What you're telling me is that music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever 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.

Hey, OK.

I say when we sell.

All right, we are back.

It's the last trade.

We have Matt Odell in the studio with us today.

Matt, thank you for joining us on the week of Christmas.

We appreciate it.

How are you doing?

Pleasure.

Merry Christmas.

I'm, I'm excited to have Matt on because I didn't share with you guys or him that there's been all this like narrative around OG's dumping.

And I wanted to ask him specifically if can you please just stop selling his Bitcoin because this fucking price is, you know, killing everyone.

God I wish I had eight.

I wish I had 80,000 Bitcoin to sell at 100K.

That would have been fucking dope.

Yeah, what?

What would you be doing right now if you if that was the case, Matt?

Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely, I would definitely wouldn't be on this show.

I look, I think, I think that's all it's it's I think your audience knows it's we kind of said that in tongue in cheek way, but I we hear that narrative every all the time.

It's been ever ever since I've been in Bitcoin.

The Ogs are dumping on you.

You know, it's a Ponzi.

You, you're, you're buying their bags.

I don't think that's new for this cycle.

I think what's different is the size, just the absolute numbers, But that always goes up.

Like unless Bitcoin fails like that will just always go up and it'll be always bigger and bigger size.

I think there is a good argument that they finally had liquidity to do it in bigger sizes.

But once again, I think you could have made that argument three years ago, right?

There was more liquidity than the three years before that.

So I don't think I think there's a little bit too much, too much emphasis placed on that.

And part of it is because on social media, Bitcoin transactions are public and saying, you know, oh, this 40,000 Bitcoin just moved to Kraken or whatever gets you, you get a lot of retweets on that.

Yeah, it's, it's a good point too, because like you can't, you can't win either way with, with either of the narratives, right?

Because it's like if, if none of them were selling, then people would say like, oh, Bitcoin's so concentrated with the, you know, the oldest, largest holders.

And so like, you know, in either direction, you know, there's going to be critics about it.

But like, I agree with you, I think it's one, it's already been happening, you know, each cycle and sort of like continuously throughout Bitcoin's history.

But it's natural and it's, I would say it's like genuinely healthy for the market for there to be continued distribution into the future.

I did hear a theory that I did not verify that and I'm not a tax attorney.

Fortunately that a bunch of people did move to Puerto Rico in 2015 and supposedly you have to season your assets for 10 years to get 0 cap gains, 0 federal cap gains.

And so that's also position that might change in the future depending on what administration exists.

So to be able to reset your cap gains, sell now, not pay cap gains, rebuy in actually makes a lot of logical sense.

So I, I think that was probably part of it.

But then, yeah, I mean, this is natural and healthy.

We, we, you, you want to see this as a, as a new money is being adopted by the world.

This is exactly how supply gets distributed.

Older sellers want to live their life.

They want to pay for things.

They want to buy a new house, a new ranch or something like that.

And, and new people come in and I'll, I'll say on the ETF side specifically, it's been pretty like it's probably the single, one of the single most bullish fundamentals of this year is how, how receptive the market has been to the Ecfs and, and, and how much they've been bought at scale in such a quick amount of time.

What would you say this isn't?

I don't want to say it's a hot take, but it's something that doesn't get discussed a lot.

And I think we were Brian and I recorded on Monday and it was like working through this thesis of I do feel strongly that we haven't been in a bear market like independent.

Of In a bull.

In a bull.

Market, yeah, in a bull market, we've been in a bear market.

And like, I guess the three main anecdotes I would look at are gold to Bitcoin ratio, the anecdotal adoption from peers and if you want to get more empirical is like talking to hardware manufacturers and and they're purchasing, you're right.

Like that'd be a signal for net new buyers.

And then the forget the last one is like the, the basically that the volatility drives in that new adoption, like the reflexivity and that the reason why it had this price appreciation, it's very similar to gold.

It's not like retail buying gold.

It's sovereigns.

This price appreciation has been some sovereign, some institutional.

But it's what you said, it's the ETF flows, but that's not necessarily retail.

That's people that have brokerages that knew of Bitcoin for 15 years and didn't want to do anything outside of just buy it through Fidelity.

Why I'm bringing that up is because if that's kind of the market structure that we've lived through, then if you have people selling because of liquidity and then you have to your point, whether it's seasonal selling, but also whatever the hell is going on and what potentially happened in October 10th with like there's somebody out there selling in the market that that's really where we're at.

And the outside relevance to that is the looking at golden equities, right?

Like that's what is the curious part of all this is golden equities are ripping and BTC sitting like in this range.

That's the best rationale I've been able to come up with a like, what the hell is going on?

Which also sets up a very bullish opportunity moving forward, if that's even nearly right.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's a couple things there that I think you hit on that I agree with.

First of all, I've been a psycho believer mostly because I've been in Bitcoin for 12 years and we kept on the four year cycles and I've had a very reasonable approach to whether or not the cycles would die.

Is I, I want to see it if if the cycles actually don't play out, then the cycles are dead or we moved on to a different cycle, some kind of liquidity cycle or something like that.

I think we're probably close to calling the cycles dead just because it wasn't a traditional bull market this year.

I mean, no matter how you cut it, but the big one to me is is priced in gold.

I mean we didn't hit a new gold all time high.

So that's unexpected there.

I still think there could be an argument that maybe due to, you know, just the maturation of the Bitcoin market and different access points, particularly ETFs and stuff like that, maybe it gets elongated.

So maybe it becomes like a five year cycle or something or six year cycle and and maybe next year's supposed to be the bull market.

But that also feels like cope.

But but overarching how I'm looking at it is I think we're basically in a global depression right now and retail is poor.

I don't think the people just don't have money.

I think market participants are spooked.

I think it's very chaotic times we're living in that is kind of being papered over.

And as a result, large allocators are going to safe haven place.

And that makes that lines up with why gold and silver are ripping and why they're at all time highs.

But I also think that lines up with why the S&P 500 is at all time highs, because it's really the mag 7 that's at all time highs and carrying the rest of the S&P 500.

And I think market participants are rightfully thinking of those top seven companies, top ten companies as basically safe haven plays.

Like I think Google is a relatively safe play if you're a large allocator, Apple, maybe to a lesser extent NVIDIA, but I don't think the US government's going to allow these things to fail, right?

And I think market participants are pricing that in as well, while not wanting to go into something that doesn't have cash flow, something like a gold or a silver while Bitcoin being young, still being young is not being treated as a safe haven asset.

And that kind of makes sense.

Like if you don't hold self custody Bitcoin, I think it's really easy to think of it as a high risk tech stock play.

Like I the reason I think a Bitcoin is a safe haven is because it's so tangible in self custody.

But if you never actually feel that, if you never actually see the core value prop of Bitcoin as being able to spend and save it without permission, then I think it's really easy to think of it as a risk on asset.

And then the last piece you mentioned, which is a lot of trading nowadays because we live in this digital world of social media and like people used to like joke around about the 24 hour news cycle.

Like now it's like a 2 hour news cycle.

Like we really live in a momentum world and it feels like something broke in October.

Specifically in the shit coin markets.

And that chart, if you look at the chart, I'm not a big chart guy, but if you look at the chart of gold, silver, S&P 500, Bitcoin, you can literally see October 10th when the shit coin market had its apocalypse.

And I think the rumors are true that at least one big market maker.

I mean, the big rumor is Wintermute got absolutely wrecked on that on that day and has been unloading Bitcoin because that's like the only thing they have of value to to liquidate.

So I think it's a combination of all those things.

But I will say that I thought I would always be happy with Bitcoin at 88 K, but seeing gold and so silver, silver sparked particularly, it's like what is like Bitcoin silver to silver silver, like it's ridiculous.

I don't it's it's really hard to wrap your head around it and it feels like a kick in the nuts.

And I think that's part of the reason why people's attitudes are just, it feels like a deep bear market, even though we're in, we're not really in one.

Yeah, the theme of this pod, it won't get the click, so we can't use it.

But as a I'm tired boss, because that's why I was glad for you to, to come on so we can just like catch up on everything that's going on.

Because like, how much can you just keep talking about with price sitting at 80 to 100K and you got like every bank stepping into the into BTC and the price is like relatively flat.

I need to find that that chart you reference because I think I shared it.

I think maybe shared we're looking at it with Marty.

I think that might be why Marty didn't end up showing is because he might have gotten blown up in the shit coin markets and he's trying to figure out.

Oh, serious note, though, that is a huge aspect that most people don't remember in 22.

The only reason we knew FTX blew up was because the leak financials, whoever leaked the audit, and then that's when they had the run and basically everything else fell apart.

So right now, nobody's out there speaking up or incentivized.

But if something like that happens, that's when everyone tide goes out and you find out who's naked and if you're actually Bitcoin is secure.

I will say also though like you, you kind of alluded to this Michael, like the bank stepping in, whether it's the, you know, progress on the, the regulatory front, all the M&A that we've seen over the past several months.

