Transcript+
Thank you for joining us today. We're excited to bring you a brand new show from the On Ramp Media umbrella. Wake Up Call is a weekly show that will be streamed live on LinkedIn every Monday morning. To catch the premiere of each episode, follow On Ramps LinkedIn page and add Wake Up Call events to your calendar. After the live premiere on LinkedIn, we will distribute each episode across On Ramp Media's podcast channels and YouTube page. Wake Up Call aims to educate financial professionals on the merits of the Bitcoin investment thesis, how this asset represents both a threat to legacy financial service businesses and an opportunity to differentiate oneselves and retain and attract new clients. Hosted by Mark Connors, Onramp's Head of Global Macro Strategy, and Rich Kerr, Onramp's President of Managed Wealth, this 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. Mark and Rich bring a combined 60 plus years of experience across traditional markets and financial services and will share their unique perspectives and how their peers and colleagues can approach the realm of Bitcoin. Wake Up Call will feature guests from various backgrounds and industries will also share their own journeys to Bitcoin and how others can get up to speed. Now time for the show. All right. Well, welcome and happy Monday to everybody in the audience. Mark, happy Monday to you. How are you doing? Good, good man. Good. And Wyatt, welcome. Glad to have you on the show. So welcome to wake up call. We have a very special guest today, Wyatt O'Rourke, who is the founder of Basilic Financial, which is a registered investment, excuse me, investment advisory out of Denver, Co. So welcome Wyatt. Quick few words to say hello to the audience. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. Honored to join. Excuse me. So Mark, real quickly, you always are parsing through the news. What are you seeing today, last week and into through the weekend? I guess because there's a few things that caught my eye, but I'm curious about your your observations. Yeah, the I guess the the news from both the online economist and the broader tape is about the uninversion of the yield curve. I think it's the second longest period of when the twos were above the 10s, which indicates recession, indicates that there's a recession coming in as a Fed reverses policy. What does it mean? It means that, you know, say, from March 2022 when the Fed started hike rates and pushed the front end of the curve higher than the long end. That usually is negative for banks. It's not a wonderful period to lend. You know, in the glory days of banking in the sleepy 70s and 80s, they used to call it 363. Rich and Wyatt. It was let's wake up and borrow at 3. Let's lend it 6 by lunch and be on the golf tee by 3:00 PM. It was a It was a very easy business. But you know, over time, things get complex, markets get efficient, they take risks, they go into securitization of mortgages, they do derivatives, and then they blow up like they did in March of 2023 when they decided to go all in on interest rates. And the reason I bring that up is because I don't think this inversion of the curve uninversion matters right now for two reasons. Recessions in the past have always handled or happened around an event. You know, 81 was a banking crisis as sort of 80. The 1991 was on the back of financialization. You had Black Monday, you had tremors in the financial markets, and the Persian Gulf War blew everything open. And then we went into a recession and we know what happened in O1 with the.com bubble and you know, the over leveraged Enron and all those guys. So each recession had an O8 obviously, and we know what happened. But you know what, I if you if you look at the recessions and I'm going to focus on this because I think this is going to bring us about what's in the system and what bitcoins out of the system. And I think you know why we want definitely want to talk about how you are. You are not an IRA. You were a Bitcoiner that brought IRA to Bitcoin, which is just I'm going to put that up here in our ramp you. Know we'll have a little fun with that, yeah. But yeah. So if if if someone goes to the Saint Louis Fed website and looks up GDP, they, they'll usually show you GDP over time with the recession bars, when did we have a recession, you know, 19581961, etcetera, etcetera. If you look at it, you'll see that before 2000, there were recessions every six to eight years. But since 2000, they've been longer. They've been, I'll even say since basically like the 83 recession. They've been longer paced on average. And I think it's because of a more interventionist Federal Reserve and Treasury. And there's a price to pay for that. You know, like the old thing of thickens, you know, spear of the rod, spoil the child. You know, I know that's not popular today, but you know, if you don't go through recession, if you don't have a credit default cycle, things get distorted and you have the basement. So back to what I'm talking about with the uninverted curve. And it's not going to matter because we're going to be printing money. We're not going to go through the pain of of having an industry default because as we saw with the bank defaults in March of 23 men no stomach FDIC backed everything more money went in 400 billion in a matter of like six or seven days. So it's important to watch they'll be they'll be short term rotations because of changes in interest rates. And we definitely think that that rates Dr. volatility no doubt, but they aren't realized in the kind of fallouts we've had in another recession. So that those are my two sats Rich on the major focus and why maybe it should be pushed off and. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned the, the length of the recessions and, and your observation about interventionalism, you know, in, in what people are doing to, you know, try to tinker and, and manage and guide these naturally occurring, you know, events, I guess. And, and, you know, I think those who have kind of caught several of our pods along the way, this is really illustrated quite well in the Bitcoin standard. I think it was one of the big epiphanies when I read that book, you know, where he was talking about the interventional nature of the Federal Reserve and, you know, whether you're a monetarist or, or Keynesian and how you came about what you were doing in that space. And he demonstrated very clearly that for years in advance, as well as through the recession or, and, or depression, that, you know, there was unnecessary tinkering that caused, you know, even more problematic issues down the road. But that being said, well worth the read. Couple things that caught my eye over the weekend, Mark and Wyatt. So Juan Bernstein made a call, I believe over the weekend and they were talking about Bitcoin price movement and where it may be by the end of the year. And that might be of interest to our audience. But one of the things that struck me was, you know, in the event of a Trump victory, Bernstein and I believe it was 90,000 by year end and in the event of a Harris victory that they saw the volatility to the downside with a 30 to 40,000 price range. You know, any thoughts or reactions to the election cycle and how that may play out for Bitcoin in particular? Why you want to take that one? Yeah, Yeah, No, it's interesting racing. I think, you know, as as Bitcoiners and as a patriot myself, we tend to get a little US centric, especially with, you know, price predictions of of Bitcoin. So, you know, I'm kind of above the belief, you know, that Pierre Richard is really popularized. You know, everything's good for Bitcoin. And you know, I'm also the belief where it's like TikTok next block, you know, it's like Bitcoin doesn't care. And you know, I do think those are sexy headlines for, you know, various, you know, investment shops to to grab. But you know, I, I do think, you know, regardless of what happens in November, you know, we will, you know, continue to see ongoing, you know, big one appreciation. And you know, there's also, I think we try to conflate, you know, too many, you know, macro events. You know, there's also, you know, some free speech stuff going on in Brazil. You know, so we see other large markets in the world actually gravitate towards big one as their political climate changes as opposed to, you know, getting too focused on our political climate, you know, in a very economically powerful country. But ultimately, you know, a fairly small country population wise compared to to some other large countries. Yeah, that's a that's a great point, Wyatt. I think, you know, it's all too often that we we start looking at things, we're very myopic and we tend to look at, at, at, at the world being the US, But there there's things that are happening all over the place. I'm, I'm going to pull on that Rich, If you guys remember this old New Yorker, we'll, we'll, we'll put it in the chat and post it. There's a famous New Yorker cover of the magazine where it had the New Yorkers view of the world and it went through like a a window. 9th Ave. I think 9th and 10th Ave. were 50% of the picture. Then you had Arizona, California, and it was like China and Russia, like little bits. But it's just so true. And Wyatt, you said it. We're what, 25% of the economy, 40% of the global equity, but 6% of population. It's hard not to be US focused, but you definitely do. I think we're losing a little bit when we don't look at things and regime shifts or dynamics like Brazil that you mentioned among others. So sorry Rich, I just want to pull it up about myopic. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a thing, right. We tend to look at the things that are closest to us. We have a clearer point of view on it. And we're not well researched around what's happening around the globe. And, and the reality is many of the the push and pulls that we're feeling here in the United States are happening in every single country. We just have to go look. And that's one of the real value propositions in my mind around Bitcoin is, you know, we're sitting here talking about, you know what Bernstein said, what bitcoins going to do in three to four months. Well, you know, who really cares? The reality around Bitcoin is that we need to be able to have low time preference and why you talk about that really well in one of your articles that you have published on your website, which by the way, is bit the basilic basilic dot IO. If you want to go read some of the articles or thought pieces that Wyatt is produced, they're really quite good. And that being said, I, I'll step back and, and, and just say we got to get to that low time preference mentality. We kind of quit thinking about instant gratification and what, you know, what this means to this necessarily, but we'll take a bigger long term view and, and, and step back and understand what Bitcoin has has done over a 15 year cycle. And you know, the kegger conversation we've had multiple times, but I encourage anybody in this audience to look at any five year cycle on, on Bitcoin, pick, pick, pick it. And you'll find that that the kegger is north of 25, which is pretty powerful, you know, so you could take the worst situations and, and, you know, realize, oh, well, it's really not that bad, so long as that we we moderate our our time preference. That being said, that was one of the things that caught my eye, of course, this morning. Michael Saylor, who's the CEO of, uh, MicroStrategy, was on a on CNBC and, and talking with Joe Kernan and, and the likes and he came out and dropped a $13 million price target. He loves to just shake him. He loves to just shake him now that's a 21 year time preference. So it was quite an interesting thing. But it was fun to to watch Sailor go in and talk