Transcript+
Welcome back to another episode of Wake Up Call. Before we get started, please like, share and subscribe to on ramp media channels to receive the best Bitcoin education and content in the industry. And also be sure to check out our latest research report titled Bitcoin the Emergent Asset class has arrived. This is a three-part series aimed at introducing important Bitcoin centric concepts to the institutional allocator world. Part 1 available now and LinkedIn. The show notes explores Bitcoins volatility and why it is a uniquely desirable characteristic of the asset that can boost returns and dampen volatility in traditional portfolios. Wake Up Call aims to educate financial professionals on the merits of the Bitcoin investment thesis. How this asset class represents both a threat to legacy financial service businesses and an opportunity to differentiate oneselves to retain and attract new clients. Hosted by Mark Connors on Ramp's Head of Global Macro Strategy and Rich Kerr on Ramp's President of Managed Wealth, this weekly show seeks to provide financial professionals the wake up call they need, prompt them to have an open mind with respect to Bitcoin, rethink their prior assumptions, become more educated on the topic, and learn from others who are already farther down this path. Wake Up Call is live streamed on LinkedIn every Monday morning and the recording can be found across on RAMP media channels. Now time for the show. All right. Well, welcome, Welcome back to the wake up call and happy Monday morning to everybody. Mark, how are you? Rich, good morning to you. Very well, thanks. Especially as we got a mild November here in the East Coast and Bitcoin might be popping to another all time high. Not that we watch price here as as as adults in the room, but maybe once in a while we have, you know, in the in the in the peripheral. I keep an eye on it, Rich. So yes, all well here. Thanks. Terrific and glad to hear it. And Noel, welcome, good to good to see you. Thank you for joining us from beautiful Madrid, Spain. Thank you so much Rich. Hi Mark, really great to be with you both. This is some of me fun. Awesome. Well, let me just really briefly introduce Noel, who is our guest today. Noel has like Mark often says Noel is one of those people that is bilingual. She speaks traditional finance, but she also speaks beautifully in the, in the, in the crypto universe. And she is an author of crypto is macro now and which I think is a very, very well read newsletter that she produces on a regular basis. I mean, I, I see it regularly inside of my feed in LinkedIn and it's really terrific insights that go above and beyond just the assets itself. And and so I think the work that you're doing is, is outstanding and we're delighted to have you here today. Are you ready to secure your future with Bitcoin? At Onramp, we're revolutionizing how you can save for retirement. Onramp has just launched the industry's first Bitcoin IRA product with multi institution custody, designed to give you unparalleled security, transparency, and Peace of Mind. With Onramp, you can verify your assets on chain and protect them with the support of three independent institutions, reducing risks and enhancing security. 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. On Ramp 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. On Ramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it, as a complement to your existing self custody setup. For more information about our services as well as our new Bitcoin IRA product, check us out at On Ramp Bitcoin Calm. But before we get kind of moving too deeply into Noel, because you're going to be the star of the show for the bulk of the time, you know, maybe let's capture some of the key themes that Mark is keying on so there our audience can kind of think about how to look at the week ahead. I mean, I, I scour things regularly, Mark, you know, I think over the course of the past week with the election and now subsequently, you know, we're seeing the cabinet pick and an inner circle of Trump forming here, at least in the United States. And it certainly has implications on a global basis. It's really quite fascinating to me to to see some of the selections that are coming in and many of them are very pro Bitcoin or pro crypto and and I think that that's a positive sign. But you know, there's some other thoughts that you might have to share and I'd welcome, welcome you kind of taking it from here. All right. Well, as you said, we're going to set this up for Noelle to, to bring her insights about what she has recently written, which is relevant to anybody in Travi or, or crypto, because as as you say, crypto is macro. Now you have to talk about the Trump bump and we're going to start there. But today I think is about the players versus the protocol. There are a lot of people now claiming to be Bitcoin advocates. There are people who say everything's going to change Now with Trump, we're going to separate it and say there are some factors, economic factors that are trenching our level of debt, our deficit, the dollar, interest rates. Those were there before Trump won in his red sweep. They're going to be there during his administration. And we think it's going to drive investment themes. Regardless of who comes in at the margin, things will change. And Noel, we'll talk about maybe with the one or two appointments that matter the most. So let's go front and center. What happened last week, It was not a good week for pharmaceuticals. So whether or not you think Kennedy is the right person in that role, pharmaceutical companies did not fare well. You had Eli Lilly down 10%, bringing their month to date down 10. Same thing with AB VE. So the point about the five day versus month to date, that's how quickly it happened. Trump was elected, people were digesting, but with comments out of Kennedy, it caused pharmaceuticals to just have one of the worst weeks, I think, in the last 20 years, definitely in the 99th percentile. But banks are doing well. So there's definitely been a Trump trade going on here. You look at things like, you know, JP Morgan up 4% of the week, up 11%. So banks, banks moved on the Election Day. Pharma didn't. And we say that because as these appointments come through, you may see more ripples across sectors. But of course