Like it does feel like, you know there is some sort of hand off going on in terms of, you know, in past cycles, you know, entering a bear market like those, those deals or excitement around the industry completely disappeared, right?

Like people retreated from their stance around getting involved with digital assets or Bitcoin, and we're seeing the opposite of that right now.

Like, despite what the price has done sort of, you know, past six months or so, like the the banks, the fintechs, traditional sort of institutional incumbents are still, you know, putting their chips on the table, making moves to the space because one, they've seen the client demand and they know that assets are leaving their platforms to get exposure in other ways if they don't offer it.

And so like all that stuff is move moving in One Direction, which is like extremely constructive and positive, which is just very different from sort of like past entries into a proverbial bear.

When it comes to holding Bitcoin.

Securely Peace of Mind starts with architecture on ramps.

Multi institution custody distributes control across three independent regulated key holders and a two of three quorum.

No single point of failure, No pooled or omnibus exposure.

Segregated client titled faults.

You retain full legal ownership while on Ramp coordinates security, compliance and operational workflows behind the scenes.

It's strength of money delivered through the simplicity of one both the institution custody is the foundation for everything.

We build sound infrastructure that distributes counterparty risk and provides fault tolerant resilience with clear audits and institutional controls.

And now on Ramp is piloting flat, predictable pricing, making best in class Bitcoin custody and financial services more accessible now than ever on ramp strength of many simplicity in one.

To learn more, check out on rampbitcoin.com.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe this is a good segue into we talked about this a lot, like how many people are actually holding spot Bitcoin today.

And when this thing rallies, it's going to be very spiteful and people are going to be very upset.

Between ETFs, digital asset treasury companies and everything else that's hanging out there, people that are around in 20/17/2020, a lot of people have been shaking out of the market, whether it was blocked by FTX selling digital asset treasury companies gold.

And so you're going to see the market take the longest path.

And then when it rips, everyone's going to be off sides.

And we already see this now with the sentiment because people, it's just kind of like dead out there.

So the question to Matt is how are your dad dad trades this year going?

I mean the joke is because most people suck at trading.

Like 99% suck at trading.

We're just waiting for that one listener who's rotates his entire position into gold and then we'll start ripping.

I you, you mentioned DATS, which a horrible acronym.

I don't know Bitcoin treasury company, digital asset treasury companies, because now they have like a theory of mid Z cash ones.

I think that's also part of the reason why sentiment is, is so bad right now is because, you know, in 2017, Ethereum was born.

Like I guess in 2015 or 20/14/2017 was like really Ethereum's big year.

We had like the Bitcoin Cash stuff, like Bitcoin was a little bit chaotic.

Icos were happening.

It seemed like, I mean, at least from my perspective, it seemed like I was a crazy person or an idiot and I was sidelined and I was missing out on all these, you know, generational games.

And then the water came out and they all got wrecked.

And from that we had like this beautiful Bitcoin only Bitcoin maximus culture that kind of was born.

And that to me, that was like the start of the the good old days.

And they always joke around like you don't, you don't know you're in the good old days until after the good old days pass.

And I think that the final, but it was, it was it's time sensitive, like it was never going to last.

Bitcoin was going to continue to mature and that was going to disappear.

But the final nail in the coffin, I think was the Bitcoin treasury companies.

And why do I say that?

Because between 2017 and maybe let's point to earlier this year or late last year, it was like we all got rich together and we all got poor together.

And like you just had this great community that that was crazy with you and now it's like everyone's getting poor on different things and rich on different things.

And it just splintered everybody.

And so that's how you end up in a situation where we're what I think like 3035% down from all time highs, but some people are down like 95% because they had like a leveraged metaplanet position and it was leveraged on top of leverage and the water came out and they got absolutely wrecked.

So I think that's part of the reason for the, the significant negative sentiment.

And I also think that's probably part of the reason why we didn't go up as high as people expected, right?

Because I think a lot of the retail that wasn't poor came into the treasury companies.

They thought of it as like a time machine.

This is something we see with investors all the time.

They think they missed out.

So they add additional risk on trying to catch up, probably catch up and they inevitably get wrecked.

And I think think that was part of it.

And I, I, and, and, and we just, it, it just, it took, it took a lot of the wind out of the sails of people buying Bitcoin, buying actual Bitcoin and, and moving, moving the price floor up because of that.

It's a good recap on some of the sentiment and culture because something you just hit on is you reference like everyone in it together.

So when it's down, you're down and then you're have memes about being down and then when it goes up, you're up together.

You hit on 30% down and 80 or 99% down.

You didn't hit on the people that made money, right?

That are like rich behind the scenes that got into whatever any of these deals exited.

But then also the quote UN quote influencers that got involved because now they can't say anything because they basically shepherd folks into this like, you know, Slaughteringhouse.

So you have like to your point, different lanes that everyone's in versus like everyone's just along this underlying asset.

And so it's created kind of like a structural from a cultural perspective, fragmentation.

We don't have to go deep on the Dats, but I do have to bring.

I just brought it up because we have listeners that listen every week, but then they keep commenting in the the YouTube comments about like how sailor lives rent free and that like we're idiots.

And I'm like, guys, we're just trying to help you like not lose your shirts.

It has nothing to do.

But they listen every week.

So I just wanted to make sure we touched on how how positive and constructive Dats are for the.

I mean like sailors.

Sailors selling his own stock for cash right now so.

I didn't send you this.

Last night.

I was, I don't know if you guys seen this.

I'm I'm shocked and bringing it up, but I was scrolling Twitter and there was a first time I've ever seen a strategy B strategy with the B.

Like a a business intelligence ad.

A business intelligence ad and I was like, is this how desperate is this?

Like a back, this is like a roundabout way to market to retail and equity because like everyone knows they don't have a business intelligent product that's has any competitive mode or value.

Yeah, it's very interesting what's going on over there.

I yeah, I don't know.

I mean, you mentioned like the people that exited, like I just don't think there actually were that many people that did.

I think, I think part of the reason sentiment is down and the fracture of the community is that all these like BS tier influencers, low A tier influencers, like all joined boards.

They like all joined the treasury Board.

Almost everybody did, which is fucking insane.

And then started showing you their stock.

Like they made a potentially, they made comp like they got like a salary that they got some, you know, you know, they, they, they, they got some bread out of.

And the worst part was like, they pretend like, oh, this is good for Bitcoin.

I'm doing it for Bitcoin.

It's like, no, look, you're doing it to, you know, to get your bread.

You're doing it to, to, to get get a payout for your years of Twitter posting.

It's fine, just admit what it is.

But I think a lot of, you know, these guys also invested in the stocks and stuff and there was maybe a one month, 2 month period where like the M Nas were really ripping and I bet you a lot of them doubled down rather than actually taking profits.

I think.

I mean, I was skeptical on a lot of that and publicly skeptical on a lot of that.

But even I thought like, they were going to have like, at least one good pump out of it.

You know, then the pump never came.

Like, they were all like setting up for the bull cycle that never arrived.

And then the water all got pulled out.

So I think a lot of people, lot of people got wrecked.

And that also adds more downward Bitcoin pressure because I think there's been a lot of eyes on whether or not like Sailor sells his Bitcoin, which I think is, you know, I think it's probably overstated.

And you know, they're well capitalized, especially now that he is stacking dollars.

So I don't really think, I don't expect, you know, a complete failure of MicroStrategy to bring down the rest of market.

But what people don't realize is a lot of the holders of the treasury companies were leveraged themselves.

And so when their margin calls come due, what do they have to sell to to to meet that margin requirement?

They have to sell Bitcoin to cover that, which brings Bitcoin down, which brings their treasury company further down.

And you have this vicious negative feedback loop.

Yeah, we've seen that you referenced sometimes.

So like the notion of pattern recognition, it matters being alive in this space.

And there's every couple years you reference the Icos and then there was like Defy in that summer and then the DAC crazy.

You just there's always something that comes out of nowhere you can't expect and it just steals people's bitcoins.

So like that's just helpful if you, you know, if you're, it's truly they just take takes people's Bitcoin because people also don't recognize if you're not buying Bitcoin with your dollars, you're buying this.

It's still the same thing whether you're selling it or converting.

But then I think we both came to this independently because I I heard you reference it.

I think I shared internally that I knew it was a scammer or didn't make any sense when it started when I started thinking, am I missing out?

Am I crazy?

Because that was the ICO stuff like when IC OS were ripping.

You're just looking at it like, do I get in and those white papers were floating around in 17 and you're like, do I you know the Excel spreadsheets and you're putting allocations and then you feel crazy for a little bit until the market falls out and you're like, Oh yeah, that was better just to stay in cold storage and relax.

And that was like the aha moment is like, yes, don't even touch the stove because once you touch the stove, that's when or not touch the stove.

But once you like put your bags, you you load your bags, even partially, you just become a bag holder and then you go down with the ship because people hate to invest in something and then tell you that they were wrong.

Yep, no, I think there's a lot of similarities cycle to cycle.

