← TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
#676: Building the First Bitcoin-Focused SPAC on NASDAQ with Andrew Hohns & Jonathan Kirkwood
00:54:51
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- [00:07]
Andrew
You'Ve had a dynamic where money's become.
- [00:09]
Marty
Freer than free if you talk about.
- [00:12]
Andrew
A fed just gone nuts all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that.
- [00:20]
Marty
In a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victoria i mean.
- [00:30]
Andrew
That'S part of the bull case for.
- [00:31]
Jonathan
Bitcoin if you're not paying attention you.
- [00:34]
Marty
Probably should be probably should be gentlemen jonathan welcome to philadelphia it's good to.
- [00:41]
Jonathan
Be here marty and you know this is the the first time i've actually been on your podcast so really glad to yes glad to be here you.
- [00:50]
Marty
Weren'T in austin in twenty one when we did it outside in my my porch the how was new york yesterday i guess we'll start there jumping right into it.
- [01:01]
Jonathan
I mean surreal again to be in new york to see btc on the nasdaq being able to be there for the closing bell and then walking outside and seeing a company that we're looking to do something monumental with you know on the large screens in.
- [01:25]
Andrew
Times square yeah it was great i mean they put together such a nice ceremony for ringing the bell at the nasdaq but jonathan and i had the privilege of being there earlier this year with fold and the fold listing and we thought wow that was really incredible to be there for this first pure play bitcoin nasdaq listed company and then to be there again within the same year with the launch of btc development as jonathan says i think it's really a great signal of things to come.
- [02:00]
Marty
Yeah i think this year with the price movement being relatively flat i think we're up eleven percent since the beginning of this year despite that i think the work the three of us and everybody on our teams at ten thirty one and battery has been doing behind the scenes and many other people in the industry really to build the foundation to to send us to sort of this next phase of bitcoin adoption as digital capital we were just talking about that before we hit record it's a term that i've been a bit averse to but it's growing on me and i think what we're doing with the spac sort of highlights that really trying to do something unique and partner with a great management team to do something special you guys have been working on this very closely andrew i'll throw it to you what are we trying to do here.
- [02:55]
Andrew
Well i would say at the front end i've been really thrilled by the adoption of bitcoin among publicly traded companies but the ones that have announced so far have for the overwhelming most part been bitcoin treasury companies or bitcoin industrial companies like miners and you've seen very few let's just say companies operating in other sectors add bitcoin to their balance sheet as a source of corporate strength corporate opportunity growth pointing toward the future i mean yes you have tesla has some bitcoin on their balance sheet block you know but they're doing a lot in the bitcoin space some larger companies high profile spacex also has bitcoin on their balance sheet but i've been surprised now since strategy's been so successfully developing its bitcoin treasury strategy for more than five years that we haven't seen at least one or really a half a dozen high profile household names whether it be you know nestle or fruit of the loom hanes or you know procter and gamble or someone you know tootsie roll right somebody add bitcoin to the balance sheet and what we're doing with the btc development company is really let's say raising a flag for the idea that ambitious businesses growing businesses businesses that have a specialty in their area can benefit by adding bitcoin to the balance sheet and we're looking to invite them to work with us to recapitalize their businesses with bitcoin and this.
- [04:49]
Marty
Is something we were discussing out in the foyer here before we came in to record but it is pretty astonishing when you look at the numbers what it takes to break into the top one hundred companies that have bitcoin on the balance sheet and you've been looking through that for the last few days.
- [05:05]
Andrew
Yeah i mean i was just on the bitbo io treasury's website and they say that there are one hundred fifty three publicly traded companies that have bitcoin on the balance sheet and the hundredth one has twenty six bitcoin so if you have more than twenty six bitcoin you could be at this moment in the top one hundred publicly traded companies and they list thirty four private companies now of course that's not comprehensive because there are many private companies if you read the river small business report they're talking about all of the small businesses that have been adding bitcoin to the balance sheet but thirty four right now that have somehow made a public filing about their bitcoin and rael bedford it just stood out to me because it's a well known company in the space the soccer team from bedford united kingdom and they're reported as the twentieth largest privately held holder of bitcoin with eighty two point seven bitcoin on the balance sheet so it's a point where the spac that we just raised two hundred fifty three million dollars it's called btc development company trades on the symbol bdci on the nasdaq the idea is to merge with a privately held company and to use all or substantially all or a very large part of the proceeds to add bitcoin to the balance sheet of the newco which will then benefit from the public listing and so you imagine two hundred fifty three million if two hundred million is used to buy bitcoin obviously depending on the price that could round about the you know two thousand bitcoin on the balance sheet of a company and you know with bitcoin at five hundred thousand with bitcoin at a million over the course of the next four years or you know in the future now you're talking about a company that would have just in its treasury a billion two billion dollars maybe more and they can borrow against that they can use that for strategic purposes so i think there's a lot of rationale early to put a significant amount of bitcoin on the balance sheet of.