we look at Bitcoin, you know, it's up 30% in the month. It's, you know, close to pumping up to its $93.00 to that all time high. But that's for the equity folks. We still think that trenchant dynamics like the interest rates and the persistence of inflation will do something here. And Noel, you know, we talked a little bit about it, but I'd love to have you talk about, especially given where you are in Madrid, you know, we are here in our little echo chamber in the Northeast or in, in, you know, the, the Sunbelt of Phoenix, you know, where where rich is. We're all, you know, basically the mini banking and retiree communities is how does a high dollar, which is in the 95th percentile over the last 50 years window 651 is at a pretty high level as you see over over time. What does that do to the rest of the world is destabilizing? Does it cause shifts in people's policies? So I guess I'll stop there and and say that the debt, the credit card level that wage earners are dealing with, everyone's in the same position. So how can Trump help? And does Bitcoin? Is Bitcoin still viable with or without Trump trying to push the agenda? Do I jump in here? Sorry about that. Do you want to I do want to say thank you so much for those kind words on the opening Rich. That was really appreciated and Mark, thank you so much for like tantalizing setup that you've left me here. Dive into the dollar. Let's start with that because that's the beautiful chart you just had right now. The sound you can hear in the background if you listen very carefully is emerging economies screaming in pain. The high dollar is painful for most of the world. I am in Europe, as he pointed out, and Ouch, I am not going to be visiting the United States anytime soon. Unfortunately, what happens is a climbing dollar does drain global liquidity because all US investments, all US services, all US assets suddenly become much more expensive. That diverts funds from entering into other assets. A higher dollar is a drain on global liquidity. It also effects collateral values, etcetera. Not good news. And part of the problem is you have emerging economies with uncomfortable amounts of dollar based debt at a time commodity prices are also in dollars. So they have to somehow find the money, not need to pay for the commodities they need to get by, but then also to service the debt. It's not pretty. And we could, unless there is a turn in the dollar index, we could start to see defaults. That's not going to make international markets happy at all. It is also relevant for crypto as you mentioned earlier. I sort of divide myself. I speak 2 languages. I follow macro markets. I also follow crypto markets. And my obsession is the overlap between the two of them, how macro is impacting crypto markets, but also how the crypto markets and the blockchain technology more broadly are impacting the macro economy. And it's very unusual to have Bitcoin climbing when the dollar is climbing. Normally Bitcoin does act like gold and that the dollar commodities that are generally priced in dollars don't do very well when the dollar is climbing. Well, the reasons I mentioned before, they're just simply more expensive for most of the world. Well, that's not what we're seeing now. We're seeing Bitcoin climb and the dollar index climb, which tells us that there are other narratives at work here than the typical macro narrative that we have been obsessing about for the past year at least. I'll take a break there because you may want to insert some other narratives now. Well, on the on the player side you just talked about and the one thing we were rich and I were excited about was having you with the rest of the world. You know, we're focused here. You're bringing up the fact that although you know, the US is 6% of population, 25% of GDP, it is almost 50% or more depending on you calculated other financialized assets in the world. So what we do matters, but the persistence of what you're talking about, if we have higher rates and inflation, people will be continuing to look for alternatives in crypto. And Rich and I were talking about this right before you came on digging into the sheet and you and I touched on it about BlackRock and the Bitcoin ETFs as the gateway drug for people in the US to get Bitcoin. Blackrock's balance sheet or Blackrock's 10 Q came out and it showed that ETFs again are driving their business. We all know that it's something like $10 trillion of ETFs globally. I'm sorry, in the US and BlackRock is a big share of that. But what's changed is that Blackrock's business is in the ETF space is about 55% equities, 38% fixed income and the balance 6% or so is alternatives. In December of 2023 that was alternatives could be active ETS etcetera. Today the majority of that in just eleven months is Bitcoin. Bitcoin therefore by using majority in that 6% number because they don't keep the exact so bitcoins about 3% of their global ETF book. That's amazing. I didn't I hadn't seen that. That's fascinating figure. And it is astonishing when you think where we were just two years ago when no one would touch Bitcoin with a 10 foot pole. So it's you know, that's an astonishing progress. I often I get a lot of pushback from crypto natives about how this is this institutionalization of crypto is exactly what Bitcoin was created to avoid. And that underlines a very deep misunderstanding of what Bitcoin is. It also highlights how often people conflate crypto with Bitcoin. They are very crypto is a vast field. There's everything in the crypto market that you could possibly think of. And Bitcoin is one asset, the largest asset, easily about 60% of the market. But it is just one asset. So I will not conflate the two. Bitcoin It was not created to disintermediate asset managers necessarily. And what Bitcoin was always about choice. Bitcoin was about giving users the choice to not go through centralized payment providers if you don't want to. And what the asset managers have done is offer yet another channel of choice. Those that want a convenient on ramp and are OK with a centralized nature of the custody in the service, they'll use that. Those that aren't, don't have to. So Bitcoin is not going against its original ethos. So what we are simply getting is a more diverse and a more sophisticated marketplace. That's what Bitcoiners would be in