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It all. Comes down to computers communicating the information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps. Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold. Is it still rat poison? Probably rat poison squared. We need to get into the world of OK, this is actually foundational technology. What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction. The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of gun. The one thing that's missing that that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash. All righty, gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Final SETTLEMENT. Today is Monday, January 12th, 2026, 11:15 AM Eastern Standard Time. Gentlemen, how are we doing? We got Michael, we got Liam, we have a special guest, Nick, which we'll, we'll get to a formal introduction for him a little later in the show. But we've got a big show, ton of links on the list. A lot has happened in the past week, the past few weeks. The world is changing quickly and yeah, we're going to jump right into it. So the the first, first headline we wanted to get to this actually dropped, I think shortly after we recorded last week. So we didn't get a chance to touch on it, but Morgan Stanley filed for their own Bitcoin ETF, also a salon ETF, but we'll we'll ignore that for now. They registered for a Bitcoin ETF and this is a big deal for a number of regions all sort of kick things off here and then and then get thoughts from the group. But this really stuck out to me. As you know, we've kind of become numb to a lot of the headlines around whether it's M and A activity, partnerships, ETF filings. But this one is different in the sense that Morgan Stanley's not a, you know, historically a big ETF factory or shop necessarily. They have a handful of funds that they manage, ETF funds that they manage and only two prior to this actually had the Morgan Stanley brand name on it. They have sort of sub brands like Calvert and Parametric that they manage ETFs for. But in terms of the the very short list of Morgan Stanley branded ETFs, Bitcoin one will be the third ever, which is a pretty big deal. I think what it also tells us is that they've seen the success of I bit and BlackRock and realized that, you know, they can allow their clients to access I bit, but they're only earning a a very de minimis sort of revenue on that. And if they really wanted to capture the economics of these massive inflows that we've seen to spot Bitcoin ETFs, then they should probably get into the issuer game. And that's exactly what they're doing. So there's more to this too, around sort of a broader Morgan Stanley push, but I'll kick it to you guys. What, what do we make of this? How big of a deal is it? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think this is huge. We touched on it and, and maybe I'll let Nicker and Liam if they want to touch on the ETF flows and just how big of a, a, a deal that is that Morgan Stanley launched or is going to be launching their own. We did go pretty deep last week on the last trade here. Where I wanna kind of focus, at least from my side is a report that came out from Barron's. I'll pull up my screen really quick because I'm not sure if you have it, you might, but it's really the Morgan Stanley head of wealth management, Jed Finn coming out and I'll read a couple quotes from there. One is it all fits together in a broader strategy of adapting to the change in the industry and in some cases driving the change in the industry. And it effectively brings out Wall Street announcing. You know, one of the big things that they announced they were investors in 0 hash. And then E*Trade is one of the platforms that says under the Morgan Stanley umbrella that I believe is either on or, or it's going to be turning on the ability to buy Bitcoin, ether and Solano. Oh, I guess it's it's on track to go live the first half of this year, but also Morgan Stanley's now rumored. I don't think it's rumored. I think it's confirmed via this Barron's article that is planning to launch its own digital wallet. And it effectively says the company envisions it's in house offering as a platform to eventually handle transactions not just involving coins, but also tokenized assets. With the excerpt, this is really a recognition that with the financial service infrastructure works is going to change over time. As our infrastructure develops, we'll be able to do more with blending of traditional finance or tratify and decentralized finance or defy ecosystems. This could mean barn against crypto holdings to buy equities or vice versa, for example, making loans against crypto and cold storages. And I think that is just kind of a very incredible exert in, in filing on what they're saying, what they're doing because it goes so much deeper than passive inflows from private wealth into I bet or an ETF shares into the recognition that the plumbing is fundamentally changing from stable coins, real world assets to the underlying Bitcoin. You can imagine some gold exposure will probably start to come about in 2026 as well. And then the realization that what people want to do with those assets from cross collateralization to to bi directional, right. So traditionally it'd be we've talked about individuals leveraging their underlying BTC or I bet holdings to get some dollars, but you can see the other side of it where you can leverage your equity holdings to get them, you know, margin to go and buy BTC or other shares. And I think that, but you take that and then you took you take a digital native way for a giant like Morgan Stanley that manages trillions of dollars in assets. And it it effectively tells you that there's a race inside Wall Street to develop best in class solutions across the spectrum, not just for other institutional investors. And I think that this is really kind of incredible, incredibly bullish to see that the markets understanding this just won't be in an ETF wrapper. Because if if it was that this wouldn't be out, they wouldn't be working on this. They wouldn't invest in 0 hash, they wouldn't be implementing it via E*Trade. So, yeah, I just thought that was probably one of the most incredible insights outside of obviously the the ETF filing. Yeah, it's a great point. And do you guys know for sure if they will be custodying it themselves or if they're going to be outsourcing that to Coinbase via the S1 filing? Did they share that? I believe it says they're outsourcing it, but I don't know if they named in the S1 who the custodian will be. Other qualified custodians, I'd imagine it's in the same realm of the bit goes Coinbase's potentially Fidelities dependent on the kind of competitive standing there. Yeah, for sure. That makes a ton of sense. And I would imagine just given whatever conversations that they had and, and likely not like doing their due diligence on Coinbase, Bitco, etcetera. They realize that they can't fundamentally know exactly everything that's going on with their custody. Otherwise there would be, you know, a point of failure with respect to how Coinbase or Fidelity or or whoever else is actually custodying their asset. And obviously Morgan Stanley isn't going to be, you know, as sophisticated in custody and digital assets themselves, but that's likely an impetus for the reason why they're investing themselves and just the fact that they know know that they need to have a solution for their customers. Their customers are going to want something differentiated. Otherwise, they're just going to go to the ETF, whichever has the most volume so that they can get, you know, just better pricing and to the model themselves. Yeah, this is this is a really, it can't