Once again, I don't know if this is an actual cycle.

It's it's just a really, it's been a it's been a weird year.

It's been a, it's been a very weird year.

That chart, you did pull up the chart.

It's crazy.

Like you look at the I mean there, I think there there could be an alternative timeline where the shit coin casino doesn't blow up like crazy and you know, we're sitting at new all time highs right now.

But then also, you know, shit coins are like they'll be around forever and people like doing degenerate things and it's always going to be a case.

You just have to you have to play this game.

This is such a long term game and there's so much survivorship bias.

You only see the winners.

Quick question because Jackson has a bunch of he he prepped very heavily for this.

I told not to because Matt will not look at your notes.

I'm just joking.

But I do want to ask one thing to put you on the spot.

What is an example of an A tier influencer versus a beer AB tier influencer?

Can you give us you feel comfortable giving an example of that?

Because I I thought they were all like C tier but.

You don't have to.

I mean, I, I mean, I think Sailors probably an A tier influencer.

I think Mallard's with XXI is probably an A tier influencer.

I think Dylan Leclair with Metaplanet was probably an A tier.

And then I think everyone else wasn't pretty much.

And it's like every and you even saw with the treasury companies, right.

It was like I'm joining like Arange, we're like doing Brazilian micro strategies.

Like what the fuck?

Like what are you doing?

You know, we're like, I don't know, similar scientific.

It's like, are you kidding me?

But they can't get access to our capital markets, Matt, like they can't get access to Bitcoin.

And for the narrative, narrative wise, right, It's like narrative wise on the Bitcoin maximalism culture, Bitcoin only culture.

It's like, what's the difference between Semler and Solana?

Like how like I, I don't know how you can really justify it.

At least with Solana, I think that you can do things with it, I guess, right?

Like you can be a degenerate and, and, and do decks things or like buy tether or something, but it's just, I think, I think it broke the culture.

I think it very much broke the culture and it is what it is.

It was probably going to happen regardless, like I said, but at the end of the day, that was that was the nail in the head of the of the online Bitcoin culture at least.

Yeah, one of the funny things about all that conversation is the whole narrative around can access.

You cannot access Bitcoin right?

Like, oh, we need an equity structure, a debt structure to.

Invest in every country.

Is is crazy, like once you actually think a little bit more about it?

Because on face value, I can understand why some people could perceive that to be true, but it's just a matter of creating new parameters or investment mandates to allow it to allocate directly into Bitcoin.

Like it's not, We have this conversation early on in the business.

It's like trying to explain to an institutional allocator, oh, does Bitcoin fit into a, a venture type of investment?

Is it a real asset?

Is it, you know, how do you think about investing in Bitcoin?

And the answer is, well, you just think about it as its own asset class.

It's really not that hard.

And so I think one of the biggest issues with all of this is you don't necessarily need to, you don't necessarily need to try to fit Bitcoin into an existing bucket.

You can allocate to it directly.

And we're actually seeing that, right, but more so through the ETFs in the US.

But to think that we all of a sudden need a bunch of companies to provide equity exposure to the underlying asset is just very flawed thinking in my opinion.

Well, I mean, no, I mean it was, it was just a lie like that was that was the big lie, right?

The big lie was I am joining the board of this treasury company because I want to sell Bitcoin to institutions.

But the only reason the treasury company wanted a podcaster on the board in the 1st place is because retail was the market.

The entire market was retail.

If you, if you, if you look at and, and this is, this is just the case, probably probably MicroStrategy the least so.

But even then, when you, when you look at how Sailor presents himself and his public appearances, it's all for retail.

It's almost overwhelmingly for retail.

You know, you like retweets, the MicroStrategy podcast and everything, like everything is, is you'll never sell your Bitcoin.

It's all for retail.

And, and that that was just the reality of the situation.

Like they pretended it was for institutions because they had to in terms of the narrative, but they were focused on retail.

And if you look at the best calls this year, it was actually institutions fading it, right?

It was Jim Chanos.

Everyone made fun of Jim when he came out and he was like, I'm going short Microstrategy's M NAV and they were like, but it's already under 2.

Like how much lower could it go?

Fucking nailed that trade.

He went long Bitcoin short MicroStrategy harvested the loss of M NAV premium Sailor played right into it dumping continuously dumping common during the whole process.

And then the other one, which is what conspiracy theories are made of of JP deleveraging their books on MicroStrategy and spring.

They've nailed that one too.

They were right.

I mean, there's I think there's a decent argument that they helped cause how quickly it unravelled.

But if they were like looking at their books and MicroStrategy sitting at a huge premium and they have a bunch of, they have a bunch of holders that are holding large leverage positions, like it makes sense that you want to deleverage that risk and you want to reduce that risk on your books.

That's what they were known for during the last financial collapse.

Fortress balance sheet.

Yeah.

I mean, look, the dad holders are down.

We don't have to keep layered on.

The point though, was just to call just, I mean, we're recapping, but also I think they will come back in some respect to the bitcoins price and to the the extent somebody listens and, and just like really does their diligence, they never made any sense.

But the last heuristic that I'll leave you guys with, unless you have something else is that you generally know something's a scam or a cult if you need a community, because the investments don't generally need communities.

They happen organically.

You don't have to like try to propagate 1.

And so that's like one of those flags that you kind of you were referencing about you have to get an influencer to to propagate or amplify your business.

I mean they will come back because Bitcoin is going to come back like Bitcoin is unless quantum unless.

Quantum And then we were wrong and it was really gold.

It was really the trade with gold I.

Mean we could talk about that, but I mean we probably look, I think people should stay amble stack sets, learn how to hold actual Bitcoin and use real Bitcoin.

But like we could be close to the bottom of some of these Bitcoin treasury companies just because they've been absolutely hammered and I think a lot of investors are questioning Bitcoin itself and they hold Bitcoin and Bitcoin will perform.

Now, the question, as I think you have to actually ask yourself as someone who's already listening to a Bitcoin show, if you're listening right now, is do they outperform Bitcoin, right?

Because that's the opportunity cost.

They'll look great on paper.

Even if they just go back up with Bitcoin, will those premiums happen?

Because that's how you should actually be thinking about these things, is you are taking additional risk over holding spot Bitcoin, holding real Bitcoin.

And that additional risk should be rewarded with some kind of premium in the future.

And I really question the ability of the smaller ones to actually be able to accrue any kind of real premium.

There's an argument that a company like MicroStrategy that has 650,000 Bitcoin will figure out a way to harvest yield off of that or, you know, leverage their position somehow to make real substantial gains.

But the smaller ones, like they're just zombie companies that hold a real asset.

Yeah.

If you use the analogy of the the ICO going back to that, right, like a lot of those Icos just never got anywhere close to recovering to where they previously were in 2017.

So I think it's fair to say, Matt, what what you just said, I think is incredibly accurate, right.

Like there's going to be assuming Bitcoin comes back, which we could talk about Quantum for sure.

But I think we're all quite bullish going into the the long term here.

Assuming Bitcoin does come back then yeah, I mean, some of these companies are going to are going to look strong, but some of them are just never going to come back at all.

And so that's where I like, I wonder how much retail interests are actually will be in the future because so many people came in and that like May, June timeline where things were just like crazy.

Everyone was like fervishly bullish on the treasury companies.

And a lot of people got wrecked.

And I don't know if they're going to want to ever park Capital back in some of those trades.

Yeah.

I just wonder how much new retail really came in.

I think we just didn't really see a retail surge.

And I think part of the reason is because everyone's poor.

I think it's just I really do think we're just in a quiet global depression.

The one aspect I would mention it well, two things.

First, the fact that you said assume bitcoins coming back is like the most bullish fucking fundamentals is how bearish sentiment is right now.

Like literally on a Bitcoin show, you work for a Bitcoin company and and we're just we're caveating Bitcoin recovering well.

Some people don't think that it's going to happen, so that's why I had to say.

That fair enough and then the second the second thing is the shareholders of the ICO promoters actually did quite well like EO says Block 1 is still one of the largest holders of Bitcoin period.

It's just you got no rights to that Bitcoin as an ICO participant, which ironically you don't actually have rights for a lot of these treasury companies, but you kind of, do, you know, it's like a little bit wishy washy there, but you're still a shareholder of the company that's holding the Bitcoin.

Let's before, because there's a lot of recap stuff, but this just popped up because Matt's not on Twitter and I I was looking in this deal.

I think it's a very like prescient note.

I guess you had somewhere it says Bitcoin's been running for 17 years at a protocol level.

No transaction has ever been blocked.

No coin ever sees.

Not enough people appreciate the magnitude.

I think this is important to tie into this like narrative that's happening in Quantum.

But before going there, we brought something similar up when it comes to stable coins because that's like obviously the, you know, block chain of this year, everyone's excited about it.

And when you really breakdown the mechanics of stable coins, like obviously they provide value and moving dollars around the world, but the reality is how much counterparty risk, how much mechanics go into that.

