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 had a great conversation this week.

We were joined by Blake Killian who recently joined on ramp as the Chief Marketing Officer.

And in this conversation we dug into nation state adoption, starting with the Bitcoin Policy Institute latest piece of research and we really unpacked the education and the narratives that are required to actually get to mainstream adoption.

So we discussed quite a bit in terms of adoption happens when the masses understand that Bitcoin is a better form of savings and they ultimately have a way to securely save that Bitcoin for the long term.

Some of the other topical things we discussed were some of the movements in gold Spot gold market, specifically in China and the surge in gold price that we've seen this year.

What that means for the broader macro picture, what that means for traditional portfolios, How do gold and Bitcoin exist alongside each other for the foreseeable future and ultimately on the topic of education and adoption, That leads us to On Ramp where we focus on multi institution custody.

If you're an individual, you're a business or an institution that is looking for Peace of Mind, a better way, a more secure way to secure your Bitcoin for the long term with insurance, inheritance, access to Bitcoin back loans.

You should get in touch with On Ramp.

We continue to pave the way.

We just launched On Ramp Guardian, which is the latest set of security features included in all accounts to protect against digital threats, physical threats, which are on the rise.

So if you're interested in having a conversation, reach out to us on Ramp bitcoin.com.

You can book a consultation directly on our homepage.

Hope you enjoyed the episode.

All right, we're back.

It is the last trade.

We're back.

I don't say we're back anymore because I've been relentlessly mocked by Brian and Michael so.

We're not in the last trade.

This is going to be a good one because we have Blake Killian.

Blake has joined on ramp as the Chief Marketing officer.

Blake, it's really a pleasure to have you on the team.

It's been a lot of fun getting to work with you more recently and excited for you to be the honorary guest of the last trade this week.

How are you doing, Blake?

I'm great.

Wow.

The honorary guest.

Well, I'll class up the joint.

So I'm feeling good.

I'm feeling really good and so excited to be here.

Jumped on the jet as it was already taken off.

So yeah, I'm excited.

Well, don't.

Don't tell yourself short like you know, you come from a highly regarded background, 20 plus years in the industry.

We're at one of the largest private media companies in the world and incredibly excited.

Would love for you to share more about your background and what you saw in On Ramp.

But personally, when I think of it from an industry making move, it's part of the news.

This week we announced and why we're starting with it because frankly, there's a big messaging and branding gap that's existed in Bitcoin from the stigma that still exists across the spectrum.

People think of it as speculative at best, Ponzi at worst.

And so there's a lot of work to be done there, let alone you need the infrastructure behind the scenes that once somebody gets it, they can really adopt it and feel comfortable that it's not going to evaporate the next day.

So we're incredibly excited, and that's part of why, you know, we're excited to have you on the show.

I'm sure you'll be on others, but also kick things off with that news.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you for the welcome and the introduction.

Yes, Hello, world.

My name is Blake Killian.

And yeah, I, I joined.

I think this is officially Week 2 as CMO here at at on ramp and I'm coming in, you know, with, with over 20 years, which sounds like insane to say out loud of digital strategy and media experience that really, you know, runs the gamut from scrappy startups to big institutional environments.

And so I really sort of done it all done, done a lot.

And but I would say for the last decade or so, it's really even focused on digital, on social and, you know, just watching those cycles break, you know, right when I started out, you know, it was like the.com bubble.

I'm sort of datingmyselfbutthe.com bubble and and burst and social media wasn't even a thing.

And so, you know, just seeing these waves crash has been really interesting.

And now with the introduction of, of AI and, and all the automated things we could do, you know, from a marketing perspective, we just have so much at our disposal that, you know, bringing that to bear to, to tell our story to reach more people is what I get really excited about.

And so yes, I, I had the good fortune, I spent the last eight years at a really large media company here in the US and, you know, had got to have a lot of really great experiences, checked off a few bucket list items in terms of, you know, clients always wanted to work with Walmart, CBS television, Paramount, etcetera.

But you know, I like a lot of people probably watching the show and everyone at On Ramp, you know, and like deeply interested in, in Bitcoin.

Obviously, I was first introduced to it, you know, in, I think it was 2017 when a friend of mine had returned from a grad school, like a graduate program in London.

And, you know, he said everyone was talking about it.

And, and at the time I had like, babies at home.

And I was like, yeah, that sounds interesting.

But then like 2019-2020 came along and I really started to pay attention because, like, the context of our world was changing.

And so it just got me thinking about a lot of things differently.

And so, you know, 2020-2021, I'm sure it's classic story is when I got really interested in, you know, what Bitcoin really is, you know, it's this base layer.

And then I just completely orange pilled and and just, you know, established A belief and leaned in about how Bitcoin is inevitable, how Bitcoin is changing the world excetera.

So I'm really excited to bring, you know, all of my experiences here to On Ramp and be a student of On Ramp, but also sort of contribute to what is already happening here.

Yeah, appreciate you sharing that.

Maybe before jumping into the to the news items, just curious from your vantage point external to on ramp, where you saw the pros and the cons in the just general digital asset space?

Because my understanding historically, we've had some of the best people come into digital assets crypto from Tradfi, best marketers, but they haven't fully made that jump to the Bitcoin industry per SE.

And so there's a lot of learnings that we can embody as an industry, specifically Bitcoin only and on ramp and then also some of the content and things we've been doing and, and just notably what you see where we can really improve and you're excited to get involved with.

Yeah.

You know, like from a marketing perspective and just personally, I want to be laser focused on clarity.

You know, I think that clarity is something that the industry needs and something that on ramp can really leverage clear communication, clear design, clear storytelling.

I think, and I believe this for a while, education is what is going to take bit Bitcoin mainstream.

And I think that there's a lot embedded in that thought.

It's not just understanding, you know, what the technical definition of Bitcoin is, but why it is and how it is and where it is.

And so, yeah, right now my primary mission and focus is going to be about clarity, like clearly defining who we are, how we're different, what we bring to the world, the value that we're providing.

But I, I think in a, in a larger sense, from like an industry perspective, there needs to be this consideration of the rest of the world because, you know, we're all sort of saying two things at the same time.

We're saying that Bitcoin is inevitable and Bitcoin is changing everything.

In 10 years from now, we won't recognize the place.

But then at the same time, you know, we and I'm saying generally speak and maybe over technical terms or assume people know things that they don't.

And so there's a lot of different mouths to feed when it comes to who we're communicating with and how we communicate.

And so, you know, I think whether you are a highly technical experienced Bitcoin bro or a tenured C-Suite, you know, financial executive or our grandmas, you know, they all deserve attention that they all need different things.

And so I think clarity is what, you know, connects those dots and and you know, that that's, that's what I'm focused on.

That's what I want to be focused on.

Yeah, I love it.

I mean, at the end of the day, the way we can describe on Ramp is as an education company, as are all the companies in the Bitcoin space.

And really ties into the point Michael you made and then Blake that you just spoke to is that there's still such a, there's still such a challenge for the mainstream audience to understand Bitcoin because you have people that are coming at it from all different angles, whether it's from finance tech, it's energy.

And once you get there, then there's all these different distractions, right?

So then it's understanding, well, Bitcoin is this old tech.

If you're coming from a technology background, Wall is this old technology.

Are these other assets newer technology?

Are they superior from a finance perspective?

It doesn't have cash flows, right?

So that it's really challenging to understand how does Bitcoin fit into a traditional portfolio.