be understated how big this is. The fact that they're really offering everything, not just exposure, but know that clients are going to cross collateralize across equities and other asset classes and bitcoins a big one. That's your stay across likely a large number of clients like this. This is something that I'm sure that they've been getting a lot of demand for because they were one of the first firms to turn on the I bit for their customers. They've had that going for almost 2 years and they've realized, I'm sure just from feedback from the customers that they need to get into this game in a bigger way. So it's it's pretty big to see. Yeah, it seems like that was a natural sort of like fact finding exercise for them to offer. I bit to their clients and then you know, see how material the the the flows actually were from their underlying clients. And then just to put a little bit more context around, I think what they saw in terms of the success. So Blackrock's I bid ETF, fastest growing ETF of all time, most, you know, quickly became Blackrock's most profitable product, more so than their S&P 500 ETF. And, you know, they've amassed a a a pretty large substantial sort of head start or lead, you know, I think at peak assets and I bet broached 100 billion. And so if you're sitting in Morgan Stanley's seat like you're, you know, you did your fact finding, you realize there was a real underlying demand for this thing. It wasn't going away. The Tam was was very large. You know, more than than most people in on Wall Street probably anticipated. And so despite sort of being a late entry to this, they are going to try to compete with Flat Rock. And to your point, Lee, I'm like, the question then becomes it's like, OK, well, why is it different? Why should someone buy Morgan Stanley's spot ETF as opposed to I bet if it's, you know, at current much smaller, I'm sure they'll sort of ramp it up pretty quickly with some, some anchor investors or what not. But you know that that is an open question. How do they differentiate themselves? Do they pick a different single custodian than Coinbase? Do they go with someone else? So they have a little bit of differentiation. That becomes a real question because this is basically a commoditized market at this point, like spot Bitcoin, ETFs, the way they're constructed, most of them outsourcing, it's Coinbase. It'll be interesting to see how they actually plan to compete with I bet, because again, they are sort of behind at this point. Two things to call out that I think are incredibly bullish is to Liam's point that they've had ETF exposure turned on for, call it two years. If I recall correctly, when they first turned it on, it was relatively low exposure and maybe it was just for like private wealth investors over a certain net worth or assets under management. And you think about like a firm like Morgan Stanley and how slow tread 5 moves that you can bet that them turning that on, they already had plans for all this and it took two years to get it live, if not longer. And so that should set a precedent for a lot of the undercurrent, the things that we haven't seen that are being worked on. And then to the other point is they more than likely know what their clients want more than their clients do, right? Like these are people at the top of their game. They, this is how they make their money. And we've been talking about how we've been in this kind of like quasi bear market where the demand has historically been for this price uptrend outside of any like sovereign bid that there had been for 17 years, people like Morgan Stanley that had clients that were looking for exposure and the ETF allowed for simple exposure. So that's demand that had been sitting there on the sidelines waiting. Point being is that they know that there's interest across these products. And so that's why they're looking to go and develop them. And it really ties into the interest and opportunity to build in this space and build differentiate solutions because these firms are fully not going to be able to bring the talent in and come up with innovative ways. And so there's going to be a huge op as you go across, whether it's lending, custody, financial services that have that Bitcoin feel, whether it's today or the price is $140,000. And then they have to look different than their competitor. It's going to come because they are planning to win and winning. Is it going to be in an omnibus fashion holding hundreds of billions of dollars long term? Yeah. So I said Nick, any thoughts on this one or I can jump to the next? Yeah, I know. I mean, I think, I think in terms of added flows, I mean it's going to build on, on what we've already seen, right? You already knew that they were going to turn this on. It's already starting to happen. I think they probably will look to to bundle some stuff with like some of their existing high net worth client base. They're probably going to say like, hey, they may bundle some things to try to compete with Ibid. Because again, I mean, they're basically the same product, right? Yeah, Yeah. I'd say that's all I have on that one. Yeah. I mean, the only other difference that I thought was somewhat interesting was like, I believe BlackRock has an Etherium ETF as well. And so it's interesting that Morgan Stanley decided to do a Solana ETF as sort of like their extra outside of Bitcoin. And maybe that's how they think they're going to differentiate in terms of those sort of flows on the margin outside of Bitcoin, but remains to be seen. We did. Mention too, Morgan normally did file for Ethereum ETF, that was so they did. So maybe it just took an extra day because of whatever staking. I don't necessarily have any deep insight there too, but they also did file for that. Good to know. We mentioned wallet push from Morgan Stanley as well. Another wallet related news from last week was Rumble and Tether launched their crypto wallet. Liam, I'm going to hand this off to you. I know you've you've taken a look at this a bit and what do you think the implications of this are? Yeah. It just shows how fundamentally broken money is that any time that you want to get payouts for you know, providing value to society that like nobody actually wants to just use dollars in general or or the fact that you need to pair dollars with so many other assets right in the platform itself versus just going out and taking the dollars and going to best in cost financial services. Everything is starting to almost be gamified or you know, almost. So there's going to be prediction markets and into a number of different asset classes everywhere. But yeah, I mean, Rumble has almost 50 million monthly active users. So they're definitely not small incorporating stable coins, Bitcoin and tethers tokenized gold product in there is pretty interesting too. And the it's definitely more about, you know, I'll say libertarian type crowd on on Rumble. So it'll be interesting to see what type of traction they actually get. YouTube is obviously significantly bigger, almost 3 billion users on there and they're just launching stable points in itself. So we'll be interesting to see what type of Bitcoin traction flow they get on there before others have to compete. But a big portion of that that makes it interesting for folks who are all across the world is just not having to you know set up a bank account etcetera to actually get capital directly to them and off board it themselves. So interesting to see to. I am not sure how much traction they're going to get outside of a fairly narrow people folks though. Yeah, I don't have much. I personally, I feel like the Tether barbell is is interesting because the tether on the side of sovereign exposure and