lot of it's like everything here, it's all about execution and figure. And it goes back to what we were talking about a second ago with are people building things for themselves or the market. It breaks down, it comes back to taste, which is one O 1, you know, for thousands of years. It's like, do you have a taste for what the market wants and then can you get it there? And so the branding to Brian's point, there's a nice taste there. And then it's just about the execution and how do you not only raise the capital, but then create the structure products that are appealing for the market. And so it'll be fun to to dive into that. Yeah, it's, it's a really interesting point on the, the dollar capital and the, the persona of that, that capital. And, and sort of what I think you're you're referencing, Michael, is like there's sort of 2 ends of the spectrum. Like you fully understand Bitcoin, so then you would just buy Bitcoin or you don't you think it's poison? And so like you kind of don't understand the value prop of having a lower Vol poison. And I think what this company and others like it are going after is like the the cohort in the middle who like is curious enough, but still either via some portion of their mandate that has like volatility stipulations in it. There's there's some reason why they basically want like a watered down version of Bitcoin exposure. And there clearly is there that core cohort clearly exists. If you just look at like micro strategies bonds and how well they've performed and also been oversubscribed historically. So clearly that demand exists. It's just like, I think, I think you're totally right in that it, it is sort of a unique persona in that you don't fully understand Bitcoin because then you would probably just buy Bitcoin, but you're not fully against it because then the idea doesn't really make sense to you. So it's someone in the middle there which go ahead. There is also think about like the the Larry thinks of the world, but are like fully Bitcoin maximalist. Like you can be running a credit hedge fund and allocate to credit products and be doing that for 40-30 years and then just find Bitcoin on your journey and you still manage capital on behalf of other people. But you understand why Bitcoin is the best asset in the world and still have to for your day job, allocate to credit products. That's why this product could potentially make sense for those people who have a lot of capital. They have a specific mandate, but they understand Bitcoin deeply. And this one is kind of interesting to your point, Michael, because it's not Bitcoin plot and credit plus real estate and equity or whatever. It's just a pureplay on Bitcoin. Yeah, I think so. I think it's and then it goes back to market timing, right, Because what Brian was sharing, there's a liquidity profile that MSTR provides, which is like the downside protection coupled with the convert coupled with access to the equity. There's a lot of there that like we see the capital being absorbed and it's how many companies can do that strategy and how much money catches up to want more of it. And then does it accrue like proto distributed to the top companies doing that, IE like Metaplanet? And then to your point, there's some level below that, which is something like this in what segment of the market? But yet because there's so much money and there's so much negative yielding money that there, there definitely has to be it there. It's just figuring out then how do you pull again the whole thing together. So yeah, hey guys, hope you're enjoying the show. Just want to send you a quick note. And while you may know of multi institution custody and the best in class services around that a lot of clients and prospective clients generally ask us or don't necessarily know of the other financial services we provide. At the end of the day, Onrep's aim is to be your trusted guide in crafting multi generational wealth. Our clients not only get access to multi institution custody, Lloyd's of London insurance lending, trading, inheritance and also independent or individual retirement accounts. Now along with that, a lot of our clients end up opting for a private client tier, which ultimately allows them to get a dedicated client solutions manager who provides additional white glove handhold, handhold onboarding and which is from industry experts. Our team comes from the largest firms in the space and we've onboarded billions of dollars and thousands of clients. And you're going to really appreciate some of that expertise, whether it's for yourself or family in a trusted way to help with onboarding to movement of funds. If you're on a collaborative custody provider and need help uploading wallet configuration files, plugging in the devices, if your backup or your device firmware's out, we'll help you with the C phrase uploading to get that signature taken care of and assets moved over. Now, along with our private client tier, clients get access to tax, inheritance, and advisory support, and then also access to private equity investments in the Bitcoin ecosystem via our relationships with Early Riders, the venture capital firm operating with Bitcoin as our hurdle rate. At the end of the day, we blend timeless prudence with the tools of tomorrow and partner in training clients dreams into lasting legacies. Reach out to us today and we'd love to talk with you. You can shoot me an e-mail at michaelandhonor@bitcoin.com. You can shoot the team an e-mail at helloandhonor@bitcoin.com, or you can go to our website and book a consultation and we'll speak with you soon. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. And then one last one that we can touch on today. Meanwhile, they are proud to announce $40 million Series A led by High Framework and Fuller Ventures with participation by a couple other parties. This is for for those who are unfamiliar, they offer Bitcoin denominated life insurance and annuities. So it's a cool idea. I haven't used the product myself, but. It's interesting and good to see funding for other Bitcoin focused ventures and and I like that there are more companies offering Bitcoin exposure for or Bitcoin denomination for everything that there is not just necessarily buy, sell Bitcoin on and off ramps. And it's getting ingrained deeper into the everyday life of you know what we're what people like us would like to have wanted to get your thoughts on on the phrase and and meanwhile, if you've spent any time there. I mean, personally, I think that there's I like, and Brian's talked a lot about this. It's something that I think over time we'll focus more on on the fun side is like this notion of permanent capital and there's a lot of dollars sitting around idle. And as long as the thesis is right that Bitcoin goes up and to the right, then infusing that in those structures will deem a positive return. One of them that I think probably do it a little better, even though I'm not as familiar today, what was in the past is like crowd health. So there's something to like parking those dollars, but maybe the majority of it is in BTC. You have to get alignment right from the consumer. But I I like plays like that. The meanwhile one's interesting. I don't know enough of the like insurance just gets so murky and convoluted and so don't have a, a deep understanding there. What I do know is that at least historically, last time I had looked, they offer some kind of like risk free rate of return on yield. They have to produce like 3% on based on whatever they're pitching to the