And it really brings the light like the elegance of Bitcoin that there's no intermediary and you can move billions of dollars without any counterparty.

And so that aspect, I think from like all this narrative, whether it's MSTR, that's ETFs, it gets lost on most people because it's still a speculative exposure for most.

And when you start talking about like this narrative quantum and the, the, the notion of changing soft hard fork.

And just like the, I don't know if aloofness is the right word, but like the, the casualness of like, we can just change things really quickly and it's not a big deal.

And we can freeze people's coins and others are like, yeah, of course we can do it.

It's, it's just, it makes zero sense.

And so maybe we can just touch on that because I think that's, that's something that a lot of people honest or honestly, this ties into why most, it's so hard for people to get exposure to Bitcoin.

Because think about it, if the hardcore people that have been around forever cannot wrap their heads around Quantum, how the hell can we expect everyone else to ape into BTC as their store of value moving forward?

It's.

We believe it is, but there's still a large gap for most, and this is a huge.

This is an easy example of that.

Yeah, I mean, a couple of things here.

First of all, I posted that on Noster or screenshot it.

What's that shared to shared to X?

Noster is an open protocol for speech and identity.

You can think of it like the Bitcoin version of Twitter.

And the easiest way to join Noster is to download Primal in your favorite App Store.

But I yeah, the quantum thing, first of all, talking to large capital allocators like it is something that's on top of people's minds and no one understands it.

I don't really understand it either.

But I think it's, you know, you can think of it as like a magic computer that breaks cryptography and it's theoretical and we haven't actually seen it in, you know, used in any practical way.

But one of the scary things about quantum is that there's a strong incentive specifically for governments to be doing quantum research in secret behind the scenes because you can, you can, you can potentially break encrypted messaging and other things that rely on cryptography of your adversaries, right?

So specifically the Chinese or the Americans.

And on top of that, the, the, the relatively correct belief, I think that that AI leaps have pushed, you know, innovation timelines across the board where we, you don't really know what, what could happen in five or ten years or 15 years.

Now there's a couple of different pieces here on the quantum side.

The first piece is like, will my Bitcoin be stolen?

I don't think that's a real fear.

I think if you're using the best practices in terms of custody and you're using said what addresses that are hashed and you're not reusing addresses, you're, you're pretty well protected against quantum in the next 5 to 20 years or something like that.

Now, I don't think that's a reasonable answer for people like if you're like a large allocator, you're thinking about like allocating $10 million and you're like, oh, I don't really think it's that big of an issue.

No, they want like tangible solutions, right?

And so I think what we what we need to do as on a protocol level is offer people a, you know, even more hardened kind of quantum resistant address type that people can choose to go to in an opt in basis.

I think that will help at least on the narrative side.

I don't know how important to that is, but might as well do it.

It doesn't really hurt.

Then the second piece is like this fascination beyond what happens to the particularly vulnerable Bitcoin that is not in the newer address type.

And those are the older coins.

And meme wise, the best way to look at it is like Satoshi's coins, right?

Because Satoshi has like a million of them and then there's like 4 million others.

But he's, he's the creator of the protocol.

And that's a lot of Bitcoin.

And it's this really, really weird fascination about not allowing that to get dumped on the market.

But I think it's, it's very, very short sighted and I think as a community or as a stakeholders, because it's supposedly communities are scamming, according to Michael, as, as stakeholders of Bitcoin, I think it's important that we nip that in the bud because the key value prop of Bitcoin is that at the protocol level, no funds have ever been seized.

No fund, no transaction has ever been blocked.

Now, yes, people can always coerce you into giving them your private key.

Governments can come and raid your house, put a gun to your head, threaten you with jail time, take your, take your Bitcoin private key physically.

We can't avoid that, but on a protocol level, the fact that this thing's been running for 17 years without any protocol level seizures or any protocol level censorship is the fundamental value that and that is insane that that was that, that we've been successful with that.

Like I don't think people really appreciate how amazing that is that that's we, we don't see anything like that in the digital realm.

We've never seen anything like that in the digital realm.

And so you're kind of it's, it's a classic example where the quote UN quote cure is worse than the disease, right?

You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

And I just, I'm not like I the, the big thought process I tell the people is like, OK, so like sailor has 650,000 Bitcoin.

What is more likely is what is Is it more likely that that some genius creates a magic computer that steals Satoshi's Bitcoin?

Or that the US government steals sailors Bitcoin?

And in and and why?

And in that situation, will we freeze the Bitcoin if the US government stole sailors Bitcoin?

No, and we definitely wouldn't preemptively steal it.

And why would, if the Navy Seals or Delta Force or whatever figured out where Satoshi was and charged him with money laundering and raided his house and forced him to give him the million Bitcoin and then put it in the SPR, would most of Bitcoin Twitter be cheering that on?

But God forbid someone comes up with a magic computer and takes a million Bitcoin that way like that.

Just, it's just like there's a complete, there's, there's a complete lack of logic there.

And at the end of the day, I think you just, you let it be.

We put an opt in, we put an opt in address type.

We add protections going forward, which I which I'm very confident we will have.

I think there's very strong consensus on it.

We don't touch the old coin.

If it gets stolen, it gets stolen.

If it gets spent, it gets spent.

If tomorrow Satoshi moved his Bitcoin, was that quantum attacker or was that Satoshi being like, I'm going to move my Bitcoin because you guys keep threatening me that you're going to take my Bitcoin?

Like if he wanted to burn it, you could have sent it to a burn address.

He did it.

Yeah.

So I was going to say a couple, couple bit lot there, but a couple things off the bat, like the notion of like, you know, the random person creating the quantum computer in their basement, like that's not even really like a realistic path, right?

Like the whatever a theoretical quantum computer looks like with the whatever it is like million stable qubits like that will require such an insane amount of, you know, capital expenditure, energy infrastructure that it really could only come from like the Chinese government or the US government.

And in that scenario, like, are they just going to market dump the coins if they were to even, you know, go through with some sort of action?

That's that's one side.

The other thing I was going to say about all of this is like the Matt, I'd be curious if you could like opine a little bit around like the work that has been going on for years around this stuff.

Like it's not like the development community hasn't been thinking about this.

And I think that's the problem with some of the more recent discourse that's a little bit more on the the fear mongering side of like imminent threat that, you know, the timelines have compressed whatever, you know, however you want to phrase it.

But there aren't, there is people thinking about this and there's work being done and there's potential dips.

And like there is a path similar to what you described where, you know, you have a new address type and you give people time to to migrate and, you know, probably err on the side.

I would agree with you.

Like, I don't think you can, you can do anything to those more vulnerable coins without sort of sacrificing some ethos of, of the network and, and why it exists.

But maybe just for the audience, like where are we in terms of some of those dips that exist?

And like why I guess, you know, why is it important to know that just because if you do end up in this like fear mongering stage like that can be counterproductive to the existing work that's already been going on.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's a couple of things here.

First of all, you said like what would the attacker do with the million Bitcoin?

Maybe they create a debt, you know, like maybe we can trade it publicly.

We'll compete with micro strategy.

Quantum Debt.

I I mean, you, it's really hard to see how there's a bunch of startups, by the way, that could potentially in collaboration with the government, you know, find this magic computer.

But like it's hard for them to monetize quantum in any kind of real way except for attacking Bitcoin or espionage against foreign governments.

Like there's only really two obvious ways of and, and like you said, once they have it, like are they going to tank the price of Bitcoin or they're going to try and monetize their investment to the fullest in terms of quantum research?

Yeah, this has been top of mind for years, like for a long, long time.

In the most recent term, it's like early fall, there was a there was a big quantum focus event with top developers in the space at Presidio Bitcoin in San Francisco.

Blockstream Research released a great paper like last week.

I think a lot of the alarmist tendencies are twofold.

First of all, it's great for engagement.

People want their star to rise so they, you know, create create panic and rage.

I think the second thing is if your obsession is to block, to freeze Bitcoin preemptively, steal Bitcoin preemptively.

By the way, the only way you can do this is preemptively.

Like you can't do it after the fact.

In terms of stopping someone from taking someone's Bitcoin that's already vulnerable after the fact.

You have to do it preemptively.

If that's the goal, then there actually is probably a little bit of a rush.

If the goal is to, to, to slowly and conservatively move to improvements, then there's not that much of A rush.

Like we're in a very good spot right now, particularly if you're using Bitcoin with best practices.

And, and I, I, we have to be very careful because if you're rushing, if you, if we move everybody's Bitcoin, if we tell everyone they have to move their Bitcoin to a novel new signature scheme that's supposedly quantum resistant, otherwise their coin gets stolen.

Like that can be an attack vector in itself, like that could have a back door.

We could completely fuck that up.

We can ruin the entire Bitcoin experiment right there and then.

So you have to be very careful and deliberate.

But if the, if the concern is we, you know, we're going to have to give people five years time, 10 years time to do this, blah, blah, blah, Then you start to feel, you start to feel the rush and you start to feel the panic because they want to freeze people's Bitcoin.

