← Blockspace: AI & Bitcoin
Blockspace: AI & Bitcoin
Google's Quantum Bitcoin, Fold credit card, and Bitcoin Volatility Index
01:20:55
Google's new quantum paper shakes the blockchain world. We discuss the threat with experts, explore Fold’s new Bitcoin credit card, analyze Nokia’s $166M financial loss, and dive into Bitcoin volatility indices with Volmex Finance. Essential crypto insights for 2026.
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- [00:00]
Brian Harrington
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Colin
What's up y'?
- [00:06]
Brian Harrington
All?
- [00:06]
Colin
Welcome back to Block Space Live, brought to you by Clean Spark. Everyone start panicking because Google has a new paper on quantum risk to blockchains out and that will be our lead story for today. We had Alex Pruden on who was cited in that paper on Wednesday. We're going to have him back on Friday to talk about the the quantum threat, which at least conversation about it is ramping up. For our interviews today, we have got Brian Harrington, who is a bitcoin personal finance expert, on to talk about the current state of the bitcoin market and also his attempts to build a circular economy in Orange county and how that has been looped into bitcoin personal finance for yuppies and other young professionals. We've also got Will Reeves, CEO of Fold, on to talk about their crypto bitcoin credit card. And then we will move into a segment on how NACA posted a $166 million loss for their 2025 financials. No one saw that coming. Everyone saw coming. And it's not just them. It's the entire crypto and treasury landscape, by the way. Then for our final interview, we've got Cole Kennelly, the CEO of the Volmex finance indices provider, to talk about bitcoin and crypto indices for volatility, why they matter and why they are seeing increasing adoption. And to close it out, Coinshares just went public today on the NASDAQ via Spock. That will be our final story.
- [01:32]
Charlie
Block Space goes live Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern featuring quick hits on the latest in bitcoin mining, AI, emerging tech. Make sure to like and subscribe. Hit the bell if you're on YouTube so you get notified when we go live. This stream is a podcast shortly after we wrap up. You can find it anywhere. Podcasts are streamed Apple, Spotify, rss. If you like what you hear here, you will love our newsletter goes out once or twice a week. You can get all of the hottest and deep dives. Often written by Colin or myself. Lastly, we have a conference that's in just over two weeks. It's in New York City for bitcoin developers and bitcoin investors. That conference is up next April 16th in New York City at the Time Center. For more information and tickets go to opnext.dev o pnext.dev this show is brought to you by CleanSpark Ticker CLSK on Nasdaq. More on them later on in the show. Let's kick it off. Colin with some Oracle news followers.
- [02:39]
Will Reeves
Water.
- [02:39]
Colin
Yeah, it's the other big thing. Not the quantum thing, the other big thing that's going to destroy everything AI. And you, you picked out a pretty interesting headline here and one that's not super surprising, Charlie, but maybe a little bit surprising considering it is one of the big movers within AI and that is Oracle laying off substantial number of folks.
- [03:01]
Charlie
Oracle, as per this Fox Business article, is laying off up to 30,000 employees. Emails went out, hit the timeline 6am yesterday. Now, Oracle was one of like the big companies putting billions and billions into AI data centers, one of the largest spenders and largest growers of like the hyperscaler companies. And what is happening? They're laying off workers. The irony here is like these are not necessarily the data center workers. These are just workers that they are laying off primarily, as they say, because of AI. Now, the first big, the first thing to hit was the block layoffs. 40 or 40. 40% of the the work of the block workforce a couple of weeks ago, which we reported on. This is 30,000.
- [03:54]
Colin
This is as a percentage of the actual company. Blocks was more and, but it was kind of small potatoes compared to this. I mean, for context, Oracle employees roughly 162,000 people globally. So this is almost a fourth of its workforce that it's axing here. And in that number, 18,000 are customer support specialists, 29,000 are consulting experts. I would imagine the customer support specialists were especially cold in this round of layoffs. But what's interesting about this is this headline is coming alongside this other headline from another AI giant which is OpenAI raising a record 122 billion as their revenue crosses 2 billion per month. So kind of a tale of two companies on the AI sector for today on our Wednesday livestream. And I guess it also bears noting that just because you're raising doesn't mean that you aren't going to cut staff.
- [04:53]
Charlie
Right.
- [04:53]
Colin
I mean, we saw Blocks share price soar after they announced firing almost half of their workforce because investors and traders saw that as a positive sign for future income and revenue generation. So all in all, just, you know, another day in the trenches looking at how AI is reshaping our lives in very fun ways. Yeah, you're one of those folks who's got an axe. And our heart goes out to all those people.
- [05:21]
Charlie
Yeah, you'll just have to set up your clodbot to gamble to generational wealth by trading on Poly Market Alpha. But until you do that, you may figure out a different place to store your money. Rather than bitcoin, because apparently, Colin, bitcoin is cooked.
- [05:42]
Colin
Bitcoin's cooked.
- [05:43]
Will Reeves
Right?
- [05:43]
Colin
This is what I was told this week is that Google said bitcoin's over, quantum is coming sooner rather than later. That being said, probably, I mean, you've been following this more than I have, Charlie. One of the more seminal research papers here that Google released this week. Can you give us a rundown of what the paper was, what it said, and who was involved in it?
- [06:06]
Charlie
Yeah. So Google dropped a very important research paper this week on quantum, saying that they think it's closer, they have reason to believe it's closer, and that research towards possibly building a quantum computer is advancing quickly. They float 20, 29 as a time, as a year that they want to be fully up and running for in preparation for quantum computer. The funny thing is we had Alex Pruden of Project 11, CEO of Project 11, like the Bitcoin quantum research outfit, on this live stream on Monday, hoping that this paper would drop so he could talk about it. But now that it's dropped, he's coming back on on Friday to review it. So what does the paper actually say? There is no way I can fully describe what the paper says, but basically there is this big theoretical problem of quantum computers. Instead of using bits, they use qubits. And they. And we thought that in order to break Bitcoin's cryptography, we would need billions of qubits. And the paper basically says they have, on a much quicker timeline than expected, reduced the requirement for qubits down to like 500,000. Now that's getting close to so. So we have this like, theoretical problem of like, we don't know how to solve these algorithms or build these computer with a certain number of qubits. And it's saying, well, we're making progress on that, but the real issue is, is that this is all theoretical. We need to then build a quantum computer and then we have this problem called decoherence. So we can have all these bits and we can have the numbers and everything. But if the computer is unstable, because a lot of the quantum computing challenge relies on, like, stability, does the computer actually, like, stay online and produce the right answer? And that is a big question. And that's where the critics come in. Basically, of course, the critiques are much more nuanced and the situation is much more nuanced than this. But basically people are saying, okay, so you're getting close to solving it theoretically. You still have made no progress at all, really, on solving it practically, because if we want to pull up this tweet from critic Alex B. He basically says, you know, we were able to entangle, say, 96 qubits for a brief amount of time, like an immaterial amount of time. And what do we need? Oh, we only need 500,000 of them. Now, I'm vastly oversimplifying this. I would recommend, if you want a more like another podcast format, I produce three long form episodes on our YouTube channel on Quantum that you should go watch. But basically you have this, you have this significant theoretical advancement and then you have critics who say, but that has yet to cross into practical implementation towards territory on that we have Nick Carter, who's kind of at the center of this as it relates to Bitcoin. Nick Carter describes this as a widening Overton window. So, you know, used to say, critics used to say, well, quantum computing is fictional technology. Okay, well now quantum computing might be 20 or 30 years away. There's no urgency to do anything. Quantum's not a problem. And now we're at this point, he says quantum might be a problem that will just adapt when it gets closer.
- [09:58]
Brian Harrington
So.
