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- [00:02]
A
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B
A major step in the race for a weight loss pill. One pharma giant is seeing its shares rise on an FDA approval. It's been a rough two months for crypto. With bitcoin down for the year. We explore what's happening and I talk with author Natalie Brunel about why, despite it all, she remains exuberantly bullish on bitcoin. For Tuesday, December 23rd, it's free markets Daily and I'm Ann Berry. More market details to come. But first, the year that crypto truly went mainstream. There's a real shot that this is one way that 2025 is remembered. Since President Trump's inauguration in January, the US regulatory stance has shifted from enforcement to fostering blockchain innovation with the appointment of a more crypto sympathetic SEC chair, the passage of the Clarity act to clarify whether tokens are treated as securities or commodities, and the arrival of the Genius act to regulate stablecoins. All facilitating the entrance by more Wall street firms into crypto focused ETFs and more Bitcoin based products, as well as seeing continued all to crypto by retail investors. But it was also a volatile year for bitcoin, hitting highs of over 126,000 in October, yet trading well below $100,000 today. So we look back at this landmark year for crypto and welcome to the show author Natalie Brunel to discuss her new book Bitcoin Is for Everyone. Coming up, our conversation. But first a word from our sponsor Vanguard to all the financial advisors listening. Let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value and fixed income is not.
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C
Easy and you can say that again.
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B
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C
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B
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C
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B
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C
All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor well, before I.
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B
Talk with Natalie Brunel, I thought our producer John and I could go through some of the major crypto milestones this year and sit tight because there's a lot of them. So, John, we haven't talked that much about crypto. If you think about the overall markets, there's been so much going on in terms of earnings, IPOs, the AI trade, we've of course covered the major crypto stories along the way. But this feels like a really exciting moment to talk about the year in aggregate.
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C
That's right.
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B
Survey it and then talk about a pretty meaningful milestone that's coming up in mid January, which we should all be.
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D
Looking out for because that could be.
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B
The next major inflection point.
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C
Absolutely. And as you said up top, this is the year that crypto sort of went mainstream. And so let's take a look back. Just in July, I'm just going to hit some milestones.
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B
Perfect.
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D
Yeah.
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C
July, the crypto market cap crossed the $4 trillion threshold for the first time. And Bitcoin, which still represent more than half of crypto's total market cap, hit an all time high of over 126,000 back in October. And today it's hovering under 90,000. We'll get into that.
- [03:52]
B
And then also let's talk about some of the things that drove those increases in the share price as a regulation we'll talk about. But we can't ignore the fact that demand and the catalyst, that change, demand is so critical. So institutional adoption was a large part of that.
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C
Yeah. We look back and we'll say this is the year that crypto went mainstream. In February, the online payments company Stripe finalized its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion. That was Stripe's largest acquisition. Then in June, the crypto Exchange Circle had $1 billion IPO. Circle is best known for issuing the USD coin. That's the stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.
- [04:27]
B
And then just to touch on Stripe again. So Stripe is one of these private companies. Everyone has been hotly anticipating that ipo. It hasn't happened yet. So the fact that it chose to make this big stablecoin acquisition bridge, as you mentioned, as it's gearing up for its IPO story, clearly it's betting on crypto being a part of what would make it an attractive IPO candidate when it finally debuts, maybe it's 2026. We're waiting to hear if that date gets locked down. Now over the summer we saw PayPal launch Pay with crypto, which enables direct low cost, cross border transactions supporting over 100 cryptocurrencies. It's easy to forget just how many of these coins are out there. And PayPal boasted instant settlement and reduced fees. So that's one of the OGs of digital payments. MO moving aggressively into this space, we saw Shopify very interestingly start to accept stablecoin payments. And then we've also seen a lot of traditional financial institutions moving into this space too.
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C
Right. You've got Citigroup, Fidelity, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, MasterCard, Visa, they're now all offering or have announced plans to offer crypto products directly to consumers.
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B
And it really is. When you see the likes of Visa and MasterCard, the credit card players, the giants going in, when you see the traditional banks like JP Morgan, these are real institutions saying, okay, whatever our feelings about the. So I will come back to that. We've got to go. If our consumers are demanding it, they're adults and we're going to make sure that they can actually get an offering that we can provide to them or they're going to be missing out, making money by sitting on the sidelines. Now none of this could have happened. These traditional institutions would not have decided to set forth into crypto world but for the fact that the US government has weighed in to move regulations along. So some of the big ones. In July, Congress passed the bipartisan, bipartisan Genius act, great name by the way, which outlined a regulatory framework for stablecoins, setting the standards for reserve backing, transparency and oversight. Now this was a really critical moment for those who were sort of sitting on the sidelines waiting for the moment it was codified that stablecoins would actually be something that would be around for a while.