So I think that's where it, a lot of it comes from.

It's not actually from people worrying about their own Bitcoin.

But once again, I'll repeat like when has anyone like who, who buys Bitcoin and is concerned that someone else's Bitcoin is going to get stolen and then might get sold?

It's like a ridiculous concept.

Imagine buying gold and being like, Oh well, a war might break out and the Russians might steal Chinese gold and dump it on the market.

That's insane.

Like you do you mind your own fucking business and let the market dynamics play out as the market dynamics play out.

Earlier this year, people were cheering on that the strategic Bitcoin reserve was going to be seeded with stolen Bitcoin.

No one was like, let's fork out that Bitcoin.

So OK, we set the stage really nicely because I didn't know if we're going to go here and this is a little bit, I'm not going to say I believe this, but I'm not going to say I don't believe this was a non zero chance.

I don't say this is coordinated, but there is a narrative that's come up the past six months around this.

And it it all the way to Ray Dalio, I believe, like citing quantum as an issue for his investment thesis in Bitcoin.

And we already discussed human incentives when it comes to the economics.

And so we talked about like the influencers and at the end of the day, there was economic incentives to do something that, you know, kind of fractured the the reality of some of these people and what they were about.

So I'm prefacing that because if we look at what's happening today, in this past, call it 18 months with ETFs and even Sailor, there's a centralization of BTC happening with a certain number of economic actors.

We can call it BlackRock, Coinbase, maybe it's future JPM, Fidelity.

And the point being is it makes sense on a trajectory perspective, if Bitcoins going to double or triple in price, if they sit on 25%, let's call it 20% of the BTC today, that that would rationally be 30 to 40% in that future state.

And if this narrative persists and everyone's economically or theoretically economically inclined to fork Bitcoin because we're afraid that somebody's going to dump our bags.

And again, we don't care about the underlying, we just don't want our bags.

That's like the, the, you know, it's always the, the solution.

They create the problem and the solution.

That is something that is interesting to me because this was coming up probably 6 months ago.

I was having a conversation around like the fork wars and like B cash.

And you know the the gentleman that is a friend, he was explaining how like Trace Mayer at the time saved his ass because he's like hey, in these like forums if you dump your B cash today, you can get .5 BTC at the time.

And so, but this is the problem with giving up rights to your asset when you go into a third party custodian in an omnibus fashion or even an ETF, because they're going to make the decision for you.

And it's already been called this past week by very notable people that like, well, this is not going to be a fork.

They're not going to give you the option.

We're just going to go to the thing that's quantum resistant.

Like this is this early, that's already being talked about.

And so I'm just curious like how you see that potentially playing out?

Because part of this discussion was like, if you're a nation state and you're sitting on the right coin, you're holding it, you're like, well, I'm just going to dump all the fork and, you know, sell the the wrong Bitcoin, right, The thing that forked over.

And so I think it's just an interesting angle because I definitely believe there's a non zero chance that, you know, 10 years from 2017 when the original fork happened where we could see something like that.

And this is the very early stages of that narrative beginning.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's 22 concerns here I have, right.

I think the first concern is that we panic rush into insecure crypto.

Crypto being cryptography, not shit coins.

And I think it's important to realize that there's like this is so far above most of our heads.

There's like 20 people.

There's like 20 people that can like figure out, you know, novel new crypto schemes and whether or not they're secure or not.

And even among those people, like the really way you find out if things are secure is by testing them over time.

So it's not like that's not like the most easy process and it's why it should be opted in slowly and, and be very deliberate and very careful about it.

So that's the first concern.

And then in terms of the, the, you know, stealing, I, I'm not going to say freezing, it's stealing people's Bitcoin preemptively.

Is it such a slippery slope?

Like where, where does it end?

Like do you if we can freeze vulnerable if we can, if we imagine saying like Bitcoin censorship resistant, except for the creator of Bitcoin, we stole his a million Bitcoin.

If if you can do that, then why does North Korea have Bitcoin?

Are we going to are we going to freeze North Korea's Bitcoin?

Should we freeze the CCPs Bitcoin?

Should we are terrorists using Bitcoin?

Should we freeze their Bitcoin?

If you're China, should we freeze micro strategies Bitcoin?

And I think because of that, I think that fork will fail.

I think it it probably, I think it's better for the industry if we just nip this in the bud quickly.

But I think actually push comes to shove, like actually the time, like if this, if there was a fork presented, I think a lot of large allocators would be very hesitant about making a decisive move because bitcoins value is that it's a neutral asset that doesn't require trusted third parties.

If we if, if, if, if you see the creators Bitcoin get frozen, like how safe is your Bitcoin, right?

And I think people actually sitting down and thinking about this question will probably hedge themselves and they won't market dump one side, right?

So like for instance, BlackRock, you know, they, they're holding it on behalf of the ETF holders, right?

So it's not actually their Bitcoin, right?

They're a fiduciary that's holding Bitcoin for their shareholders.

Are they going to market dump on this type of fork if there's any type of questionable if, if there's any question in their mind of if it's the right decision, they probably won't, they'll probably sit tight, I think in that situation.

And so then really kind of the market gets determined on the edges, right?

And I think there's actually probably a lot more conviction on the side of property rights in in, in Bitcoin land.

And one of the key things we have going for us on Bitcoin is that so much of the supply was distributed early to like very ideologically minded people.

So I that are holding self custody, that can easily participate in this type of market that don't have to deal with boards that don't have to deal with fiduciary responsibility, that don't have to deal with potential liability from their actions.

They can just make a decision and then all of a sudden it kind of looks similar to the B cash situation where you had a bunch of companies that had boards that had fiduciary responsibilities, that had potential liability concerns and teams of lawyers or whatever that were on the B cash side that didn't have conviction.

And then you had the original chain of Bitcoin that was a lot of individual ideologically minded holders that had a lot of conviction.

And that side was the side, that one, right?

Yeah, I guess the the push back there would be and this is the way it was posited was that it would be much more hectic and chaotic to have basically 2 coins out there with an asset managers.

And I mean part of the S1 is you're giving up all those rights to the issuer to to pick whichever for.

Yeah, I mean that will suck for them and it would be fucking hilarious.

I mean, that would be the the best part about the best part about the situation would be, and this is what I said about the non stuff too, which is like fortunately, like mostly behind us.

But if they forked, it would have been great to see like the the large corporations have to deal with it, right?

Like they're going to.

It would suck for the users.

It would suck for the shareholders and what not, who would learn a hard lesson on custodial risk.

But it would be at least entertaining to to watch the chaos that unfolds.

And of course, they don't want to see a fork, which is also probably why they shouldn't push it in the first place and might not even support it in the first place.

Because like I said, I think there's pretty strong consensus that, OK, let's add very reasonable more quantum hardened crypto into Bitcoin and give people opt inability there the consent.

I do not see consensus on freezing people's Bitcoin.

And I think it just hurts us from a narrative point of view in the short term.

But it's probably doesn't even matter that much.

I just talk about it because people are curious about it.

So we're not forking.

I think they'll be forks in our future.

Like absolutely.

I also think it's interesting here, right?

Because it, it does show that the whole soft fork versus hard fork thing was a little bit of a narrative SIOP propaganda thing because like technically proponents of this call this a soft fork because it is at the client level backwards compatible.

But like, if a soft fork includes freezing the creator's Bitcoin and stealing it, like, is it really backwards compatible?

Like, why not just hard fork?

And I, I think that probably will open up a lot of people's eyes if they keep trying to push that narrative that it's, you know, a no risk, quote UN quote soft fork.

Like a soft fork could just as easily result in a chain split as a hard fork.

If anything a hard fork might be more less risky because at least like pre emptively you're like OK in a year there's going to be two chains and people can decide.

Give us a lot to think about man.

It's just funny because I feel like 6 months ago that the big conversation online was about core and knots and, and maybe that's still is the case, but it seems like it's muted compared to the quantum conversation now.

And my gut instinct is that people are kind of looking for a reason to point to as to why this year shaped out the way that it did, right?

And so I didn't really hear much about Quantum six months ago or at the start of the year.

I didn't hear anything about it.

And nothing's changed at the fundamental level for Bitcoin yet.

I think expectations and sentiment is just so much in the gutter and people are grasping at narratives now to explain why that's the case.

I mean, that's just like my left bell curve take.

I I don't think anything necessarily changed from 6 to 12 months ago.

And if anything, it's just like the, the soup du jour of what can we get people worried about get them to sell their Bitcoin.

And I don't know, I mean, I, I don't know much about it.

I learned a good bit from this conversation, but I I particularly don't think that this is something that everyone needs to get their panties up in a bunch about and sell all their Bitcoin.

It's the last remaining FUD, right?

Like they they, you know, the Fudsters have really run out of narratives to to fuck Bitcoin.

Like, well.

This one is.

The last remaining money.

It's existently recycled.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, go.

On I think, I think something hit me last night.

I don't know how true this is, but it feels like it would happen.

