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Ray Dalio Is Wrong About Bitcoin & Bonds Are Breaking | THE ₿ROADCAST EP. 30
01:18:25
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- [00:00]
A
All right, welcome everyone, to the broadcast part 30. This is where we catch up on news tweets, videos, charts, trends, and any other bitcoin and macro related content that stood out to us in the past two weeks. Usually I'm here with Brian and Michael. Michael couldn't make it, so we're happy that Liam could jump in. So welcome, man.
- [00:22]
B
Excited to be here.
- [00:23]
A
Yeah, we're, we're happy you're here too. I think there's a lot to. To talk about. I think the first link is also Liam's. Liam's link. And we were already.
- [00:36]
C
This is not it. This was my.
- [00:37]
A
This was yours. This was yours. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So maybe give a bit of context, then we play the video or if you want to play the video.
- [00:44]
C
Yeah. I feel like we've, we've talked about Ray Dalio probably several times on this show before and his various takes on bitcoin and gold and portfolio construction. But I guess this was an interview that he did with Ted David Freeberg last week or the week before and basically talking about bitcoin in the context of safe Haven assets and why it's not a safe haven asset. Basically saying it lacks privacy and has a high correlation with tech stocks and it's relatively small and controllable. And he basically is comparing that to gold and saying like, you know, gold's a real thing. Don't worry about this bitcoin thing. And it's interesting because he's talked positively about bitcoin in the past and I think more recently, I think he's kind of downplaying it a bit and talking more about gold. And yeah, if you just scroll down to what Jackson replied to this and we'll play the clip after this, but basically the data doesn't support his arguments in terms of it not performing well in crises and post crises. And so this is a chart that we put together at onramp that basically shows every crisis from 2020, basically, and comparing S and P returns, gold returns and bitcoin returns in sort of a 60 day time period after that. And you can see bitcoin is positive after all of them and it actually is outperforming everything else after them. So while in the moment, sometimes bitcoin correlates to one goes down violently in terms of headlines and crises, it typically bounces back harder and faster than anything else. And so I would say that makes it a great Safe haven asset. And so this is just one data point that refutes what he says. But play the clip the same period that gold's climbed 80% since we last talked. Bitcoin's down 25%. What's your view on what's happened with Bitcoin and why that hasn't played the role that many thought it was going to play, which is the safe haven.
- [02:45]
D
There's an important differentiating characteristics of bitcoin. Bitcoin does not have privacy. Any transactions can be monitored and then indirectly perhaps controlled. Central banks are not going to want to buy bitcoin and being able to hold it. So it's not just individuals, it's institutions and so on, but most and central banks. There has been some question or thoughts of the development of new technologies like quantum computing and so on. Can there be issues regarding that? And then there's, you know, who owns it and what are the other exposures that they have in their portfolio. It tends to have a pretty high correlation with the tech stocks. So from an ownership, you know, just the supply demand is affected by. If somebody gets squeezed in one thing, they sell something, whatever else they have. So there are those dynamics. It's a long way and it's a relatively small market. That's a relatively controllable market. I think a lot of attention has been given to Bitcoin but as a money, you know, it's, it's small in relationship to gold. And so you know, those are the dynamics. There is only one gold in the
- [04:02]
C
same period that gold climbed 80%. Yeah, I guess a few things to highlight there in addition to what I already talked about around the crisis data. The fact that he's saying as a money it's small relative to gold. Like that is the entire opportunity and like from an investment perspective, like I'm surprised. That's why I like question his motives or incentives in saying this stuff because like surprised that he wouldn't understand. Like that's the whole opportunity. That's why it's an interesting thing to buy today is because it is a smaller market than gold and it improves upon the properties of gold. And the privacy stuff. We've talked about this too. Like Bitcoin's privacy is at other layers than the base chain which like not a concern in my mind. The quantum stuff like we've talked about at length. And the other thing that he references is like the correlation with tech stocks which is like again not a reason to not own the asset. Like it's not, it doesn't refute the underlying investment thesis on why you would want to own bitcoin because other people own tech stocks as well. Like it just doesn't make any sense if you're looking at the asset. Asset objectively like other people. Also, owning tech stocks has nothing to do with the long term trajectory of Bitcoin.
- [05:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. I have so many thoughts on this. And also like how, but, but also like how they are like you have like technology and, and philosophy and like history and like finance and, and economics. It's, it's like all intertwined, right. And what I just are constantly.
- [05:30]
B
Yeah.
- [05:32]
A
Amazed about is that even someone like Dalio, right, Like who has intensely interesting videos like on monetary history and stuff like that, like stuff that we all learned a lot from, right. Like I feel like these are all super superficial arguments that don't really do justice to what I would expect from someone like Ray Dalio, right? So for example, the, you know, even Friedberg, he asks. It's such a stupid question, right? Like oh, Bitcoin, you know, bitcoin, the thing is not behaving like everyone said it would behave. But I never understand why these people talk about it like this, right? Even the correlation with tech stocks. No, it's the people that don't understand how you should use Bitcoin. Like what is bitcoin, what is bitcoin for, et cetera. If you're trading it like a tech stock and there's, and there's too many people still trading it like a tech stock, just like Brian said and what we've talked about, talked about extensively, you know, that's the asymmetric opportunity. Because you know, then I, I would go to the gold argument, right? Like oh, you know, Bitcoin lacks privacy. I. E. Gold is like super dark and it's all like, you know, hidden and whatever. That's the issue, right? Like you know, gold would, you know, gold's function is to back, you know, the legitimacy of countries and this and that and blah blah, blah. That's why they're selling bonds and treasuries, you know, shit like that. But you never really know how much gold they have. But you know, that's, that's a great thing, right? So I feel like, you know, just a short clip, it's. It's a short conversation, right? They sit for an hour or whatever. But for me these arguments are just, you know, surface, surface level arguments. And then the thing like, yeah, if someone needs to sell something, they are selling bitcoin. And then I'm thinking, but that's also a great aspect of bitcoin, right? It's highly liquid. It's the only 24, 7, 365 liquid market in the world. Right. Which has traded longer than the whole digital tradfi market combined. Right. So the fact that you could actually use it as liquidity in very large amounts on a Sunday evening at 9pm is an extreme strength and unique thing that it can do and for which it's also used. Right. So not recognizing these things and then using these super simplified arguments. Yeah, I'm just, I don't know, it's just, I just find it interesting. So I'm not leaning towards, you know, maybe he's disingenuous and just, you know, playing dumb. I, I don't, I don't know. Maybe it's also, you know, that's his last sentence, right? Like, you know, that's why central banks aren't looking for it. You know, it's, it's. I think also, honestly, when you're older, it's just, it, it's just harder to see the paradigm shift. Like, I don't want to age. How do you say that? Like, be an ageist or, or whatever. But, you know, his whole spiel is around, you know, how do central banks move, how do countries move? You know, like, and this whole history of gold and whatever. And bitcoin is still this, this paradigm shift. Right. So if you're really deep into like one world, which he obviously is, it is also not easy to see Bitcoin. But again, my expectation of someone like Dalio would be that he would actually
- [09:11]
B
do that work 100%. Yeah. I mean, he's just missing that. While he looks at everything top down, Bitcoin's an emergent asset and it behaves completely differently. Also, just on a few things. Bitcoin lacks privacy, so central banks won't look to hold it. Fundamentally, that's just refuted in the data,
- [09:31]
A
like Rush by Bitcoin. And how much is it?
