Speaker 1: Bitcoin is better money than anything else out there. There
Speaker 1: is a speculative attack happening of people borrowing fiat currencies
Speaker 1: in order to buy bitcoin. Based on the fundamentals, bitcoin
Speaker 1: is going to surprise to be upside then to the downside.
Speaker 1: If you invest in a bitcoin treasury company that has
Speaker 1: levers wong bitcoin and is increasing stats per share over
Speaker 1: the longer run, it could potentially.
Speaker 2: Have perform Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: But over the short run and with bad management.
Speaker 3: How should we as bitcoinners be thinking about and working
Speaker 3: with government? Yes, so here, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me Mark, Thanks for being flexible.
Speaker 3: Maybe kind of work around this, but I really wanted
Speaker 3: to sit down face to face.
Speaker 4: I think the first time I met you was I
Speaker 4: can bit.
Speaker 3: Block boom, they can like twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Maybe that sounds all right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've been all in on bitcoin at least since
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. I want to ask about that. I started
Speaker 3: buying bitcoin twenty fifteen and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: I have to tele a bowl world about it. And
Speaker 3: then I found crypto and right around twenty nineteen was
Speaker 3: by I foun mc kim on the other side of it,
Speaker 3: and I was like, all right, I've done. I've done
Speaker 3: my time in crypto, this bic one on the to
Speaker 3: bitlock boom, I remember that. But you stayed bitcoin only
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. You co founded the One Institute. So how
Speaker 3: did you one get into bitcoin and then manage to
Speaker 3: stay firm?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So already in high school I was really interested
Speaker 5: in open source software and sound money, and so I
Speaker 5: was like a golden silver bug type person reading Austrian economics,
Speaker 5: reading Murray Rothbard, thinking about like hundred center reserve banking,
Speaker 5: even thinking about how you could actually have something better
Speaker 5: than gold that like, could we'll just have a fixed supply.
Speaker 5: But that was just kind of a thought because obviously
Speaker 5: I didn't think that there was any way to like.
Speaker 2: Actually have that in the real world.
Speaker 5: But I was just kind of because Austrian economists will
Speaker 5: theorize about well, what's the right amount of money, and
Speaker 5: it's like, well, just any amount of money works well,
Speaker 5: but ideally you want to have it fixed, and you know,
Speaker 5: to the extent that gold can can try to get there,
Speaker 5: it's better than government, you know, few currencies. But in
Speaker 5: any case, when I first heard about bitcoin and really
Speaker 5: went down the rabbit hole of the fixed supply twenty
Speaker 5: one million. This is like the end of twenty twelve.
Speaker 5: I was in grad school getting my master's in accounting,
Speaker 5: and you know, it would have been great if I
Speaker 5: had been like, you know, mister Sailor with like five
Speaker 5: hundred million dollars on the bouance sheet but in the conviction.
Speaker 5: But no, I was a broke college student, you know,
Speaker 5: cruing a student loan debt, so unintelligent leverage. But in
Speaker 5: any case, what interested in me wasn't so much the
Speaker 5: idea of like getting rich quick. It was really about
Speaker 5: the ideological nature of this, which is that for decades
Speaker 5: Liberty Harrian's had been complaining about Siah currency ever since.
Speaker 5: Really you know, we went off the gold standard from near.
Speaker 2: Nixon, but even before that, Roosevelt and I didn't really
Speaker 2: they bother about.
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely, But I didn't really see a
Speaker 5: path of how do we get from here to there
Speaker 5: other than just calamity and chaos.
Speaker 6: Of like the Fiat systems that blows up, self destructs,
Speaker 6: everybody's like starving in the streets, and we finally are
Speaker 6: back to jo Yeah, yeah, exactly, which you know, like
Speaker 6: I'm a big believer.
Speaker 2: In the ends.
Speaker 5: Do not justify the means and said to me, it
Speaker 5: was like, wow, there's anything we can do to avoid
Speaker 5: that that would be really great.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And bitcoin came along, and I think that the the
Speaker 5: key difference in my mind between bitcoin and gold was
Speaker 5: that we could upgrade to bitcoin and it's not like
Speaker 5: whereas with gold, like we based our downgrading to gold
Speaker 5: because something bad has happened.
Speaker 2: We can upgrade to bitcoin and.
Speaker 5: Not have if something bad happen to the dollar. Now,
Speaker 5: of course, like if something bad does happen to the dollar,
Speaker 5: you can foresee it accelerating bitcoin adoption, but I would
Speaker 5: actually argue that it would really accelerate gold and silver adoption.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's what we're seeing currently and that there's still
Speaker 5: a process of education for people to realize that bitcoin
Speaker 5: is better money than anything else out there. So yeah,
Speaker 5: that was my introduction to it, and that's what you know.
Speaker 5: I remember early twenty thirteen, we're having these conversations about bitcoin.
Speaker 5: Somebody else in our group is like, oh, have you
Speaker 5: heard of light cooin? And then on Facebook as.
Speaker 7: Well, I started hearing questions about light cooin and I
Speaker 7: didn't have an opinion on it, so I was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 7: I'm going to go research what's going on here, and
Speaker 7: they're saying that the advantages that has faster confirmation lives silver.
Speaker 5: Correct, So already that argument is silver bitcoin's gold. It
Speaker 5: was like immediately debunked in my mind by the divisibility
Speaker 5: of bitcoin. And so it's like, well, SATs are the
Speaker 5: silver to beatc's gold, right that you can split it
Speaker 5: up into a very And so I didn't like that
Speaker 5: they used that that that Freeman because already in my
Speaker 5: mind I was like, well, that's not even true. So
Speaker 5: really this is just a method of almost like psychological
Speaker 5: manipulation through metaphor. And then the faster confirmation times I
Speaker 5: found out that actually that didn't even matter either, because
Speaker 5: you get the same amount of finality over an hour
Speaker 5: that you get either with either protocol and so and
Speaker 5: then they would never come back with like a really
Speaker 5: compelling counter argument, and that's when I started.
Speaker 8: Becoming a toxic Maximore stuff.
Speaker 5: Like, Okay, why is it that every time I come
Speaker 5: back with an argument against their thing, they're not happy
Speaker 5: about it, and that they're they're pumping their back, they're
Speaker 5: not really like engaging in something you know, substantive. So
Speaker 5: and also just from the sound money aspect of it,
Speaker 5: where it's like, none of this works if we're basically saying, oh,
Speaker 5: we're going to keep expanding the money supply throughout coins.