We're just going to end up with a a plethora of like quantum shit coins that are going to come out post this.

We already have them.

They're they already exist like this was this did happen in previous cycles, like this is not.

They just never really had that much.

I mean, what people don't realize by the way is like Ethereum and Solana, all these account based models are way, way, way more vulnerable to long range quantum attacks than Bitcoin is too, because they basically reuse addresses from a bitcoins point of view.

That's like they reuse addresses by design, which is crazy.

I will just say like on the independent, like on the larger capital allocator side, behind the scenes, we heard this question a lot previously, like 10:30.

We heard this question so much that we put a blog on 10/31 in January of this year on Quantum and basically about how, you know, the best devs in the world are working on it.

And we're not too concerned about it.

And we kind of faded it, but we wanted A blog post out there so that we could just answer people like really easily, like, oh, here's, here's something tangible.

You can go read.

I, I, what I do think is fascinating, if you want to compare from six months ago, is it does seem like 6 months ago there was a concern you had like people that are, were pro Bitcoin soft forks.

They wanted, you know, covenants or CTV and all this other stuff.

And then you had the ossifiers.

Like people like, oh, Bitcoin never should change ever.

I mean, sailors specifically in response to someone said the first rule of Bitcoin should be do no harm.

And now the Ossafire camp is like, let's freeze the creator's Bitcoin in a in a contentious quirk.

It's like been a complete flip in less than a year, which is pretty crazy.

So because I know we wanted to chat on some of the biggest things this year and heading to next year, but one thing on the quantum, no, there's more like psychoanalysis on.

You mentioned institutional allocators and in general narrative.

I truly believe like from an individual perspective, most people do not want Bitcoin to succeed.

And it has nothing to do with like Bitcoin has to do with things that are new and change.

So if you change the perception of value and how it's stored and what does it look like, and you can't touch it, you can't feel it, you have to understand it.

And quantum scratches that itches itch so perfectly.

It's like all the FUD that's come about, it's kind of been dispelled regulation, administration, the quantum's that last piece and it's a ghost because you can never touch it.

It doesn't exist.

It's all theoretical and the thing I always gravitate and it's again left bell curve.

But it's very like, I don't want to say first principle.

It was very like common sense is like Parker has a great analogy about like payments.

It's like if we get from zero to one in censorship resistant money and that's finite, we can figure out payments like that's the easy part.

And it's like, if we can get there to this asset at $2 trillion and where we're going, it's not to say quantum to to migrate is the is the easy part, but like we can navigate that and there's enough economic incentives to do it.

And so it's just a rational take.

And then you just size it appropriately and then you do your diligence.

And then if you think it's a real risk, just don't allocate that much money to Bitcoin.

If you come to the conclusion that it isn't as big of a risk and you'll fix it, then you get to naturally.

And then that's what you get paid for in the future.

But yeah, that all this like kind of crazy thought of it being existential doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

I mean, the last piece I would say here, which is kind of interesting because I've been thinking about it more lately.

Is, you know, Quantum is an industry just like filled with hype, right?

And press releases based off of that hype.

And there's a bunch of different quantum stocks and like no one knows how they're going to monetize.

And we very much live in a post truth world.

Like it's really hard to see like what's real and what's not.

Probably the only way to tangibly verify for yourself that quantum exists and is actually practical and it's used and can break crypto is if the early Bitcoin is stolen.

Like, I don't know, like like if the US government comes down, it's like, Oh yeah, we have a quantum computer.

Like do they like, I don't know if they do, oh, we broke Chinese encryption.

Like did they like the Chinese might know, maybe if like some, you know, they had some secrets leak or something like that.

But how would you know they actually had one?

It's like actually it's, it's an interesting thought experiment.

It's like you freeze that bitcoins like do you even know Quantum was reached did.

We.

Actually ever reach it or do we just all switch to backdoor crypto on like Signal and shit and all of our communications because the NSA finally had another chance to have backdoors and everything?

I mean based on again we don't know anything about quantum but like the notion of the time and value to crack an address, I feel like there's lower hanging fruit that we haven't discussed.

We don't even know.

Like unknown unknowns that will be cracked and weird shit would be happening.

There be a Canary in the coal mine before any of this even got close to being relevant.

Well, the argument is that they wouldn't do the Canary because they would be going for bigger fish.

Yeah, but the game theory there is you don't know when you're going to get to the bigger fish.

So the logical thing is take the bird in the hand versus the other deal.

All right, Matt, since we're on this biggest piece of noise and signal that is under discussed because we can't do dats in quantum because everyone knows that it's it.

I mean any real listen I would hope understands their noise and that.

Are you asking me?

Yeah, yeah, from this past year like under appreciated SBR noise, OK.

And then signal.

Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

What a what a let down that was.

So far, we still do.

You think it exists?

It exists.

We're seizing more coins.

Sylvan got the audit.

We haven't, we haven't gotten the Fort Knox audit either.

Like said richest man in the world.

So we're going to have a Fort Knox audit and then got a black eye and left the administration.

We'll doge.

With also noise, but that's a different story.

That was 100% noise.

I can't believe people actually thought the government be more efficient.

We're with pomp in, in, in media like in New York in February, he was like the the government's going to belt like he would take he was on Twitter.

So this isn't like secret conversation.

He would ask what's the likelihood of the government balancing, balancing the budget And everyone's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

He's like, I I think it's going to happen.

He's like, I can't believe you guys don't see it.

It's like, what world do you live in?

A lot of people believed it, I think.

I think Elon believed it too.

I.

We need Marty Jones for that one.

Though if I wanted like a home run, non zero chance call, but out there for next year, it would actually be that to catch up for so strategic Baker and reserve.

Everyone I think had very high expectations.

Technically it exists via executive order.

We were, I think a lot of us were hoping that we were going to see something like actually put into law via Congress, which hasn't happened.

It wasn't about buying Bitcoin.

It was about just keeping stolen Bitcoin through like criminal investigations or whatnot, criminal seizures that happened and not selling it.

But in the meantime, you know, Trump is incredibly transactional.

His everyone he surrounds himself with is kind of on the take with him, right?

And they've all been loading up their bags individually, right?

Trump media, his his, his, his stock has been buying Bitcoin.

Do you have his sons with getting Bitcoin exposure, getting significant Bitcoin exposure?

You have to imagine that that like friends and other family are also in on that as well.

So I think there's an argument that maybe they've been packing their bags individually and then next year is when they go hard in the paint on actually using their position of power to create upwards demand pressure on Bitcoin.

And one way for them to do that is they did launch a sovereign wealth fund that bought 10% of Intel.

And I think it would be an interesting play to bail, quote UN quote, bail out the industry America First style by buying a significant portion of MicroStrategy at a discount.

And I think the shareholders would actually be happy about it at this point in time.

So that that's the kind of an interesting scenario to walk through in your head is the SBR.

Actually it wasn't.

It wasn't the real driver.

What the real driver was the sovereign wealth fund, and that was buying equity in the largest Bitcoin treasury company in the world.

Yeah, I mean, to your point, right, Trump and the cabinet administration, friends and family, they didn't get involved in Bitcoin to lose money, right?

Like that would be saying people get elected into public office and then they they just buy the wrong stocks and they don't meant millions or 10s of millions over their career.

So I totally agree with you.

I think we're, we're getting set up for something more exciting.

I don't know if it happens next year.

I mean, I could be inclined to think that, you know, something like you just laid out could happen, but I just generally don't think that you would be in a position of power.

Get involved, have family working in the industry or on board seats in the industry buying Bitcoin at public companies for this all to kind of just dump in 2026.

Yeah.

Would you even touch on Cantor?

How much underwater are they?

Like a couple billion dollars in their MSTR position before?

Like when the prices ripping?

I think it was like 20% of their treasury was in strategy at the start of the year.

It was like a crazy.

Number, it was like a billion dollar position.

But I think they were doing options things and stuff too, right?

Like I don't know if you can just treat that as a spot position.

Yeah, I don't know.

And they're also holding all of Tethers treasuries, and that line of business has been doing quite well for them.

It helps when you're, you know, get access to, you know, Howie, I don't know.

So one thing just to call out.

I I think is a little bit controversial, but I, I personally, and I'm curious your thoughts And then also what do you think like under the radar was bullish this year is the whole stable coin narrative and stablecoin adoption from like banks.

And the main logic is really simple.

It's just a easier way for the market to digest.

There's a digital form of money and then the rails that are associated with it.

We saw what tethered in for the past 10 years.

I think that's like widely under discussed in the Bitcoin camp of all these banks effectively turning on, even though they went, you know, and maybe missed the forest of the trees with getting stablecoin integrations and what the plans are.

There's there's a large influx of narrative we've seen the YouTube just across the board.

And so I think that that'll naturally end up in inflows in BTC Mercurial's take there.

And then also just like mainly like what under the radar happened this past year or just do you think is miss misappreciated for like where sets us up nicely in the coming years?

Yeah.