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C
And I remember this well because back then on your sister podcast, after earnings, you spoke with Coinbase's chief legal officer, Paul Graywell.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And he just kept saying over and over in the conversation with you, clarity, the word clarity. Businesses are looking for clarity and they got that from the government. In the months since the Genius act was passed, mentions of stablecoins and SEC filings has grown 64%.
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B
There is also of course, the Clarity act making sure one of the key issues under the last administration's SEC was folks weren't clear, are these going to be securities or commodities? When we look at cryptocurrency and the way in which some of these were being issued without that clarity meant that there was a real struggle for some of the institutions to actually hold them or transact in them or being able to process them for customers who wanted to do so. So Clari, yes, the name of an act, then you have the genius act. So all of this supporting institutional movement into the crypto world, so all of this looked like it was going great. This created a ton of momentum. That is why we saw crypto going above $120,000. And then suddenly, suddenly it went reversed. So October 10th is the moment in 2025 when things really went south. The crypto, it was the, the biggest liquidation date in the crypto market's history. Wiped out $19 billion worth of crypto value. Now roll forward two months and Bitcoin is still down 10% year on year across all cryptocurrencies. Total market cap, excuse me, is down nearly a trillion dollars since October. So just remember again in July, crypto market cap crossed $4 trillion. It's now down a trillion. That's 25% since October. So what happened? Right. So we all looked at this and went, what is going on?
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C
And everyone's been asking this. I looked back at reporting at the time.
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D
Yeah.
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C
And so October 10th was the same day President Trump announced he would impose an additional 100% tariff on goods from China. That tariff never ended up being enacted. It was part of trade negotiation. But bitcoin is still down. So there was some people thinking at the time, okay, it's because of this, but that policy didn't come out.
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B
So there've been lots of different theories around why bitcoin has remained down. Some have suggested it's the correlation between the price of crypto and the market movement of more speculative tech companies. People do draw the distinction between folks like Apple or Alphabet, which are less speculative, and saying let's look at the more high risk, non cash flowing tech companies like the Quantum, names like the Rigettis of the world or even something that's seen more volatility like Oracle. Folks have said maybe they're correlated. We've seen a pullback in the share price of some, like Oracle for example, amidst AI jitters. But it's not enough. It's not enough to explain why bitcoin has remained so low relative to its peaks, given that a lot of the AI trade recovered after that date.
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C
So there's one other big concept that we need to talk about and that's digital asset Treasury. These are publicly traded DAT companies and they hold crypto on Their balance sheets, much like corporate Treasuries, hold cash. And that's what you were talking about with the clarity of being able to hold in that way. So there were 10 last year and there's now 200. So there has been an explosion in these digital asset treasury companies. Estimates that these Companies now hold 4% of all Bitcoin and Ethereum. And when crypto prices fell, there's concern about the exposure these DAT companies have.
- [09:54]
B
I'm so, I'm so glad you brought this up because this is a really critical and it could be at the heart of why Bitcoin has remained so low. So if we think about one of the most famous of these DAT's, these digital asset treasury companies, it's Micha Sailors company strategy ticker MSTR, it's the largest corporate holder of crypto. There are others out there like Hot 8 for example. Often these businesses started life for something else but and, but they've moved into really adopting again this digital asset treasury and it's become the hallmark of what they do. Well. Michael Saylor Strategy just yesterday said in a filing that it had bolstered its cash reserve to $2.2 billion. It's pausing on purchases of Bitcoin even though you could argue if you're a real believer, this is a buyer's market given where the price is at. Nevertheless, Strategy does have total holdings of around $60 billion. Now strategy has said that it's created the cash reserve to fund future dividend and interest payments and it's attempting to assuage fears that it could be forced to sell Bitcoin if token prices continue to fall. So that sets the stage for what are these DATs or digital asset Treasuries. So why do these perhaps hold the key to understanding why Bitcoin has stayed low for such a long time? Well, we were poking around on this and there are lots of different theories and writers on Bitcoin out there. But there was one article in on CoinDesk which I spotted. It's an opinion piece written by Avatar Sarah and I just thought it articulated one possible answer so clearly. It was worth reading it out actually. Now this article says that crucially, quote D A TS have been benefiting from the index inclusion game through a self reinforcing chain of events. As a DAT grows large enough, it's automatically included in indices like msci which is a big one, and other major benchmarks which forces passive index funds and things like ETFs to buy these DATs like the strategy to replicate the index composition and this index driven demand creates additional buying pressure for the shares, pushing the price, the market cap and the demand for Bitcoin higher. On October 10, MSCI again a major index provider, published a consultation titled Digital Asset Treasury Companies which proposed that companies whose primary business is holding Bitcoin be reclassified as fund like vehicles rather than as operating companies. Under the proposal, if a firm's digital asset holdings represents 50% or more of its assets, it could now be excluded from MSCI's main equity indexes. And if these like strategy become excluded from those indexes, there's a series a ripple effect of a decline in demand for those company stocks and as a result potentially a decline in the demand overall for bitcoin. So this January 15th date, MSCI is keeping this consultation open until December 31st, New Year's Eve and will make a final decision on January 15. So there is one theory that January 15 is the date everyone is waiting for to see if the underlying demand.
