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Bitcoin is very unique in that sense that with some people in Travis world perceive as a bad thing that there's no cash flows. There's no, it's not based on earnings is actually a positive in my mind, because when you have chaos, what's most important in those times is reducing not only counterparty risk, but just the number of variables that could impact any given investment. The elegance and simplicity and beauty of Bitcoin and held and cold storage held the right way is you've reduced as many variables as possible relative to any asset on earth. The main one probably being monetary policy, right? That's where the scarcity, the finite nature comes from. We know the supply schedule. You can't say that about other monies or other other assets. But then even just like the impact that AI will have on it, right? What would cause that to wobble? Is AI disruption, competitive forces, all these things you have to think about with these other assets? And so to me, the reason why Bitcoin tends to do well on these chaotic moments, it's a recognition of this has less variables to think about. If there's chaos in the world, there's uncertainty. I need to own more of the thing that is less susceptible to all of that chaos. What you're telling me is that music is about stuff, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous extra assembled in the history of darkness. 1974198792972000 and whatever we want to call this, it's all just the same thing over and over. We can't help ourselves. I say when we sell. I say when we sell. All right, we figured it out. We're back on the last trade this week, ladies and gentlemen. I'm joined by Michael and Brian. If you're watching on YouTube, let us know what do you think of this podcast overlay that we have going on? I think a multi $100 million offer is on the table now for on ramp Bitcoin now that we have overlay on the podcast. Pretty fired up about it. Michael Bryan, what's going on? I mean, I think this is the just small order of operations. We get the overlay, then maybe we'll get dynamic overlays for segments and then eventually we'll get to a live stream. So it's an incremental order of doing good. I think the listeners would be shocked. I don't know how many there are out there. There seems to be some of how much work we actually do and then leading into this and maybe the the lack of ability to really, I think it we, we land this, but I think it just gets missed on. We're running a business. It's incredibly busy. We had a big launch this week. We'll get into it. But yeah, we're, we're just not podcasters all day long. Like I'm coming in feeling a little under prepared because I know we put the list together, but I honestly don't know what direction we're going in. So. I don't think you've ever really prepare that much. Yeah, that's the fun fact. I can't, I can't prepare. It's either works or it doesn't. But I'll just got you, just got to throw it, You know, I was thinking about that, yeah. Well, we could really go in any direct and then the world is ours for the taking. But I think what we need to start with the launch of On Ramp Finance got pulled up on the blog for the announcement, the one live yesterday, the Foundation first why we built On Ramp Finance. And I also just want to contrast this before I hand it over to Michael to give some opening remarks on the significance of this and why we decided to do this as a business. I just want to compare this to what we have with the announcement of Polymarket yesterday, because I think this is really going to paint the picture of of the business that we built here at On Ramp when most of the time you log into X and what you see is Polymarket, Coinbase, Robin Hood launching some form of gambling. Yesterday, Polymarket announced 24/7 perpetual Futures Trading for crypto equities and commodities. I think what we do here at On Ramp really stands in stark contrast to the general direction of gambling being kind of the soup du jour, the the fastest growing financial sector. So I'm really excited and proud of what we built as as a business here. And Michael, I would like to hand it over to you to give some opening remarks. Well, I'm glad you're proud of what we built. In the spirit of switching things up, I figured I would talk last year and I'd love to hear what it means to you, what we worked on. So you guys go, go first. The one thing I will say is it's been incredible. 24 hours from sign ups, Bitcoin deposited, amount of people saying this is what they wanted look for. But I'll, I'll hand it over to you guys and then I'll kind of wrap up on the back end. So I can speak from my personal experience as well as the conversations that I have daily with clients. And so I thought you're going to speak for. Brian, sorry, I thought you're going to speak for Brian as well. Yeah, Brian, you're not making any comments on this one here. Leave it with me. But so from my perspective, right, the way I think about this personally is over the past several years having to manage Bitcoin has been a bit challenging. We talk about it every week where there's no shortage of hacks, there's frauds, there's misplaced keys, there's fragmentation in the market. You have a relationship with one business for one thing, another for another. And if you're anything like me, over the past several years, you've ended up with several different relationships. And whether that's hardware wallets, it's different exchanges, different custody providers. There's just a lot out there and it becomes quite a headache in my opinion, to manage it. And it also increases the threat factor for any individual or business that's managing wealth that way. So I'm particularly excited about what we built here because we started with arguably the most important aspect, which was multi institution custody and ensuring that anyone that works with us or individuals like us to actually use our own solutions, we're able to credibly secure their Bitcoin for the long term. We had to build that first and we built everything around that in terms of long term wealth preservation. But the theme that we kept coming back to was there is a lot of fragmentation. I still felt it myself. We felt it as a business and we heard it from clients. And so the whole idea with this launch here is really building a unified platform for managing your wealth. We called it the money platform of the future. And what we've done here now is integrated dollars and even gold actually alongside Bitcoin best in class ways. So you can manage your spending, you can earn on your account as well up to 5%. Now you can manage your long term savings and multi institution custody. You can do Bitcoin back loans. And so I'm really why why I say I'm proud of what we built here is we're building a solution that really stands in opposition to what the rest of the market is gravitating toward. We stand for conservative, balanced approach to managing financial services, while the rest of the broader financial services industry is trending more toward gambling, toward the just gamification of everything. And so I'm incredibly excited about what we built here. And I feel this myself. I'm really excited to be using this platform now to just not only manage my long term Bitcoin for my family, but actually be able to integrate much more my financial life into one place. So that's what it means to me. Brian, what are your thoughts? Yeah. That's all very well said. I would agree with everything you walk through there. The the sort of comparison to what's going on in the broader market I think has never been starker in terms of the massive opportunity to build something like this where it's not about speculation. It's simply about preserving and growing one's wealth in a conservative, principled manner, owning hard assets, getting more out of your dollars. Because the reality on the ground is people still need to use dollars for whether it's paying bills, their mortgage, various other things. So tying all this together, adding dollars to the platform was always sort of on the road map in terms of what on ramp ultimately wanted to be, which we've talked about in the in the past of like the private banking experience, but sort of centered around Bitcoin. You can't really have a full rounded private banking experience if you're not servicing the other parts of someone's financial life. Yes, someone may be, you know, 80 to 90% in