I mean, I think first and foremost, like, I mean, having having a pro crypto President Trump was a significant win over the last year of Biden and whatever Harris would have brought.

I mean, we were like, we're on the verge of, you know, American Bitcoin companies getting raided by the feds and getting thrown into gulags.

I mean, we had samurai that happened to samurai and them getting ending up getting jailed and sentenced was a was a leftover of the Biden administration in in a very big way.

And hopefully we see Trump pardon them.

But he did pardon Ross.

He took off a lot of the pressure off the industry.

And the big one he took off pressure on was tether, which says basically the biggest risk for tether for the last, you know, 10 years has been basically, I always called it cruise missile risk.

It was like the US government like raiding them with Delta Force and making their lives miserable and seizing all their assets.

And that seems like it's basically out of the picture now at this point.

Meanwhile, they're on track to, you know, make 20 billion plus in profit that they've been stacking Bitcoin and gold with and they have like 70 employees like that.

The store, the Tether story is pretty crazy.

And when you're talking about stable coins, they always, everyone always fades Tether.

Well, at least like among suit circles in America, they fade Tether for like circle and stuff like that.

But tethers, the dominant 1 Tanner, there's the winner.

They're the ones that are the overwhelming majority of volume usage around the world.

And I think that is, you know, and at the end of the day is basically run like a small business among a couple Bitcoiners and it's all completely closely held except for like Cantor got a token 5% equity or something.

So they had skin in the game.

That's probably bullish as fuck for Bitcoin, I think.

And that says someone who doesn't actually use Tether or have demand for Tether.

But having long term bitcoins that are ideologically minded that are, that are more powerful than ever, that have a ton of liquidity and seem to be kind of investing in an ideological ways.

Like there's no way you can underwrite the Rumble investment, for instance, where they invested like a billion dollars into Rumble from like a straight monetary point of view.

Like you can't.

There's there's no way there no, no actual financial allocator who cares about returns is doing that investment.

They did that investment for influence and freedom of speech reasons and pushing tether usage and Bitcoin usage in the Rumble wallet or whatever.

So there's I think there's something there that is pretty bullish.

The thing to watch is, you know, if that relationship becomes too close, then what you're looking at is something that is very similar to a CBDC, but it's privately held.

It's like a private bank digital currency.

And the last piece I would say on that is I do think the sleeper in the stable coin conversation, particularly with gold at all time highs is Tether.

Gold, which obviously does not compete with Bitcoin, does not compete with Bitcoin because it requires A trusted third party.

Any real world asset requires the trusted third party because there's no way for you to natively verify on chain that that asset actually exists.

And because of that, it requires permission.

It could be seized, it can be blocked.

We've seen Tether do that in the past.

But I think that would be very interesting if that adoption gets bigger, which I expected to.

But if it starts to thread and Tether U.S.

dollars, tether gold usage versus Tether U.S.

dollars, then all of a sudden I don't think there's such a strong argument from the US government that it like increases dollar hegemony.

So that I something to watch.

I think that's something to watch specifically.

I think if you look at the market caps, it's like $2 billion is in tether gold and like 200 billion is in Tether dollars.

So it's like 100 to one difference in quote UN quote usage if that's what how you want to measure usage.

So if that gap narrows, that should be interesting to watch.

It's a great call you brought up because it's going to happen.

Like the big thing that I think we missed on the Bitcoin side is A, how hard it is for people to wrap their heads around it.

And B, the inertia momentum that gold has, like we didn't expect 30, Like gold sits at $30 trillion.

Might as well be like Bitcoin in the sense of most people don't know how to buy it, where to buy it, how to transact with it.

That market structure is being built in real time independent of Tether.

Tether's leading, but there's like World Gold Council, there's all these people doing tokenized pools.

It's very similar to like the Bitcoin market structure where not everyone has their underline in self custody.

It sits in these different vehicles and then people want different types of exposure and the ability to take redemption.

And we look at gold at 30 trillion a day.

I think we all agree it's going to, you know, increase in the future and people are going to naturally like, I think the thing that we all forget is it's it's hard to underwrite Bitcoin and it's full potential without understanding where gold went.

And so people naturally have to go through gold and they're not going to want to take self custody, but they also like understand GLD is not the best product and that's going to be a huge opportunity.

And then Tether about this right before from a private market participant that's public, they're easily probably the most sophisticated actor in this like world.

We're talking that you can see what they're doing and I think a big part of the gold Bitcoin stacking is them understanding that the credibility of the dollars fracture, the credibility of treasuries are fractured.

So ultimately whatever's backing a a dollar stable coin is going to naturally be sound assets that people recognize.

So there's a second and 3rd order game they're playing with stacking gold and Bitcoin that once other people catch up to it, they're going to be playing that same game because it's just game theory.

Like why would you take a stable coin if it's backed by just treasuries that are we know what's going on with the bond?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just interesting to think like Tether just came out and announced they did an investment in Speed Wallet, which is like kind of a shitty Lightning wallet that doesn't really have that much usage.

But the quiet piece is that Speed Wallet actually powers steak and shakes Bitcoin merchant processing.

And it's a really good, it's probably one of the best merchant integrations we've ever seen in Bitcoin, period.

It's super clean, you know, it just shows you a, an inlaid invoice.

It's like really easy to pay, very good UX, works really well.

I, there's a world where, why did they make that investment, right?

I think there's a world where maybe you can go buy a burger with Tether Gold, right?

And then all of a sudden you start to think it's like, OK, so Tether Gold doesn't compete with Bitcoin, but it definitely competes with GLD and it probably competes with physical gold too.

And I definitely would rather own Tether Gold than own GLD.

I probably even at size rather own tether gold than physical.

You know, I there's an argument.

I mean, there's obviously physical is awesome, but hard to verify, hard to move, hard to transact, right?

There's a lot of.

You're making the case why people don't hold spot Bitcoin, by the way, because a lot of people's perception of that is what you're describing.

But spot Bitcoin?

Spot Bitcoin is way, way easier in those intermediate sizes than gold is.

Like if you're, if you're a sovereign and you're allocating to gold, it's easier to allocate to gold than Bitcoin, right?

Because you already have processes in place to verify, store, move it around and acquire it.

But if you're in the middle tier, right, and you're trying, let's say you're just a random person, you want to buy 500,000 to $2,000,000 worth of Bitcoin with a gold, it's really, really difficult to buy, verify, store and do that whole process.

You're going to pay significant premiums.

It's going to take you a lot of time.

And then if you want to transact it afterwards, if you want to sell it afterwards, it's going to be a lot more difficult in a couple clicks.

Like you can just get access to Tether gold if you wanted to, right?

So it's, I, it's an interesting dynamic.

Like I'm not once again, I'd rather hold Bitcoin.

I but to your point about gold being this massive mature asset, I mean, I think the stat is like over the last five days, gold added another Bitcoin market cap to its market cap saw that like gold is up 20.

The the engagement tweet is gold is up 21 million Bitcoin in five days, which is crazy.

The main signal why the market structure and four year cycles don't really matter, right?

When you look at like gold, doing what gold's doing means like the emperor has no clothes.

People are recognizing that the dollar's cooked.

And in that world, you can't ever like forecast, like where the hell Bitcoin goes or gold, because there's no top.

Yeah, that was going to be my sort of and and it was discussed.

It's not that it was under discussed, but I think my sort of most bullish thing of 2025 was just the the narrative that entered the zeitgeist of the debasement trade.

I think was important for people beginning to go down the path of understanding sound money, understanding how Bitcoin improves upon gold's monetary properties.

And I think the greatest sort of anecdote example of that was Harvard's allocation to gold and Bitcoin.

Like that is still under discussed.

Like there was, I think maybe one or two write ups about it in in certain periodicals, but like really, really under discussed in the sense that, you know, it's not only that they allocated to Bitcoin, it's that they did it in tandem with a gold allocation.

So so there's some understanding in that investment committee that both of these things are similar from an investment perspective, from an underlying thesis perspective.

And I think that's super critical.

Like Harvard is the epitome of sophisticated allocator in the world, like full stop.

And so we've seen some inkling of like people, you know, following their lead, whether it's Brown or Emory or a few others, I expect that to accelerate in 26 because they are the bellwether of of sort of institutional sophisticated capital allocators.

And you know, I think part of the reason why it's under discussed is because they were very quiet about it.

Like they didn't do a big release around their thesis or why they did it.

They just just, you know, it just happened to be disclosed in their filings.

And so there was no fanfare around it.

And I think that was purposeful in the sense that it's still taboo in their circles, right?

Academia, their peers, their colleagues don't understand what Bitcoin is relative to crypto.

Crypto there's, you know, a lot of conflation still.

And so I think it's natural that they were pretty quiet about it.

But as a result of that, it's really been under discussed.

But I think, you know, probably the most bullish thing that happened this year in my mind.

Am I correct that is their largest public position?

Correct.

Yeah, it's bigger than all their single name stocks in that portfolio.