- [07:19]
Marty
An interesting company and jonathan i'm going to put you on the spot we like to provide alpha on this show and i know you're working on a piece right now about digital capital but really to build on what andrew's saying to paint the picture of the opportunity and what we think bitcoin represents for companies specifically why don't you explain what you're working on this piece of well.
- [07:43]
Jonathan
To tie in kind of the first part of the conversation and i'll go into this idea that i'm pulling on for digital capital in the conversations that we were having yesterday in the last six years that we've been building ten thirty one and decade before that we've been in the space we continue to find out like we're early like this is still early we're right but we're early i mean it's early that a top one hundred company in the public market has twenty six bitcoin i mean that to me that is a glaring signal how early we are and every year that i'm in bitcoin i just realize man we are that much earlier than what i thought i was the year before and so the interactions with people who move first in bitcoin have the largest outside advantage i mean that is absolutely true if you got into bitcoin in twenty ten twenty twelve twenty eighteen twenty twenty two your ability to acquire more digital capital the sooner you make the move the larger that allocation to the twenty one million and the ability to do that is getting easier because adoption is increasing but we are still extremely early where we're the first you know btc stock that was announced to ever be created like we created it like this is the first so we're marking this time in history where bitcoin is being more accepted and the fact that we were there at the bell ceremony twice this year i mean that has never existed before until we did it so the time is now and so going you know building off of that to where we are today and how we're thinking about this idea the digitization like what is that what does it mean so as a business you have land labor and capital that is what makes up your business and i think that we've already gone through the first revolution of the digitization of land where you dematerialize the storefront and now it's a website it's a url so any business that adopted the digitization of their storefront was able then to scale without having to have the brick and mortar we are in the first innings of the digitization of labor where with llms the new ai models an expert can no longer need kind of the long list of kind of lower analysts they have a lot more power at their fingertips but also for your individual they can now become an expert an assisted expert in certain fields or gain an understanding being able to interact with the marginal cost of electricity the second wave of the digitization of labor i think is going to be the humanoid robots where your initial capex you have a humanoid robot that then will be able to operate any manual task and so that's the digitization it's very tangible where it is sucking up the oxygen in the capital markets and we're seeing the vast majority of kind of winnings from companies like nvidia that are actually a software company but solving the physical constraints of building out data centers and so we're seeing that in real time but the digitization of capital i think that we've already seen how that plays out bitcoin is the winner of the digitization of capital because of the scarcity of it if we're going to have abundance in the digitization of labor then scarcity reigns supreme and the digitization of capital which is bitcoin is being adopted today it's very early in that adoption and that's what we're leading and that's what we're pushing for with businesses such as the ones that we've invested in through ten thirty one but then also trying to bring in businesses outside of bitcoin and traditional legacy either finance or industrial that want to exchange equity for this new digital capital because they know that you have to have the digital capital to be able to operate in the future yeah and this is.
- [12:31]
Marty
Something we talk about probably every week particularly with prospective lp's at ten thirty one is similar to the internet the digitization of land everybody going having e comm storefront and now today everybody's an internet company when the internet wave came and similarly we believe that everybody's going to be a bitcoin company ultimately they're going to need to use the best capital if they want to be productive and grow their business and store the value and the profits of that business that they accrue correctly and so i think this opens up the aperture to what many up until this point would have viewed investing in the bitcoin space as people building infrastructure software hardware wallets mining infrastructure financial services but i think what we're trying to do here with the spac really expands the aperture and really trying to pull in companies that you wouldn't think of as a bitcoin company and help them realize that they can use bitcoin to do what they do better more profitably more efficiently absolutely.
