It all comes down to computers communicating.

The information superhighway can be a confusing mix of on ramps and off ramps.

Bitcoin is worthless artificial gold.

Is it still rat poison?

Probably rat poison squared.

We need to get into the world of OK, this is actually foundational technology.

What the Internet of Money does is it creates a single network which can do a microtransaction to a giga transaction.

The Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the roller gun.

The one thing that's missing that will soon be developed is a reliable E cash.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning into another episode of Final Settlement.

We had a awesome podcast this week touching on all things that happened in Nashville last week.

The team got together, hosted a few events, talked about the recent updated news on IPO filings as well as some of the new Bitcoin treasury companies that are coming to market, and then also touched on the exciting news from the stables, a early riders announcement that happened last week.

Very excited to announce a new headquarters as well as an accelerator to fund Bitcoin start-ups in Texas.

We talked a little bit on the pod, but I encourage you to all to look at it and reach out if you're interested in getting involved.

We have a lot of exciting announcements on the VC side of early riders, but as well as looking for firms to get involved and we can, you know, get involved with from a funding perspective and also collaboration onto the show and hope you enjoy it.

Thanks guys.

All righty boys.

Welcome back to another episode of Final Settlement.

Today is Monday, September 22nd, 10:14 AM Eastern Time.

Liam, Michael, how we doing?

We're back from Nashville.

We're back in the saddle.

It was nice to see you guys in person last week.

It was a lot of fun.

It was a long week.

I think everyone got in Tuesday and I think the last time I saw somebody was Saturday morning, Liam and we're back quick, quick turn around a lot, a lot happening curious, you know, there's a lot of conversations that you guys had curious which are big takeaways were.

Yeah, so for for anyone who doesn't know in the audience, we were we were in Nashville last week for Bitcoin Park was putting on a few different events last week.

The Wednesday, Thursday was the custody and treasury summit at Bitcoin Park.

And then Friday, Saturday was the imagine if conference, which was more of a sort of Bitcoin, AI, energy freedom, tech oriented conference sort of on the adjacencies of Bitcoin as well.

Whereas Wednesday and Thursday was much more strictly focused on on Bitcoin and and really custody strategies.

And so, you know, one of my key takeaways was that, well, the institution custody is very much in the zeitgeist across several different panels on those first two days.

You know, there's lots of discussion around different types of solutions and really a recognition that, you know, something that we've been saying for a long time is that, you know, the the pre-existing solutions, what we've historically had for the 1st 16 years of Bitcoin's history, either self custody or single third party custody doesn't scale all that well.

And as a lot of institutional allocators and corporates come into the space looking for Bitcoin exposure, there needs to be better solutions.

And so time and again, the the concepts around multi institution custody and the distribution of counterparty risk came up across multiple panels.

And so that was very encouraging to me just in the sense that it's, it's more in the zeitgeist of the ability to have fault tolerance in a setup is super critical for really anyone with a material allocation, whether an individual or an institution.

But you know that that line of thinking really coming to the fore was, was very encouraging.

So that was one of my big takeaways.

Yeah, I'd like to that.

And there was obviously a big diversity and thought at the whole conference some people were still saying that if my dentist is interested in getting allocation to Bitcoin, perhaps start them with a getting a metal plate to stamp seeds into it and bury it somewhere in their backyard or for their business.

But a lot of people did acknowledge that many net new entrants into the space are moving towards ETF type products just because they don't necessarily want to start off by understanding exactly how custody works in the Best Buy.

It looks like a professional solution, but the take away was there needs to be something that's has better trade-offs both on both sides and can meet both businesses and customers in the middle where they are.

And you know, it is increasingly in the zeitgeist that more businesses will be adopting MIC.

So it was interesting to see that while while it's not necessarily common, common consensus yet, there are other companies that are starting to dip their toes into everything that we're doing here and MIC in particular.

Yeah, I I would take the other side of it.

I mean, I wouldn't listen.

I wasn't at the Treasury deal.

I couldn't make it.

But we're so early, like it's right.

But I don't think anybody's really the the joke that I made.

And I had a lot of conversations about multi institution custody and it sounds you're kind of crazy.

But when you really go down and we have investors and and clients and people that probably listen that have gone down, when you like really look at multi institution custody, it's very similar to Bitcoin.

Like it looks interesting at first, but then there's multiple layers.

And as our the, the best example or way to see like that statement has substance is ultimately the conversation that we'll get, you know, push back and actually appreciate it.

Because I don't think people deeply have thought about the difference between gold isn't really the finite supply or the amount of, you know, BTC, gold and Bitcoin, the amount of BTC.

It's the fact that you can insert governance at the asset layer.

Because when you really extrapolate where gold failed, that was the problem and had a good conversation and I probably feel OK referencing it because he said he said it on stage.

But it's something we use in a lot of sales conversations referencing how the Internet, one point O and two point O look very similar.

Back in the 90s when you had like a magazine that would use like time.com as an example and you put it on the Internet and look very similar.

It's nothing dynamic.

And so I think Cam was sharing this with Ryan Gentry, who who basically who was sharing with me that he liked the analogy and used it on stage at one of the panels.

Maybe it was imagine F, but the point being is that we are so early that A, we haven't figured out custody yet and that's definitely not in the zeitgeist or discussed even close at any of these things.

But B, that that is effectively I was thinking about this, the the only path to 1,000,000 or $10 million BTC is through multi institution custody.

Because when you look back at the 1st 15 years, any reflexive moves are up into the right ultimately end up dissipating or falling apart because of counterparty risk.

And then if you take it even further, it's why everyone's excited about ETFs and BT the Bitcoin treasury stuff is because nobody will admit this, but nobody wants to hold their own private keys.

And, and the best example of it is guns.

I was thinking about this over the weekend because I just, a lot of times just like have these conversations and hear feedback.

And it's like guns, like guns are, are so important to American culture, to the Constitution, to me, to making sure we are free.

It's the exact same analogy for self custody.

It's important, but it doesn't mean everyone a has to do it, should do it or is equipped to do it.