what they're doing across dollarizing emerging markets and sweeping flows and really leading on that front I find really interesting. I think on the other side, there's this Mosaic, it's kind of chaotic they're trying to paint in how do they get to the distribution and utilization from day-to-day. And I don't necessarily, I think they're looking for something, right, because we look at Rumble and Tether and, and what does that look like? I know we've seen what YouTube's doing with stable coins. I think there's a lot of TBD. We talked about it last week of the week before that they're launching a wallet. I think that utilization on the end side, everyone's fighting for like the use case there, but I feel like they're very sophisticated 1 angle and the other side, it's like TBD to see how it plays out. And so you hear a lot of this stuff and Tether obviously has a big name, but it's really kind of still theoretical on like how will creators and content interact with Tether? And then it's still just, it's going to be fascinating to watch what USCC and being closer to the US markets, right? I feel like USCC, Google, JPM, that's more of a like trad kind of experience anything but like just Tether Rumble in itself or more of like on the outsides of kind of like specifically rumble and in what most people would associate that platform for and is. So yeah, I think, I think it's interesting to see the activity, but I don't necessarily know if it goes anywhere. Well, it's, it's an interesting point around the the distribution angle because you know, a few months ago Tether did a big push around USAT, like the US centric genius act compliant stablecoin that they launched and they had some marketing, some sort of commercials around it. But it's like, it's very difficult, I think in my mind to get individuals to adopt and use something like USAT. And much like you're doing like a Ubi air drop to them and then, you know, it's it's they're much more incentivized to use it. So in my mind, like this Rumble deal is basically a different parallel path to get like distribution people using digital dollars where you already have sort of an ingrained user base that is familiar with, you know, a lot of the ethos of Rumble is like, you know, anti censorship, freedom of speech oriented type thinking. So it it's kind of a natural fit to to integrate these things into that existing user base because, you know, there was some fanfare initially around USAT, but I haven't really heard much about it since then. Anything else in that one or we can jump to the Walmart 1 pay deal. No, I think I think just one thing I would say is like it wouldn't surprise me if you see a lot of people that are like doing streaming, like especially like pro gamers or like things like that, people that stream on Twitch and stuff like that. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those people pick this up. Also, like in terms of people who stream on YouTube and stuff like that, I know there have been a number of, there were a number of people, pretty well known YouTube streamers and, and creators who were banned off of the platform for various reasons because maybe they didn't post things that YouTube necessarily agreed with. And so it wouldn't be, it wouldn't surprise me if you see some of those folks use this because this would be a pretty like instantaneous way to get like YouTube donations and like receive, you know, stuff through Twitch and stuff like that. Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, I agree with that. All right, switching gears a little bit here. So Walmart, Walmart backed Super App One pay hits $4 billion valuation. I'm going to pull up a different article here, but Michael, I was going to hand this to you. Why is this a big deal? Yeah. So I think the one pay stuff is much bigger than people have talked about. I think it kind of ties into the transition from the Rumble conversation that maybe there's going to be a lot if not future value on the margins, but today there really isn't. It reminds me a lot of like acts and not Even so much sub stack. Even the sub stack has monetized. I think they just raised it like or they just raised $60 million. Maybe maybe the value either the I think the valuation was much greater, but I think it was 60 million that they raised. Point being is that most people still say to acts like the network of facts where the conversation discourse is happening very similar to like YouTube and what's happening there. And so when we. Transition over into like capital markets, I think of it very similarly, where US centric market you're going to look there for value capture first in distribution before you start to get into like the fringes. Where because again, when you think about tether in emerging markets, in the amount of capital flow that would come in through a wallet or financial service, there just fundamentally different than AUS individual and, and their cohort demographic and and capital spend. So where the one pay aspect gets interesting is because it came out, you know, a few weeks ago that they were turning on buy sell into digital assets in Bitcoin. I think it was only a few cryptocurrencies. The thing that's really fascinating, I really recognize is 1 pay is top 12 finance apps. They're ahead of Robin Hood, Amex, Schwab, Coinbase around a few among a few others notable that you just wouldn't expect and that it's like this one kind of like super app and that it offers kind of debit cards via green dot reminisces banking, buy, sell. And so I think this is interesting because not only does Walmart in a certain segment of the market that they're focused on via one Pay is a traditionally kind of fits into that like Square Cash App cohort that may not be able to get access to the best financial services. And that digital asset rails offer the ability to build better financial technology, better banking apps and reduce a lot of the inherent friction that had traditionally occurred. And so I think One Pay via its distribution and what they're working on is kind of a signal where we will see other firms, whether it's like credit unions, challenger banks start to incorporate some of this tech because it's much easier to turn on pieces of like other additional products. And then also just net new players come in to be able to offer banking services to individuals that either couldn't be underwritten in a traditional financial sense that they make economics because of the customer acquisition cost a traditional bank has to incur when they want to win a client. And so I think that that's a big missing piece that we haven't really discussed in the market isn't focused on is when you disintermediate the ability to effectively be a bank, where will the value accrue from existing players that have better distribution and segments of the market that have they haven't been able to acquire and win and then net new players. So I think it's bullish in the sense of Bitcoin digital assets and net new players. I think it's somewhat bearish and either credit unions, old fintechs that are going to be a little slower in adopting some of this technology cousin of this or angle is like revolute Revolute. My understanding they're like stable coin remenses and and transactions have like blown to the roof the past call it 12 to 24 months where somebody like Western Union or I figure what the other money. Yeah, there's the other remittance firm. They've said they're coming into this game, but they haven't fully embraced or adopted it because of the legacy businesses are kind of like predicated on the the slowness of money and the fees they can transact and they may be in the back like the, you know, the net new firm trying to do