- [09:58]
Charlie
And he provides what he thinks are the future widening Overton window milestones. This is a topic we will cover. There is no way I'm going to make everyone happy in my treatment of this topic. But basically this was a story that crossed the chasm outside of just crypto, because this relates to elliptic curve cryptography and cryptography in general on like, how blockchains are secured. So there are a number of people talking about solutions and what we can do, and there's proposals in Bitcoin and there's critiques over the urgency and feasibility of these proposals. And this is a conversation which will go on for a long time. We will have CEO of Project 11, Alex Pruden, on Friday to talk about this. He was cited, actually Project 11, the company was cited throughout the Google research paper, as the Google research paper was focused primarily on how the. On the quantum risk to blockchains particularly. So there's your two minute summary. Colin. Thoughts?
- [11:19]
Colin
Really good breakdown. First of all, I always love listening to you talk about these things because I think you do a good job of really distilling the kernels of truth that matters because this is a topic that is galactic in scope for most people. And I think it's hard to really wrestle with just a few things. One, I don't think anyone can model this risk properly. I think that's part of the problem, that, that the gulf of understanding and rather the Gulf of fear between the naysayers and the doomers on the quantum front I think can be explained with one side saying this is all fantasy science, this is not coming anytime soon. The other side saying you don't actually know that for sure. Because exponential increases in research and in and in and in the practice of actually building a quantum computer could eventually lead us to a point where it comes much quicker than not. I think that's partially Nick Carter's point. One of the things I really like about the paper is that it distinguishes between threats for Bitcoin and threats for Ethereum and other blockchains. Coindesk had a good write up on it and I've seen Nick talk about how Ethereum is actually being a little more proactive on this front to solve this problem, which doesn't surprise me given the Ethereum foundation still holds a very, it holds a very hands on role for Ethereum's development. And it's going Ethereum, the project is going to steer in whatever direction that the Ethereum foundation turns the wheel. But one thing that it pointed out is that Ethereum is, there's the base chain and there are all These apps, layer twos, DeFi applications built on top of it with Ethereum smart contracts. And that is a whole other consideration. Ethereum can upgrade, but everything built on top of it also has to upgrade to spec to solve for its own vulnerabilities to a quantum computing attack. That's a problem that Bitcoin doesn't really have. But the problem that Bitcoin does have is that development and consensus move very slowly. And I think that's part of the concern with this is if we do get a quantum computer, and let's say on an accelerated timeline, it hits in five years, we need to be thinking about upgrading now because other upgrades like Taproot took multiple years to actually come to fruition. And I do appreciate that argument because I do think that Bitcoin technical development tends to be a little more conservative. And it does seem like now we might as well get our ducks in a row so that we have something ready rather than being caught flat footed once this thing comes.
- [13:47]
Charlie
So yeah, this really, I would say the core of the, the, the disagreement is about timeline. There are people who say these are entirely fictitious, you know, machines. But it, most people say on a long enough timeline will develop types of quantum computers. This really becomes a. Can Bitcoin coordinate a change before a quantum computer emerges? Is that timeline 30 years or three years? And that is really the core of the Argument and to coordinate a change requires that we have five more consensus argument discussions. And if we want to compare Taproot, the most previous software for bitcoin, that was a comparatively uncontroversial change to bitcoin and it took years. Now, with incentive, I'm certain we can move pretty quickly. But the, this is, this is a really fun topic to cover just because, like, you have really smart people on every side and, and they all disagree with each other. They all disagree with each other. So it's like perfect fodder. We can bring on smart people from of both sides. So anyway, enough about Quantum because bitcoin is still not dead. It's at $69,000. It, you know, we'll have to postpone its death for tomorrow. In the meantime, in the meantime, we
- [15:14]
Colin
will get Brian Harrington, California's favorite bitcoin evangelist, on the stage to tell us what he's been up to and his thoughts on the current state of the market. Brian, how you doing, man?
- [15:24]
Charlie
Welcome to you. What's up, guys?
- [15:26]
Brian Harrington
Cheers. I have to say off the top, I've been a block space Stan since the very beginning. So seeing the live show and being here, I've. I feel like I've wanted to see this for a few, a long time. So I'm happy to be here.
- [15:39]
Colin
Really, really happy to hear that, Brian. Appreciate you, your kind words and for following the show. Yeah, we're happy to get you on, man. We've known each other for a while. You've done a lot of cool things in the space and I'm going to throw you a bit of a curveball because I didn't say, I didn't tell you this when we were doing prep, but since we did just talk about quantum computing as a fervent bitcoiner and a guy who I think kind of represents the lay bitcoin holder and at least the more maximalist camp of wanting bitcoin to flourish and become more of a mainstay in everyday commerce and finance. What's your take on the quantum FUD or the quantum threat? And how do you feel about the current level of discourse and the preparation from the bitcoin development community for Q Day?
- [16:22]
Brian Harrington
I have two thoughts. Number one, canceling Nick Carter was the dumbest thing that bitcoiners have ever done, ever. And that started to turn two things. Having coffee with UDI and then watching them cancel Nick Carter was the beginning of the end of me going from bitcoin maximalist to reformed bitcoin maximus. All right. And so that's one. And that was just a super dumb move. Number two, my reaction is at least this being like a per address issue is where I'm resting right now with my understanding of like it will be get figured out and each person can move on their own kind of timeframe. And also just because we're throwing curve balls, I don't believe in self custody anymore. I don't think it matters. I think it's dumb. And so I believe that fidelity is going to figure it out for me because I hold all my bitcoin at fidelity.
- [17:21]
Colin
Okay, I want to unpack that actually before I get to my technical first question. You no longer believe in self custody. What inspired that change? Or can you unpack that a little bit for us? Like why are you so.
- [17:36]
Brian Harrington
Because here's the thing. So I first bought Bitcoin in 2015. I first met a bitcoiner in real life off moving Twitter networking into in person networking in 2017. And then in 2019 like I started working for bitcoin startups. I worked for Bitcoin startups in 2019 until 2025. Guys, when we started this as just loudmouth libertarians on the Internet with no kids and no houses and fix the money, fix the world, the volatility didn't matter because we were changing the world. And I still believe we are changing the world. But now bitcoin has won and is being talked about in the highest levels of power in the country or and when I say has won, it has reached an incredible new level. Bitcoin is at a new level. Everyone needs to blank slate the way that they used to think about the. We used to really pride ourselves on game theory around here, guys. You remember that? We used to really pride ourselves on game theory. Okay. We lost that somewhere along the way and we now suck. We suck at explaining what's happening in the real world. And we keep pounding the table on old talking points. Even you calling me today being like, oh yeah, Brian, he's the Orange county circular economy guy. Absolutely correct. I'm super proud of my branding from back then and I really appreciate the California like bitcoin event. Absolutely. I worked really hard on establishing that that's not what I'm doing right now anymore because that has evolved into the new thing. And how that ties back to self custody is, guys, we don't need any of the dinky bitcoin fintech companies anymore that we all know and love. Guys, Fidelity has on chain bitcoin accounts. Banks are adding on chain bitcoin accounts. Guys, Stablecoins beat Bitcoin for payments Cash app. I sent you this tweet. Put it on the screen. I DM'd it to you. I asked Dorsey about Square terminal taking Sats in 2023 and he said he didn't know what the status of it was. Why did they just launch it now? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
- [19:43]
Colin
Damn, man, I. I didn't even need any coffee. I should have just had. I. I just need to have Brian as my alarm clock waking me up in the morning. Charlie.
- [19:49]
Charlie
Yeah, I'm awake. I'm awake. We have a great comment in the. We have this great comment in this stream. Bold. He had to put that down the matcha latte to say that. So. Okay, so Brian. Okay, I'm with you. I hear what you're saying. I see your angle here. What does the bitcoin economy look like these days? Given the views you just expressed and this new regime we're in? What does a bitcoin economy look like?