- [09:34]
B
Yeah, well, also, people don't know. Does China still own bitcoin? If so, how much does Venezuela still own? 600,000 Bitcoin. If so, North Korea, North Korea, El Salvador, when they were moving bitcoin between wallets. So while you can find, you know, public keys every time that bitcoin moves around, that fundamentally doesn't necessarily mean you necessarily know who is holding each of the different addresses. And then on the other one too, it's just all these guys think with such short time frames of Bitcoin, you know, immediately going down during times of crises. And I think that like all of us on this call and people who just genuinely understand bitcoin as an Asset know that you know, 60 days later being up is a better way to look at things. Well, unless you're, you know, a lot of these guys are just like degen margin heavy, like day traders. You know, that's fine if you know that's your thing but it's just should be looked at as a different way for you know, most retail individuals who can like just the other time frame.
- [10:43]
C
Yeah, I mean the other thing that you, you just highlighted is like. But that's the incongruence of what he's saying because this guy talks about long term monetary cycles, like 80 year monetary cycles and debt cycles. It's like. But you, you care about Bitcoin's performance relative to gold over the past three months. It's like it doesn't make any sense. And then just to put another point on what you referenced around the privacy and central banks thing, like not making sense and being a fallacy, it's like we are pretty sure not certain that like a lot of Middle Eastern countries have been mining bitcoin. Like that's a way to accumulate bitcoin without anyone really knowing how much you have. And we're pretty confident but again not positive that that is happening. So like he's just wrong on a lot of these things. And yeah, that's the asymmetry.
- [11:28]
A
I mean we also. This is you know, slayer, Slayer, hero. So we talked about Michael Burry, you know these, these old clips of Michael Burry where he's saying like you know, will raise too much and this and that and blah like explaining the whole thesis and then you know, 10, 15 years later he still doesn't see Bitcoin, you know, so yeah, I think it's just a part of it. And, and again and this is also something we've said before. This is the asymmetric opportunity that you know, apparently not, not everyone sees. Right. And maybe one more thing about the central bank thing. Like what a crazy way to elevate trust in a central bank than to be transparent about your holdings. Right, that's my idea.
- [12:14]
C
Yeah, exactly. It's not even necessarily a negative thing if we do know how much bitcoin countries have.
- [12:22]
B
Yeah, Braun, I would agree. My next link is a perfect one to segue to. I don't know if you've checked that out previously.
- [12:30]
C
This one.
- [12:30]
B
Yeah. So Abu Dhabi backed Mubadala bought another. Almost another. Up to almost $600 million of IBIT and increased their number of shares 16% from last quarter. And just for the folks who don't know that is backed by Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund. So obviously, you know, that's not stopping any sovereigns from actually buying Bitcoin. Any privacy issues and they bought etf, so that's even less private number one. And number two, they're probably also, as Brian alluded to, just doing probably some like cash and carry trades or, or some derivatives trades because they're likely mining themselves as well. I know that. I think Mood Bottle is invested in either indirectly in, in mining through other companies as well. So they could be doing something there. But I think it is a broader point. The powers that be want to get the Clarity act passed. And other folks around the globe I think generally know the direction that we're going. And that's just generally, while some of us may not think that the Clarity act is perfect for bitcoin, there's just going to be more money that goes into the digital asset economy and that's eventually going to find its way to Bitcoin. It may go to other crazy scams, especially at first, but eventually, just like many of the folks who start off as more shit winners and then have a come to Jesus moment with bitcoin, the same thing is going to just happen again and again on a larger scale too. And this is just an instance of kind of front running by central banks too.
- [14:09]
A
Yeah, I have to think about how we've also talked about before that you know, tradfi is lagging bitcoiners with like eight to 10 years.
- [14:22]
B
Right.
- [14:22]
A
And so like, like you're saying, I fully agree there, you know, tokenized stocks. We talked about. It's gonna be insane, right? Like there's gonna be just an insane wild west. There's gonna be, you know, doge ETFs or whatever. Like it's just going to be wild, you know, doge structure, you know, yields are your doja or whatever. Like, you know, I think it's going to be crazy then, then a lot of stuff is going to blow up, you know, and, and we'll just be chilling and watching them come to the same conclusion as many of us did. Eight, eight years ago or before. Right. I, I think that's going to happen. And I also had to think about another thing, you know, in terms of related to, to countries. I, I read this, I think it was from. Do you know Quoth the Raven. Do you know who that is? Like on X like this also this finance guy with an email and I think he, it was him who made an email and he said he was talking about this mining project Of I think it was Oman and Marathon together, which is like a billion dollar project. Right. And he said, although these people have their pet tiger next to them in their Ferrari while driving to work, a billion dollars is a billion dollars. Right. You don't randomly decide to spend a billion dollars on something that is nonsense. Right. Just like you don't spend almost 600 million on, on something you don't think has value even if, if you are super rich. Right. So just these numbers also show you that this is not a test. Right. It's, it's not 50 million, it's not 40 or it's not even 100 million. Right. Maybe 100 million could even be a test there. Right. But, but they're slowly increasing it actually. Big steps. I think 16% is quite a big step. So. Yeah, it's not a joke, it's not a test. Right. They are seriously looking at this. Although obviously overall this is an extremely small percentage of whatever they have allocated. But I liked that point of view, just looking at those numbers. It's not a random thing.
- [16:35]
C
Yeah, it's not random. And it, it, it isn't. It was a nice transition from our previous topic because it's like, how could you think this isn't relevant to central banks or sovereigns when it's literally happening before your eyes? And like, the interesting thing about this one in particular is like, it, I think they are showing a pretty strong playbook in terms of like, I think the first time they disclosed Ibid exposure was like probably close to 3/4 ago now, if not a year. And so they're just steadily accumulating like through this, you know, benign historically volatility, but relative to other assets, pretty volatile period. For Bitcoin, they're just accumulating, which I think is super positive and sends a strong signal to any other sovereign that's thinking about doing this. And the only other thing I'll say is like, I think, and we kind of already highlighted this, but like I would imagine this is not the bulk of their exposure. Like this is potentially for derivative trades or is just sort of like a vanity exposure which is small relative to whatever they've been stacking in cold storage or through mining.
- [17:44]
B
Yeah. And they also have through MGX, a, I think it was $2 billion investment that they made in finance like last year.
- [17:53]
C
So.
- [17:53]
B
Yeah, I mean you don't just make $2 billion investments unless you have previous experience in space too.