And you need a certain amount of like of a cohort to make sure that it's the the the network in the same way as the constitution is fulfilled properly.

But if everyone in the planet in the is in the analogy where this breaks or not breaks down but you can think about it is the police are to security and safety as like multi institution and trusted banks are to like security and safety in the financial world.

Like imagine if there was no police and everyone held their own guns.

Like nobody wants to live in that world in the same way that when you really extrapolate because nobody has solutions to, OK, well, it's the ETFs or treasury companies or self custody.

Like none of them if you project them out in the future mean that Bitcoin is successful, but nobody has a solution from here until there.

So anyway, yeah, like sure, they might think it's interesting or whatever, but that's like saying Bitcoins interesting because you can exchange value without an intermediary, right?

Like when you look at, you know, every different function on the planet Earth that it will touch, the bounds are unconscionable for us to like understand fully.

Yeah, I mean, all that is fair.

I, I think, you know, I guess my, my optimistic silver lining take was more like this is coming off of a base of no one talking about multi institution, right.

So like, you know, you have to, you have to take the baby steps in terms of like people beginning to understand what it is.

But you're right, like the, you know, the vast majority of people at the conference and people in Bitcoin generally are still not thinking about it seriously.

They may think it's a niche solution, but to your point, if we actually want this thing to scale 10 to 100 X from here, this is what's going to be required because these larger pools of capital and just, you know, individuals don't necessarily want to deal with private keys.

You're exactly right.

And from an institutional perspective, you need fault tolerance, you need redundancy.

And MIC is really the only thing that can achieve that at scale.

So agree with all that.

Maybe another thing to reference just from last week was our announcement around the stables.

I'll pull up a link from it.

But Michael, do you have you want to reiterate anything we we said last week around the announcement and and how people can get involved?

Yeah, if you want to pull it up, I think this was, you know, biased, but I'd say that the most bullish thing that was announced last week and really so the the this is Bitcoin magazine picking it up early riders Texas based accelerator to fund Bitcoin startups with up to five BTC.

So we we announced the stables.

The core idea is it's going to be a base camp for early riders on ramps HQ as well as portfolio companies and really a place for our teams and networks to touchdown and Texas get away from the noise to meet for off sites.

But then also we're going to have an annual funding program for Bitcoin or Bitcoin adjacent companies that we'll invest in.

We can go deeper there.

There's going to be, you know, equipped with a lot of things you would naturally want if you're going to get away.

But the thing that I think I'm most excited about is the world is getting noisier and more chaotic.

And you see this across the board with the amount of crypto, VC investments, Bitcoin, treasury company investments, lack of real infrastructure being worked on.

When we talk about multi institution, I'm increasingly believing like we get up and just fun dedicated solely to multi institution.

And maybe we should because there's just so much opportunity from a global perspective.

You know, custody is just the first layer to all of this.

Point being is I'm really excited for what we're doing to keep having these discussions and the right people to pick up what we're putting down.

We have some very exciting investment announcements in the coming weeks on real base level infrastructure that is fundamentally different than what you see that historically has happened in the space with rewards and like, you know, payments that aren't necessarily happening yet at scale.

And and so yeah, I think the we there's a shout out that's probably overdue to our advisor Cam Duty from Brickyard, because there was a lot of things that were embedded into what, you know, the stables is and one of them was looking at, you know, Cam Duty and the success they had at Brickyard.

Anyone that's not familiar, they run a Chattanooga based venture capitalist firm that effectively the main heuristic.

There's a number, but the main 1 is that you have to, they think the main one that somebody would recognize you have to move out to Chattanooga for 12 months or until you get 2 million an AR.

It might be a little longer.

But the the point mean is that if you're going to be a serious builder, you have to be interested in really doing the work, getting away from the coffees and the drinks and you know, the accolades of being a founder title and actually getting to the studs.

And this is just so important if you're going to build on a Bitcoin denominated, which our fund is, because you have to be able to get in at the very base level of the foundation of the company and be able to really insert a lot of the things that we've learned from on ramp and the other companies we've invested in or incubating.

Because unless that foundations, right, everything is kind of a derivative of it.

And if it's positive, then it'll go into the positive direction.

If it's negative, then it'll ultimately show its face at a certain point.

So we're really excited about it.

But yeah, I don't know if you guys any have any other thoughts to share.

No, it's a good, good overview and we've already received a lot of interest in applications.

So anyone who's listening to this and wants to learn more or see if they can get involved, please go to earlywriters.com/stables and you can apply or or just learn more from an investment perspective.

So it'd be an amount if you had anything else there or we can move on.

No, I think you guys summed it up well.

Super excited about this initiative.

All righty, let's move to some some news, some links.

This one came across this morning, little Bitcoin treasury news.

As we like to cover on the show, Strive is going to buy similar.

Yeah, maybe you, you, you teed this up a little bit and I'm sure Michael has some thoughts, but go ahead.

Yeah, I'm going to preface this by this is not like any financial advice, but especially when we talk about securities, but this deal seemed a little bit odd to me.

Similar was trading at a discount to its Bitcoin holdings and Strive went out and acquired them for a 210% premium to its existing stock price at the time that the relative to the last closing.

It is a little.

It just seems like a a steep price for buying this net new company.

It sounds like they're going to either sell off or redistribute their medical business, which is loss making at the moment was very surprising to see.

But it's also something that I think we'll continue to see of companies that are trading at discounts being acquired by other Bitcoin treasury companies.

I am surprised that it's they actually bought it at a premium, though I'm not necessarily sure how much synergies are going to be able to realize.

I mean, the strategy does have a little bit of a benefit of being the larger ones that I do think trade at a little bit of a premium to their underlying Bitcoin holdings.

And it is going to be a winner take most in this type of business.

But the the deal overall just made no sense to me.

I don't know why they bought it at 2X what the underlying Bitcoin holdings are when they can go out and use the capital to just buy Bitcoin itself.

Did you guys have any thoughts?

Michael.

I mean, I do, but let's let Brian go.

Let's make sure.

Well, I, I, to me, it was similar to Liam.