We're used to looking at income statements, different financial statements, cash flows, interest payments.

And then from an energy perspective, we're kind of, you know, we're told in many ways that energy consumption is inherently bad.

You don't want to over consume energy.

So then you hear from the energy sector, well, Bitcoin uses so much energy, this might not be good for the environment.

And so I think one of the challenging things for this industry across the board is fighting a lot of different competing narratives.

And to your point, Blake, being very clear about what Bitcoin is.

And ultimately at the end of the day, the education has to start at the very top of the level, right?

Just on understanding what money is, why do we have the financial problems as a country or as an individual that we have today?

Why are we $37 trillion in debt?

So really it's about answering those questions to finally understand and educate the masses on Bitcoin.

And then what I'm really excited particularly about you joining Blake, is then educating the market about a lot of the things that we do here at On Ramp and why that's ultimately going to take the educated personal money to actually be able to save and preserve their wealth for Bitcoin in the long term.

Yeah, what one thing I would I would not challenge there, but I think challenge us and and where we're at an inflection point that I think for 1st 15 years, everything Jackson said was insanely important because it was an early adopter phase.

And you ultimately have to really understand those nuts and bolts if you're going to be an early adopter and park money and magic and Internet beans and figure out self custody and, and all the things along with it.

But if we're truly going to cross the chasm to ubiquity and the same thing as the Internet, e-mail, an iPhone, water running out, people are not going to care about any of that.

They're going to care about what does these, what is the solution and how do you make it easy?

And how do I know it's secure and safe?

And so we're still not there, but I think that's really the opportunity.

And we're most excited is how do we like slowly cross that chasm into still building trust and recognizing the debt system and all those things and educating.

But over time it becomes ubiquitous that I go to, I go to Bitcoin because it's a better savings technology.

And I go to on ramp because it secures that without a question.

And that's how we really win as as a as a society, because people can just preserve their wealth.

And I think if we have that as our North Star and even fall a little bit short from it, we're in a really good spot.

Yeah, well, why don't we riff on some news now that we have Blake introduced, the audience is more familiar with the latest addition to the team.

And so I was joking before we hit record here that it's deep in a bear market.

Sentiment is very poor.

If you go online, doesn't feel like we're still above $100,000 per Bitcoin.

It doesn't feel like, you know, retail at least is enthusiastic or excited about Bitcoin currently, more so the price, of course.

But one thing I think it was worth calling out is when you look past the enthusiasm and the FOMO that and the emotional investing, emotionally driven investing of retail investors, you start to see some signal here.

And so, Michael, maybe I'll hand it over to you.

First, some of your thoughts on this chart from the Bitcoin Policy Institute on nation state adoption.

Yeah.

Thanks, Jackson.

I think this is something we've been actively talking about, specifically related to the hash rate being a little bit, I don't call it inorganic, but just the past two years, nation states stepping in to be mining Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

And Bitcoin Policy Institute did a great report basically breaking down that there's 32 countries, roughly one out of every Six Nations on earth already have Bitcoin exposure or actively pursuing it.

And if you Scroll down to the second tweet, it actually shows the type of adoption if you show more right there.

So it's like strategic Bitcoin Reserve 16 Bitcoin mining 14 countries.

I think this is some of the first steps as we'll see.

And we've been talking about into potentially cycles changing where if sovereigns are naturally stepping in to adopt A better form of money.

We see this with gold we'll talk about later.

It kind of changes the overarching cycles when it comes to the the reflexivity and downward, you know, 80% retraces.

And so I thought this was very cool to see.

It's something we've been already instinctually thinking about, but to see it put into with empirical data is is fun.

And it's still very early, so you can imagine a year from now this will be tremendously different.

Yeah, this is a great, great stuff from BPI as always.

We'll we'll link to it in the show notes.

But a few other things to call out around this is, you know, in my mind, like a lot of what's talked about in the report and just general sort of sovereign game theory is not reflected in, you know, the Bitcoin price today is what I would say sort of first and foremost.

So let's like put aside the price for now and think more about sort of just the Overton window continuing to shift and the perceived toxicity around Bitcoin as an asset really eroding before our eyes.

And so it's, you know, this this transition not only from central banks, governments, sovereigns around the world recognizing that, hey, maybe we don't want to own as much U.S.

Treasury debt and maybe we need some other reserve assets.

And so we know they're stacking gold.

We'll get to some other gold headlines later in the show.

But increasingly, there's this recognition that there's really only two neutral reserve assets in the world.

It's gold and Bitcoin.

And, you know, as this report from BBI outlines, you know, even if even if these things haven't been, you know, enacted or there is an outright spot buying, we know there's mining going on at the nation state level and we know that there's things being proposed legislatively to to put these things in place.

And, and I would also call out they do a good job in the report of saying, you know, how are they going about doing this, but also the why.

And so I think there's three core rationales that they they outline in the piece.

And so the first is obvious, right?

It's it's what I just referenced around reserve diversification.

So getting away from having so much exposure to U.S.

Treasury debt as sort of trust in U.S.

Treasury erodes post, you know, the freezing of Russia's assets in 22 and you know, governments are looking for these neutral reserve assets.

And the other big, big component here is is trade facilitation.

So we've seen little glimpses of this here and there, but this will be more of a long or medium to long term story of bitcoins portability and neutrality, making it a very viable sort of bridge currency or transactional currency, especially for developing economies constrained by, you know, dollar reserves.

And then the other component worth mentioning is just sort of the, the natural FOMO and game theory of all of this because the, the proverbial gun is on the table in terms of Bitcoin being an option as a neutral reserve asset.

And so once you know, a handful of major sovereigns decide to actually adopt and act these pieces of legislation and buy Bitcoin, that will be a very strong feedback loop for others to get involved because it then becomes not offensive, but actually defensive.

Where if you know G, you know, G7 or G20 countries around the world start owning Bitcoin and you don't have any, then then you are in you're, you're sort of off your footing in that sense.

And so you have to, you have to make a move.

Yeah.

And, you know, just from a marketing perspective, it, you know, nation state adoption is like the Holy Grail of social proof because, you know, it's undeniably moving, you know, anti fringe becoming infrastructure and, you know, in a really big conspicuous way.

And so I think that, you know, events like that can't help but create momentum and yeah, eventually lead to like landslides that, you know, that that day is coming.

And so, you know, I, I think that's really good news.

Of course it is for everybody in the space.

Yeah, I've always, yeah, I've been thinking about more recently on the topic of nation state adoption.

I, I agree with you, Blake.

I mean, the social proof is certainly there, but one of the things I'm unsure about as it relates to the US in particular is.

Since.

Everything so politicized these days if adopting Bitcoin within a specific state is just seen as like some political move and you know, the opposing party just, you know, hates everything about that.

You know what I mean?

Like so there's social proof there, I think for like one side of the demographics, but then particularly in like over politicized economies such as the US right now, I wonder if there's like, you know, the budding tension there actually could be detrimental, detrimental to.

Bitcoin in the short term now I know in the long term it doesn't really matter what your politics are because every country has the same problem of insane debt levels currency to basement and to Michael's point earlier, it just ties back into the idea that people will need to understand that Bitcoin is a better savings technology.

So it doesn't matter where you stand on the political spectrum, it still protects your purchasing power, doesn't care who you voted for in 2024.

And then once you get past that point, then it's just a matter of area.

Well, how do I actually secure this for the long term?