- [18:00]
A
Yeah. And it's so interesting, right, that there are some people that are capital allocators that Actually know they need to do the work and that they need to study to try to figure out if this is, if this is something for them. Right. Or on a baseline level just understand what this, what this thing is. So it seems like, you know, and maybe this is a bridge to my link. You know, in some places we are, you know, ruled by, by, by idiots or, you know, either they're stupid or they don't want to, they don't want to do it, right? And I, I saw this, I don't know if you saw this, but this is, this is the, the leader of Germany. And this is Mario Dragi, who was a former ECB president in like 2011. So like shortly after GFC and he got, you know, a very special prize, the International Charlemagne Prize or whatever. Know, he stabilized the Euro in threatening times, courageously and against resistance and Europe owes you and whatever. And it is so that, you know, Draghi, I will read it, he was the governor of the bank of Italy until 2011 and then he was asked to become the president of the ecb. And what he did, he, he tried to, you know, uphold the euro. And he has a famous speech where he says, you know, we're going to do whatever it takes to stop the euro, euro from failing. And in 2015, he, the, the central bank started to buy large amounts of bonds to reject money into the economy, you know, quantitative easing, et cetera. But it's, it's so crazy. Like there's nothing courageous about it. It's literally the only option you have if you don't want to admit that you're running a fundamentally flawed fiat currency, right? So it's like a crazy circle jerk. So I just replied what stabilization looks like according to these people. This is purchasing power from the introduction of the euro and it's at 57 cents now. I think it's a bit lower already. And then this is Lex, who's a former board of director member of the Dutch Central bank. And he says, oh well, I can show you. He says, remarkable. It's not at all courageous to turn. This is, by the way, sick, this translation feature, right? On the contrary, it's precisely courageous to turn off the money tap, right? That courage has. Draghi didn't show the courage. We're all still reaping the bitter fruits of it. ECB was made independent to not do the first thing and to do the second thing. Draghi has done the exact opposite, right? So it's, it's so crazy that, you know, and then people reply like, oh look, the inflation under Draghi was low. Yeah, because. Because there's a lag, dude. Like, what the. You know, so it's just again, you know, Brian knows this. Like, I'm just bewildered by the, by the, by the stupidness. But because it is, it is just basic, you know, create more money.
- [21:11]
B
Or it's just.
- [21:12]
C
Or it's just evil, bro. Like. Or it's just. This is pure gaslighting. And like, oh, yeah, let's give this guy.
- [21:18]
A
Let's see how far we can go. Yeah, I know, I know.
- [21:21]
C
Giant award to gaslight the public that, like, this is all good and we're doing.
- [21:24]
A
But I end up. I end up on this conclusion all the time. It's like they're. Or they're evil, right? Like there's nothing. A little bit.
- [21:33]
C
A little bit of both, perhaps.
- [21:36]
A
Well, yeah, maybe.
- [21:36]
C
Yeah.
- [21:37]
A
Like, wait, sorry. You know, like this woman.
- [21:43]
B
Oh my God, that's so crazy.
- [21:45]
A
Anyway, so what do you guys think?
- [21:48]
C
Yeah, I mean, not, Not a ton to add that. That was a great response from Lex and the replies there. But yeah, I mean, I just think it's. It's pure gaslighting. It's, it's. I think they know the ills and the perils of what they're doing. How could they not? How could they not see the chart that you replied? They know the purchasing power is being eroded, but everything that they do in terms of the money, printer and deficits, like all of it allows them to continue to maintain power. And frankly, that's all they care about. And that's where the evil component comes in because it's like you don't actually care about the people and your constituents. You just care about maintaining power. And so you will do, quote, unquote, whatever it takes, even if that is actually bad for your constituents.
- [22:30]
B
Yeah, I think it's short termism at if I'm being generous and if I'm not, it's just like literally being evil. Because I do think that there is a lot of. Okay, like, you know, if it's like essentially saying like, well, eat like shit today and I won't go to the gym, and if I do that every single day, like, life is easy, but like, at the end, like, your life is actually hard because you, like, are feeling like shit, you look like shit, and you can't actually do anything productive with your life, but if you actually do the hard things and don't print a ton of money, then at the later date it will actually be so much better and more productive for your Life. So it's, I mean like, either way, you're going to have to do the hard thing at some point. You may as well just do it up front. And so, and then on the other side, sorry, I just want to say,
- [23:22]
A
then you call your other fat friend and give them a medal for trying to.
- [23:30]
B
And that. But like, I do think that there's a lot of gaslighting and the amount of financial illiteracy that is taught and, and even taught the opposite of what should actually be financially literate by the government is, is just appalling.
- [23:45]
A
Yeah, it's, it's also like, it's, you know, if we, if we go that route, like it's, it's a theater. Right. It's just sometimes I see these things, right. And I think like, how many people in nominal terms care about this? Like a million or a thousand? I don't know. Right. Like. And so sometimes I think about that and I think like, yeah, but it's also, it's just like a little event, a nice dinner, some drinks and whatever. Like there's 500 people, you know, and then, you know, there's some, there's some journalists and some photo ops and then they just blast the thing. Like, oh, you know, there, there was this event and Mario Draghi, he got, he got this thing and you, you see it on all the, you know, news stations. And so maybe it's just that, it's just, it's just PR for. Yeah. For whatever their, their thing is. Right. And it's like, oh, we, you know, now the dragy chapter is done or something. Right. Like the end of the dragy chapter is he got a nice prize that, you know, maybe 500 people care about. And maybe that's just it. Maybe it is just a circle jerk. But they have a lot of money so they can tell everyone that they're circle jerking and they're really great or something.
- [25:04]
B
Yeah, I think it's a bit of. If you do the bidding and do what is probably not the best for the country over the shorter or long term, the government will still treat you extremely well and it will still be revered by at least the government. So I think that's a little bit of, of a nice send off that they do in order to get the next person to do exactly the same thing.
- [25:25]
A
Exactly. That's a good point. That's a good point. All right.
- [25:27]
E
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- [26:02]
A
Liam, this was yours.
- [26:04]
B
Yeah, this one was interesting too. I mean, I don't want to be too mean, but it's just sad to see the Winklevoss twins fumble their 1 million bitcoin head start. To everybody else, Gemini is, you know, losing a good bit of money at the moment. And they threw in another $100 million strategic investment at this stage, in order to fortify the balance sheet, they're selling more of their bitcoin treasury. And it just seems like a company without a lot of strategic direction just given trying to start the ETFs and then moving away from that into a kind of everything exchange. They announced a strategic pivot away from, you know, just bitcoin and crypto trading in general to just being trading in general. I think that's just what you're going to see more of is there's more and more tokenized stocks, et cetera. And, you know, really just shows that we're in the bear market that, you know, bitcoin and crypto in general isn't really hot. And then I saw just one other funny aspect was I think that the Winklevoss twins are in a zcash treasury company with somebody at the who's like the CIO of their family office showing better bitcoin as essentially what they're buying or private bitcoin. And just, it's just a notion out there that there are a lot of people that are going to pitch you something better and doing something with your bitcoin and it isn't always necessarily the best thing. Rather than just imagine if they still had that 1 million bitcoin.
- [27:42]
C
Yeah, that's crazy how bad they fumbled that. It's a good point. And then just.
- [27:48]
A
Yeah. So context is they had a million bitcoin in the beginning, right? Like, yeah, like they were 12 years ago or something.
- [27:55]
C
They were early and then tried to, you know, they tried. They. I think they were the first firm to try to get an ETF approved. Is that right, Liam?
- [28:04]
B
Exactly.
- [28:05]
A
Yeah.