Like it's just surprising.

Like, I think we expected to see this, but more in the realm of, you know, acquiring other Bitcoin treasury companies at a steep discount.

So, you know, getting for getting Bitcoin at, you know, pennies on the dollar per SE, not paying 210% of what it's currently trading at.

So, you know, I, I haven't run the exact M NAV numbers, but as Liam said, like Semmler was sort of, you know, first of all, they were kind of early in terms of being, you know, adopting a Bitcoin strategy prior to a lot of the mergers and specs we've seen over the past like 6 to 12 months.

But their stock never really reflected the same hype or pop that a lot of these other ones have gotten from an Ms.

perspective.

And it's sort of traded at around 1X or even below for the past several months.

And so, you know, to me, it's just, it's just a little odd that, you know, they're going to buy it at basically at 2X and NAV.

And I guess, you know, part of the line of thinking is that you monetize the Med tech business.

But to Liam's point, like that's been lost making.

And so like, I don't know even how much value you can actually get for that.

So I think we got it.

We got to see a little bit more follow through on what the plan is here.

You know, I, I've seen the announcement, but there hasn't been a lot of articulation of, of the actual plan for it.

So not really sure what what to make of this just yet.

Yeah, I I'm just, I'm just going to be, I guess fine with, with going down with like either the egg on my face, you're just being right or wrong.

This makes no sense.

Like none of the treasury companies make sense.

They haven't made sense from the beginning.

They ultimately are a proxy for how early we are and how uneducated the market is and how uncomfortable they are with spot Bitcoin that they don't know what bucket to fill, fill it in.

And so again, without rehashing, because everyone's probably heard it, we can go if anybody ever wants to chat about it personally or come on the show and talk about it like we know the top ten list of reasons why it doesn't make sense in particular in this one, because they're supposed to be an accretive dilution, which is kind of like, you know, stablecoin or you know, all these other things.

They're just cuz they're they're play on words.

There's no accretive dilution.

Nobody's getting the Bitcoin out of there.

They're just getting diluted that they purchased, I guess the media company True North and they purchased this at 2X BTC.

Like that's the opposite of a creative.

I think Brian's point, you know, I think it's, it's a big one, is that Sembler hadn't been trading at a positive.

I hadn't reflected the Bitcoin holdings and I think that's reflective of how most of these companies will be.

And this is kind of the longer term play of where these things end up a little dangerous or at least a backdoor into where sailors able to acquire a lot of these in the future.

And I think if a lot of people knew that, they wouldn't necessarily be so long this trade.

I think what I'm most fascinated about of all of this is just how everyone is indirectly involved.

We saw no shortage of announcements this weekend, you know, Meta Planet Additions and other Bitcoin treasury companies.

And it's like pretty much 90 to 95% of this whole industry that has any voice has either a friend.

Oh yeah, B Huddle as well.

We talked about the nonsense of that one.

But like has either a friend directly in it or is in there in it.

So they don't feel comfortable and explaining just how ridiculous all of this is.

B Huddle is another one that's very ridiculous because it's it's really simple and straightforward like all of these companies.

And you already see the second version of this is outside of a creative dilution, they're going to make the claim, which B Huddle does that they're going to generate incremental yield to pass back to their shareholders.

And it's absolute.

Like nonsense because nobody has at any scale has ever delivered Bitcoin yield.

There's not a fundamental big enough Bitcoin market to lend out BTC.

And unless it's not to say if there is a like Figma style company that has is in a positive cash flow fundamental strong business, adopting BTC like that has a is a completely different game than everything we're talking about here.

And you're seeing this with the it's a playbook from the the all coin treasury strategy stuff with Solana and staking and they're referencing all these.

They don't have a better story because they can at least just like it's more of a casino, you can make the case in all coins and how they can play around trade generate yield.

What is it the validators for proof of stake versus?

We saw this play out in 2022.

Everyone blew up and that was trying to basically was naked not holding the BTC when they were lending it out.

But for some reason, now that we have publicly traded companies doing it, we're going to be able to like just increase Bitcoin per share and everything's going to be fine.

It makes zero sense and.

I'm.

Going to continue saying it until like, I mean they're proven wrong or everyone wakes up and realizes they just need hold spot Bitcoin.

Yeah.

I think you made one distinction there that is really important, which is there's a big difference between businesses that hold Bitcoin that are cash flow positive and can continue to pull their Bitcoin in perpetuity and don't necessarily need to rely on the capital markets and their Bitcoin to be trading at a premium to their underlying holdings in order to continue just the the music going and getting more Bitcoin on their balance sheet, etcetera.

Versus just like, honestly, if I was a publicly traded company and I was the CEO of 1 and profitable, I would definitely buy Bitcoin.

I wouldn't just completely ignore my operating company, but I would also opportunistically use the financing of the company in order to pick up some additional Bitcoin.

And I think that's a little different than what's going on with, you know, building a community for publicly traded companies with a loss, making underlying business and thinking that the, you know, going on and, and showing your stock all the time and thinking that it needs to actually trade at a premium because of, you know, the speculative attack that we all know.

But it there's a big difference between people who can do it themselves or go to even if they want the exposure to some of the larger ones, versus needing to have thousand of these, which won't necessarily all trade at a premium over a long time.

Yeah, it's all said to me.

It comes back to sort of just the order of operations here, right?

Like kind of as, as Michael you alluded to, you know, if you have a core operating business that can generate cash flow and you can sweep into BCBTC, like that is the correct order of operations.

The incorrect order of operations is to make a bunch of announcements and basically promises.

And that's why it does look and feel a lot like the altcoin stuff because it's, you know, akin to the vaporware promises of of crypto and all coins where it's you know, we're going to have all of these yield generation strategies that will make our stock traded at a premium going forward.

And you're basically being sold a story and that's and that's why you see the community driven sort of narrative and involvement around these things because that's effectively what you need to do.

You need to drive sentiment and promise people things into the future.

And you know, I think we we've seen a glimpse of of sort of unfulfilled promises to some extent as this article that we have up on the screen now, it says one in four public Bitcoin treasury firms are not trading below their BTC holdings value.