Speaker 5: So I just felt like a very strong bias against
Speaker 5: that that if you The last point is really un
Speaker 5: monetary economics, which is that there's always been this debate
Speaker 5: about value versus utility, and so a long time ago
Speaker 5: it was the banking school versus the currency school in
Speaker 5: Great Britain, and so when when thinking about the utility
Speaker 5: of money, like Akanesians are like, it's about spending it, right,
Speaker 5: it's about the velocity of it, and you want to
Speaker 5: have liquidity and just money slashing around the system, and
Speaker 5: the Austrians were very much in the mindset of no, actually,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of value in saving and holding money,
Speaker 5: and that gives you optionality. It's the option value of
Speaker 5: money that if you try to inflate people out of
Speaker 5: holding money, then you're yeah, you're you're creating a short
Speaker 5: term stimulative effect, but you're actually taking away a very
Speaker 5: important tool for investors in the economy to be able
Speaker 5: to hold cash and to wait for good opportunities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting to hear that at the at the
Speaker 3: New York unconfience where I was a week ahead to go.
Speaker 3: You said something online. I saw Michael Sailor a chuckle
Speaker 3: from and you said. I think you said something like
Speaker 3: I've learned most of my stuff just from arguing online.
Speaker 3: You're sort or something like that. And so to your point,
Speaker 3: like kind of arguing or or going back forward with
Speaker 3: the likelying guys back then, and so you've been really
Speaker 3: good at that and just sort of like hashing it
Speaker 3: out online that really well, I was like more of
Speaker 3: tech guy. So I built up two different tech companies
Speaker 3: and had some exits on that and so but then
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight I wiped out and I
Speaker 3: was like, what's this whole financial system? I have to
Speaker 3: go figure that out. And I quickly found out about
Speaker 3: the FIAT system, the debt based system, and I'd beat
Speaker 3: a bullbot also. So I also got bitcoin pretty quickly
Speaker 3: because I was really aware of what the problem was
Speaker 3: and you know, having seening Fiat and being a bullbug.
Speaker 3: But then I still fell down the tech rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: You know, it's maybe it's maybe it is blockchain, and
Speaker 3: maybe we do need all these different ledgers and so anyway,
Speaker 3: a good job on that, I think, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: sure you would agree. A lot of times people don't
Speaker 3: understand bitcoin because they don't understand the problems. So the
Speaker 3: don't understand the solutions that I solved, and I came
Speaker 3: at it from a different problem solution a little bit
Speaker 3: maybe then use you a little bit more on the
Speaker 3: austream monetary side, where I was more a little bit
Speaker 3: on the tech side, even though we both saw FIAT
Speaker 3: as the problem. So either way, but you had some
Speaker 3: really early predictions, one of which was in twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: calling for the speculative attack, right, and even when I
Speaker 3: heard about that years ago, it was still kind of early.
Speaker 3: And of course we can look through history and see,
Speaker 3: you know, Hugo Stine's in Wymar Republic doing things like this.
Speaker 3: Where did you, I guess, pick up that and think
Speaker 3: that was going to happen in the bitcoin space.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's really from hearing about I think it
Speaker 5: was a lecture by Hans Hermann Happa where he's pointing
Speaker 5: out that there are mechanisms by which currencies compete against
Speaker 5: each other in the international market, and so as libertarians
Speaker 5: like we're often like, oh, FIAT currencies are you know, uh,
Speaker 5: they're banked by the military. And you'll hear like charliston
Speaker 5: you know kntans to say this as well, like the
Speaker 5: value is banked by the military and some capacity, and
Speaker 5: you know, there's there's truth to that and that like
Speaker 5: if if your country gets invaded, like your currency gainst zero,
Speaker 5: So there's truth in that. But but they can't prop
Speaker 5: up the value of currency, and certainly not when it
Speaker 5: comes to competing on four x markets, right, so like
Speaker 5: you've never seen a headline of oh Trump deployed the troops,
Speaker 5: like the dollars up five percent, Like that's not a thing.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: The way that they compete in international money markets is
Speaker 5: true interest rates and through capital controls and through currency reserves,
Speaker 5: and so those are kind of the three tools that
Speaker 5: they use to coordinate devaluation amongst FIAC currencies. Unfortunately, it's
Speaker 5: very rare that they coordinate revaluation of you know, increasing
Speaker 5: the value of currencies.
Speaker 2: And that when you look then at.
Speaker 5: What are currency speculator's role in this, because ultimately all
Speaker 5: of these levers that the currency issuer has, they only
Speaker 5: have an effect to the extent that market participants are
Speaker 5: on the other side of the trade. And so if
Speaker 5: you look at the history of devaluations, there's cases like
Speaker 5: Southeast Asia in the late nineties and then most famously
Speaker 5: or Soros and the Bank of England and the British
Speaker 5: pound with where they were trying to manage the exchange
Speaker 5: rate of the British pound to enter into a stability
Speaker 5: of the Eurozone. And that the person on the ground
Speaker 5: was Scott Bessant in London who was orchestrating, you know,
Speaker 5: some of their their speculations, which is basically to say
Speaker 5: that if you have a weak currency like the British
Speaker 5: pound and a strong currency like the Deutsche Mark, that
Speaker 5: you can borrow in the weak currency borrow pounds, sell
Speaker 5: the pounds for Deutsche mark, so that you're shorting the pound,
Speaker 5: shorting one fiat currency against another, and that is the
Speaker 5: deutsch mark appreciates and value. Then you can go back
Speaker 5: and repay that pound denominated liability the borrow and have
Speaker 5: a profit.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 5: The that that's really how currency values come into equilibrium
Speaker 5: against each other and kind of like you get to
Speaker 5: a point where supplying demand is reflective. Now, of course
Speaker 5: the policymakers, they have their own agendas behind them, and
Speaker 5: so you know, if they don't want this to happen,
Speaker 5: what they have to do in the case of the
Speaker 5: British pound is like, for example, raised interest rates so
Speaker 5: that borrowing British pounds becomes more expensive, and so it
Speaker 5: undermines the economics of that trade.
Speaker 2: Paul Krugman famously.
Speaker 5: You know, obviously he's become a political hack, but a
Speaker 5: long time ago he was a legitimate economist. Keith popularized
Speaker 5: his term of speculative attack. I think it's pejorative because
Speaker 5: ultimately he doesn't like speculative.
Speaker 2: Attacks because they impose fiscal and.
Speaker 5: Monetary discipline on governments and saying like, hey, you can't
Speaker 5: like go full Stephanie Kelton money printer. You actually have
Speaker 5: constraints that are put on you by you know, the
Speaker 5: bond traders and the currency speculators and these giant you know,
Speaker 5: macro hedge funds.
Speaker 2: And so fast.
Speaker 5: For today, I think that's what's happening is that in
Speaker 5: a very interesting format, there is a speculative attack happening
Speaker 5: of people borrowing fiat currencies in order to buy bitcoin,
Speaker 5: and that today fiat currencies have to tighten their monetary
Speaker 5: policy to be more aligned with bitcoin, otherwise they're going
Speaker 5: to continue to invite this kind of trade.
Speaker 3: And now we're seeing that start to happen faster and
Speaker 3: faster and faster. It's the arbitrage trade, it's the carry trade.