- [28:06]
C
But anyway, I was going to make a broader point around like whether it's Gemini Kraken Coinbase, Robinhood. Like, everyone's trying to do everything and a lot of it is moving towards whatever's going to happen. With all this tokenized stocks, you see hyper liquid gaining a lot of popularity. So like leverage trading on equities or commodities. And I would say, yes, it's partly a symptom of like quote unquote, bear market, less interest in crypto. But I think it's also like, I don't think it's bear market specific. I think it is also indicative of like the rest of crypto, like actually didn't have any value. And people are coming to terms with that. The exchange is included and they're saying, okay, well now we actually have to pivot to these other things. Tradfi is sort of eating these rails, the plumbing, like the successful, quote unquote, successful plumbing of crypto. None of these tokens matter, but some of the rails could be useful for basically modernizing traditional assets. And so I think that's, it's kind of like there's two angles to it. It's like Tradfi eating crypto and crypto relenting and saying, like, okay, yeah, none of this stuff made any sense anyway. We've got to pivot our business.
- [29:19]
A
Well, I think it's also hard when you start a bitcoin focused company, you know, for example, for, for, for them, right. If you do like big bang, a lot of money, you know, blah, blah, blah.
- [29:33]
C
And there is this bear market.
- [29:34]
A
And I mean they, they've had brutal bear markets, right. Like, because they, they were so early. And so I, I do understand that, you know, in that context, maybe you try to do something else. But it's also the kind of like the classic case of, well, not really boredom, but more like the action bias or something. Right. And it's also, you know, there's not many people that were like into bitcoin in, in 2011, 12, 13 that just kept with it in one straight line. Right. I mean, I'm in bitcoin since 2014 and then I went out and I did all the crypto and nonsense stuff and whatever, and now I understand that's fucking bullshit. And you know, it's bitcoin only, but, you know, just holding bitcoin, yeah. Could, could invoke this action bias, you know, and you're trying to do all this other stuff. So I, I do understand it. What I don't like is that there's still many people that are talking about, you know, oh, crypto this, crypto that. And I Think something like zcash, right? It's really, it's just, it's just a huge cope of, of anyone who's shilling zcash, right? Or what's the other one? What the fuck did Jason, what did Calacanis talk about? AI or decentralized? Yeah, blah, blah. And it's amazing. Oh yeah. You know, like those are like the two narratives that the crypto people are like clinging on to and be like, oh yeah, there's still some hope, right? And then let's compare it to bitcoin. Like, no, you still, you still don't get it. And that's by the way, another thing I wanted to say when, you know, we talked about Friedberg and Dalio, and I have the same feeling with Jason Calacanis. I think this, that guy is such a dude. Like, he got lucky. He got fucking lucky. Like he, he was in the right place at the right time. Like, you know, sitting next to chamath for fucking 12 years, hearing him talk about bitcoin at like $400. And he, and he's. And he still doesn't get it right. But it's the thing in a lot of Silicon Valley people do not understand bitcoin. Like they look at it from just like a technical point of view or something. And they always think like, oh, you know, there was this, you know, you had Yahoo before and then, you know, came whatever. Or there was a thing before Facebook or before YouTube. And so their whole mind is kind of like prime to think that there will always be a next better thing or investment. Right? And that's another thing that I'm still surprised about. There's not a lot of Silicon Valley people that are like super deep into bitcoin. There's a, there's a few, right? Like the Replet CEO, for example, he's a huge bitcoiner. But it's not, it's. It's so technologically profound. It's like too profound for Silicon Valley or something.
- [32:29]
B
I don't know.
- [32:30]
A
But I just find that very, very interesting to see that a lot of them, you know, Solana is like a Silicon Valley type. Has a Silicon Valley type origin, I think. So, you know, it's, it's just interesting to see that, you know, it, it just takes a, it just takes a long, long time. And obviously, by the way, Silicon Valley also really benefits from, you know, the fiat money, trickle down whole, you know, structure of VC funds and stuff like that. All right, next one. Yeah, I had a little title here that said bitcoin is not for everyone. I saw this quote by Carl Manger. I'll read it. He said only a small number of economizing individuals will at first recognize the advantage accruing to them from the acceptance of other more salable commodities in exchange for their own. This knowledge will never be attained by all members of a people at the same time. Right. And this is exactly what we've been talking about. Like it's an asymmetric opportunity based on publicly available information. It is just there, right. I had, I will try to find it. But there was this other quote that talked about how, yeah, like how the MMT people, right, that, that, that think that, you know, infinite money printing is a, is a great thing and will and will solve everything. They, they don't understand that there's just human behavior, right. So if there's too much inflation, people will naturally start looking for commodity based value. Basically, you know, of, of which the, the, the two core characteristics are the, the saleability, right? Like just, just acceptance by a lot of people, but also the, the scarcity aspect. And so, you know, we always say, you know, like, Bitcoin is for everyone or anyone, like anyone can adopt Bitcoin, right? But not, not everyone will get it. At least not, not at the same time. So I thought it would be fun to throw this in there and just see what you guys think.
- [34:38]
C
Yeah, I love it. I mean all of this stuff that we talk about on the show, you could trace back to Austrian economics and the roots of money, the history of money. And while we say it's an asymmetric opportunity based on publicly available information, that information is not evenly distributed. And most people, the vast majority of people have not been taught Austrian economic principles. And so it does take typically like a pretty curious person to seek that information out or it takes like hyperinflation of your local currency. And so like sitting in the west, in the us it does really take that curious person. I think elsewhere in the world you've seen more people that have like a shorter chasm to cross for understanding why Bitcoin would exist, why it's important and why you might want to own some and store your value in it. And so I think that that's, that's exactly right. It's not that like, I, I wouldn't say Bitcoin isn't for everyone. It can technically be for everyone. It's just a matter of like, does that person have agency? Do they see the need for it? Have they had experiences in their lives that have prompted them to think about the origins of money, what money is. And most people haven't. And so that's why it's like, you know, it is going to take longer than we expect. Once you see it, you kind of think like, you know, this is going to happen overnight. How does not, how does everyone not see what I see? But the reality is it is going to be a slow grind and it will happen. It's just like the education needs to dissipate and spread. And part of that comes from curiosity and part of it comes from people being forced or needing a better money. Like in a real, in a real way.
- [36:27]
B
Yeah, I mean honestly, 99.9% of it is just going to be bitcoin pumping. And like that's really the only reason that like most people that spikes curiosity, like.
- [36:39]
C
Yeah, that would fall in the curiosity bucket to me.
- [36:43]
B
Exactly. That's like, I think the only way that most people are going to like find bitcoin and actually do a little bit of work for the first time or when they're, you know, taught from a top down perspective that bitcoin is something that's interesting and can actually, you know, when there is authority that can really pitch them bitcoin rather than, you know, their Uber driver just like a friend going out and saying like bitcoin's the best new thing. And you know, talking about all this Austrian economics, I think that most people are just generally a little bit lazier or they just have other shit to do and they don't necessarily know that how much you can really improve their lives. So I do think a lot of it is just going to come, it's just going to be time related. And yeah, the next kind of big print we see, there's going to be a big pump too and maybe clarity related that we'll get a lot more of the education out there.