favor of. It's always about choice. No one is a for. No one is forcing investors to go centralized. It's their choice. Great point, Noel. Maybe when you and I spoke the other day, you did such a wonderful job of kind of describing your, your path into this this space. And I think it's really relevant for people to understand that you've accomplished quite a bit in in the not only in the crypto universe, but also in the broader financial services and with the work that you've done. And so maybe maybe share with our audience a little bit about your journey and then your journey into the digital asset space because I think it's fascinating. Well, thanks so much, Rich. Happy to do so. Once Upon a time, the land far, far away. Now I come from trad fine. I graduated and applied maths and economics in the United States, went straight into financial analysis, brokerage, sales, corporate finance and I ended up doing fund management, managing futures and options, which was really, really stressful. I really shouldn't have been doing that because I was, you know, pregnant at the time. I'm left the financial. I left fund management when my son was born and I set up one of the first e-commerce companies in Spain. This was back in the dinosaur years of 2000, Spain's way behind anything that ever happened in the United States, which is an opportunity. Anyways, I digress. I ran that for 13 years, sold it and was then trying to figure out what to do and what what, what my next career. And I was cutting up on some reading about what had been going on in finance and technology more broadly when I wasn't paying attention. And I kept hearing about this thing called Bitcoin. This was in early, this was in January 2014. I don't like not understanding things, so I watched a Do you remember Khan Academy videos? I watched the Khan Academy video. When I when I realized that what I was looking at was permissionless payments, I got goosebumps because I grew up in Central Africa and Zambia and just thinking about what it could do in that part of the world, Permissionless payments in that part of the world, I just became obsessed. The usual typical thing, didn't sleep, couldn't do anything else but research and started writing about this, started teaching about it also. And the more I researched, the more I realized the barriers that were in the way for it to be used as permission payments in such a fragmented financial landscape as sub-Saharan Africa. But it became even more interesting because of that, especially when I realized that actually what I was looking at, it wasn't a payments network. It was a different type of marketplace. And I'm a total markets nerd. I can jump up and down and tell you how markets are not a tool for freedom. They should be a tool for freedom. But unfortunately, in most Western economies, they're not used in that original sense anymore. But suddenly there's a new type of technology that can bring it back to that distribution of savings to where the opportunity is roots that they originally had. So became totally obsessed with this. Joined Coindesk in 2016. I think it was just do their newsletters. Ended up setting up their research team. Left in 21 to join Genesis Trading, which was a very good time to join Genesis Trading. I left before things totally went crazy. Left in September 22 to focus on what I'm doing now. What I really care about is I've probably sketched out is the overlap between crypto and the macro landscapes, especially the impact of this technology on the global financial field that moves the world basically. And it's fascinating. I write the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, as you kindly pointed out earlier, Rich, thank you. And it's, I feel absolutely privileged. It is the most interesting thing I've ever done. Yeah, what, what a, what an interesting story. I mean, it's just, I think it's fascinating. And what it tells me is just you're a deeply curious person, you know, and brave, you're willing to kind of move into interesting spaces and you're, you know, all over the all over the globe and your travels. And I think that that you know, probably lends a lot of perspective, you know, certainly what you were sharing about growing up in Zambia and permissionless payments. And I can imagine that, you know, that hit you as quite profound. And, and when you, when you think about, you know, that original use case that that I think Satoshi put forward, how do you see the use case of, of, you know, Bitcoin evolving? I think that's one of the things that a lot of advisors, when I'm speaking to them, they're like, OK, well, I kind of getting there around, you know, this idea that it's sound money. There's some really interesting concepts there. And I think to myself, Oh my God, you know, they're really more than interesting. They're they're, they're meaty. But that being said, you know, I think people are at at different phases of discovery, certainly in this audience. And, you know, one of the questions I often hear is, you know, what are the use cases? How do they evolve? What does it ultimately look like above and beyond this, this, you know, beautiful, hard sound money that lays underneath it and gives you these, you know, this wonderful store of value and in an emerging, you know, medium of exchange. So where does it go in your mind? I think it's so wonderful, Rich, that people are asking you that question because far too often we hear from financial experts that's just simply Bitcoin has no utility, full stop. It just has not. You have people asking because they realize with this kind of an increase and with this kind of a market cap, there has to be something there. And, and they're right, and you're right to be explaining this to them with the nuance that you have sketched out. Human beings, stepping back here, human beings, we are collectively really, really bad at seeing what new technologies will be used for. The Internet was created to share research papers. The phonograph was invented to be able to hear sermons in your living room. We're bad at that. And it goes pretty much for everything, I think. So we have to start from there and realize that whatever Bitcoin was originally built for, it's going to find its place in the world, the technology. Society finds uses for technology that the original creators generally