a little bit about how his businesses have evolved, you know, from a software company, which you know, is still, as he says, a cash cow. But at the same point in time, he's now a, he's a now a Bitcoin company as well. And, and, and he's focused in on the monetization or the securitization, I guess I should say around Bitcoin with the way that he is doing convertible debt offerings and things on that nature as well as issuance of stock in creating the leverage points for Bitcoin and people to access it. So it's, it's a really good clip. I encourage everybody to go take a look at it. But you know, those are some of the big things that caught my eye over the weekend. You know what you just did Rich right there is you gave a great Segway for Wyatt because I think we have with us today the Sailor of Rias. Sailor saw the opportunity to transform his business and you did the opposite. You went inverted and you said let me take a new business and give it the opportunity. Yeah. Well, Mark, that is. That's far too kind. That's the title. I can, you know, not you. Gotta run with it. Yeah, right. As long as somebody else said yeah, Yeah, but I appreciate it And yes, So, you know, I really identify as an entrepreneur, my backgrounds in finance. I was joking. I'm traditionally trained in financing, you know, a lot of good that does me, but my last startup went under, you know, I was transitioning, you know, and try to figure out what what to do next. And, you know, just being an entrepreneur, art and a little stubborn. I didn't want to go work for for somebody else. I'm a really avid, you know, TFTC listener and Marty had a line. You know, it's like, well, like the biggest thing you could do, you know, the biggest, you know, chunk of the pie to help grow, you know, is help grow Bitcoin adoption. And so it's like, you know, got the wheels turning in and, you know, I'd ever been helping friends and family with, you know, some, some budgeting, financial planning, investment source stuff. And so ultimately, you know, I decided, you know, considering I can't, you know, code or anything, like what I could do is help, you know, grow Bitcoin adoption. And, you know, at this point I was already a a maxi. I'm I'm, as you mentioned, rich in Denver, Co, really involved with the Bitcoin community here. I'm on a board member of the space, which is Denver's very own citadel, very similar to, you know, Bitcoin park or Commons. And we're getting that up and running, which has been, you know, extremely rewarding and exciting project. But, you know, I just, you know, view other Maxis as my peer group and I just can't, you know, look myself in the mirror and go to bed at night if I wasn't upholding, you know, some of these Bitcoin, you know, values and ethos that we hold so true to, you know, our hearts and and our culture. So deciding that, you know, I figured it probably best if I just went straight independent, so got fully licensed and registered and, you know, built a firm, you know, aimed at bridging the gap between traditional financial services and and Bitcoin financial services. And we go about things, you know, slightly differently. You know, we try to be, you know, very tech enabled, streamlined, all that good stuff. But you know, we also, you know, take a human first approach to our business and we work with our clients to make sure we're finding funding contentment, you know, where money and meaning are are in balance. And, you know, I think, you know, Bitcoiners as a whole get, you know, a little caught up with the number goes up, which is, which is great, but you know, there's ultimately much more to, you know, creating wealth and, and passing on wealth. And so Bitcoin is obviously a huge tool, you know, we use and you know, advocate for many of it. It's quality principles. But you know, we, we take, we offer four services. So we have our Bitcoin financial services and when we focus on sound custody solutions there. So I'm not a fan of the ETFs. As great of a company's micro strategy is, we don't want to buy micro strategy as a proxy to Bitcoin. You know, Bitcoin has a the properties, you know, ain't with it to to hold the bare asset and you know, itself. So we, we try to facilitate that and we have, you know, three different tiers of of custody depending on how comfortable clients are with the asset and the technology. Then, you know, we have retirement services which you like 4 O 1K plans, cash balance, financial planning, portfolio management and in each of those traditional financial services offerings we have, you know, we try to look at those through, you know, the lens of Bitcoin. So if you're interested in setting up an IRA, you know, can we, can we open up, you know, a Bitcoin IRA in the the realms of financial planning. It's like, well, do you have Bitcoin? Let's you know, forecast, let's do some modelling. Let's see how, you know, adding Bitcoin to your personal balance sheet. Can, you know, expand your wealth, how you can plan for future opportunities for for you and your family? How you know it really unlocks potential goals you you may set for yourself and live a live a purposeful life. And then, you know, in the context of, you know, portfolio management, you know, we get into some of this as well, but and the financialization of Bitcoin, which I say a little tongue in cheek, but you know, there are new products, you know, coming how build asset management has a collateralized loan, private credit fund where, you know, they buy Bitcoin denominated loans. And you know, so getting access to that as accredited investor, you know, how that can subsidized some of your your traditional fixed income, your requirements. And so really, you know, taking your step back and, and looking at what traditional RA services offer. And then, you know, just trying to, you know, sprinkle in a little Bitcoin a long way. And and why it it, it sounds like core to that your offerings and the ability to unlock Bitcoin is to have Bitcoin, not the wrapped animal like the ETF. Is that what? Is that what you would suggest to your clients on on those 4 principles? Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I think that is, you know, very important for us, as you know, for sovereign individuals. And, you know, we were kind of talking about how, you know, there's kind of this idea or that political whims can, you know, affect Bitcoin. And while, you know, that might be true to like the price action over, you know, whatever window you want to, to look over, the fact of the matter is, you know, us as individuals can, you know, take custody of the asset. And, you know, we think that's extremely important, You know, whether you know, X regime wants to censor, whether, whether you know, Y regime wants to, you know, take your gold and maybe ultimately like your your Bitcoin, like, you know, it's important to us that we try to. Mitigate the exposure to, you know, trusted third parties and we take on the responsibility of our wealth ourselves and episode we just try to be a partner coach, a sounding board to to make sure our clients are comfortable with that. At Onramp, we believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset of the 21st century. The hard part is securing it right There are shortcomings with keeping your coins on an exchange, but also with setting up your own self custody arrangement. Onramp solves for these concerns. Our multi institution custody solution maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, ensuring that your Bitcoin remains securely in your possession and provides built in inheritance planning to ensure your family is protected as well. On Ramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it as a compliment to your existing self custody setup. For more information, check us out at on rampbitcoin.com now. I I love what I'm hearing Wyatt about your story 1 you you know you you slightly changed the language of the RIAA just a moment ago. Rias generally speaking, have always talked about financial independence. We're, we're trying to help you become financially independent, right? And you, and you take it just a little bit further with sovereign individual, right? We want you to feel fully empowered to, to make the decisions that you wish to make, to live the life that you wish to live and to have your assets simply working as a tool to empower you to do what it is that you were meant to do on this earth. And, and so I, I love the, the extra layer that you just kind of brought forward. One of the things that strikes me, you and I've had, you know, several conversations and, and one of the things that strikes me is you have this real altruistic, you know, spirit, right? You're not only trying to help empower those people that you are working with that are clients or prospective clients or in your community find their path to Bitcoin, but you're also giving back to the community itself, right. And so one of the things that you recently did, as I understand, is you just completed or authored a chapter for the brains Bitcoin book and it was largely built around, you know, the financialization or the collateralization of Bitcoin. And and I'm curious if you can share shed a little light with our viewers on one, you know, what was the what was the general thesis that you came forward with and you know, as it relates to collateralization and why is that, you know, potentially an important aspect for Bitcoin on a move forward basis. Absolutely, Mark, I met up with the, the brain or excuse me, right, sorry. I met up with the brands guys in Nashville and, you know, stumble upon this opportunity, which I, you know, was super fortunate to have. I, I love writing and talking about Bitcoin and as many of us do, and they're a mining company and, you know, wanted to put a, a finance book out there. So I threw my, you know, name in the hat and ultimately I was, you know, tasked with focusing on, you know, why, you know, Bitcoin is good collateral for different companies of various sizes. So, you know, breakdown simply into, you know, big, medium and and small companies, right. And so it's a tremendous book and, you know, different chapters get into, you know, why, you know, Bitcoin is pristine capital, why it's, you know, permanent capital. And you know, some of the these terms that we've come to, you know, embrace as bitcoiners, which is, you know, just a succinct way to describe it as a savings technology. Well, if you own a a savings technology, you know, you are you freed up like with your decision making, right, You can zoom out when we talked about earlier, you can focus on, you know, the the long term, you know, and, and that that low time preference kind of mentality innate with Bitcoin and and focus on investing your capital in projects that will have, you know, a substantial return, especially if you're trying to just beat, you know, the price of a Bitcoin appreciation. It's very hard to invest for the short term. You know, a lot of public companies get caught up, you know, trying to just juice the numbers for the next quarter so, you know, they can get that bonus, they can get that stock price appreciation and Bitcoin kind of flips at that narrative. So ultimately, you know, we know, you know, we suggest that, you know, individuals and companies, you know, acquire Bitcoin for their balance sheet, but you know, you also understanding, you still have, you know, expenses and you need to, you know, invest for the future growth of yourself or your company. So we take a look in this chapter about, you know, keeping that Bitcoin on your balance sheet and using it as collateral to gain access to liquidity. And so there's really 2 main ways you can get access to liquidity. You know, it's either via loans or, or bonds. And in doing so for either, you need to