Loading summary
Transcript106 lines
- [00:00]
A
I see bitcoin as a life raft for, for the United States. I've talked to some senators in such who go, well, is. Isn't bitcoin attacking the dollar and isn't the dollar what makes America so powerful in the world? And my, my response to that is always, well, no, the US Government is destroying the dollar. Bitcoin is going to be the life raft for Americans so that we don't get totally wrecked once. Once the math of the fiscal situation of the US Just inevitably plays out, you might look at this and go, well, America is the richest country in the world. Isn't it unfair that like, bitcoin just making America richer? And maybe my hot take is fairness doesn't matter. I care about my country. I want America to disproportionately benefit from bitcoin. I actually don't agree that bitcoin is going to, like, save the poor masses of the world. That doesn't make any sense. The economic problems in the third world are not due to money. They're due to culture and other deeper issues that bitcoin can't fix. And so I actually view bitcoin as a way to keep the crown jewels of our civilization, the west, you know, like, shining. And that's the most important thing. If that goes out, then the whole world goes dark. And so that's what I think is the most important thing. I think bitcoin is going to help save Western civilization. Our mission is to build the world's most trusted financial institution. And I think the world's most trusted financial institution is going to be built on bitcoin.
- [01:20]
B
Foreign. Plebs. My name is Walker and this is the bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin continues to make new blocks every 10 minutes and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. If you are listening to this right now, remember, you're still early. This episode is brought to you by Blockware. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack bitcoin at the same time? Well, with blockware, you can. New US tax rules let miners write off 100% of their mining hardware in a single year. So earn bitcoin daily while saving big. Come tax season, get started at mining.blockwaresolutions.com Titcoin use the code Titcoin to get $100 off your first miner when using the blockware marketplace. This is not tax advice, so go speak to the team at Blockware to Learn more. That's mining.blockwaresolutions.com Titcoin Head to the show. Notes for links to find the show on centralized social media platforms and on noer or just go directly to bitcoin podcast.net. you'll find it all there. And kind reminder that you can support this show by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain. Or don't. Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it. Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk. Well, dude, it's good to have you on here. I think we met at the bitcoin policy Summit. You had just given a really awesome presentation to lawmakers and staffers and everything else. And I was like, man, it's about time to get you on the show here. So I'm glad we made this happen. I'm stoked to have you here, man.
- [02:57]
A
Thanks. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I think my highlight of that event was. It was great to meet you, but I think I really enjoyed meeting Jim Justice's dog, Baby Dog. That was probably my, the highlight of my, of my BPI conference.
- [03:15]
B
That when that was happening and Baby dog came up on stage, it was like just like a what, what is going on? Moment for me. Like this kind of like beautiful thing. Like you've got the, you know, you've got a political leader sitting up there with his just big old, big old dog called baby Dog putting on bitcoin hats. Like it was, it was quite surreal, but honestly very cool. It's cool to see the bitcoinization of Washington. Like we're, we're trojan horsing them, not the other way around, you know?
- [03:43]
A
Yeah, exactly. It was fun. It was fun.
- [03:48]
B
Yeah.
- [03:49]
A
Great. It's great.
- [03:50]
B
I've got to say, illuminating to maybe you probably do this a lot more than I do, but talking to Nick lawmakers and staffers was kind of an eye opening experience for me just in that I sort of realized I was like, oh, wow. Most of our lawmakers are like very on the older side, to put it kindly. But like all of their staffers seem to just be like fresh out of college and you've got this just kind of giant, like multiple generational gap between the people who are actually kind of doing the behind the scenes work and then the people who are out there talking about that work. And it just, it struck me as very odd. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that that's the way it is, but something about it was just very like, so this is how the sausage is made kind of moment. I don't know.
- [04:35]
A
Yeah, yeah. And One of the interesting things about politics, and I've had my share of interactions in the mix of things, but unlike the business world, where there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of young business leaders, because you can be successful at business and then stop and you keep your money. Whereas in politics, if you're successful and you stop, you lose all your power. And so there's an interesting dynamic in politics, especially that where it's like just. People just stay forever because if they leave, then they lose everything they built.
- [05:13]
B
Yeah, that's honestly quite an interesting observation. Then you've got the folks like Nancy Pelosi where it's like, boy, I mean, she's also built up quite a lot of money, so at least she's leaving politics with, like, an obscene amount of money. I guess. You know, she really played the game.
- [05:30]
A
Yeah.
- [05:31]
B
The game. Well, so to speak. But man, yeah, for the most part, it's like your. Your position is your power. Like, you don't necessarily have the monetary or financial power that a business leader would have. But then in some of those rare cases, it's like you just happen to be a really shockingly great stock trader. Not on insider information, of course, not on insider information, but you just happen to be really good at it. And so then you get to leave and, you know, retire with a couple hundred million dollars. Like, that's really, you know.
- [05:57]
A
Well, I think. I think with Pelosi, it was the combination of her political power and her husband's hedge fund.
- [06:03]
B
Yeah.
- [06:03]
A
You know, the sum is great. The. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts in that. In that combo.
- [06:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, really, it is like the. The ultimate. The ultimate kind of, I guess, political economic coupling there. Like you just marry someone with a hedge fund and then get in political office. And that is like. That is your ticket to infinite vacation homes, I guess.
- [06:26]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [06:27]
B
But. But I digress. Stoked to have you here. Got a bunch of things I want to talk with you about for as a full disclaimer. You guys in no way sponsor this show. I'm just a really happy customer of River. Have been for a while. Have used multiple different exchanges before river, like a bunch of different ones. And now river is the only one that I recommend to people to, like, friends and family, because it's the only one that has proof of reserves. Maybe I don't know if some others have started now. You can correct me there, but I think you guys were like, the first to really publicly do it and make that a Cornerstone, but then also like it's, it's bitcoin only. And you guys seem extremely mission and vision aligned with what I believe. You know, the bitcoin ethos can have many components, but there are some core things I think and I feel like you guys really embody that. So. Yeah, I just want to again, clarify. Nobody's paying me to say this. I just really like your product and I'm super grateful that you guys have built it. I know a shitload of work went into it.
- [07:27]
A
Well, I really appreciate hearing that. It feels, it feels good. It's been, you know. Yeah. Almost seven years of hard work now. And the proof of reserves thing was, was definitely big. There have been other exchanges that have had proof of reserves in some capacity. Kraken has had it for a while and they've done it sort of directionally on an annual basis. Bitmex has, has done it for a while and other exchanges do it to some degree, but it's, they're all kind of like there's varying levels of how good it is. We, we really just said, okay, how do we make this super, super easy to understand and validate? And I do, I think we're the only bitcoin only company that has proof of reserves as well.