didn't even imagine. Now, Bitcoin was created to be peer-to-peer cash. That's basically it. That's in the first sentence of the white paper. If anyone wants to go back and read, it's a really good read. You can skip the math parts, but it's actually very well written. It does layout a fairly simple proposition, but the genius is that he Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he, she or they are, found a solution to a problem that cypherpunks had been looking for for decades. This was not a as a a brief parenthesis to correct another misconception. This was not as a result of the financial crisis that or she had been working on this for at least a couple of years and say before him. Many had been trained searching for the solution for decades, but it coincidentally it emerged at just the right time. But going carrying on close parenthesis, carrying on Bitcoin is peer-to-peer cash for many around the world. Now, most of the people that you and I know will say I don't need it. You'll find we are privileged. We live in a society in a financial system in which I can pay with the swipe of my phone, in which I can, you know, even just think payments and they're probably they're they're easily made in Europe. It's very sophisticated, probably even more actually, if I may eventually, but even more than the United States. We don't use paper checks here, for instance, so we don't need it for that. But most of the world does not have our level of privilege. For much of the world, Bitcoin, as clunky as it may be, as a payments rail, it is better than what they have. And you lay over that the censorship resistance to making Bitcoin transfers, then that is a very appealing proposition, again, to many who do not live in the stable systems that we enjoy. So Bitcoin is a payments mechanism for many. Bitcoin is the store of value that you were talking about, rich. It is a digital type of gold if you will. It is in fact probably harder asset than gold. Gold's supply, we're told it's finite. We have seen no evidence of this and we do know that gold supply is not going to be quite so finite. If the price goes up to say $50,000 a $100,000 an ounce, suddenly it's going to be economical to extract gold from seabeds and asteroids and suddenly the supply equation shifts. That can't happen with Bitcoin. Bitcoins supply, distribution, supply schedule does not care what the price is. There is nothing that is going to change that. And that's even before you get into the whole custody thing. It is easy. It is easier to cross a border with a pen drive than a knapsack full of gold. And given the amount of conflicts that have been erupting around the world, tragically, this is material for many, many people and for central banks as well. I'm convinced that we will eventually see central banks, probably soon in fact, see emerging countries, central banks around the world start to realize that Bitcoin is a dollar substitute in the sense that you can convert it into dollars 24/7, 365 can't do that with Treasuries, can't do that with gold. And Bitcoin does have that hard cap protection. So we will see central banks start to hold Bitcoin as reserves. It is a reserve asset. And here's the click. Here's the kicker, going back to what I was saying before about new technologies. It is a new technology. It is a new type of database. Bitcoin is the largest data storage network for NFTS at the moment. Advise with Ethereum, sometimes one's ahead, sometimes the other, but it's up there. It is one of the largest data storage networks. And while we think who wants Bitcoin based NFTS with these transaction fees 1 the transaction fees are not high and two choice. The market will decide. There's no one saying you have to do this with you. This is the free market at work. We will see where the market preference ends up falling. So Bitcoin is all of those things. Plus let's not overlook speculation. Bitcoin is volatile. Traders want it for the alpha. Fine, why not Bitcoins diversity, if you will, of all of those different use cases is part of what gives it value and part of what gives it its floor. Bitcoin goes up, it comes down, but with such a diverse group of investors with different investment theses, the floor gets higher and higher. Noel All right, so Rich, you got to book Noel for round two because we're not going to get through this all. I want to back to the bilingual. I just want to augment 2 points you made on gold. 2/3 of the gold that exists in the world today was mined since 1950. So that Olympic sized pool that everyone talks about that gold is it isn't a static one. We have mined as technology grows and price increases and we unleash the beast in 71 by de pegging it. People went after it Noel so dead on. And and the other point was there's a great chart. We'll maybe we'll we'll put total assets by market cap that I'm looking at. I won't jump in here and and and share it. But over the weeks since Trump was elected, Bitcoin jumped silver. It jumped Saudi Aramco, which is the Saudi nationalized oil company, to be the 7th largest asset in the world. Leaving Warren Buffett's Berkshire has them way behind in #12. And yet it's useless, right? And yet, and yet it's yet it's and yet it's useless. BlackRock doesn't care. Fidelity doesn't care. Been in it for, you know, almost 10 years. Wow. You did. And I'll, I'll say this to everyone. You did the best job and the tightest delivery of the breath of the use case by use in geography and and and application that I've ever heard. Thank you. I don't, I don't throw those things out there as Rich knows. And that was so that'll be played back hopefully by people and they should store it and transcribe it. Well done. Thank you very much. Yeah. So what gets you, what gets you really excited when you're looking at all of the things that you're talking about, what are what are the, what are the big themes that that really energize you or or spark your curiosity? I'd love to hear. When it comes to markets, it's adoption. I'm fascinated about the emerging use cases and I do keep an eye on what's happening in different in countries around the world. Obviously, the institutional acceptance of Bitcoin as an, as a portfolio asset in institutional port for and again, I used to be a fund manager, I used to be a CFA. So I understand the rigor that goes into these