Speaker 3: We kind of see it play out in different different
Speaker 3: areas all over the place. I want to dive into that,
Speaker 3: but before we do, I guess, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: retracing some of this. So, like you came from the
Speaker 3: financial side of things, and you've studied the financial markets.
Speaker 3: You understand the specultive attack and the way these financial
Speaker 3: markets work. Talking about sort of like these battle of ideas.
Speaker 3: How you've been always engaging people in open debate. Good,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want to debate you. But it seems like today,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe it's a function of the industry growing, but
Speaker 3: it seemed like people that came to bitcoin early maybe
Speaker 3: were a little bit more principled. They came for one
Speaker 3: reason or another. I lost my money, I had to
Speaker 3: go find a solution. A sound money supply worked for me.
Speaker 3: You were censored, a cipherpunk whatever it is. Today, it
Speaker 3: seems like we have a lot of people in that
Speaker 3: maybe don't understand how the world works. From a bunch
Speaker 3: of different angles, specifically right now about the financialization aspect
Speaker 3: of it. So a lot of bitcoiners think that bitcoin
Speaker 3: ends financialization and like Wall Street's not necessary because we
Speaker 3: can just save our money and it all goes away.
Speaker 4: I mean, do you see that? And if so, how
Speaker 4: would you counter that?
Speaker 9: Every day we see headlines about inflation and dead and
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Speaker 5: Yes, so bitcoin gives you that option to uh not
Speaker 5: have to invest in stocks and bonds, or in real
Speaker 5: estate or in small businesses like that, you have the
Speaker 5: option to just save bitcoin. And I think that that
Speaker 5: itself has been very attractive for me and for lots
Speaker 5: of others out there who see stocks and bonds and
Speaker 5: real estate and all of all these asset classes that
Speaker 5: you know are tied in with Wall Street is.
Speaker 2: Basically overvalued relative to bitcoin.
Speaker 5: And so I think that thesis can be true, and
Speaker 5: that then when you think about the financialization of bitcoin,
Speaker 5: it's like, in that set of circumstances, could you really
Speaker 5: expect Wall Street to do anything other than try to
Speaker 5: adopt bitcoin, like you think that they're not going to
Speaker 5: act in.
Speaker 2: Their self interests, right.
Speaker 5: You know, this is the place where like famously Gordon
Speaker 5: Gecko is like greed is good.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: If you really think that bitcoin is the best performing
Speaker 5: asset historically and going forward, then you should fully expect
Speaker 5: Wall Street.
Speaker 2: To just go all in on bitcoin. And I think
Speaker 2: that there's part of it is.
Speaker 5: A concern that Wall Street is going to co opt bitcoin, right,
Speaker 5: and Blackstone is going to go in there and.
Speaker 8: They're gonna like change the rules and they're.
Speaker 5: Gonna muck it up and and and maybe with an
Speaker 5: neferious ultimate end of just destroying bitcoin or more benign
Speaker 5: of like advancing their own interests and that undermining bitcoin, right,
Speaker 5: So like trying to get everybody to custody with you know,
Speaker 5: the ETF and like try.
Speaker 8: To just clamp down on the ecosystem and control it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's the opposite.
Speaker 5: So I think that Blackrock, Fidelity, all of the other
Speaker 5: financial institutions that are embracing bitcoin, they are joining the
Speaker 5: bitcoin network, and really I see it as like they
Speaker 5: are finding how to integrate with bitcoin, not how to
Speaker 5: integrate bitcoin into their world. And so when I look
Speaker 5: at like, so we have to start with the idea
Speaker 5: that like sixty one oh two executive order means that
Speaker 5: these are giant honey pots of bitcoin that you can
Speaker 5: get seized by the government when when the crisis arises,
Speaker 5: right when the time is right. I think that that
Speaker 5: is a huge risk, and that the only way to
Speaker 5: interact that risk is through lobbying. I actually don't think
Speaker 5: that it's as effective as people think to say, oh,
Speaker 5: if we all self custody, that we can avoid sixty
Speaker 5: one oh two, because ultimately, if even if you self custody,
Speaker 5: at some point, you want to do something with us
Speaker 5: bitcoin right, right, like you want to pay for your
Speaker 5: kids vacation to Disney World, and you know that basically
Speaker 5: if you take the bitcoin addicult storage, there's no exchanges
Speaker 5: to bring them to, right.
Speaker 2: You might have like a bitcoin guy.
Speaker 5: On the street who you know could exchange, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: but like do you really you know, want to take
Speaker 5: out like fifty grand, you know, And so then suddenly
Speaker 5: you're in a situation where sixty one or two affect
Speaker 5: you even if you're self custodying. And so even if
Speaker 5: you are a self custody MAXI, I think that you
Speaker 5: want to be engaged in politics so that not only
Speaker 5: did you avoid that outcome, but you create a better
Speaker 5: outcome of Hey, no capital gains taxes on your bitcoin, right,
Speaker 5: you don't even need a KYCML when you take the
Speaker 5: medical storage. And so I think that we want to
Speaker 5: be engaged with the policy making process to advocate for
Speaker 5: the best outcome. And I think that the more financialization
Speaker 5: of bitcoin there is that it's it's great to have
Speaker 5: black Rock and Fidelity and micro Strategy and anybody else
Speaker 5: hiring lobbyists and like getting bitcoiners in the room to
Speaker 5: advocate for these policies that are good for everyone. Right,
Speaker 5: They're good for the treasury companies, they're good for the miners,
Speaker 5: they're good for the publicly traded companies, for the financial institutions,
Speaker 5: and for the self custodied PLB who just wants to
Speaker 5: you know, pay for his kids vacation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, the financial industry is one of the biggest
Speaker 3: lobbying groups out there, so of course it is right, Well,
Speaker 3: we can get the pharmaceutical companies to put it under.
Speaker 4: Balance sheets that my health out too, but we won't
Speaker 4: even about that.
Speaker 3: But so I would agree with you on that, but
Speaker 3: it seems like maybe there's a lot of people that
Speaker 3: don't understand capitalism. Then so they think that again, right,
Speaker 3: all this financial stuff goes away. So you're a grifter
Speaker 3: if you're going to help these companies raise money?
Speaker 4: How dare you? Don't you know? People should just go
Speaker 4: hoddle their bitcoin on a hill?
Speaker 3: Right, So I think there's that, and then almost they
Speaker 3: want to dictate how bitcoin should be used.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so okay, so I think that part of it
Speaker 2: is just we.
Speaker 4: Don't need to call it any names, but you know
Speaker 4: who we're talking about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the CAF dependency of like a lot of OG's
Speaker 5: saw what happened with mount Gox, and so when you
Speaker 5: think about it probabilistically from like an actuarial table perspective,
Speaker 5: if you were really scarred by Mount Gox, like you
Speaker 5: have a very set like list of best practices about
Speaker 5: how you can survive with your bitcoin, and you could.
Speaker 4: Also say Tara Luna and Celsius and and all that.
