Anchorage and the Charter Wars with Nathan McCauley

Summary

Galaxy Brains Podcast Summary

Episode: Anchorage and the Charter Wars with Nathan McCauley
Date: May 21, 2026
Host: Alex Thorn (Head of Research, Galaxy Digital)
Guests: Nathan McCauley (CEO/Co-founder, Anchorage Digital), Bimnet Abibi (Galaxy Trading)

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Overview

This episode delves deep into two major themes:

1. The shifting regulatory and macro landscape for crypto in the US, highlighting progress on the Clarity Act in the Senate and its impact on market outlooks.
2. The rise and realities of obtaining an OCC national trust charter for crypto banks, with in-depth perspective from Anchorage Digital's Nathan McCauley, who lays out the competitive field, institutional adoption, security imperatives, and the intersection of AI and crypto.

The episode maintains an analytical, occasionally irreverent tone, blending regulatory news, macro trends, and industry insight.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Senate Progress on Clarity Act & Crypto Regulation (00:26 – 05:55)

• Clarity Act Developments: The Senate Banking Committee advanced the Clarity Act, a pivotal market structure reform integrating crypto with US capital markets.
  • Bipartisanship emerged during the hearing, with Senators Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks becoming the first Democrats to support the bill alongside Republicans.
  • Alex Thorn sees this bipartisanship as a dramatic increase in the bill’s viability:

    “I raised our odds … from a coin flip, 50/50... to 75% chance, likely for the bill to become law in 2026.” (04:27, Thorn)

• Critical Remaining Issues: Ethics, law enforcement and illicit activity remain as hurdles, with a tight timeline before Congress recesses in August.
• Market Impact: Regulatory clarity could catalyze further institutional engagement in crypto markets.

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2. Markets, Macro, and US Debt: Conversation with Bimnet Abibi (05:55 – 21:48)

A. Markets Reaction to Macro Events

• Geopolitics: Ongoing Iran negotiations impacting oil and market volatility, with both risk of escalation and hope for an eventual de-escalating deal.
• Inflation:
  • Despite some soft data from the UK, global inflationary pressures persist.
  • The Fed is likely to shift metrics to “trimming PCE,” further complicating the narrative.

    “The Fed's about to move the goalposts a little bit on you. They're going to use this figure called Trimming PC.” (10:46, Abibi)

B. Bond Market Dynamics & US Deficit

• Treasury Supply Concerns:

  • Surging US debt and fiscal deficits are shaking global appetite for Treasuries.
  • “There is no alternative (TINA)” to the US dollar, but bond buyers are demanding higher yields due to perceived long-term inflation.
  • Notable quote:

    “You're taking 30-year bond risk … What am I getting paid on the 30 right now?” (13:32, Thorn)
    “About 5.11% ... Is the government going to be solvent?” (13:34, Abibi)

• Diminishing Foreign Appetite:

  • Foreign holders (NATO allies, China, Japan) are buying less US debt, with only a few “pockets” increasing holdings (including Tether).

• Long-Term Outlook:

  • The US retains dollar hegemony due to lack of viable alternatives, but global confidence is waning.
  • Metaphor: World as an estranged couple “separated but still living in the house”—reluctant to move out due to lack of alternatives. (16:38–17:41)

    “We're separated... but I can't really move out because I don't have another mortgage lined up ... So you're in this weird situation … until you find an alternative.” (16:39–17:06, Abibi)

C. Equity Markets & AI Boom

• Stock Valuations:
  • S&P forward P/E ratios are elevated but not at dot-com-bubble extremes; much current bullishness comes from the anticipated AI buildout, which remains in early stages.

    “Memory is going to get bought until like kingdom come … the AI build out really doesn’t—we’re nowhere close. The buildout is nowhere close to having finished at all.” (21:01, Thorn)

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3. Anchorage, OCC Charters, and Institutional Crypto: Interview with Nathan McCauley (21:50 – 49:07)

A. Anchorage’s OCC National Trust Charter: Past, Present, & Competitive Landscape

• Anchorage as 'OG' Crypto Bank:
  • First crypto firm to secure an OCC national trust charter at the end of Trump’s term under Brian Brooks (~2021).

    “While Trump was signing the first round of pardons to end his first term, we were getting our bank charter. Truly closing days, right in the last minute.” (22:15, McCauley)

• Political Whiplash:
  • Incoming regulators (Mike Hsu) in the Biden administration were hostile, leading to a “debanking” phase—even Anchorage, with its charter, lost banking access. (24:01)
• Opening the Floodgates:
  • Now, a broader movement: multiple firms (Fidelity, potentially Morgan Stanley) are pursuing or receiving OCC licenses.
  • Anchorage’s Perspective: Welcomes growing competition, positions itself as infrastructure provider with deep regulatory experience.

    “Our goal is for there to be 5,000 [crypto bank charters] ... Many of those banks … are going to need infrastructure ... So it’s actually an incredible business opportunity for us.” (24:32–25:07, McCauley)

• Not a Gold Rush, But a Slow Burn:
  • Institutional “convergence” with crypto is inevitable but will unfold over decades, not months.

B. TradFi Convergence and Satoshi’s Vision

• Would Satoshi Approve?
  • Hal Finney foresaw Bitcoin being bank-custodied for broad adoption (26:10), so institutional entry aligns with that vision.
• Tether & US Dollar Dominance:
  • Tether’s move to US regulatory compliance (USAT) seen as inevitable, with Anchorage as partner.

    “Tether is I think one of the most incredible companies on earth … their distribution and reach and what they've done for the dollar itself on a global scale has been incredible.” (27:20, McCauley)

  • Tether is now a generational company, increasingly diversified, “looking at the world itself,” per McCauley (29:24).
• Stablecoins as US Dollar Manifest Destiny:
  • Stablecoins and US-backed digital assets viewed as tools to spread and reinforce US dollar dominance globally.

    “My kind of bombastic way of saying what's happening with stablecoins is it's this century's manifest destiny … One of the primary ways that we can spread US dollar dominance and kind of financial influence is through stablecoins.” (34:40, McCauley)

• Observations on Europe: EU may be missing the boat by over-regulating and stifling local stablecoin growth (34:15).

C. Clarity Act, Stablecoin Yield, and Institutional Adoption

• Regulatory Nuances: Stablecoin Yield Debate

  • The controversy over allowing stablecoins to pay passive yield is, in McCauley’s view, a “distraction.”

    “If you look at American consumer expectations, almost no one in America expects that their payment product is also a yield product. ... Most stablecoin growth ... happened for the last decade in a ZIRP environment.” (36:36, McCauley)

• Institutional Engagement: Real or “Touristing”?