- [20:18]
Brian Harrington
Yeah, Bitcoin. So here's my broad take. My broad take is that everyone in bitcoin and crypto is going to be a little bit right and a little bit wrong. And they're going to get a little bit of their investments right and a little bit of their investments wrong. Stable coins are going to replace the ACH network. That's stupid. That dollars only move Monday through Friday. That's dumb. Okay, so stablecoins replace the ACH network. Bitcoin replaces the bond like market. Everything about Saylor and STRC and digital credit, all that stuff is directionally correct. I have a slight issue with their most recent announcement because they're batching things too quickly and people can't catch up. And so there's a little bit of a concentration risk if even guys like Chamath can't keep up with Saylor. There's an issue there. Okay, but again, sticking at the broad picture, Stablecoins replace the ACH network. Bitcoin replaces the debt market. If bitcoin preferred beat United States Treasuries, then people start to en masse, move out of that. That is bitcoin beating fiat money. That's ripping the guts out of the fiat money network. Okay? And then number three, the crypto people will be a little bit right because stocks will move on chain. Okay. Nasdaq itself is going to go 24 5, then it's going to go 24 7. Hopefully we get it to where we can turn a key and my mortgage provider can know. Here's how much money I have and here's how much stocks I have. Okay, so that's broad picture what it looks like. So what does that mean for how the bitcoin economy, the bitcoin economy guys I Talked to on YouTube, I've been talking specifically to 35 to 55 year old affluent bitcoin holders. Okay. I like try to say that every video to hyper niche down they've been calling me dude and being really honest. Here's another thing. Talking about your bitcoin finances is good to talk about with other people. That was a dumb talking point to like not talk to it about other people. So because you need to talk to other people about it. Especially because what we're trying to do is really hard. We're trying to advance a philosophy and replace fiat money at the same time that we're trying to like become financially like independent. All right, so they've been calling me dude and what does it look like right now? It looks like sitting on your long term position but then really ramping up your income. Okay. Because I just don't buy the 4% rule and drawing down off of your bitcoin. I don't think that's going to work for the majority of people because you don't know when you're going to get laid off. You don't know like how, you don't know if you're going to have kids or if you're going to want a new house or like just life doesn't work like that, dude. You can't project out that far. So there's not build up your stack and then draw down off your stack. There's multiple things and income helps you do that. I've been a real estate investor alongside bitcoin almost the entire way through and I it took till now to realize that like I have felt bitcoin volatility different than other people, different than the guy that has 8 bitcoin and nothing else. I never was that guy. I always had something else going along with it. And so those people are, are hyper, hyper generally not good right now, man. They're not good. They're tired and it's going to take climbing the mountain again to all time highs. And people need to do something differently with their personal finances.
- [23:23]
Colin
Brian, a lot of ways that we can take this. And I'm going to pluck out a few things that you said here that I think worth mentioning. First of all, the whole idea about bitcoin bonds replacing U.S. treasuries, stocks moving on chain things like that all that sounds really bullish. And then you hit us with the guy who has 8 bitcoin exposure and nothing else absolutely bleeding right now with bitcoin almost down 50% from its all time high. Then you mentioned about being a reformed maximalist. I love that. The kind of bitcoin maximalist reformation. We're eschewing the high priest of the bitcoin Vernac or Volgate and we're moving back towards this place where we're a little bit less rabid about some of those preconceived notions and beliefs. Right. But all of that to me shows that like you have a more mature view of where we are with bitcoin and where bitcoin is headed rather than if you know, you were an all in maxi where everything's good for bitcoin and you're always hyper bullish. The reason I bring that up kind of for maybe a closing question, here you have this tweet where you say, for what it's worth, you can put me in the camp that believes we go lower. Why do you feel that right now? What's making you the most bearish and what is it going to take for you to flip from bear to bull on this point?
- [24:40]
Brian Harrington
Yeah. So what's putting me there is everything I just said, like all, everything that people like heard me say this morning. And it's being able to. I, I've personally been trying to think about my household finances in terms of like quarters more than like months anymore. And I've been trying to. And it's just like I really, I kind of buy. I bought. If you need a talking point, like I really buy the talking point about just like the midterms I got by the talking point of just like things are just generally not healthy. Generally people don't know what's going to happen. AI. You can't project what's going to happen. And when I just think about just the regular millionaire, like the regular non bitcoin millionaire, they're just not like they're choosing, they're structurally choosing to hold money in the s and P500 instead of Bitcoin, I think that's the competition more and more, I believe The S&P 500 and Bitcoin, it's just, it's just a choice. It's just a political choice. Like what? And a trust choice. Just which one do you like? Where do you hold your money? Like the Old World Index Fund or the New World Index Fund. And I think just the regular person in the United States doesn't know what to do. They are nervous about all the change happening in the world and they're going to stick with the old way of doing things and because there is no real forcing function forcing them to do anything fancy. And so I kind of buy the like it just does its thing and treads along and then sweeps the lows again because of the election.
- [26:16]
Colin
Charlie, you have any lightning round closing questions or
- [26:23]
Charlie
no bitcoin prediction for the end of the year? Brian, go hot seat.
- [26:29]
Brian Harrington
I mean 91,000.
- [26:32]
Colin
Love it.
- [26:33]
Charlie
I come back.
- [26:33]
Colin
Hey man, I'd take that. Give that to me every day, brother.
- [26:40]
Charlie
We'll see. Yeah, we won't hold you to it, Brian. Thanks.
- [26:43]
Brian Harrington
It won't do all time high. Yeah, it won't. It won't do all time high this year. It's gonna go low again. 60 or under in October or November and then yeah, you'd be lucky if it's back to 90.
- [26:56]
Charlie
Book it y'.
- [26:56]
Will Reeves
All.
- [26:57]
Colin
Brian.
- [27:01]
Brian Harrington
See you guys later.
- [27:05]
Charlie
I love Brian. Longtime friend of the show, close friend of block space. Speaking of friends of block space, let's roll that Clean Spark ad. This show is brought to you by CleanSpark NASDAQ ticker CLSK we are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner.
- [27:23]
Will Reeves
A publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate powered entirely by self operated infrastructure across four states. This is our proof of work. We are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and bitcoin@cleanspark.com
- [27:51]
Charlie
Alrighty now we got our second guest of the stream. Let's bring on up our boy, Will Reeves. Will, welcome to the show.
- [28:02]
Will Reeves
What's up guys? It's good to be here.
- [28:05]
Colin
Always good to talk to you man. Thanks for joining.
- [28:08]
Charlie
Yeah. So long time fold user here. Really long time fold user I guess. And you guys have a number of things coming out. Rolling out a credit card right now and it'd just be good to catch up on what fold's up to. Yeah, you put out a thread on the credit card last week. Give me the tldr.
- [28:31]
Will Reeves
So Charlie, I think you've been through with fold for every era of fold as we've evolved from the early days of, hey, you have bitcoin. Let's at least allow you to buy things in the, in the real world through gift cards. Then we went to the reward turning into bitcoin rewards. Then we added the checking account and debit card and finally we have our credit card out and you know, really the progression of this has been a little bit about a personal journey of going from how can I accumulate Bitcoin in every way possible to how can I begin living with bitcoin as a part of my life, not. Not just a asset for my savings, for something that's real in everyday life, for bills, for managing expenses, all of that. And really, I think this new release that we just had is kind of the culmination of making Fold into a kind of a comprehensive platform for managing your dollars and your Bitcoin in one place. And the credit card, I think, has been the number one request and feature for six years. And it's been a thing that we've been trying to build for equally as long.