Speaker 5: Yes, But then also like even if you held a coinbase,
Speaker 5: I've heard the stories of people struggling to get at
Speaker 5: their bitcoin out of coinbase because of kycaml right of like, Okay,
Speaker 5: now they've got additional verification all of that, and so
Speaker 5: I completely understand and you know, like this is from
Speaker 5: lots of secondhand, firsthand you know, sight seeing over the
Speaker 5: past decade. We cannot undervalue the self custody, right, So
Speaker 5: like even for somebody who's interested in just purely financial returns,
Speaker 5: you have to multiply the financial returns by the probability
Speaker 5: of loss from not self custodying, from having to trust
Speaker 5: the third party. Okay, So now today, I think that
Speaker 5: with the election of Trump, there's a real, big, like
Speaker 5: psychological problem that's facing the bitcoin community, which is that
Speaker 5: we've had it in for the past four years. I
Speaker 5: think we've had a really nice mindset of Joe Biden
Speaker 5: and Kamala could they can just come in and take
Speaker 5: our bitcoin any day?
Speaker 2: And so, like self custody is non negotiable.
Speaker 5: Now it's realizing that actually, as long as we have
Speaker 5: like some baseline amount of property rights and working institutions
Speaker 5: here in the US, they can't undo the ETF. So
Speaker 5: to come in and say, oh, well they could see
Speaker 5: it's like the ETF that's basically kind of in the
Speaker 5: same realm as saying they could come in and seize
Speaker 5: all the four one ks and you know, all gold, ETFs,
Speaker 5: the s and P five hundred like everything, right, And
Speaker 5: so I think that there's there's a there's a reality
Speaker 5: check of like a massive amount of uh, the world's
Speaker 5: wealth is in US capital markets, and it is actually
Speaker 5: reliant on the regulatory framework and the rule of law
Speaker 5: US institutions. And the reason why the US continues to
Speaker 5: be the wealthiest country in the world is, I would argue,
Speaker 5: due to the stability of the architecture that was set
Speaker 5: in place by the founding fathers in you know, really
Speaker 5: divinely inspired wisdom h two hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 4: And that.
Speaker 5: If if if you have the view that well, that's
Speaker 5: actually very fragile. One, we have to fight for it.
Speaker 5: So I actually agree that it is fairly fragile. But two,
Speaker 5: you basically we will we would have to go around
Speaker 5: door to door and fud all of that into saying
Speaker 5: that like, you know, your your retirement account is going
Speaker 5: to get seized by the government next year, that's why
Speaker 5: you need to buy bitcoin and self CUSSI it.
Speaker 2: And so we could we could.
Speaker 5: Do that, you know, like drive bitcoin marketing that way,
Speaker 5: but It goes back to like do the uns justify
Speaker 5: the means? No, I don't think sowing panic, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: by spreading food in the public, it's like a good
Speaker 5: way of selling bitcoin. I think that we have to
Speaker 5: sell bitcoin on its merits of like do you want
Speaker 5: to have the freedom to control your own money or not?
Speaker 5: Right like that, you know, we don't have to like
Speaker 5: trust to strike here in people's hearts all the time
Speaker 5: to can I give a positive vision for bitcoin?
Speaker 2: And I think we.
Speaker 5: Really have to meet them where they're at, and honestly
Speaker 5: where I'm at.
Speaker 2: I don't think the.
Speaker 5: Rule of law is like falling apart in here in
Speaker 5: the US to such a degree that if you buy
Speaker 5: a security, whether it's an ETF.
Speaker 4: Or the brakes a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean we to the point like that
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago it was a different direction.
Speaker 4: But I agree, yeah.
Speaker 5: And I also think that if you look at, okay,
Speaker 5: when the rubber hits the road, like what what would
Speaker 5: the elites tolerate. I don't think they would tolerate like
Speaker 5: arbitrary seizure of like assets at that level you could
Speaker 5: argue like and look at like the case of gold,
Speaker 5: right like, why is it that they.
Speaker 8: Were okay with Executive Order sixty one O two.
Speaker 5: And I would argue that it's because gold custody had
Speaker 5: already centralized, because that is the equal equilibrium.
Speaker 2: Outcome for gold custody.
Speaker 5: I think for bitcoin custody, it's all about decentralization. Having
Speaker 5: a multi sig is something that you cannot do with gold.
Speaker 5: And so even if they're if they're thinking like two
Speaker 5: steps ahead of all right, well if we sixty one
Speaker 5: O two bitcoin, what's the next step. Well, it's multi jurisdiction,
Speaker 5: multi signature of custody right where Now sixty one oh
Speaker 5: two in one country doesn't mean that you see, it's
Speaker 5: the bitcoin.
Speaker 2: It just means that you're entering into years of litigation
Speaker 2: to try to seize the bitcoin.
Speaker 4: Maybe I often think about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember Ray Dalily making a big deal
Speaker 3: about that, and in sixty one oh two, the government
Speaker 3: had created the Federal Reserve. In nineteen thirteen printed way
Speaker 3: too many of those fake currency units, and by nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty three.
Speaker 4: They owed gold. So they owed gold, so they needed
Speaker 4: the gold.
Speaker 3: But they don't owe bitcoin to anybody, right, They owed dollars, right,
Speaker 3: So why would they seize.
Speaker 4: They don't.
Speaker 3: They don't have the same demand or need for the
Speaker 3: bitcoin like they did for the gold back then.
Speaker 5: I think that they're going to run the playbook in reverse, right,
Speaker 5: because I think that in order to have a you know,
Speaker 5: like ship of theseus like we're going to replace each
Speaker 5: plank of this ship of seatt We're going to replace
Speaker 5: it with bitcoin and or you know, like people will
Speaker 5: talk about replacing.
Speaker 2: The jet engines mid flight, right, Like.
Speaker 5: That's basically what we have to do if we don't
Speaker 5: want s to hit the fan from a societal perspective, Yeah,
Speaker 5: And I think that the best path to get there
Speaker 5: is for them to print dollars to buy bitcoin until
Speaker 5: each dollar is fully backed by bitcoin. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 5: how you kind of get to the equilibrium mat com.
Speaker 3: Do you think it's also probably levels to this game? Right,
Speaker 3: So you started the meme, I think you started about
Speaker 3: selling your chairs or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, the IMT started that meme?
Speaker 4: Oh is that the IMF started that meme?
Speaker 3: But I think about like the plub who's just trying
Speaker 3: to get to one bitcoin, and it's like, just get
Speaker 3: to one bitcoin, don't buy anything else. Everything else is
Speaker 3: a scam nothing's worth more than one bitcoin. But like
Speaker 3: I've been to Michael Saylor's house in Miami, He's got
Speaker 3: like three outs out there, Like as you have more,
Speaker 3: you have more money. And I think about even my
Speaker 3: own bitcoin, A good majority of it's in multi sig
Speaker 3: and then some's on single sig and some on some exchanges,
Speaker 3: and I have a little bit on my phone, and
Speaker 3: it's like kind of everywhere. So there's like levels to it, right,
Speaker 3: and so maybe maybe it's people in different levels and
Speaker 3: they don't understand that. But even just going back to
Speaker 3: the financial system for a second, like the financialization, sure,
Speaker 3: but like there's some parts that will never go away, right,
Speaker 3: Like we're always going to have savers and not just
Speaker 3: individuals that can do multi sig or cold storage, but
Speaker 3: like corporations, So there's gonna be some need for that
Speaker 3: insurance services, capital formation, Like that's never going to go away.