  • Institutional involvement is real and gaining steam post-FTX, but secure implementation and robust infrastructure are the key risks.

    “It's very easy to get something that works. It is not easy to get something that works securely.” (33:43, McCauley)

• Security & AI Risks

  • Security threat vectors are expanding with AI; even competent teams might struggle to stay resilient.

    “The only reasonable conclusion … is that you're going to be attacked by a sovereign nation with infinite resources.” (39:03, McCauley) “DPRK is going to get better because the AI tools are going to get better … it's a multiplication of the threat vector.” (39:28, McCauley)

• Regulator Adaptation:

  • The OCC benchmarks every new crypto charter to the high standards set by Anchorage’s cybersecurity practices (42:16).

D. Tokenization: The Next Phase for Crypto?

• Future of Financial Instruments:
  • Real-world assets (stocks, bonds, funds) will inevitably be tokenized.

    “We've built a ton of plumbing … to serve almost no real assets … Once real assets come in ... there's going to be more of a point to all this infrastructure that we've built.” (42:47–43:16, McCauley)

  • Tokenized equities seen as the most natural fit, given their inherent digital nature.

E. Anchorage & AI: Building for Humans and Agents

• Internal Tools:
  • Anchorage uses an AI chat tool called “Alaska,” plugged into internal knowledge bases. (44:43)
• Product Experiment:
  • Opened Anchorage Digital Bank to AI “agents”—entities controlled by humans after KYC. (45:14)

    “In order to open an account [the agent] has to tell us about the dumb human. … The engineers that worked on that set a goal to not write a single line of code and so would joke that it's for agents by agents.” (46:43, McCauley)

• Personal AI Usage:
  • At home, McCauley uses Suno (AI-generated music) to create educational songs for his children, e.g., sportsmanship lessons. (47:07–48:10)

F. The Lightning Round

• Bitcoin Price Prediction for 2026:
  • McCauley’s estimate: $125,000 by the end of 2026.

    “I’m thinking probably in the neighborhood of 125.” (48:35, McCauley)

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Notable Quotes

• On US Treasuries and Alternatives:

  “The US house is still the best house on the block ... there is no alternative.” (15:10, Abibi)

• On the Banking Charter Era:

  “It’s funny in hindsight to think one of the main themes of that period of time was debanking.” (24:01, McCauley)

• On Stablecoin Yield:

  “It’s a distraction … people don’t really expect the yields anyway.” (36:36, McCauley)

• On Tether:

  “They make like $10 billion a quarter or something … it’s like the most profitable company by headcount.” (28:41, Thorn)

• On Tokenization:

  “We've built a ton of plumbing, a ton of infrastructure … once real assets come in ... there's going to be more of a point to all this infrastructure that we've built.” (42:47–43:16, McCauley)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Senate Clarity Act & Regulatory Breakdown: 00:26–05:55
• Macro & Market Analysis with Bimnet Abibi: 05:55–21:48
• Interview: Nathan McCauley (Background, OCC Charter, Competition): 21:50–25:11
• Stablecoins, Tether & US Dollar Dominance: 25:52–31:15
• Institutional Adoption, Clarity Act, Security Risks: 31:53–43:43
• Tokenization: 42:38–44:43
• AI at Anchorage (Internal Tools and Use Cases): 44:43–46:46
• Lightning Round/Closing: 48:29–49:07

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Memorable Moments

• Metaphor for Reserve Currency Status:
  The “estranged couple” metaphor for the world’s relationship with the US dollar (16:38–17:41) colorfully captures the inertia keeping global finances USD-centric.
• Internal AI Bot with a Pun:
  Anchorage’s AI bot is playfully named “Alaska”—“I’ll ask a,” demonstrating their love of puns. (44:59)
• Building Internal Tools “For agents by agents”:
  Anchorage’s experiment opening deposit accounts for AI “agents,” all written by agents themselves, not humans. (46:43)
• Using AI for Parenting:
  McCauley uses Suno to create custom pop songs teaching his kids life lessons and sportsmanship. (47:07)

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Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive update on the interplay between crypto, traditional finance, and evolving US regulatory frameworks—anchored by nuanced commentary from industry leaders deeply engaged in both policy and infrastructure. McCauley’s perspectives on institutional convergence, tokenization, stablecoins, and security challenges ground the discussion, while macro context and market sentiment provide a broader lens for listeners.

The general tone is optimistic but cautionary: regulatory progress is real; competition is heating up; security and execution matter more than ever; and the US still dominates—but nothing lasts forever.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Galaxy Brains. An infinite amount of cash.

[B]

Cash.

[A]

I'm your host Alex Thorne. The US Banking system is sound and resilient. Bitcoin made a new all time high.

[B]

If you're not long.

[C]

If you're not long, you're short.

[A]

Satoshi is going to come on there, laugh hysterically, go quiet.

[B]

All bitcoin's gonna be erased.

[C]

Bitcoin. Bitcoin's the best.

[B]

Crypto Bitcoin is going to zero.

[A]