- [29:42]
Charlie
Yeah, I don't pretend to really understand fintech or traditional regulatory structures. Okay, why haven't I seen a bitcoin rewards credit card half a decade ago? Maybe there was, but I didn't really know it existed. What took so long? Why is this hard to do?
- [30:05]
Colin
Is it a demand problem? Will, that's the first thing that I can think of, like going back to the half a decade, or was it more like Charlie said, structural with the regulations?
- [30:13]
Will Reeves
Half a decade actually puts us pretty much at the BlockFi credit card. So this whole category was created fold. First partner with Visa, first bitcoin company that Visa ever partnered with. And we brought the Bitcoin rewards debit card to market. Now we actually wanted to bring a credit card to market, but a debit card, essentially what that does is it shrinks the amount of players that need to be involved from probably five or six to two, two or three. And so the debit card is just simply a easier way because you have less coordination issues with kind of traditional financial institutions you have to manage. So the credit card just expands that complexity dramatically and it becomes very susceptible to whatever Bitcoin's doing in the macro environment, whatever crypto company has imploded now, that's scaring everybody off. So I'd say the issue was not demand, because if you look at the Bitcoin rewards credit card from BlockFi, it was one of the fastest growing credit card programs ever. At Visa, in the first year, I believe they had nearly 100,000 cardholders. They were doing three or four billion dollars in volume in that year, and it was still not totally available to everyone who wanted it. So not demand, it is purely a reflection of the amount of reliance you need to have on the traditional financial system is so much that any change of sentiment on Bitcoin, any new news thing, could really Topple the project. And I know probably a dozen projects that tried to bring a Bitcoin rewards credit card to market and died on the journey. Because it's just simply a lot of it's out of your control.
- [32:07]
Colin
When you say, oh, sorry Charlie, can I hop in here? When you say out of your control, an under the hood question here Will. And if I'm understanding how these rewards credit cards work, it's like airline miles or anything else where it's basically a percentage of the transaction fee is kicked back to the user and in whatever form that is, it could be airline miles. In this case it's Bitcoin. Sometimes it's credit at a store like Home Depot or something like that. When, when fold and when other crypto companies are working with like Visa to roll something like this out, is there a template where you basically say we want to do this reward percentage and kickback, Is it more bespoke? Like how much control do you have over fine tuning these offerings for the fold credit card specifically?
- [32:51]
Will Reeves
There's a few, there's a few routes that you can go here that, that will have an effect on the rewards that you're having. You can build one of these totally from scratch. And there what you're keeping the economics but at the end of the time, at the end of the day, you're bringing on a bunch of complexity that may be outside of your, your expertise. There's others that you totally wholesale let another company run your program. And that's true of, you know, if you look at the airline miles, the airlines, none of us national airlines are profitable if you remove the revenue from credit cards that are driven to those airlines. So if you don't have credit card airline mile rewards, you don't have airlines, you will, you will be, you will have a nationalized airline system if that were to go away. And so you can put these together in all sorts of ways. But it all comes down to interchange. And so interchange is essentially the feature fee that Visa is charging merchants to accept Visa cards. A lot of regulations have come through to make it more competitive and more open to more cards entering the market, new payment systems. But ultimately, if you're talking about a credit card top line interchange from each individual transaction is going to be about 2 to 2.3%. And in the middle of that you're going to have banks taking a cut, rewards being paid out of that. And so it gets tight, it's payments. Everyone's playing for bips.
- [34:28]
Charlie
So you know, it's funny, like a credit card like you, you're like the end user is largely retail. I think people will interpret this as like a retail product announcement. But what I'm hearing you say is that this may have like bigger implications for like just fintech finance banks, payment process overall. Can you speak to a bit about that? I kind of understand what the retail user, what they get out of it. Does this change the game at all? How's fold strategy evolved here? What are your thoughts?
- [35:02]
Will Reeves
The story that's happening right now, if you take both the warming up of traditional financial institutions to Bitcoin at the same time, you know there are schisms within traditional finance, not just between traditional finance and Bitcoin. And so Bitcoin's actually leveraging some of the schisms in traditional finance. And a good example of this is cards. So typically when you start a card program, you need a sponsor bank, which is an accredited bank in the US that's sponsoring your program. And the reason is because you need to have someone custodying the dollars at some point. Point. Now what happens when you have Bitcoin and stable coins that can have a dollar in value account that is separate from a bank? Now you see Visa is looking and saying, hey, we're giving away 20 to 30% of our interchange from their network to a bank. But stable coins and Bitcoin provide a pathway that we don't have to do that anymore. And so what you're seeing internationally first and then you're going to see it come to the US is stablecoin and Bitcoin wallets disintermediate, disintermediating the need to have a bank tied to each one of these programs, which would vastly open up Visa network, make it far more competitive, because the primary bottleneck is bank partnerships. So if you remove that need and you can just have your stablecoin and Bitcoin wallet, this opens up the field tremendously. And we're not there yet, but it's already happening internationally where the sponsor bank environment is far less developed.
- [36:46]
Charlie
So credit card pretty cool. But we've got you here in the hot seat and I'm gonna toss it to Colin because if you can stay with us, Will we like to touch on the latest in the Bitcoin treasury narrative.
- [37:05]
Will Reeves
There we go.
- [37:05]
Colin
All right, Charlie's making me the bad guy. Charlie's making me the bad guy here. I have to throw the hard ball. All right, so we gotta address this because this is a sector wide, you know, trend at this point. Your Bitcoin treasury dropped from like 1527 BTC at year end to about 827 BTC by mid March. Can you give us a rundown of this decision and how y' all are approaching in capital management and as we see Bitcoin kind of treading in this 60-70k range?
- [37:35]
Will Reeves
Yeah, great question. So fold from the beginning, since 2019, we have been a operating company delivering, you know, bitcoin financial services. That is what we're doing. That is our vision. That's the most important thing to us. We have built a Treasury that has the explicit purpose of driving forward that operating company, not the reverse. The company doesn't exist just to stack Bitcoin, although we do. We are planning to get it so that we can do that and we will do that in the future. But the treasury supports the operating company first and foremost. And so I think from the very top level, there's a kind of a category misalignment. There's this whole treasury narrative of companies exclusively dedicated to accumulating Bitcoin to hold it forever. And there's fold. And we've always been related to the full treasury story, even though we haven't been that way and we haven't really acted like it as well. So when we looked at this year, we are launching our credit card, our full banking. Rails and Bitcoin Exchange and Wallet are getting revamped. We have our Bitcoin bonus program where we're powering steak and shakes and platforms, employee bonus program paid out Bitcoin. We have a lot of stuff going on and a lot of stuff that we need to scale. This credit card program is going to a million cardholders. We need to scale to that. And so we look at our treasury as a resource to doing so. And so when we looked at 26 as the main year of scaling the operating company, with all of these milestones and catalysts coming down the pipe, we wanted to make sure we were in a position to, to support that. And so we did two things. We said, number one, we want to remove any operating constraints on the company. And anytime you have debt on the company's balance sheet, you are subject to covenants, operating constraints and what that means. Anytime I want to do something, even if it is the right thing to do, I need to go get permission from someone else. That slows down our ability to operate, make decisions. And so first we said, we're going to remove the debt from the company so that we don't have any more operating constraints on the business because we need to make the. We need to Prioritize the operating company first. So number one, operational freedom. The second was to remove all of the debt overhang from our balance sheet. We looked at where FLD is valued today and where Bitcoin is valued and it's in my belief that fld has a 10x in front of it. Bitcoin, I believe has, I'm very optimistic and has upside, but I don't see a 10x in the, in the immediate future. And so we are prioritizing, looking at the dislocation between the equity value of the operating company and our bitcoin. And so we made the decision to sell some of the bitcoin. We sold 200 bitcoin to remove all debt from the company. And the other 500 bitcoin was just locked in a convert. So that was an option for fold to acquire 500 bitcoin in the future. Because FLD was so far out of the money and it had operating constraints, we said, hey, we're going to close that note down, we can revisit it, we can open it one later. But right now let's clear the decks, full operational freedom and let's put our money where our mouth is, literally, and put some of this bitcoin to work on what we believe is the biggest opportunity for the company, which is continuing to ship.