- [08:10]
B
Well, so, so that's an interesting thing. Let me. I want to get into kind of some of the history of river as well, but from the perspective of bitcoin only. Like, maybe this is a silly question for people who are bitcoin only themselves, but just for anybody who stumbles across this, who perhaps is not bitcoin only, can you explain why you guys only offer bitcoin and you don't offer every fart coin under the sun? Why do that when you can probably make more money if you also sell shitcoins? What if you could lower your tax bill and stack bitcoin at the same time? Well, by mining bitcoin with blockware, you can. New tax guidelines from the big beautiful bill allow American miners to write off 100% of the cost of their mining hardware in a single tax year. That is right. A 100% write off. So if you have $100,000 in capital gains or income, you can purchase $100,000 worth of miners and offset it entirely. Blockware's mining as a service enables you to start mining right now without lift finger. Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low cost power to configuring the mining pool. They do it all. You get to stack bitcoin at a discount every single day while also saving big come tax season. Get started today by going to mining.blockware solutions.com titcoin again, that's mining.blockware solutions.com use the code titcoin to get $100 off your first miner when using the Blockware marketplace. Of course, none of this is tax advice from me. Go speak with the team at Blockware to learn more. One more time. That is mining.blockwaresolutions.com TitCoin Wish you could access cash without selling your bitcoin? LEDN makes that possible. The global leader in Bitcoin backed lending, LEDN has issued over $10 billion in loans since 2018 and and has a perfect record of protecting client assets. Why is a leadn loan different? Well, with custodied loans, collateral is not lent out to generate interest. No credit checks, no monthly payments. Apply in minutes and repay whenever you want with zero penalties and proof of reserves. Reports verified by a top accounting firm are published every six months. Leadn gives Bitcoin holders a secure, transparent way to unlock liquidity without selling. Learn more@ledenio Walker that's L E D N dot I O forward slash Walker.
- [10:51]
A
It's a great question and really there's two answers. One is economics. I think like there is just room in the market for a product that focuses on bringing bitcoin to the world as money and not just an asset to trade more of. And so when you look at what river is able to build and compare it to like a coinbase, well there's just a fundamental challenge you have once you add multiple assets where your products now has this degree of freedom and this level of complexity that prevents you from building a super streamlined, simple, elegant app to focus on doing one thing and doing it really, really well. And so sort of like the Grug brain is like Bitcoin is the most important build the best bitcoin app. Only do bitcoin. If we focus on that, it will just be better than everyone else. And so we can eat Coinbase's lunch eventually when people realize that, well really they just want bitcoin. They don't want all these long tails of speculative assets. And to the extent they do, that's a very different customer base that's more of just a gam, you know, it's more of a casino. So and then there's the spiritual component. Like I don't want to run a casino, I want to run a business where I can say the vast majority, you know, 99 plus percent of the clients that have ever used my service are wealthier because of it. And, and I don't think that the multicoin exchanges can say the same.
- [12:27]
B
That is definitely and very sadly true. I mean, I really, I do applaud that because I think that it's one of the hard things about getting people like friends and family, especially into bitcoin is like often, you know, in the past, if I would send somebody to Coinbase, let's say they would, okay, they finally decide, I'm going to, I'm going to go on, on Coinbase and maybe I'll listen to Walker and I'll finally get a little bit of bitcoin. But they get on there and then they see literally hundreds of other shiny coins. Unit bias is very real. I myself suffered from it when I first got into. Well, I didn't even get into bitcoin at this point. It was after ignoring bitcoin for several years in 2017 when things were, you know, right at the blow off top, basically. Like I bought at the worst possible time. But I, I didn't buy bitcoin. I bought litecoin because I thought I don't have enough. Like I'm not wealthy enough to buy bitcoin right now. Didn't know I could buy satoshi's worth, I didn't know I could buy a fraction. But a couple litecoins, those, I mean, never even. I sold them at a loss years later when I remembered I had them and then started buying bitcoin again or buying bitcoin for the first time. But like, that's a real challenge when you're trying to onboard people to bitcoin and they're bombarded then with all of this gambling, all of these tokens and then you need to go like, it's like, dang, I already got them to kind of put my foot in the door there to get them to try bitcoin and now I've got to go in and explain to them, no, listen, here's why all of these are scams, which is a good conversation to have, but it's just like it's another layer of friction that prevents people from just going into bitcoin, saving in bitcoin and preserving their wealth through that. So it's like, I mean, I get why these other guys do it, you know, but I'm glad that there are folks like you out there who are, I think, who are pursuing a more clear cut path. And I think that's ultimately like going to serve you guys better. Right? I mean, that's Part of your thesis is, look, this is a better business decision for us.
- [14:18]
A
Yes. There's two ways to think about running a business. One is how much can you extract from your customers? That's how you frame your thinking. How much can I get out of these customers? And that will make you money. Then there's the other way of thinking about it, and which I think Henry Ford does a really good job of describing in his autobiography, which is actually, you should be obsessing about how much value can I deliver to my clients? And the company that obsesses about that will have the. Will make the most money in the long term. And so you can only wring your clients dry and get them gambling in the casino for so long. And so that I do think has an expiration date.
- [15:04]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, it definitely does. And I think you'll end up putting so many more people off of crypto, but of bitcoin specifically. Like, so many people get wrecked by shitcoins and then say, well, this whole thing is a scam, Bitcoin included, because they lump it all in. And I think that's actually been incredibly detrimental to bitcoin adoption more broadly. Like, this is why we tell people, you know, bitcoin only like, don't shitcoin, it's bad for you because ultimately people just get hurt. People get burned. Maybe they're up for a few weeks or a couple of months or even a year and they feel like a genius. But then inevitably, like it all trends to zero versus Bitcoin. You should have just stacked in bitcoin. You're probably not a good trader unless you're one of a very small percentage of people. And so just focus on bitcoin. But shitcoins aside, I'd love to know. Okay, you said you started river seven years ago. You are both the CEO and the cto, correct?
- [16:02]
A
Yeah, I just run. I'm sort of the dictator. I. Yeah, about six and a half, seven years. February 20, 2019 is when we started. And yeah, I wear both hats. And the reason for that is, you know, river is a first and foremost a technology business. And you know, by having strong opinions about the technical direction and, and the business strategy in one brain, you know, those things can be much more seamlessly merged and executed on. And in the modern era, like, you know, most businesses are technology businesses. And so this concept of like CTO and CEO I think is, you know, it will still exist, but it's not as like distinct as it used to be.
- [16:49]
B
No, I think, I think that Makes perfect sense. And like it's like every business is an Internet business ultimately, right? You know, like every business is a technology business when it comes down to it. How did you actually start? Like, was it just you, did you have co founders? Because you've done actually a lot of the, like, you've done a lot of the actual building, developing of it from the software side, correct?