Welcome back to Galaxy Brains. As always, I'm your host Alex Thorne, head of Firm Wide Research at Galaxy Bitcoin. Not Zero. We have a great episode for you this week. Nathan McCauley, CEO, founder of Anchorage, is our guest. We sat down with Nathan a couple weeks ago in Miami for a great conversation focused a lot on institutional adoption and the Clarity act and how it will impact crypto. But also Anchorage, I think the first crypto company to get an OCC national bank charter back during the Brian Brooks era. I believe in Trump one. It got kind of put on ice by the Biden administration. No surprise there. But now there's a gold rush of crypto firms seeking or even getting preliminary OCC charters. What is that and how does Anchorage sort of maintain their initial lead and moat in the growing field of national crypto banks? Quote unquote? We'll ask Nathan. That and a bunch more. We'll also talk with our good friend Bimnet, a BB from Galaxy Trading, as always, to talk about markets and a good conversation on the state of U.S. bonds, bonds and debt and what it says that the world wants less of our debt and and what sort of the US Is going to do about it. Before we get to that, I need to remind you to please refer to link to disclaimer in the podcast notes and note that none of the information in this podcast constitutes investment advice or an offer recommendation or solicitation by Galaxy or any of its affiliates to buy or sell any securities. Hey, big week. Last week in the US Senate, the Senate Banking Committee held its markup on the Clarity act, the comprehensive market structure reform bill that would normalize and integrate crypto into the US Capital markets. This is a big deal, you know. I think our audience knows a lot about Clarity. But last week, as late as Wednesday night, crypto policy watchers and the ecosystem were pretty negative and thought that we were going to get a partisan markup, meaning that no Democrats would join Republicans to vote yes on Thursday. Wednesday night. Now the Republicans have a majority on that committee 13 to 11. So the fear wasn't that the bill wouldn't pass the committee. The fear was that it might pass with all 11 Democrats voting no. And that's what it looked like. You know, almost halfway through this markup, and then about 90 minutes in, Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat from Arizona, said while talking about one of the amendments that the committee was discussing that he would be a yes vote in in the committee, Though he caveated, that did not guarantee an ultimate yes vote once the bill was on the floor. And then later, Senator Tim Scott, the chairman, said that there had been a deal had been reached, and as a result of that deal, he wanted to introduce five more amendments from Cynthia Lummis, which were apparently to consummate that deal. They were the amendments that some Democrats had agreed to vote yes on as part of this bipartisan compromise that literally emerged during the hearing. And ultimately Senator Angela also Brooks, the Democrat from Maryland, also voted yes, with Ruben Gallego from Arizona, the only two Democrats I'd like to have seen three to five vote yes. But nonetheless, Senators Gallego and also Brooks deserve a lot of credit for breaking ranks with their caucus and voting with Republicans to keep the bipartisan momentum alive for this bill. Again, it would have advanced anyway, but making it bipartisan as it heads to the floor, I think dramatically increases the odds that it will ultimately pass the Senate. I raised our odds from what I had called a coin flip, 50, 50, about three weeks ago, to 75% chance, likely for the bill to become law in 2026. There's still a lot of pitfalls and potholes, potential zigzags that could hold this thing up. I mean, two of the biggest would be the ethics issue and then something around law enforcement, illicit activity. It's not clear exactly how that might shake out, But I think the fact that this deal was able to come to fruition during the hearing in such a dramatic fashion in the Senate Banking Committee last week, it does. It gives us sort of confidence that though twists and turns, there may be tricky issues outstanding that there are, that perhaps those could get resolved as well. So people are very excited about clarity. I think now it comes down to some deal making on these other issues on the floor and then this timeline. I think we think we have about nine weeks of Congress time until the August recess, and that this will take six or seven weeks of work, potentially that many. Historically, nothing really of serious importance actually gets done between the August recess and the end of the year during an election year, a midterm election year, which this is not impossible. Technically, it could get done. You know, in September, October, or even in a lame duck session after the election has occurred. But I think the shot clock is up and it's ticking down towards August. And so we were feeling pretty good about it, I would say, overall, and, you know, more twists and turns to come, but nonetheless, that was a big story last week. We've got a lot of content about that. I was on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Check out that video. I was on there talking about this. So also did a good episode of Bankless last Friday, the day after that hearing, where I went deeper into this analysis. And of course, stay tuned to our content. I'll write a lot more about clarity as the show goes on. Let's hop right into it with Bimnet Abibi. Let's go now to our friend Bimnet AB from Galaxy Trading. As always, Bimnet, welcome back to Galaxy Brains.

[B]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

We're, I don't know, ranging slightly down and Bitcoin. But, you know, it's basically where we've been elevated from, you know, months ago when we were very upset. Well, you were predicting it, but I was upset. I don't know. And what's happening? I mean, last week the big story really was CPI was super hot. What's the story in equity markets this week?

[B]

It's just Iran negotiations. Trump over the weekend stated that he's very close to attacking Iran. Took that back. And it seems like we're on a pathway to some kind of negotiated agreement that saves face for all sides but accomplishes the tangible goals, which is denuclearization. So nuclear material, leaving Iran, taking it out, potentially leaving Iran. But there's like, some ways to make it look like Iran is still doing, like, nuclear stuff. Maybe they're allowed to, like, run one

[A]

plant for a period of time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or only enrich up to a certain.

[B]

But I think in terms of, like, the overall structure, like the skeletal structure of an agreement, you're already kind of there. It's just about the small nuances that make both sides feel like they can declare victory. In a way, I think the Iranians are most eager on proper sanctions relief, release of frozen funds, and the US Is more interested in free passage as well as, you know, nuclear kind of ambitions throttled.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But if you think about, like, freedom of navigation in a way that both sides can appear to win is like, well, every ship has to check with some random, like, Iranian authority before passage. Okay, that's fine. If 100% of ships get through, like, does it really matter?

[A]

Just adds a phone call. They have to make as long as functionally they say yes every time.

[B]

And it's not like a huge toll like, or anything like that. And so there's lots of middle ground to get to kind of like an end game deal. But I think it's constructive that we haven't struck again. But I also think that there is still a risk that there is some kind of military escalation simply because there's a pathway where escalation leads to de escalation eventually. And if progress isn't being made quickly enough, you have an issue where inventories reach incredibly critical levels sooner rather than later. And so you kind of want to avoid that point. And so if it seems like the length of time to get to somewhere reasonable is longer than you might like, then you might need to, you might

[A]

ratchet it back up.

[B]

But I do worry that ratcheting back up just leads to escalation.

[A]

Kind of like, oh, 100, 100 and you know, like escalation spiral. We used to call it an international relations class.

[B]

It's never one of those, but apparently everyone's an IR expert these days.

[A]

Yeah, well, myself, I think everyone was, they were an IR expert, then they became antivirus experts and you know, that's that old thing, Ebola.

[B]

Don't, don't forget about that. But I think the most important story, which deal aside, is you're having significant stress in fixed income markets globally and that's driven by an inflationary impulse that even if the strait were to open today would still exist and you haven't seen it feed through the data. You had some soft UK data today.

[A]

Even oil is not that high. Should it be higher?

[B]

Yes and no. I think at this point most of the market is aware of the inventory story, the, you know, dynamics.

[A]

Pretty well priced at the moment.

[B]

I think it's reasonably well priced. But the, the, the issue is not really like on the front end, but like what happens like six months end

[A]

of year, like where the future are they, the futures are higher, I'm assuming

[B]

like, like crude, I think in December is like on, in the low 80s, which is still like very elevated.

[A]

That seems low for frankly a generational disruption.

[B]

Yeah, no, fair enough.

[D]

I don't know.

[A]

Who knows? I guess this is a big question, right? I mean, I don't know.

[B]

I guess but, but there's also just a ton of other stuff. And like what I would remind folks about inflation here in the US is that it was already high going into,

[A]

they'd made progress, but it wasn't. Did we ever really get below 3

[D]

annualized, maybe 2.9 or something.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

We wanted to, I mean, choose the target so it's still elevated, but.