- [41:13]
Colin
Having the 500 Bitcoin locked in the convert or as collateral for the convert. I'm not totally sure about the capital structure. That's really interesting to me and I think it's an example of the ways in which having Bitcoin on your balance sheet can be used to supercharge certain financial decisions or capital management, and in this case being used to extinguish some of that debt. I've got one last question and then I'll throw it to Charlie for a closer will. When you all went public, I believe you all started trading in February of last year. Am I remembering that correctly?
- [41:43]
Will Reeves
Yeah, good memory.
- [41:45]
Colin
So we were just at the cusp of paper bitcoin summer. I mean, we were not even in spring yet, Right. But there is this kind of Cambrian explosion of bitcoin treasury companies and all of this fundraising that was going on, just eye popping valuations and fundraising day in and day out during the spring and summer of 2025. And you kind of mentioned that Fold was caught in the crossfire here as a bitcoin operating company, first with actual revenues and business lines, then with the treasury on the back end. We're now starting to see this flip where a lot of these Treasury Companies are now coming out and saying, we're not a Treasury company strictly speaking anymore. We're actually a bitcoin operating business. We're building out these revenue generating business lines and then the treasury is just a sweetener. Can you speak to, I mean, I know you can't speak for these companies, but what paths do you actually see for a lot of these companies to actually build out those operating businesses? Like what, what opportunities exist for these treasury company cohorts? Do you think they're going to be able to pull this off?
- [42:47]
Will Reeves
You know, it's, it's, it was an inevitability that we would end up in this place. And so fold launched operating company. Yes, we had a Treasury, but the treasury was there to serve the business. And so yeah, we would take advantage of opportunities to bring more Bitcoin on the balance sheet to serve the business, but not just for bitcoin for its own sake. We launched, we were actually the first out into the public markets and then a successive paper bitcoin summer, Cambrian explosion happened, all exclusively focused on the treasury angles. We knew that the story would eventually come back to the operating company. Frankly, I am surprised it only took six months for the narrative to have such a drastic shift. But here we are and I would say it is very, very difficult. It's very, it's very easy to find companies that have developed, created great businesses, that have built great Treasuries. Just go look at Apple, go look at any of the other. But going the other way is very rare to find a company with a big treasury that then goes and acquires and continues great businesses. And so this is where we're going to see this kind of magic wand of hey, don't worry, we will get an operating business. That hand wave is an exceptionally difficult effort where history is not on your side. And I expect some will emerge having solved it, because I think there's, there, I believe there are some smart people at the helm of some of the companies out there, but I think the vast majority are doing this out of pure survival as a narrative. And I don't think it is going to be successful for the majority, although I wish them a tremendous amount of luck. And right now I think we're really at the point where all these experiments are being launched. You can look at all the major treasury companies and now you can see the beginnings of what they are turning into their operating company.
- [44:48]
Charlie
Last question. So a lot of bitcoiners pontificate endlessly about how to get off Fiat and I hadn't Some have done things like take out credit cards to go buy bitcoin again, do your own risk. And they've been successful and unsuccessful over the years. But I hadn't considered because in your tweet thread, back to the credit card, your tweet thread, you make an interesting point where through this line of credit you kind of accomplish a similar get off fiat thing. That's kind of a novel idea to me. I invite you to riff on this. What are your thoughts on leveraging financial instruments like this to get off fiat?
- [45:37]
Will Reeves
First off, just a single kind of scroll on bitcoin, Twitter or Nostr, you're going to see an endless amount of strategies that people deploy. And it ranges from the dead simple IDCA, 10 bucks a day, to very complex instruments to reduce reliance on fiat and accumulate more Bitcoin. I'm sitting here, we got a company I'm running, pretty busy. I have a kid, a 3 year old. I have another daughter on the way very soon, too much going on. So what I optimize for is what is the most simple way for me to optimize for bitcoin exposure that keeps my family safe and headaches and anxieties
- [46:20]
Brian Harrington
out of the way.
- [46:21]
Will Reeves
So that means no margin calls. I can't have any of that. That means no complicated tax work. And so what I use fold for, so what I, you know, fold is, allows me to, I get paid. My direct deposit paycheck comes into fold. I convert most of that into bitcoin immediately. That gives me a small buffer of cash that I, that I optimize to make sure I have enough breathing room so we can take care of any unexpected issues, despite volatility. But most of it's going to bitcoin. And then I'm spending on my credit card or my debit card to buy groceries, pay bills, all of that, all of which I'm earning rewards, rewards. And the way the full bitcoin credit card works is that the more bitcoin you buy with us, the higher your reward rate goes. So because I'm converting most of my paycheck, you know, I'm getting serious Rewards, I'm getting 3% back on, on my spending and then we get to the end of the month and I need to pay that balance off and I am allergic to interest and I don't want to pay interest at all. And that's a beautiful novelty about the unsecured credit card is that you, you don't pay interest for that 30 day period. So I'll look at where the Bitcoin is at where I converted my paycheck. And if I'm above my cost basis, meaning I have a profit on that bitcoin, typically I'll use some of or all of that bitcoin to then pay off the credit card bill. Yes, there's a taxable event, but it's maximum of one per month. And it's very easy now with the tax software to just load that in because it has what I bought the bitcoin for and then what I sold it for. It's all very simple. And so in that case, when I'm selling bitcoin at a profit, I not only get an extra half a percent back on my spending, which takes my rewards three and a half percent, but I now have increased my purchasing power because I've used bitcoin at a, at a, at a, at a profit. Now there's some tax that's taken out of that, but that's only on the gain. If my bitcoin is underwater at that point, I'll typically dip into the Fiat side savings that I have to pay off the bill. That way I can remain a hold of the bitcoin that I have now. I forego the extra rewards. But ultimately that means that at any given time my exposure to Fiat is, you know, 2015 to 20% of my kind of liquid house, you know, financial cash management that I have. And ultimately over these years it's led to a situation where never really overextended myself. I don't buy bitcoin on credit. I don't, don't, I don't quite go there. But it leads to a way, a very low risk, very low headache way of making sure you're maximally exposed to bitcoin. Because we know that the moves, the moves to the upside on bitcoin, they don't happen over months. They really happen in these kind of compression suppressed periods of time where if you miss it, you miss it. And that could be a week's time period where you just don't have the right exposure. And I've missed it too many times in the past. And so this, this allows me to live with my family, not piss them off, keep them around and you know, get, get, get my bitcoin as well.
- [49:35]
Charlie
Will Reeves, thank you for hopping on the show. Look forward to following the full story over the years as you roll out the credit card and yeah, best of luck in your endeavors. Thanks for coming on the show.
- [49:51]
Will Reeves
Thanks guys. Always good to hang and look forward to more. We got, we got more stuff coming that I'll jump on and, and hopefully you can bring some more hard bowls. That was, that was, you know, that was manageable.
- [50:02]
Charlie
The second one, the second date, we'll throw some more hard bowls.
- [50:06]
Colin
We'll throw a curve and then a hard ball. Keep you on your. Appreciate you. Will, thanks for joining, man.
- [50:10]
Charlie
Thanks, Will.