- [12:58]
D
For Bitcoin is going to rev back up again.
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C
Fascinating.
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B
It's fascinating. I got to say again, it was a very well written piece I thought and certainly sort of of illuminated for me some of the key considerations. Some of those nuggets lurking around in there. Well that's our deep dive. Coming up, our conversation with Natalie Brunel.
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E
So good, so good, so good.
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A
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F
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B
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F
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B
Some have called it a pet rock, others are just long time evangelists. Others again are neutral or feel they don't know enough about it. Whatever one's feelings about Bitcoin, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. So for more insight this time from A crypto fan. We invited Bitcoin Is For Everyone author Natalie Brunel to the studio. She is unapologetically pro bitcoin. It's worth just having that in mind as you listen. 90% of her money is actually tied up in bitcoin. So she does put her money where her beliefs are. She makes a case for separating Bitcoin from the rest of crypto, arguing that it is a neutral, finite savings technology in a market where inflation is the real villain. And Natalie believes that Bitcoin is a digital property that's more accessible than traditional assets like real estate, and that from a global point of view, it can be a lifeline for those in economies and communities that are just less entrenched in the international banking system. So here it is, my conversation with Natalie Brunel.
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D
So, Natalie, thank you for joining. Hold up your book because we've got this brilliant copy. Natalie's new book is out, Bitcoin Is For Everyone, which I was lucky enough.
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B
To get a pre read of over the last couple of days and excited to dig into the book with you here. Let's talk about how you actually couch bitcoin because you're actually quite specific about.
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D
Separating it from the broader crypto ecosystem. Why is that distinction so important to you?
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E
Well, Bitcoin is the best savings technology and one that is accessible to everyone in the world. And I think that's the thing that everyone needs most, a way to economically empower themselves. So I separate it from broader crypto, which I really don't invest in. I only invest in Bitcoin. And I think it's so important that we have a form of money that is neutral, that is apolitical, and that allows you to think about your future. We exchange our time and energy for money, but the money that we have right now is controlled. It's controlled by a few people who we don't elect, and they constantly expand the supply. So I take the time in the book to break down how our financial system works, why inflation is sort of the bedrock of the system and dilutes all of our dollars and our purchasing power, and why Bitcoin is a powerful tool for savings and for economically empowering ourselves.
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B
So I actually wanted to say your book could almost have been renamed.
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D
Right, A book about inflation.
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B
Yes. So talk to us about. Just define for us how it is.
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D
That Bitcoin would be immune from inflation.
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E
Well, it's a programmatic money supply that is finite. So there's only going to be 21 million Bitcoin that's in the code. Anyone can verify the code. It's open source. So you have it right there in the code. It says no more than 21 million. And it's a decentralized network that is secured by energy, by mathematics and physics, so no man can manipulate it in our current financial system today. What I learned in my journey of understanding Bitcoin is that inflation is what destroys our purchasing power. They're constantly needing to expand the supply because we live in a debt based economy. And when they print money, every dollar is worth less. So the way to have someone be able to save for the future is to be able to save in assets, hard assets. And yes, there are stocks, yes, there's real estate. But I make the case in Bitcoin is for everyone that Bitcoin is not only the accessible asset, but it also, it has the properties that make for great money that you actually don't see in some of the other asset classes. And that's one of the reasons why I was so passionate about this book. Because we really don't learn about inflation in school. I wish we did. I wish that in my primary education, in my high school and college, I actually learned about how destructive inflation can be and why the average person has such a hard time saving for the future. And Bitcoin, I think is the best solution for it.