find a, a liquidity source. And so in the chapter, we kind of focus on three, there's your track five players. Those are your, you know, traditional financial institutions, your big banks, various pools of private capital. Then there's kind of a new newer market entrant and we call ECM kind of a see fire centralized finance, just for, you know, sake of kind of distinguishing the the two. And, you know, these are, you know, still relative, you stars themselves just given, you know, the kind of the the nascent see of of Bitcoin. And these would be companies, you know, like your your unchanged, your auto huddles. And you know, these are companies built with, you know, 4 bitcoins. So they embody, you know, Bitcoin ethos, you know, which means, you know, they're built with, you know, multi signature new technology at the the basis of their offering. You know, they don't rehypothechize your Bitcoin. You know, you get the wallet address so you can monitor the balance. And this was, you know, I think, you know, these companies saw a market opportunity and saw how they could compete against, you know, the, the track five players, you know, who will put a 800 page contract in front of you. And you know, you got to hire a lawyer just to like understand what's going on. And they're, you know, generally risk adverse and don't have, you know, kind of a, a fluent understanding of the asset or the technology. And so we have this this new emergent competitor base designed to specifically offer liquidity for Bitcoin. And so I think that's that's really exciting. And then kind of the newest market entries is kind of look here your D5 protocols. And I know that is a little bit of a dirty term in, in the Bitcoin industry, but we are starting to see now companies and, and projects being built specifically for Bitcoin on, you know, some sort of layer 2 or utilizing bitcoins, you know, distribute law contract functionality. And so this is kind of really taking the trustless and, and permissionless and aspects of of Bitcoin and, you know, to that full extent. So, you know, ultimately, you know, participants have to do, you know, their own due diligence, you know, especially with newer protocols that haven't, you know, been a long around for, for a while, you know, you want to make sure to really do your, your research and understand what you're getting into. But the moral story is that, you know, with some of these newer protocols, you don't even necessarily need to know who the the counterparty has seen. You have a, a program designed to, you know, take your Bitcoin and whatever, however it works with the specific protocol you decided to go with, get some sort of liquidity in return, which, you know, maybe some sort of, you know, stable coin or, and then upon you, a pre agreed upon your agreement, You know how much you're repaying, what point you need to you repay it. You have that liquidity and then you can ultimately, you know, go to market and, and decide how to spend that. But your Bitcoin remains intact and you're still owner of it. As long as you do, you stay within the bounds of of your predetermined agreement. Is there an analog Wyatt that your clients look to and tratify? They say, oh good, this looks and smells like a home loan or this looks and smells like AI guess a he lock or it's more like just taking money out of the ATM. What What is? What's been the feedback? Absolutely. I think those are are some great examples, Mark. And this is where, you know, I think basilic is kind of innately suited to help clients with with this sort of thing because in the Bitcoin your community it it's it's honestly a fun. I do it too. We poo poo tratify a lot, right? And you know, it's like, oh, they don't get it. They're the ones that got us in the mess, whatever it may be, like they're they're kind of easy targets a lot. However, you know, I think we need to understand that, you know, there's been you given, you know, the capitalistic society we live in. I'm a, you know, capitalism, you know, absolutist, but there's been developments in the finite utilization, you know, with Tragify products, you know, I think, you know, mortgage loan is like a great example and stuff. I think if Bitcoin can get deeply integrated with traditional financial, you know, products, we really start to unlock and, you know, a lot of things not currently, you know, available in the market and that makes it, you know, more robust. You know, in the meantime, and I kind of mentioned, you know, build asset management previously. And So what they're doing is they're taking, you know, loans collateralized by Bitcoin, passing them off at a private credit fund and then offering a private credit fund to investors to get a yield. And this isn't like your, your your defy yield, you know, with like a different all coins. This is like Tri fi yield. You know, this is this type of yield has been around for, you know, hundreds of years. And so I think if we start to embrace some of these products, we ultimately end up making, you know, Bitcoin more robust. And just because you know, and in my chapter, I use the, the opening scene from the Big Short to kind of set the scene. And, you know, it's like, I think a lot of us, you know, particularly Bitcoin have been trainers like, Oh, no, you know, this, this is, you know, bad. And, you know, I certainly don't, you know, support the actions of those actors. I think, you know, unfortunately we are in a bit of a, a crony capitalistic setting and certainly, you know, during that time that's that's what was happening. But if we have this, you know, pristine capital, I think, you know, if we can build additional financial products, you know, on top of that, we're ultimately allowing more participants to enter the market. We're allowing for more robust and greater price discovery. You're enabling, you know, party A and party B to take, you know, either side of