- [37:42]
A
Yeah, I want to go to your link, Liam, but I just saw this post of safety that kind of ties into what we talk about because you said, you know, like these people have other shit to do and stuff like that. And I mean, yeah, they probably think so, but it's, it's, it's such like NPC behavior, right? Because it's all, it's all everything is fucking public. Everything is fucking public. Right. So save. Dean shared this. If you put 10k into a long term US government bond shitcoin shitcoins, 10 years ago you'd have $8,550. Today if you put it in Bitcoin it'd be 1.7 million the bond market is a way to bankrupt people who lend money to pedophiles, you know, to mass murder foreigners and rich cronies and by elections. But I mean, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. Right. And so it, it, it's a scheme. It's just a, it's a scheme keeping people asleep.
- [38:43]
C
Did we lose prom?
- [38:45]
B
I guess so.
- [38:47]
C
He rugged himself. Yeah, I would agree. It is a scheme. Oh, there he is. He's back. You got rugged dude.
- [38:58]
A
But you know, it's, it's a scam and it's a, it's a brilliant also, right? It's, it's just, it's just extremely brilliant.
- [39:07]
C
Yeah. I would say it's the best game of all time. Long, probably longest running best game of all time.
- [39:12]
A
Yeah. Sorry, I see in the chat he said too much.
- [39:16]
B
Yeah.
- [39:16]
A
I heard clicks in my AirPods and then it was gone. Now there's a laser through the, through the window.
- [39:22]
B
Yeah.
- [39:22]
A
No, but it's, it's the most brilliant scheme of all time, right? Because it's like, hey, you know, there's a centralized group of people and they know we give them a mandate, right? Like this is the thing that they should, they should follow. And you know, you're, you're fully in the loop, right, because it's a, it's a public central bank and you know, blah, blah, blah. But you know, it, it really praise on just the ignorance that many people have. And to your point, Liam, like too many people are also too busy to, you know, have a look at what the, you know, performance of the bonds are that they, that they, that they buy. I mean it, it's, it's true. But yeah, it's just crazy. It's all, it's, it's, it's, it's just all made. Yeah.
- [40:07]
B
Yeah. 100. Yeah. Once you see that, like, I think that's why all bitcoiners are a little bit more conspiracy theory minded. Just because if your government can lie to you about like what money actually is and what it should be doing for, you know, 40 plus years, then you realize that, you know, there are groups of individuals who can conspire and have plans together. And you know, it's likely not the only one.
- [40:31]
A
I mean, for sure, right? Like, you can, you can argue that money is, is the most important technology that we have in, in, in the world for, for any, any ways to exchange value. And so if you're in control of that, you can control a lot of stuff. I mean, this is also why I think that, that, that Bitcoin is a very spiritual thing and that fiat money is, is a spiritual crime. Right? Like, it just hijacks your, your mind, hijacks your ability to think. And I mean it, the crazy part to me is that, you know, on one side it's a brilliant scam, but it's also like fucking clear. Right? So you can ask very simple questions and then, you know, not finding answers is the actual signal. Right. Like just, just, you know, what we're talking about with Draghi, like, okay, he's awarded this award for the fact that he did what? Like he printed the, you know, he printed a lot of money to save the euro and make it stable. And then you look at one graph and none of these people talk about this graph. You never hear any of these people say, you know, it's all great, we've lost, you know, almost 50% of the purchasing power since the introduction of this currency. But it's great because, you know, it doesn't matter because whatever. Right? Like there's no, like they never, they never talk about it, but it's public information at the same time. Right. So it's either you pay attention or not. And then once you start paying attention, I think for yourself then, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of clear, Right? Yeah. And if the money is not what you thought it was, then a lot of other stuff, you know, probably falls into that bucket too.
- [42:17]
B
Yeah. Trying to relearn it when you're 50 years old is a little bit tough just because it's tough to accept that. But like the new folks who are growing up with social media and they see other, everybody posting these charts and understanding like what's actually happening with the money and they have the ability to go to AI and figure it out in like five seconds rather than going to a local library and checking out book on Austrian economics like 30 years ago is, it's just light and day in terms of where the education is going to go and why that's going to drive adoption. In addition to like everything that we also know about AI related to why it's going to be deflationary and then why you need to have an actual scarce money on the other side.
- [42:58]
A
Yeah, I actually have an idea written down somewhere where I wanted to take all the tweets from Lagarde European Central Bank. So just monitor their accounts and then have a super Austrian economics trained AI just dissect anything that they publish and then just ask questions. Right? So just reply and say like, hey, if you're reading this tweet, think about these three things, right? With, with a little substance and maybe some link out or something. Because that's, that's how easy I, I think it is. Because they never talk about their philosophy, right now you have these MMT people, they talk about their philosophy, but then when you ask the question, you know, okay, so if you want to print infinite money and you don't think it a, it actually matters, then you know, why, why do I pay taxes? And then, you know, they glitch and they don't really, they don't really know how to answer. Right? So I think it's, it's, it's superficial, but no one is actually doing anything about it, I would say. And that's just, you know, that's just why it can just still exist and they can cast like that along the way.
- [44:11]
B
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [44:12]
A
All right, Liam, this was yours.
- [44:16]
E
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- [45:08]
C
This is mine.
- [45:08]
A
Oh,
- [45:11]
C
so yeah, this was some good data from In Gold We Trust is the incrementum guys super sophisticated. On the gold side. They put, put out some really great research. And because Michael's not on the show today, I had to, I had to bring a link about gold from. But if you scroll down to the chart, basically the takeaway is that despite the run up in gold's price and despite what we know about like central bank accumulation over the past several years, the sort of like institutional crowd allocators, private investors are still like super, super underweight, like gold, like around 2%, which is crazy because, you know, I'm, I come from that tradfi world, the allocator world. And it was even lower obviously based on the chart, like 10 years ago where, you know, no one really had gold exposure. If you did, it was like opt in. It wasn't like part of standard policy portfolios by any means. It was all 6040 equities, bonds, maybe some private equity exposure, private credit. Nobody really had gold exposure. And so that's starting to change slowly. I think we saw sort of the very early innings of it, I would say about a year ago or over the summer last year with the popularization or at least the recognition of the quote unquote debasement trade and people really piling into gold at least, you know, in addition to the sovereign accumulation which has been going on for years. You know, China being probably the most notable buyer of gold in recent years, but elsewhere too and you saw some retail phenomenon around it. But the, the where it really hasn't picked up in earnest is sort of the allocator world. And so like institutional entities, banks are still super underweight gold. And so I think this is an interesting chart just to monitor because I think just today we have bond yields blowing out. Inflation's going nowhere. Is going nowhere, meaning inflation still exists. People are coming to terms with that, the sort of oil crisis, the knock on effects in terms of food and fertilizer, like all of that is real. And I think the market is, is still digesting it and beginning to grasp it. And I think that's what you're seeing with bond yields today, particularly the US 30 years, over 5% for the first time, I think since the 08 crisis. Japanese yields are the highest they've been in 30 years. UK yields are blowing out. So all of that is a signal that the debasement trade is no longer a trade. You better own hard assets. Headed into this period of persistent accelerating inflation and basically a potential sovereign debt crisis that's spiraling out of control before our eyes. And so gold is going to become much more important not just for central banks, not just for retail people, but like these institutions are going to need to, to ramp up their allocations to gold and as a byproduct, bitcoin as well. But like, yeah, I think this is a pretty interesting story just in that context of the basement trade got hot for a while, but like one, it's not a trade and two, it's just getting started. Like I think people, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking like, oh, gold is topped, it's cooled off a little bit. Like I think we're still in the early innings of what gold's going to do over the Next decade.