Bitcoin in terms of their net worth, but you're still going to be wanting to interact with dollars. Maybe they have a smaller allocation to gold and maybe that flexes over time as they grow in age. And so to really round out the business and the platform, I think it made all the sense in the world to, you know, add these things and, and, and do it in a way that was thought out, measured, not rushed into because we needed to get the custody right first. Because frankly, you know, none of the things we add on top of that really matter if we're not super hyper focused on having the best custody solution for Bitcoin that exists. And so we needed to earn trust and build credibility around that. So really the past few years has been pioneering multi institution custody, getting people comfortable with the architecture of the design surface. And now we're at a point where we built a lot of trust around that. And we've heard internally from our clients that these types of things, the ability to have dollars sitting right next to their Bitcoin, maybe get some gold exposure, it's things that they're really excited about. And so we wouldn't have done this if one, there was no excitement or interest in it from our existing clients. And then, you know, also for net new people, it makes total sense, right? Because the vast majority of people on earth don't have a material exposure to to Bitcoin. So if you can give them a more palatable entry into our orbit that, you know, the honor and finance tier is free to sign up. You can start earning up, you know, earning on your dollars, access a spending card, get 1 1/2% cash back and then Start learning about Bitcoin, Start learning about sound money and build up your education, build up your conviction and start easily converting some of those dollars into Bitcoin over time. And so I think this is also how we just reach a much broader market, open the aperture of the business to really accelerate Bitcoin adoption. The other the other thing I would say is it's an extension of what we do and it's it's meeting the market where it's at, which is what we've always stood for. Even just the concept of multi institution custody is a form of meeting the market where it's at because you know, most people don't want to deal with the burdens and the and the frictions of self custody. And so we had to provide a solution to the market that was that eliminated those frictions while still not, you know, making people susceptible to single counterparty risk. And so this is an extension of that and MIC is still sort of the flagship and our focus, but we're rounding out the platform and sort of opening the aperture. Yeah, I, I appreciate you guys running through that. I mean, I would say a couple things. Where did this come from? Let's start at the App Stones joke. Let's not start at the App Stones. But this is about 6-7 years in the making. The reality is we see this, we talk about it, there's a lot of things that are obvious that aren't obvious to the market. And one of them, as the guys alluded to is it's a natural thing if 99.9% of people's wealth is in dollars or some form of dollar equivalents to want dollars next to what other application or financial investment you have into it for the first X number of years really pre this administration that was a non starter. It was just not kosher. Banks didn't want to touch it you couldn't do it. That fundamentally changed with the genius act. I won't go deep into it here. I was on joking sorties pot talked about some of the issues with Visa was working on something back in the day and then chain in 2021 FTX pull up the market. Everyone was scared to get close to this to banks have historically been. So that banking and regulatory clarity was really the shift on being able to make this happen with Stripe and Bridge. And then the other side of it is that I think what makes us different and what makes us different is this notion of we deeply care and understand about Bitcoin, but we also deeply come from professional backgrounds that weren't directly tied to the space. Meaning like on my side and traditional tech on the guy side and other people on our firms, whether there was in the digital asset space, traditional tech side or finance space. And when you come from that background, you come from a level of professional experience requirements. And really the ultimate one is scale because when you come into this space, we still truly are a hobbyist LED industry. And that's OK. That's how industries form. But if you care about the asset and you care about building a generational build business, you have to obviously get complexity. You have to make things easy. People do not care. And so you can be ideological or you can meet the market where they're at. My favorite joke because I have a lot of friends like this and they they will go against and it's OK, but it's the notion of do you want to make money or do you want to be right? Because if you want to be right, you can put all these things in front of the market and require them to to do them to leap and bound to get exposure to the best savings technology that's ever existed. Or if you want to make money, you can meet the market where it's at and also help the industry grow. And that's always what this mission has been about. It's always what multi institution has been about. There's a lot of folks out there that will talk, but the reality is they've never sat in the trenches and onboarded thousands of people, billions of dollars and felt the pain. Felt the pain of people putting that little micro SD between the 1MM deal on a cold card or felt the pain of losing the assets or felt the pain of getting set up with collaborative custody and leaving all the assets on block 5 because they didn't feel comfortable with that. And so the notion is multi institution was how do we get people at? I would make the case that multi institution will help get more people in a long enough time horizon into self custody in the opposite way because they'll understand why they want outside money and then ultimately as they get more comfortable, they'll go into it. So that's the foundational principle that this firm is built on. And as you start to go further, well, the realization is the market we've talked about will hit this convergence point. As liquidity comes into the system, risks comes in. Nobody wants to address it, but more capital coming in means more people get further on the risk curve with rehypothecation, lack of OPSEC, physical tax, digital tax and everything under the sun. We've seen this every time Bitcoin's price has risen and so we know capital will fly into this platform when those things happen. That's a defense. I'm not really a defensive player. The offense is how do we go and meet the market where, where they need, where they're at and what they need is a better platform just to buy Bitcoin, lend against it, get cash, the highest form of cash earning, spending on it, Iras, access to terminal research, all the things you would naturally want if you were Bitcoin centric or looking for that financial service, but still needed to live with your wife and your family and not make them pissed off because they don't know how to access your Bitcoin if something happens. And so that's really the bridge is honor and finance. There's a catalyst in confluence of things happening with genius act with the reality of meeting the market where they're at and then really bringing people into on ramps orbit, because there's a lot of listeners here. I guarantee you that may have been interested in a product offering, but may not be ready for multi institution. You may have thought it's too expensive for them. And so the idea for on ramp finances, if you're ready to start trading at a lower cost brokerage, have all these perks and you've been following us and want to support, you'll have that ability. You can, you know, we'll talk about some of the perks and other things, but the point being is how do we let people or their family members know? Because that's another big gap in the market is that for the 1st 17 years, again, a lot of these things sound subjective, but they're objective that we're been in a hobbyist industry because if we hadn't, you wouldn't have all the hot potato that's existed. I guarantee you everyone's listening here. If they still hold their stack has gone between 1:00 to 4:00. Financial service counterparties, one to four devices, different