something different because it benefits them like a Revolute may benefit tremendously. Yeah, all, all great points. Maybe if we pull that through a little bit farther, you'd shared this tweet from Simon Taylor just talking about effectively the difference between having access to the distribution like you're talking about. But then also, you know, how that compares to like actual expertise and the ability to win. Like those are two different, two different things effectively. So what is what is he talking about here in in that context? Yeah, I thought this was fascinating because it it was like Tyson to that meme that's been passed around after the new year. That COVID or March 2020 crash was seven years ago when it feels like 3 years ago. This idea that he throws out or timeline, it feels like the JP Morgan Apple Card was just launched, but it really was back and I think they said 20/19. It was really Goldman getting in or Goldman, if I said JP Morgan Goldman getting into the Apple consumer based products and consumer lending products with the Apple Card. So they partnered with Apple. He references they cost about $350.00 to win the client, but they started to really hit significant losses year over year because of the way that they were underwriting the loans and the type of borrowers that they were approving. And so we went from like, I want to say 2, it says 2.93% in 22 jumps to 6.2% loss rates in 23. And then they started to slowly migrate and look for somebody to absorb that credit and they had to absorb it at a discount, which ended up sitting in as JP Morgan because of JP Morgan, I believe they're the largest credit issuer for Amazon. They understand how to underwrite that. They have the distribution, but they also have the technical and the economic expertise to be able to do this. And so Goldman really came in, had the distribution, but they they're not consumer based credit lenders. And so they suffered significant losses. And I thought this was fascinating just from a traditional market, you know, retrospective on like how you know, you want to develop a product, you want to get into a new space, but just because you want to do that, have distribution, if you don't have the experience and expertise, you may not be able to be successful. And it reminds me very similar as we start thinking about Bitcoin and custody, Bitcoin back lending and other financial products that unless you have the right taste, team and distribution and experience and expertise, we're going to see a lot of these firms get in this game. But again, naturally not know where to play or how to play. And the the easiest angle to go to is Bitcoin back lending because I think it's easily forgotten that while Bitcoin is the best, you know, asset when it comes to superior like not only for custody, but from the pristine collateral that you get thrown out a bunch. It doesn't really matter how pristine the collateral is if you don't know these new primitives that exist. What are they? Well, it trades 24/7. It's more volatile than traditional markets. Times that are liquid like real liquidity events happen, usually happen in nights and weekends. This is empirically scene I remember being back in the day running a lending buck. And it would be like the one that always comes to mind is Thanksgiving evening. And because there'd always be these crazy deleveraging moments around there and Trap Fight's not prepared for that. And then that's not even accounting for rehypothecation. And the reality, and Trap Fight always has that moral hazard that exists that if we blow up, we will be bailed out because we matter too much. There are no bailouts in Bitcoin. And so if you get offsides in your lending book, there's nobody to step in. And we saw this happen in 2022. And so I think that's where this ties directly into, you know, transfy is going to come in. They're going to, you know, participate in this economy. But the ones that are going to be prudent, conservative are the ones that are going to survive to kind of be players in the space. And I think a lot may you know, end up in the same example as Goldman Sachs and the credit rating or credit lending on consumer side. Yeah, I'd agree. I'd think that a lot of this ultimately is going to come from the consumer to who is who's been in the space and going to ask like they're going to come out with their V ones and it's going to be OK. And you know, it's going to be not not having the assurances that many folks who have been who took out loans of Bitcoin space before are are really looking for And and they naturally won't necessarily all know the stories of block by Celsius and what essentially went wrong there. And over time, the most sophisticated Bitcoin lenders who have who just have the most Bitcoin and have been in the space for the longest. We'll just ask that they upgrade their products otherwise they will only use it for a speculative amount and size their risk appropriately. And ultimately that's just going to drive the market. And I do think a lot of those folks are more like the Morgan Stanley side of the of the world than in one pay. And so it's great to have like Bitcoin and, and, you know, digital assets on there, but I think it's difficult to really make it a core part of your business or, or sell it without all the education that goes into Bitcoin. And just because there is so much confusion and conflation out there with digital assets in general. And so without that, I think it can be difficult to, to get the consumer on board. It's it's, you know, just having Bitcoin and and digital assets out there is going to be a net positive as long as they do everything like custody and making sure that the consumer is is safe. But I could see it not getting quite as much traction within the broader app, although it's so great to see just given the the large amount of distribution. Yeah, that's very well said. Expertise is going to be critical. You know, these, these players, these incumbents, whether it's the banks, Oregon, other fintechs have certainly realized at this point that they need to do something. And so now we're kind of watching the scramble, scramble mode period of a lot of M&A activity partnerships. But again, going back to the, the broader point here, it's like you can have distribution, but having the expertise, the, the domain expertise really around Bitcoin and digital assets is another thing. And the the issue there is that, you know, attracting that type of talent who has that expertise, it's difficult for those players because you know, what hardened Bitcoiner wants to go work for Morgan Stanley, you know, few and far between, I would say. And so that's why you've seen a lot of partnerships and and acquisition activity because they know, they know they're now in the time crunch to be able to offer things to their under underlying clients and they they don't have the expertise, they don't have the infrastructure in house. So maybe that's a nice transition to talk a little bit about Early Riders and the new year 2026 things we're focused on the team is growing. So that's a nice segue to formally introduce a new member of the team, principal and Early Riders, Nick Johnson, who joined from Tri Fi and, and I'll, I'll let him give a little bit more on his background. Maybe, Nick, if you could speak to your prior experience and then maybe how you got into Bitcoin and then more so you know what resonated with you about what we're doing at Early Riders and our thesis here. Yeah, no, for sure. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, no, so super excited to be here and and appreciate the the opportunity to join the pod. So Nick Johnson was born and raised in Dallas. Families lived here my whole life. I worked at City. So prior to to joining early writers, I worked at City and San Francisco doing exclusively technology M&A in terms of kind of my why Bitcoin, you know, in in 2020, my dad and I were watching an interview with Michael, Michael Saylor was on it and I heard him talking about it and and he kind of just gave his whole thesis on like. You know. Why money is broken, why Bitcoins to fix. And I just immediately got enamored by it. I was like, this is super interesting. And I knew there was just something different about it. I'd never heard anything. You know, I had a finance degree, so I learned in school about inflation and how all that works. But you know, there was just when I learned about Bitcoin, it was just different and it seemed like the first asset that's ever really been admitted. That's truly the closest thing to perfect. And so that really kind of won it over for me. So I kind of went down the rabbit hole just like everyone else and kind of realized, you know, I was having a really good experience and, and learning a ton and investment banking. But I just realized that the Bitcoin was just what I was super passionate about and I always wanted to do the buy side in terms of private equity venture, that kind of buy side world. But I really wanted to find a way to kind of intersect the buy side with Bitcoin because that's what I'm most passionate about. And so when early writers were the opportunity kind of came about, I was like, this is perfect. I was like, this perfectly combines my interest in the buy side, my interest in investing and also my, you know, beliefs in Bitcoin and and kind of my full thesis on that. So yeah, hopefully that's kind of helpful, but that that was kind of the key drivers for me. Yeah, thanks for thanks for walking through that. And I think, you know, I believe, you know, part of what would drew you in was our initial white paper that we published close to two years ago now. But I'm going to pull it up here and and we're going to be re releasing this this week, little refresh version, a little bit of a look back on on, you know, what we got right, what we got wrong, where we can improve. But maybe Liam, if you want to talk through a little bit about just the overall thesis and and where we're heading in 2026. Real, real quick. Sorry, just before we go into the white paper, I just wanted to to share super excited about Nick joining. I think 2026 is going to be a big year for Bitcoin early riders of portfolio companies and part of that is leveling up across experience and expertise. I think that part of the themes we'll be talking about with the white paper and in general is there really needs to be the the building of the bridge between Triadfi and digital assets. And a lot of that comes down to the commercial relevance and viability. And what that means is there's a lot of companies building great things in Bitcoin, whether it's slightly tweaking the product for the taste of mass market consumer demand or helping those companies. I think that's where we'll focus and Nick as well, because Nick's worked on very large M&A, he's worked on very large deals. And that's something that's just traditionally missing in a space like we know as people that have been listening to this podcast and follow the Bitcoin space is that there's certain prudent pragmatic ways that makes sense to build products long term. The reality is traffic doesn't appreciate them yet and it's our job to get that there. So it gets the right products with the right firms that are going to stay in for a long time. But it's not enough just to say it's the best product. You got to really be able to articulate it and then show that it benefits there and side and so excited there. Nick will be in Dallas. We are it's not fully announced. If you're listening to this, you'll get a head start. We will have a a Dallas satellite office for early riders and on ramp. You'll be able to meet us and the team because Dallas is going to be a very key and pivotal market given the the current macro in in US set up and what's happening in Texas. So super excited for Nick. And then you can kind of maybe go to Liam and and maybe Liam when you shot share about the the white paper, if you want to just give any highlights on what the purpose of the new white paper was before going into any of the the the particular themes. Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, I think super excited to have you on the team here. And I can yeah, I think, I think the the white paper is, is a really pivotal, pivotal moment because it's to a lot of Michael's point too. There's so many principles that Bitcoin has, right and that so many folks really have identified with and have benefited significantly by adopting them themselves. Anything from you know, why understanding that Bitcoin is, you know, more of a signal than all the other digital asset tokens out there and why there is a need for you know, cold storage Bitcoin segregated from the Internet that is, you know, not, you know, re hypothecated. All the principles are exactly right and something that should be applied more broadly to the world. But also fact that many of the folks out there, especially those who are listening probably have a significant portion of their net worth in Bitcoin and insignificant is relative to whatever they've really identified with in the past. And then once the natural progression of that is once you have a significant portion of your assets in Bitcoin, you really start to understand, well, I, I at some point allocated to this or I made this personal expense, expense over here and realized, Oh well, especially earlier on, like maybe I would have been better off just buying Bitcoin itself. And that's kind of how we came to this whole conclusion of of early riders in general was both personally using Bitcoin as our way to denominate our expenses and, you know return on and just ability to you know, run circles around our peers who still we're not living in that mindset. And as well as just the insight of, you know, working at the Brown rather Herman's and and points of any use of the world to be able to come in and bridge the principles of the traditional financial world. And, and what really has has gotten right there. And then the on the other side, applying the principles of, you know, everything that we've done on the Bitcoin side of, you know, utilizing the right unit of account, doing more with less and building the bridge in order to create the right products and services for the market. So I'll take a pause there, but it's almost like a manifesto of how all capital formation will come out in the future. Really rooted in practice of being around this industry for a while and understanding what has been going right. And then what potentially needs to be improved upon in order to kind of cross the chasm from being an industry just for hobbyists to essentially creating the best in class products and services for folks like at the Morgan Stanley's in the highest degrees of finance. Yeah, maybe Brian, if you go to the top on some of the the outline, I would encourage anybody listening check out this new white paper. I think the the core idea is as Liam said, that this serves as a a capital, a manifesto for how capital formation will happen in the future. And it really was rooted in two aspects. 