- [13:35]
Andrew
I think that there are for us in our conversations it's been helpful for me to frame some of the advantages of putting bitcoin on the balance sheet of a company and i think there are many but three primary advantages are bitcoin as a treasury asset bitcoin as a frame for expanding the customer base and for marketing outreach affinity and bitcoin as an improvement for either commercial processes or industrial processes so the first one bitcoin as a treasury asset if you put bitcoin on the balance sheet of the company and you have the ability to hold onto that asset over the course of a four year eight year period of time historically speaking you're in for a very significant expansion in the dollar value of that asset and that gives the company options it increases the market value of the company it increases the enterprise value of the company it makes it more financable it is a liquid asset it's not like you're making an investment that you need a lot of things to go right and then four years or six years from now you might have liquidity you actually have liquidity at every moment of time so if something comes up you can tap that asset for liquidity either by hopefully not selling it or otherwise drawing financing against it and again if you look at the lower percentiles of historical bitcoin returns they've been growing at phenomenal levels and so if you were to put even one hundred bitcoin or one thousand bitcoin on the balance sheet of a company today thousand bitcoin one hundred million dollars you could realistically expect over a four to eight year period of time that that was going to be worth five hundred million a billion dollars and that would be actually below trend growth for the bitcoin and as it appreciates not only could you acquire other companies or invite other companies to merge with you because they're interested in exchanging their equity for this growing base of digital capital but you can also pull financing supported by that bitcoin and right now bitcoin financing is available and it's becoming less and less expensive because more and more capital is entering into that market and i think that's a trend that will continue so over the course of the next cycles few cycles the cost of financing supported by bitcoin is likely to prove an advantageous cost of capital for a business that recapitalizes on bitcoin today the second area which is marketing and affinity you know mike germano had a great presentation two years ago at microstrategy world and he said bitcoin is the best brand and he went through he said look this is one of the most recognizable logos in the world which is remarkable because there's not a dollar of ad spend by bitcoin the brand because there is no bitcoin board of directors open source projects supported by everybody in this global community that is really pointing toward a sound money future and a digital future but for companies that embrace bitcoin and not just as a marketing gimmick but actually integrated in the ethos of their activities they stand to attract a very interesting clientele and a growing clientele a clientele that has a lot of disposable income has habits of saving a clientele that feels very strongly about the mission of bitcoin which is quite interesting so there's a lot of customer expansion that's possible and the last one commercial industrial processes i mean if you're a business that has payment processing or if you're a business that has heating in some element of your supply chain or if you're a business that has cybersecurity needs and who doesn't everyone has cybersecurity needs there are utilities that exist right now on bitcoin and many more that will be built in the future that lower the cost of payment processing that create indirect heating as a byproduct of bitcoin mining and that provide cybersecurity through things like cyber domes i mean imagine if you could protect your corporate email server not by paying a fee to a company that provides email protection but by holding bitcoin on your balance sheet and saying we're only going to accept inbound emails from other servers that have a certain minimum amount of bitcoin and if each message doesn't have a small digital stamp of two hundred fifty sats or twenty five sats on it it just bounces off of the cyber dome and now you have protection against phishing and spam instead of as a service it's a service of the bitcoin and that as that asset grows in value you enjoy that appreciation as well so i think that when you start to think about the different frames of how a business can profitably integrate bitcoin it drives more efficiency and what jonathan was saying the other day which was super interesting was what it can mean for employees too.
- [19:10]
Jonathan
Yeah we think i mean we've seen this with businesses and so i'll touch on a few of those because i think there's definitely something to further dive in but you know businesses that are being able to provide bitcoin to their employees you know the greatest you know cost center for any business is human capital and the cost of payroll and if you have the ability to incentivize staff to stay on longer and have less churn then that's a benefit to the overall business and so providing capital this digital capital and bitcoin to your employees invest over time they're not you're not diluting the equity of the business you're providing the capital to the employees is another lever of incentive that you can provide but you know to touch on that last point you know we're seeing with the this digitization of labor with the llm the ability to create video and spoofing and that cost now that barrier to be able to do that is exceptionally low and so there is absolutely going to have to be a need or there is a need that has to be satisfied to for my that has to be paid for if i'm going to look at an email if i'm going to answer a call if it has to have some type of value being transferred because the cost to reach me now is zero and that is we're just inundated with so much like false info or i want to say false information but false advertising false attacks or vectors to be able to try to gain my information or gain you know my accounts in some way that we have to have a a modality to prevent it sup freaks this.