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D
Let's just break this down because you've, even in the very short time since we started this conversation, you've you sort of alluded to Bitcoin as a couple of different things. You've called it an asset, which, let's put it in the, in the bucket of a store of value. You've also referred to it as a money. They're not necessarily the same thing.
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B
Sure.
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D
So let's start with which one you think Bitcoin is primarily.
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E
Well, I think today we consider money, what we spend, right, as sort of currency, but we can't store our value in money, right. Today we can't store our value in dollars because they're like melting ice cubes. So we need to acquire assets. Bitcoin, I think is the easiest one for the average person to acquire because it is immune to debasement because it is available to anyone around the world. You can purchase fractions of Bitcoin where you can't be in say, a developing country and purchase fractions of stocks or fractions of real estate.
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D
You can purchase fractions of stock stocks.
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E
In the developing world. It's very hard for someone to gain access to the American stock market and Today in the developing world, you can't say, purchase beachfront property in Miami very easily, a fraction of it, but you can purchase satoshis and you can watch your savings grow. I know it's volatile in the short term and it is. We've seen the volatility just this past week and this past month. But when you zoom out, it is the best performing asset of the last decade. And I think it allows you to again save for the future. It's also growing as a currency. People are using it.
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B
We're going to get there in a minute.
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D
Let's just, let's not leave the asset part of us. We're only going to get there. So let's stick with it as an asset for now. And it's an asset that's being purchased in traditional money, traditional currency. So the definition of inflation you talk about in your book and it, by.
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B
The way, it's brilliantly explained when you.
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D
Talk about the money printers. But even if no more money were to be printed, there would be money chasing a fixed amount of bitcoin. And if you go back in history, the traditional definition of inflation was too much, even static money chasing too few goods. And in this case, bitcoin is static. There's a finite amount. It doesn't feel from that perspective like bitcoin really is therefore immune from inflation.
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E
Well, you can't divide it into like it's. It's like having a pizza and saying that you're going to expand the pizza. In this case, you have 21 million Bitcoin, but each Bitcoin can be divided into 100 million Satoshi. And those satoshis have a market price. Right. Today I can spend $5 and get a certain amount of satoshis. So again, the asset is available to everyone around the world. And whatever price you can afford in terms of how many satoshis you can accumulate, you can start buying in. There will always be a market where there are sellers and there are buyers. And so I actually think it's the most accessible, again, asset that anyone can come into and say, okay, I only have five dollars, I only have five yen, I only have five euro, but I can buy a certain amount of, of bitcoin for that. And it grows in value at an average rate of 20 to 30% per year. Conservatively, on average, it's actually been growing like 50 to 60%.
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D
And what's driving that growth in value?
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E
I think more buyers than sellers. Right. I think as more adoption grows, you have more people really understanding it. They're Wanting to protect their purchasing power, and they're wanting to access something that is accessible to them. And I think today people are searching for that because we're at a place in society where the average person has not been able to save. Many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and that's here in America, which is supposed to represent, you know, the American dream. That's what my parents came here for, economic opportunity. And for the average person today, it feels harder than ever to be able to save. Why is that?
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D
Well, let's focus on the American. Okay, so what you just described, the value going up year over year. You just said it. It's more buyers than sellers. That is the definition of asset inflation. That is the definition of why prices go up. So there's only a fixed amount of bitcoin. You may chop it up into smaller pieces, but the pizza is not growing. It's the same piece of pizza chopped up into smaller and smaller morsels. So it is definitionally subject to price inflation if the demand for it continues to grow because it gets more accessible, because more people in countries outside America, for example, want it. So help me understand. If folks are not getting paid in bitcoin and you're saying, go invest in bitcoin, there's a disconnect there. It's the same kind of inflation when you see where people trying to buy houses, for example, but they can't afford it because their wages aren't keeping up. Right.
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E
But again, I see it. So if bitcoin is digital property, which I see it as, that there's a difference between being able to buy a whole house versus being able to buy fractions of bitcoin. It is, again, very accessible to be able to save in something like bitcoin because it's fractional. You can start very small and start to accumulate when you buy in the right. The rising tide lifts all boats. Right. So as you start to purchase and the money grows over time, despite the volatility, your purchasing power actually grows. So when you look at asset classes right now, today, things like real estate.
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D
Yeah.
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E
Bitcoin is actually making it cheaper. It's becoming cheaper to purchase a house priced in Bitcoin when you change the yardstick from US Dollars to Bitcoin, I can now afford a home because I have been savings and my unit of account has been bitcoin in an easier way than I could 10 years ago when I was saving in dollars.