I love the the Harvard allocation because it dispels the whole notion that institutional allocators can't get exposure to Bitcoin.

And the funny part is it's still like it's .03%.

I think roughly directionally .03%.

I think it'll eventually will dispel why they Coinbase won't persist as a leader for institutions on a long enough time horizon.

For once a sophisticated allocator understands Bitcoin, I make the case they fully still don't because their size is severely under allocated.

Why would they leave it with a trusted third party?

Because if they're at 3 to 5%, how do you go to board meetings and work with your endowment and say like our counterparty is, you know, this effective bucket shop?

So anyway that's more market, it's more market structure long term, but.

Here's the conversation no one wants to have.

If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin?

Really think about it.

The C phrase hidden in your house, the hardware wild and the safe.

That complex multi 6 setup.

You understand it, but does your spouse do your children?

Billions and Bitcoin are already lost forever because people did not plan for this moment.

On ramps inheritance solution is built into our multi institution custody from day 1/3 institutions.

Clear beneficiary designation and professional succession planning.

No technical knowledge required from your heirs, and with our new flat tier pricing starting at $250 monthly, your family won't face surprise custody costs just because Bitcoin appreciated the same predictable fee.

Whether Bitcoin hits 200K or 2 million, don't leave your family's future to chance.

There's strength in many.

Visit on rampbitcoin.com/inheritance That is on rampbitcoin.com/inheritance.

Here's what keeps Bitcoiners awake.

You're still securing millions of dollars the same way you secured thousands.

That hardware wallet in your drawer?

Your family's entire future depends on you not losing it for getting the PIN or something happening to you on ramps.

Multi institution custody removes that burden.

Three independent institutions hold your keys.

No single point of failure.

No seed phrases to protect, no explaining complex recovery processes to your spouse.

And now we're offering flat tier pricing.

One predictable monthly fee starting at $250.

Other Bitcoin is at 100K or 500K Plus with on rate buyer raise, you get the same institutional security with tax advantage growth.

This is how smart investors protect generational wealth.

Without the weight on their shoulders, there's strength in many.

Learn more at on rampbitcoin.com.

I'll give, I'll give the group and more importantly the listeners some hopium and you guys kind of touch on it, but not fully.

I I think the hopium is that just the magnitude of the move in gold in this year paves way for a Bitcoin super cycle at some point.

But the fact, the fact that this asset move like what, 15 trillion in a year and people don't think anything?

Is possible anything's on the table.

Is what you're saying the Bitcoin can print another couple $100,000 or even a few $1,000,000 in a given year?

I don't know when that happens and what the catalyst will be, but to think that a small market like Bitcoin cannot move incredibly high in in a very short amount of time, I think is misguided.

I just don't know what the catalyst will be for that.

I mean, the the big reason for gold, of course, was you actually have a major sovereign bid the past three years in particular, but even more so like just relentless bid from sovereign nations and everyone thought that 2025 was going to be the sovereign year for Bitcoin.

I thought that we were going to have a bright orange future.

The orange man was going to usher in the orange coin.

The everything was going to be great in America.

Of course, we kind of got run pulled.

Are you?

Enjoying Are you enjoying your golden age, Jackson?

No, not even.

Honestly, I'm not even having any fun playing with my Bitcoin.

So it's just been a disappointing year overall for the market.

Yeah, I don't think that's opium.

I mean, I think that's the key aspect of the thesis, the Bitcoin.

I mean, Bitcoin will move when you least expect it in both directions, but it's definitely a play.

It is interesting though.

Like, I do think I've been thinking a lot over the years of like, when does Bitcoin get truly appreciated as a safe haven asset?

And there's been multiple false starts on that.

But like earlier this year was like a really bad false start.

Like I just like Larry Fink was on CNBC and he's like, this is digital gold.

Like this is, you know, like one of the most powerful people in finance was like, Bitcoin is the safe haven.

And now Bitcoin's at 88 K and gold and silver at all time highs and just feels like, OK, does that mean we have to wait another four years or five years?

I mean, I'm, I'm down to I'll wait.

I'd rather not.

I don't think we are waiting because in previous cycles I think at this point what is like over 2.

Chad's supposed to buy a home.

Man, he really wants to buy a home.

It's a running theme in this deal and.

That's, that's my real, that's my real hope him.

But no, I mean, in previous cycles, right?

Like at two years after two months, excuse me, after the peak, the price would be way lower than it is right now.

And despite all of the bearish narratives, all the FUD that's being thrown out, Bitcoin's still at about $90,000.

And so it's definitely showing more resilience than previous cycles.

Of course, there's probably a number of reasons for that, but I just can't see a world where 2026 is like a big drawdown here.

I'm not going to say like I can't see a world where things don't chop around again, but I just don't think that we're going to have a big, big bearish year in 2026.

I think it's going to be either flat or it's going to be incredibly bullish.

It's one of the one of those two in my opinion.

Dude flat is so boring.

I OK the I don't.

Disagree but.

Rather down or up.

But anyway you brought up the four year cycle.

So I, I, I did a little bit of homework before I came on and I have the numbers.

If currently we're at $88,000, right?

If this was equivalent to the 2012 cycle, we would be sitting at $3,000,000 right now.

If this was equivalent to the 2016 cycle, we'd be sitting at $930,000 right now.

And if this was the 2020 cycle, we'd be sitting at $326,000 right now.

So I mean, I, I, I, what am I?

What is my point with that?

Well, first of all, I'm incredibly disappointed.

That's that's the main point I have.

But second of all, like, I don't know, like if everyone always wants to see like AV shaped recovery, but if we have maybe the we haven't seen all the pain yet, Like you said, we're sitting at 90K sentiments really bad.

You know, if that is IF80 was actually the bottom, that'd be fucking fantastic.

But who, who knows?

Like maybe we, maybe we go lower first.

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't be so surprised if we'd go lower first.

Just to put my foot in my mouth, my predictions that the Triple Crown, I think we get directionally close to triple BTC price, triple gold and triple M&A in the space next year.

18 months, 12 to 18 months.

I sadly thought of something and I know we have to wrap that we'll have to talk about when you come on again.

Matt is me and Brian have this running.

It's it's a gets pretty heated debate and I still think he's betting, but he won't bet money on it.

So it kind of tells you where he's at or he won't bet Bitcoin on it.

Is he believes you like crypto's dead but crypto and J coin?

That's not the take.

Don't, don't, don't summarize my don't summarize my take like that.

OK, well, I'll summarize that.

He's he he he takes that Bitcoin dominance well just could tape into the right forever and and the idea is yes, on a long time horizon things Charles is 0.

But over the course of the next, call it two to five years, that this wave of orange, you know, America or whatever, is going to usher in the amount of speculation that we cannot even fathom.

The point was the point was higher lows for for Bitcoin dominance from a cycle to cycle perspective, which I think we've seen like I think we've seen higher lows in terms of where Bitcoin dominance falls in sort of the the cycle when alts run.

We didn't really see that this year and it it never fell below like 50%, which was my specific call.

I didn't think dominance would fall below 50%.

This this.

Yeah, I mean, I think when you when you look at independent assets, my competitor competing monies to Bitcoin, they should all trend to zero against Bitcoin.

Now the big overtime.

But like if, if the big one that's been wrong so far as gold, I mean, gold and silver are just ripping like crazy.

But the reason that Bitcoin dominance is like kind of a scam metric is because it's, it's not the same assets.

Like if you look at the Bitcoin dominance #10 years ago, it was completely different shit.

Coins were were taking up the majority of market cap.

And the human condition of gambling is that, you know, they're just going to keep coming out with new ones, right?

And that's probably going to be the case, I think, for at least however long.

But maybe Bitcoin hits escape velocity.

I think now the the real number I'm more curious is like Bitcoin versus gold and silver.

Like, I think that's an interesting dominance metric.

Yeah, remember everyone.

It's definitely more useful.

It's just funny when everyone would dance on the grave of silver, right?

Like people would pull up that chart and be Bitcoin is much larger than silver by market cap.

And now if you were to pull that up, silver's got a double on Bitcoin.

I just also think it's funny.

I know, or wrap here, Matt, but it's funny that Michael just.

Yeah, I know.

I was going to say Michael brought that up and then he just dipped because he had to make Christmas cookies.

Yeah, but appreciate the time, Matt.

It was a fun conversation.

Wish you a Merry Christmas.

And anyone who wants to get in touch with you, where should they find you?

All my contact information is at Odell dot XYZ.

Reach out you have any questions, feedback, always happy to to provide.

And also if you haven't checked out nonstar, download Primal on your favorite App Store.

I'm very active there.

It's fun.

We have an integrated Bitcoin wallet and we have a lot of big, I'm heavily involved in primal development.

We have a lot of big improvements coming up in the next four or five months.

So if you don't necessarily like what you see, stick around and I I think you'll enjoy it.

You're going to love it.

All right.

Well, thanks, Matt.

Merry Christmas to you and appreciate the time man.

Cheers.

Merry Christmas.

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.