decisions. To see it occupy such an important place in in the pantheon of acceptable assets is fascinating. And we knew the state would come. To be honest, it's come a lot faster than I thought it would. But then also to see it used as a savings asset for investors and savers around the world that I find exciting because of the following reasons. Gold is not that easily accessible. If you are living in say rural Kenya, you may have a cell phone, but you don't necessarily have access to a gold exchange, nor do you have a way to go and pick up your gold bar and keep it in a Caesar in. This is the seizure resistant way and whereas if you get your Bitcoin beamed to you and you self custody, then that's a different equation entirely that I'm fascinated by. It's hard to get data on, obviously, but anecdotal evidence here is playing a very important part. I'm also fascinated by the increasing use of Bitcoin as a way to finance the construction of renewable energy grids in areas where it has previously been uneconomical to do so. And we all know the importance of energy, access to energy for economic growth and opportunity, and that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the impact that can have. And another thing I'm fascinated by this ties in to what I was talking about earlier about Bitcoin being a new technology. We know because we live in financial in financialized economies, we know the impact, the benefit to in portfolios to venture to private portfolios of investments in new technologies. We also know the risks involved, but those are well rewarded should one choose correctly. However, in our our economies, that is limited to those that opportunity, that immature, that opportunity for superior gains, for outperformance is limited to those who are already rich. You want to invest in a new technology and as it is getting started in the Western world, you have to be an accredited investor or an institution. Whereas Bitcoin, ETH, Dogecoin, Sol, the whole range of crypto assets are available to anyone, anywhere from day one of inception. This is democratizing the investment in new technologies in a way that the Western economies have not yet managed to achieve. There is no other opportunity for investors, whoever you are, to be able to put whatever amount you want into something that is so new, so innovative and so still in its early days. Yeah, amazing. And then you and I were having a conversation on Friday and I found this an interesting one as well, because I know that a lot of advisors are paying attention to the conversation around tokenization. Now, does that apply in the Bitcoin world or is that, is that really kind of living in other crypto spaces? What are What are your observations on tokenization? The answer is yes to both. I hate it when I answer like that, but it actually really is. Tokenization is mainly done right now on Ethereum because Ethereum was built for that. OK, not specifically for that, but Ethereum was built for functionality, whereas Bitcoin was built for security. And so most tokenization today is being done on Ethereum. There's an amazing amount of activity, and I'm not just talking about tokenization of Fiat, other words, stable coins. There's some fascinating stuff going on there. You just have to look at what Stripe paid for the bridge platform. It's an eye watering amount. They they see where this is going. There's the course, the money market funds, there's tokenized real estate, there's other tokenized commodities. There is an increasing amount of work being done on Bitcoin to enable it to have smart contract functionality, smart contracts and please code that gives it functionality, inputs, outputs if then and that will allow tokenization on the Bitcoin blockchain. My, I'm excited about that because anything that's being built around Bitcoin does highlight the fact that this is an emerging technology. We don't yet know where the market is going to go for what the market is going to go for. But my personal view is why you don't really need tokenization on Bitcoin. Bitcoins value proposition is the security flexibility. We want flexibility. You're probably going to be better off in one of the other genes. Now, that said, the choice is what matters. Investors should be able to choose for small transactions. You don't necessarily want to use Bitcoin. You use something like Lightning or one of the other layer twos that offer fast and cheap transfers of Bitcoin. Same with some tokenization. You don't necessarily need the hard security. Maybe there's an intermediation intermediate that will give you the security, but perhaps not immediately. I'm not going to get into the technical discussion here. Where I'm heading with this is Ethereum is a much more obvious, clean and high community choice for the tokenization. But we could be surprised. Like I said before, we don't really know. The market could decide that what it wants is tokenization on Bitcoin. I'm excited about seeing that choice hit the market. Yeah, yeah, that's a, we could talk about that forever. And I don't want to do that because I know that we've got a, you've got a hard stop at at a certain point. But that being said, it is an interesting conversation and I and I do get the questions more and more frequently. And I think it's largely, and this is a healthy sign in my opinion. You know, I don't want people to lose the plot, but at the same point in time, it's sparking interest, it's sparking questions and curiosity. And that's a really, really strong and healthy, vibrant, you know, place to be. And I think people are, you know, waking up to Bitcoin in particular and they're and they're and they're evaluating and thinking through, OK, well, what are the app applications? What are the possibilities? Where could this thing go if you're if people are if they keep hearing OK, this could reshape the Internet and change the way that that people create and control their content and things on that nature. I, you know, I think it's probably a healthy thing that that, you know, anybody, anybody getting curious about where things can go is a very good sign that people are getting serious about what the capabilities are. I guess that's maybe what I'm trying to say. I'm getting lost in my thoughts but. Yeah. And the reminder that it's a new technology, digital gold, easy