- [21:15]
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- [23:01]
Marty
It out i'll touch on a couple of points that you gentlemen just brought up starting with the last one going through my inbox is daunting i don't like to look at my inbox anyway because to your point it's just all ai slopped that has just been thrown at all my email addresses i don't like looking at emails so creating it's funny because it's a return to what adaback originally built with proof of work when he launched it in the nineties was to prevent email spam but unfortunately his proof of work didn't have the difficulty adjustment satoshi brought that in and maybe we will find our i think we will we definitely will just looking at my inbox as a problem that needs to be solved be returning to that and to your point on brand and thinking long term i see this with my children i have a five year old a three year old i also have a seven week old thank you he's not cognizant enough to get.
- [23:52]
Andrew
It but you look very good for.
- [23:53]
Marty
Having a seven week old thank you the five year old and the three year old they recognize bitcoin the brand obviously their father is immersed in the industry but they just know they see the bitcoin b and they go oh bitcoin they know that and thinking long term for businesses that want to be sustainable and be in it for the long run it's funny because we were having this discussion only a few weeks ago in utah at our portfolio retreat and it's shadow house rules we won't say exactly what was said but thinking of these generations that are coming up they're going to recognize bitcoin as a.
- [24:26]
Jonathan
Brand they will recognize bitcoin as a brand and but to touch on the you know the our portfolio we've been you know investing in bit in companies that operate within bitcoin in in multiple ways but you know we've always you know making the the decision you know to invest in the company like do we want to part with the digital capital for equity as kind of that first hurdle and then when we make the investment into the company we're always telling the company okay we think that you should keep a portion of the capital that you raise as long term capital that is this your bitcoin you need to be holding bitcoin on the balance sheet for long term for all those reasons that you pointed out and so and we see that kind of translating today with this the bitcoin development company in the same way but we think that we can do that on a much larger scale where we're looking for businesses you know think of a market capitalization of two hundred fifty five hundred seven hundred fifty million that want to reposition a portion of their equity into digital capital for the same benefits that we're seeing kind of on the earlier stage companies that have raised capital for all those benefits but another fact is because of the appreciation of bitcoin some of the companies that we've invested in have more value in their treasury than they've ever raised and some of these are profitable businesses and some of these are businesses that are at break even that bitcoin provides multiple attributes that allow that business to further flourish and.
- [26:09]
Marty
There'S an intangible aspect attribute i had a conversation with luke thomas good friend of mine starting a new company called formable ai but during that conversation we had about a month ago now at this point he framed bitcoin as the best founder coach you could ever ask for because that idea of the hurdle rate the opportunity cost of your spending obviously this is in the context of startups but i think it applies to any business there is an intangible sort of effects that bitcoin has on business owners i've seen it myself with what we're doing at ten thirty one what i'm doing at tftc it's hard to express but you don't know it until you experience it yourself and i think that is something that many people don't.
- [26:55]
Jonathan
Recognize yeah i think this goes back maybe to have we corrupted this idea of capital capital is the productive use of money that's the definition and through the last forty years we've had the use of debt as capital which had a decreasing interest rate up until recently and because of that you were able to further expand and expand on the debt where now bitcoin as digital capital is reinvigorating a productive use of capital that has expansion capability so the value of the digital capital that you're replacing or that you're putting on your balance sheet expands instead of contracts or drags like debt does on a business i.
- [27:48]
Andrew
Mean michael saylor has been an incredible force over the course of the last five years and i think that his work at microstrategy now strategy will be right up there with the greats of corporate history john rockefeller and dupont and steve jobs i mean he's going to be right up there and the way that he is up there and the way that he is able to frame ideas is just he's he's extremely talented a very special individual and one thing that he said is that you know companies for decades now almost measure their success by leeching the patient you know by dissipating their own corporate energy and they're doing that through dividends which are not necessarily the most tax friendly and so there's a cost to that a cost to the investor but also a cost to the company i mean income has its role for sure don't get me wrong but they're also doing it through buybacks and those buybacks he's characterized that as an admission that the company doesn't really know what to do with the capital and they think they have too many shares outstanding so let's go out and we'll reduce the number of shares and companies are penalized actually for holding cash on their balance sheet investors think well this is not a good use of corporate resources let's take it over reposition it it should either be dividended out or a recapitalization or we should do a big buyback program and you know that means that companies are actually in a more vulnerable position because they don't have a lot of resources on their balance sheet as a whole and what he said is with bitcoin it's actually quite a different it's an inversion of that concept where you can take bitcoin which is liquid three hundred sixty five days a year seven days a week twenty four hours a day it's fungible all bitcoin is the same around the world it's divisible into one hundred million units right now one hundred million satoshis it's universal it's weightless it's transparent it is programmable it's so many useful things and it has tended to appreciate very powerfully over time and so if you're a company and you put this asset on your balance sheet you then have this this radiating core of energy that's growing and you can use it to power all of the things that you're doing you can use it for employee motivation and employee retention you can use it to reward stockholders in the future with either future business growth future acquisitions or even maybe you're drawing future dividends against the bitcoin as a very small amount of the outstanding notional value when looked at four years eight years hence you can use it for these industrial processes commercial processes i mean it's such a powerful tool.