Speaker 3: So that part, I mean, sure, maybe we don't need
Speaker 3: to invest into a four oh one K. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: like the Wall Street scaffolding doesn't just disappear.
Speaker 5: Well, there's that, And then also there's people who actually
Speaker 5: want to try to outperform bitcoin by going leverage long right,
Speaker 5: and I actually think that that's that's maybe the purest
Speaker 5: way of trying to perform Bitcoin is just going leverage
Speaker 5: long and historically the challenge there has been liquidations. So
Speaker 5: like when I worked at Kraken, like we had a
Speaker 5: margin tating product, right, and.
Speaker 2: So it was very popular.
Speaker 5: And then it's no secret that sometimes we had to
Speaker 5: turn it off for.
Speaker 2: New positions because we just ran out of dollars to
Speaker 2: lend to borrowers.
Speaker 5: And so it's also no secret to anyone that whether
Speaker 5: it's a Kraken or at bitmex or any other kind
Speaker 5: of leverage trading platform, that Bitcoin being volatile, causing cascading
Speaker 5: liquidations and causing increased volatility with this leverage, right, And
Speaker 5: so I think that's what's disturbing for bitcoiners is this
Speaker 5: idea that if you invest in a bitcoin treasury company
Speaker 5: that has leveraged long bitcoin and is increasing SaaS for share,
Speaker 5: that over the long run it could potentially perform Bitcoin.
Speaker 5: That's really you know, just to put it bluntly, it's
Speaker 5: disgusting to bitcoiners because in the mindset of like, the
Speaker 5: virtuous thing always has to be the most financially rewarding thing, right,
Speaker 5: the virtuous thing of self cussing, right, has to be
Speaker 5: the most rewarding and if it's not, then there's an
Speaker 5: injustice occurring.
Speaker 2: Right. But the reality is that it's a trade off.
Speaker 5: It's saying, Okay, you're gonna have to trust the third part,
Speaker 5: and it could underperformed bitcoin. It could outperform bitcoin if
Speaker 5: you look at the fundamentals, like if it's really being
Speaker 5: executed well over the long run, it ought to be
Speaker 5: expected to outperform bitcoin, but over the short run and
Speaker 5: with bad management, it could underperform right.
Speaker 2: The train off there.
Speaker 5: Of saying okay, well that's that's that's a bitcoin treasury company,
Speaker 5: and then you've got bitcoin called storage where you know
Speaker 5: you're going to track the performance a bitcoin one hundred
Speaker 5: percent like uh, and you know is assuming you trust
Speaker 5: yourself to self custody. I think that's also something bitcoin
Speaker 5: is maybe tend to miss is how many people out
Speaker 5: there don't trust themselves to self custody a lot. And
Speaker 5: you know, it's like the that that is we can
Speaker 5: yell at them on social media and say like no,
Speaker 5: you need to take responsibility for your financial life. But
Speaker 5: realistically there's also diminishing martial orts where you can say, like,
Speaker 5: all right, if I think there's a one percent probability
Speaker 5: or ten percent in probability of sixty one or two happening,
Speaker 5: and so I'm going to have some bitcoin and cult storage.
Speaker 5: But I think that there's like a ninety percent chance
Speaker 5: of the government being controlled by bitcoiners and us going
Speaker 5: in the opposite direction of like government's voluntarily adopting bitcoin
Speaker 5: and not doing sixty one or two.
Speaker 2: Then I want to be leveraged long bitcoin.
Speaker 5: And so then it's just a expected value calculation based
Speaker 5: on probability weightings of different outcomes. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 5: I have a definite view what's going to happen in
Speaker 5: the future.
Speaker 3: But now you're asking people to like get educated and
Speaker 3: take responsibility.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's that's asking a lot. That's asking a lot.
Speaker 3: So speaking of leverage long the best way to make
Speaker 3: money and the treasury companies, you had a debate with
Speaker 3: Jim Chinos, Yeah, talking about this this entire topic. Right,
Speaker 3: So he's shortened micro strategy buying bitcoin. It's kind of
Speaker 3: worked out for him so far in the short term.
Speaker 3: I think about Simon Senek's book The Infinite Game, and
Speaker 3: it's like Bitcoin's the infinite game, and if you're playing
Speaker 3: these short term games, these finite games, you could probably lose.
Speaker 3: But he's been righting there in the short term. In
Speaker 3: the long term, why is he wrong? And why do
Speaker 3: you think these companies should outperform bitcoin?
Speaker 2: So this is a fantastic question.
Speaker 5: First of all, I would question whether he's right in
Speaker 5: the short term or not, because in the first five
Speaker 5: minutes of the debate he mentions that he's constantly having
Speaker 5: to go buy bitcoin to maintain his head because Sailor
Speaker 5: is increasing bitcoin per share and even.
Speaker 4: Though the price of bitcoin, even the price of MSTR
Speaker 4: is going down.
Speaker 5: Right, So to really short end af you have to
Speaker 5: maintain a constant offset to the bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Per share that Sailor has.
Speaker 5: Okay, And when I hear any kind of trader come
Speaker 5: to me and say, hey, my trade makes sense as
Speaker 5: long as I'm adding more capital to it, I'm scratching
Speaker 5: my head of like, well, that sounds like you're losing money, right,
Speaker 5: and that you're filling in the gap.
Speaker 4: Isn't a short in the fiat price of MSTR, though?
Speaker 5: Why would you have to add more bitcoin in his
Speaker 5: bitcoin long?
Speaker 4: Oh, in the bitcoin long in order.
Speaker 5: To maintain the same ratio of long bitcoin to short bitcoin,
Speaker 5: so that the only factor.
Speaker 2: Is MNAV multiple.