But I agree nonetheless, at the nation state level, it's very encouraging.

I'm just kind of unsure about what that'll look like in the next couple years within the United States in particular.

It's a, it's a good call out.

It's something for us to keep tabs on because you can already see this happening.

I think in some of our links.

There was Senator Warren, among others.

I don't know if they were suing, but they put up into the like, you know, into the stratosphere around Trump and miss dealings.

And we can kind of see this play out over the next couple years heading into yeah, here's the the post center warrants lock and call for ethics probe into Trump linked crypto dealings.

And it it links out to some other things where his sons were referencing, you know, this we're not the first kind of family administration to make money off of the presidency.

I think the main point, Jackson, and it gets a little, I don't want to be like conspiratorial, but ultimately when we come into whatever looks like the next administration, if things get hairy and, and I don't want to say blow up, but effectively blow up, they're going to blame a lot of it on this like Wild West style, you know, policy that's coming in.

Because we've seen this with like Etps and ETFs and the standardization.

They're basically going to let everything under the sun fly in the public markets.

And it's going to be a very nice angle to bring in some draconian legislation when it comes to policy around like who can do what with it?

You can just already see it coming.

So to your point, it is really her Bitcoin.

It just hurts U.S.

citizens if this is the route we're going down.

And it's something I've been thinking about, still early, but it's something we should be monitoring and talking about.

Yeah.

One thing we talked about with Ovic Roy on scarce Assets recently was the idea that ultimately it is just a matter of Bitcoin being embedded in enough of the public and private sector that the incentive turns away from the government wanting to fight Bitcoin to wanting to embrace it, right?

Because there's always this embedded concern within the industry that at some point the stakes are high enough where the government comes after the private assets, particularly Bitcoin.

But if you can actually reverse the incentives and that politicians, Wall Street, you know, name your influential people within a given country, if they all have Bitcoin exposure, then they're far less likely to attack it in any way.

So I think it's ultimately the goal is like we want to take advantage of the opportunity that we have now as an industry to get Bitcoin as widely adopted as possible, because then it really does change the incentives and and perhaps it does allow for, you know, more prosperous future rather than the government having to come back and try to attack those who have embraced it.

I I totally.

Agree with that and I would also say like in.

Sort of the.

Context of what you describe, Jackson, in terms of some negative perception around Bitcoin crypto as a result of the Trump administration.

It ultimately comes back to what we were talking about before around education in the sense that the people in government or even just, you know, normal citizens who are, are heavily political.

They are effectively outing themselves as not having done the work by just naturally saying, oh, well, Trump's associated with this, so it must be bad.

I'm going to be anti it.

That is just, you know, simply outing themselves as not having done the work themselves, being an independent thinker and coming to a conclusion because at sort of the actual government levels, like politicians, there is bipartisan support for this stuff.

There's, there's plenty of Democrats who are, are interested in, in Bitcoin and crypto and pushing forward productive legislation.

And so I think it's more of the perception that you're referencing around just generally being anti Trump.

Anything he does, anything he touches, we're going to be anti it.

But that ultimately comes back to education because once you actually open your mind to it and are willing to learn about it, you don't, you don't look back and you end up embracing the technology and embracing better rules and regulations for the citizens, that of the country that you're, you know, a government official in.

And so I think you know that that really is the story.

If you just think about Bitcoin in general, the the entire story of Bitcoin adoption is education.

We know what the supply is.

It's finite.

There's 21 million all the only function you need to assess is, is demand increasing and increasing demand is necessarily a function of education.

And so that's, that's the entire story of Bitcoin.

And you know, I think it, it's, it's playing out at different, different sort of rungs of society from the individual to the corporate to the nation state.

But that is the trajectory.

More education, more learning, more people supporting this asset and network.

Yeah, I mean the the lack of education, the less education there is, the more likely Bitcoin is to become associated with one thing or being one thing or associated with one person or policy or or set of politics.

And so, you know, education really broadens that horizon, stretches it out.

And so, you know, you get to see it as not, you know, something that is politically motivated, but you get to explore the utility of Bitcoin, the function of Bitcoin, what it enables.

And, you know, there's a lot of other conversations to have around that.

And I think that that's really crucial to sort of swarm around, you know, conversations that maybe you're not serving Bitcoin with, you know, not arbitrarily positive information, but true objective information that, you know, needs to stay in the spotlights and stay balanced because, you know, ultimately it'll swing back into that favor.

And you know, all that knowledge and understanding will be there to move.

Yeah, it would be an interesting case study to look into other technologies in the politicalization of them in in the early adopter phase.

Because we get to a point, to your point, Blake and Michael is just once it's mainstream enough that people just understand that this benefits them and they don't really care about any of like the ideology that was behind it like a decade or two ago.

But yeah, shifting gears, I want to talk a little bit.

It's still on the topic of nation states, but we should talk about Tether.

So some news that came out recently there.

And then we could also talk about, in particular as relates to gold, some of the action that we've seen out of China.

But we'll pull up the article here first on the topic of Tether.

So Tether seeks $500 billion valuation, what rank among world's most valuable private firms, per Bloomberg.

Who wants to take this one first?

I think the main thing that I'm most interested or fascinated is Tethers, obviously, you know, playing for keeps in the sense they're going, you know, for, for dominance in this market.

And there's a playbook, you know, they brought in Cantor on the, I think $600 million valuation round.

I think in the Bloomberg article, it would put their holdings on the investment at 25 billion, I believe if if they get this valuation, yeah, that 500 billion, we mean Cantor's stake would be worth 25 billion.

But you can see the playbook of they got Cantor involved, they had Lutnick, you got Bo Hines that this wasn't, you know, the next step in the plan to go raise significant capital.

They don't really need the capital.

If you raise this amount of money, you're effectively, you know, going for market penetration, meaning the people they're raising from are going to be some of the most well connected financial institutions, which would give your kind of strategic advantage to getting Tether embedded into financial institutions in the US and probably globally.

So it'll be very interesting to see who ends up investing and then what that looks like.

So yeah, that's the immediate interesting take.

I think the only other one is really probably where we're all at is who else ends up in this world.

Like Circle just doesn't feel like they have the confidence or strategic planning to go and do something.

My instincts would tell me that there's like a wild card that ends up in some kind of consortium with whoever doesn't invest in the tether around to figure out what are they going to do from a distribution perspective, when you think about the JP Morgan chases in the Wells Fargo's of the world.

But yeah, it's it's really fascinating.

I mean, I, I think that the tether story is a branding story because, you know, I think it's a great big signal.

I, I don't really think it has anything to do with balance sheets really, because you know, where they have gotten to is it's just very clear to me that they've gotten where they've gotten based on brand momentum.

You know, users trusted and use, use it because a lot of other people are trusting it and using it.

And so, you know, for the tether name to become shorthand for something like dollar liquidity, you know, is to me a fascinating story and case study in branding.

And so, you know, it's definitely one to watch for lots of different reasons.

But that's why I'm watching it, yeah.

It's a.

It's a good point like because.

You know, historically speaking, Heather's brand was somewhat maligned, you know, for for a lot of bitcoins history, Tether was viewed as an unscrupulous actor, often viewed, you know, in certain sort of fun arguments around like this is the reason that Bitcoin goes up because they're printing Tether like so they really have done a remarkable job of turning around that that image or that perception of the brand.