1 is building with a Bitcoin standard, whether it's a personal balance sheet or business balance sheet, you end up coming out to the most efficient outcomes because once you have the best form of money, you start to root everything into that, which is very valuable to know that money doesn't grow on trees in your decision making. And then on the other side of that, once individuals, if we believe that the majority, if not all individuals will have to come to that conclusion, well then the logical progression is they have to be credibly, you have to credibly understand how they will get more Bitcoin if they're going to participate in an economic endeavor. And so this white paper we initially put out in 23 and we decided to add to it this new white paper because it really exemplified there was a lot of things that we understood early that are starting to play out, whether it's the notion, The biggest one, I would say, and then I'd love to hear Brian's thoughts is the debate, the basement trade, right? We're still early in this theme, but the notion that the denominator is broken. Being early, people hear it, they hear gold, they understand it, but still tradify at the very margins, may start to think about how do they underwrite their return profile in some other unit, whether it's the S&P 500, gold, Bitcoin, but it's still very small. But the logical progression is once people start to question that, then they start to still start the journey on like, well, what are the other denominators that I should be looking at? And then as they go through like, what makes a good form of money? What's the best investment, you know, profile when it comes to all the aspects of Bitcoin, you end up in this logical conclusion, whether it's gold or Bitcoin, you want to sound money to benchmark any returns against because everything else is effectively a derivative of that. And then that's really where this white paper goes deeper into like, why would you raise deploying return in there? What is Bitcoin as a hurdle rate? How does it change capital stacks when you think about a company that uses sound money as its denominator and it goes into like the next steps in that because once you get that you have a better form of money on your balance sheet. Well, that form of money is working in your favor. So you don't spend in the same way as value that's depreciating. So you start to do more with less. So we're really excited about this. We really encourage everyone to take a look at it because it really gives the clarity of thought that comes into how this firm came about. And it's really helped us get a lot on both the investor side because this is what they've been looking for. But then also on the builder side, because builders out there deeply understand these concepts, but they haven't had them articulated. And once they do, they find kind of like that, that group, that team, that version that they want to work and build with. And we really attracted some of cornerstone portfolios based on this white paper that's come out. Yeah, all that's very well said. I would say, you know, the, the, this notion of the denominator being broken is core to everything we do. Quarter of the thesis. And to your point, the a version of that story really entered the zeitgeist this year with gold running, with silver running really all precious metals, commodities. People are waking up to the realities of inevitable Fiat debasement. And while in sort of mainstream circles, it's still viewed as, you know, quote, UN quote the debasement trade, you know, I would say we, we view it slightly differently in that this is a structural long term ship. This isn't just something that you trade in and out of because these these trends, these the debasement realities happen slowly over time, but they're not, you know, there's no really going back from it, right? Like as Lynn Alden says, there's nothing stopping this train. There's nothing stopping the inevitable Fiat debasement. And so you need to be positioned in a way where you can capture or, or really preserve value into the future in this world where, you know, AI is making everything abundant, you need a sound asset to absorb a lot of that. And, and the other thing I would say is that, you know, as we've looked at, you know, one of the themes in here that we talked about is, is doing more with less. And the way I would posit that that theme or that part of the thesis is, is goes back back to a, a quote from Michael Dell that he had a few years ago around constraints, breeding creativity. And that's really the essence of, of what we mean when we say Bitcoin's a hurdle rate. It's the opportunity cost. It it by using a sound unit as your denominator, as your benchmark, you're naturally going to be more disciplined, more prudent in your decision making because you're assessing everything against a, a, a benchmark, a, a form of money that's actually going to appreciate in value. As opposed to the opposite, which most of traditional VC has been sort of stuck in this loop for decades of, you know, raising as much money as possible, deploying as much, you know, spending as much as you can, trying to show top line growth, revenue numbers by, you know, via that spending. And ultimately comes back to chasing the wrong unit and then distorting how capital is deployed, distorting proper price signals in the market. Because again, the, the unit itself that is being chased typically is, is not sound. And so you're constantly on the, the hamster wheel of, of trying to show growth, redeploy capital, you know, raise at a higher valuation, etcetera. Whereas if you were just more disciplined and, and held a better form of money, you wouldn't have to worry about, you know, that that sort of vicious cycle or that loop of, of deployment re raising, you know, getting a higher valuation, etcetera. So, so it's it, it really cuts across various themes in this, in this white paper. So implore everyone to to read through this. And like we said, we're, we're releasing a sort of refreshed version of this, but any other thoughts on on this guys? Yeah, Maybe it's a good transition and then we can go wherever is the the last link with the AI, because I think AI is a a key component of this AI is acceleration. And what Brian just did is exemplified into the notion of everyone's building these vibe coded apps. There's a theme that's been building for the past couple years is like there will be the first billion dollar company, but with by one individual. And I've always had this vision that that person, it will happen, but it'll be somebody that deeply understands these concepts of ethos. Because ultimately, if you're competing with somebody else that has access to the same tools to buy code and app. And obviously, like there is execution in the entrepreneur entrepreneurial taste for distribution of the market. But let's say those both existed pretty similarly. Well, it all comes down to how are you sweeping your capital into and what are you chasing? Because if you're holding a better form of money, it's appreciated in value. You're going to have a sharper lens and how you build. And so sorry it was it was the last one where why the latest craze of PE and BC roll ups won't work. This video, yeah. You don't have to click the video, but just if you pull it up because it'll show well, Liam's or Brian's pulling it up. I thought this was super fascinating because this was a recent podcast that was, I guess it had to do with all In interview, which was Mackenzie and General Catalyst senior exec execs, if not the CEO of General Catalyst. But the point being is there's a craze going on right now. It includes these firms, includes like 8 BC and others that are doing these roll ups around. And like it's like venture kind of migrating because they're realizing that like the venture model doesn't won't historically work in this new world. And what they're looking at is like cash flow positive businesses that are pretty like unsexy that they can either invest in businesses that will roll them up or roll them up or funds and