Speaker 5: Okay, right, So over time that MV multiple is being
Speaker 5: monetized into BTC per share, both through common stock issuance
Speaker 5: that is a creative and through fixed income instruments, whether
Speaker 5: it's convertible notes or preferreds and so over the short term, yes, okay,
Speaker 5: I'll concede that you can have and I can see
Speaker 5: that this in the debate. You can have short term
Speaker 5: MNAV expansion and contraction. We saw it in fact in
Speaker 5: twenty two sailors went below one x, so that without
Speaker 5: a doubt you can have based on various market conditions, right,
Speaker 5: namely that I think m NAV is a function of momentum,
Speaker 5: volatility and sentiment. Right, So if bitcoin's on our ripop,
Speaker 5: it's gonna like MNAV has an opportunity to expand Bitcoin's
Speaker 5: going sideways and it's not volatile, then I would absolutely
Speaker 5: expect mn AF to compress. But to me, the main
Speaker 5: question of the debate was really about is the equally
Speaker 5: room MNAV greater than one x? And I think it is,
Speaker 5: and we can debate about where it should be. I
Speaker 5: think that ultimately it actually depends on what level of
Speaker 5: leverage the company achieves or is expected to achieve, right,
Speaker 5: And that that's where equlibrim nab ought to be. And
Speaker 5: then day to day it's obviously going to oscillate around
Speaker 5: that because it's the trade off actually between like a
Speaker 5: two x lever and ETF right, where day to day
Speaker 5: it's going to have two x BTC performance on up
Speaker 5: and down. But then when you start zooming out to
Speaker 5: like monthly and yearly, there's that decay from the derivatives trading,
Speaker 5: and so I see bitcoin treasury companies.
Speaker 2: Being the inverse of that.
Speaker 5: Day to day, they're not tracking two x bitcoin, but
Speaker 5: over a long period of time, you're seeing fundamental value
Speaker 5: correl from SATs per share increasing, Right.
Speaker 3: And then the m NAB, as you said, is some
Speaker 3: of it's just like a market premium, so sort of
Speaker 3: like a pe ratio. Why is it thirty seven and
Speaker 3: not forty two? Yeah, or thirty two, And so that's
Speaker 3: sort of like where the market sort of puts that
Speaker 3: premium based off of that. So when you have higher
Speaker 3: bitcoin volatility and then they're mapping out where they think
Speaker 3: that leverage could be over a long period of time,
Speaker 3: people want to pay more for it, correct, right, and
Speaker 3: in a time of compressing volatility or price cline, then
Speaker 3: they're willing to pay less for it.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 5: And I think it's really amazing because like if I
Speaker 5: go back to like the days of margin trading at Kraken,
Speaker 5: like the idea that you could so you know, you
Speaker 5: have a leverage long position inside of an account, the
Speaker 5: fact that you could sell the equity in that position
Speaker 5: or buy the equity in that position and not have
Speaker 5: the liquidation risk, Well, I think that we're reaching a
Speaker 5: you know, a point where that it's it's very attractive
Speaker 5: from like thinking about the speculative attack where historically, and
Speaker 5: this is what I wrote in twenty fourteen, is that
Speaker 5: like people would borrow against other assets to buy bitcoin,
Speaker 5: but the that's suboptimal because those other assets have a
Speaker 5: lower return on an investment capital than bitcoin does. So
Speaker 5: the ideal would always be that you're borrowing against bitcoin
Speaker 5: to buy more bitcoin, but that hasn't been impossible up
Speaker 5: until now.
Speaker 2: I would argue that, and.
Speaker 5: There's still like inefficiencies. So for example, like ideally the
Speaker 5: dividend payments on preferreds would be tax deductible, just like
Speaker 5: interest expensive TAC subductible set. I still think there's like
Speaker 5: and that we'd get rid of capital gains, Like there's
Speaker 5: still like constraints on the on the leveraging up against bitcoin,
Speaker 5: but it's getting better and better, and I think that
Speaker 5: it's getting better for corporates and I think that it's
Speaker 5: actually going to get better for individuals as well. Once
Speaker 5: the like you can post bitcoin at JP Morgan Chase
Speaker 5: and just get a line of credit against it like
Speaker 5: you would a mortgage at you know, five percent interest
Speaker 5: rate for thirty years.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we think out five or ten years in
Speaker 3: the future, we have asset heavy businesses, so insurance companies, banks,
Speaker 3: oil companies, et cetera typically trade in a one to
Speaker 3: two times m NAV and sometimes they'll maybe get to
Speaker 3: a three and sometimes they go below, depend on sort
Speaker 3: of what's going on, which is kind of what these are, right,
Speaker 3: asset heavy businesses. Do you think that with reclassifying reclassifying income,
Speaker 3: for example, bitcoin continues to go up, you know, hits
Speaker 3: a million dollars in five, six, seventy or something like that,
Speaker 3: do you think we start to rethink what capital and
Speaker 3: what income is and they start trading more like a
Speaker 3: pe ratio maybe much higher or do you think they
Speaker 3: stay sort of in that like one to two times
Speaker 3: m NAV asset heavy business that we see over like
Speaker 3: a five tenure window.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think that you know, being levers wanting bitcoin,
Speaker 5: like first of all, they're going to buy design potentially hopefully.
Speaker 8: Maybe we'll see be more volatile than bitcoin, right, so.
Speaker 4: We'll they are right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so I think that you know, that's going
Speaker 5: to be it's really challenging because of this like GameStop,
Speaker 5: meme stock like uh, a time we live in where
Speaker 5: uh there's maybe less fundamental research happening in the retail
Speaker 5: community than there ought to be, but when it does happen, like, uh,
Speaker 5: it's very high quality and the high signal. Right, and
Speaker 5: so I think that the uh, there won't really be
Speaker 5: an equilibrium on the m n AFF like it's just
Speaker 5: gonna that's gonna be volatile. Nafs are gonna be volatile.
Speaker 5: But what's really interesting is that from a bitcoin perspective,
Speaker 5: they're gonna sorb all the volatility and so strangely enough,
Speaker 5: like I think they were in a new new era
Speaker 5: of bitcoin price formation where on the way up, like
Speaker 5: bitcoin treasury companies have more resources to buy bitcoin, and
Speaker 5: then on the way down, they're not pay ex selling.
Speaker 2: There's holding right right, they're sitting on their hands, and
Speaker 2: which we really haven't seen yet. We haven't seen anyone
Speaker 2: like really blow up.
Speaker 5: Uh you know, knock on wood that that doesn't happen,
Speaker 5: because I want everyone to succeed in this space. But uh,
Speaker 5: you know, the even if we look at like uh
Speaker 5: uh mstr and let's just like draw the insane argument, right,
Speaker 5: Let's say they get to like eighty percent leverage on
Speaker 5: the perpetual preferres uh and that bitcoin crashes and they're
Speaker 5: like basically underwater on it.
Speaker 2: Like, I still don't think that.
Speaker 5: It's in their best self interest to liquidate the bitcoin.
Speaker 5: And so I think that there's like, uh, at a
Speaker 5: less than one XM and AF, the management team and
Speaker 5: the board can credibly go to the public and say,
Speaker 5: we think bitcoin is fundamentally undervalued and we're going to
Speaker 5: continue to hold it because of that. And so I
Speaker 5: think that there's like a countercyclical force to bitcoin treagery companies.