[B]

But the Fed's about to move the goalposts a little bit on you. They're going to use this figure called Trimming PC.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I saw that. This is what Kevin was favors.

[B]

Right?

[A]

What does it take out?

[B]

Takes out like more of the volatile components. So not just stripping out like energy and food, but like other stuff.

[A]

So additional things removed.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Actually, I don't know, like, the specific dynamics, but I'd say that what's relevant is the Fed's gonna pick its own measures that it thinks gets to the policy that they wanna get to. And you've seen it with Powell, you've seen it with Yellen, you've seen it with a ton of Fed folks. Powell, when inflation was too high, he was like, well, let's look at super core inflation. Then super core got too high and then it's like, oh, like headline Core PC. And so it's always a moving goalpost of like, what you want to do. But at the end of the day, what matters is the market, the marketplace for treasury securities and bond assets. And the issue you're facing now is they're not really great stores of value because we've all seen inflation average is

[A]

higher than

[B]

the 4% that you get on some part of the yield curve. And you're telling me that the government consistently runs huge deficits and stuff just keeps getting more expensive. Like, if I'm a big bond buyer, like, what am I in a rush to buy bonds?

[A]

I don't think so.

[B]

Right. Like, it's like you telling me you want to sell me that, that Galaxy hat. I know you've got like 15 behind.

[A]

I do.

[B]

Why? Why am I.

[A]

That's why it's so clean on the shelf.

[B]

Why am I gonna pay like a reasonable price?

[A]

Because I've got a bunch of others I'm gonna inflate. As soon as you get one, I'm gonna put it. As soon as I sell this one to you, I'm gonna reach out and put on another one.

[B]

But again, you're going to deflate the value of the bonds with the hat, with more supplies. So the bonds have to get cheaper, which is higher yields. And so you've got this huge supply story. And there's no, you can't really. The other problem is war should come in with this view that the Fed balance sheet should shrink, not increase. And so in theory, if you're going to add more supply from the Fed balance sheet and more fiscal supply. Like why am I in a rush to buy bonds and why wouldn't I demand like a much higher premium? Why wouldn't I demand like term premium that is consistent with like historical levels. But point is, bond market's a bit shaky and it has the potential to get a lot shakier because if you're talking about fundamental value like you could argue way higher easily. You're taking 30 year bond risk.

[A]

I know. What am I getting paid on the 30 right now?

[B]

You're getting paid about 511.1, doesn't it?

[A]

That's a view of where. Of the inflation that I don't. I need a lot more to beat inflation than that. Over 30 years.

[B]

Is the government going to be solvent?

[A]

Don't they probably need 20 though? I mean in reality like truly though, I mean you don't think that we're going to. Inflation is going to be 20% over, over 30 years.

[B]

I think like a reasonable.

[A]

Hasn't it been like 20% like basically since 2020?

[B]

Depends on what you look at. I know if you look at like the average S and P return over its lifetime, let's call it like 8%.

[A]

Yeah. A year.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. Like I feel like you probably need something on the order of like six to seven.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

That's like probably like a fair market value.

[D]

But I don't know man.

[A]

I'm just saying that like you know, 5% doesn't cut it. No, it doesn't. Like over 30 years it just seems like I'm pretty, I guess I'm bearish on or I guess I'd be bullish on debasement and you know, stocks are going to give you a lot more. I don't know, it just doesn't seem that attractive. And you're right. Like do we think they're actually going to be able to. Hopefully, I guess with the bond market, with a long dated bond from the US government or any probably big government. I guess you're hoping they just keep the carousel moving and they don't bankrupt before they have to pay you. Right. I mean it's basically the, the bet and like you know, it's sort of like a, it's honestly it's like a greater fools kind of situation but because we all kind of know that eventually they will not be able to pay this debt.

[B]

Yeah. But the, the issue is like there's only so many hard assets in the world.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And two, like if you're Talking about like all the houses you could buy. Like, let's say you only have the option of buying like 15 houses.

[A]

Right.

[B]

The problem is the US house is still the best house on the block.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, there's this phrase, you know, Tina, which is like, there is no alternative.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like the US house is still like the US dollar.

[D]

Well.

[A]

And you're also like, where else do I put my money for 30 years? Especially if you're in a pension. I mean, I get it.

[D]

You're right.

[B]

Or years. What's the best.

[A]

The best house on the block? Yeah.

[D]

Probably dollars.

[A]

And it's probably.

[B]

And gold. Like you can only do so much with gold. Like you can'. I can't wire it to like Indonesia tomorrow. Yeah. You know.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Bitcoin. Yes. But again, it's still too small for that. Too small?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And it's young.

[A]

I mean, you're going to really do a 30? I mean, I am pretty much. And some bitcoin believers for sure are. But you're going to do a 30 year allocation to something that's only existed for 17, it seems.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Shouldn't it have at least existed for 30 before you invest for the second 30?

[B]

But I heard this on social media the other day and I, I wish I could give credit to who said it, but I just don't know. But the way he described it is like the world is effectively like, imagine me and you were dating. Right. And you're the US and I'm everyone else. We've effectively broken up, but we still. How about this? We're a couple. We live in that usa.

[D]

We're separated.

[B]

We're separated, we're in the house, we're

[A]

living in separate bedrooms.

[B]

Separate bedrooms, all that. We're in the USA house.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Right. We've broken up. But I can't really move out because I don't have like another mortgage lined up. I don't have any like, suitable, like, situation. And so you're in this weird situation where it's like, we don't like each

[A]

other anymore, we hate each other and they have to.

[D]

Right.

[B]

But like, until you find an alternative.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like you have to stay in that house even though, like, you know, this

[A]

has been sort of the risk. Like, and I think why the US and you can apply to a lot of things, whether it's geopolitics, even our sanctions policy. I've always been cautious on using sanctions because you're adding encumbrances to the dollar and eventually it'll be so cumbersome to use that people will choose a new one. It just turns out that our moat is so deep. But we're hanging a lot on our hat of it being hard for you to move out of that house.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And eventually it could become too much. And people will create an alternative, though they haven't yet and there isn't a clear one yet. But people talk about the, you know, the digital yuan might be a way and it's like, well, you know, the USD still a lot better than that. The euro's not very good and the European economy isn't. Isn't dynamic like the American. So there is no alternative.

[D]

But.

[B]

There is no but.

[A]

We are sort of like gambling and. Or we're sort of like. What's the word? We're sort of offering the world to call our bluff, basically. It just hasn't come up with anything better yet.