I think it's actually probably more than that at this point, but we're starting to see these these premiums erode and even flip to discounts as you know, investors sort of wait around for execution on again, these promises and these plans to have all these, you know, Bitcoin yield generation strategies.

And so that that's kind of yeah, go ahead.

The BTC, the this treasury stuff is easily the most like product of Fiat than anything that probably exists because like the two-dimensional version be like, of course it's a product of Fiat because we're speculative.

Attacking the three-dimensional version is like, no, it is the most like truly Fiat from the sense of like a Bitcoin or just talking about the status of the world that Bitcoin people decided to like ultimately rug the shareholders to try to generate more Bitcoin for themselves.

Because it goes back to the Warren Buffett stuff we talked about, like if you don't fundamentally understand the investment, by definition, you shouldn't take it and you definitely shouldn't park material amounts of capital there.

And so Bitcoin's hard enough to understand and to understand the fundamentals and why it can enforce incredibly a 21 million hard cap supply, like that's where people are at or you can't get there.

But to go past that and you'd have to understand that.

But you know, if you're going to go into these things and then park material capital, it just makes zero sense.

And we've seen the kind of narrative start to shift.

And again, this goes back to just like mimetic trading and momentum training that we've seen in the private markets and specifically in the public markets.

We see we talked about this, everyone's fine with calling out Robin Hood and blood and saying AI is going to people in the future.

AI was just going to be a traitor.

Like this is a like symptom of how crazy the world is that the next narrative, you can already see it coming is, well, we're a Bitcoin treasury company or now we're not a Bitcoin treasury company without calling out names.

That was this past like week, I think, saying, well, we're a Bitcoin financial service company and we're going to generate all this like incremental yield across all these incremental things.

It's like, look, the reality is there's two ways to make money today in Bitcoin if you're providing value.

And the way you provide value is generally around some version of buying and holding the asset and maybe some insurance and inheritance products around it because it's in its monetization phase.

And so there's not a lot to do with it.

And if you're whipping it around, it's inherently speculative.

And I don't doubt there's people that can make Bitcoin denominated gains in a speculative fashion, but it's at such a small scale, you have to get into that fund and you have to be very like careful with your sizing and also who the investors are that are managing it.

But it's nowhere near the scale to justify, you know, the growth of these companies.

And so anyway, it's important to call out because, you know, frankly, it's going to it's it's going to make our businesses, it's going to make the people that show up because the individuals that listen and don't like any of this, naturally they don't listen and they won't reach out from, you know, particularly getting involved in early riders from either side investing or founding a business.

But the reality is like, unless multiple people have other qualified custodians that are coming on board and launch multi institution, a lot of these firms are going to have to come to us and they don't know it.

And I've explained it to them because at the end of the day, if you take the tack that a lot of the investors aren't necessarily educated and they're buying into these assets will when the market naturally has any volatility or delevers because somebody blows up, somebody loses the private keys, that will happen.

There's going to be just a complete reflexive loot downwards into a lot of these entities because there's no transparency into like, oh wait, are they solvent?

Because nobody's even underwriting the risk of these shares being tied to is the Bitcoin actually in the custodial setup.

And so when that happens, and I saw this happen in 21 and 22 on the lending side, everyone just flees to fault tolerant, transparent solutions.

And that's been our pitch to the Bitcoin treasury companies.

And will increasingly these like, sure, if you're going to run it and you're going to try to figure out that strategy, at least make sure the like underlying assumption, which is the most important that those Bitcoin are still there and safe, which is not something that's at the the most important at the forefront of a lot of these firms, which it really should be before you go, you know, down this rabbit hole, try to accretive dilute your shareholders.

Yeah.

It also kind of comes back to like the natural like false sense of security.

And and, you know, we'd like to talk about that in in reference to self custody, but it's a similar dynamic in terms of, you know, these proxy exposures and not being entirely sure that the underlying is there, particularly going forward.

And, you know, if something were to happen, that sort of natural capital flight out of these proxy exposures would would make a lot of sense.

I think, you know, it's something that continues to get talked about, which I would put in that same light of like false sense of security is all the proof of reserve stuff.

Because that feels like, you know, the, the best that these people can do who are, you know, advocating for these proxy exposures is say, well, you know, maybe there's some proof of reserves that these, these companies can do to, to prove that they have the Bitcoin.

And, and as we've discussed multiple times in the show, like that is a fallacy in the sense that you could have proof of reserves today, something happens overnight and the bitcoins no longer there.

Your proof of reserves from yesterday actually is completely irrelevant.

It doesn't mean anything.

So what you actually need is segregated wallets and the ability to transparently observe those on chain with multiple, you know, authentication legs across multiple institutions.

Like that's how you actually have a true quote UN quote proof of reserves.

It it proves itself.

The underlying custody structure proves that the assets are there.

And so I think we're just in this period of, you know, ignorance is bliss sort of to some extent.

And you know, that again, that false sense of security around like, yeah, it'll be fine.

Hopefully they'll prove, you know, they'll do proof of reserves one day and then we'll feel really good about it because not all of them have even done that.

And, and you know, I, I do believe it's a fallacy, but the, the perception around it is that it's like a net positive to, to do some form of proof of reserves.

Hey everyone, hope you're enjoying the podcast.

Wanted to give a quick shout out from early writers.

As mentioned at the top of the show, we had the exciting announcement around the stables.

Really excited to get more of our investors involved in the ecosystem, have a touchdown place in Texas for them to visit as well as our portfolio companies.

And we're also really excited about the accelerator launching as part of that to really get, you know, we've had no shortage of inbound from folks with all across the globe interested in participating.

There's no shortage of research across the website.

earlywriters.com would encourage you to check it out.

If you're looking to get involved, please shoot us a note.

I hope you have a great week and we will be back on Friday with a great last trade episode.

Thanks.

Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this week's episode of Final Settlement.

Wanted to just give a quick shout out in Word from On Ramp and specifically on Ramp trade.

A lot of our clients and prospective clients and listeners are familiar with our pioneer in a best in class custody with multi institution custody.