to understand. It's also a new technology. And can you think of any other asset that does embody such a diversity of potential investment? Theses Equities are equities, bonds are bonds and commodities. OK, perhaps commodities can be a bit more complex. Oil can be used for many different things, but Bitcoin is arguably the most complex. And, and this is also very important, oil is location specific. A barrel of oil in Sri Lanka is not the same as a barrel of oil in Norway. But a Bitcoin is a Bitcoin as a Bitcoin. A Bitcoin in Athens is exactly the same as a Bitcoin in Kinshasa and can move from 1:00 to the other in the blink of an eye. OK, literally 10 minutes, but still very, very quickly. So that's another, that's another thing that makes you invest Bitcoin such a fascinating investment, it really investment asset. Yeah. And don't you think it's funny, right, When you think about the big problems of the world, the big problems of the world, regardless of where you are on a political spectrum or where where you live, isn't it interesting that Bitcoin is always popping up as this could be the pathway, whether it be, you know, ending war as we understand it in kinetic ways, or it's tapping in and bringing energy resources to, you know, areas that are are strapped from from from our energy constrained, you know, stabilizing energy grids. You know, Bitcoin just constantly keeps coming up to the big problems that cause material challenges to humanity. And to me, you know, that that really is inspiring that people are solving. You know, climate is another big thing that's important to, you know, people that I love and know. And, you know, while my beliefs are a little bit different than theirs, I love the fact that they're gravitating to it, going, hey, Rich, what is this about? You know, what's Bitcoin doing in this way to help solve this? You know, so a lot of the early FUD that kind of existed in the marketplace is getting somewhat destroyed over a period of time slowly, systematically. And, and actually in proof, you know, there there's elements of proof that are actually happening in the space where you can see Bitcoin actually evolving and doing something that's really significant. I, I have two, I have two theories on that which I'll, I'll take a deep breath and just throw them out there. And one is that things are changing. I mean, we don't. You don't really need to look too far out your window to realize just how much the world has changed over the past 10 years. And this is overwhelming, obviously, but change is also an opportunity. And as we are finding out through the crises we've been through recently, through current monetary policy, etc, that economic orthodoxy is not what we thought it was, that traditional established economic theories no longer work, that does open a window to new ideas that does create. Yeah. Well, can you give an example of that? Because that's that's a bold statement we just said because. Hence the deep breath and I'm just throwing it out there, but do you remember back when accumulate, when governments accumulating huge amounts of debt was just simply a no go area? You just couldn't do that because nobody would continue to buy your. Well, we've seen that's not true. Do you remember when no government in their right mind would just print a huge amount of money? No, for any reason, what we've seen that is no longer true. And deficits don't matter. Have you heard any of the political parties over the campaigning? And I'm not just talking about the US. I'm talking pretty much anywhere. Have you heard anyone talk about bringing down debt levels? OK, maybe a few conversations, but no actual proposals. So economic orthodoxy has changed. We are in a new type of philosophy now. We're still trying to figure out what that is. But at the same time, like I said, this does open the window to new ideas coming in. The old school doesn't work. We don't know yet what the new school is, but we're interested. And when it comes to the climate change, that comes down to just persistence of narrative for two people. There's got to be something here. I can't be this wrong for so long. Therefore, maybe I should do a bit of research. And that's when they realize, oh, I was wrong on this when I thought it was bad for the environment. Oh, I was wrong when I thought it had no utility. Oh, I thought it was wrong. I was wrong when I thought you could just spin up another Bitcoin. So what's this whole scarcity thing about? So people are learning because of the persistence, not just of people like you who are doing everything you can to to help people understand, not just because of your stamina on this, but also because Bitcoins just not going away. It has gone up, it has come down, but every single it has, every single time it has crashed, it has come back stronger. And again, you can't say that about any other asset. Wow, OK. So that you're right are rewriting what we think about economics and assets and it is the breath of what it solves or helps from as you said, energy grids, leveling them off, getting opportunities to folks towns in Africa to get electricity and and pay for it to store their value in exchanges for non-us entities. That resilience you said is really the word integrity. When I was at my former firm and going through the 2022 three doldrums, the integrity of Bitcoin versus everything else is the thing that stood out and that's where I spent a lot of work and and and rich and I are speaking to Rias about does your portfolio have this resilience? Do do your bonds go bankrupt like Spirit Airlines today and then and then come back? No, they don't. Bitcoin is a is the definition of anti fragile in the investment in technology system. Yeah, and you're so right. And you've hit, you've hit the nail on the head on another issue, another thing that makes Bitcoin unique among assets other than commodities, arguably commodities in the same bucket in that it cannot go to zero. It just can't. And the reason it can't go to 0 is because of its one diversity of uses. There's always going to be someone somewhere that's going to want it for something, right? And two, there's no one who can switch it off. And as long as Bitcoin exists, which it will because there's no one that can change that and someone somewhere wants to use it, then it has a value. And