- [31:18]
Jonathan
I think.
- [31:18]
Andrew
That we're going to see a big rotation in terms of the household names of corporate finance over the course of the next probably fifteen to thirty years and the only companies in the s and p five hundred that will stay in the s and p five hundred thirty years from now are going to be those companies which over the course of the next five to ten years add bitcoin to their balance sheet and embrace digital capital the ones that fail to make this transition are going to fall out of the of the echelon where they've become very accustomed the ones that do make the transition will be able to take advantage of all of their market position their manufacturing facilities their product offerings their research and development and grow them stronger and many new companies will enter into those ranks and they'll become tomorrow's household names just like thirty years ago you know you could ask an investor who's going to be in the s and p five hundred and people would not have said the list of you know technology companies that now dominate that index many of them weren't even founded yet and we're going to see that same kind of rotation again.
- [32:42]
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- [34:01]
Marty
That'S what positions us well in the spac well is that we have the expertise having been i've been in bitcoin for twelve years now ten thirty one's been investing across the space we've seen every company in every vertical in our somewhat niche industry right now but to your point it's going to grow and we have the expertise and the capital to help supercharge your business and that's.
- [34:25]
Jonathan
What we're looking for we're looking for companies we're looking for strong management teams that want to adopt digital capital that want to be the first in line to make that transition we're not solving tomorrow's problems with yesterday's tools this isn't a rock that we're putting on a balance sheet just because we think that it can store value this has all those attributes that you just talked about being weightless programmable infinitely divisible i mean that is new tools those are that's a that's a new ladder to reach new heights we don't need yesterday's abilities to solve tomorrow's problems and so being first being early to bitcoin you have been rewarded it is you know first mover advantage and we are still in those very early days yeah i mean.
- [35:24]
Andrew
I guess i just want to build a little bit on what jonathan is saying which was you know in part the point of doing this podcast is actually to invite inbounds from people we want to hear from companies around the united states around the world that want to embrace digital capital are looking for a turnkey way to really engage very powerfully with the bitcoin ecosystem to put a significant amount of bitcoin on their balance sheet and to benefit from the increased liquidity of a public listing i mean that's the point of talking about this here today is to really begin to build a mental map of who are the companies around the world that are tuned into this frequency and we are looking to advance those dreams and to take those ambitions and really deliver them into a nasdaq listing which is you know i mean to be at the the bell ringing ceremony yesterday they have this and one lucky listener today will join us and hopefully more than one because we'll do you know we'll do more than one of these because i think there's this deep vein to pursue but you know when when when you come to that listing ceremony and you're ringing the bell right there at forty forty second and broadway at the crossroads of the world as they call it they have this inspirational video that they show right before the bell ringing ceremony and then there's like this confetti that comes at the time and it's really pretty fun but that inspirational video you see people they're training they're running they're lifting you see somebody who's showing up early to the store and flipping the sign says open for business and you see someone hard nights working and making all of the sacrifices that any business owner is accustomed to making in terms of the amount of intensity the focus in order to grow the business the discipline in order to grow the business and just thinking about rewarding those traits for companies that are now really seeking as jonathan put it to you know to climb a taller ladder and that ladder made possible by bitcoin i think that's a really it's a really exciting frame i personally am very i'm very interested to see what we receive as a result of this podcast in terms of you know the the very interesting businesses that are looking to piv toward bitcoin or private businesses that already have bitcoin on their balance sheet and they've reached a certain size and they're really ready to go to the next level i mean that's great too it doesn't have to be brand new i've never worked with bitcoin before it could also be somebody that you know already has bitcoin on the balance sheet and i just think i think i expect that we're going to be really inspired by what comes our way and it's.