And now they're had a place where, you know, there's a, as Michael sort of ran through, there's a lot of connectivity with the current administration and tether.

And so they've really done a full sort of brand pivot or brand, you know, rebrand and in some sense.

And the other thing to, to note, which I, I, I saw earlier this week around this announcement was I think in that headline, it says, you know, they'll be one of the largest privately held firms in the world.

But I think in terms of like publicly traded banks, they would be I think the second or third largest if you know, at that 500 billion valuation, which is just remarkable.

And I think will be a wake up call for a lot of Trad 5 folks, you know, think like an equity analyst studying banks, studying the financial sector.

They see this headline, they see this news.

And maybe they still are working off of that historical perception around Tether, but now they have to update their priors because this is real, it's happening.

The connectivity with the government is there.

And so you need to assess this thing as one of the largest financial institutions in the world, which is just objectively what it is.

And so I think this is a big headline.

I think it's a big headline, not necessarily for us in the space, because I think we all have known this about Tether for a long time, but I think it's a big wake up headline for a lot of people who are on the outside looking.

Yeah.

I mean, I think to your point, Brian, whenever you see market perception outweighing technical specs or outweighing history, you know, the, the history of the company of, of the brand, when perceptions are bigger than that and leading to valuations and, and progress in this regard, that points directly to brand.

I, I, I really believe that.

And I'm biased, of course, because of what I do and, and what I, you know, want to keep doing.

But yeah, I just think it's amazing.

I think there's two sides.

It was a good point.

Like something that I had thought of and I wanted to bring up was just from a market perspective, the fact that whatever top five list of most valuable private companies, like that's pretty wild for a digital asset space.

I don't even know what you would call, you know, AI as from a market cap, but you know, 4 trillion roughly is in the digital asset space.

And you know, a $500 billion valuation is is a big head Turner for just people realizing this, this at this asset class in this industry is here to stay.

You know, we won't go far, but like the reality is if somebody's brand is changing that fast, nothing really changed.

Like if you go back and look at 17 to 20, like there was very shady things happening, nothing fundamentally change other than changing the brand.

But just taking it a step further, which is easier to view is it's effectively, if this is the winner, it's a CDC, if it becomes ubiquitous and it gets deemed and this is what everyone from the administration, it's just public, private relationship of this is what you use and it becomes systemic.

And anything that's systemic naturally has to.

And it's funny because this isn't even like conspiratorial.

We've already seen stakes being taken by the government and then it's increasingly looking like the government taking larger stakes and other businesses that are quote, UN quote, systemic.

So, yeah, I don't know.

It's it's not either or it is what it is because global liquidity had to come into the digital asset space.

It's happened since the beginning, Tethers been the main trading pair.

It's allowed for liquidity to come into Bitcoin.

It'll increasingly do that.

But it's also being weary and understanding like this route does not lead to the most positive things from an individual perspective.

Yeah.

And I think we saw there was a, sorry, there was just a headline this morning from Circle saying that they're considering, but basically the ability to reverse transactions for US well.

They've always, they've always been able, they've always had the ability to do that blacklist.

Yeah, Reverse like all this stuff is always it's it's it's Fiat 2.0.

There's nothing really different.

It's a large database for how dollars move.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think for companies like ours, I know I'm going on and on about it being this branding story.

But for on ramp, what Tether has done is really a foil to what we're doing and what we endeavour to do.

Because it, it sort of shows like to all of the points you guys are making that, you know, the market will accept obviously a large degree of opacity if the utility is high enough.

And so Bitcoin is really the opposite of that.

Transparency, auditability, that's the utility on Bitcoin side.

And so, you know, I think for, for Tether, it's about becoming ubiquitous and, and that's how they've like muscled their way to where they are.

But the branding story for Bitcoin is still about truth.

And it's, it's amazing how truth has survived so many things over the last decade and more and still keeps moving.

And so, you know, Tether isn't a story that we from, we should run from.

I think it's a story that we learn from and use it as an example, you know, to show again what Bitcoin is and isn't.

It's education.

It's an education opportunity.

Yeah, I would add to that too.

In addition to truth and transparency, it's the the actual decentralization of the network.

And so I think what we've seen really over the past decade, to your point, Blake, is that the perceived utility around something is, is sometimes inversely correlated with basically the actual decentralization of of the thing.

And so all these other block chains, you know, tethers coming out with a, a new blockchain, a new L1 that's obviously inherently centralized, but it'll be very, you know, widely used.

That'll probably end up being where most of the stable coin liquidity resides.

And so people will perceive a lot of utility in that and they won't necessarily care whether or not it's decentralized.

Now all those other use cases are effectively just, you know, mapping traditional assets, whether it's dollars or real world assets to marginally faster, cheaper block chains.

Like there is some utility there mostly for the issuers of the assets, less so for like the individual person.

But those things don't necessarily need to be decentralized inherently.

And I think that that's what a lot of the crypto space is waking up to as we see, you know, a lot of these players that, you know, some incumbents, some trad 5 folks entering particularly the stablecoin and real world asset space, launching their own chains that are going to be permissioned and not decentralized.

And I think that that is just sort of a recognition broadly in the space that is occurring.

And I think it's helpful because it actually continues to portray the actual difference between these things, between neutral sound money and, you know, a marginally faster, cheaper database all.

Right.

Just a quick break.

If you're not subscribed to the On Ramp Research newsletter, I certainly encourage you to do so.

If you're a fan of the last trade and other shows here at On Ramp Media, I know that you'll find a lot of value in the newsletter if that Brian on our team produces each week.

We just sent out the weekly roundup this morning and Brian really dug into the sovereign accumulation watch as he called it.

So dug into what is happening around the world as nation states approach Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

So again, if you're interested in what we do here on the research side and want to follow our research updates as well as team updates, product updates, head to our website on rampbitcoin.com and you can put your e-mail in right on the homepage.

You see here.

Maybe we could talk, maybe we could talk a little bit about debts, digital asset treasury companies or Bitcoin treasury companies.

I know we had a few topics in the hopper for this week.

There was the Strive and similar acquisition.

There is B Huddle and then there's another article yet that I am not familiar with, but I'd be curious to hear because it does tie into the topic of adoption.

And yeah, we're we're seeing was at the start of the show, we talked about nation States and Michael had pulled up the chart from Bitcoin Policy Institute and different I guess already authorized or let's say pending use cases of Bitcoin at the nation state level, talked a little bit about state adoption and then just kind of the overarching go Tether, the rebrand there, but I I think ultimately like.

Everything is a story of adoption and this cycle has really been dominated by the adoption story around corporate treasuries.

And so one of the big news items of this week was Strive and similar scientific.

And I wanted to maybe hand it over to Michael first for any thoughts on that topic because they did a transaction just this week all stock.

And curious what you make of the transaction or maybe just like the latest news in that space?

Yeah, I am.

Maybe I'll get worked up to to really share the the spicy stuff.

I talked about it this week earlier on on final settlement.

I don't know if I have the energy to just keep explaining how ridiculous these things are, but I, I can be goaded and I'll let Brian because he was at the two prime event earlier, maybe share some thoughts and feedback.

But maybe just in the spirit of what you said in Blake being on the podcast, I think independent of, of any of the mechanics, structurally not making sense of these things trading for more than one Bitcoin.

This all comes back to education and adoption.

Because frankly, we are still so early that very few people on the planet earth treat Bitcoin as just a savings technology.

They look at it as an investment.