What a lot don't know is that if they wanted just to start a relationship with on Ramp, their friends and family are first coming into Bitcoin, they can actually set up a trade account at no cost and they can effectively buy Bitcoin at the lowest cost in the industry.

Because we focus on other financial services, specifically around those long term storage of the underlying asset, we can actually pass through a lot of the costs that traditional brokerages have to create when it comes to revenue models around just trade.

So I would encourage anybody listening that has a friend or family member or if you're just naturally stacking Bitcoin and want to check out a service that allows you to bet, buy best in class and then deposit into multi institution custody to check out on ramp trade.

It's on rampbitcoin.com/trade.

On to the rest of the show.

Yeah, we can we can transition because I know we did deep here.

But I think the the one thing to leave everyone is I think it's important for us to talk about this because it's the ultimate heuristic or filter with I think as people decide to work specifically on that, it ties into the stables and early writers stuff like if all of this makes sense, this is what we think of as timeless wisdom of you just want to park eyes on the asset, you want to reduce counterparty risk, You know, things that have kept people safe for 15 years, then we'd actually want to work with those individuals.

And then there's a lot of infrastructure that naturally needs to be built because this happens every cycle where people try to get cute effectively, and then everyone wakes up and it's like, oh, why do we do it that way?

And so I think that's part of how I rationalize how we have to get forced to talk about the the treasury company stuff.

Yeah.

We could move on.

I think, Michael, you brought this one.

More than 86 million bank accounts to be terminated from September 1.

This is in Vietnam I believe.

Yeah, I think so.

This is a little misleading that they there's a level of inactive accounts.

I think there's over like 200 million in Vietnam.

And they basically required people to opt in for this new like digital ID identity.

And there was a subset of them that were frozen or had not been used or maybe tied to malicious parties that were facilitating fraudulent activities.

And so I think that 86,000,000 number, you know, you naturally see it.

You're thinking kind of like, holy crap, do they just, you know, seize people's capital.

But it still isn't an indirect way, the ability to show that, you know, some people had funds there.

They probably maybe they hadn't looked at their account, maybe they passed away and now they have their family members funds.

Maybe they were doing things with illicit activity and they didn't recognize that their money wasn't theirs.

But I think there's an overarching encroachment that we're seeing in the US as well as in Asia Pacific and across the world around the digital, kind of like tying from, you know, data to your biometrics to your your wealth.

So it's just worth calling out any time these things happen because I think they get underreported.

And we're going to naturally start to see a lot of this come to the US, especially when it comes to stablecoin stuff.

Yeah.

Brian, if you want to pull up the third link that I had to, I think it ties in directly to this too, which was the Bank of England's proposal is to cap stablecoin holdings between 1000 or 10 and 20,000 lbs for individuals and 10 million for businesses because they call out the systemic risk to stable coins on on the banking system.

And I think what we're all naturally going to see is as the US tries to dollarize the world and stable coins are definitely not without their risks, but a lot, there's a ton of demand for them all across the world because the US dollar generally loses value slower than a lot of other Fiat currencies around the world.

I think what you're naturally just going to see is many of these other central banks and just even commercial banks across the world aren't going to want to give up their their deposits, which they make money off of if they're a bank and then their ability to issue more currency without taxation if they're central banks, Oregon governments.

And so you're naturally just going to see a crackdown on how much holdings that these different countries will allow their individuals and businesses to have, as well as just the fact that there will naturally be some instances of essentially the reverse of what happens with the US seizing Russian treasuries.

Given the time of the war, there's going to naturally be issues as it relates to just geopolitical tensions.

And that's going to be one of the levers that other countries are going to be able to pull as it relates to seizing stable coins that have been or just locking them up and, and making it more difficult to access their wealth if they're actually held with other institutions or just making different stable coin issuers freeze the funds.

So I, I think essentially, while many other people are thinking that the US dollar is going to to be around a lot longer than we necessarily think here in the US, especially as Bitcoiners, There are going to be more and more instances of censorship and fund seizures all across the world as these different governments try to hold on to what they have as it relates to their ability to monetize the government through issuance of more currencies as well as banks just trying to maintain reserves for their customers.

Yeah, this is an interesting one to me in the sense that, you know, I think with the passage of the genius act and really the the momentum and excitement around stable coins in the US, particularly from this administration from best and etcetera.

I think this is, this is sort of a, a sign of things to come as as you're describing, Liam, in terms of, you know, it seems like a great plan for the US on paper to, to push stable coins all around the world.

But there's naturally going to be pushed back from, you know, the, the other countries who have their own Fiat currencies and want to hold on to some semblance of, of a national currency where, you know, all of their citizens aren't just using U.S.

dollar stable coins.

I think that they would obviously perceive that as a as a bad outcome.

And so this could just be, you know, a sign of of things to come in terms of some pushback around this plan that is very US centric.

Michael, any thoughts on this one?

Not necessarily, but maybe a good transition is around that sentiment corner in the notes because I think maybe before going to it, the reason why I share is it's kind of bullish Bitcoin and bullish the the notion of the polarity that exists between dollars or any Fiat currency and BTC.

As we think about trad FI and just in the natural error of people realizing there's this one unit that's increasingly structurally has to do.

That's the thing I think most people don't recognize structurally has to inflate and reducing purchasing power and then Bitcoin and that it's going to be an interesting next decade that plays out.

So this one, this quote was for a Macroscope because Zero Hedge had a note from somebody at Goldman said there's a sense that money is losing value anyway, so better to use it now than hold it, which is basically the whole pitch for everything that anybody's investing in.

Is that like that you're a sucker if you hold dollars.

So that's why VC is blown up and all these other just different assets, whether it's private or public.

And the Macroscopes tweet was from the the book When money Dies, saying as money save diminished like a lump of ice on a summer's day, there was every incentive to eat it, drink it or be merry with it, which effectively encapsulates the Bitcoin treasury company deal.

And I just think it's going to be very interesting.