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D
Well, let's just hold that thought. If you had, instead of buying bitcoin and bought Nvidia stock, the same argument would hold. It's just instead of cashing out of bitcoin, you'd be cashing out of your Nvidia stock to go buy that same house. The assets appreciated. But let's just focus on the US market for a moment and let's just focus on the U.S. saver. And you're right. This issue of accessibility has been devastating. You talk in your book about your parents filing for bankruptcy. I, like you, grew up with no financial. My parents didn't go to college. We had no savings. We lived paycheck to paycheck. And that's really what drives my interest in financial literacy and accessibility. So I'm stunned by the story of hard work in your family. There is something that's changed over the last couple of years in the US which has been exciting to see, which is platforms like Robinhood and other brokers providing fractional access to stocks, providing fractional access to assets. Assets. Do you think that that increased accessibility to fractional assets means that the fractional of allure of bitcoin isn't as relevant anymore?
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E
No, I actually think it makes it more relevant. I think as people learn to invest more, I mean, the average person truly does not invest today. And that's one of the lessons in the book. The majority of stocks are owned by a few people in this country. Like the 10% own 85% of stocks. I'm trying to make asset accumulation more accessible. And again, I think that bitcoin is the most accessible asset you can get when it comes to stock picking. Look, a portfolio is a very personal decision in terms of where you place your money. I have found that when I'm looking at stocks, when I picture 10 years out, 20 years out, I'm talking about really the long term. You have to think about things like what are the products that they're going to put out, what are the liabilities and the competition that might come up? Who are the leaders going to be? What is the board of directors? Who is the CEO to make decisions that are related to human beings, Human beings that can make mistakes, human beings that will make different decisions along the way. And things can change. Bitcoin is something that is not something that's the purview of any humans to control. There is no CEO, there's no board of governors, there's no one managing it. And it's something that's really tied to just something that no one can manipulate, which is energy. And so I see it as actually more secure and less risky. For the 10, 20 year time horizon because it doesn't have the moving parts that companies, real estate and other asset classes do. When I'm thinking about where I want to put my money for 20, 50, 100 years and something that I can will to my children, stocks are a little bit more risky. You have to be very careful and put the research in. And Nvidia has outperformed Bitcoin in many years. However, I don't know enough about Nvidia. I do know enough about bitcoin to put the majority of my life savings into.
- [25:55]
D
So talk to us about what you invest in. So how much of your assets is in Bitcoin? Got 100% in Bitcoin?
- [26:02]
E
I have, I would say about 90% in Bitcoin in different formats of bitcoin. Because, for example, in my retirement account, I do hold the bitcoin etf.
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D
Okay.
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E
And then I and I experiment with a little bit of stocks here and there, but that's a tiny percentage. That's the, that's the percentage that I say, you know what, I can lose that money. I can't afford to lose my bitcoin. I have to have 90% or more in bitcoin, which I believe, believe will outperform everything over the long run, and that carries the least amount of risk.
- [26:30]
D
So talk to us about some of the specific examples because you spent a lot of time clearly researching for your book the stories of individuals and what bitcoin did to change their life. And take us through one. And again, not just where bitcoin was bought as an asset, where someone could equally have done well buying a speculative stock. What was specific about that Bitcoin experience, specific to Bitcoin that impacted their life in the way that struck you and, and prompted you to write about it? Yeah.
- [26:56]
E
One of my chapters is focused on the human rights angle of Bitcoin. And although we have a lot of problems here in America when it comes to inflation and job security, economic security, when you zoom out and you go around the world, you see how people live in oppressive regimes. People live with inflation rates that are 50%, sometimes over 100%. They live in hyperinflation. And those stories, I think, really touch your heart in many ways, because people work so hard for whatever currency they're exchanging their time and energy for. And if someone can click a button and expand that currency, debase it by say, 50%, 100% overnight, you see people whose life savings are evaporated. And so I share examples of people from different countries in that chapter who have faced inflation crises. I mean, sometimes stories where I mention a story in Lebanon where a woman actually held up a bank because she couldn't access her own money. It was a fake gun, but she needed it to pay for a family member's health care. And she was just trying to get her own money out of the bank. And the banks were not allowing people to withdraw their money. I mean, there are situations that we've never experienced here in America. Doesn't mean we, we never will. But I think it's so important to have an asset that you control entirely. If she had had bitcoin, she would have been able to access her wallet, especially if it was in self custody, and use that bitcoin to empower her family to flee if she needed to flee. And we've seen those cases. Some of the women that I talk about have actually fled the, their, their home countries in order to seek economic freedom, and they've used bitcoin in order to do that.