[B]

Well, what's happening now is like, slowly you're seeing like, think about NATO, right. All those countries buy a shit ton of US debt. The data says they're buying less of it. The Chinese buying less of it. Less of it. Japanese foreign holders reducing. There's only like a few pockets that are actually like increasing. And so it's like tether.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like the world is like slowly trying to decouple itself from the U.S. whether, you know, I mean, we talked about taking over a NATO ally like a couple months ago.

[A]

You're talking about Greenland and that whole thing. Correct.

[B]

Canada to the north. Right.

[A]

Like that was mostly a joke. Right.

[B]

But again, like, you know, I, I think.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Some of the, the comments around Taiwan the other week were like a little bit concerning, you know, like, like, like there's, there's a push to like not be so reliant on the US Totally in part.

[A]

And, but back to your original point, this is yet another reason why bond buyers want to see higher payments. Right. Because there aren't as many buyers. I mean. Right. I mean, basically all of this adds up to like, we're going to have to pay our bond buyers more.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's getting more expensive for us to borrow. Correct. Because they don't like us as much, basically.

[B]

And the issue is like, they don't

[A]

trust us as much as they did the market, the bond buyers, I mean.

[B]

Absolutely.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And the other issue is like, are we, we're talking about like a one and a half trillion dollar defense budget next year.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Double or something. Didn't he say like double it?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And so like, it's not like, and then the tariff revenues aren't there as well.

[D]

They gotta sort that out, right?

[A]

Didn't they get a lot of them got overturned by the Supreme Court.

[B]

They're refunding money right now. Right. And so like okay, you've gotta roll the existing debt at higher interest levels, you gotta take out more debt at higher interest rate levels and then all of a sudden you're paying like a trillion dollars a year in interest expense and like the issue gets that much harder to solve.

[A]

Like so debt more expensive commodities tricky here oil and inflation still likely to rear its head worse or inflation in particular.

[B]

Inflation.

[A]

Yeah, some of that commodity driven though. And what in equity markets are we're just chugging along here like mostly. I mean we were at all time highs like what last week or the week before. Right?

[B]

Yeah, no, I mean here's the thing about equities, you know, you're trading at like almost like a 21 forward PE. There's still some which isn't like unreasonable.

[A]

You know what it was off the top of your head at like the top of the dot com or something like what are prior tops for. For PE? Like talking like 50, like how bad the blow off top in that one? I'll, we'll check and I'll, I'll add that to the, to the follow up here in the show.

[B]

But, but, but I think we're.

[A]

It's not like totally crazy is your point.

[B]

It's not totally crazy and there's like structural things like like memory is going to get bought until like kingdom come.

[A]

You just need so much memory for this.

[B]

Right. You need power.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

And like who's going to host all these fucking machines?

[A]

Like you need buildings and energy and RAM and all quartz and silicon and Right. I mean it's just, it's true like the. I have seen the AI build out really doesn't. We are not there yet. People are like oh are we topping with the cat? I mean maybe they've the announced forward. Capex has already been so big, who knows how much more there is to announce. But they're nowhere close. The buildout is nowhere close to having finished at all.

[B]

Yeah, I mean like you can say you're going to spend $750 billion on CapEx.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But realistically like if there's no generator

[A]

to buy it's just sitting there waiting to be allocated someday in the future. That's a good point. All right, well let's leave it there. This has been a good one as always. My friend Pimnadabibi from Galaxy Trading. Thank you so much.

[B]

Thanks for having me.

[D]

Nathan McCauley, co founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital. Nathan, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brands.

[C]

Oh, thank you. It's great to be here.

[D]

It's an exciting time in institutional crypto. You guys are kind of the OG institution because you've had an occ, correct me, on this National Trust Charter.

[C]

That's right. Yes.

[D]

Since 2021.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

Right before the last Trump administration exited, Brian Brooks gave you guys that license.

[C]

That's right. We got it right there at the, at the tail end of the initial Trump administration. What I joke with people is while Trump was signing the first round of pardons to end his first term, we were getting our bank charter. So, yes. Truly closing days right in the last minute.

[A]

And.

[D]

Yeah, and Brian was a great acting comptroller of the currency, no doubt. We got a really bad one right after that. This guy, Mike sue was terrible. He hated crypto. I was there at a. I was. Well, I was there. I'll also have you to say it. I was there at a. I think maybe it was the Digital chamber event in D.C. like six months after Biden took office. And Mike sue gives a keynote address. He's like, he's like, I. I've been known. He opens it with like, I'm well known to like, not like crypto that much. And we're all like, but. There's no but. Then he just proceeded to yell at

[A]

us for an hour.

[D]

Now, though, the situation is very different and many other people are getting that license. This is the main question I wanted to ask you. Like, you guys were early in the door. You, you saw where the puck was going, you skated towards where the puck was going. But now you got Erebor Fidelity. Like, I mean, I think Morgan Stanley is going to get one. I saw the floodgates are open. How helpful is your early advantage? Or like, how do you think about the competitive nature now with the OCC license?

[C]

Yeah. So I think it's been. It's been really interesting. So you're totally right that we had, you know, first Trump administration did some trailblazing on crypto stuff. Biden folks came in and had what we can call a different point of view on this. And it's just kind of funny in hindsight to think that one of the main themes of that period of time was debanking.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Where people were actually losing their bank accounts. We ourselves got debanked even as a National Trust bank, which is totally ridiculous. Actually testified in Congress about that. They were, they were floored. And so I, I welcome the new, the new administration looking to issue more charters. We kind of consistently, all through the last five years while we've been the only one that had it said, hey, we need more, we need more innovation here. And so the way we think about it is there's, there was one for many years, now we got something like 10. And our goal is for there to be 5,000.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And we want every bank to come into digital assets. There's no reason that any bank shouldn't be interacting with cash just as much as they're interacting with stablecoins. And so I think it's, I think it's wonderful. And frankly many of those banks as they're coming in are going to need infrastructure.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And are going to need Rails and they're likely to partner with someone else who is regulated party pursuit with them and has a five year history with the occ. And so that's what we're finding is that it's actually an incredible business opportunity for us. And so it's, I think it's very, very positive is that the new gold

[D]

rush is selling the picks and shovels to tradfi entrance.