that itself gives investors confidence. When equities go to 0, they're not coming back from that. But same with bonds. Commodities are not going to go to 0 again because they have a steady use case. But what if one day a commodity suddenly nobody wanted it anymore? There's suddenly something better than I'm going to choose a better than silver for whatever silver is used for industrially. Again, there's a terrible example. I should think of something better. But you know what I'm trying to say here, that Bitcoin, because of its evolving use case, and again, we still don't know what that's going to be 25 years from now because of the fact that no one can switch off the network. It will always have value somewhere to someone. And that gives investors confidence. So it's one of the few assets that isn't going to disappear. Well said. No doubt. So Noel, your husband is an investment advisor as I understand it. And you of course, being a well researched, not just an analyst, but you know, almost a futurist in many respects, you do such a nice job of kind of looking at the future and connecting dots. And but that being said, you know, how long did it take you to kind of help, you know, bring him along? And where is he at in this process? I love that question so much. We had, it was a it was a fun period. I'll say that a year of dinner table arguments, debates. I'll say debates, a year of dinner table debates. Because I started getting really interested in this. He wanted to know what I was spending all of my time on, why I wasn't sleeping. And so I'm talking to him about how interesting it is. Anti investment, traditional investment analyst, yes. But what backs it sounds like a technology scam kind of thing. And I would counter with what backs the dollar. Well, you know, the might, the might of the US military in like, Yeah, right, The faith and credit of the US government. Eventually he realized that Fiat works on faith, as indeed is implied by the name Fiat. Fiat works on faith. Bitcoin actually works on faith. We trust the network to work. If you're not so trusting, dive into the network. You can see it works. I'm not that trusting myself. I did. I did spend a long time figuring out how the code works. I'm not a coder myself. But when you realize that, yeah, there's actually no one that can stop this from working, that's when the magic hits. So it, it took a year and he get, he eventually got it. And as I'm sure you've seen this so many times of people that you talk to once you once you see it, you can't see it. So now he's all in on Bitcoin and Dogecoin. He likes dogs. So Dogecoin is just a yeah. And to his credit, he's he's a very nice man. To his credit for a year or so in the early days, he was saying we should buy some Dogecoin. And I'm like, don't be silly. We're not buying Dogecoin, he never once said I told you so. Yeah. That's a good marriage right there. Yeah, he's a good man. He's a very good man. And yes, he does get it now. And it's it's an interesting example also. And again, I come from Tradfi, so I also understand the the journey. It is a journey Bitcoin is. And you, you referred to this earlier Mark, about, you know, the new ideas that are coming in. And this is an extension of my theory on why things are, why the innovation in which you mentioned this also why innovation is picking up. Bitcoin is a tool, It's a technology. Technology is a tool. Bitcoin is a tool that not only gives us new paths, new vectors of innovation, it also, and this I get very excited about. It also is a tool that enables us to ask better questions. I come from Tradfi. I thought I understood money. It turns out I conflated money with numbers, and I moved them around. It was only when Bitcoin emerged and I dove into it that I started asking, wait, what is money? We assume we understand that because it's the water we've been swimming in since we were born. But suddenly along comes a tool that reminds you that's not necessarily what you think. And then when you start to ask that, Christine, you start to question a whole lot of other things as well. I, I am convinced that most people that work in tread fight today, the vast majority do not understand money. They again, they think they do, but they've never really asked the hard questions that studying Bitcoin forces you to ask. And so this is another journey that I, I went through. I see it was all my investment strategist husband go through it as well. What even does this represent? Yeah. That uncomfortable questions to ask and that's why that's why Rich and I have this call and that's why we want to have you on because right Rich. I mean, when you go into the advisors, what are the motivations or incentives that you've seen Rich that, you know, Noel acted on or just spoke about? Are they about the business or they looking forward? Well, you know, advisors are very, very sharp people, but they wear a lot of hats right there. There are a lot of things to their clients. You know, in many respects, they're coaches or psychological counselors in many respects around money and behaviors and, and, and they're deeply researched people, but it researched in the old frameworks, right? And they, they work within this, this framework that we all kind of commonly accepted. You, me, Noel, all, all of us, we were all in the same spot, right? Because I think we all had our epiphany and got curious enough to go down the rabbit hole. And the further that you do, all of a sudden you realize, hey, there's some things I need to unlearn and there's some things that I fundamentally need to learn. To your point, Noel, you know, what is money and what are the, you know, what are the foundations of money? I think that that was huge and safe. A Dean and the Bitcoin standard really kind of helped drill, you know, some of those components into my head and make me rethink about what I thought I knew. But we, you know, as a, as a financial advisor, right, they're constantly thinking about, well, how do I secure and do the best work that I possibly can for my clients so they can achieve their financial outcomes, you know, and at the same point in time, they're trying to grow and they're running a business. And so there's a lot of things that are, are pulling and dividing them entering Bitcoin into that conversation. That's a, that's another thing