- [17:12]
A
Yeah, I wrote a good amount of the early code. But you know, when building a business, right, you can only do that like job so much. I've leaned very heavily on my engineering team who's done the vast majority of the actual implementation work from the early days. I wrote more code, much more in the first year that, you know, than I have since. So the really, the kind of the backstory is I have. I built my career in the bitcoin industry. I started going back to 2013. I moved to the San Francisco Bay area to pursue a career in bitcoin. I really loved bitcoin and came into bitcoin because I was really interested in alternate money and building a currency and a money that the federal government couldn't print. More of in control. I heard stories growing up of my great grandfather having his gold confiscated by Franklin Roosevelt and things like this. And so I was always very sort of like liberty minded. And so I kind of had the pieces in my head to make me interested in this kind of thing. But I was an engineer as well. I studied aerospace engineering in college. And so anyways, I sort of fell in love with this a year after I graduated and decided to move to the Bay Area to pursue a career as a software engineer and work on bitcoin. So I have mostly been doing that ever since. Went back to grad school out there. I helped teach the first bitcoin class at Stanford in the computer science department as a teaching assistant. And then eventually was working at an investment fund, a crypto investment fund called Polychain. And I was mostly focused on the bitcoin side of things. And it was fun. I had a good time, saw it, met a lot of different people, a lot of different companies and investors. And that gave me a lot of exposure to the investor world. And I had always wanted to start this kind of bitcoin bank sort of company. And I finally realized, okay, I finally had what I needed to get this thing off the ground. And so I left Polychain and they led the fundraising round for River. Early on, my cousin Andrew helped, was a co founder of the business. He handled the operation side of things for the first Few years, but we've come a long way since then. We're about 70 people now. We have about two and a half billion dollars of assets under custody. And our vision is to, our mission is to build the world's most trusted financial institution. And I think the world's most trusted financial institution is going to be built on Bitcoin. And our vision for the world is that people and businesses will increasingly save in bitcoin, but for the foreseeable future they'll keep spending and earning in dollars largely. I don't think the dollar is going away tomorrow. And so we're really leaning into the kind of the pragmatic reality too, and to build what is best for consumers that fits into their life. So I'll stop there. Hopefully that answers the question.
- [20:12]
B
No, I, I love it. I mean one of the, one of the interesting things that I forget exactly when you guys introduced it, but you started offering like very attractive interest rates on any cash like USD that was kept in river. It's very attractive by itself, but it's really attractive compared to what you can get at basically any, you know, normal bank. Like this is just far and away, like, I mean, interest, you know, interest rates on a savings account in a bank have honestly just become a joke. Like you're not, you're not getting anything. I mean, it's been like fractions of a percent at most banks. Certain banks, you know, you can get a little bit more, but it's, it's again like jokingly small, like not even coming close to keeping up with stated inflation, let alone real inflation. So I mean, I, when I saw that, like my first thought was, oh, like this, this is like a bitcoin bank. Like, but it's a, you know, like it's better at being a normal bank than a regular bank is too. Like, is that kind of where you guys see this going? Like bitcoin enabling you as a business to not only do the bitcoin side of things. Yes. But like to do the, let's say, the fiat side of things better than the fiat institutions currently are.
- [21:21]
A
Well, you know, we want to be the financial app for your life, for your savings. Right. And that. And today that means bitcoin and dollars. Right. And so in order to do the dollar side of things, we do have to partner with an actual, a real bank. We're not actually a chartered bank. Like we don't have an account at the Federal Reserve, so we partner with a bank who does and we work very closely with them bank called lead bank. And Our client's cash is FDIC insured through that partnership with leed. And the cash there is managed very conservatively. Right. They don't lend out crypto deposits is what is the policy. And so basically our client's cash is just kept at the Fed and we just pass through as much as we can. Because our business model isn't lending cash to earn interest in taking a cut. Our business model is bitcoin brokerage. So we can really just give all that back to our clients, whereas banks are just keeping it. That's kind of the behind the scenes of that, the cash side of things for River.
- [22:27]
B
So that's where the yield comes from. For anyone wondering, that's where the yield comes from.
- [22:30]
A
Basically the Fed overnight rate. Yeah. Is where the yield's coming from. And now, you know, one of the insights was, well, one, pretty much all exchanges are just keeping the interest from cash deposits. Two, so I was thinking, well, it'd be really cool if we paid back any interest on cash people had. And this is back to that mindset of how to run a business. How do you provide as much value to your clients as you can? If that's your mindset, you come up with ideas like this, and then we're like, well, it'd be even cooler if the interest was paid in bitcoin. And so that's how this idea came up. And so now the product, we call it Bitcoin interest on cash. Your cash at river just earns interest and it. It's paid in bitcoin and you accrue bitcoin every day. And so let's say you say, you know, I always want to have $10,000 in cash savings, right? You can have that $10,000 FDIC insured. You're not, you're not putting it. You're not investing in a bitcoin or anything. You're risking, risking it and just earns you bitcoin every day. And that's kind of cool. And yeah, so it's been a popular product. We have over $200 million of deposits for that.
- [23:48]
B
Wow. Did you see that ramp up to where you're at right now with 200 million? Did you see that happen pretty quickly? Was the response generally just like, yes?
- [23:59]
A
Well, yeah, I mean, it started growing very quickly. I mean, before, people really had no major reason to keep dollars in river unless they had a target price order or just needed it there temporarily. But once we started paying this interest, yeah, it grew very quickly, and it continues to grow.
- [24:16]
B
So.
- [24:16]
A
So it's really Just been a upward trajectory and today we just launched direct deposit to make it even easier to get cash driver. You can auto convert it for zero fees to Bitcoin too. Oh, that's my MacBook magic. And then what we're moving towards is we want to be able to just be a full, you know, like a fully a full bank replacement for you. We want you to be able to get paid to river, pay your bills from river, do everything you need for your, with your savings, your bitcoin and your dollars on river.
- [24:54]
B
I think it's a, it's a really nice goal because again, this idea of like the dollar isn't going away tomorrow, right? I'm, it's, it's just, it's, it's not going to happen tomorrow. I don't know. Like, eventually I think that it will. I also think that if the dollar, if and when the dollar falls and eventually like every fiat currency is doomed, right? But when the dollar falls, that will probably mean most other fiat currencies in the world have already fallen, maybe fallen multiple times. Like, like the dollar is the prettiest horse at the glue factory. It's the skinniest kid at fat camp. Like, like it or not, this is the reality. Like it's going to be around longer than most other fiats and who knows how long that is. But like, until then, sadly, we do need to interact many times in dollars. And so it's like, you know, the idea of meeting people where they are. Right, but at least giving them something that's a little bit of a better tool than the current joke of like keeping your money in, you know, JP Morgan, Chase checking accounts and savings accounts, which is just like, you're just not getting anything.
- [25:54]
A
0.01 is what Chase, Wells Fargo, bank of America Pay. We pay 3.5, our interest rate of 3.5 instead of 0.01. So you, even if you don't care about bitcoin, it's actually way better. And yeah, and to your point about it's the dollar's the prettiest horse in the glue factory or whatever. Really one of the insights I've had is I've spent a lot of time in Argentina over the last few years. I just really love it down there. And the inflation has ebbed and flowed. It's chilling out recently with Milei, but it was really picked up a lot five years ago or so. But the one thing I noticed was even when the inflation was crazy, inflation beyond anything Americans have ever experienced, people still transacted in Pesos. They didn't hold on to the pesos, but they still transacted in them because the network effect for the payment system is just so insanely sticky that your currency can be trash and everyone knows it's trash. And so they're saving in dollars or saving in something harder, but they're still transacting in the fiat, even though it's really crappy. And so that's one of those things that goes. You know what that made me realize the dollar is not going away anytime soon for transactions. And so we can't run away from that.