And because of that, not only do they look at his investment, it's still very opaque and how they can secure a material amount without the counterparty risk of custody and figuring out themselves or outlaying it.

And that's why we see demand for products like this.

But ultimately, if you look on a long enough time horizon, if we have a positive and bullish take on humanity, as individuals get smart, as the tooling and education get better, people will opt for better solutions that do not give them exposure to the execution risk and everything involved.

And that's the thing that is just discounted.

It's not intuitive, but if you worked in the space long enough and understand how people have adopted this technology and also on a long enough time horizon where these things trend, the market will just get there to the point of why do I want all this execution risk when I can just have the underline?

And that's what I'm most excited about our business is because I can walk backwards and forwards with anybody on how ridiculous treasury companies are, but we also have solutions for them and we can explain why they're ridiculous and then also how we solve for it.

We're not on Twitter, we're not somewhere saying, oh, you know, it's because I have this hardware device, park all your money here or oh, I have this dat.

It's like we have the actual solution that help solve for the problem that exists and why people are adopting or putting any money in these digital asset treasury companies.

Yeah, it's it's it's spot on in the sense that the reason there is so much interest and uptake in Bitcoin treasury companies as well as just the ETFs is because of the challenges of Bitcoin custody, because the challenges of a digital bear instrument and people not wanting to manage private keys and basically just offload that responsibility to a quote UN quote professional.

I think, you know, as Michael mentioned, I was at a conference this morning here in New York held by two prime.

They're a sort of Bitcoin yield shop.

They are Bitcoin only, which I appreciate.

But you know, there was a lot of dat talk at this conference.

I mean, that was the topic of the day.

So lots of discussions around these pipe structures, you know, supply overlaying over overhang from these unlocks and, and why a lot of them are are dumping below at 1X or one XM NAV.

But the, the massive elephant in the room is custody.

And, and a couple of the panels got to it where the moderator asked a question around custody and there's just not a good answer there.

There's, there's a, a growing recognition that there's a real centralization risk with custody, particularly Coinbase, they custody 9 out of 11 of the ETFs and they're, you know, at least partial custodian for a lot of these treasury companies.

And so there is increased recognition that there is a problem here.

But people don't still, still don't see the solution.

They think, you know, effectively what I heard on, on some of the panels today was, you know, you just have to really keep diligent saying you're, you're custodian, you're single custodian and make sure that they're doing everything right.

And you know, maybe you could diversify custodians so have multiple custodians and then, you know, you don't necessarily lose all your assets, but you know, that's still not a great solution.

If you have 4 different custodians and one goes down, you lose 25% of your assets for the ETFs.

Like that's not palatable like that.

That product goes away if you know, the ETF loses 25% of the assets in there.

So it's not a realistic solution.

It's not a palpable solution long term.

And you know, I, I wanted to just stand up and scream and shout like we, we do have the solution here.

Like there is a solution.

You distribute the keys across multiple custodians in a quorum so that you actually have fault tolerance.

And I think, you know, it's going to be a long, long journey here, but like the at least the problem is being recognized.

Moreoverly, people are, you know, talking about it more.

And so, you know, part of why I'm so excited for Blake to be on the team now is because we need to tell the story that the solution exists.

And you know, there's a better way to get quote UN quote exposure to this asset.

You can own the underlying.

You can do it in a risk mitigated way.

You can do it in a way that's easy.

It feels like a brokerage.

You're not handling cryptographic material.

Go ahead, Blake.

Yeah, No, I, I was going to say like this is a perfect example of where clarity I think will serve us really well.

And clarity is, is going to be one of the ways that we win because that's, I think that's market noise.

It's, I think it's noise And, and there's noise everywhere.

But, you know, I think it's essential to sort of call a spade a spade and, you know, point to new structures and new ETFs.

You know, this, that's what alphabet soup of acronyms that pop up every week.

Like people can't keep those things straight.

And so I think maintaining a position that custody is the signal and all of these wrappers are noise really helps to not only differentiate but facilitates understanding of wait, you know, now I'm starting to get it and it and it's almost as if that learning will occur, you know, by knowing like what you don't want or, or what you want to avoid.

And so.

Just just just to piggyback like this is a common theme we're recognizing is the noise and the noise is directly correlated to the increase in the amount of monetary units.

Because if you dislocate fundamentals from the amount of capital, you will inherently get more distortation, more distorted noise.

And so the key concept here is don't mistake inertia and consensus with being right.

We've talked about this ad nauseam around most of the smart investors would know bonds are negative, negative yielding, they're impaired, but nobody's incentivized to say it.

In the same way that there's a lot of people that recognize Bitcoin is the best performing asset but can't say it and can't allocate.

In the same way that the digital asset Treasure company, a lot of people fundamentally feel and understand there's something intuitively doesn't make sense to trade $0.90 for a dollar.

But if you have those amount of monetary units and people can make money and 90% of the industry that are thought leaders are on some kind of board or affiliated, you don't hear about it.

But on a long enough time horizon, you will because it just doesn't make sense in a fundamental sense.

And so that's where really doing diligence and understanding the mechanics and truly like doesn't make sense for your own personal portfolio where you start to hear and you don't get a lot of these takes, but they'll increasingly come up.

And then the last part is, yeah, the custody stuff is goes the same way with consensus that you'd be surprised in the level of multi trillion dollar, uh, financial institutions that are talking with us about holding keys.

They recognize this problem.

And the beauty is it's the same way with nation state adoption.

It's all game theoretical.

So if your country's not adopting BTC over a long enough time horizon, you're going to lose out in the same way that the custodians are all competing with Coinbase.

And if they can effectively differentiate and have a better story, which is rooted in the fundamentals of the security of the asset, overtime we're going to get more and more adoption.

And that'll naturally we see this.

We pull assets from every major custodian because sophisticated investors know this is kind of the end state.

People listening this every week, it helps because they hear it, they come, they leave their firms, they join our business.

Like Blake, This is the beauty of asymmetry and alpha.

Like this is the difference between, you know, being wrong and right.

And the nice part is we're so early that if you're right, you get to make a lot of money.

Yeah, I think this also ties into something we wanted to get to on the gold side because Michael, you mentioned the point about incentives.

And are you incentivized or not incentivized to tell a certain story or tell your clients the truth?

I I always found it interesting how in the traditional finance space there was such a lack of acknowledgement of gold as an investable asset, as a macro asset.

I've talked about it on the show before.

What I found interesting about a week ago was that Mike Wilson, who's the Chief Investment Officer at Morgan Stanley has kind of come public with A602020 portfolio.

And so I can just read this here quickly and then we can react and get thoughts.

But zooming in a little bit, the idea, right, is to take the 40% that typically sits in bonds in that 6040 portfolio and allocate 20% or 50% of that, so 20% of the total portfolio into gold.

And so they cite here 20% gold is a more resilient inflation hedge at a time when US equities are offering historically low upside over Treasuries and investors are demanding higher yields for long term bonds.

And So what sticks out to me here is that this is a story and narrative that we've heard for a long time in public markets.

US equities are overvalued if you compare any of their fundamental metrics to any historical period.

But I think what is often missed here.

And so that is part of the reason why Morgan Stanley's Chief Investment Officer is recommending a gold allocation in the portfolio is twofold because of the stretched valuations and equities which you know on a good look forward basis, you would imply then that they have lower returns in the next 10 year period.