that they might view as a distraction, right? And, and so it's easy to say, well, I heard this and you pull it into the conversation and drop it and, and think, OK, well, now I can, you know, get away from the conversation. You know, it's money laundering, OK? It's, you know, it's a network. And if it fails or gets hacked, you know, then the whole thing goes to 0. And you, you can hear all of the, the, you know, the doubt and fear and, you know, all of that kind of come forward because frankly, they are busy people. And you know, I think at the, you know, our job is to just sit with them and keep them staying curious as long as we possibly can. And I think it's coming faster than than usual, to be perfectly honest. I think most people take a little bit of time, but I think with the price movement, I think with the tenor of politicians here, certainly in the United States changing very quickly, it's forcing their hand to say, OK, maybe I need to stop, slow down, pay attention to the Noel Atchison Atchison's of the world, the Mark Connors of the world, and start developing a thesis. And, you know, that's a healthy thing. So I do think when it opens, it'll open, you know, more of a floodgate than anything. There are our early adopters in the advisor community here in the States and they have got a very refined point of view about the role that Bitcoin plays. Certainly from a, a money standpoint, what is money, but also from a monetary policy standpoint and they are implementing and that's a that's a great thing for their clients. But we need to make sure that, you know, the message continues to get out so that others can can, you know, ultimately implemented and, and preserve their business. Because I think that there's a threat just as much as there is an opportunity. If you don't see the opportunity and and you have a 15 year track record of, you know, Bitcoin being the top performing asset in 111 year track record of the dollar debasement, then you know, if I'm a client, I'm going to say how did you miss those exactly, you know? Yeah, you're so right. In a way, This is why what you do is so important for now. Today, Rias have no excuse whatsoever to not understand this. And if their clients are asking about it, even more pressure. It's not something they can dismiss credibly, which means you're going to be getting a flood of inquiries. Yeah. And this is the thing that Mark and I were talking about earlier this morning separate of this call. But you know, clients are taking action on their own. You know, Rias probably don't realize this, but there are a ton of their clients have already taken steps to secure Bitcoin and those Bitcoin that that's what one point what $5 trillion, you know, asset right now. And those assets are unmanaged largely outside of the, you know, the ETFs. And so when you look at that and you think, OK, well, jeez, who's who's making those investments? Well, it's, it's my neighbors. It's, you know, a bunch of people like myself or whoever, right? And we're making decisions independently regardless of whether or not the RIAA has advised it. And so that right there says, wait a second, my clients are making decisions around their investments without me being a part of that conversation. And my reputation's on the line for not. Talking about, yeah, that ought to be a warning sign. Hey, wait a second. They're breaking from the council that I am providing. Why? And, and it ought to, you know, as an entrepreneur, they ought to get opportunistic about that and say, wait a second, I'd like to integrate that into your portfolio. Let me help manage this cohesively. Let's think about your financial plans and, and what you're trying to accomplish. This is great. I'm glad that you're engaged. Advisors love it when their clients are engaged, but they don't love it when their clients are making independent decisions and informing them of what's going on. So I think it's a real opportunity for advisors to one, consolidate those assets and, and be able to help support the, the client, you know, in, in their financial planning needs. But that being said, I, you know, it's a it's an interesting time. Yeah. And I know we're going to wind it up here, but what you guys just were talking about, we had Chris Kiper on earlier this month and he's he uses that invert, invert, always invert instead of saying Bitcoin, what's its use case? What's going on at this point? Given its adoption, given it's been around 15 years, the question is, well, why don't you have it? What is your reason that you can hang your hat on and stand proud in five years and say, thank God I didn't allocate Bitcoin to my clients because. And we think that they will obviously when they do that turn and realize there is not a good use reason to not own Bitcoin at this point. Regret minimization. A very good life philosophy there. You go, we're going to hang out more in a while, I know that much. All right, well, we got to let Noel go. She's got a hard stop. But I have to say, I sure enjoyed, you know, hearing some of your thoughts and, and, and perspectives and they're just so well researched and, and you can see your passion and energy behind it. Noel, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, access your newsletter, How, how, how might they do that and what's the best way to do so? Thank you so much, Rich. And then before I answer, thank you so much to both of you. This has been a lot of fun. We could have we there's so much more to talk about. You can find me the the newsletter that I mentioned earlier is crypto is macro now on sub stack. I do hope some of you will consider subscribing and you can find me on Twitter Noel in Madrid. I do sometimes share photos of the beautiful city I live in. That's awesome. Well, that's a plus right there. All right. Well, thank you so much, Noelle. We've enjoyed this and I hope that everybody has a wonderful week into that. I will bid you all a deal. Yep, thank you subscribing to your well sub stack folks. That's job one. You'll be well rewarded. Thank you so much Mark. It's been fun. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Ramp Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit on rampbitcoin.com/contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private Client advisors.
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