then integrating in Fuse, like best practices in AI. And at first glance, it sounds great. I expect a lot of capital to flow into these themes. But when you really start to peel back the layers as an entrepreneur, you realize that that is one approach, but it's an approach that won't be the most efficient because you're effectively having to re architect the foundation that is just fundamentally broken when it comes to the inefficiencies and the people that have been hired and the processes that are part of the totality of the culture versus if it's just embedded from day one, meaning that you're going to be utilizing these tools, your team is going to be utilizing the tools from a mindset and also from a productivity perspective. And I think that's really embodies like we are focused on Bitcoin returns. Doesn't mean we only focus on Bitcoin infrastructure because there is a much more value that's been delivered to the world that has a lot of fat and inefficiencies. But once you have somebody that understands these concepts and themes and wants to effectively infuse them into building that new companies that compete with the incumbents, that are historically fat, mired with inflation, mired with return over bad unit economics, this is how we'll rebuild the world to be more efficient and net new value to be delivered. And so I just thought this was interesting because I, I was always like fascinated by this concept and I thought it would go somewhere. And I still think it will, but it it will be like a migration point, not the end state to basically net new company building what this will be the category winners. And that's super exciting for what we're working on and who we're looking for to get involved with what we build. Yeah, that's a great point. And as soon as I heard about Bitcoin denominated firm while I was still at my old private equity shop, I it initially clicked like, oh, we're cocked. If this has any credible way to actually outperform or even denominate returns in Bitcoin, it's just so much superior to the existing status quo. But over time, capital, all capital allocation will need to come this way. It's just like how overtime better, better money will drive out bad money and you know it. It definitely takes time. And there's the entrenched bureaucracies and status quo that will limit adoption, especially by the the established funds who, you know, probably know that this is how they should be operating, but can't because it admits that how they were previously doing business is, you know, generally not the right way. But on the other side of things too, I think it's important to call out that, you know, some folks just literally have, no, they're like, well, all these concepts are 100% right and I agree with, but there's just no way to outperform Bitcoin. And that's just essentially saying that the world will look exactly as it does in the future, which I generally don't agree with. I think that it will change significantly. And you know, everyday we're seeing like more and better opportunities come through the door in terms of just the acceleration of kind of human progress and technology. And so I would say it's never been a more exciting time in both venture and and to be thinking about capital allocation. This way, yeah. Just to maybe put a, a loop around this discussion, I, this tweet caught my eye over the weekend from Akash Gupta. He started a, a company called Product growth. But what he's saying here is the, basically the, the broken traditional BC and, and founder math. And we've talked about this in the past. So like the way traditional BC works is, you know, effectively you assume that, you know, 9 out of 10 bets are going to go to 0 and you really need to hit a home run with one or two of those bets. So this says BCS need 3X fund returns to stay in business, $100 million fund needs to return 300 million if they own 20% of their company at exit, you need to sell for 1.5. So basically he's saying, you know, there's a, there's a misalignment of incentives here between these mega funds and founders. Effectively where it says here the incentive structures are pointed in the opposite direction. VCs optimized for portfolio returns, founders optimized for personal outcomes. These only align at $500 million plus exits. And really the take away from this to me was like the this misalignment of incentives traces back to again, chasing the wrong unit. So the these dynamics that are being described here are effectively a function of broken money and the, you know, broken denominator that we referenced and the need to basically chase hyper growth outcomes for, you know, 10% or or less of of a fund. And so, you know, the, the way that you combat this is you, you use a better form of money and you don't have to effectively be on that hamster wheel of, of trying to achieve these outsize exits. And, and just assuming that the rest of your portfolio gets to 0 like that is not a prudent or efficient way of doing things. And so I think people are starting to wake up to a lot of these sort of misalignments. They're, they're still missing the broader solution of, of tying it back to the money being broken. But I thought this was interesting in in sort of the context of this discussion that, you know, most people are still missing this, but they are, you know, at least somewhat waking up to the the misaligned incentives that are sort of pervasive throughout the traditional VC space. What do you guys think on this? Yeah. I mean it's a great, it's a great call out. I mean, what we're talking about here reminds a very similar of sometimes we talk past each other when it comes to Bitcoin and where it sits in a portfolio. Because for vast majority of people that are interested in Bitcoin, they don't necessarily underwrite it based on like where gold SAT for hundreds, if not thousands of years and specifically around capital formation. So it, it doesn't end up as an end state. It ends up as like a sleeve in a portfolio. And it's very similar here when you talk about like VC math and the insanity of the VC industry that's grown over the past 50 years. To really understand how it's a Frankenstein aberration, whatever you want to call it, construct, you really have to go back to how venture started, the purpose of it. And then the reality of whether it's institutional family offices put in any bucket and have to go further and further out on the risk curve to hit the return profile and benchmark. And then ultimately looking at these like outliers that have provided air cover for everyone to raise a fund because the vast majority of funds underperform the S&P when it looks at look at quartiles, there's very few venture funds that hit their targets. And so this will only increase because of the amount of monetary units. And it really gives like a negative connotation to like venture in it in itself, because the notion of capitalizing somebody to return, you know, more capital is pretty straightforward, has existed for forever since money's existed. It's the notion that you need to go for home runs, that 9 out of 10 bets failed. These are all concepts of a Fiat system. And that they, they can exist because you can do the, the the mental model of in a Bitcoin world. Well, what, what sane person would give up their capital to know that 90% of it is going to be evaporated? And like, what same person would get out of bed if they hadn't? They knew that a 90% chance they would fail. It doesn't make any sense. But we fund these concepts when they're theoretical and that we can go for the home runs because the money's broken. So, yeah, this, I hadn't fully looked at this, but this is kind of a common thread and really the understanding that