- [27:21]
B
I mean, yeah, network effects are very real. And. And again, like, it's, it's true. Spent a decent amount of time in Turkey and it's a similar thing over there where inflation has been absolutely brutal, not quite on the level of Argentina, but really, really horribly bad. And people still like, they, they certainly don't keep any money in, you know, in the Turkish lira, but they still, you know, use it because it's like that's what most people accept as a medium of exchange. They will happily take dollars. If you go to the, the bazaar, they will happily take dollars, euros, bitcoin, you know, anything. You see a lot more of those signs. You know, we accept bitcoin starting to pop up because they are really happy to take it and hold on to it because it actually, you know, will preserve the value of their wealth. And people in Argentina and Turkey and any other country experiencing inflation, severe inflation or hyperinflation, like, they end up adopting Bitcoin, you know, out of that necessity versus, like, well, this is nice. This is a good investment for me. It's like, no, this is a lifeline for me to actually be able to save something for my future that just can't be inflated away. And like in the US we're very Gladstein's idea of like, check your financial privilege. Like, it's very true. This. A lot of people view this as still as bitcoin is like, well, it's a speculative investment. It's, you know, that hyperinflation won't happen here. We don't need to think about that. But it's like it happens everywhere eventually. And, you know, hyperinflation is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. I guess would be another way to say that. But yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, it's. Well, so another thing I wanted to kind of talk to you about is just generally like, you guys see a lot of the behind the scenes of people's, people's behaviors when it comes to times like this, we were just talking before we got on about, let's see what's current bitcoin fiat exchange rate is just above $100,000. It's like $100,800. The meme of Bitcoin crashes to $100,000 is officially real. But like there's a lot of fear right now. There's a lot of I think anxiety, people wondering like is this, you know, is this bull run already over before it began? I'd love if you can talk a little bit about like what are you guys seeing behind the scenes in terms of your customers behavior? What, what is that, what is that showing you and what do you think that says about the larger state of the market?
- [29:41]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. And you know we do a lot of aggregate analysis internally to see high level trends. Like what's, what's happening and what we, what we've seen is that one, throughout this whole price crash down to 100k we haven't had a single day where there wasn't net buying on river, right? So every day there's been net buying. The lowest it got was like 60% sort of buy sell ratio. But river clients for every day for the past month have been net buyers. Additionally we did some analysis of like how many people, you know, like we did like a paper hands analysis. We said okay, how many, how many people just totally were like freaked out and sold everything? Because what we don't, we want to know is well we don't want our clients that to happen to our clients, right? We don't want anyone to have used river. And then like, like at the end of the day they just quit and lost wealth. And it was a very small number, very small number. Like handful of people kind of ran away and sold everything. So what we're seeing is anecdotally as well people buying a dip. People are like I actually do believe in this long term. They've been on the sidelines and seen and you know, maybe, maybe last cycle were the ones who said oh, look at these dumb bitcoin people. They're you know, you know they're just going to lose everything. And I think that that has kind of played out. No one says that anymore, right. And, and I think we're now at sort of like this critical mass of like actually people are just buying the dip now. They're seeing this as an opportunity. And then the question is okay, well if that's happening then why is it dipping, right? Why, why is the Price going down, and no one knows for sure. These are complex market dynamics with lots of information that people don't have access to. But I think it's a combination of one, whales who have been holding Bitcoin for, like, 15 years going, you know what? I kind of want to just start allocating some of this wealth to other things, using it, who knows, Starting new businesses, buying estates, buying private jets, things like this. And then there's also just sort of the macro uncertainty. But I do think a lot of it is just big whales selling. And then some people will say, well, there's paper bitcoin. There's a lot of funny business happening. The challenge with that claim is there's no proof. It's hard to prove it's not happening. But, you know, we try to at least prove it can't happen on river because we do proof of reserves. So we can prove to you we're not selling paper bitcoin. Other people can't prove that. And so maybe, but it's not the simplest explanation.
- [32:36]
B
I would agree with you on the OG whales thing. I think that's. I mean, there's been a couple of very public cases of this, right, where it was like, the galaxy processing like, 80,000 Bitcoin for that one whale. I mean, like, an unfathomable amount of bitcoin for the average person. Like, I mean, heck, for the average country. You know, that's a. That's a shocking amount of bitcoin. But, like, that was, like, one. One whale moving. That right? There was the other one with, I think, 20,000 Bitcoin. There's certainly many others of those that. There are people that have been around for a very long time. They have held bitcoin through the ups and the downs and multiple cycles. Like, and maybe they mind it on their laptop, and now they're like, yeah, okay, 100,000, you know, fiat cuck bucks for one of these coins that I essentially got for just the power that it took to, you know, power my cpu. Yeah, I'll. I'll. I'll take that. I'll, you know, I'll get myself a Jeff Bezos mega yacht now. I deserve it and, like, more power to him. Do whatever you want with your money. But it is interesting, I feel, the. The narratives around paper bitcoin, they never really creep in when the price is going up. It's typically, you know, when the price is going down that a lot of these narratives, it seems, creep in there. And it just feels like probably the simpler explanation is there are a ton of OGs with a ton of bitcoin and they've held since effectively zero and now they're selling like and, and like maybe it is just that simple. But like people love to like hindsight 20 20, you know, reverse attribute things to I feel like various narratives but it's amazing that you're seeing. So I mean do you think you guys are unique in that regard though because you are a bitcoin only exchange? Because people that are coming to you are perhaps more laser focused on bitcoins. There's less paper handedness. I know you don't have any necessarily data from these other exchanges, but do you have a gut feeling about that?
- [34:26]
A
Yeah, I mean I think that maybe it's more just that retail is actually less paper handed than the big money is really what's moving things right now. And so arguably what we're seeing is actually, and so for context we serve sort of that middle, right sort of retail folks with a good job and up to wealthy individuals. But we're not serving the hedge funds, we're not serving the super sophisticated. You have $10 billion of Bitcoin and you're trying to do advanced trading things to sell it super optimally. Like we don't sort of like that tier of the market. And so I think our user base is just buying and the sell pressure is coming from this bigger money. And so arguably we're seeing a redistribution of coins and that's probably a great thing for the long term health of bitcoin.
- [35:30]
B
I was going to say like it's, it's a better thing to have a more like to have the market be more spread out. Right. You want that, you want those coins to cycle from the whales, you know, from the people who took the biggest risks to people who are now, you know. Yeah, they're buying bitcoin at A, at 100K. Maybe they're going to sell it at a million. But like that's that just. And so it goes, right? Like we're still at just very early levels of adoption. It feels like extremely early, you know.
- [35:57]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [35:59]
B
I'm curious too because I know you guys, you do service like you put out a report as well just on like business adoption of bitcoin and because a lot of the, I feel like a lot of the focus this in these, you know, this past year has been on the ETFs. Understandably it was historically good, great ETF launch, you know, and then also on the bitcoin treasury companies. But there's this kind of other Cohort of just businesses who are buying bitcoin. Can you, can you speak to that a little bit? Because when I saw the report, it was actually a larger than I thought it was going to be, like shockingly so.
- [36:32]
A
Yeah. And I think this is the most exciting trend we've seen. We've seen a major growth in the amount of just normal Main street businesses buying bitcoin. And I kind of joke, these are the real bitcoin treasury companies. Right. It's a profitable business run by an entrepreneur who themselves believes in bitcoin. And typically they realize they're buying bitcoin for themselves. Well, the next logical thing is to do it for my business. We don't serve the ETFs and stuff like that. That's Coinbase. They're doing very sophisticated things. We're serving people running restaurants, running plumbing businesses, running. One of my favorite ones is a hot dog stand up to large businesses, large food services companies, large IT firms. But the sort of core underpinning theme here is these are real businesses with real profits that they're allocating into bitcoin and we serve thousands of them. And that's grown a lot this year. And so it's a really, really cool development.