the trade and you know, facilitate that. And that adds to diversification that allows different market participants to get exposure to Bitcoin in different ways. I think it helps with risk management. You know, I output the belief that options in in future markets will, you know, be developed for Bitcoin like they have with, you know, other commodities. And then you also, I think that leads to price stability because you have large pools of capital, sophisticated risk managers, sophisticated finance teams that, you know, are partaking in the ecosystem and they are, you know, ultimately just taking different sides of the bats. And that's why, you know, when I say financialization is kind of a bit of a dirty word, like it does get misconstrued a lot. But that's what I'd like the audience to take away. It's like all financial or product to do in a non crony capitalistic setting with, you know, pristine capital that doesn't have skewed incentives. It ultimately just allows you to take a side of a trade, right? And the more participants have taking or partaking in, you know, whatever side of the trade that may be, I, I think that really allows a Bitcoin to, to flourish. And the the last thing I'll say on this, if you know, one of my favorite sayings in bitcoins, you know, bitcoins a black hole. It's like, well, we can't expect it to be a black hole, but you know, not also you encapsulate financial products have been, you know, tried and true with different commodities and and currencies and not expect them to to have a place in Bitcoin. Push on that black hole because our audience may not. Usually a black hole is a negative statement like I'm I'm lost in it and once you go in, you never come out. But how is that how you're speaking about it? Or another way? I think of it as Bitcoin just being all consuming, you know, given its it's stressless nature, You know, I kind of mentioned, you know, TikTok next block, you know, it's not up to you, me or, you know, Brian on the other side of this call, you know, whether the Bitcoin network keeps going like it will keep going whether, you know, we care or not, you know, that's it. I think a great context to frame the beginning of our conversation too, you know, with the, you know, whatever election may be going on. So because Bitcoin is such pristine Capital, One of my favorite, you know, lines from sailors, you know, bitcoins, a wall of encrypted energy, you know, it will continue to, you know, absorb financial markets. And I think, you know, ultimately a lot of different markets as well. And excuse me, continue, you know, sucking up more and more of, you know, 900 trillion market or 900 trillion in global markets. I'm thinking of Jesse's graph that, you know, he's, you know, may come place, you know, and it's like, OK, you know, so it's like equities, you know, very small part of that fixed income, you know, I think 300 trillion housing markets. And, you know, ultimately, if we can use Bitcoin as a form of collateral to, you know, reach different sorts of assets and you know, that's what I mean. When it's a black hole, it will continue to, you know, soak in various types of assets do. You mind if I hop in? I, I, I, I read one of your articles this week and I was just pulling it up. Give me a second here, but it I think it really describes and I'll I'll take a minute just to read it to you guys. But you know the black hole concept, right? The density of the black hole is sucking everything towards it, right? Everything comes to it. And I was reading one of Wyatt's articles on his website, which you can go check out yourself once again, basilic dot IO. But in the article he says Bitcoin is the standard for decentralization. Any claim to decent, any claim to decentralization needs to be measured against Bitcoins rigorous standards. The most decentralized network and technology is intrinsically the following The most trustworthy, has the most freedom and human rights, has the highest probability of staying alive, the most fair, the most representative, the hardest to attack and corrupt, the hardest to change, the most accessible, and the most predictable. Therefore, the users of any other network or technology that claims to be decentralized needs to be aware that they're they are participating in a network that is automatically less trustworthy, trustworthy, free, fair, etcetera. While each person's preferences and trade-offs will vary, in my opinion, this being Wyatt, encouraging the participation in any network or technology that is not the decentralized standard severely compromises the user of such network and technology. And it it if you, if you go back and you just give that a few minutes and and read it on your own. I think this really kind of hits the, the, the point that, that why it's really emphasizing here, which is if you have all of these attributes already created inside of a financial system, which Bitcoin is in many respects right, it's got its own monetary policy, etcetera. It everything else has to compete against those attributes and is going to ultimately fall short. And so it collapses into Bitcoin and one could say very clearly, right, you have to not just look at all of these net, these decentralized or, you know, D buy networks that are out there and other protocols, but you're also looking at the current system and saying, well, how does the current system hold up relative to Bitcoin? And so in in many respects, right, Bitcoin, everything ultimately gravitates. And that goes back to that chart that Jesse had created. And I think people have seen Michael Saylor use it as well around total addressable market. When you have 900 trillion in assets and Bitcoin represents, you know, 1 1/2 trillion or one and a quarter trillion depending on where Bitcoin is, it's pretty outstanding. Astonishing, I guess is the right word to think about what the possibilities are. So thank you