market. And there's no real understanding or explanation on how they get that yield generation, BTC yield. And everyone knows if you're not, if you don't know where the yield comes from, then it's generally from you. And so that's the thing that I think is, is worth bringing up that a lot of these products like you want static permanent capital that has an understanding of like what the return profile is and how far somebody's going on the risk curve. And it's not really explained. And I don't think it can be explained because there's not really a risk free rate of returning yield in Bitcoin. It's holding the Bitcoin and not touching it. So that's I think just something worth calling out. Maybe we'll have to do a deep dive or get them on the pod to to walk through that. Yeah, it's a good call. I, I candidly don't know enough about it, but that's interesting around the, the yield component. But to, to your first point, broadly speaking, I, I do align with this thesis of basically like finding these pools of idle dollars. So, you know, the insurance world would historically be one health insurance as well. The, the, the example I always like to give is the, the funeral homes, which basically like if you need like a plot for your grave and to set up a funeral, like you do that, like sometimes, you know, decade plus in advance where you're putting down a deposit of some amount and it's just sitting in dollars. And so it's like that concept of like, if there's just these pools of idle dollars around and you can infuse Bitcoin into whatever that structure is, it's better for all parties, right? The Funeral Home wins. The the person who's putting the deposit down wins. And so that I think is an extension. This is kind of an extension of that. That thesis that I've had for a while is like, we just need to identify where all these idle dollars sit and infuse Bitcoin in various ways. Brian's already bought the plot for all the shit coins out there too. All right. Anything else we want to hit on today before wrapping up? Need to figure out a closing segment or like rabid fire. I don't know if it's a business ideas could be harebrain or if there's bullish bearish, but there's something here that. There was, there's this tweet this morning which I thought was worth pulling up. I think AP Abacus, I think he called GameStop a few weeks ago and now he's calling. 2 new corporate entrants are coming. So you know, guesses in the comments are Dell and somebody else. There's been murmurs around eBay as well, but any thoughts? Any thoughts from the group on on who the next corporates, corporate IC OS? I think it's probably somebody international who's coming next, that he's dealing with something tariff related. I think that there's just a lot going on with allocators finally understanding who the true counterparty risk is. There's in the system based on trust. There's trust being eroded pretty rapidly. I don't know exactly. I'm not going to be able to to speculate who exactly this is. There are people who speculated Facebook and Meta for a long time. I know he's got like a llama names Bitcoin or or Max or something for like Maxi or, but it's it's anybody's guess. Yeah, but you hit on a good point there and that the eroding trust is a broader theme and it's it's not just corporates, it's nation States and it's really, you know, make what you will of all this tariff trade war stuff. If you zoom out what is really happening, it's basically a move away from globalization towards a more multi polar world. And the knock on effect of that is inherently less trust, right. And so you need some other asset that you don't have to trust an issuer. It needs to be credibly neutral would be great if it was also digital. And so that's why Bitcoin is is really perfect in prime for this moment from the corporate, nation state, individual level, all across the board. In a world with eroding trust, you need this credibly neutral asset. Yeah. It's going to be fun to see like the first company that really you would think it'd be Square, but it doesn't feel like it for a number of reasons that really just like embodies the Bitcoin strategy like across the board. So from capital preservation instead of stock buybacks, right, because stock buybacks have certain value. But then ultimately one of the negatives is you're reducing optionality in the future because you're you're expending the capital that you made today and you think from from that. So holding a treasury to leveraging the network for like whether it's cross-border and it can be stables coupled with BTC, different integrations. But then ultimately like passing through because you theoretically like, I guess holding Bitcoin, being a Bitcoin treasury firm has shown positive from the public traded side, but then also being able to cure super cash flow positive. And then you can pass back some of those dividends to the shareholders. Like there's something interesting there for like somebody that fully understands why it's just like the best form of capital preservation from a full stack, from the treasury all the way through like corporate finance and how they manage. Honestly should have been claim base if Bellagio had never joined it's. Funny. It's funny you say that because it came up to, this came up last week, somebody deeply respectful or respect executive in the industry, traditional industry breaking into the space. And he referenced how like, you know, careful Coinbase, right? Like they're, they're on, they're on. It's like, are they really? Because you look at like the signal, the signal is they've been involved in the space since 13 or wherever and they held, and I know this is an exact number, but they had like 4 Bitcoin going into their IPO. It's like that's the signal. It's like they missed the whole vote. So how could they, You know, to your point, Brian, it's should have built that vertical integration to do that. And yeah, they did it. So, and it's sad because we may not see that company, they'll just end up private because any Bitcoin person would rather just, that's true. They're printing. They would come private, especially if there's all this like tokenization stuff. You're going to be able to sell private placements a lot easier, bring more liquidity to that market. Yeah. With public markets, we're just seeing that there's more pressure to, you know, add more coins in order to monetize faster, even if it is necessarily damaging to your brand over the long term. Yeah, it's, it's the same. It's the, it's the Bitcoin crypto thing on a personal side all the way to the business side. It's like you're delaying a little bit of gratification for long term winning and and also just being able to like look people in the eye and not have scanned them. And so there's just a reality of the incentives haven't been there. But it's bullish that as Bitcoin gets more of that divergent from crypto, more capital comes in, more capital is going to require it. We'll see more people take a stand on not putting, you know, salon on their balance sheet or, or supporting other crypto. Right, boys, Should we wrap it there? Two way to go full circle from starting with crypto to I mean with it's all, it's all noise. A lot of noise we're here to we're here to sift through it for you and find the signal. Thanks everybody for joining. See you in a couple weeks. 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 Onramp 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.

Transcript source: fountain

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