- [37:42]
B
But what I was going to maybe pull up on the screen here is just to share that piece from that report, just this chart, which I thought was really cool. So basically showing these buyers here, and this is kind of wild when you look at it. The conventional businesses were again, this high as it relates to funds and ETFs. Bitcoin treasury companies, conventional businesses are fully holding their own. That's a pretty incredible thing.
- [38:08]
A
Yes, It's been a great trend. Are you talking about them just sort of like buying for their own treasury or self custody or what?
- [38:22]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, just generally it's like I feel like people discount perhaps the fact that there are. While there may be not a ton of bitcoiners out there relative to the total population, the people out there that are bitcoiners tend to be a lot like a high concentration of entrepreneurs. I would say. Again, this is anecdotal, but just like from personal experience, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people who are, maybe they have a family business, something else. But as you said earlier, there is that natural tendency to say, okay, I'm buying bitcoin for myself, why wouldn't I also buy it for my business? If I actually believe that this thing is what it is, I would be silly not to.
- [39:03]
A
Right.
- [39:03]
B
And I feel like we're going to see that accelerate because again, we're just. We're so darn early in this cycle. Like, I think. Or not just in the cycle, but overall, like, if you look at. I mean, I don't know if you guys have better data on this, but I'm guessing, like, total ownership of bitcoin, like, as part of the, you know, worldwide population, it's like, it's less than a percent. It's still a tiny, tiny fraction. Right. So it's. We have a lot of room to go. And I think seeing businesses do this is a super heartening sign. Seeing individuals do it is also heartening, but, like, for a business like this makes sense. It's just kind of like that thesis that eventually every business is a bitcoin business, every business is a technology business. Like, you're going to hold bitcoin if you don't want to keep getting debased, right?
- [39:47]
A
Yes, exactly. And we did some analysis of what if Apple had put 1 or 2% of their treasury in bitcoin. I don't know if that's on. Maybe that's on page three. I can't remember which chart. Chart it was.
- [40:03]
B
Ownership distribution there.
- [40:04]
A
Oh, no, that's. That's a different one. But there, you know, if you. If you go through the report, you'll find some interesting things. We show sort of like, what's the impact of bitcoin and a treasury and protecting against inflation. We did the analysis. The f. Apple had allocated like 1 or 2% of Bitcoin to their treasury five years ago. They would have total. They would have not lost any. They would have maintained their purchasing power as opposed to having lost purchasing power. We also show the breakdown of the different industries buying bitcoin on river.
- [40:38]
B
And so I think I got this one somewhere. I'll find it here.
- [40:45]
A
Yeah, this is.
- [40:46]
B
Here we go.
- [40:47]
A
Oh, yeah, there we go.
- [40:50]
B
So real estate up at the top, huh?
- [40:52]
A
Yeah, because, you know, if it's interesting, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because real estate people really like hard. Really, like real, like, hard assets. They. They like something that's scarce, but they're also. They also know that real estate's really annoying. Um, and bitcoin. And they look at bitcoin's performance, they go, wait, hold on a second. You're telling me I can, like, beat my returns from real estate and not have to deal with tenants and like, plumbing and all of this nonsense? Like, why wouldn't I do that?
- [41:28]
B
And so it is super interesting.
- [41:30]
A
Mm. Construction is another One like construction, you know, it's. But it's really across the board. We also see a lot of nonprofits, we see a lot of churches, we see a lot of software firms like it consulting firms or things like this, like industries where people would know, sort of know about bitcoin. And healthcare is also another one. Lots of doctor's offices, dentists. It's, it's not actually like super obvious why some of these are so popular. Maybe we're just plugged into certain networks and we get a lot of referrals. But I think there's something else. Like I don't know why there's so many more doctors than sort of agriculture, you know, buying bitcoin. Maybe it's the doctors just have more wealth to allocate somewhere else. Not sure.
- [42:27]
B
No, it's, I mean it's, it's really interesting. The real estate one, honestly, like makes, that makes a ton of sense. And I think you've seen that like, seen this from some like bigger name people in real estate like start to start to really talk about this as like now we're going to structure deals with bitcoin incorporated into them. Because this just, this just makes sense going forward. Like. And I mean honestly the other side from the. If you're renting out, you know, you got a bunch of tenants. Like man, bitcoin is a lot easier to, to manage than, than tenants and a rental property. So I can definitely see the need for diversification there. I'm. It's also very heartening to see I guess that a lot of, you know, the second highest one there is just some bitcoin services is just other bitcoin like bitcoin companies, right. Who are taking a portion of their proceeds and putting them into their own treasury. Correct.
- [43:17]
A
Yeah. And you know, there's, there's a lot of different kinds, right? There's, there's miners, there's like mining repair firms, there's software businesses. There's a lot of different types of things in bitcoin services.
- [43:34]
B
Yeah. So yeah, I love to see the other chart here. That is just kind of like kind of mind blowing. Whereas it was just like total, total corporate treasury adoption, I think. Where was this? Somewhere along here. I just skipped over it earlier. I'll find it again. But just. Oh, here it is. The like number of bitcoin treasury companies with at least 10 bitcoin like that, I mean, talk about going parabolic. Like that's just kind of wild. And it's like it starts with one, right? It starts with strategy And I mean, I guess you could. You know, there were bitcoin companies with more than 10 bitcoin. But like, we're talking. This is specifically about like explicit bitcoin treasury companies, correct?
- [44:14]
A
Yes. This is like, because if you look at the Y axis is, you know, hitting about 50. So this is these bitcoin treasury companies that are trying to go public and financialize, and we're not taking a stance on whether that's good or bad. I am personally skeptical that the vast majority of these make sense, but maybe that's a different conversation.
- [44:39]
B
I share the skepticism there. I think there will emerge a couple of key players and I think it's getting fairly clear who those are. I also think that a lot of this, it's like, skepticism aside, like, this was kind of an inevitable, inevitable, inevitable result of bitcoin being successful. Right. Of course you were going to see this. Of course you're going to see nation states jumping into this as well. Like, it just makes sense if bitcoin was winning, if bitcoin is winning, everyone is going to want it. Like, that's just a, that's just kind of the reality of the situation. It doesn't have to be good or bad. You don't have to like it or not like it. It's just like, that's just the way it works. People want harder money. They want a better way to save the value of their time and energy, and they're going to find it. And they happen to found a really good one in bitcoin.
- [45:26]
A
Yep, exactly.
- [45:29]
B
Another thing I wanted to talk to you about and. Oh, I did actually just find. Maybe it's worthwhile for me to pop this one up on screen since you mentioned it, just to show folks the Apple side of things, which is pretty interesting. So pulling this up here. Yeah, Big tech Treasury performances since 2020. So that, that's like, that's pretty remarkable when you see the, basically the, this is kind of like real terms what actually happened and what would have happened with just a 1% allocation, is that correct? I mean, that's wild. Like, so you're, you end up losing tens of billions in purchasing power if you're just holding dollars and gaining tens of billions in purchasing power if you just do a 1% allocation to bit bitcoin. Like, that's, that's just kind of like, it's just kind of crazy that with that small of an allocation, it has such an outsized impact.
- [46:18]
A
Yep, yep.