And then the other part of that is that the Treasury market, particularly on the long end of the curve demanding higher yields, which they're starting to show weakening of the the US fiscal situation.

And now what I think is typically underappreciated in the traditional finance spaces you've heard for a decade now, people talk about, oh, well, the, you know, the US equities, the stock market is overstretched if you compare any sort of fundamental valuation there.

But what's not appreciated is the fact that investors, there's two things.

The first is that passive flows exist at to an extent, they have never existed before, like compared to a decade ago or 20 years ago.

There's just so much capital that's constantly flowing into markets regardless of what the priced earnings ratio is of the S&P 500.

And then the second piece is that the debasement is accelerating.

And so people don't they, whether they actually realize that or not, there's a subconscious recognition that I don't really care what priced earnings I buy the S&P 500 at because I don't want to have my dollar sitting in my savings account that's buying me less and less goods at a rapper more rapid pace each year.

And so I think it's an interesting story because you know, typically we talk about the bonds part of the portfolio faltering, but it's really is twofold.

It's the equities as well.

And you're now having this kind of lash back from, you know, the traditional finance world, recognizing that there's a lot of these issues in the in the public equity market.

Yeah.

And this is this headline that you pulled up is one of many in in sort of a slew of of similar headlines over the past several weeks from Triatify folks, the Morgan Stanley's of the world.

There was a Deutsche Bank note the other day, Jeffrey Gunlock, who's known as the bond king, came out and said, you know, 25% in gold is is reasonable.

Deutsche Bank note was saying that central banks by 20-30 will own, you know, more gold in Bitcoin than they do today.

Effectively.

Dalio was out again making the rounds, reiterating his five to 10% gold allocation with some Bitcoin as well.

And so this is really, Jackson, to your point, like for a long time in Tratify circles, gold was ignored.

If it wasn't ignored, it was a marginal de minimis allocation.

1 to 2% in a portfolio, we're now talking upwards of 20%.

Like that is a significant shift in just the perception of where gold fits in a portfolio.

And really what we're talking about is, is sound money talking about hard assets.

And so as the the debt deficit issues continue to get worse, there's a growing recognition that hard assets have a real place to play in a portfolio.

And the natural inclination of anyone learning about gold or beginning to appreciate gold in a different light is to then look at Bitcoin like it's just a natural evolution and progression to then look at the digital form of gold that actually improves upon a lot of gold's monetary properties.

And so that that's where we're headed.

We're still a very early days.

Gold's breaking out and central banks, institutions, endowments around the world are taking note and they're publicly coming out and saying like, this is this is the right way.

We're we're, we want to own less fixed income to because to Jackson's point, it's, it's negative yielding and probably only going to get worse from here, frankly.

And so it's a real changing of the guard in sort of the, the Stradfi mainstream circles around what is gold?

Where does it fit?

And Oh yeah, what's this Bitcoin thing?

Zooming.

I don't want to leave this topic entirely because I want to go back out.

There's some China news on gold.

But if you zoom in like there's also a notion that gold is really clunky and hard for individual investors to buy an assay and know where to purchase.

And it's going to get easier because this thing isn't going away.

And so businesses are going to get stood up to allow for similarly like Bitcoin where you can have SMA style products and execution and you know, lend against them.

And we've seen a lot of this in Switzerland because it's very sophisticated capital market.

But point being is think about like a high net worth individual that we know somebody listen, he knows that has anywhere between 1,000,000 to $10 million total net worth.

And they say, all right, I, I hear Brian, I hear the guys I want 10% and My Portfolio 20% only worth a million call it.

And they say I'm going to take 100 to 200 K and I'm going to go down to wherever and I'm going to park this in my house.

Like how much how insane a proposition would be for them to put 200K in there safe.

Now, some people might not worry about it, but the point being is that there's a level of clunkiness where what is why there's been that innate apprehension for in retail investors to allocate.

But this is effectively what everyone's doing when it comes to Bitcoin.

There's still bearer assets.

Now, obviously you can hold more of it on a hardware device than in your hand when you're holding a gold bar, But the, the point still remains that that proposition is pretty insane.

And it's something that we needed to do for so long in Bitcoin.

But as the price appreciates, we will look at it and be like, I can't believe.

And that's kind of the, the, the testament to like what we're working on.

And also frankly, where we're at at 108,000, we're kind of dipping.

He's imagine somebody high net worth, that same high net worth ready to, to take his allocation, let's say 20% of 1,000,000.

He wants 10% in BTC and 10% in gold.

That person is not generally going to put 10 Bitcoin on a Ledger or Trezor or any other hardware device because that's fundamentally different numbers.

Umm or let's say 10 million.

So it's a million bucks.

Point being is like what 10 Bitcoin was for years is fundamentally different.

And so when you think about risk, it's just changed and that still is not like priced in or understood by the market.

Is somebody buying 10 to 100 BTC five years ago is going to be completely need different products and services because those numbers are drastically higher?

So, yeah, I mean, I may go way out way out there on this topic, but I just think that, you know, gold, you know, macro news cycles is a signal of like people searching for protection.

And to me, that means that people are afraid.

And so where this gets a little wacko is, you know, I, I think like our ancestors, you know, living in caves, wandered outside of their caves, saw Saber toothed tiger and ran back to the physical protection of their of their caves.

You know, gold, the physicality of that I think for forever has been what has brought people comfort and safety and protection.

But the context that people seeking protection now is really, really different be because of, you know, how we are accepting and embracing things that are intangible.

You know, think about the the first time you used your phone as a plane ticket instead of a physical ticket.

You know, there's lots of people that were afraid of that.

And then that fear eventually when it went away because of the function utility and portability of that.

The first time you got into an Uber and some stranger drove you somewhere else.

I mean, I personally still have these moments where I'm like, are you going to take me somewhere to kill me?

But you know, the, you know, having that go mainstream and become a norm.

I mean, even Netflix like watching you streaming shows and wait, I can watch a a whole series.

There's there is some latent fear, I think associated with that.

The point I'm trying to make is that I think that, you know, utility and and technology eventually, you know, trump's that fear.

And when we all get to that place where we don't need such physical security blankets like a bar of gold, then I think the clunkiness of that, Michael, to your point becomes like something that we see in a new light.

And it makes it then easier to see scarcity, portability, transparency easier and getting on board with that and opening up to that.

And so I wasn't planning on bringing up Saber toothed tigers on the pod today.

But I mean that that's what I think that the human experience is all about is being afraid and being brave and, you know, conquering fear until something else comes along.

So.

Yeah.

I mean, I think tying that and taking a step back like to maybe Jackson, if you pull up the second link around China, I think there's a reality from a structural perspective, whether it's the amount of liquidity in Bitcoin and then also some of Blake's points of just unfamiliarity in the physicality.

There's a Gold Telegraph tweet around China's quietly aiming to wreck re centralized pricing power in the East, shifting the gravity of gold flows away from Western vaults into a system of full controls.

The reality is the Shanghai markets have just gone insane when it comes to the amount of gold being delivered, but then also what they're structurally trying to set up when it comes to repricing oil pairs and just in general leveraging gold is the underlying denominator in a world that is moving around some other stable, some other digital form of money that's tied back to gold.

Now obviously in a long time resident it doesn't make sense, but that's what we're seeing play out here is the recognition that the dollar system is ultimately failing, it will end and there's a glow.

It feels like a global competition to figure out how those flows and who will control them.