- [50:11]
Colin
We have Cole Kennelly coming up soon. But before we do that, we have our second news story of the day. I'll try to be somewhat quick on this one. So I don't want to beat a dead horse, or rather beat a dead frog, that is. Nakamoto reports a $166.2 million loss on the fair value of its Bitcoin in 2025. And it sold 284 Bitcoin in March. So kind of continuing that thread that we talked about with fold of some of these companies starting to invest themselves with their bitcoin holdings. So I'm going to go ahead and get the filing up here because there's some, there's some interesting stuff in this filing and it looks like I've lost my place, so. Oh, here we go.
- [50:56]
Charlie
Yeah, because these filings are big. We, you know, this is the value we provide as we clot our way through the four the 10Ks for you.
- [51:04]
Colin
So a few headline notes for this. Driving that loss in the fair value of their bitcoin. Bitcoin fell from a weighted average purchase price for knockout of 118,171 in 2025 to 87,519 at year's end, just down even more than that. So if they were booking this loss today, you know, we're roughly at 68,000 right now. It would be even more. And at the end of 2025, Nakahold held 5,304 42 bitcoin on its balance sheet, but it has tapered off some of that. It sold 284 for 20 million in March, as well as 11.1 million in Meta Planet shares to, quote, establish a dedicated US Dollar operating reserve, end quote. It also used some of this liquidity from those cells to pay interest on an outstanding Kraken loan. This loan is collateralized by 3717 Bitcoin, so over half of their treasury at a interest rate of 8%. And it matures on December 4, 2026. Now, I'm not totally sure about the chain of loan providers here, but if I recall correctly, Nakamoto had a loan out with two prime that I think it rolled into a Coinbase loan and then it rolled into a Kraken loan. I could have the provenance a little bit backwards there, but they've had a number of bitcoin backed loans actually that they've rolled into new bitcoin backed loans to keep that liquidity train running. And right now this Kraken one has about six months left, or excuse me as roughly eight months left until it matures. Now a few other things to report here before I get into kind of some wind down thoughts on this news story. So Nakamoto merged with Kindly MD last year to go public as a bitcoin Treasury Company. Kindly MD is a healthcare company. That healthcare company drove 2.72 million in revenue in 2024. Now that revenue is at 1.8 billion. 2 million for 2025. And that is the sole source of revenue currently. Or at least it was last year. We'll get to how that's changing here in a minute with a recent acquisition from Nakamoto. But Nakamoto is going to wind down this healthcare business. That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know. Like the doctors who work for them probably are not very happy about all these bitcoin shenanigans. You might as well just sell off that business to someone else, find a way to wind it down. If I had to guess, I'd imagine they would probably just go out and try to find a buyer for those clinics. Totally divest himself with that business. I think that's really smart and to be expected. But what is going to take place of that for Revenue Driver? Again, going back to our conversation with Will Reeves, CEO of Fold just then. A lot of these treasury companies are now really starting to try to distinguish themselves by building actual revenue lines and legitimate businesses that aren't just raising money and buying bitcoin coin. As Will said, I don't think anyone was under the illusion that that was going to last forever. Maybe strategy can get away with it. I mean, they do have their software business. It's a very small portion of the actual pie in terms of the money coming in and out of that shop. But the end of the day, just buying bitcoin on credit or by diluting your shareholders can't last forever. So Nakamoto this quarter acquired BTC Inc. And UTXO Management. Now those are the companies. BTC Inc. Is the company, the parent company of Bitcoin magazine and the Bitcoin conference. It was started by Nakamoto CEO David Bailey, as was UTXO Management, which is BTC Inc's investing arm. They have a liquid fund and they also have a VC fund. They were acquired by Nakamoto for 364, 0.795 million shares of the stock. And that increased NACA stock float almost 2x. Just to give you an idea of how much that is, it was worth $81.6 million at the time of the acquisition. But again, it's an all stock deal on a stock that is pretty illiquid at the moment. I believe Naka shares are trading at roughly 20 cents right now. We'll get the stock chart up here in a second. But why am I covering all of this? NACA really needs to get this. It needed a cash generating business. I think, you know, it needed to have that revenue coming in. If I recall correctly off the top of my head, BTC Inc. When they were reporting for the acquisition, did something like 50 to 60 million in revenue, I believe for 2024. Something in the ballpark of that pretty. A pretty decent chunk. But yeah, Charlie's got the share price up right here. It's under a dollar. And they're. They have received the delisting notice from NASDAQ. This came on December 12, 2025. And you get these delisting notices if your stock fails to trade above a dollar for 30 consecutive business days within a certain timeframe. If it goes back up above a dollar and trades above it for at least 10 consecutive trading days, sometimes they. They move that threshold up just to make sure that something that a company is completely compliant, they will continue to have this delisting notice. And they are looking at June 8, 2026 for a delisting if something doesn't change. Now, how could they resolve this? They could do a reverse stock split, although that doesn't guarantee that they will maintain that dollar trading threshold. And if they fail to do this, they will likely be moved to NASDAQ Capital Markets. So there are a bunch of other things in this filing and in their earnings. If y' all are interested in the company, I get I, you know, urge you go ahead and take a look at it. They had other losses on top of the bitcoin, the change in their value of their Bitcoin treasury. But that was the biggest ding against them overall. A company that is trying to find footing. We're rooting for them. We don't want to see this company delisted.
- [57:13]
Charlie
Yeah, there are friends.
- [57:14]
Brian Harrington
Yeah.
- [57:15]
Colin
But just a brutal reminder that we are far from the heady days of bitcoin paper summer in 2025 when it felt like every time you logged on Twitter, people were talking about how rich they were getting from treasury companies and how this was a new paradigm. Kind of reminds me of the John McAfee tweet from like 2017, where it's like those of you calling this a bubble don't understand the new paradigm of the blockchain bubbles are mathematically impossible. Right. You had all kind of, you had all of the same, you know, shared delusions around this treasury mania. But I'll toss it to you, Charlie, before we do an ad read and
- [57:52]
Charlie
then bring Cole on, I don't have a lot to add. There's a lot of, you know, trad buy market stuff that happens here that honestly, I apparently should have been studying for the past 10 years instead of how bitcoin works. Because this is where the meta shifted over the past year. Yeah, shout out to the NACA folks. And really, honestly, the broader bitcoin treasury ecosystem, Abs, you know, it's been painful. They've taken a lot of. Take a lot of it on the chin. I know some people are, yeah, they're trend water. They're trying to make it happen. I would, you know, hate to see them get delisted, but I'm not.
- [58:29]
Colin
Yeah, it's extremely painful. And I would just like to add that before we move on to the next segment, that we could literally cut and paste any of these treasury companies in place of naca and they would all have a crazy loss on their balance sheet. Because now with the reporting rules for the sec, any change to your cryptocurrency can be logged as a loss or a gain. So if bitcoin doubles over a quarter, you're doing great. You're going to log like a 2x unrealized gain. Same goes on the downside, though. So not picking on Naka here, it's just, I think, emblematic of where we are with the treasury craze at this point. But with that, we will leave that there. And before we bring Cole on, I have a quick ad read from our friends at Lygos, and that is hedge funds are getting liquidated. Is your bitcoin safe? It's not just bitcoin's price drying up. Big whales. Hedge funds and lending desks are going under after the notorious 1010 and 25 liquidations. I think everyone kind of like March, what, 13th or 14th, 2020 will remember where they were on on February 5th, 2026 during one of bitcoin's most historic sell offs. But counterparty risk is rampant and so it's more important than ever to understand who actually controls your Bitcoin. And with Lygos you are always in control. Don't be the next FTX or Celsius victim. If you are working with another lending provider, do yourself a favor before it's too late and check out Lygos Finance. They are Block Space's preferred non custodial Bitcoin lender. They use Bitcoin native smart contracts to protect your hard earned Bitcoin stack while also allowing you to borrow against it. With Lygos you always know where your Bitcoin is. Hold your keys. No wrapping, no bridging, no rehypothecation. Just competitive rates as low as 10% APR and non custodial lending. Go to Lygos Finance to learn more. That is L Y G O S dot Finance to learn more. All right, and now we have the Volmec CEO Cole Kennelly on.