leaks, different hacks, different ah shit moments. And so the idea is imagine if somebody's able to step in, have a cash platform move over, whether it's just the earning rewards into Bitcoin so their principal stays whole or they want to DCA and then slowly learn about cold storage, multi institution real material balances. The last thing from a just structural and strategic perspective, this is going to do wonders for our relationships with the large Tri 5 firms because at the end of like what happens is when you go and you pitch these firms and you're a niche Bitcoin multi stick provider. They're very pleasant and they're very cordial, but the reality is they kind of like smile and it's like, you know, good job son, because you're building a small like custody niche platform. They don't see it as a the future money platform, the future custody layer, but they also miss the gap of they want other assets, they want to offer a holistic view. This is what Morgan Stanley is doing. This is what Fidelity is doing. And so by us learning client deposits along with a bunch of other financial services we have planned, it allows us to further partner, bring in other custodial relationships and then ultimately offer different technology services to them. Well said. I want to pull up a few things here before we jump into some of the market related news. So I want to call out a few things here. First and foremost, I want to give a shout out to the team. Beautiful new website. If you haven't been on the new website, check it out. What I'm looking at right here is on rampbitcoin.com/finance and you can actually see the terms for the Genesis program. This would be certainly relevant for listeners of this show. It's the really the encapsulation of everything that we've been discussing here so far. It's limited to the 1st 210 sign ups. I do think we still have a little bit of room left. You can sign them for free and you're actually getting a number of perks that are after we get through the window of 210, we'll never be offered again, including a signed copy of gradually then suddenly by Parker Lewis. You're locked into the highest earned rate of five percent, 1 1/2% cash back on the on ramp spending card, access to the on ramp terminal, which I'll show you here as well. New and improved. It's fantastic. I don't know why you wouldn't want to access something like this that's typically gated behind thousands of dollars a year to access this type of data. AP is built in. Now you can see on the right hand side all the news aggregating sentiment and then hundreds of different on chain metrics, macro metrics, Bitcoin treasuries, ETFs, etcetera. So again, Genesis program, if you are interested, you can go directly to the website on on ramp bitcoin.com. And when you hit sign up again, it's free to sign up. You hit sign up here and then you just put Genesis in the code when you sign up and we'll be sure to get that all out to you. One thing I do what I do. Hopefully OPS doesn't kill us. I think they listen, if you put in TLT, we're going to do an extra 25, whatever the SAT, I'm not going to do the conversion here. And we're going to do that until they kill us because you'll get the Genesis, but put in TLT. And the main reason for that is because I know there's a lot of people listening that have wanted to get involved with what we do and they're not ready for multi institution. So you get all the Genesis stuff, you'll get everything. The SAT that are going to be at things 21,000, but we're going to add an additional I guess that would be 32,000 SAT roughly on top of the 21,000 close to 50,000 SAT's for anybody that puts it in TLT, just don't share if they're, if they're not listeners because there's a lot of folks that have been following us been they've seen the growth, they've appreciated the commentary and that's just a token of appreciation. We'll see how many weeks we can do this before finance or operations says you guys need to quit. Yeah. The other thing to point out there is if you are one of those people and you've been thinking about multi institution custody, if you sign up for Genesis you get a year free if you deposit to Bitcoin. So if you want to test it out for a year at no cost, there's a. Way. That's true. I think we were going to wait to see people come in and then because maybe this is this has been a big reason for a lot of people to move over stacks from other providers. They've reached out, but that is a big that is a factor. If you've been on the factor, it's on a sweet. Actually, no, I know, I know. I'm doing, I'm doing a lot of. Secret information. I'm doing a little a little radiator, but but there that is a it is a good thing to call and if you've been on the fence, you actually can sign up and get your first year if you have a / 2 Bitcoin deposited. So all this and that look guys like the. The main goal here is we're in a really good spot. The industry's coming back. There's a lot of momentum, and I know this stuff works and you want momentum to be get momentum because when we go into this run, all the things we've been able to do, these pods will still continue, but all the consults we're getting, we'll have to bring people on. It'll just get crazier and crazier. I went from like 5 and Unchained to 125 or whatever it was. And we want to be able to be there. We want to bring people in before the mistakes happen because as the price runs, that's when everything gets crazy. Everyone freaks out. And so our goal is to really pull forward as much of the demand for the people that have been, you know, looking at this wanted to get involved. So yeah, I would encourage you to check it out or just book a console and talk to somebody on the team and hear what's going on, how we're working with the new. We don't even push it enough. The new wallet config file feature. So if you have like Sparrow Caravan running and you want to onboard and then validate that your assets are sitting there on chain. So it's an exciting time. In the last piece before we talk about news, the last piece would be the referral program that's officially live and launched and you can get up to $150.00 in Bitcoin for each referral you make. So friends and family as well. No reason not to sign up for Genesis if you're on the fence, do it. And then you can also, you know, let your fan friends and family know if they have a fragmented experience currently or they don't currently own any Bitcoin and they keep asking what to do. You can both benefit. So referrals check that out as well. Now on with the show. Most financial apps do one thing. On Ramp Finance provides everything you need to preserve and grow your wealth. Earn with On Ramp up to 5% on the dollar sitting in your cash account. Spend with the On Ramp spending card. Earn 1.5% cash back on every swipe. Your cash back stacks up in dollars, then with a single click turns into Bitcoin Earn spend accumulate the flywheel that grows your Bitcoin while you live your life on ramp Finance the all in one platform for your Bitcoin wealth. We're live highest rewards founding benefits first access. Join the on ramp Finance genesis program. Sign up now. If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin? Not, Probably not. They would figure it out with certainty. I thought about this a lot. You may feel confident managing your own keys, but are your loved ones? Billions of Bitcoin have been lost already because someone died without a plan. With on ramp inheritance planning is built in directly into your custody setup. Your Bitcoin stays segregated and in your control, insured through Lloyd's of London and accessible to the people you choose when they need it. Get started in 15 minutes. Book a free consultation at on rampbitcoin.com on ramp secured by three controlled by me. Let's get into some signal and some noise. This one made made its way around the Internet this week. So we have 4 star Admiral and commander of the US Indo Pacific Command who is actually Jason Lowry. So I maybe some people know, others don't know, but Lowry reports directly to this individual here at Barrow and we're talking, it sounds like, you know, we can see if it's signal or noise. It sounds like Lowry kind of handed him a script of our Brian before we hit record. He said kind of like a index card here, some of the main talking points. But nonetheless, a lot of people are excited about it and I think it's generally an interesting situation to monitor. So let's