[C]

I think, I think it's, it's, it's hard to call it a gold rush because it's going to be such a, it's a slow burn. It's one of these things where you like set out the, set out the business and then it scales over time periods that are measured in decades. But I do think over time it's going to be one of the bigger trends to see bank starts to come in, start to offer crypto offerings to their wealth management clients, start to lend and lend against crypto assets and then even start to look at things like what do stable coins look like? What do stable coins look like for international remittance for settlement internally. So in short, don't know if I'd call it a gold rush, but the opportunity is gold.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And it, the convergence of tradfi and crypto we call the great convergence. I didn't come up with that. But it's, I, I think it is, I think it is great though. It's, it's big as well. Do you think that would Satoshi Nakamoto be upset with you for having a bank license, etc.

[C]

You know what I'm saying? Well, it depends on, it depends on who satoshi is. There's a very early post from Hal Finney on the Bitcoin Talk forums where he talks about the fact that most bitcoin will be held inside banks because of the practical realities of how hard it is to manage private key security. So if Hal is Satoshi, then I think actually quite the opposite. And this is actually what Hal, Hal recommended.

[D]

It's quite interesting that post. Hal talks about basically like stable coins.

[C]

Really. It really is, yeah.

[D]

He's talking about technically like bitcoin collateralized stable coins.

[C]

Tether.

[D]

Talk to us about Tether. You guys are partners with Tether?

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

You guys are their primary partner for USAT. The U.S. i guess, the permitted payment stablecoin issuer version of Tether.

[C]

Yeah, that's right.

[D]

Genius Act, Tether. We know Bo Hines runs that.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

We haven't heard a lot. I know that. I'm watching.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean nobody's really, I mean the Genius act doesn't quite exist yet. It's in law, but they're not implementing yet. But like how, why, why partner with Tether?

[C]

So Tether is I think one of the most incredible companies on earth. Their distribution and reach and what they've done for the dollar itself on a global scale has been incredible. You know, I was there at the, at the signing of the Genius act and President Trump and the administration was all but thanking them for how much they've done for the cause of the dollar globally. And so their decision to come here in the US create a US based coin, you know, when talking to them, that was always inevitable. They were always going to comply with the rules and regulations in the US and it's a, it's obviously a strategic priority for them.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And so where we are with USAT is it's, it's out there, it's launched, it's kind of what, what Tether is called, a soft launch. We've got a set of partners that now support it, getting market makers onboarded, getting distribution partners onboarded and starting to do some activation campaigns. But look it, it benefits usat, that is benefits from the global power of Tether, which is unmatched. And so this ecosystem that they're going to build I think is going to be pretty profound and want to be one of the bigger growth vectors in, in stable Coins moving forward.

[D]

It, it is one of the biggest companies in the entire world. Tether, they're really huge. They're quite good at what they do. They have what, almost $200 billion in outstanding supply of USDT.

[C]

That's right.

[D]

I was talking with some folks at Tether and I didn't realize this but they, they own like agricultural concerns, pharmaceutical Companies, they have a big AI business. Is it the most or is people have to quote the. Because they publish their numbers every quarter, their revenue versus headcount ratio. Like it's like, you know, they've got like 100 employees, but they make like $10 billion a quarter or something. It's like the most profitable company by headcount. How would you just like stepping back even from our seats in our places in crypto, like is this like a, like, I don't know, is it like, is Paolo like, you know, Bill Gates, you know, like, is this like a generational company?

[C]

I think it is. I think it is generational company in that it is looking at the problem from a much larger scale. Right now when you reach the kind of scale the tether has reached, you start to think about the world itself. One of the stories about Henry Ford, this idea that he wanted to make the cars affordable enough so that his factory workers could afford them. And so you kind of get into these self influential things where you start to think about. And one of the things that tether is focused on is my conversation with Paolo and what he presents a lot is like he wants to create a stable world. And so this is not just about stable coins, but how can you create technology that helps drive stability worldwide? And so yes, I do think it's a generational company.

[D]

They're one of the few like institutional grade crypto companies that also carries forth a cipher punk ideology. I think Kraken's another notable one. Maybe it's Jesse Powell, like back in the day, you know, how do you think. I kind of, I was sort of needling at this tension before when I asked you about whether Satoshi would like whether you had a bank license. Yeah. Like just with the great convergence happening, like how do we think about like the, the revolutionary anarcho capitalism of bitcoin clashing or mixing or integrating with traditional capital markets.

[C]

I think it was from my point of view always necessary because there are certain aspects of the crypto ethos that could have been, could have been cut off in infancy. In fact, one of one of Satoshi's last posts ever on the forums was this famous post about kicking the hornet's nest.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And then, you know, two or three posts later, it disappears forever.

[D]

Right.

[C]

And so this, this idea that this experiment we have here within digital assets, this I guess you call it anarcho capitalist experiment was fragile.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

One of the things that needed to happen was to make that movement anti fragile. And one of the best things we could do to make the movement anti fragile is to drive institutional adoption. And so I, I've always thought the institutional adoption was path dependent to actually achieving the initial aims of decentralization and increasing human freedom from this. And so I think we're, we building in the institutional space are absolutely aligned with what needs to happen here.

[D]

Let's talk a little bit about institutional adoption. We're at consensus. It's filled with institutions. How are they really here? Are they just touristing like what's the deal? Sifma I've, I've, I've addressed sifma, which is the securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. All the big banks and brokerages, they're all building something. Are they really building?

[A]

Are they here?

[D]

What's your actual view on this?

[C]

So I think this, we're at the point right now where we can see cycles. And so we have gotten to a point now where I can, I can solidly say that 4 years ago pre FTX we had institutions at this level. I can tell you, like we had a G sib on the one yard line. They're about to start lending against Bitcoin, literally, I won't say hours, but days away from signing the documents, sign off from the CEO, FTX explodes and it all goes away for years.

[D]

Right.

[C]

And so we have moved past that. The, the progress that's happening is past there. The regulatory environment is very clear. And so I believed it last time and it didn't work out I believe at this time. And I think it's actually going to work out this time because we've got a lot of Runway with the current administration. We got a lot of clarity now with genius and maybe even clarity itself will pass. So yeah, I do think, I do think they're here. I think they're still figuring things out. You know one of the things that I sometimes worry about is how do institutions actually build in the space. It is very easy to get something that works. It is not easy to get something that works securely. And so it's actually one of the things that I, I worry about a little bit as institutions start to adopt is are institutions going to invest enough to make sure that it's built well and can withstand the kind of resilience, but it can be as resilient as it needs to be.

[A]

I got a couple things I want

[D]

to pull on from your, your statements. Let's start with clarity though.

[A]

Sure.

[D]

We've got genius. It's a big deal. It's a US dollar dominance law. Right. That's how I think of it.

[C]

Totally 100.