I think that's the other side of where Tether and US stable coins come in is it's, it's less even about absorbing the debt.

It's more about the proliferation of dollar and and US dominance from a actual physical exertion perspective, because it's almost more powerful than having an army in any country if you can basically shut off the country from being able to coordinate economic activity.

So either way, independent how this plays out, there's everyone kind of placing their chips on the table of recognizing that the world's changing very fast.

Yeah, I'm, I'm curious to like pose a question to the group, you know, do do you guys see Bitcoin and gold being BFFS or do you think that Bitcoin should be synonymous with, with gold in some way?

Where do where do you land?

It's a great question because I think historically speaking, the gold bug camp and the Bitcoin camp have almost acted adversarially for some reason in the sense that, you know, there and there has been some overlap, like the Larry Lapards of the world who, who came from gold and, and appreciate Bitcoin.

But you know, by and large, it's, it's been this notion of like, oh, Bitcoin's going to demonetize gold.

So gold's going to go to 0, Bitcoin's going to go to the moon.

And that's just how things are going to play out.

And frankly, like I, I used to think that I, I, you know, a year, two years ago, I, I was more into, in, in that sort of camp of thinking.

And, you know, partially as a result of the price appreciation of gold, but also, you know, just learning more about gold and the history of gold.

I've come around to the idea that they are on the same team, they are BFFS.

It's the same thesis.

You know, gold is just analog Bitcoin.

I, I like that better than actually saying Bitcoin is digital gold like because, you know, again, the monetary property is improving on what gold meant to be, you know, gold is really just analog Bitcoin.

It was, it was the best humans could could find before we actually engineered it ourselves in terms of the the perfect form of hard money.

And so I think, you know, we're in the early stages, but I think that dynamic is shifting where people are, are waking up to the fact that it's really the same trade.

And, and I think, you know, 1 signpost of this was very recently with Harvard's endowment making a simultaneous allocation to both gold and Bitcoin.

They in their minds, it was logically that is the same sleeve.

It's sort of the sound money allocation or the sound money exposure in that portfolio.

And you know, I think again, it's early days, but I think people are waking up to it.

It fundamentally is the same trade.

And you know, if you, if you have a thesis around the dollar system, if you have a thesis around debasement, you probably want some exposure to both of these assets and can sort of flex that percentage based on risk, risk tolerance, the, you know, demographic age, etcetera.

But it's the same story.

It's, it's, it's fundamentally the same thesis.

But Michael, I'm sure you have thoughts.

I was going to just say it's wild that most investors owned no Bitcoin and no gold as well.

Yeah, I mean, that's just like if I were to walk down the street too, there's a RIA like at the corner of my street.

I, I would be shocked if they had more than like a 1% allocation to gold and probably close to 0% allocation of Bitcoin across client portfolios.

And then I think it ties into what all of you guys have said, but it's worth reiterating is that the gold bid right now is not retail investors, it's not the professional investment community, it is sovereign nations.

And so Michael, I know you had some news on China in particular, but Brian, you also dug up an interesting chart that shows spot accumulation of gold versus ETFs, right?

And so this is a chart from earlier in September.

The blue line here that's going parabolic is the spot price.

But you can still see that the ETF, the inflows have been down.

Quite frankly, if you look from 2022 to start of this year, they've just been down and they're just slowly, slowly trickling back up.

And then more recently, you can see here that if you dig into the the details a little bit more, bullying backed ETF surged close to 1%, the most in percentage terms since 2022.

And so this is still like very early stages for a repricing of gold.

But the overarching theme here is that most people own 0 Bitcoin and 0 gold.

They're fundamentally on, they're fundamentally unprepared for a more rapid period of debasement and the realities that they actually have to face as relates to the debt and, you know, monetary inflation.

Yeah, to tie both of these themes, what you're sharing here on the the sovereign bid and then what Brian was sharing is I think close to two years ago, I started to go down this path because I ultimately and this is very naive of us on the Bitcoin side not to recognize the just the notion of anybody that's of age, call it over 50 that has any wealth, either A, can't stomach the volatility or B doesn't want to catch a falling knife.

So the notion and that's how sovereigns, you know, would think as well, like this whole inevitability of Bitcoin is not, is not certain.

And even if it's certain in our minds, think about how much time it took to get there.

Yeah, and we talked this with Brahms pod, like think about how much noise exists between like the running of nodes in core versus not versus quantum.

Like that exists in the Bitcoin community that's looked at this for 10 years.

What are somebody that's never looked at this space or sovereign supposed to think when it's like, oh, so I'm going to park all my like citizens assets in this thing and it goes belly up.

It makes zero sense.

So tying back to two years ago, it's like, well, wait, if my grandmother can't stomach the volatility, I'd much rather have her in gold.

It's an easier path progression that's going to be logical and then people can play the trade if they want to go more into gold or Bitcoin.

And it goes back to like, you know, a new age 6040 is, you know, if you want to look at it from a, you know, textile equity, BTC and then that your your store value bonds in gold.

It's just logic.

It makes logical sense that those will be paired, they'll take longer.

And also there's just so much built in education to even get to a place where you're going to even talk about it in those ranges in size because most people are still.

I guess the last part was isolating gold from digital assets because that is historically, I know I was thinking about this all from our business perspective of like how do we actually go into a larger total addressable market?

Because I've just seen this for 15 years.

This bubble that we live in is still relatively small.

Every founder, every investor, every large allocator, we pretty much are a phone call or 1° away.

And there's all this other capital out there, but they look at Bitcoin specifically, think about family offices, they look at Bitcoin and digital assets and it's all speculative.

It's all sizing at minimal, you know, sub 5% allocations.

Well, it's like, how do we get this related to gold?

Because once it starts going and gets closer to gold and saw this kind of like gold move as a natural progression.

As you know, people start having to go back to what are hard assets and real assets.

You start to go back to what Brian was saying is analog gold versus digital assets in crypto.

And now you start to align better.

Now we then that goes real back to branding and marketing, because that's what naturally needs to happen is there just needs to be a natural bifurcation of like gold is a Bitcoin is much similar to gold and crypto and digital assets is at best, you know, it depends on what room we're talking about is is venture style bets, but generally Ponzi's.

Yeah, it's a hyper critical point because the, the taxonomy for basically, you know, really the past 10 years of Bitcoin once, you know, Etherium came to be, the taxonomy has been wrong.

The that, you know, the people from the outside coming in are lumping Bitcoin in with the rest of these crypto assets and it's just the wrong taxonomy from an investment thesis perspective.

Bitcoin is hard money.

It's sound money.

All these other things are, to your point, charitably venture tech bets that again, back to my earlier point, maybe have some marginal benefits in terms of transaction speed or cost relative to, to, you know, incumbent Fiat rails.

But that's very different than money.

The the Tam alone.

Like if you just think about the Tam's of these things, the Tam of money is, you know, at least 4 to 500 trillion.

The Tam of, you know, a cheaper, faster database is, I don't know, maybe a few trillion.

So they're just fundamentally different bets.

And even from a, you know, not even just from a return perspective or a Tam perspective, but from a risk perspective, they're fundamentally different.

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it's extremely transparent.

The supply curve is known.

So it's, it's the most trustworthy and transparent monetary policy we've ever had for an asset.

So that's why that's why people are buying it.

They're buying it because they know what the supply is.

It's 21 million with all of these other coins, all these other tokens, all these other block chains.

It's just a fundamentally different thesis.