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D
And when you say they use Bitcoin to do that, how specifically were they buying their transportation tickets using Bitcoin? Break down for us really specific examples how that empowered their journey. Natalie?
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E
Yeah, really anything and everything. Because they were not able to access the banking system. They were cut off from the banking system. In one case, we have someone who is basically fleeing her country of Togo, which has had economic. I mean, they have literally resorted to violence for people who are dissidents. And so she had to flee and she used bitcoin in order to be able to pay for everything that she needs in life in order to secure a new future in a new country. And we've seen the same thing out of Afghanistan. We've seen women that are able to finally have bank accounts for the first time. In places like Afghanistan, you need a husband's permission or a father's permission to actually access the banking system. So this woman, Roya Mahboob, for example, she's one of the first female tech CEOs in Afghanistan. She started paying her female employees with bitcoin.
- [29:27]
D
Wow.
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E
She also said that because of the volatility, she's willing to buy it back so that they never lose any of their actual value that they earned for it. And those women were able to empower themselves. Some of them were able to flee when the Taliban came back in. And so these stories are very real, and I think that they make a huge difference because when you zoom out again, there are billions of people, people who are in regimes that are oppressive, authoritarian, and they need Economic freedom more than anyone.
- [29:54]
D
So everything that you've just described, Natalie, is astonishing. Right. In terms of the reach and the applicability of bitcoin.
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B
Let's talk about those in the US.
- [30:05]
D
Where there's deeply held frustration. The average age now of a first time home buyer has reached 40. There's this pervasive sense that generations aren't able to do better than the generations that came before them. That was the promise of the American dream. Bitcoin as a store of asset, we've talked about as an asset. So as a store of value, we've talked about how much do you see bitcoin becoming an actual currency to be able to see the benefit of it become more widespread?
- [30:34]
E
I think that will take longer.
- [30:36]
D
Okay.
- [30:36]
E
I think the, the primary problem that we have is the inability for the average person to save in a reliable way. They exchange their, their time and energy for the money that they earn. And then all of their, the prices, the cost of living is running away from them. Right. They can't save fast enough and everything is getting more expensive, including these homes. So I think that bitcoin will first be seen as a lifeline and as a refuge in terms of savings, a savings technology and a store of value. The medium of exchange part, I think will come largely from merchants who say, in order for me to sell you this, or maybe at a discount, I want you to pay me in bitcoin. I want to incentivize you to give me a way to accumulate more bitcoin.
- [31:20]
D
Interesting.
- [31:20]
E
I think businesses will start to say, I want you to pay me in bitcoin. And that's where we'll see more of the medium of exchange and the velocity of the money will increase. And I think block is really doing a great job. They've just enabled millions of merchants to be able to accept Bitcoin really on the back end, where the merchant, the buyer, they don't even necessarily experience bitcoin. They decide how they pay and the merchant can decide to accept bitcoin on the back end. And so you never even feel like you're actually interacting with bitcoin. Just like how we use our phones every day, we don't necessarily know how they're coded and engineered on the background, but we appreciate and get a lot of use out of the technology.
- [31:54]
D
So what are your thoughts on stablecoins given all of that? Because stablecoin is attached to a traditional.
- [32:00]
E
Currency, I see really stablecoins as a digital dollar. So we know that their supply is going to increase. I think it's going to allow for more people to access the dollar, which in a lot of countries again, people just want dollar dollars and they see dollars as sort of their checking account. And now they have an easier on ramp to get into the dollar ecosystem digitally. And I think the bitcoin will be sort of that next step from that. Now they're going to have stablecoins as maybe their spending currency. More and more people will use the dollar around the world through stablecoins and then maybe they'll start saving in bitcoin.
- [32:30]
D
So how long do you think it takes? How long for this sort of the flywheel of merchants saying they'll accept crypto? How long do you think it's going to take before it becomes a mainstream currency and means of transaction?