- [46:21]
B
That is. Yeah, that is just wild. Okay, so another thing I wanted to talk to you about was. And this is. Was the topic of your presentation at the Bitcoin Policy Summit was sort of bitcoin in America. And you guys did another great report on this. I can maybe pull some, some charts up from that as well in a little bit. But can you talk about this, like, more, more broadly? Because it's a pretty cool thing for you to be able to go and speak in front of these lawmakers and talk about this, this American bitcoin advantage. But, you know, like, you guys are obviously, like, you're, you're based in America, American company. I don't know if you service any other jurisdictions besides America currently, or is it just usa?
- [46:57]
A
It's pretty much the US we, we serve some select international individuals, and that's something we'll probably scale up a bit next year. But we're not entering the consumer, we're not entering Europe supporting the euro or the pound or anything like that. So we're pretty much an American company. We operate here to the extent that anyone in other countries is using us. We're still operating here. They're just opening accounts here and using dollars and bitcoin. So, yes, and I think sort of my own. I think for anyone who follows me, they know I'm deeply American. My, you know, you know, my family goes back to the 1630s in the United States. Like, this is my country. I feel very deeply in protecting this, protecting the United States and ensuring it can continue to thrive and prosper. I think bitcoin plays an important role there. And so, you know, we did an analysis, we did a whole report on, you know, what has bitcoin done for the United States? What, you know, how does the US Compare to other countries in the world in terms of bitcoin holdings, businesses, things like that? I mean, really what we saw was America's, unsurprisingly, like the bitcoin country, you know, about 40% of Bitcoin is held by American people or businesses. And it's by far sort of the biggest, the biggest market. It's also very culturally aligned. Right. Bitcoin is this idea of freedom, distrust of government and economic independence. And that's something that is downstream of the ideals of the American Revolution and the culture that built that. So it makes sense that it's very popular here.
- [48:48]
B
No, it doesn't. I mean, seeing some of the data in this report is kind of wild because again, I mean, this isn't just about who has the most in their bitcoin strategic reserve, if they even have a bitcoin strategic Reserve in terms of these other countries, Basically the countries that own bitcoin, by and large own it because they have confiscated it through law enforcement action. And that's so far the U.S. that's what they have from too. Notable exceptions, El Salvador, Kingdom of Bhutan, I think a couple others who are actively mining bitcoin or buying bitcoin. But mostly it's these confiscation efforts. But even the other part of that is just what do the citizens themselves own? And at a time where there's like, you know, central banks are stockpiling gold, allegedly, who knows if it's just, you know, tungsten wrapped in gold leafing, we don't really know. I have. I haven't assayed it personally, but it's really interesting to see just what individuals are doing across the world and how actually dominant America is in that regard. Like, you look at some of these numbers and it's just like, I mean, it's kind of shocking, like just what a huge percentage of this is held by Americans, American businesses. Like, it's very much dominant.
- [50:01]
A
Yes. And, you know, maybe I can say a few spicy things that will, you know, that maybe my hot takes, I think bitcoin is. I see bitcoin as a life raft for the United States. I think, you know, I've talked to some senators and such who go, well, isn't bitcoin attacking the dollar? And isn't the dollar what makes, you know, America as powerful in the world? And my response to that is always, well, no, the US Government is destroying the dollar. Bitcoin is going to be the life raft for Americans so that we don't get totally wrecked once the math of the fiscal situation of the US Just inevitably plays out. And then there's this other thing. Well, you might look at this and go, well, America is the richest country in the world. Isn't it unfair that bitcoin just making America richer? And maybe my hot take is fairness doesn't matter. I care about my country. I want America to disproportionately benefit from bitcoin. I actually don't agree that bitcoin's going to save the poor masses of the world. That doesn't make any sense, I don't think. Or save the unbanked. People don't have banks because they're poor. Giving someone a bank doesn't make someone rich. The economic problems in the third world are not due to money. They're due to culture and other deeper issues that bitcoin can't fix. And so I actually view bitcoin as a way to keep the crown jewels of our civilization, the west, shining. And that's the most important thing. If that goes out, then the whole world goes dark. And so that's what I think is the most important thing. Bitcoin isn't going to help Uganda. I just don't believe that. I think bitcoin is going to help save Western civilization.
- [52:03]
B
That isn't. That is indeed spicy. But let's, let's. Because let's unpack that a little bit more because you've got, you've got like the store of value side of this, right? And then you also obviously have the medium of exchange side. And like, it is I think probably pretty demonstrably true that from a medium of exchange standpoint, like if you don't have access to banks and you have to use cash or you have to use gold, those both suck in terms of being able to transact in any meaningful way outside of just a very small local circle.
- [52:35]
A
Right?
- [52:35]
B
Like, you can't send physical cash around the world. I mean, you could use Western Union as a go between, but that's just terrible. Gold, even worse. Like, so bitcoin is useful there. But I absolutely see what you're saying in terms of, like, there are other underlying problems that need to be addressed.
- [52:54]
A
Why wasn't there a bank to. Why isn't there a bank? Right. That's asking a question halfway into a story. Well, it's like, well, and I kind of came to these opinions a long time ago in life when I did some development work in various countries and was like, well, hold on a second. Why am I building this water tank? Why aren't they building the water tank? And I kind of came to the conclusion that it's a lot more complicated than the west can just give technology to these countries and they'll just, you know, thrive. Like, I just, I fundamentally don't believe that.
- [53:32]
B
Well, yeah, that's the whole concept of like foreign aid, right? And whether or not that is actually an effective means of lifting up countries, like, it kind of, it gets back to that. Like, if, if foreign aid was effective, foreign aid would have been effective. But it's so many times, like, you know, where I would be able to bring it back to the money is like, so much of the foreign aid that comes is, first of all, just through these rampantly corrupt shell companies and NGOs that are actually just completely full of shit and don't actually. Whatever 5% of it actually gets to its intended destination. The rest is just grift by people operating at higher levels. And then you've got the whole imf, right, and the World bank and those very, the fiat epitomizing organizations that are just very obviously harmful. Like they haven't left any country better than they found it. And they didn't find them in good spaces, you know, in a good place to begin with. And so it's like, yeah, I mean, I guess my point of hope here is that, you know, I'm of the same opinion that like, I'm an American, I love America. I want America to continue to be the greatest country in the world. And I believe that it, I believe that it is and I believe that it still can continue to be. I gotta say, spending a little bit of time in Switzerland, I am like, boy, some we feel like a third world country sometimes compared to Switzerland, but that's a different story. That's a very small, incredibly. Yeah, different story there. A whole other rabbit hole to unpack about why that's so successful. Yes, but, but like, I want America to, to continue to be the greatest country in the world because the American ideas are infectious in the best possible way. Right. And American pseudo capitalism. I think we've gotten about as close as anyone. I don't think real capitalism has ever been tried. They say that communism hasn't been tried, but it's been tried. It's been tried a lot and it resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths. But I think we've gotten pretty close to capitalism here. We can still do better. And I think that bitcoin does help us fix that. And capitalism is what lifts the world out of poverty. Right. It's not, it's not us throwing more money at problems. It's fixing that money at the base level. Dare I say, fix the money, fix the world, but fix the money, fix capitalism first. And then I think a lot of that is just downstream from fixing those incentives.