just play this clip here real quick to another subject. Our competition with China isn't just about military strength. That also includes monetary strength as well. You know, last year, the Chinese Communist Party's main monetary think tank published research on Bitcoin as a strategic asset. You know, this came after President Trump moved to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Admiral, how does leadership in Bitcoin impact leverage resilience, deterrence for Indo Pacom against China? And do you think that a strategic Bitcoin reserve helps America compete against China? Senator, our, you know, our research into Bitcoin is as a computer science tool. It's the combination of cryptography, a blockchain and a proof of work. And Bitcoin shows incredible potential as a as a computer science tool that through the proof of work protocols is a actually imposes more cost than just the algorithmic securing of networks and our ability to operate. And Bitcoin is a reality. It is a valuable computer science tool as a power projection and outside of the economic formulation of IT, it has got really important computer science applications for cybersecurity. Thank you. What What recommendations do you have for us here in Congress on how to how the US can lead on Bitcoin competition? You know, I have to go deeper on that with you, for the record, and I can go, I can go deeper on that case, but Bitcoin is a reality. It is a peer-to-peer zero trust transfer of value. Anything that supports the all instruments of national power for the United States of America is to the good. So I think definitely want to hear your guys thoughts. The main thing that comes to mind for me is where that clip started, just in the context of the great power competition with China in particular and discussing just what's happening as it relates to the monetary forces. So I think it's easy to lose sight in the day-to-day volatility or week monthly volatility of the price of Bitcoin. And you know, everyone likes to look at what's happening there with the headline volatility in the price. But behind the scenes, there's still a lot more happening as it relates to what we talked about here most weeks, Bitcoin, gold, dollar and how this kind of is all shaping into the next decade or two in terms of monetary power and forces. And we know we talk a lot about U.S. Treasury market and we talk a lot about the Federal Reserve. But the fact of the matter is that money plays an absolutely critical role as we've seen particularly in the past couple years here, right with just the war currently happening and then 2022, the sanction against Russia. And so this is all really trending favorably toward Bitcoin and also gold. And the reason being is because of what what you heard here, it's peer-to-peer. There's no trust involved. You can settle instantly 10 minutes. And I think it's just important to remember what's actually being discussed at some of the highest levels here. And even if this is just, you know, something that doesn't come to pass or doesn't materialize in any way, these are still conversations that are happening and in an audience of people who have influence and an audience of people who are still very unfamiliar with Bitcoin. And naturally when these more of these conversations happen, you are moving the Overton window, you are shifting conversation in the right direction as relates to Bitcoin. So I think that's more of the signal here than necessarily then then the rest of what was said. You got to love the the boomer Gantee below it says Croc. Is this real? Can you verify it? Because I think that's the thing going around on Twitter right now is that the boomers are getting like deep faked by all the AI slot. Yeah, I think that's that's right. I also think this is stuff we've been talking about and Liv Grauman's been talking about that there's a true reality happening that the world is fracturing. It's going to multipolar and the US is not going to have the dominance from air, naval definitely for manufacturing. And so there's a true reality that if the US wants good and services, specifically anything that is physical, whether it's commodities or rare earths, they now have to pay for it in gold. Like full stop. That's just how it works. And so we don't know how much gold China has. We know they've accumulated insane amounts. We know that the petrodollar is effectively broken. They're demanding yuan or gold. And so when they say China is looking at this from a geopolitical perspective, there's an angle that I believe was was looked at for years now, and it's part of this administration. All the things we've talked about around why it matters for the US is that the US has a very large percentage of the Bitcoin sitting within our borders. And so if there's a world where money goes back to being commodity based gold, Bitcoin, you click the case, it's already there with where gold is dealing and how people are not settling on things that people actually need. Then it's of geopolitical significance for the US to figure out how to get ahead of it, provide the right market structure, and then incentivize companies and the asset to come within our borders, which we're seeing across the board. Whether it's our capital markets, MSTR, what they're doing, whether it's the ETFs, that there's a reality that if gold is going to do its thing and we are going to have a deficit when it comes to trade because we need those things. And they require us to pay in gold, not in dollars. They can park in treasuries. What other lever do we have outside of this to be able to to pull on it from a monetary perspective? So I think this is all just like coming to light. It's the stuff that Matt Pines has talked about. It just took a while to get there. So that's my at least gut take on it. And it's also interesting because they were like rumoring. Something was going to come out. I hadn't listened to it until this exact moment, but that kind of it hit me that this is what they were excited about last week when they're mentioning that this would get right be brought up. Yeah, I have a few thoughts. So I think when I first saw the clip on the timeline, I thought it was signal. And then I learned that Lowry is a direct report to this guy. And then I thought it was more noise because it's like, OK, he just gave this guy some talking points and this all sort of feels a little orchestrated and planned that he would say this at this hearing or whatever. But now I think I'm back on the side of the signal in the sense that kind of what you were saying, Jackson, like kind of doesn't matter whether or not this is like Jason Lowry slop or rated through some guy that no one's heard of before until today. It kind of doesn't matter because what he's saying is pretty powerful. Even if you don't take it to the extent of all the software thesis, power projection, all that stuff. Because I know there's a lot of Bitcoin people in either camp of this that think that's like total nonsense. Like it's not a power projection tool. I think part of the reason that people get so riled up about that is because they think the trajectory here is that the government wants to basically call Bitcoin a weapon and then do some sort of nationalization of miners, which like, you know, not out of the realm of possibility. But that's not where my my mind goes with this. Where where I think it's it is signal is this is putting out into the zeitgeist, moving that over to the window that Bitcoin good, not necessarily what you've heard before in terms of Bitcoin bad. And that's like the very layman terms. Like for all these people that are in that room that have no idea what Bitcoin is, they've heard about it in the context of criminal activity and wasting energy. They have a guy who seemingly is respected in that room saying, no, this is a computer science breakthrough. It's a reality. It's important and we should be thinking about it. That alone, like whether or not, you know, the, the full extent of Jason Lowry's thesis is true or practical, it's kind of beside the point. The point is that this continues to to nudge out that over to window and and get more people on the side of, hey, maybe I should rethink what I thought about Bitcoin previously. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the, the Jason Lowry stuff, I don't know. And it's it's hard because you go from these different cohorts and vintages of like 17 to 20 and then 20 to 22. And Lowry came out and that 2022 like kind of really like it. And so you got to remember who you're speaking to. I think like the whole thing probably makes sense as a quasi SOP and where he came from. But it was a long term play for for this because you have to remember, like, how can you relate geopolitical significance without meeting these people and what he's saying to a level of where they can grab a grapple with why it matters right around energy, etcetera, etcetera, whatever you said. So I think that's the angle of this is just another faction within the government, the sense somewhere else that they're all coming around and coalescing that this thing actually matters. And so, yeah, I think that's the right meta point that independent of what's said and how what's being reiterated or reinforced based on somebody else's book, there is just a notion that these conversations are happening at the highest levels. And then they're being made in a way or like delivered in a way that somebody doesn't have to understand all the mechanics of Bitcoin in the monetary aspects. They just have to understand quote UN quote, power projection, projection and whatever that means. Michael, you should read Software. Thank you. The only thing that I you guys have heard me say this, but I'll say it again because it's the best line, is the Bitcoin at the end of the day are just geopolitical, monetary nuclear weapons. Yeah. I mean, that's basically his thesis. But in this, in this truest sense of like if I'm here in the States and or Texas, if whatever your local sovereign entity that you govern is and you need something to make sure nobody revolts and how you get it is shipping Bitcoin. And if you don't ship the Bitcoin ID the money, then you don't get it. Like I think that's in it's true sense, meaning if you're in the US and you need fertilizer or to, to feed your, your people, you need that. And if you're don't have it, you don't have that monetary nuclear weapon, then you ultimately start. But that's like what I take from that, not even related to whatever power of rejection. And like, because it's so funny that well, the Bitcoin network compared to like where AI is going, all the things needed there, They're not talking about AI in that respect. And that's. Yeah. Well, the nuke thing, the the way that he frames the nuke thing, is very similar to Safedine's framing around gunpowder. It's like you can't, you can't afford to not adopt the thing basically if other people are. Yeah, so this actually ties into the next thing. I wanted to talk about a few things here. I'll pull up and then we can riff on it. But I wanted to call out, so this isn't Anthony Pompliano's newsletter titled Bitcoin has Become the King of Safe Haven Assets. And I want to just take a look at this chart here from on Ramp. And we were talking about Brian, I guess you and Glenn put this together. But just looking at the performance of Bitcoin relative to the S&P 500 and gold 60 day return profile over some key geopolitical events over the past six years or so. And you can see here that Bitcoin is outperforming both of these other major asset classes pretty significantly in some cases after the 60 day window of all these different events. And if I were to flip over to Marty's tweet here, ties directly into what we were just talking about. Don't know how anyone could be bearish on Bitcoin considering how it's performed. Since the beginning of the latest incursion to the Middle East, demand for neutral and permissionless monetary network controlled by no one has skyrocketed. And then the last piece here that is a little bit difference, but I still think is relevant. I thought it was interesting is Bitcoin is now calmer than South Korea's stock market. Here's why it matters. And so this last piece here, I was just thinking more about in the context of just being an American and thinking about everything from my lens of the world. But when you actually move outside of the US or outside of the West and you start looking at other economies and other equity markets and South Korea's still pretty large market in a developed economy. Bitcoin still being less than two decades old and still being considered incredibly volatile in the United States and in the Western world is actually is providing more stability than a major country's equity market. And so I think this is some of the distortion or inversion that we'll end up seeing over the coming years where Bitcoin will continue to go into favor just given the circumstances that we find ourselves in today, where there's more turmoil, there's more challenging of the existing world order, there's more GL put a conflict and Bitcoin is positioned very well to perform in those instances. And what I think people thought was a safe haven assets, whether it's U.S. Treasuries or it's equity markets of different developed countries are going to be a little bit more challenge. I might, I may say that the US the, the stocks only go up and there's a number of reasons why. But if you start to look outside of the United States, it's kind of a different picture for equity markets. And so I thought this was an interesting one just to tie it back to what we've discussed here on Bitcoin is really starting to perform well. I mean, we don't want to consider the fact that it's down 40% from its all time highs. But when you actually think about the circumstances we find ourselves in the past 6-6 weeks, whether it's the performance itself or Michael, what you've spoken to on previous podcasts about Bitcoin actually being used for settling trade and ship passage in the Hormuz, it's actually pretty compelling long term as part of this thesis that we've been describing for years now. Yeah. I mean, anybody building or have allocated this base and then around for any number of years has to really pinch themselves because the price isn't reflecting this. But the amount of fundamentals from just think about the US and with Morgan Stanley Schwab. But then from a geopolitical perspective, like these are insane headlines that Jackson's throwing out. And you can really feel that crossing the chasm of I heard it, somebody was explaining to me, like Bitcoin has that I don't want to call it blue chip, but it has that name brand like a Coca-Cola. Like everyone's heard about it, but it still has a stigma. And the stigma has different, you know, flavors of it, but it was always going to be the case that when Bitcoin crossed a chasm and went into numbers that we all expect, there was going to be a very chaotic world, which you see as that backdrop. And then I can't also help but just think about this whole notion. And maybe there's a better term for it for like investment management, Brian. But it's like obviously like there's the what's obvious is obviously wrong. And that's kind of people still playing the 6040 and thinking that all exists in perpetuity. But then there's the old adage of like being a contrarian for just contrarian shape sake, meaning think about all the stuff we talked about, like bitcoins, the trade it it's fundamentally the trade. It has everything you need. And then you have this like lever that's like contrarian for contrarian sake. There's a, there's a better analogy, but it's like ultimately trying to figure out the amplified or better Bitcoin. And that's how you end up with none of the Bitcoin. You come like full circle, right? And I just can't help but but outline that because I think that's what happens with a lot of smart people, right? And especially investment management is you find the trade and you almost outsmart yourself to think if it's a second or third order effects. And I think that's ultimately what we're seeing. And when it's so obvious to that, you would think, OK, that. And that's the same with crypto, right? The people have found Bitcoin and they try to make more on it because they thought they could get the next one. There's just these different flavors and when you think about everything under the sun that Jackson just laid out, it's really gets back to that asymmetric trade because you get all the upside in the monetization premium, but you also protect yourself from all the downside and any other alternative you have because the risk of loss is everything. It's not just like 20%, it's literally everything. If you don't, if you pick the wrong trade off. Yeah, there's a lot there. What I was going to say is, you know, to me, part of my sort of long