- [32:40]
E
I don't think it'll take as long as it's taken other forms of money. I mean, gold monetized over a thousand years, right? But we probably zoom out, we look back and we think gold was always around. It's just taking time. Bitcoin is 15 years old and it already has tens of millions of owners around the world who are slowly accumulating, buying to hold. A lot of people are buying and actually holding. So I think in the next 10 years we'll be surprised by how much activity has happened and how much evolution, especially now that the institutions are coming in. There's more and more on ropes, there's easier on ramps. Excuse me. There's more and more, just easy ways to interact with the asset class, either directly or indirectly. You can passively invest. I think index funds will have more and more companies that are bitcoin adjacent that you'll be investing in a stock and you don't realize you're actually also investing in bitcoin as well. So I think 10 years from now it will surprise us just like the Internet. I share a story in the book about how when I was young, I remember watching the Today show and they were talking about what is the. The at sign, what's dot com? Are we going to use this? You know, it's the Internet and now it's, it's all in our fingertips and all of us can't go a day without using the Internet. I think bitcoin's actually going to be the same.
- [33:48]
D
Let's talk about something. You just touched on that, which is the institutional shift towards using bitcoin. What are your thoughts on that?
- [33:56]
E
I think it was inevitable. I think again, when you see an asset that has performed the way bitcoin has performed it's seen as something that is increasingly uncorrelated to other assets. We see Bitcoin actually breaking away and not always trading with things like tech stocks. It's sort of making its own path. It's seen nowadays as a debasement trade alongside gold, something that is neutral, apolitical, especially when we know that governments are just going to have to need to print money. So I think institutions will increasingly get involved. Right now it's a slow process because many of them have individual mandates and they have to get charters changed. They have to be able to look at this asset class, actually study it, have their compliance teams go through it and say, okay, now we can allocate. But once they do again easier on ramps. Harvard just revealed that their number one equity investment is IBIT. That's BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin ETF. Their number one holding is IBIT. So I think things are really changing. But my message is actually in the book for the average person. I don't want the institutions to front run everyone. I want us, I want us, the working class, to get our chance to accumulate as many satoshis as we can before bitcoin hits a million dollars. Because I do think it's the, the best savings vehicle and an economic empowerment tool for the future.
- [35:10]
D
Well, let's double, let's double down on that, right? Because you've so articulately expressed what you're observing about institutions moving to bitcoin. Let's, let's move more into focusing on.
- [35:19]
E
How you feel about it.
- [35:20]
D
You made your feeling pretty clear. You want everyday investors to get ahead of it.
- [35:25]
B
But let's talk about the practical implications.
- [35:27]
D
Of what you described as happening, which is institutions are getting more involved in holding and allowing the transactions of Bitcoin.
- [35:34]
B
And there's a page in your book.
- [35:37]
D
Which I can sort of hold up here, but it shows something called the money printer mountain.
- [35:41]
B
And in your money printer mountain, you've got the top of the mountain, the.
- [35:44]
D
Money printer, which in this case is the central banks.
- [35:46]
B
Then you've got those closest to it.
- [35:48]
D
Which is Wall street banks, large corporations.
- [35:51]
B
Underneath it, small businesses and families. And at the bottom of the mountain you've got the sort of a group.
- [35:56]
D
That you call the lowest income. And what you essentially say in your book is the furthest away people are from the money print, frankly, the less benefit they get from it. So if we've now got big corporations with the biggest resources, with the biggest access to energy, this is how microstrategy sort of went best able to get a hold of bitcoin getting closest to being money printers because they're the most adept at mining for bitcoin. Do we see a money mountain now emerging for bitcoin?
- [36:29]
E
I actually don't for several reasons. Number one, there is no money printer in bitcoin because again, it's only 21 million. So no one, none of these institutions, no matter how much bitcoin they actually buy, they can't print.
- [36:40]
D
They're mining it, they're not printing it. That's.
- [36:42]
E
They can't print more. They can't change the supply, they can't dilute it. Also, when you look at the chain analysis and the on chain metrics, as bitcoin grows in adoption, it tends to be diffused among more and more holders in a way that's more egalitarian than our current system. Just as you pointed out, our current system has the Cantillon effect that I explain in the book, which is that the closest you are to the money printer, the more you benefit. You can leverage your access and you can purchase more assets. Those assets go up in value, and by the time it trickles down to the average person at sort of the bottom of the mountain, everything has gone up in price. And they feel priced out and things are. And they're struggling more and more with Bitcoin because it's a finite supply. Anyone who starts to just accumulate a bit, little bit, their purchasing power is going up along with everyone else. So it's. It's a system in which all of us benefit. The more people enter into it and purchase bitcoin, the institutions make you more empowered and your portfolio is worth more. The more that they get in. The working class is helping the institutions. I mean, everyone is actually working together in a system where no one can manipulate the supply, no one can inflate it, no one can change the protocol. Whereas our current monetary system system, it's subject to changes every other month, right? We don't even know if they're going to cut interest rates or not in December, because it's all relying on people who control it. Whereas this is accessible to everyone. And it's a network that's decentralized with no one in control.