[D]

Yeah. I think Scott Besson said we're going to grow, maintain and grow US Dollar dominance. We're going to use stable coins to do that. He said at the March 6, 2025 roundtable that you were at.

[C]

Oh, yeah, it was wonderful.

[D]

I think it's brilliant. I mean, look, I like bitcoin, but if we're going to have Fiat, then ours should be best.

[C]

Yes, yes.

[D]

And I am a patriot and I think America should crush it. By the way, do you think Europe is this up pretty bad? It seems like they are. I think they're, Asia and us are like going full steam with their stablecoin visions.

[C]

I, I, I get the impression that you get the impression that Europe generally is starting to rethink the regulatory first mindset that kind of shuts things down and they're starting to come.

[D]

They're rethinking it.

[C]

Maybe not as a, you're hopeful, maybe not as a collective, but they're, you know, even like some of the speeches you saw at Davos where people are saying some green shoots, maybe may default should be open instead of default closed. And some of these kinds of ideas. So I hope they'll turn around because I think it is, it is a missed opportunity for them. Whereas on our side, like my kind of bombastic way of saying what, what's happening with stablecoins is it's this sensory's manifest destiny. You know, we, we looked at that at different ways in the past, but now the, the, one of the primary ways that we can spread US Dollar dominance and kind of financial influence is through stablecoins. And so that same nature that makes bitcoin unstoppable can be applied to the dollar itself. And it turns out that a lot of humanity wants dollars. So it's a, it's a great opportunity.

[D]

Another thing you mentioned, clarity. It's going through the trenches of the Senate right now. Yeah, I've written a lot about this, so I'm going to tldr it. But right now we're waiting for Senate banking to schedule a markup on this bill. It has a lot of good stuff in it. I love this bill. I think it's a great bill. There's some disputes. One of the most interesting, of course, has been about stablecoin rewards. Senator Tillis and also Brooks have negotiated a compromise with the banks, which actually I think is quite good compromise. But how it restricts. Genius already says that issuers can't pay token holders, but there was a little bit of a gray area about third parties. Could they pass it on? And this restricts that. They say, well, you can, but not solely for holding the stablecoin. That's basically the can't look like a passive bank deposit that earns interest. How important is clarity and is that some people are all upset, oh my God. That neuters stablecoins.

[A]

I don't think it does.

[D]

How important is the compromise on stablecoin yield?

[C]

So I think the, I think the whole thing is a distraction. And this is one of my hotter hot takes, I would say. But if you look at American consumer expectations, almost no one in America expects that their payment product is also a yield product. You, you go to a bank and you put something in a cd, that's how you earn, earn interest. You're not expected to get that just from holding the payment instrument itself. And then you look at this idea that the banks want to fight against stablecoin yield because they're afraid of deposit flight. When in fact stablecoins are probably one of the biggest opportunities for banks to fundamentally innovate. Their core product is getting an upgrade. And by the way, they could take stable coins and use stable coins as deposits themselves in the same way they use cash so they can do fractional reserve, not on the stable coin reserves, but on the stable coins themselves. So it's just a, it's a weird thing where I think we've gotten ourselves into a thing that needs to get resolved that if, if both sides kind of looked at it more soberly, they'd be like, oh, actually I, as the. We as the banks don't actually care about that as much. But also we on the, on the crypto side are like, well, people don't really expect the yields anyways. You know, most of the stablecoin growth that has happened for the last, I don't know, decade has been in a zerp environment. So stablecoins got popular when there was no such thing as stablecoin yield because there was no yield. Yeah, you know, it's. I'm, I'm glad we're getting to a compromise, but I still think that it was, it was an avoidable dispute in a sense.

[D]

I think that's really well said. Back to something else you said. What keeps you up at night? You were talking about the banks, when they build in this space, need to do so securely. Yes, we've seen some major defi. Vulnerabilities recently. The Anthropic released Mythos and said, no one can see it. It's too dangerous. Which was great marketing Separately, but credible marketing. But I mean. Well, actually I was laughing. Somebody pointed out that chat GPT, that OpenAI said the same thing about ChatGPT 2 like 5 years ago.

[C]

Yeah, but I didn't see that one.

[D]

But I mean we are seeing a lot of stuff. I use AI at home and it's pretty good. Like, are you worried about AI assisted vulnerabilities and crypto?

[C]

I think the, I think the way to think about this is that it raises the stakes for what it takes to be secure. So one way to think about this is that when you're, when you're designing secure systems, you think about who is going to come in to attack you, who is going to come and attack your infrastructure. And the only reasonable conclusion to make on that if you're in crypto, is that you're going to be attacked by a sovereign nation with infinite resources.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And so you already had a all knowing, all being beast that was your potential adversary. And many of the hacks have actually happened from dprk. Dprk, who knows? Yeah. And so what now what has happened is DPRK is going to get better because the AI tools are going to get better and everybody else is as strong as DPRK now. And so it's, it's, it is a multiplication of the, the threat vector. And I think it does have pretty profound influence on how banks or financial institutions start to build in this space. If you just think of some of the defi protocols that have had issues, some of them very legitimate, we're no longer at the point where we can just say this is just pure incompetence.

[D]

Right.

[C]

There are cases here where there's competent teams trying hard and failing. Which means that as a bank integrating something here, you got to say, hey, am I better than that? Do I actually have the skill to be able to do this?

[B]

Well?

[C]

And if the answer isn't an absolutely 100% yes, then you better think very carefully about how this gets implemented.

[D]

You guys have been regulated by a national bank regulator for five plus years now. Five years. Are they, are they smart to this? Are they asking you guys regulatory exam questions about your cyber sec? That is up to snuff with what we're seeing.

[C]

Yeah, there's a, there's a couple ways they think about it. The, the banking regulators for as, as difficult as it is and kind of like how many, how many multi layered programs you have to build there, there's a real sense in which there's a set of guidelines that you are kind of mandated to follow almost kind of checkbox type of things, but then also a real sense in which they ask you to do your own security assessment and then to measure yourself against your assessment to see if you're good enough.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Which I think is particularly important. Something like crypto where you couldn't have written rules on crypto anyways and now you definitely can't rule. Right. Rules of crypto that assume things like Mythos and Quantum. And so I think the, the, the regulatory framework that they have there has a lot of, I won't call it gray area but like specialization to your specific case. And we, we talk a lot with them about that. We're like, hey look, our security is good and it's good in ways that you probably don't yet know how to examine us on. But here's what we're doing and here are the like the kinds of steps that need to be taken. I think it's particularly important as you see the new charters coming through. One one of the things I'm pretty proud of is that we have set a standard at the OCC that in many ways now every other bank is going to get held to.