term thesis on Bitcoin has always been grounded in this idea of reducing the amount of variables at play. And so Bitcoin is very unique in that sense that what some people in trap fi world perceive as a bad thing that there's no cash flows, there's no it's not based on earnings is actually a positive in my mind because when you have chaos. So if you know, if we're looking at that chart of all the different sort of geopolitical events and financial crises that are, are listed there and, and that that chart could go back further as well. What's most important in those times is reducing not only counterparty risk, but just the number of variables that could impact any given investment. And so it's similar to what you're saying, Michael, and that like, you know, it's unfortunate that even if you figure out the trade, if you then add more variables to the thing, then you're adding more risk, whether it's counterparty risk, execution risk, management risk, all these things. The elegance and simplicity and beauty of Bitcoin and held in cold storage, held the right way is you've reduced as many variables as possible like relative to any asset on earth, the main one probably being like monetary policy, right? Like that's where the scarcity, the finite nature comes from. We know the supply schedule. You can't say that about other monies or other other assets. But then even just like the impact that AI will have on it, right? Like the stock market, you know, I agree with you, Jackson, it probably just continues to go up because they they print a ton of money at some point. But what would cause that to wobble is AI disruption, competitive forces, all these things you have to think about with these other assets. And so to me, the reason that that chart persists and why Bitcoin tends to do well in these chaotic moments, you know, after the first like few hours, right? Because I think particularly if it's on the weekend, Bitcoin tends to sell off on these things. News sort of breaks around these various things. But when you look 3060 days out, it tends to do well because one, it's a recognition of, you know, what this thing is. And two, it's a recognition of, well, this has less variables to think about. If there's chaos in the world, there's uncertainty. I need to own more of the thing that is less susceptible to all of that chaos. And so I need to reduce the amount of variables that could impact my investment. And so that's always been sort of a core tenet of how I look at Bitcoin, it's value prop. And I think that that chart in particular does a good job of sort of showing that. That's very well said, Brian. Yeah, I think it's incredibly challenging to plan for the long term just in general right now. I was thinking about that the past couple of days because most people want to follow the conventional wisdom that worked for the past several decades and probably what they've heard from their parents or friends and family growing up. But to your point, even even though Bitcoin is incredibly volatile from a price perspective, it is incredibly predictable in terms of how the network actually operates. And so it's a great thing to just come back to an anchor to because we don't really know. I mean, we don't know how Bitcoin will perform into the future, but we also don't know how real estate or equities or anything will perform into the future. Because the circumstances today are just so far different than what they were and call it the 70s, eighties, 90s, when, when the previous generations were starting their careers and, and, you know, in the middle of their career. So it's a, it's a hard situation we find ourselves in, but definitely like the like the backdrop that we that we continue to see play out here. And it seems like there's a lot of structural tailwinds that exist to favor Bitcoin and, and gold again. So one thing I wanted to make sure we get to, I don't know, Michael, how you're on time, but one thing I doubt definitely wanted to cover quickly, Brian, was your interview that you did last night with CGTN, You were talking about the independence of the Fed with the Senate hearing with Wash or the lack thereof independence. I'm going to pull it up here now and let me know how much of this clip do you actually want. Me to play here, right, Just play it. Just the habit of falling in and out of love with people that he one time wildly supported. What sort of land mines, if any, do you think could be out there for warsh if rates don't drop? Quickly. Yeah, I mean, I would say there are a ton of land mines for Kevin Warsh. And it's not necessarily because of who is who it what his past is in terms of, you know, historically being a little bit more hawkish and now, you know, potentially being forced to be more dovish and and cut rates. The land mines really stem from the unsustainable path of the debt that Jerome Powell has been quoted as as describing so many times over the past few years. He's really being put into a pretty much impossible situation where, you know, if he were to cut rates in the face of inflation that's been pretty sticky and really hasn't been solved for the most part, then that would be a a, you know, potential recipe for disaster. And he really can't raise rates from here in the sense that, you know, the interest expense on the debt is already over a trillion dollars a year, you know, and that's just adding to the 40 trillion in in national debt. And so that's why I think Powell for the past year has wanted to just sort of stay put and do neither thing, neither cut rates nor raise rates because there really is no palatable solution in either direction. So the landmines really stem from the state of the Fiat monetary system, I would say, and the really the, the rock and a hard place that that we put ourselves in. Considering Warsh's record and recent comments, what you can think of it there. I'll I'll summarize the rest of my views. I think, you know, they had asked me on to to sort of talk about the nomination hearing that occurred yesterday for Kevin Warsh. And so I did my, I did my best fed speak and and Michael hates fed speak, but I'm fluent in it. And I think my point that some of the points I want to make were, you know, effectively it doesn't matter either way. Like who gets appointed to be the the chair of the Fed, whether they're hawkish or dovish, The reality on the ground is that they have to print more money at some point, they have to lower rates. And so a lot of it is theater, whether it's a confirmation hearing or FOMC meetings in general, because the writing's on the wall in terms of the unsustainability of the debt and the need to continue to inflate away the debt and debase the currency. And so I tried to make those points in as polite a way as possible, like Kevin Worsch. You know, it is interesting in some extent. I think we talked about it last week that he has like, you know, millions of dollars in crypto investments. He was on the board of various digital asset companies. I think where that's somewhat interesting is as it relates to waning demand for U.S. Treasuries, we know stable coins are going to be a big part of filling that gap. And so maybe his expertise in that arena or at least open mindedness to digital assets, stable coins and the like. Maybe that that sort of some function in terms of why he was nominated. Because I think that's going to be a part, you know, not only of, of the US Treasury strategy, but also, you know, what the Fed ultimately does. And so I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that or if, Michael, you just want to move on because you hate the Fed. No, I want to comment on, I thought Brian did an amazing job. The platform that he was on seemed very buttoned up. It was cool to hear them talk to somebody that, you know, has a background in Triadfy, but also, you know, from working in the, the Bitcoin space. And the, the reality is it's less about the Fed or Fed speak. It's what Jackson alluded to earlier. And what we keep alluding to is unless they're going to allow the economy to crash, they just have to print money and stock market goes up and everyone's going to get to base. Like it's just hard to, to, to, to do the credence of the song and dance. But I think you did it really well. And we have to do it because going back to meeting the market where they're at, they don't want to hear that. They want to hear that, you know, dollars just going to lose a few percentage points in