- [48:50]
A
Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. By the way, I watched Sailor with Peter McCormack. I don't know if you watched that podcast, but that was really good. That was like classic history, Sailor, which I loved. And for me it ties into what you're saying, right? Like, you know, it's just cycles in history, you know, there's nothing new. And I think in these, in these more modern times the, has just been kicked down the road successfully. But we all know that there is an end. Like there is no, you know, even if they, if they, they, they, they print now, even with these yields going up, right? Like, even if they print the money to buy back more of their own treasuries and blah, blah, blah, you know, do their own little, you know, money, money loop, if eventually it all lands on the citizens and the treasuries will be less and less and less and less attractive the more and more and more they buy their own stuff and the trust is just eroded over time. Like it is so classic, right? And it's, it's so prevailing also that there's only two endings. It's either more centralized control, which you know, a lot of countries are, are attempting, or it's some sort of blow up and therefore after that more decentralization. Because any unification of, how do you say, of currency, for example, the EU or countries that are now running on the US dollar would also ditch the US dollar if America would have a huge problem, etc. So that is just where it's going. And then to go back to what we talked about, if you just recognize this and yeah, maybe you buy gold because all the others also have gold, right? Which, you know, I'm not a fan of that argument, but I understand it's a valid one, you know, if you are early to Bitcoin, that it is such a crazy asymmetric opportunity. Again, it's not only for us, right, it's for any, any serious country. This is a craz opportunity. Because why will it all blow up, right? Like why will it all blow up is because you cannot trust any other person. That's why it's blowing up, right? Because you know that, that, that's why what the lesson will be of everything blowing up, right? Like the biggest pension funds in my country are deep into American sovereign debt, which is dumb, right? Like over 10, 20, 30 years, you, you get your nominal return, which is just a real loss. And your whole goal of a pension fund is to, you know, keep the money and grow the money. And, and this is the crazy thing and then I'll stop talking. But like it, how do you say like it? It is inevitable that when the world reserve currency ends that it will touch everyone on earth, right. And that even if you're not the U.S. it will show that the same principle of a fiat currency, right, just a currency by decree, they all have the same characteristics on the entire world. Right. There's not a different, you know, the euro is not a different fiat currency than the US one or the slotty or whatever. It's all the same principle. So I just don't understand that not more people see this, right? Because you know where it's going. And so if you're a country, even if you buy, I don't know, 500 million in Bitcoin and just store it away like, let's wait for 20 years, you're going to be a crazy, a crazy winner. And even if you're now today a serious country and you buy a 500 million in Bitcoin and you tell the world you're like three times richer next week, which is an insane strategy. So. Yeah, I'm still bewildered. I'm just, you know, bewildered all the time.
- [53:10]
B
100%. Yeah. On that, on that gold piece. One of the things that you were making me think about, Brahm, is just the fact that all the gold is held by central banks. And these stablecoins are just too many countries. It's going to be better than their local shitcoin. And many of the folks who are in, you know, countries like Argentina, Turkey, et cetera are, and even like countries that are inflating a little bit faster than we are here in the US but not quite as fast. They're going to see real major currency problems and you know, a lot of assets flowing out of their local, you know, euro denominated assets or etc. And they're going to have real problems. All these countries are going to necessarily have to sell assets and they're. And what do they have? They just have gold. And so when Ray Dalio talks about where there's a correlation to one moment and who's actually the holder of bitcoin, he also doesn't really necessarily see the whole vision that while I would love it to just be every country goes to be denominated in bitcoin initially, I think that it's likely going to happen where there's dollar dominance even more across the world, just given the proliferation of stablecoins with this genius and clarity act, et cetera.
- [54:28]
C
I, I would, I would agree with that. With the caveat that I, I, I don't think, I don't think even material selling of gold from certain countries will outweigh other country, other stronger countries buying more gold because they're seeing the writing on the wall with the fiat system. And, and even if like on a relative basis the dollar extends its dominance via stablecoins, like I think we're moving towards a world where it's like stablecoins proliferate, more countries quasi dollarize, even if their government doesn't like it. They probably take steps to try to prevent that from happening, but it's going to be kind of hard to do. And then gold and Bitcoin become like the counterbalance to that insanity.
- [55:10]
A
Yeah.
- [55:10]
B
The gold chart probably looks like the Weimar Germany chart that we've all seen where that, this one. Yeah, exactly. It's just price in dollars this time as there's a lot of forced salaries and then people want to actually understand the value of scarce assets over a period of time and you know there's going to be some volatility there over the next few decades.
- [55:31]
A
Yeah. And it's also interesting, right? Like the whole structure with stable, stable coins is just like Brilliant Scheme 2.0. Right. Because they're just creating new air quotes, new demand for, for Treasuries. And I think the stablecoin issuers will be kind of like agnostic buyers. Right? Like if it's 5%, 4%, 4 and a half, 3.8, whatever, like they're just buying, buying it because you know what, what you guys are alluding to, it's, it's just proliferation of, of a dollar adjacent digital currency. Right. Or dollar abstraction or however you want to, want to define it. Right. And it's a way, I think in a sense it's the only path for the US at least to extend the buying of Treasuries. And the funny part is that now you hear Lagarde in Europe talk about, you know, they, she really wants the, the digital euro, which is not a stable coin. Right. It's a cbdc, so it's like a centrally central bank issued currency. But she's not a fan of the stablecoin.
- [56:54]
B
You just cut out.
- [56:56]
A
I don't know what I'm, I'm lacking here. Did you hear what I said or was I muted? All. Not a fan of, I just, she's
- [57:05]
C
not a fan of something.
- [57:05]
A
Oh yeah, yeah. Stable coins. And she says it out loud like, right. Like this undermines the, you know, blah, blah, blah. And she's, she's, she's right, because if you would have like a similar structure in the EU as you have in, in the us, right, why is, why, why will US stable coins be so, how to say successful is because they convinced the world to buy US debt from the get go, right? Like they just pulled everyone into this scam and I think, you know, like from like 70, 80 years ago. Right? But if you want to start doing that in the eu, right, It, I feel like it becomes a bit more obvious also. So Lagarde kind of talks about like stable coins being a threat because they're privately issued or whatever, but she doesn't talk about the American mechanism. Does this make sense? Right, like she doesn't talk about it because it would kind of show that, well, in order to have a successful stablecoin, you need to have buyers of actual Treasuries. Well, do I want to buy euro, do I want to buy these bonds, right? Like do I want to buy bonds of oh friends, which is also 120 debt to GDP, right? Or oh, do I want to buy Italian ones? No. Do I want to buy German ones? Right? Like the country that's blowing up their own nuclear reactors. No, also not, not really. Right. And so why does the US have, you know, why are they ahead? Is, is just because, you know, buy US Treasuries because it's safe and stable, right? It's just ingrained in every financial advisor's brain through, through their education. Like I said, even the biggest pension funds in my country are still buying US debt, right? So I think that's, that's my, that's my point why I'm really interested to see where, where Europe is going because where the US is going, if they really, really adopt Bitcoin, right? And they, and they basically pull back, right? It's America first, we're going to pull back and whatever they are leading this kind of like decentralized side. I don't know, I want to call it the side, right? Like, and this is also how America came about and, and whatever, right? And then in Europe you just see like, no, we want more unified debt. We want, we want like EU bonds and we want like all that stuff. Yeah, of course you want that because they're all broken. They are moving more towards the centralized part with CBDC, etc. So I, I just find that extremely interesting to see. And I also think again, the, you the EU couldn't really follow the US in terms of this kind of like stablecoin scheme.
