B (4:15)

That's amazing. Thank you. Elliot. You certainly were a pioneer by being that first in Canada file for that Bitcoin etf, which is amazing. You're bringing digital assets to people wherever they are and making it easy. But the big innovation that I heard is you're building that infrastructure around the access and trading again, making it easy to access and providing that trust behind your name. So thank you. Elliot. At Bitcoin Treasury Corporation, you're focused on Bitcoin treasury and lending strategies. How do you see corporate treasuries evolving with Bitcoin as a reserve asset?

A (4:47)

This is something that we're incredibly excited about. And so just to be very clear for the listeners I'm CEO of Bitcoin Treasury Corporation. I'm also CIO of Evolve ETFs that I was just talking about. And Evolve is providing the backend infrastructure for Bitcoin Treasury Corporation. You can go to the website of either company if you want to learn more about the relationship between the two. But I need to make sure that that's very clear for listeners and not the same business. Bitcoin Treasury Corporation is a separate publicly listed company trading under the ticker of BTCT on the TSX Venture. We hold 771.37 Bitcoin. And as you mentioned, our vision for the business is to grow the Bitcoin per share for the benefit of the shareholders. And we think that we have a real opportunity to be a pioneer in institutional Bitcoin services. So this is where we think that the excitement is going to be going forward. Because what we believe is that we that critical point where people have now accepted that Bitcoin is the highest quality collateral in the world. People are now starting to use Bitcoin as a store of value, as a safe haven against market uncertainty, against inflation, against money printing. And even governments are getting there too. You know, as we saw in the past year, with the US now having a strategic Bitcoin reserve. But when you have an asset that has that level of adoption, institutions are now coming into the assets. Governments, as I said, are coming into the assets. It doesn't make sense for the asset to just be inert, to just sit there in a vault somewhere, like borrow gold at a bank. Especially not when it's a digital asset that can move around the Internet at the speed of light and can be used and integrated into so many applications. So we think that the first opportunity that's quite obvious is lending the Bitcoin in much the same way as you might think of a real estate investment trust. They own buildings, but they rent them out to people. In the same way, we're going to own Bitcoin, but we're going to rent out the use of that Bitcoin. But in addition to that, Bitcoin is now getting integrated into new financial products and services. And we think that this is going to expand the market for new Bitcoin products and services. So by this, I think we're really excited looking at the way in which Bitcoin is starting to get integrated into credit products. So Bitcoin bonds, Bitcoin mortgages. People have talked about including Bitcoin in Treasuries, government Treasuries and those kinds of things. Are very interesting because when you include a hard money asset into other structures, you increase the quality of the collateral in those structures. And so we think that there's going to be a real strategic benefit to a company like ours that starts out with just buying Bitcoin. Let's just have a big inventory of bitcoin. Let's grow that inventory by providing it as a service to other companies that are trying to use that bitcoin. And I kind of come back to the thought of the early Internet, right? You didn't really know what the Internet would become when it first started, but you knew that there was something incredibly exciting about the possibilities. And the same with the mobile phone, right? When the iPhone came out, we didn't know Uber was going to disrupt the taxi service, but it did. So now Bitcoin is here. It's the best money, it's the best store of value. It's built for the Internet. And we're only just starting to see the ways in which it can be used. But we think in Bitcoin Treasury Corp. That the first step is to acquire as much as you can and then look around at the industry that's developing and think about the best ways to serve other institutions who need access to Bitcoin for products and services that they're building.

B (8:03)

Thank you. I appreciate that. Starting out there, I really appreciate. I know the audience will better understand your role in Evolve, which provides that backend infrastructure for Bitcoin Treasury Corporation. So again, teasing those two companies apart. Appreciate that. But I really like the vision to grow bitcoin per share for your asset customers. I think you're, again, you're looking out for the best interest of your customers. And what I've seen in the last couple of years, really institutions, especially recently here in the US Institutions, governments are now investing, proving more adoption in these digital assets. Absolutely agree with you. Bitcoin digital assets are transformational and will be best to support Industry 4.0 and innovation going forward. So thank you. Elliot, given your experience with physically settled crypto products, what infrastructure challenges do institutions still face when adopting digital assets?

A (8:52)