- [55:54]
A
Yeah, I think that's mostly true. I think there's a layer above that, though. I think capitalism works because of the type of people in the capitalist system and their values and their virtues. And so I actually don't think like capitalism just like blindly works for like all cultures, like in the same way it works for the US like, sure, it's communism doesn't work, but yeah, anyways, it's, you know, I generally directionally agree. I do think it's a bit more, I do think it's a bit more coupled to culture too.
- [56:30]
B
I do not disagree with that. And I'm being slightly reductionist with My portrayal. Like I am in agreement because like obviously not all cultures are the same and I know it's not like a popular thing to say that, but it's like they're not the same and that's okay too. They're not going to be the same. Not all people are the same. People don't have the same values, people don't have the same cultural and religious beliefs. This is not to pass judgment on whether one should hold said beliefs. It's just to state a fact that like those societal structures, those cultural institutions are different and they result in different outcomes and different desires amongst the people who inhabit those, those territories. And it is primarily territorially based. At least you know, it started that way but then that spreads out and, and you've got different microcosms of that, those same cultures throughout the world now. But like their Western, western values and people that self select by coming to America and that have self selected by coming to America, you're naturally self selecting for risk taking entrepreneurs and people who are want, believe in a meritocracy and believe in the ability of you to work hard and as long as you get a reasonably fair shake to get ahead. And that's why America is what it is. Right. Because we're a nation of, of people who wanted something a little bit better than what the current status quo offered them. I mean that's why we overthrew our tyrannical British overlords at the end of the day, right?
- [57:59]
A
Yeah. I mean I think that all that cultural thing is true. Before we had a welfare state and then after that it did not filter for risk takers. Yes, that's for economic opportunity. I can get more free stuff.
- [58:12]
B
Yeah, no, that's. We're going to have to do a whole nother podcast where we just go deep down this rabbit hole because this is one that I think is so important to discuss because it's uncomfortable for people, I think to talk about this and especially now. I mean we just saw like a literal self proclaimed socialist who's actually just kind of like a dumb communist get elected mayor of New York City, the financial capital allegedly of the world. That's just kind of insane to me. Like genuinely insane. I don't know if we want to go down this rabbit hole. We can go back to talking to talk in more river because I've got more questions there too. But yeah, that was nuts to me.
- [58:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, but it's unsurprising to me. Of course that's unsurprising. And frankly, you know we don't have to dwell on this topic, but like really, really it's just a demographics question. If you look at the, if you look at sort of the breakdown, it's like in a multi ethnic society, every politics is just an ethnic, like is mostly an ethnic thing now. That's not really the case in this election. It's like, that's half explanatory. The other half is sort of just like new transplants to New York also voting for him, which, which is like a little odd, but it's mostly, it's mostly like Gen Z women and recent immigrants voting for Mandami, which is. There's a lot to unpack there, but maybe, maybe we should just move on.
- [59:42]
B
Yeah, we're going to need to. Okay, we're going to have to do a whole different show on that because it is quite a lot to unpack. Okay. Obviously this shows this very safe space for rants and tangents and digressions. So I'm glad that we got to go on one here. Okay. Something I would like to talk about. We'll bring this back to more, let's say, easily palatable conversations for the, for the vast majority of people. But I'd love to hear about like what you envision for the future. You talked about building this idea of like, of being a bank, of being a bitcoin bank, of being the most trusted financial institution because of bitcoin. Can we talk about that a little bit more? Like, how do you see this, like in terms of all of these legacy players, like you're, you're playing in a very, a very big arena filled with very big players like that have been around for a long time, hold all the power, do all the lobbying? Like how do you see this playing out? I mean, is this something where it's like, does bitcoin and do bitcoin incentives and bitcoin companies like yours, are you guys able to affect meaningful change amongst the rest of these institutions or is it just about completely like just, just beating them, just, just being better? They don't have to change, just like let them die off. You'll just do it better and that's how the change will happen.
- [61:09]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. You know, I think our competitive advantage is that they just don't believe we're right. Right. So that's actually like the biggest competitive advantage we have is they think we're just not right. If they believed we were right, they would be changing how they act. So given that, let's say we Are, I mean, I'm not arrogant to the sense. Like, we could always be wrong. Right? That's possible. In which case none of this works. Okay, fine, back up. Do something else. Go back to, I don't know, go back to aerospace engineering or something. But if we're right, then river will hit like a trajectory of growth and momentum that they won't be able to react to, I don't think. And now the thing is there's a lot of money made on things that river doesn't do. Like we're focusing on the consumer small, medium sized business, you know, like savings. These banks, they do all sorts of stuff. So it's not like, it's not like we're eating their lunch completely. Like, it's not like real estate loans are disappearing or big corporate M and A deals and stuff like that. It's not like we're going to eat that lunch anytime soon. Maybe, maybe never. Right? Like what happened? Like a lot of, there's a lot of money made in finance and banking that isn't, you know, retail focused. And so I don't really know exactly how this all plays out because finance is a huge industry and I don't think they're going to like, I don't think JP Morgan is going to, you know, like die, you know, because river is successful in the next 10 years. I think they'll figure something out. So I, you know, I, I don't know how it plays out is basically what I'm saying, because it's all very complicated.
- [63:01]
B
It is interesting just on the JP Morgan thing to see Jamie Dimon's kind of arc as it relate. Like he still really won't say anything positive about bitcoin, but now at least he's in his, his phase of like blockchain technology. And you know, like we have our own, you know, we have our own JPM coin and JPM blockchain. Like it's, it's interesting for him to go from like, all of this is garbage and smoke and mirrors to like, hey, well the stuff that we're doing with it is good. Like do you, obviously they think that we're wrong still, these, these types. Maybe Jamie Dimon doesn't. Maybe this is actually like I always wonder this, like, do you think those types of guys, the Jamie Dimons, they're actually just full of shit and they're like, they're personally buying bitcoin and they are just like, they're specifically just not wanting this to rattle their cage too much and that. Or do you think they just really just don't get it. Still.
- [63:50]
A
I mean, I think he doesn't get it. I also think he doesn't care. And I also think. And maybe this is another hot take, he's not wrong to not care. Right. If you actually put yourself in Jamie Dimon's shoes, sure. If you really, really, really, really care about the long term, he should probably see this. But JP Morgan controls and has controlled, is the most powerful financial institution in the United States and has been since World War I. Right. And it still is. And frankly, that's not going to change in the next 10 years because there's a. Here's the thing, right? And like, is that maybe the world, like, there's maybe even a world where like, everything just transitions to bitcoin and then JP Morgan just starts using it because they have already the network effect of, like, all of these relationships. The government trusts them to do financing. All of the money is there. Like, once it's big enough, and it's just not big enough for JPMorgan to care yet. Like, it's not. And then you could argue once it is, they'll do, like, they'll start serving the big money and do the things with it that the market demands and they won't be any worse off. Maybe the retail banking will take a hit, maybe that will take a hit and we'll eat some of that lunch. But maybe the big money actually is just going to. It converts to bitcoin over time and they start doing finance with that.
- [65:26]
B
I think that, I mean, that's, that's kind of fair. It's like, to the question of, like, are we still early to bitcoin? It's like. And you're saying, look to Jamie Dimon, like, bitcoin is still just like, not relevant to him. Like, it's a $2 trillion asset, which is a lot, but then it's like thousand trillion of global assets. Yeah, bitcoin is growing, but it's like.