- [60:30]
Charlie
Let's ring him up.
- [60:32]
Colin
Talk about why we need a VIX for Bitcoin. Cole, how you doing? Welcome to the show.
- [60:37]
Charlie
Welcome, Cole.
- [60:38]
Cole Kennelly
Hey. Hey Charlie. Great to see you guys. Great to be on the show. How's it going?
- [60:43]
Colin
Appreciate you taking the time. So y' all at VX are building out all of these volatility indices and we'll, we'll probably just focus on the, the bviv. BVIV I'm going to call it, I don't know what y' all call it in your parlance, but yeah, we'll focus on BVIV because you know, we're mostly a bitcoin focused show. Can you give our listeners a breakdown of what the BVIV index is?
- [61:06]
Cole Kennelly
Absolutely. So great to be here. The BEV index is the leading, longest running, most integrated, most neutral and battle tested Bitcoin volatility index. And so in the US Equity market you have the vix. The VIX and BEVIB brings a very similar product to the crypto landscape. The Bitcoin landscape. BVIV is a 30 day rolling implied volatility index based on the global, global crypto options market. And so basically when the market is fearful, this index tends to always spike. And so FTX crash. October 5th. Excuse me. October 10th. February 5th. BV saw very sharp moves to the upside. And so it's an index which tends to increase in times of feet, in times of fear. It can also increase in times of greed. And it's a very powerful indicator. Right. And so it's a piece of information for traders and investors. It's also a product that you can trade across a couple of different exchanges, including Bitfinex, Polymarket and others. And so BVIP is the standard for bitcoin volatility.
- [62:13]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [62:13]
Colin
And going back to the spiking here, we were talking about February 5th, and you can just see the index just going absolutely parabolic, nearly touching 100. And that's the largest spike in some time on the index. I mean, the largest so far this year. Cole, why have these indices at all in both traditional markets and in crypto? Can you explain the need or rationale for having these? And then as a second part to this question, who is the target trader for these? Like who is the ideal trader who would be trading this index, using it to hedge things like that?
- [62:50]
Cole Kennelly
Yeah, so great question. You know, these indices are really powerful in terms of a piece of information that traders and investors across retail, pro tail, institutional sort of user bases can access as a standard, reliable benchmark for bitcoin implied volume. So when you're an investor, you're a trader, you're in the business of risk. And so you need to know how much risk the market is expecting there to be over the next 30 days, over the next 60 days, 90 days. And so BVIV and the entire term structure of BVIV indices provide this sort of insight into the market. BVIV is also a benchmark for derivative contracts. And so in addition to just understanding how much risk the market is expecting, BVIV is also an instrument which can be traded via perpetual futures and prediction markets. And so if you would like to hedge, if you like to speculate on this implied volatility level, you can buy a future on Bitfinex or polymarket prediction market and other exchanges coming soon. And so it's really important as a piece of information that trading terminals and exchanges can display and offer their traders and investors insight into the market. And it's also a very powerful product which traders and investors can trade and use for hedging, speculation, diversification and other strategies. And so that's kind of how we think about, you know, why Viv, why this is so important. And you know, to the question about the target market, I would say it's really all the above. I kind of insinuated, you know, it's, it's really retail pro tail, institutional traders and investors. We really, you know, see a lot of different types of traders, investors using this type of product as either information, either as a tradable product, you know, so if you're a retail investor, maybe you want to go on a dex like Polymarket or we have a partnership with an exchange called Gains, which is a perp dex. And so maybe you want to go on a venue like that. If you're an institution, perhaps you prefer to use something with a more robust KYC policy like Bitfinex or an OTC desk that can interface with the BVIV index. And so really our vision is to have this entire complex of know DeFi, CFI, Tradify Futures, DeFi CFI, Traffi options, you know, exchange traded products, prediction markets, tokenized products. And so there's really a derivative wrapper, a tradable product wrapper for all types of investors and traders across, you know, retail, protail, institutional. So great question. Yeah.
- [65:31]
Charlie
So I'm not really familiar with like the volatility indices broadly, but I've been in Bitcoin a while. I know it's volatile. How does BVIV stack up compared to other volatility indices? Is it like one of the more volatile markets? And then is there, I don't know. I know traders like volatility because there's opportunity there. Are you seeing that there's appetite for this product among more volatile inclined traders?
- [66:09]
Cole Kennelly
So it's a great question. So the Vix in the US equity market is on any given day somewhere between 15 and 20, typically, unless there's a big volume or a big crash or something. And so BVIV is currently about 60. And so 15 to 60, you can say BVIV is about four times greater in terms of volatility points as the Vix index. And so the Bitcoin market expects four times more volatility at this moment than the US stock market. It trades four times as many hours. Stock markets open like 9 to 4 and 30 to 4. And the Bitcoin market's open 24 7. And so the realized volatility of the index is also greater. And so any way you kind of look at it, the volatility of bitcoin is much greater than US equity market, which is very intuitive. And so to juxtapose VIX and BVIV is a really interesting thing. You can kind of look at the Delta between the two, meaning B Viv minus the Vix or look at the ratio between the two. And so that's pretty easy to do. We're on TradingView, we have our own charts platform, we're on Bloomberg Terminal and this type of platforms. And so I think a lot of folks do kind of look at the relative expensiveness or the richness of BVID versus something like the VIX it's very interesting to look at the two together. We are seeing a lot of appetite for these type of products. We have eight contracts to trade across three exchanges. As mentioned. We have Bitfinex futures, we have polymarket Prediction markets and an exchange that's on base and Arbitrum that also has perpetual futures. And we see a lot of appetite from other exchanges to list this type of product and offer pure volatility trading to their investors and traders. We have a number of different data integrations as well. We're available on, as mentioned, TradingView, CoinMarketCap, Bloomberg Terminal, Refinitiv, which is owned by London Stock Exchange as well as bybit. They display our data on their structured product section. And so we have a lot of integrations already, you know, just mentioned eight or so of them. And we expect that more Tier one exchanges, more, you know, institutions will continue to adopt this and sort of participate in this bviv, you know, volatility for Bitcoin standard. And so we're seeing a lot of appetite from, you know, all the different types of, you know, users and different exchanges and venues that can access the product. And it's a really exciting time because, you know, there's really this institutionalization of crypto right, in the US and globally. And a benchmark index that's robust and neutral is really the beneficiary of that. And so we're seeing a lot of appetite for BVIV around that. And then, you know, obviously crypto is kind of in this. Bitcoin is in this, you know, sort of sideways regime. And we're seeing that, you know, we're one of the products which, which benefits from that. And so it's an exciting time. And BVIV is really kind of at this inflection point
- [69:11]
Colin
question on the regulatory side of this, Cole, I'm curious to expand the listings for bviv. Is there anything you all need to do on the regulation side? I know, for instance, like for prediction markets, they have to get a broker dealer's license, I believe, from the cftc. I think that's usually for futures. So this would not necessarily. This wouldn't be considered a futures product. But is there anything that you have to do on the regulation side of things? Get a rubber stamp to bring this to more markets or is it good to go as it is?