Speaker 5: Even when their stock is doing poorly and m navs
Speaker 5: are compressing across the industry, they're actually either holding bitcoin
Speaker 5: or continuing to accumulate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as long as they can hold it. I remember
Speaker 3: Sailor saying, we've been Prague a few months ago, and
Speaker 3: someone said, what's the worst that can happen? He said,
Speaker 3: the worst that can happen is we never raise any
Speaker 3: more money ever again. And we're one hundred billion dollar
Speaker 3: company growing at sixty percent a year. And to your point, right,
Speaker 3: there could be these bear markets. But to your point right,
Speaker 3: if we're not forced to sell the bitcoin, the stock
Speaker 3: can take a hit. Let it take a hit, give
Speaker 3: me a year or two, and we can kind of
Speaker 3: get it back. I think that's what you're saying, if
Speaker 3: you're able to withstand and kind of and hold through
Speaker 3: that period.
Speaker 5: It also gets back to like the argument of like
Speaker 5: and Chaino's pointing this out. I was like, Okay, so
Speaker 5: strategy has been going to do great as long as
Speaker 5: Bitcoin's price keeps going up.
Speaker 4: You have to believe in that, right, And I.
Speaker 5: Look at Bitcoin's fundamentals and they've never been stronger. And
Speaker 5: so I'm like, the only argument against like getting back
Speaker 5: to like one hundred percent cager that it was at,
Speaker 5: you know, five ten years ago is basically just that
Speaker 5: it's gotten so big that now it's a two trillion
Speaker 5: dollar asset class, and so it's going to require massive
Speaker 5: inflows to you know, get to that. But I still
Speaker 5: think that even if we fall short of a hundercent
Speaker 5: cager and we land a fifty percent or forty percent
Speaker 5: or thirty percent, that's still greater than the cost of
Speaker 5: capital in uh FIAT markets. And so I think that
Speaker 5: the yeah, the arb there is intact, but I think
Speaker 5: that it's more likely based on the fundamentals, that Bitcoin
Speaker 5: is going to surprise to the upside than to the
Speaker 5: downside going forward.
Speaker 3: So the give in the law of large numbers. The
Speaker 3: bigger bigcoin gets, the harder it is to kind of
Speaker 3: continue to have that explosive keg. But when you overlay
Speaker 3: like a technology like s curve intol, you can see we're.
Speaker 4: Accelerating to that adoption.
Speaker 3: And you would also say two tillion is actually still
Speaker 3: pretty small when you're tapping into one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five trillion dollar fixed income market. So certainly, yes, as
Speaker 3: it gets bigger, technically that's correct, but as we tap
Speaker 3: these big pools of capital, things could speed up. Two
Speaker 3: more things to ask because then we got to go
Speaker 3: to dinner.
Speaker 4: So One, what.
Speaker 3: Are these extremely attractive fundamentals that you see and why
Speaker 3: do you think potentially we could see the end of
Speaker 3: that four year cycle in the bitcoin cycle you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So one is on the supply side, ninety five percent
Speaker 5: of the bitcoin have been mined at this point, and
Speaker 5: so with each having like the new issuance of bitcoin
Speaker 5: entering into the market is just a smaller and smaller
Speaker 5: percentage of the trading float out there, and so I
Speaker 5: think that that is less and less impactful. Two, on
Speaker 5: the demand side is the ETFs have only begun to
Speaker 5: be rolled out, and so if you think about all
Speaker 5: those financial advisors out there who are talking with their
Speaker 5: clients about what percentage delllecate to bitcoin, like, all of
Speaker 5: those conversations getting to like one to five percent are
Speaker 5: in the future in the next ten years, not in
Speaker 5: the past, So massive amount of demand from that. And
Speaker 5: three on still on the demand side, from a demographic perspective,
Speaker 5: the massive wealth transfer that's going to happen through inheritance
Speaker 5: from boomers essentially to younger generations over the next ten
Speaker 5: to twenty years. It's just it's astronomical trillions of dollars
Speaker 5: and so incrementally a lot of those dollars that are
Speaker 5: going to flow into bitcoin. And so I think that
Speaker 5: those are the three big trends that even if you
Speaker 5: look outside of like corporate adoption and software adoption, like
Speaker 5: if I just look at flows from ETFs plus plus
Speaker 5: from demographics, they were looking at a multi decade pull
Speaker 5: market in front of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would definitely agree with all those. I would
Speaker 3: also add that I think that the four yer having
Speaker 3: cycle just so happened to coincide with the four year
Speaker 3: global liquidity cycle and the four year ism business cycle,
Speaker 3: and I think those are really.
Speaker 4: The dog that wags the tael.
Speaker 3: So when you look at the global liquidity cycle, I
Speaker 3: think one we can see from the banking collapse in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, there's like no appetite for a drawdown
Speaker 3: right now. Yeah, you have yelling and now you mentioned
Speaker 3: Ascent earlier.
Speaker 4: They've continued just to load the front end of the bills.
Speaker 3: And so when you take away that debt maturity at
Speaker 3: three to five year debt maturity and you load it
Speaker 3: all in the one year, you start to really limit
Speaker 3: the impact of that liquidity and then on top of that,
Speaker 3: you have rates just started being cut now, as opposed
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, they were behind the curb and they
Speaker 3: are hiking.
Speaker 4: Now they're just starting to cut. Right. Trump is patting
Speaker 4: the table.
Speaker 3: He wants rates three points lower than that he gets
Speaker 3: usually what he once. He's going to replace the FED
Speaker 3: chair in a couple months from now. We'll probably be
Speaker 3: cutting all the way through next year. And if the
Speaker 3: US is cutting, that gives cover to China and every
Speaker 3: other central bank to start cutting on top of that.
Speaker 3: So certainly the cycle is intact.
Speaker 4: Intel has proven otherwise.
Speaker 3: But when you look at the macroeconomic picture, it looks
Speaker 3: like we can accelerate all the way through next year.
Speaker 2: What worries me about like and.
Speaker 5: The US dollar monetary policy situation is said, it feels
Speaker 5: like any gains we get in bitcoin from that are
Speaker 5: going to be offset by the price of my stake.
Speaker 8: At the supermarket increasing.
Speaker 2: And I feel like that way about like COVID. You
Speaker 2: know that COVID inflation period where it was like but no,
Speaker 2: but no.
Speaker 3: Right, So from twenty twenty to now they increased in
Speaker 3: US and two forty percent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and homes are up forty percent, gases.
Speaker 3: Of forty percent, oils of forty percent.
Speaker 4: Foods up thirty to forty percent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well bitcoins up what.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that percent so big point is
Speaker 4: much more sensitive to that liquidity.
Speaker 5: But I still feel like that the the the marginal
Speaker 5: demand from people trying to avoid inflation. Yeah, that that
Speaker 5: can that can be material. I just I hope that
Speaker 5: that's uh maybe maybe it's just uh rose colored or
Speaker 5: orange colored glasses of just hoping that like they don't
Speaker 5: blow up the system, because ultimately, if we think about
Speaker 5: it from a societal perspective, like we can't take what
Speaker 5: we have for granted. And uh, as much as we
Speaker 5: want to be like anarcho capitalists, the reality is that
Speaker 5: if if the system blows up, it's going to hurt
Speaker 5: a lot of people that had you know, they're not
Speaker 5: the ones who decided to go off the gold standard
Speaker 5: or anything like that. And so, uh, but I agree
Speaker 5: with you that we're entering into an easing things and
Speaker 5: if we think about bitcoin versus the dollar, they arguably
Speaker 5: should be increasing interest rates, not lowering them.