- [65:47]
A
Well, and also being an asset, being a big asset doesn't mean it's like, that useful for them, right? There's a lot of gold. Like, JP Morgan doesn't really care because they can't really make a lot of money holding gold in vaults, right? And so really they care about finance. They care about, like, things moving. They care about loans. They care about, like, the dynamic part of all of this, not just like something sitting there. And so the question is like, well, that part of, like, that's what makes money. And so will that actually take a hit and I think maybe like the argument against that this is going to be harmful to them is if bitcoin does actually continue to definancialize things. Right. There's just less they can take cuts of and that might be what shrinks their business. Not that the business they have moved somewhere else. It's more like it just goes away. Because all of this funny, these financial shenanigans just aren't as popular.
- [66:49]
B
That's fair on the gold piece, I think to be play Devil's Africa, I think JP Morgan does have like between their New York and their like London and maybe Singapore vaults, they do have like, they do hold a lot of gold. I mean again, allegedly, because they don't actually disclose this stuff. Like so who knows and like how much return they're actually making on holding that and for whom.
- [67:10]
A
Yeah, but what percentage of their business is it? Right. Probably it's like super. Like they do it to just keep probably some rich customers happy.
- [67:15]
B
Yeah.
- [67:17]
A
And so it's like, you know, they're making money on credit cards a lot. Right. And so like that, like that's, you know, and like our industry is not eating that lunch anytime soon.
- [67:30]
B
No, that's fair. I am curious to. What are you guys. I mean you, you've been rolling out a lot of new features recently between the. I was saying this before, I don't know if we've actually touched on it on air, but the supercharged buys for the dca, like when, when bitcoin dips, you dca more like. I thought that was brilliant. I'm. I'm currently using it again. Nobody's paying me to say this, I'm just saying what features I like here. And I think it's a genius feature because then I just automatically am stacking more when bitcoin dips. It's perfect. You got that? The direct. The direct. Direct deposit buys. What else are you guys are kind of like looking at, like what's next on the horizon for you? What do you think are the. Is the next kind of set of tools that you need to build out? Or are you feeling pretty comfortable with your tool set as it is? And it's just about kind of refining it, making sure, you know, you guys have solid uptime, that you don't go down like coinbase every time bitcoin rips those sorts of things.
- [68:20]
A
I mean it's all the above. There's so much left to build. In fact, if you're an engineer and you're looking for a job and you're good apply river.com careers our biggest bottleneck right now is getting the smart people in to help us move faster. We have a long list of things we know everyone wants and some of them are obvious. Like for example, we launched direct deposit today. Okay. People want to be able to also pay their bills from river, right. So we're like, we're building that. So there's this whole category of things that makes river a much better place to have your savings and a long list of just kind of relatively maybe obvious things there. So that's one bucket. Then there's a bucket of like perfection and polish and making sure this like making sure it is just like the best designed, highest quality experience we can possibly deliver and maintain that as we scale. Right. And so a lot of the investment is behind the scenes and automation. Things that help our service team serve you like faster and can provide you a really high quality service experience as we continue to grow the client base. And then the other category, which is always my favorite is the cool new stuff, like the stuff no one's really done before. And so we don't leak those ideas and so we're already like plotting some, some the next things like the supercharged to that people go, wow, like I've never seen that before but I really want that. And so yeah, those are like the kinds of buckets of stuff we have go have in the works.
- [69:57]
B
The supercharged thing was seriously like very cool. Like as soon as I saw that I was like, yep, turn that on immediately. That's a no brainer way. So and I'm glad because then bitcoin started dipping more. So like been able to take advantage of the feature right off the bat. It's like bam. That's perfect. Yeah, go ahead.
- [70:15]
A
I was just going to say it was kind of funny because when we launched it like for the next like two days, the price just went up and so we were like, oh, you know, like, you're welcome I guess. You know, we launched this thing and nothing supercharges. But now it's. In the last week it's been great.
- [70:28]
B
Yeah, it's certainly, yeah, we're sitting just above 100,000 US infinitely printable US dollars per bitcoin. Like it's perfect to be able to buy some more down here. I think I snagged some just under 100 too. Which I was like, yes, that feels good. It's crazy that that feels good, but it feels good. Want to be conscious of your time because we're running up onto it a little bit. I Do want to ask you kind of before we close out and then I'll just give you a chance to send people wherever you want to. But as it relates to bitcoin, four year cycles, overall adoption, where do you stand on this? Do you think that we're at this place where four year cycles are kind of, kind of dead? Like is this. Are we, you know, or are you of like, you know. Yeah, maybe we've already topped in this particular cycle. Or is. Is it something completely different? How are you looking at this? How are you thinking about it?
- [71:24]
A
I mean, honestly, the shorter answer is I have no idea. I've never really like, I've never really. I have no insight that I can give somebody as to like what bitcoin will do in the next four years. Like the macro analysis, I kind of generally believe most of that is like tarot cards. It's an extremely complex system. None of that stuff can predict the whale, that no one knows who he is. Woke up one day and was like, you know what, I'm kind of ready to just. I just got married and now I want to build a castle. No macro analysis can predict that in the chain reaction of that. Right. So I don't know. I really don't. I just know the first principles makes sense long term and that hasn't changed and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
- [72:18]
B
Amen to that. A technical analysis is just astrology for men, right? Yeah, as they say. Well, I really enjoyed this, man. Anything you want to leave people with or wherever you want to send people, anything they should be on the lookout for coming out from you guys, feel free to go in any way you want with that.
- [72:35]
A
Yeah, I mean we have some cool things coming out. Maybe in the next month we will have a big update. So stay tuned for that and then. No, I mean just, you know, the advice I like to give people is, you know, just keep focusing on leveling up your life. Right. Bitcoin is a tool. The vast majority of people whose lives are improved by bitcoin are just getting really good at something in their life and they're focusing on their career, they're focusing on their family and they're saving in bitcoin. They don't need to all always work in bitcoin, Right. Go be a really good doctor, go be a really good carpenter, go be a really good farmer and save in bitcoin. Right. And use that proof of work to stack sats. And so I think some people kind of find bitcoin and they kind of get like, oh, should I do this? And maybe the answer is yes, but the ROI of just investing in yourself and getting really, really good at something you care about is very high. And so that's the thing to focus on.
- [73:43]
B
That's a great piece of advice to end with. Well, yeah, again, highly recommend people check out river if you're sick of Coinbase or wherever else. It's awesome. Really grateful that you guys built it. Really happy about the proof of reserves because it makes it a lot easier when I send it to, you know, friends or family and say, look, you can literally see that they, you know, they, they've got you. Like, you know, you're not, you're not going to get rugged by them. So glad that you guys are. Have built that out. Hope we see more people adopting that and, and yeah, cheers to, I guess, the, the bitcoin banks of the future, right?
- [74:15]
A
Yeah. We have a bright future ahead. We're just getting started, so stay tuned.
- [74:21]
B
Love it. Alex, thanks so much, man. It's been a pleasure. Looking forward to going down a. A couple of different rabbit holes again another time.
- [74:27]
A
Thanks, Walker. Me too.
- [74:35]
B
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at tcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.com walker America to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.