- [38:08]
D
And then just a last question for you, which is about trust, and it's about trust in the system. And you've given examples of folks who've taken amazing risks to empower themselves and flee regimes that are now devoid of trust, again, just to bring it back to the United States. Implicit in what you're saying are you anticipating that trust breaks down in the US So much that bitcoin becomes a flight to safety for American individuals?
- [38:36]
E
I actually think that trust is so broken down right now that if bitcoin didn't exist, I would have very little hope for what could bring us together. And that's really how I was feeling when I was a news reporter and I had spent a decade immersed in really the symptoms of the broken monetary system. I started to feel like the future is one where we continue to get more divided. We might erupt into some sort of civil war and more and more violence because the political unrest and instability is growing so, so strong. People are just looking out for answers. And I think it causes them to sort of resort to just any, anything that will help them, just any. I will elect anyone that will give me an easier life because things have gotten so hard. That sort of desperation. I think bre the worst types of authoritarian leaders. And that's where I thought we were going until bitcoin, until I learned about bitcoin. And that's when I realized that no, we can shift peacefully into a parallel system, one that no one controls, one that no one can debase, no one can manipulate, no one can confiscate from us. And we can rebuild. We can build up a new economy that is actually equity based rather than debt based. And we can be rewarded for the value that we create and provide each other other, rather than just see the wealth creation, stay in a small group of people at the very tippy top. I think that bitcoin really does empower the average person. And without it, I would be worried about the future, frankly. And now I think this is, this is why we need to get the message out. Because this is the most accessible form of capital and people can start saving for the future again. And that I think will ease some of the social tensions that we have. Because the number one frustration I hear from people and when I watch news stories is it's monetary, it's financial, and people are really struggling today.
- [40:24]
B
Huge thanks to Natalie Brunel for joining. Well, it's nearing the end of the trading day. More M and A continuing to slip in there right before the conclusion of the year. John, take us away on this deal. This is amazing. Yeah.
- [40:38]
C
Announced just this morning. ServiceNow ticker now has agreed to buy cybersecurity startup Armis for $7.75 billion in cash.
- [40:46]
E
Yep.
- [40:46]
B
That headline's been sort of rumoring around out there. It's been solidified. And this is a really big one. The enterprise software company aiming to integrate Armis's security features such as device scanning and threat detection into its core software offerings. Remember that we saw another big more than 7 billion dollar deal announced yesterday in the finance yesterday in the financial services space. So there's a lot going on not only here and in M A, but also in the world of organic growth. Let's take a look at what's going on in the world of pharmaceuticals. Because Novo Nordisk shares up 8% this morning after the company received FDA approval for a weight loss pill.
- [41:25]
C
It's been a race among pharmaceuticals to develop an oral semi glutide. The pill has been the same active ingredient in injectable Wegovy and Ozempic and will be sold under the brand name Wegovy.
- [41:35]
B
Right, that's it. And don't forget that Pfizer, do you remember Novo Nordisk and Pfizer have been battling out to try and find oral treatments. So this is a huge moment for Novo Nordisk. We're going to be watching this one very, very closely. Not just over the holidays, but also in 20. Well, brew markets is going to be taking a holiday, but we've got some great shows lined up with a look back at some of our favorite guests of this year. We've had an embarrassment of riches in terms of the guests we've had the privilege of speaking to, including Andrew Rossorkin, Danielle DiMartino Booth, Michael Lewis and many others. You won't want to miss them.
- [42:10]
D
We're going to be back here with.
- [42:11]
B
The Daily show with the daily wrap up of the news back on Monday, January 5th. Meanwhile, that's it for today's Brew Markets day Daily.
- [42:19]
C
Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Croteau, Tarkab Del Atif and Emily Milian. Our technical director is lonnie Fiskus. Our A1 is Baoza. The president of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin Emery.
- [42:30]
B
Enjoy the special holiday episodes and we.
- [42:32]
D
Will see you back in the new.
- [42:33]
B
Year again with brand new daily episodes of Brew Markets. Same time, same place.
- [42:50]
D
Limu Emu and Doug.
- [42:53]
G
Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [43:07]
E
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
- [43:10]
G
Cut the camera.
- [43:11]
B
They see us.
- [43:12]
C
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com.
- [43:14]
G
Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings.
- [43:17]
C
Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [43:19]
D
Excludes Massachusetts.