if you're going to build a better firm and that last into to the future and the perpetuity. Ideally it said you have to start with the right foundation and then bet that the rest of the market is going to naturally come this way. Because that's the, one of the most exciting things from an institutional perspective is when people start to just wake up and realize, well, why am I doing any of this? Why don't I just hold this money that has a venture like return, but has the safety of bonds? And, and then that's the first step. And that's what on ramp and other portfolio companies solve for. But then over time, as you get there, as the price appreciates and the return profile starts to diminish. And also as you start to think about diversification, specifically from an institutional or even individual that wants to invest their Bitcoin will, their natural progression is will are you going to give me more Bitcoin than I gave you, which is a very rational thing to to say and do. 100%, yeah. That, that's, that's a piece that most of the sort of traditional market is still missing. It's like, why would I, why would I want to receive more dollars 10 years from now? You have no anchor to know what those dollars are going to be worth 10 years from now. And so it's, it's completely irrational to to lock up capital for that amount of time with the hope of, you know, outperforming the S&P effectively in dollar terms, nominal terms. So Brian was referencing, you know, we're coming up on an hour, but one thing we did want to call out was the launch. This will be released on Tuesday, today's Monday honor and for everyone. We're really excited about this on the honor and side because ultimately one of the concepts we just talked about around understanding Bitcoin as your unit of account and savings vehicle is that still a far reaching for a vast majority of individuals because ultimately they don't know how to credibly custody it, which is impedes the ability to really get material exposure. And so we've been called, you know, on ramp the Rolls Royce of custody. We work with institutions, endowments, pub Cos, but a lot of individuals don't feel that they can work with us, whether it's because of our marketing needs to improve or the cost structure. So honoring for everyone includes an IRA account, individual self onboarding. We still do white glove onboarding, but then really a flat fee structure which has been asked for by a lot of individuals. One thing that we're going to do to upgrade, you know, this year is final settlement doing more kind of just engagement with the audience. One thing is if you sign up, if you want to check out on ramp, you can actually get 50% off your first month using FS. So if you go through get set up, you'll get 50%. If you've been meaning to try on ramp and you felt whether all those things that we talked about, you needed an IRA account to be included, the fee structure or you just didn't know if we worked with you as an individual. So we're super pumped to have that out. Brian, do you have any thoughts on honoring for everyone? Oh yeah. This is this is going to be a big, big deal for us heading into this new year. I think historically there's been a perception that on ramp only works with super high net worth folks or institutional allocators. And while we do service those those cohorts as well, we wanted to re emphasize the individual because frankly, that makes up the core of of our existing client base today is individuals, many of whom who have been holding Bitcoin for a long time, predominantly in some form of self custody. And they realize that a certain point when that portion of your net worth becomes so material that the burden of, of self custody and, and whether it's the physical or digital attack risks or even just thinking about long term planning like inheritance and estate planning. It it you don't have to be on an island effectively. You can use on ramp and also be confident and know that you know, you're not ceding unilateral control to anyone particular custodian, which has been basically the the pitfall and why a lot of folks have been in self custody for years is because they know it's not prudent to just keep coins on an exchange and you know, an omnibus pool where you don't actually have clear visibility or transparency into your Bitcoin. So, you know, the way on ramp works is you have a segregated multi sig vault where 3 institutions are, are coordinating on your behalf. You're sort of quarterbacking the quorum. And it's really a, a fantastic solution for individuals of all kind. Whether you're new to the space and don't want to have to go down the path of, of learning self custody or you've been in for a while and you recognize the, the value prop of, of what we've built and how it can be accretive to your existing set of the, you know, none of this is meant to fully replace self custody. We, we believe in self custody and think it's critically important really to the network. The ability to hold your own keys is, is massively important. But you know, we think MIC and, and what on ramp provides can be in a creative element of someone set up and just being able to know that a certain amount of your Bitcoin wealth is going to be passed on to your your spouse or your kids, for example, with a proper inheritance plan, with legal titling, you can set up all that stuff easily in apps. So this is a big deal for us. But anything else on that, Mike? Yeah, I think we covered it. Super excited. As mentioned, you can use FS if you want to get 50% off your first month to try it out. And then like we talked about, we're just going to do a lot more with the audience as it relates to special incentives, swag, you'll be able to meet us in market. And then, yeah, I don't know if I want to leave it to Nick and Liam to leave. The one thing I'll share with the audience is we're constantly looking to improve the segments and what we're looking at. We've had no shortage of real high quality inbound from company buildings who would encourage anybody that's thinking about opportunities. We'd love to chat with them. And then also just in the YouTube comments, if you have any other thoughts around segments, opportunities, things we should be focusing on. We're always looking for feedback. So please, it's always nice to to hear from the audience, but Nick and Liam, anything before we wrap. No, I'd just say, yeah, please check out the white paper if you haven't seen it yet. It's a, it's really phenomenal work. And would would also please reach out and give us comments on the white paper too, in addition to just the segments in general. But then yeah, lastly, we're going to be trying to do a lot more with, you know, building the bridge across not just, you know, Bitcoin and and tried by on the early riders side. But yeah, with all the portfolio companies too, like on ramp for everybody kind of bridging all the principles of self custody such as proof of reserves built in no single point of failure and and the experience that everybody is used to at traditional financial U.S. banks and fintechs. So yeah, excited for for grade 2026 and can't wait to get after it neck anything else? Yeah. No, I think you, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think all I would say is is obviously super excited to be a part of the team. I think 2026 is going to be a big year. And you know, I think, I think we're pretty well positioned to to take advantage of that. So I think I would leave you with that. Awesome. Thanks guys there. You go. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Rat Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private Client Advisors.
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