- [38:50]
Jonathan
Not just you know adding digital capital or being you know trying to plug into bitcoin one more point that i don't think that we should gloss over because it's extremely powerful and just to juxtapose this the room you are in before you go into the studio you go in you look at all the businesses that have gone on to ring the bell and they show great businesses apple i think nokia there was other robotics companies and like they have their individual like product that they've created like in a showcase around and when i was in there i was i was thinking like yeah this is really interesting you know uh these are great businesses but there's no connection between those businesses and what we see in our portfolio is real portfolio network effects the companies that are building in bitcoin because bitcoin is an open system any business who is building on bitcoin whether it's directly or indirectly is having an overall benefit raising the tide of of every business that's operating and so any business who plugs into bitcoin is going to benefit every other business around so whether it's strike or fold unchained upstream data giga energy satoshi energy like these are great businesses that we are interacting within the bitcoin space but they're also interacting with other businesses around and so any new business coming in will benefit from the network effects and be immediately plugged into the ten thirty one portfolio yeah i.
- [40:44]
Andrew
Mean i think i'd like to comment on this one because you know i mean when we first we first started working together actually as battery our investment platform that is adding bitcoin as an additional collateral element to long term financings and improving financing terms for borrowers for commercial real estate for project finance many different kinds of financing structures and ten thirty one invested in that company and has been a wonderful partner to us and since then of course we've expanded our activities together and now are also partners on this btc development company but firsthand here i have experienced i think it's going to be if there are any students from harvard that are listening i think that this is the perfect harvard business school case study for them to write about it would be a really wonderful thing to profile what ten thirty one has done with what you call the network effect bringing your portfolio companies together right now it's about forty on a regular basis and saying how can you collaborate with one another and cross pollinate and create new ideas and brainstorm and share one another's tools and bitcoin services and it's more than just encouraging that because what you said is actually it's really the magic of bitcoin which is that bitcoin is a common equity that all of these companies share if you were running i don't know a healthcare fund and you invested in a series of innovative platforms that were looking at developing new pharmaceutical treatments or new therapies and you brought them all together for an annual meeting to a certain extent they might benefit from learning what the others are working on and maybe they would form friendships or what have you but it wouldn't really be the case that if one of them succeeds the other one's experimental drug is buoyed there's no shared equity but the model that ten thirty one has developed which is bitcoin only focused on the best builders in the space focused on companies that are leaning into bitcoin creates this really strong incentive system that's very very powerful and the idea now with btc development company is you know again it doesn't have to be a bitcoin business that's you know building a wallet or doing mining i mean it could be many different kinds of business it could be a consumer products business it could be you know it could be a retail business it could be a media business it could be you know really any different kind we can brainstorm a few in the next few minutes adding bitcoin to the balance sheet and then having the opportunity to work with all of the leading bitcoin companies in the ecosystem and just have this turnkey entree into the market and we've seen.
- [44:01]
Marty
It break out of our portfolio too just i believe it was last week or the week before strike announced a partnership with bitkey owned by block which many would perceive as a competitor but they now have a partnership where people can automatically sweep the bitcoin they buy on strike to a bitkey hardware wallet similarly cashapp bitkey too they use mempool space for blockchain analytics if you're receiving or sending a transaction and you want to see where it is outside of bitkey or cash app's walls you go to mempool space which is a ten thirty one portfolio company these are little attributes that benefit both companies at the.
- [44:40]
Jonathan
End of the day it's a positive sum game at the end i mean the more work that's put in that everyone puts in everyone benefits from it's like as if everything that i do you do andrew does invites the fact that we're all going to win because.
- [44:59]
Marty
Of it copetition as jameson lopp like to say i think that was a great phrase that he popularized or at least in the bitcoin context a few years ago and so i think that's the pitch we're looking to really find a company that's looking to take it to the next level partner with experts in the space that have an incredible network that can really help accelerate your transition to digital capital it's growing on me it's growing on me yeah two.