[D]

Yeah. They're probably benchmarking every crypto related OCC license against Anchorage and the work you guys have done, you deserve a lot of credit for that.

[C]

Let me set a high bar.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. I mean this is a safe. You guys are safe keeping people's digital assets at your core. That is your core.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Mission.

[D]

You guys do a great job of that. We're running low on time. I want to bang through a couple more questions. Sure.

[C]

Let's do it.

[D]

Tokenization. We didn't talk about this. How important is this for crypto? Whether it's we tokenized Galaxy stock. Is tokenized equities the pinnacle here?

[C]

I think it's got to happen. So one of the ways that I think about it is Standard Oil. Standard Oil did an incredible amount of build out pipelines, the whole thing. And almost all of that happened before cars existed. And this is what I think has happened in the crypto industry. We have built a ton of plumbing, a ton of infrastructure, so much to serve almost no real assets.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And so once the real assets come in, stocks, bonds, equities, tokenized funds, everything, there's going to be more of a point to all this infrastructure that we've built. So it should be a enabler for every defi protocol now gets better. Every chain now gets better. Stablecoins grow probably in tandem with the rate of growth of the Tokenized securities and how we get there, I don't know. Is it that everything's going to go through the dtcc? Is it that we're going to tokenize our own stock like you've done and then it's more like an issuer LED thing?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

I'm not exactly sure how it's going to play out, but is obvious and inevitable that it's going to happen.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Nobody is quite sure. And I would say while we have internecin disputes about how to do it, we're all aligned that it should happen and we're for it. To me, tokenized stocks, stocks themselves are intangible. Remember when everyone was trying to IBM was going to tokenize tomatoes. They were going to put tomatoes on the blockchain. Well, it turns out like. Or there was a big real estate push. Turns out the digital and the physical pretty hard to connect. But financial instruments are inherently digital.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

They seem ripe, you know, they seem ready.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Ripe was a tomato pun there.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Here's another question. Nathan, you mentioned this before too, but what is Anchorage doing with AI internally to build with AI and actually a much more interesting question like what are you building with AI at home?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Good, good. So a couple things here. First is that we have. We really like puns. We really like puns. And so we've got a internal chat bottle that is called Alaska also Alaska. Oh, pretty good, right?

[A]

Alaska.

[C]

I'll ask a question. And so. And it's got all of our, you know, corpus of information there that could be used for that. But probably most fun is earlier this week we announced we are opening up our bank to agents.

[A]

Oh.

[C]

So agents can now come to Anchorage Digital bank, open an account, get cash card and crypto rails.

[D]

Wow.

[C]

So they're able to get new card issuance and then be able to pay for things with merchants that you can get crypto rails. So they can pay other agents that are doing agent agent payments and even wire money.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And, and send each other money to other agents or to, you know, traditional vendors.

[D]

I'm gonna send my open claw agent at Anchorage right after this interview.

[A]

You should.

[C]

It's. It is going to need the, the way we joke about it is that the agent in order to open an account has to tell us about the dumb human. So we'll need your KYC information. But yeah, it's a, it's a fun project.

[D]

That's interesting. You KYC the human. That makes sense. I mean the agents don't actually. We're nowhere close as a society. Yet to reckoning with how to deal with legal personhood for AI. But yeah, it makes sense. You can.

[A]

We're not.

[C]

We're not there yet, but I think, like, it's not out of the. It's not out of the realm of possibility to imagine that your agent would be an llc.

[D]

I agree with that.

[C]

You know, they could have identities over time, but for now we're doing a know your agent thing. And so we. We actually assign the agent identity and that agent identity can be used out there in the. The ecosystem a little bit more. So I think it's going to be. I think it's gonna be fun. Early days. Yeah, we're gonna have to see how everything plays out. And so we are not just building. Oh, that's the other thing that's fun about it. That product. We entirely built it with agents. The engineers that worked on that set a goal to not write a single line of code and so would joke that it's for agents by agents. I like that a lot. That's fun.

[D]

What are you building at home? What do you like when you vibe code at your house? And how are you helping your family with AI?

[C]

So I just threw a 40th birthday party and I signed my agent to help with a lot of logistics of the. Of the birthday party, finding vendors. I needed. I needed a robot dancers for reasons that were personal and profound particular to the party.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

And so they came. But then the other thing I really like is this app called Suno.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Have you seen this one?

[D]

Yes.

[C]

So I use this to, like, teach my kids. So I'll have some message I want them to think about. And so we'll write a pop song that has them as the lead hero in the song.

[A]

Brilliant.

[C]

Exemplifying some, like, moral standard or so.

[A]

Good.

[D]

It's so crazy how good it is.

[B]

Good.

[D]

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I love that. So you're like, I don't know. I'm also 40 and I've got two kids that are pretty young, but, like, I don't know, they like Disney channels and, you know, Handyman Hal on YouTube, who knows what you know. And the custom songs that you can make in Suno are so good. I didn't realize I hadn't thought of this. So I always love asking this question, what are you building with AI? Because honestly, it's like a green field. It's really whatever you can come up with.

[C]

I had a great one.

[D]

Educational music for your kids.

[C]

Yeah, my son was. He's like, decently good at basketball. But he's getting trash talked.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And he just couldn't handle it. So he was like. He was beating up this other kid, and I was like, hey, man, listen to the song. And it was about how you. When someone trash talks you, you win on the scoreboard, not through that.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

The best way to. Yeah. The best way to silence your critics is to win. Yes. It's a win.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

Nathan, before we wrap, gun to your head. December 31, 2026. What is the price of Bitcoin?

[C]

2026 this year? Yeah, I would. Right now, I'm thinking probably in the neighborhood of 125.

[D]

I think it's very reasonable. We feel good right now.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

We kind of need to get 100 back, I think, before we're really back. But the setup seems very positive.

[C]

You know what? You know what happened the day when it first said 100? I testified in Congress. Maybe that's what we need to do and stuff, too. Yes.

[D]

Nathan McCauley, co founder, CEO of Anchorage Digital. Nathan, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brains.

[C]

It was a pleasure. Thank you.

[A]

Thank you for listening Galaxy Brains, the weekly podcast from Galaxy Research. I'm Alex Thorne, head of firmwide research at Galaxy. Follow me on X at Intangible Coins. Follow Galaxy Research on X at GLXY Research. Read our written [e-mail] research. And don't forget, if you like Galaxy Brains to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more, we'll see you next time.