It's not why people are buying them.

They're buying them for tech innovation.

And they, whether they know it or not, the supply can be changed, the rules can be changed because they're inherently centralized.

And so the correct classification is, is with gold, that is, that is the bucket.

It's the sound money bucket, gold and Bitcoin.

And you know, if you want to play around with this other stuff, it's you just have to think about it in a different light.

Yeah, like, don't quote me on this something I'm saying that would be forever captured in this podcast.

But a scrape I've wanted to do for a really long time is to see, you know, our our beloved Michael Saylor.

And, you know, in the early days of of his campaigning, educating, whatever you want to call it of what Bitcoin is, gold was always a part of his talking points.

And you know, he was including gold in in in those speeches because, you know, he was using, you know, association to illustrate scope and scale like, no, no, take Bitcoin seriously.

And you know, in contrast or comparing to gold, here's how big it could get, etcetera.

And it seems like lately, maybe the last year or a little more, he's doing that less now that could be a function of just everyone getting wiser to or or more sophisticated on the topic.

But I think that that's probably a, a more intentional choice if I had to like read his mind that, you know, that was sort of pitting Bitcoin against gold.

And, you know, now seeing them as BFF.

So seeing them as synonymous actually helps in like another way.

And so it's interesting to see how that that journey has evolved.

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Any any topics we didn't get to cover yet that you guys want to get into?

Yeah, let's, let's definitely do a quick hit for the stables and then maybe the crypto millionaire account.

I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, stable coins is collateral.

No, the stables on the top escape the noise.

Oh, I see those those types of stables.

Yeah, the the good stables.

OK.

My apologies.

So what, we didn't even get the chance to catch up, but we were, you know, Jackson wasn't able.

Well, Jackson was was selling that.

So Jackson was in New York, he was on the road as well.

But while he was there, we were in Nashville for a few events and we had the announcement of the Texas, the first accelerator in Texas, the stables.

What's exciting about this, and I was talking with the Texas Blockchain Council yesterday about is the core idea here is a place we talked about earlier on this pot around how much noise exists in the market.

There's really a lack of fundamentals that exist when it comes to entrepreneurs chasing the right projects, but also really when you think about city centers and how much noise exists from, you know, whether it's coffee meetings to just the different things that have been really romanticized about entrepreneurship.

And so we felt this first hand, me specifically living, I moved about 50 minutes outside of Austin and have been focused on building these businesses and realized, you know, the amount of value that has been created from just getting isolated and then creating intentionality when you want to step away from the the quote, quote fundamentals of building a business.

And so it'll be a touchdown space for on ramp early riders and portfolio companies, but then we'll be having this accelerator where we're taking submissions for entrepreneurs that are looking to build in the space, leave their job.

If anybody's listening, there's a lot of folks we've naturally talked to that are ready to leave their quote, UN quote Fiat business, whether they're in tech, finance or across the board, but have been looking for the right group to either get involved.

Blake is a we talked about this is a great example of somebody that's been falling into space, but naturally was around a lot of individuals that either thought he was crazy or also just needed support and thinking about whether it's legal.

How do you think about the right commercialization?

What do people really want to pay for it a day versus, you know, 10 years from now?

So super excited about this.

Wanted to call it out because I think it's relevant in a world that we're talking about.

There's a lot of noise that exists.

You can't just, you can't just talk about these.

You have to either provide solutions or invest or put your capital or human time in or you really shouldn't talk about them because it's not really providing any kind of solution to where the market currently isn't going.

Yeah, the stables is a is a really exciting development that, you know, whenever I was brought in to what that is and where that's going.

You know, once the word gets out, I just, I, I think so many people are going to be beating the door down because it, it, it takes sort of that classic accelerator incubator model and puts it in this really unorthodox context, you know, in a quiet place, in a place that prioritizes Wellness, focus, etcetera.

You know that that's a really interesting and compelling proposition that not only I think a lot of people are going to be attracted to, but a lot of the right people are going to be attracted to that.

And so that's exciting for two reasons because of the thing what it is, but then to see what springs from that environment and and how and if that those businesses are different in some way.

And so, yeah, a lot, a lot to keep keep a lot for people to keep their eye on there because.

Yeah.

Where should people reach out if they want to learn more about the stables?

Yeah, they can go to earlywriters.com/stables or just shoot any of us an e-mail.

We had a really good podcast breaking down a lot of the concepts and, and different businesses we're looking at.

I mean, frankly, I know Jackson, you and I have had, you know, thousands of conversations at this point the past couple years on the the business development and sell side.

There's no shortage of really good ideas and great operators kind of stuck in the legacy system.

And so there's been no already no shortage of applications.

The idea is the top five will get to pitch in front of our LP's, our advisors, founders, so they can still get funded.

But the number one, you know, the chosen company will get 2 to 5 BTC and then come out for four weeks to build alongside.

A lot of the team will use it as an off site in a, you know, leap jumping off point.

Good example of what Blake was talking about is Legal.

Gavin Fury's an advisor, world class legal expert in the digital asset space.

And generally when you try to build a business in the space, legal will crush you like it's anywhere between 50 to $250,000 because there's still such a lack of education.

And so we've just built a lot of that framework to help and kind of like offset those costs from a company's investment really quick.

Maybe the other thing, because I know we're we're short on time, is I just wanted to call out the Henley and partners.

I've seen them do other stuff before.

They had pulled up the number of crypto millionaires.

So it says crypto millionaire account surges 40% to nearly 250,000 amid historic boom.

But then if you click into that link, Jackson, there's actually a table that shows the sent to millionaires, the growth.

And I just thought that was really fascinating to see the growth of the asset class and individuals.

But then ultimately it ties back into just the risks that is associated when you have that amount of capital.

It came out also that crypto.com had an unreported attack.

We're leaked users, personal data was out there.

And and so I get no shortage of like every digital asset firm under the sun, whether it's Coinbase, Ledger, things I've never heard of or emailing, texting as the market starts to wake up and realize this amount of millionaires are sitting with this digital bear asset in their house or one click away from being taken away.

It's just something to be aware of because the market is already very sophisticated in the amount of attacks and it's only increasing.

I don't know, like Wolf, as we wrap if you want to share any of your history with that or that's the topic for another day, but it's just definitely important.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's definitely something that we could.

Get into but yeah, I, I was, you know, one of those people that was in the space and thought I was doing all the right things and playing by the rules.

And, and I was the victim of, of a hack.

And, and I would say, I say I was even going above and beyond on the protection side, on the security side, and I still was the victim of an attack.

And so, you know, lesson learned.

And I'm glad I learned that lesson in 2022-2023, not in 20-30, you know, But yeah, we can.

We can definitely get into that because there's a lot to unpack, including recent conversations with the FBI, which have been surprising.

So, yeah, they caught the guy.

He just got sentenced last week.

So it's it's amazing.

Well, that's he got eight years.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, I know we got a rap here that he.

Was 15 years old, by the way, when he stole it.

So that's, that's incredible.

Yeah.

That is.

That's impressive.

Yeah.

Well, I think that wraps it for this week on a very sad note.

I'm, I'm very sorry, Blake, that we had to end on that note, but we're excited.

Don't be.

Sad, you know, team.

And yeah, excited for what we will do accomplish the rest of this year and into next.

And again, for anyone who's interested in the stables, reach out to early riders, it's a great opportunity.

Thanks guys, have a good one's.

Boys later, bye.

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