- [45:28]
Andrew
Hundred fifty million dollars enterprise value five hundred million dollars enterprise value or more the spac that we've created is a really interesting tool because although spac is an acronym that stands for special purpose acquisition corporation as a matter of fact really these are mergers and what we're seeking is to merge the capital that we have raised ideally as much of it as possible into bitcoin but some of it could be used for other working capital needs into a private to merge that private company into the spac and then the combined company trades under a new symbol on the public markets benefits from listing on the nasdaq which is one of the most liquid stock exchanges in the world and we're not seeking to acquire the business and you know replace the management i mean absolutely the contrary in fact what we're seeking to do is to make a strong minority investment in the business support management teams that have proven track records of success that want to catapult their business vault their business into this digital capital future into this bitcoin future that see the real tangible benefits of working with team that we all are a part of in terms of the bitcoin connectivity and i think it's probably also worth mentioning it's more than worth mentioning it's a really prime factor is that there is another set of partners on our team which is the cohen family and cohen circle and betsy cohen daniel cohen amanda abrams jeff bloomstrom brace young this whole group that i've been working with now in different capacities for going on twenty five years they have just an exceptional track record of building extremely successful and innovative publicly traded companies in financial services in energy in real estate banking i mean betsy began jefferson bank in the mid nineteen seventies and sold that to hudson united some years on in the late nineteen nineties daniel and betsy began the bancorp which was among the nation's first purely digital banks and that was in the i mean i think in two thousand that was started and you can just see a pattern of really being ahead of their time and most recently over the course of the last decade they've completed countless spacs and i had served as a director on the board of one of those spacs which ultimately was the first engagement with the bitcoin theme for the cohens which was the acquisition of fold and fold of course is a company that was and is part of the ten thirty one portfolio and i had come to know will reeves the ceo and develop a real appreciation for his vision for the company and for what he has built at fold and jonathan of course is very involved in the management there and we merged with fold and now fold is publicly traded and enjoying the benefits of that public liquidity and after the success of that initial transaction came together as a group and organized btc development company and just priced it i think maybe three weeks ago at this point so we're very much in the top of the funnel process we're looking to build a roster of companies that meet these general characteristics that are already seeing a lot of success in their core market where the ownership would be able to perhaps recognize some liquidity by becoming publicly traded would benefit from bringing strategic investors into the company would benefit from the capital raising possibilities of having a public listing and you know already has two years of audits that's a very important factor but and really perceives the value of putting a significant amount of bitcoin on the balance sheet and engaging with the bitcoin community so i think it's a it's a very nice team that that that we've brought together here and yeah i'm just i'm extremely interested to see what comes our way of course we're actively looking but we thought that you know we i mean we thought that it made sense because of the spirit of the bitcoin community where so much of it happens on podcasts we wanted to reach out to the number one podcast in the space tftc and say look this is an interesting opportunity if there are listeners who are out there who maybe have been putting bitcoin on their own personal savings and investing plan for years but they have a business in the commercial window space or they have a business in manufacturing or they have a business that's consumer facing they have a nice retail footprint and they want to somehow position that into bitcoin or they have you know a fashion business that's been growing rapidly and they want to embrace bitcoin as a trend within the products that they're making and add bitcoin to the balance sheet whatever the business is a media business a portfolio of radio stations digital media whatever the case may be those listeners who have been saying i'm not really a bitcoin miner that's not how i'm going to get in the space i'm not going to spin up a wallet or some of the other more what you might think of as conventional bitcoin business plans but you have a very successful business in its own right and you feel like that business could be powered up with bitcoin that's really i just can't wait to see what comes out of this neither can.
- [52:22]
Marty
I gentleman jonathan and any closing thoughts one with you.
- [52:28]
Jonathan
Just to further build on what andrew was mentioning there at the end i mean it could be businesses in the oil and gas orphan large portfolios of cafdorf and wells i mean we have businesses that can monetize at the well side there's also businesses that are stream where you can put bitcoin mining along the energy stream so there's a lot of ways to be able to plug in to bitcoin or to companies within the bitcoin space to elevate your business we're really excited we are very happy to have partnered again with the cohen family partnered with andrew again and i'm excited for what the future holds i'm bullish on humanity i'm bullish on our endeavors jonathan if someone.
- [53:25]
Andrew
Listened to this podcast and they want to reach out to us how should.
- [53:29]
Jonathan
They do that you should reach out at spac zero thirty one xyz awesome.
- [53:37]
Marty
And we say it a lot here at tftc at ten thirty one we're going to win so come join some winners we're going to win gentlemen thank you have been a pleasure thank you.
- [53:49]
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