for that nugget, by the way. I thought it was very well written so. Well, I would say it was also very well read there, Rich. I don't know if you do that for a living at local schools or not, but you're bringing that up and just taking away the time, the fact that why it's been the time to write it. I mean, we all speak, we think we have ideas, but when someone takes the time to write something and I can tell that you have a lot behind that. You have hours, years, you know of experience behind that and you curated it into the words that Rich shared with us and what I liked about it. Coming back to the Black hole I idea, which I think is core to what we talked about, and it was similar to another blog I saw from April that you wrote, which I think is pretty foundational that others should read as well. Is that all right? Well, where should we go? Should we buy treasuries? Why not? Why shouldn't we buy treasuries? Well, are they centralized? Yes. Are they used to fund things that we didn't really vote on? Maybe like a program or a war maybe And that is happening. Will the increase of treasuries have an impact on the ones I bought last year? Will they be worth be able to fund my lifestyle going forward? And the answer is obviously we've seen is no. So the the word that I'm going to throw out there as well in case we have any physicists on the on the call or asset managers, they called also the singularity. I used to hang out with a guy at at Craig Swiss who was a quant and they like that word, which is like you said, a black hole creating a singularity and it's almost the gravity of its offering. It is, as you say, the pristine asset that people are drawn to it. And I'll go back to now, Jesse, we talked about four times. He's one of the Co founders of our firm and on ramp. And what he did is he drew a little nugget on the upper right corner of a of a graphic that at the time was half a trillion dollars, a little thing called BTC. And it was on the same field as all these other assets. And what we're saying is that the game is afoot where the qualities of Bitcoin are going to draw that value into it. And, and I think that's why Sailor uses it. And that's why that graphic will probably go down as next to the white paper, one of the best indicators of value and insight to for Bitcoin adoption. So whole order compared to the white paper, but as I thought given your comparison that Rich just wrote about about decentralization, it's brilliant. Thank you. No, I appreciate it both and I I think that's what you know, it's really important. You know, I do like I really enjoy writing and like to get a little provocative with this. And that piece was, you know, meant to be, you know, a direct shot and like one at the US dollar system, you know, insert any Fiat system, but then also, you know, any, you know, all coins and you know, but silicon we're Bitcoin only. That's our focus. That's why, you know, respect what you guys, you know, build that on ramp and only try to work and partner with, you know, Bitcoin only companies. But what I'm really trying to hammer home in that piece is, you know, if there is somebody or cabal of central bankers, you know, pushing the buttons and putting pressure on the scale and shifting the scale like you're not control. And that is the to the benefit of no one. And you know what I you know, perceive what will happen as we move towards a Bitcoin standard is unprecedented amount in today's standards of predictability, right. And, you know, as business people, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, and we know you're the backbone of capitalism. You know, we try to, you know, create value and do and creating value, you know, on top of big one, I think is, you know, obviously where it's at. But if you, you know, decide to take on that journey, it's a big investment. There's a lot of risks that come associated with that. And ultimately, what business owners and entrepreneurs want is predictability. They don't want to be subject to a manufactured business cycle. They don't want to be subject to a manufacturing, you know, credit cycle. They want to know that what they earn and generate in value won't be debased, it won't be stolen from them and that the effort they take to make an investment that you hopefully outpace the value creation of Bitcoin. They need to start being on the other side that they won't get rubbed in the meantime. Yeah, you know, it's so funny, Wyatt. You know, as, as most of our audience knows, you know, both Mark and I have been in, in the trap eye world for, you know, close to 35 years, if not more. And one of the mad madding things is the lack of predictability, right? And with, with our Federal Reserve and policy makers and, and things of that nature. And, you know, people used to just make a living off of parsing the words of the Federal Reserve Chairman, just studying and reading between the lines and looking for any little hint or innuendo that would lead to what the interest rate environment may or may not look like. And you know that that still happens quite a bit today. And I think that there became this this group that just kind of came together and coalesced and said, stop fighting the Fed, Don't fight the Fed, don't fight the Fed, right. You know, that all kind of came out in the Greenspan years back in late 90s. Don't fight the Fed. And, you know, and I just sat back and I thought to myself, this, this is, this is madding. Like it's legitimately madding that people are, you know, one person reads a, you know, something a little bit different and all of a sudden you have this skew in terms of of how they might, you know, be advising their clients and clients. You're talking about business owners wanting predictability. And that is so very true. They're certainly willing to take advantage of, of, you know, unpredictable environments, but they do want predictability and in how