- [69:43]
Cole Kennelly
So, yeah, great question. In the US market and largely globally outside of really one market that I'm aware of, it's really the index derivative products and the tradable products that are licensed and require licensure as opposed to the index itself. So it's the securities, the futures, the regulated prediction markets that, that are regulated. And it's not the benchmark index. Right, like bviv. And so, you know, BVIV US is our new index that we launched that's based on IBIT options. And so we expect that some of the venues that are interested in that and the products can be linked to that will obviously be regulated. But as an index company, we are not required to be regulated in the same way that they are. We have BVIV, BVIV US. And so BVIV is kind of the 24.7volume index that has some perpetual futures and contracts that trade 24, seven prediction markets, Bitfinex, polymarket gains that are available largely to non U.S. users and traders. And then we have BVIV US, which is kind of our foray into the U.S. market and building more institutional and regulated products in partnership with exchanges and issuers that are able to launch these type of things. And so it's a really good question, something that folks ask a fair amount, you know, about learning about the business. And I think we're in a really strong spot between having BVIV and the kind of the standard that's emerged around having BEVID us, which allows us to kind of push into the US market with some different partners.
- [71:17]
Colin
I've got a closer. Do you have one more? All right, so I'm going to frame this as post ETF and pre etf. And you can correct me as to whether or not you think that is the catalyst that matters here. But how have derivative markets evolved since the ETF came onto the scene in 2024? I would imagine that that liquidity probably helps really supercharge some of these derivatives that we're seeing, the ones that we touch a lot on on the pod are we talk about the forwards and futures for Bitcoin mining Hash Rate from Luxter. We've got this bv. Obviously there are other futures and options that exist for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. But how has the derivatives market landscape changed over the last couple of years? And what would you say is the primary catalyst for that change?
- [72:05]
Cole Kennelly
Another really great question. It's something that we're paying attention to very closely. Specifically, we created this BVIV US index. The symbol is BV US. It's on TradingView Blue, Bloomberg and Molemax's website. And the reason we created this is because we noticed that the Ibid options were growing extremely fast. And we were like, hey, if this rate keeps up, this thing is going to become ultimately the same size as Terabit by the end of last year. And that was actually exactly correct. IBIT options have grown from basically zero, let's say 16, 17 months ago to about 25 billion of open interest right now and peaked at about 40, 45 billion of open interest at the end of last year. And so IBIT options have become massive in the short amount of time. And so that's one of the major things we've noticed and that's why we built the BEVIV US index because it uses that IBIT options data to underpin the index instead of offshore exchanges, which BVIV itself uses. The other thing that we've noticed is that for a long time, I think with a lot of the dats and the advent of the IBIT ETF itself, there was a lot of different derivatives option strategies which were suppressing volatility. I think you saw right before October 10th those levels reached their local lows. BVIV was 32 or 30 or some 30 handle and it was extremely low relative. It was sort of an all time low for the index. Bitcoin volume was very, very low and very relative to where it's at now. It was an interesting sort of regime. Post 1010 we've seen that the volatility has remained fairly elevated. It's at 55, 60 right now. And so I would say the growth of IBIT options are extremely notable and it's why we created a new index that uses some of that data and sort of the DATS and the institutions which are running different sort of option strategies were suppressing volatility into 10 10. Those two things come to mind. It's a really interesting question and I think it will continue to evolve. I mean IBIT options are piped into Robinhood and Interactive Brokers and Schwab and so we're seeing that quickly become sort of the dominant form factor for, for trading optionality on Bitcoin in the US market. And it's really, really exciting. I think the derivatives market structure is evolving and Deribit, OkX and Bybit are super important companies and will continue to be. But it's really cool to see IBIT kind of penetrating the US market in a really big way and we're really excited about that.
- [74:49]
Charlie
We will have to double tap on this. Maybe we'll just have you on every time bitcoin rips or diploma dips to talk bitcoin volatility. Cole, thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [75:00]
Cole Kennelly
Thanks guys. See you next time. Cheers.
- [75:02]
Colin
Appreciate you, Cole. Thanks, man. Alrighty. And with that we have one more story and then we will get y' all out of here and that is Crypto asset manager Coin shares lists on the Nasdaq. This is coming to y' all from CoinDesk. Coin shares listed on the Nasdaq today following a merger with one Vine Hill Capital. So this is a 1.2 billion dollar merger with Vine Hill Capital Investment Corporation, US based special purpose acquisition company, also known as Spock. I'm quoting directly here from CoinDesk and Coin Shares. They are, for those who don't know, the largest digital asset manager in Europe. They're very active in the European scene. They do have a US presence, but they are much more of a titan of crypto industry in Europe. They have a asset management arm. They also have a capital markets arm as well. We'll get into some of those numbers here in a second, but this is the latest in a slew of crypto related public listings that we've seen over the past year. Just getting up the scorecard here really quickly. Coinbase, obviously this was last cycle, but they went public in April 2021 for an $85.7 billion peak valuation. For the first day of trading. Circle went public in June 2025 on the New York Stock Exchange they raised 1.05 billion in their IPO. The IPO price at the time of listing was 6.8 billion. And bullish went public last year shortly after circle on August 2025, also on the New York Stock Exchange with 1.1 billion raised and an IPO price of 5.4 billion. And most recently, BitGo went public with a $212.8 million raise in their IPO, listed on the NYCE with a $2.08 billion valuation. Now to give you an idea of where Coinshares swims in the school of crypto financial companies, I have one of their prospectuses for the spoc. These are admittedly old financial earnings reports that they are old numbers, but this will give you a little bit of an idea. Their asset management arm for the 12 years ended Q2 or 12 months ended Q2 2025. So that is the last 12 months to date. As of the end of Q2 of last year, they had $118 million in revenue from their asset management business and 59 million from their capital markets business. That is up from 47 million for asset management and 24 million two years prior. At the end of Q2 2023. So a decent chunk of change there from both of those business arms and exciting as always to see another cryptocurrency company jump into US markets. Now I will note that they were public on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange before this, but this is the first time they have debuted in US markets. And hats off to the Coinshares team. I have to show this. It's kind of unfortunate to end with this, but as most as as often is the case with these IPOs, it's sold off. Of course insiders want their bag. People who built the company want to be able to divest of their shares. Who can blame them? But it is down at currently 10 or 11% on the day, 10.5% on the day at $900 or $9.85 per share. So.
- [78:54]
Charlie
So yeah, I will say I think while yeah they're assets under management went up I think technically so did their like like their gross like crypto holdings. So it's not just simply bitcoin price appreciation, but just net increase in units of crypto assets they hold. I will just opine after this a few times before like all the good tickers got taken over the past few years and so now you have to be. Now it's got to be boring. Now it's got to be C8CSHR for coin shares. No more Wag Me, no more YOLOs.
- [79:34]
Colin
Well, I mean Coinbase gotta have the best of them. All right. Coin.
- [79:37]
Charlie
Coin.
- [79:38]
Colin
Yeah, I just. You can't beat that.
- [79:41]
Charlie
I'm surprised nobody taken that before. But yeah, maybe. I. I'm actually curious. Is there a. Is there a YOLO ticker? Is it. Oh my God. Guess what? It's a cannabis company. Of course it is.
- [79:57]
Colin
The yolo ticker is a cannabis company.
- [80:00]
Charlie
Advisor shares Pure Cannabis ETF to Cannabis ETF Ticker yolo. Okay, anyway, thank you for listening to Blockspace live. This is a Monday, Wednesday, Friday production going live at noon Eastern featuring quick hits on Bitcoin AI, Bitcoin Tech and markets hosted by yours truly and Colin. Make sure to like and subscribe. Hit the podcast subscribe to the newsletter@newsletter.blogspace media.com and if you don't already have a ticket, book that flight to New York for April 16th for op next op n e x t.dev thank you to our sponsor of the live stream CleanSpark ticker CLSK. See you all on Friday.