And when it comes to businesses that are thinking of the transition period, and I don't, I think it really is a novel and and MO or not MO, but advantage Bitcoin companies that are thinking about stable coins and have them next, because that's effectively meeting the market where they're at.

We see the right on the wall.

The stable coins are going to proliferate and touch everything.

But the idea to park BTC next to it is going to really be in and then not anything else, right?

So anyway, I'll pause there.

Yeah, this was, you know, the original Zero Hedge tweet here is referencing a a note from a Goldman macro researcher.

And I don't have the full note, but this was what I have on the screen.

Here is basically a summary of the the note that came out, I guess last week.

And so part of his other sort of explanation or, or what he was arguing was that, you know, liquidity basically drives everything.

And the decline of the dollar is similar to the 1970's.

The risk is a repeat of 1979.

And so there's a lot of good stuff in here, but it's, you know, to me, it's kind of like, you know, saying the quiet part out loud to to a certain extent around the recognition that you obviously can't hold dollars in this environment and you need hard assets.

And he even references, you know, Bitcoin cryptocurrencies in here effectively acting as gold did in the 70s.

And you would expect gold to also act like gold in this period as it has been making the all time highs seemingly every day.

Bitcoin has lagged as it typically does.

But you know, a lot of what's in here is, is, you know, what Bitcoiners and gold bugs have been talking about for a long time.

I think it's now just becoming more and more ingrained in the zeitgeist that, you know, you need to own hard assets to protect your yourself from this, this current environment where, you know, things are kind of off the rails in terms of the debt and deficit.

And we're just going to keep spending.

We're going to lower interest rates and you better own hard assets or you're going to get left behind.

And so, yeah, this is, but this is just interesting, you know, coming from Goldman, I'm not exactly sure who this researcher is.

I think he's based in London, but yeah, there's been a lot of headlines over the past couple weeks around the similar tract.

You know, Dalio reiterated what he said a few weeks ago around having at least 10% in gold.

He reiterated that at a conference on Friday.

And Jeff Gunlock, who's known as the bond king, said 25% of your assets in gold is pretty reasonable.

He still thinks bitcoins A gimmick.

But the, the broader sentiment is that you want to own hard assets.

Gold at 25% is, is really more than anyone in the Tratify space has been saying for some time.

And then in addition to that, you have the Morgan Stanley CIO who came out last week and said no more 6040.

We're going to do 602020, meaning 60 equities, 20 in bonds and 20 in gold.

And again, like the proverbial sort of gold hedge allocation in the tradfy world for a very long time has been kind of at most 2%.

And so this is 10X in that, that recommendation.

This is Morgan Stanley CIO who's saying this.

So this stuff is, is accelerating, you know, something that we've talked a lot about on the show, the sort of sound money renaissance like this is accelerating.

More people are waking up to this.

Michael, I'm curious your thoughts on sort of the business side, Like how do you, how do you translate what we're seeing in terms of this sentiment around sound money beginning to, to develop and, and sort of evolve?

How do you how do you map that to business building and and products and services that need to be built around this idea?

Yeah.

I think the notion of Ray Dalio and Goldman and others saying this translates to the institutional sovereign level, but not to the individual level.

And it's kind of where Bitcoin being an emergent asset and it's going to take a lot of time and there's A at least one layer between the institution saying this or individuals between that and then the consumer, which is the businesses that will help in execute and make it easy for individuals to subscribe to this.

Because it's really hard.

If somebody says 20%, like how do they go by 20%?

Because if they're just going to put it in GLDA, their financial advisor and their business is probably their traditional money managers going to tell not to do it more often than not.

And then ultimately, how do you do it in a way that is best in class that you can reduce counterparty risk?

There's an analogy here that I was thinking about.

And at the risk of sounding crazy, I'm going to share it is it reminds me very much of food.

Like gold and Bitcoin are just as easy and transparent if you understand them in the environment we are in.

And then the lack of fundamentals with the existing investments to say like, yeah, that's, you know, all in pretty straightforward.

In the same way like water and beef are pretty straightforward is like those things are good for you at the most visceral human level all the way to if you have, if you go like study a lot of illnesses, autoimmune diseases, like people just go on these water meat diets and they have these nutrients and they're really straightforward.

But the reality is everything we breathe, everything we consume is telling you something else that's different.

And so there's so much inertia and that's when you go look at a lot of these like books, if somebody develops cancer and they'll go to like cancer books and it's like literally just watered meat and some derivative of that and they make money.

But I mean, I was thinking about that before you asked a question because This is why it's so hard for individuals to grok like, oh, 20% or sound money or just this status of value in the world.

And there's so much time because all we've lived in is this world of a 6040.

And so to your to.

So I just think that's important to like contextualize.

That is why it's so hard for people to adopt Bitcoin or gold is because they're fundamentally different assets and everything they've ever been born into or allocated to.

The other thing on the investment side, we've been talking a lot about gold, similar with stable coins and Bitcoin.

You don't see a lot.

You don't see Bitcoin and gold sitting next to each other.

So we have some exciting things we'll be announcing in the coming weeks there because the reality is people shouldn't have to fight or make the decision.

They should be able to decide based on their own risk profile, age, volatility, preference to adopt it.

And so we're pretty excited about how do we play closer to gold because the reality is this is going to extend much longer than most people wanted to believe when it comes to, you know, the, the common narrative before was, you know, Bitcoin hit 400 K and then it, you know, surpasses gold market cap.

But that was such a kind of crazy take because as assets are inflating gold, gold is not only running just because of inflation.

It's actually running much harder because people are recognizing that it's a better form of money than a bond or some other publicly traded equity with fundamentals that aren't keeping up at par.

Yeah, this was another note on the screen here from Deutsche Bank Research.

Bitcoin to coexist with gold on central bank balance sheets by 20-30, they say Bitcoin volatility will decline.

Neither needs to replace the US dollar as a reserve asset.

And so, yeah, this is this is kind of more of the same.

One of the things that I think about all of this is like, and you kind of alluded to this, Michael.

It's like you can you can understand that this is the trade, but if you don't own these two neutral reserve assets in a way that minimizes counterparty risk, you're you're sort of not getting the full benefits of the trade.