they, you know, focus on their businesses. But the same is true for individual investors that are coming to you. They're looking for predictability, the predictability in the relationship that you offer, the predictability in the investment philosophy that you implement, the predictability, you know, in, in the investments that tie into that investment philosophy. And and so you know, the beautiful thing about Bitcoin in my, my opinion is, is it's got absolute transparency and predictability in terms of its monetary policy. You know what is going to happen in terms of the supply of Bitcoin, you understand that, that, that that it steps down, right, every single four years in terms of support supply coming to market. You understand that the demand is only increasing. And I think Fred Pye, who was one of our guests a few weeks ago on the show, just said, look, if you know supply is going down and and demand is going up, there's only one outlet for price over a long period of time and that's to it. That's to go up. And so, you know, it's a predictability is a really, really important concept that I don't know that we talk enough about with our audience. And so I appreciate you kind of bringing that forward. That being said, we could sit here and chop this one up quite a bit. I love the conversation. I want to thank you Wyatt for taking the time to to join us and share your unique journey into the RIA space. Being a hardcore bit pointer, you know, a Bitcoin maxi and saying, you know what I've got to step into the market and actually fill that void and carry it with the right level of integrity and, and secure accessing the Bitcoin correctly, securing it properly and, and making certain that it aligns to what the client is really trying to achieve. And I think that that's what we're all about on this call. It's trying to say, let's get in alignment. Let's, let's, let's do good work for our clients so that they can be financially independent and maybe even sovereign individuals should they choose that path. And so I want to thank you Wyatt for joining us today. Any closing thoughts, Mark or or Wyatt that you'd like to share? What? Thank you guys so much for having me. I absolutely love what you're doing and I think the the mission on ramp is, you know, extremely important as well. You know, the more people we can get, you know, comfortable adopting Bitcoin from an individual or institutional side, you know, the better. I also, you know, have a, you know, working hypothesis that, you know, just for what, you know, cloud native companies were to legacy IT systems in the other early 2000s. You know, multi signature native companies now, you know, will will be, you know, better off than their, you know, tratify or, you know, third part trusted third party, you know, counterparts. And you guys are are doing a huge thing for the the ecosystem and, and trying to push that forward with that ethos. And you know, I'm honored to beyond the the pot today. And if you're interested in any of my work and you find it at, you know, basilic.ioy.work.com or also very active on X at WR or work. Oh, very cool. Well, we appreciate it. And, and you're right, you know, we, you know, Mark and I, you know, being trapped by refugees, as we, as we so proudly call ourselves, you know, we didn't leave great careers with people that we, we really, you know, enjoy being around. There are a lot of great people inside of the trap buy world. And, and so we're not, you know, bashing on it. We're, we're trying to help others, you know, come to the same conclusion or similar conclusion, their own conclusion around Bitcoin one way or the other. Get off the bus, get off a 0. And that's the the goal that we try to to push forward and in our. Minds you know and and why see you got to be in business with good people because rich is being kind there. He left Schwab my firm Chris Swiss went the way to hula hoop because they couldn't asset allocate. So so the diaspora of great people from Chris Swiss are all over. We could, I could go work with them, but Rich, it's so wonderful, like Schwab unlevered asset manager, you know, gathering assets, good investment, the banking system. I just bring it up every time because I talk about the singularity, man, it's running away from, you know, from the Bitcoin thing. And when you are unsound, guess what happens, you know, think things go away. So and I love that Rich and I bring those different perspectives to it and where we all end up guys, different backgrounds, similarities, but we're all we're all here because of not just number go up, but because of the soundness of it, as you said, the predictability. No doubt about it. And we're just, you know, how do we facilitate to get the rest of this 90% of the world to kind of move in the right direction. It's just helping people service to one another, I think is one of the greatest attributes and doing it in smart and sound ways that meet the client where they're at. And that's what it's all about. So anyway, once again, check out why it's a website if you if you're interested in reading more or his Twitter page and and give him a follow. He, he's a tremendous guy with, with a deep, a deep bench of knowledge accumulated over thousands of hours. I'm certain of it, you know, just researching and learning. So Wyatt, thank you again for joining us. We would love to have you again at another point in time just to come back and tell us what you're working on and the success that you're having in moving the ball forward to create more access points for other people to find Bitcoin. And so thank you for the good work you're doing and really appreciate you guys coming on today and chopping it up. So we'll see you all later. Have a great. Week. Thanks, Wyatt. Take care, everybody. Thanks, Rich. 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.
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