Speaker 3: At this point, stock markets, all time highs, low, unemployment, right,
Speaker 3: I would say, I mean one hundred percent. I remember
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight. I referenced that earlier and
Speaker 3: how I got hammered in that. And I remember them
Speaker 3: coming out with a billion dollar tart.
Speaker 4: Build and I'm like, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: No, and now seven hundred billions like nothing right part
Speaker 3: of me, and maybe it is insensitive is just like okay,
Speaker 3: just bring it now, right. But we did see in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight was we had massive asset price
Speaker 3: and it's not inflation, it's appreciation. When consumer prices stayed
Speaker 3: actually relatively low. So we could see actually, maybe it's
Speaker 3: hopeful thinking. But where bitcoin is that liquidy sponge and
Speaker 3: absorbs more of that asset price inflation, So maybe you
Speaker 3: don't see houses going up as much as you did
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight, So maybe houses stay down
Speaker 3: a little bit, maybe assets stay down little bit. Bitcoin
Speaker 3: absorbs more of that. Consumer prices could still say relatively low. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe that's that's hopeful thinking, and we'll see how that
Speaker 3: plays out. Let's jump into the last question because we're
Speaker 3: here in Washington, d C. My first time being here
Speaker 3: on the helm by the way in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: Talking about policy. So you referenced it sort of earlier
Speaker 3: with the A M L K y C. But you know,
Speaker 3: I was I was mentioned to you before we started recording.
Speaker 3: I think that we should sort of be trying to
Speaker 3: keep the government and check one of the finding fathers
Speaker 3: that intended the Constitution to be as opposed to working
Speaker 3: with them the past laws that allow us what to do.
Speaker 4: I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: You spent a lot of time with regulators in Texas
Speaker 3: and now here. What do you think is the sort
Speaker 3: of approach and how should we as bitcoorners be thinking
Speaker 3: about and working with with with government.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 5: So I think that first we have to kind of
Speaker 5: have some like North Star principles, right, Okay, we would
Speaker 5: never or support anything that undermines self custody.
Speaker 8: Running your own note mining, you know, whether it's at
Speaker 8: home or a large facility.
Speaker 5: And by the way, self custody whether you're a plub,
Speaker 5: you know individual, your family, or your.
Speaker 2: Church, or a giant mega corporation.
Speaker 5: That you know wants or you know, a bank that
Speaker 5: wants to be able to custody a bitcoin like, they
Speaker 5: should be free to do that for their clients and
Speaker 5: for themselves. And so I think that that focus on
Speaker 5: freedom like has to guide everything within that. And then
Speaker 5: there's questions of like, well do we what do we
Speaker 5: prioritize on a tactical level given the game of politics, right,
Speaker 5: And I think that we always want to be moving
Speaker 5: the ball down the field away from banning bitcoin. And
Speaker 5: so I feel like that's the strongest argument, for example,
Speaker 5: for the strategic Bitcoin reser, is that's one more thing
Speaker 5: where we get it, you know, ten yards down further field,
Speaker 5: where AOC or Gavin Newso or whatever Democrat gets elected
Speaker 5: as president in the year twenty thirty two after JD
Speaker 5: Vance's second term and they cheat again or something anyway,
Speaker 5: but that's get too political that yeah, they've got to undo,
Speaker 5: they've got to undo wins rather than score goals, right,
Speaker 5: And so I think that we also want to make
Speaker 5: sure that the debate is debating what is the value
Speaker 5: of bitcoin, like are we bullsh on bitcoin or not?
Speaker 5: Versus the debate of should we ban bitcoin or not?
Speaker 5: And so it's almost like a denial of service attack
Speaker 5: of like we want to advocate for policies proactively so
Speaker 5: that we keep them tied up and not keep them
Speaker 5: on their heels. Right, Right, there's there's a saying here
Speaker 5: in d C of if you're not at the table, you're.
Speaker 2: On the menu. And so you want to be in
Speaker 2: those rooms. Yeah, and you want to be.
Speaker 5: Zealously advocating for bitcoin and for the bitcoin community and
Speaker 5: for the whole ecosystem, because if you're not telling the story,
Speaker 5: your enemies are telling the story about you know, and
Speaker 5: they have right, They've they spent many years talking about
Speaker 5: the environmental devastation of bitcoin mining, all the criminal activity
Speaker 5: happening on bitcoin, all all of this fud that we
Speaker 5: have to push back on. Otherwise, if we take everything
Speaker 5: for granted, it's kind of like a metaphor of like
Speaker 5: another sports metaphor soccer name.
Speaker 2: Okay, so got to.
Speaker 5: Like him national team, like FIFA champions versus five year
Speaker 5: old like you know, kids soccer.
Speaker 2: And you could say, well, obviously the FIFA team's gonna win.
Speaker 5: They don't even need to play, and then you know,
Speaker 5: the kids score goals and then the kids win. Right,
Speaker 5: the FIFA team still has to go out on the
Speaker 5: field and kick the ball into the goal. It's not
Speaker 5: enough for them to sit on the bench and say, well,
Speaker 5: we're obviously better than them on paper, so we don't
Speaker 5: actually even need to play right. And so that's where
Speaker 5: I think like, even though we know bitcoin's going to succeed,
Speaker 5: that only happens by us doing things. It doesn't happen
Speaker 5: from us, like you know, just you know, taking cheap
Speaker 5: shots on Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're responsible to go build the world that we want.
Speaker 3: And I've challenged a lot of bigcoiners with that. You
Speaker 3: think you're just going to go hoddle and the whole
Speaker 3: world's going to get built for you and then you're
Speaker 3: going to emerge one day. It's like not going to
Speaker 3: happen that way.
Speaker 5: So or or they're free writing on the efforts of others,
Speaker 5: which I'm like, that's fine, Like, you know, I don't
Speaker 5: know that you want to tell your grandkids about it,
Speaker 5: but that's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, Pierre, we're going to wrap it
Speaker 3: up host a Bitcoin for Corporations. You talk about this
Speaker 3: all the time. New independent director at Strive Asset Management. Again,
Speaker 3: congratulations of that bitcoin bond co company. You don't have
Speaker 3: anything to announce on that yet, but we're going to
Speaker 3: keep an eye on that. Anything else people should be
Speaker 3: paying attention to.
Speaker 2: Uh, the Satoshi knacametoans too, of course.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I encourage everyone to go check that out and
Speaker 5: to just go down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's it. Thanks thanks for having me on Mark
Speaker 4: Cool