- [60:09]
C
Yeah, no, it's a good point. They can't really replicate what the US is aiming to do.
- [60:14]
B
They'll try 10 years later though. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah, maybe.
- [60:21]
A
I had, we have three more links guys. So I had this one. Yeah, I just thought it was a nice chart. Like I am not a chart guy or whatever, but I thought this was very interesting. Like implied volume is like at multi year low and shorts are more short than they've ever been, which I just find very, very interesting. So I feel like shorts are also narrative driven to a degree or something. And then I saw this one, historical premiums being paid to short bitcoin here that this was 78. So this was this like two, two and a half weeks ago. Very, just very interesting divergence of kind of like where the price is going and what the shorts are doing. So I still like this idea of a, of a short squeeze. That's what he, he talked about. And this is what I wanted to ask you guys. Like, you know, this is obviously something we've talked about for years. This is just a topic for years, but do you think this would actually happen at some point? Like just a huge, huge, short, short squeeze like we, we haven't seen before?
- [61:35]
B
Yeah, I think that essentially this short, the shorts are probably being done by folks who are looking at like the Clarity Act. Like obviously, I mean there are some, you know, retail folks who short short bitcoin and other digital assets too. But I think it's probably a little bit more of an institutional move just given where a lot of perceived value of bitcoin is hanging on the Clarity Act. And it seemed like there was just no budging with the banks about a week ago. And then something finally did get through the Senate Banking Committee about they actually just don't really care that the banks aren't really happy with this. And despite a bunch of folks thinking that there would bend the need to the banks, it seems like the government really is prioritizing buyers of their incremental debt rather than the existing bank lobbies. So I think that, you know, I, I, I'm not going to be able to be the one who is going to be perfect on does this regulation pass or not. But I do think that a lot of the shorts were caught offside. There would be my genuine guess. And, and if this does end up getting passed, I do think that, you know, we're just going to see a big front running of what a lot of folks know is going to come and kind of what we just described over the past 5, 10 minutes, about all the New money coming into the system and how that'll inevitably find its way to bitcoin.
- [62:59]
C
Yeah, I agree with all of that. The other thing that this just made me think of is, like, these short squeezes will only get larger and they are inevitable, basically, because if you think about where we're headed right now, what's been happening in the past week with what I was talking about earlier around bond yields and inflation ticking back up, like, and I feel like I've explained this before, but like, bitcoin wins in either scenario. Either, like, drastic scenario of like, oh, things are great, we can finally cut rates. Great for bitcoin. Oh, inflation's back and it's real and it's accelerating. Good for bitcoin. Maybe it takes a little longer on that side of the spectrum, but, like, we saw what happened when they printed a ton of money and inflation ran hot five years ago. And so either way, it's good for bitcoin. And so either way, whoever's shorting this thing is going to get caught off sides. And I think right now is also a particularly interesting spot because if you are more on the retail side of trying to short this thing and you're a chart watcher, you're a chart guru, you're probably looking at it and being like, oh, this could still go down to 40 or 50k has another leg down. And it's like, well, you know, the, the oldest adage in finance is past performance is not indicative of future results. And like, if you're, if that's how you're going about your trading strategy, like, that is how you get wrecked. And so I would say it's coming, it's inevitable, and they will only get larger from here.
- [64:31]
A
All right, let's, let's move to the next one. I have, I need to open a door for someone. So I'll be back in 2, 3 minutes so you guys can chat about this.
- [64:41]
C
Yeah, I mean, this was kind of, we've kind of touched on this already a bit. But I just, I did want to highlight in a little bit more detail what's been happening literally past 24 hours around bond yields. So 10 year is officially about 4.5% for the first time since about a year ago. The 30 year is above 5 for, I think, the first time in like 20 years. And Japanese yields are blowing out, UK yields are blowing out. And so again, not to just reiterate myself, but like, this is, this is the system breaking in real time. And like, this is what eventually causes a massive printing cycle, is because they can't contain this enough. The bond market is calling bullshit and saying, no, inflation's coming back. You guys haven't, you know, this war is still going on. There's going to be energy inflation that leads to all these other forms of inflation. So, and just today, like the expectations for a potential rate hike actually increase. So now it's more likely that we actually get a rate hike going forward for the remainder of the year than we would get a cut. And that's, I guess it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out with Kevin Warsh taking the Fed chair seat today and obviously Trump yelling at Powell for the past two years to cut rates. It doesn't seem like a spot where he can cut rates right now. If anything, he might need to hike rates because inflation is just starting to percolate again. And a lot of the impacts from this ongoing war, which in my mind, not a geopolitical expert, but doesn't seem like it's ending anytime soon. You know, a lot of those impacts have not actually hit the numbers yet. So I think that's part of what the market is telling us today with bond yields is that people are coming to terms with that reality. And so, yeah, like I said before, either way it's good for Bitcoin, but in this way it expedites the potential big print, I would say, because there's no world in which the US Government can, can let these longer term bond yields continue to rip up. And that's not even, that's not even talking about like other governments around the world are having the same problem on an exacerbated scale. So that's where we're at.
- [67:10]
B
Yeah, I do not envy Kevin Warsh. That seems like an impossible job. Yeah, I mean, just, I think that bond yields are going to cause the, a ceasefire or something like that. It's just too expensive for not just the US but all the allies globally that are seeing bond yields rip. It's not just the US phenomenon. We're seeing this in Japan, uk, pretty much everywhere right now. And I think that if there's, if they continue to see higher yields for a long time, like something's going to break. And so I do think that this ends up getting resolved in the near term. Although. Yeah, I mean this, this is just a slow moving kind of.
- [67:57]
C
The only thing I would say is like a ceasefire, like maybe a ceasefire stops it for like a few days, but like that doesn't stop the conflict.
- [68:03]
B
Yeah. I mean, and it doesn't stop the
- [68:06]
C
Knock on effects of all this inflation that is going to show up in these numbers at some point.
- [68:11]
B
Exactly. It's just like we'll see volatility and the news headlines and that'll cause volatility in bond yields. But at the end of the day like, yeah, this is going to be a challenge that inflation is going to likely be persistent and it'll come and go by years but like it's just going to be a 40 year phenomenon at the rate that we're going where there's not really a way to get it consistently to 2% or less
- [68:43]
A
transitory. Guys, it's trans story. Trans.