In a sense.

You may make money from an exposure on a near to medium term basis.

But if you want to hold these assets in perpetuity for the long term, you want to do it in a way where you reduce your counterparty risk and you have not just price exposure, but ownership of the underlying.

The ability to take in kind withdrawals from either, you know, gold or Bitcoin will be super critical in in actually realizing the full benefits of the trade in a certain sense.

We have many thoughts on all this.

Yeah.

I mean, many people are probably curious why we're talking about gold so much when we're obviously more focused on Bitcoin.

But the reality is that it's essentially just, rather than going back to that quote that the Goldman economists mentioned of there's a sense that money is losing value, so better to use it now than hold it.

That just as applies to saving the money and saving it in a way that can't be debased, whether it's called a Bitcoin.

And the same thing applies to businesses as well.

Rather than going out and trying to, you know, acquire a bunch of different people and you know, negative unit economic type revenue.

The there's a much better way where people can just necessarily save the money that they have and use it only when they see pitches that are really fat and they have a great opportunity to actually make more money.

Whether they determine money is gold or Bitcoin or dollars, whatever.

But there is a really unique opportunity to just sit on your hands and just like from the individual level and just, you know, continue to hold Bitcoin or on the business level and just only take the opportunities that you see are really where you have an unfair advantage almost.

And so that's kind of why we keep on talking about gold and Bitcoin and we'll continue to see, you know, both nations are doing the same thing because they're going to increasingly on to have control over their money as well as the opportunity to provide values, valuable services to their citizens on the other side of this too.

So we're we're in the very early stages of this hard money renaissance.

Yeah.

Michael, this was one more link from your side just around sentiment.

This is around private credit funds.

What was your take away here?

Yeah, the the tweet was a plethora of private credit funds are currently trading below $0.80 on the dollar.

We haven't seen the sentiment since early April when the recession odds were greater than 60%.

I think the core idea here is all of this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum.

We showed I think 2 weeks ago there was the status of number of bankrupt publicly traded companies and just companies in general reaching like I think levels from OA that with the whip sign of the Fed funds rate as well as just inflation in general.

A lot of these bonds, you know, will not be repaid back.

People are, you know, understanding that.

And ultimately just goes back to what Liam was sharing about the 6040 and just recognizing, you know, the first notion is like the risk free rate, maybe not be risk free.

And then this understanding that whoever's you know, whether it's investment style credit, private credit, that as everyone I think believes AI is going to and it's probably good.

The other one that that Elon popped up.

But the AI stuff also doesn't happen in a vacuum that it will cause deflation.

It will cause business models that were once economical to not be and somebody gets left holding that bag.

There's too much debt, not enough dollars.

And so this will naturally, and it's already understood.

I think This is why people are saying gold and Bitcoin.

But the I think if it is like real estate is probably the closest example of if somebody has a portfolio, we've seen this where they, you know, Bitcoin isn't you call you at 3:00 AM with the leaky faucet.

Point being is more and more people realize that they can express the trade of scarcity with real estate without having all the other kind of like dirt in it from a just like lack of highly concentrated asset like a Bitcoin.

There's the doors only so big for those investors to get out of.

And it's very similar with bonds and almost every asset, I think is the kind of the core idea that I take from, you know, bonds trading below, you know, one $1.00.

Yeah.

Was there anything else from this Elon Al summit?

I I haven't gone into any of the I know all and had their summit recently, so I haven't dove into any of the interviews but the.

The main thing was that if you Scroll down, there was a very quote because I looked for the quote that I heard right there.

Artificial intelligence, humanities brain drain.

He basically says that he expects AI to surpass individuals human intelligence by next year and outstrip collective human intellect by 2030.

And then he also references human intelligence is declining.

I think that it's mainly an important call out because independent of how realistic that is on the time horizons, there is reality that AI is going to impact every business, publicly traded, privately traded, what was funded.

It goes back to the foundation and getting into businesses and from the very first principles and how you build leveraging the most efficient tools so you can have the right unit economics.

Because at the end of the day, every business is competing with some other business on a long enough time horizon.

And if to deliver more value at a lower cost, that's effectively.

We had a good, you know, pod with Jeff Booth talking about this, that if AI is going to accelerate at these paces and it's the reality that they already kind of are, we don't see it because they're used for the models that are being worked on in private.

And so we kind of get this notion of the most recent, you know, GPS or whatever, kind of like the iPhone, like Apple has a bunch of tech, they just haven't released it yet.

And they're just literally extracting as much, you know, revenue from the existing, you know, iPhone is this just core notion that this thing's coming and people are not prepared.

And so when it you take that to an investment opportunity, whether it's building a business or investing in a business, that unless they're so insanely well equipped to be thinking in this way, somebody else is going to build a business at 110th their cost 10 times faster.

And as inflation is ripping, if you they're holding a better form of money, they're going to out compete them.

This is effectively the whole early writer's thesis.

They will be the the winners in the new world.

And again, time back to why the fund is called early writers is ultimately because the incumbents can't move this fast.

They're not incentivized to move this fast, whether it's their shareholders or the inertia that's been created.

And so, yeah, I think a lot of people get tripped up in Elon and polarizing nature and AI and the hyperbolic ways that it's used.

But ultimately, it's coming.

And we're going to increasingly see people and bonds trade at negative yielding premiums as well as companies that go bankrupt because the math doesn't shake out when it comes to inflation and then the amount of capital they've raised to execute on whatever their strategy is.

Yeah, I would also add, like, you know the quote that we have up here, if AI and robots don't solve national debt, we're screwed.

I mean, I would just read that as we're screwed because I think the big fallacy here, and this is something that Jeff who talked about on the pod last week is like AI and robots, like, you know, the prospect of this massive productivity boom results in a massive amount of deflation from technology perspective.

But from a Fiat debt based monetary system perspective, that can't be allowed to happen.

So there's going to be massive money printing, whether it's through Ubi or or just flooding the market with liquidity.

The reaction to a productivity boom and that coming to light over the next several years actually just means that like the the sort of debt spiral is going to accelerate.