I think the number one challenge for most institutions is that they're very stuck in the structures that they've already built. And so those structures include things like compliance structures, how they think about assets, how they think about the infrastructure that they use, or perhaps maybe a better way to put it, although less kind, is how they don't think about those things. So when you look at the traditional finance industry, it's a central clearinghouse model in Canada, we use Canadian depository for securities. In the US There's a depository trust company called dtcc. And all equities, all stocks that trade clear through those entities. And those entities have been around since, you know, the stock market modernized decades ago. But nobody really thinks about how that infrastructure works. And then when it comes to compliance rules, people are not used to a new asset, right? You typically don't see new assets. You typically see new companies. So there's a new ticker or a new set symbol for a new company, but you don't see a new asset class entirely. And so I think institutions are struggling to figure out how to put Bitcoin into their existing framework. Whether it's their internal infrastructure, their accounts and bookkeeping and so on, whether it's into their compliance frameworks around how do they think about it? You know, we think Bitcoin is the best quality collateral in the world. But I'm sure that the regulators who govern bank capital and all the countries coordinate through an agreement called Basel iii, which is based on a negotiation in Basel, Switzerland, between countries to agree on how they treat big banks. They don't have a framework for saying, well, Bitcoin's better quality collateral than cash deposits, so you should treat it as such and allow banks to use it as a reserve asset. That's a really long way away from here because there's a lot of bureaucracy that has to change. So I think it is going to continue to be a challenge for a lot of institutions to figure out how to use Bitcoin within their existing tools, systems, processes, allocations and infrastructure. But incrementally, every day, more and more people are figuring this out, more and more institutions are figuring this out. And I think the most exciting part about it is because of this friction, because it's so difficult for big institutions to get there. The largest institutions are going to get there last, which is an incredible opportunity for those of us who are able to get there earlier. And as I said, you know, we've been in the business of access products now for a long time. ETFs, we're an access product for people to use Bitcoin without having to open an account at an exchange, without having to deal with their own keys. Bitcoin Treasury Corporation is an access company that allows people who to buy Canadian equities because they're in a Canadian equity investment mandate to have Bitcoin in their portfolio. So there are now more and more tools and more and more people are innovating. But the biggest participants are not there yet. But that's so good for everybody else because there's only 21 million bitcoin, it is the hardest money ever created. But by being infinitely divisible, there's enough for everybody and being earlier to be able to use it within your products, services, your life, your portfolio is an advantage. And so we're very excited. We spent a lot of time talking to big institutions, trying to help them think about Bitcoin and figure it out and how they can use it. Everybody's making progress. I think increasingly everybody recognizes this value. There's still a lot of friction in the way. And so it's going to take some time for all of that to get resolved.

B (12:14)

Thank you, Elliot. I appreciate you breaking that apart for us. Absolutely. I agree with you. Challenge for these large institutions. Most institutions today that are still invested in their traditional tradfi infrastructure and they're trying to figure that out to really adopt and integrate their digital assets into their portfolio. The interesting thing I took away is you said that probably the largest institutions will most likely get their last due to their large infrastructure and the amount of work to integrate those digital assets. So I appreciate that. Elliot, last question of the day. Looking ahead, what do you believe will be the next major catalyst for mainstream Bitcoin adoption? Will it be ETFs, corporate treasuries, sovereign wealth, or something else?

A (12:55)

Something else is probably the easiest way to answer that because I think usually we're surprised by what it ends up being. But I really think maybe if I could then take a guess at what that anything else is. I think what you're going to see in terms of mainstream use of Bitcoin is it's going to be the layer two networks that are getting built on top of it. And this is a very exciting part of the industry and it's very, very early. So layer two networks for your listeners who aren't familiar with them. These are services that use Bitcoin as the asset that they move around, but they live separately to the bitcoin main blockchain. And it allows you to send bitcoin even faster than it already is sent, which is, you know, every a block, every 10 minutes. In this case, the biggest one is called lightning, where the movement to the bitcoin is almost instantaneous and it allows you to send it at much lower fee in smaller size. So the classic example is a cup of coffee. And the reason why this is so relevant is because the developing world are using Bitcoin and have more of a need for it than those of US In Canada and the US where we have a more stable currency than they have in some parts of the world that are suffering much worse inflation. You have a much weaker banking system and more debanked people. And so they're turning to Bitcoin and using it much more so than we are. El Salvador is the best example. Bitcoin legal tender down there. You can buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks or a hamburger at McDonald's in El Salvador and pay with bitcoin using the Lightning network, which is that layer two network that I mentioned. And I think what's going to happen is more and more countries are going to be doing that, and people from the developed world, from Canada and the U.S. they're going to go on vacation to these places and they're going to realize that actually it's easier for them to put a little bit of Bitcoin into a digital wallet on their phone and pay for things on their vacation. And that's much easier than them changing currency into the local currency or figuring out how to, like, you know, does this place accept visa or MasterCard and all those fees and complexity associated with that? And they'll be able to. Bitcoin will be accepted in more and more places. That's going to increase people's awareness that this is a currency that they can use. And so I think that will again, continue to expand the mainstream adoption, which was, you know, I think what you were asking about. But I do think that the other thing that's going to get people's attention is just going to be big institutions, governments and so on, bringing bitcoin into their world as a reserve asset. But I think those two things combined are going to. Are going to change the name of the game and people are going to forget about when they were skeptical of Bitcoin, and someday they'll just be accepting that it's a part of their lives. They know it's a store of value. They know they can use it in certain circumstances. And that's a lot like, you know, those of us who are old enough to remember the transition from BlackBerry to iPhone. And, you know, you look back after a few years and you can't remember how you lived before you had these tools. I think this is happening to money, and it's going to. It's going to happen faster than most people expect. And when people realize that it's happened already, the world will have changed for the better. And we'll look back and go, wow, I can't believe, you know, the old days before we had this technology so this is where we think the world is going right now.

B (15:57)

Thank you, I really appreciate that. You know, back to the question. In the future we, we don't really know. We have an idea and it may be something else. Don't know what it is but we do know it'll be innovative. Right. And one example you highlighted is and I like this, the Layer two networks, they'll continue to innovate, right to bring crypto better, cheaper, smarter, faster to the masses which is really cool. And another example I like to highlight, we talked about this on the podcast previously. Is El Salvador's one of those countries that is fully adopting digital assets Bitcoin to easily use as a standard currency to make everyday purchases I think is pretty cool. So thank you Elliot. It was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.

A (16:37)

Thanks very much Brian. I really enjoyed this. Appreciate you having me on.

B (16:40)

Bye for now.