purchasing power and everything's going to be honky Dory. Brian, I wasn't sure because at the start of this interview that they played the clip about we're saying that he's going to sell his $100 million portfolio of whatever he owns. Is that a requirement to become Fed chair? Do you know? I don't know if it's a requirement. From the way he answered the questions, it sounds like it's typically like a negotiation around like what assets need to be sold. If there's any inherent conflicts of interest related to those assets, then they probably do need to be sold. So I think that's and, and part of the take away from yesterday was like this could get delayed in terms of him taking the seat because one, the, the Democrats want to hold it up because of the, the probe that Trump did into Powell building that building, which is very theatrical and, and pure noise. But so I think he eventually gets the seat. But where they might also try to hang it up is on the crypto stuff, because he does have a lot of investments in that space. And that's something that they've come after Trump and the Trump family for as well over the past two years that they have all these interests in these crypto companies. And then he's sort of pumping the markets, doing his own pump and dump coins, that kind of stuff. So of course they don't like that. Yeah, I thought, I thought that was interesting just because some commentators think that Warsh is going to be a hawk and he's going to reverse a lot of the policy of the past two decades that just create created this crazy Walt divide and pumped all the asset prices. Kind of comical, I know, I know. But it'd be kind of comical if, you know, he just sold his portfolio at the top and then started to try to rug everything. But to the main point, right, there's only so much you can do before you start running into some physical realities there. Yeah, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. I think is an apartment quote for what he's about to walk into. Like he can do the song and dance of I want to reduce the balance sheet, I want to use interest rates instead of the balance sheet, etcetera. But the, the main cause of like massive QE is typically a crisis. It's like that you have a plan going in, but then something breaks and then you have to print more money. And so like that's inevitable. He's not going to be any different, so. So Brian, you going on CGTN signal, give me the signal. Pass. If the Bitcoin price doubled tomorrow, would you feel good about how it's being secured right now? Most people have not really pressure tested that. And I get it. I have talked to people who have self custody for over a decade and others who've stayed on exchanges because they could never get comfortable managing their own keys. Both camps have real concerns. That is why we built on ramp multi institution custody so no single company can lose it, move it or use it. Lloyd's of London Insurance inheritance planning built in and a team that can walk you through the entire setup. Get started in 15 minutes. Book a free consultation at on rampbitcoin.com on ramp secured by three, controlled by me. Got a couple more here. I like this one. It ties back Brian a couple weeks. I don't know if I'm a month at this point, but we're looking back at the flows into the, I'll make it a little bit bigger into the ETF complex complex. So crypto funds attracted 1.4 billion in inflows last week, highest weekly inflow since the third week of January. This marks the 7th weekly inflow out of the last 8, the strongest week since October. Bitcoin funds LED with 1.1 billion, bringing year to date total to 3.1 billion. As our friend and loyal listener to the last trade, Eric Balchuna says, the boomers have diamond hands. They're just, they're committed to the Bitcoin trade. They're buying more. I bet they're buying more Morgan Stanley ETF now, Fidelity, FBTC, etcetera. So this is encouraging and the sentiments definitely shifting in real time. I think totally different environment we found ourselves in than a month or two ago in terms of Bitcoin sentiment. And then also just pointing out here that Bitcoin is the market, yeah, 1.1 billion of flows in the last week out of 1.4 billion into the total complex. Bitcoin really is, as we know, the signal here, but it still is gaining by far more of the attention and the capital in the trad fi space. And the last thing that you guys might like here as well that I think of find interesting is European banks are at risk of losing customers to rivals with better crypto tools. So this was something I found through Coindesk. It was a survey of investors in Germany, Italy, Spain and France said they would consider switching banks for better crypto investment services with the highest interest in Spain. In Spain about 1/4 of respondents already owned digital assets, yet majority still feel poorly informed view crypto is too complex and see it insufficiently regulated and risky. And so I think this ties back into what we're building here on ramp, right? Because people are naturally going to want to work with firms that are able to provide good education, research and best in class services to own Bitcoin reliably, able to access it easily from brokerage standpoint. And this is something that the incumbents definitely have to think about because we know that the generations that are inheriting a lot of the capital over the next decade or two, as well as people who are in the prime of their careers and building wealth, are naturally more inclined to invest into these assets than previous generations. Yeah. I think high signal, the thing I go back to is thinking about how small 21 million really is and then how small also the amount of inflows to date, we still have seen, even though the numbers on a relative basis from the ETF from BlackRock have been significant, there's still so much capital out there on the sidelines. And then to your point, going back to the finance stuff, and here is this is just a rational progression that if you're an individual, you're going to go to better products and services. It's not the best analogy, but it's the closest I can think of. And I always go back to it is like Blockbuster and Netflix because the design surface for distribution fundamentally changed. And then the rational thing, you can have as much affinity for Blockbusters you wanted, but you rather sit at home with your kids and click the button, have it stream. And it's very similar here except for people's money. So not only will these new native firms because they're building with a new design surface that isn't native to these larger incumbents. And even if it was, they still have all the bureaucracy and regulatory barriers when you think about money movement to not really be incentivized to build with that kind of like frictionless behavior as a stable coin or Bitcoin. But then the other side is really the economic reality and economic forces that once people go on from their speculative ETF exposure and they either get confidence and conviction because the price rises or they decide to buy more because they read and they get educated. The rational thing to do is the question, well, what would happen if this were to be lost? What is my custodian? What is my financial service partner doing different? And this is ultimately where we see it being driven by the market and whether they come to on Ramp or on a longer time horizon. These firms that we're talking to actually partner with us because they understand this is the second and 3rd order evolution of Bitcoin in custody because our clients that are sophisticated will demand it or they will leave. It's the same reason why Schwab turned it on. They see the capital leaving their platform. And so that's the idea behind on Ramp finance is that we will build that bridge. People that are already Bitcoin centric may understand that they don't want a relationship with Schwab, Bank of America any more. They want it with on ramp. And then on the other side of it, the people that are tied into Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, maybe they want to retain that relationship and if they have multi institution custody allows them to do that. So we're both basically coming at the market from both sides. How are we doing on time? Good. OK. I think we got to talk about the upgrading cycle for Bitcoin. It's not the same Bitcoin some are saying on the street. I'll play this clip this 5 minutes