And so I think that's a big thing missing from most people's thinking around this right now.

I also found it curious that he says human intelligence is declining.

He didn't elaborate why.

I mean, I think part of it's pretty clear why, at least in my mind, I think there's an increasing reliance on the AI tools, which, you know, there was, I think it was the MIT study that said, you know, people are literally getting Dumber by using AI because you're not actually thinking for yourself or, you know, going to primary resources necessarily.

You're just asking a chat bot and taking it as truth.

And we also saw that if you looked at the charts of, you know, open AI usage after college got out in the spring, like it just fell off a Cliff in terms of you should.

So there's a lot of great things that are coming from AI in terms of, you know, businesses being able to do more with less.

But the other side of that is, you know, the youth maybe not learning as much as they they used to or just because they can ask a chat bot and have the chat bot do their homework.

And so I think that that is sort of a natural side effect of a lot of this.

Liam, any thoughts on this one?

No, very well said.

All righty.

I think that was most of the links today, boys.

And we should we should, we should we should chat Bitco IPOI think that is I think that that that is a interesting business to IPO from a fundamentals perspective.

I think Bitco a lot of people throw around stats, but I think it goes up there when it comes to infrastructure providers in the digital asset and Bitcoin space.

Again, there's a lot of value delivered to helping individuals, you know, with custody.

Mike Belshie pioneered multi sig.

They were one of the first believers in multi institution custody.

So have a lot of, you know, favorability to them recognizing that they've also been one of the again, around the longest up there with Coinbase doing things the right way from again risk.

Now they support, you know, not only Bitcoin, but I think that what's most interesting, at least for me, is I've always long believed that they will end up partnering with a very large financial institution or acquired at a certain point.

And I think that ends up positive for the institution, but not necessarily maybe for the entire industry.

If you end up seeing sub custodial arrangements.

So imagine like a BNY Mellon buying a bit go BNY Mellon is a natural sub custodian for a lot of banks in general, you're going to end up with, you know, similar constructs and there's a lot we can talk about, you know, Pico and just general omnibus for private accounts versus segregated wallets.

I also thought it was interesting the the filing their numbers, it's kind of from a profit perspective, I think there was a lot of like revenue and in top line, but from a bottom line perspective, I think there was like net profit of like $12 million, which I think you know will be interesting to see play out.

I don't necessarily think that the revenue multiples will be what is acquired.

It's more of the infrastructure and access to a lot of the assets because as the Bitcoin price appreciates in crypto price appreciate, that'll be more assets under management for some financial institution to monetize.

I think it's a fun.

I I mainly call it out because I think it's fundamentally different than like Gemini and some of these other companies launching.

Gemini obviously does have pretty good infrastructure.

I don't believe they've had any substantial public hacks, but I do think that they're fundamentally different businesses in the sense that Bitco is more infrastructure than some of these other companies that might just be kind of plays and almost Aqua hires from a human perspective to get inside of a company which will still have value.

I think of bank buying Gemini will still be accretive to the bank trying to get exposure to the space.

Yeah.

Well said Liam.

Any thoughts on this?

No, I I would completely agree with that.

I think that there's going to be a massive amount of interest in or at least companies that are looking to buy them.

We'll see if they do diligence lines up and this is something that they end up being interested in.

I am not sure.

I just honestly don't have an opinion and would be curious here guys if they will be as interested in everything Bitco has going on from a staking and.

Save a coin sponsor fees perspective, I would imagine that that's actually something that almost gets more interest from them than rather than just holding Bitcoin itself to just because that's a really interesting story and of a growing market for a lot of these banks that are going to end up getting interested in the space.

But yeah, I'm curious what your guys thoughts are on those types of revenue models rather than just the existing infrastructure for different funds and companies as well?

I agree there actually, that's a great point that a lot of these sometimes it's better to be lucky than right, because they're they will be attracted to everything you just shared.

And if they end up with a bunch of BTC and increasingly Bitcoin world class infrastructure as the markets play out, how we think they will, they will back into world class Bitcoin infrastructure.

The other thing that's really positive and bullish for multi institution is as we're increasingly adding other qualified custodians, it generally comes up because Bitco has been behind the scenes powering a lot of infrastructure.

They really picked up steam in 2022 with really as the markets collapse, they'll consolidating a lot of players, whether it's the acquisitions or just like assets going to Bitco because they were solvent effectively that it makes the conversation easier of well, the key partners.

You know, we naturally have insurance.

There's natural legal precedent for multi institution.

The title ends up with the client in the client's name and the legal arrangements with each key holder.

But it makes less and less sense for collusion to occur as bit goes publicly traded.

And there's other companies there that I liken it to.

Eventually Schwab, Fidelity and others will be holding keys.

You would never ask the question.

Well, does with Fidelity and Schwab, what happens if they collude to take my Bitcoin like that just doesn't come up, but it comes up in the names with some clients.

And so I think that's also very important function as a publicly traded company with, you know, audits and, you know, direct investigation of their their business practices from the balance sheet side all the way to infrastructure.

It becomes like, not realistic to say, well, why would Biko collude with a different firm?

Yeah, that's a super important point.

And agree with all that.

Not, not a ton to add there.

All right, gents, I think we're right in an hour, so maybe a good place to wrap it.

See you guys next week.

Good stuff.

We, it was a good week.

We saw a lot of investors and clients will actually be in Dallas in a in a few weeks for the North American Blockchain Summit.

We'll be hosting a few happy hours with Tetra Trust.

We have some exciting announcements there.

So yeah, please reach out.

There was a lot of folks that reach out.

They were able to come to our events, meet in person, a lot of one-on-one discussions, talking about a lot of these concepts.

Really nice to hear.

You know, folks are picking up what we're putting down.

And so, yeah, if you want to meet in person or attend one of our events in Dallas, please reach out to any of us and we'll gladly coordinate.

And in case you missed it, check out Early riders.com/stables to learn more about the program and how to get involved.

Awesome.

All right, Thanks, guys.

Thanks boys, Later.

Thanks.

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