- [68:47]
C
Of course.
- [68:49]
A
Well, I mean it's, it's, it's part of the scheme that we talked about. Right. It's just like, just. Yeah. Oh yeah. Say the word. Trend story. Transitory.
- [68:56]
C
Yeah.
- [68:56]
A
It buys us time.
- [68:57]
B
Yeah.
- [68:57]
A
Okay. You know, 20 years later, you know. Yeah, well we're not at the end yet, so it's still transitory. Right. It's a, it's a, it's a brilliant, It's a, it's a brilliant word. Yeah. Let's, let's move on to the last one. Liam, this was yours.
- [69:14]
B
Yeah. I think that a lot of folks, I don't know if you guys saw this, but early riders led on Ramp's series A investment and a lot of folks just aren't familiar with onramp, what they do or you know, why it's valuable essentially a lot of folks are just feeling the pinch of either self custodying themselves and yeah, that tweet by Bill Ackman that was in the wake of the FTX collapse when folks were like, you know, just self custody or bitcoin and the issues of FTX won't happen. I think that, you know, one, it's not something that necessarily everybody wants to do either they've tried it and they're worried about you know, somebody coming into their house with the rent attacks. Their, their wives are not completely comfortable. They're worried about themselves book gunning themselves or on the other hand if they're an institution, they, they really can't get their position zeroed out because they, you know, choose the wrong exchange. So super excited about this opportunity in order to kind of commercialize this even more so than the multi institution custody already is. And really it was a great opportunity to share the vision of kind of rebuilding all financial services on top of better foundation. So Everything like Trade ETFs is a backend lending via multi institution custody platform and a lot of folks Were able to kind of see a little bit more of early riders and our thesis there and what really goes into an investment memo for a bitcoin dominated fund. So just thought it was worth bringing up just because it's such a nascent product and we're so early and folks don't necessarily know that there are options other than leaving your bitcoin on coinbase or you know, using a ledger themselves. And it's not for everybody, but it is, you know, a product that has extreme value.
- [71:13]
C
Yeah, well said. It's, it was an exciting week. I mean I, I've been with On Ramp from the early days coming up on three years now with the firm. And so this was, this was a long time coming. We've, this is really the first formal fundraise we've ever done. Historically we've been pretty bootstrapped in terms of how we've run the firm and taking some very early sort of angel investors and then really Michael bootstrapping the business himself with his own capital, his own bitcoin. And so we've remained very lean as we sit here today. We're 13 full time employees costing about a billion in assets. And so we, we, we really run with the, a lot of the, the, the thesis that early writers as a firm looks for in the sense of leveraging deflationary tools, leveraging AI tools to do more with less. And this is a big step forward for us in terms of bringing some, some more capital in the door in order to scale what we're doing on the side of On Ramp Finance, which we launched a few weeks ago. And then really the focus in my mind for the remainder of the year and going forward is expanding the multi institution custody network. So as we sit here today, the sort of default multi institution quorum is On Ramp Bitcoin coincover. We also have Tetra Trust that can be swapped in. But the longer term vision of this thing is like having key partners all around the world. And so that'll be a large focus going forward. Is it expanding that network globally? We want a key in Singapore, we want a key in Switzerland, we want keys all over the world. And to be able to really create a standard for a better form of custody in the sense that 3 is greater than 1 in a multisig 203 quorum context. It just fundamentally is because it adds fault tolerance and redundancy to bitcoin custody for the first time. And that's, you know, you can do self custody, that's great. We, but, but really what this is solving for is like at the institutional level, if we want Bitcoin to scale to the masses, people are going to have to use custodians to some extent, whether it's the ETFs or institutions. And it's, it's broken market structure to just trust a single entity with a digital bear asset because on a long enough time frame, they're going to screw it up. No one's infallible. And so if you can build around the actual protocol layer, the advantages of the protocol itself, the ability to distribute private keys and create fault tolerance, that is a improved market structure for how things should work. And so we really do think that we're creating a new standard for how Bitcoin should scale into the future. And frankly, I don't think people appreciate this enough. But when we talk about bitcoin adoption and why it's slower than we all expect, custody is a huge part of that. Of why more bitcoin or more capital hasn't come into bitcoin today is because people worry about custody. Most people don't want to self custody. For a lot of institutional allocators, it's not palatable at all. So they need to use custodians. And then when they look at the landscape of custodians, it's like, okay, do I go to Coinbase? They're a crypto casino, like why would I trust them with billions of dollars of bitcoin? That doesn't seem to make a ton of sense. And so there hasn't been a good option for capital to come in, in size, in material allocations to this thing. And so, yeah, super exciting news for the week and more to come.
- [74:55]
A
Yeah, awesome guys. Congrats to both of you. I also think it is a really great to have firepower to extend the mission. So congrats again. And yeah, also interested. Interesting that and it's something I think more people could look into. Right. Like early, early writers, is a bitcoin denominated fund, which there's not that many of. Right. And I think that that that philosophy and that approach is just, it's just really interesting and in general. So I would also want to, you know, invite everyone to, to check that out. I just saw a tweet actually that I want to, that maybe that's a nice one to, to end with. Guys, it's, it's a super, it's a super grift.
- [75:46]
C
Wait, it's coming.
- [75:52]
F
Many years before Bitcoin, like a decade or something before bitcoin was invented. Hal said if you see a proposal for an electronic money system, check to see whether it has the ability to preserve the privacy of financial transactions the way paper money does today. If not, realize that the proposal is designed to harm, not help, individual privacy. Hal was the first zcasher and I'm out of time, but I have to make it plain. Bitcoin has failed at that. Use the Hal Finney test. Apply it to Bitcoin. Maybe it's useful for nation states to trade with each other or whatever, but it is not a payment system that can empower individuals the way the zcashers and Hal would have wanted.
- [76:45]
A
Keep Hal's name out your mouth. I love. I love Rockstar saying it. You know, it is. I'll say one thing, I just love that, you know, the grift just keeps on grifting. And like any, like, crypto project that basically has no merit of its own, it always bashes bitcoin. That's. That's kind of my takeaway from, I don't know, 2017.
- [77:16]
C
It leeches on bitcoin. Like he's using Hal Finney's name to give himself credibility, which is the part.
- [77:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. I saw some of the guys that, I think it was Dragonfly and Nick Carter being like, how if any of the Love Stable coins, they're so cipher punk last week, it really hasn't even started. We're about to enter the golden age of grifting with the clarity bill being passed and yeah, yeah, I mean, like, we're going to see grifting like you've never seen before. And everything is just going to try to get associated with bitcoin, especially as it. It really starts to run.
- [77:50]
A
All right, guys, well, let's wrap up. Liam, thanks so much for joining us.
- [77:55]
B
Really appreciate it, guys. And yeah, just for folks who aren't familiar with early writers, feel free to check out our website@earlywriters.com and the White paper too. I think a lot of folks have really resonated with too, which is kind of just a manifesto of investment under a bitcoin standard and how we think all capital formation will happen in the future. So appreciate you having me on today, Bram, and it was super fun.
- [78:21]
A
Awesome, guys. Well, see you in two weeks.
- [78:23]
C
Later, boys. Thanks.