here. I mean, we could just summarize what was said. Maybe go into the like minute and 20 and I'll probably leave a little bit early and you guys can finish like 5, but like that 120 I think right here got pretty interesting and just. Quick. Before you clicks. Play there was a op next meeting which is interesting meeting of the minds which between devs and then the large custodian, the trad 5 firms and so on. The stage is BlackRock, Coinbase, Anchorage, and I think a few other folks talking about just Bitcoin protocol development and inserting some form of influence because of their economic resources. Exactly, they are strong actors with economic incentives I think is one of the quotes there. Risks are mitigated on the correct timeline is great and that's additive. And so you know, Coinbase has events on Quantum that they're planning as well. BlackRock has been transparent and vocal and the custodians are already planning for the best mitigation strategy. So all of that's good. And it's different from before where there weren't private firms that had the capitalization and resources to do the upgrades. I'm 100% agree. It's just not the same Bitcoin. It's not the same Bitcoin of the block space wars where, you know, the industry was very small compared to what the community wanted. It's not the same thing as Taproot where, you know, adoption of anything is based on demand. Right here we have a clear need, a clear demand and you know, the strategies of the world, the black rocks of the world, the anchorages and the Coinbase of the world. We are a part of this community now and Bitcoin is easy community that is working towards developing these changes. And so it's it's on all of us to do that and there's no reason why it shouldn't happen. One thing that's I think very important here is that we aren't, we aren't going to wait for some other external change, right? We are going to come and make sure that we all execute this in time in a, in a timeline that makes sense for us as a community, not just, you know, some other external timeline. So I have to run but I'll just do a quick comment as what I think it was, the block size war block. Space Wars. Yeah, this is something we've been dancing around. It's going to come to light more. I was thinking about it last night when we were roofing on it and be careful what I say. I think that he said something there that is objectively not true. It's a subjective statement that it's clear that we have a problem here. It's it's not, it's what they're propagating. It's just not. That's your question every everyone should question who's propagating that and what their long term incentives are. There's a lot happening behind the scenes around the centralization of Bitcoin that people look at as good and pumping the price and it'll ultimately come to rear its head and negative externalities. And yeah, this is this is going to be a big deal. I think the silver lining is sophisticated participants and people that really hold Bitcoin to hold it at Coinbase or Anchorage, they have any cold storage because they know they haven't been able to trust a single entity. And I think it's going to be a very interesting line we straddle to work with those firms, but also retain the principles and understanding that people not only own the title of their Bitcoin, but they own any fork that occurs and they can follow any fork and we can distribute those coins. And we also have a principled stance on ultimately what is Bitcoin and how does governance work? And there is no economic forces around an entity that can help manipulate that. It's fundamentally antithetical to the whole value prop of what it what and why it exists. And anybody that's propagating that is just either disingenuous or incompetent, frankly. So yeah. Yeah, some wild sound bites from from this panel of gentlemen basically saying big boys are here now, we know better than you guys and we're going to do this because we need to all all of these different things. You know what I would say is you're you're exactly right. Like This is why ownership assurances around Bitcoin matter so much because if there is some sort of future fork war around this quantum deal, then you want to have the ability to basically have both sides of that. And if you're in an ETF like you are beholden to the guy on the stage there and what he wants to do. And so that is, I think you're right, Michael. I think this is going to come to a head at some point, but early stage is still. And one thing I want to say before I jump, sorry, is like, I know I appreciate everyone listening. I hope we gain followers, all the things associated, but there is a real reality that these people do not know what they're doing and they do not know what they're talking about. And why do I say that? Or what do I mean is I've talked with them, I've talked to the leadership of these firms. And when you break down what we do, when I go in and explain it and they're like, well, wait, we don't we do that, right? And then you have to break down how multi sick works and how different institutions participated like wait, wait, why don't we do that? There is just true fraction or a fracture of what it means to understand Bitcoin from a technical and operational security perspective and then what it means to understand the financialization of it. Those are fundamentally different things. You see this all the time. And so it's not to say like if you want to financialize Bitcoin, I'm probably the last person you want to speak to about it. But my thesis is you cannot financialize an asset until you deeply understand the security profile. Or back to Brian's point, you're layering on assumptions on a false premise, which are ultimately going to end up and you getting wrecked. And so I think that's our big kind of like notion or the thing I like keep anchoring back to whether it's talking about the MSDR stuff or here is that we're in these rooms and they just deeply don't understand the second third order effects, the game theory, the incentive model. And these things didn't exist in Bitcoins first 10/12/15 years as real coalescing factors. And like the whole notion of trust, don't trust verify, like all these concepts go back to pre Bitcoin. They're just rational ways to manage things. And I just think we're getting set up for, you know, the price is going to pump and everyone's going to be super excited. And these individuals are going to have a lot of economic resources and economic capital and nodes tied to the amount of Bitcoin that their governance controls. And so you're going to have this motion where people are going to keep pushing aside. Oh, it's OK, it's OK, they're pumping my bags. It's the same thing we saw with Brahm talking on the broadcast of like, well, how much Bitcoin would you get uncomfortable if MSTR has right? Like that's the same idea is that there's going to be numbers hit on all these different fields where everyone starts to question. And by the time it gets to that point, it's going to be too late. I think we'll be OK. I think it, the governance structure in the global aspect of this will work itself out. But it's something to be aware of, especially if you're thinking about putting your Bitcoin on a centralized exchange or contributing to a bunch of Bitcoin sitting on centralized with centralized entities that are governing it. Cut. We're cutting it there. We're ending it. My Claude usage is back up or ending the episode with go. Gentlemen, thank you for your time today. If you are a listener to the last trade, please like subscribe grade 5 stars and sign up for Genesis before spots are gone. Use code TLT. Michael said he's going to throw in a little extra sets. He's going to throw you a bone. I come out of my stack. I don't even know. We got to hope. Nick, if you're listening, tell me how we got to do it. But yeah, use TLT really want, you know, I, I had you guys in mind building this because I know there's a lot of folks that want to support and either tell their friends, family, they sign up. You can also get the SAT and you can refer people because that's another way to get referrals. You're you're on board and we know where to deposit the Bitcoin. All right, Claude's ready to cook. Thanks guys. 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 onrampbitcoin.com/contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private Client Advisors.
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