Cameron Winklevoss (4:52)

Good. Great to see you, Peter.

Peter McCormack (4:54)

Good, Peter, great to see you. So firstly, welcome. Thank you. You are now sponsors of what bitcoin did, which is amazing. Thank you for doing that. How are you feeling about it?

Cameron Winklevoss (5:05)

Very excited, Pumped.

Tyler Winklevoss (5:07)

Very excited to be supporting.

Peter McCormack (5:09)

All right, so I'm going to give you a really hard year. I'm going to really hard year. I'm going to push you loads on bitcoin stuff, but you're doing loads anyway, which is really, really amazing and awesome. But I want to use this sponsorship, not just because I want your money, but I actually want to help do some kind of bridge with bitcoiners and push some of you up. You've been doing quite a bit anyway. Should we go through some of that?

Cameron Winklevoss (5:36)

Yeah, let's do that. I think the last time we spoke might have been three, four months ago. And I think the parting questioning was around support for bitcoin core. And since then we talked a little bit about that and our desire to do that, but we hadn't done a lot up to that point. And you were actually kind enough to introduce us to a number of folks in the community. And I think we've made a lot of progress since then, starting with. So we stood up the Gemini Opportunity Fund with the sole purpose and goal of supporting bitcoin core development around privacy, security and scalability. And to date we have donated close to $500,000. And I'll just break that down really quickly. We made a pledge for a million dollar gift to the digital currency initiative at MIT to be given over four years. We've obviously given the first piece of that. So that's 250 right there. And then we gave $50,000 to the Human Rights Foundation HRF to support Bitcoin core developers, to enhance privacy on the Bitcoin network. And really, if we view Bitcoin as a tool of financial freedom and a human right, privacy around money, we think that's a great area to start giving back to. And then another grant of 150,000 to John Newbery's Brink, based in London. And that's a program that sponsors and mentors amazing core devs. And then most recently, recently we announced today a support of 25k to memepool space, which is a open source blockchain explorer. So we've been pretty busy here and obviously this is just the beginning. We're a few months into the Opportunity Fund, but we're really excited to kind of give back to key stakeholders in the space because we really wouldn't be here having this conversation without Bitcoin. We owe so much to Bitcoin and to the core and all of that. And so if we don't get that right, if we don't protect that as an industry, as investors, as entrepreneurs, as founders, all of the above, we really have nothing. And so it's going to be a very important cause for us to be pushing and supporting going forward. And I'll let Tyler add anything there if. In case I miss it.

Tyler Winklevoss (8:13)

No, I was just gonna say, Peter, it's all your fault.

Peter McCormack (8:17)

Well, listen, look, I tried to give you a nudge, right? Some people are saying you should nudge people to try and support devs, and I did it with Brian Armstrong, kind of trapped him in an interview. So I thought I'd do it to you guys as well. I've given you a little nudge and it sounds like you've run off and done a lot more than I even expected, which is pretty cool. Have you kind of learned anything about going through that process? Has anything kind of stuck out to you?

Cameron Winklevoss (8:38)

Well, I think, look, it's like sort of anything. It's sort of like venture investing. You have to meet with lots of founders, understand sort of your thesis, the particular area you want to support and how you want to support and supporting. Whether it's nonprofit or venture investing, it's sort of very similar. You meet the teams, you talk to the developers, you get a sense of their philosophy, the problems they want to tackle. And it's been interesting kind of going through that, that process and trying to find really excellent teams that are doing this kind of work.

Tyler Winklevoss (9:13)

Right. And I think the other thing is because Bitcoin, the ethos is all about Decentralization. A lot of these projects and people working on it are decentralized, which can make it hard to know what's going on. So it does take a little work. You are a huge. You helped with some introductions and we sort of took it from there and sort of networking into the cores and the different projects out there. But hopefully people can see the Opportunity Fund look at what we're doing as sort of a reference point of things that are going on in the community. And we've tried to blog about everything.

Cameron Winklevoss (9:57)

And sort of talk about it on Twitter.

Tyler Winklevoss (9:59)

So at least there's some sort of centering point at around what an exchange like Gemini might be looking at. The different projects can sort of elevate those UPS because it can super get lost in the noise, especially when we're talking about like nonprofits and organizations like that versus like the commercial startups where people are trying to, you know, get rich kind of thing by investing in them. So hopefully our efforts and Coinbase's efforts and they've been public and blogging are a bit of a resource of like, hey, how are two large exchange custodians in the US that are regulated thinking about this problem?

Peter McCormack (10:37)

Okay, well, it's brilliant. I'm glad you're doing it. I would want to prod you more, but to be honest, it sounds like you're flying on that. There are a few other things I want to talk to you about though, like potentials and ideas and directly towards supporting Bitcoin. Firstly though, can you talk to me about your treasury management program? And then I'm going to tell you about some things I'm interested in.

Cameron Winklevoss (11:00)

So I think you're referring to Gemini Fund Solutions, which is a full stack solution for fund managers and or corporations that sort of want to take a portion of their treasury that's sitting in dollars and put that towards Bitcoin. And we've been building this full stack solution. Of course we're an exchange and a custodian so we can help custody your Bitcoin, we can help execute your trades and through the necessary workflows to get that done. And I should note that we are the custodian. We service the two Bitcoin North American ETFs that trade on the TSX and a number of other open end and closed end funds. And so we're this, I guess, turnkey solution for people, you know, corporations and managers and fund sponsors who want to set up bitcoin vehicles and or make a purchase into Bitcoin for their balance sheet.

Peter McCormack (12:03)

Nice Any update on the status of your ETF application?

Cameron Winklevoss (12:07)

No comment. No, no comment. So we currently don't have an S1 under file, but we're continuing to look at the marketplace and obviously the chairman, the chairperson of the sec, there's a transition period going on right now and we're sort of watching that. And I think ultimately we've always felt that this is a, it's not an if, it's really a when situation. We think that there will be Bitcoin ETPs, exchange traded products in the US absolutely likely within the next couple of years. We already have them in Canada on the tsx we sort of say that. I don't know if you remember the intel ads way back in the day. Intel inside all the PC manufacturers would sort of tout that. Well, we're sort of Gemini inside these funds that are already trading publicly up in Canada. And I think most people can access them through their brokerage account. Even if you're in the U.S. the tickers, you can look them up and get access that way. And these funds have grown well north, you know, hundreds of millions and some of them I think have a few billion at this point. So I think Canada is a little further ahead, but, but it's just a matter of time before we see these in the U.S. okay.

Peter McCormack (13:33)

Okay. So there's a few things I've got on my list, things that bitcoin has talked about. I don't know if they're on your mind, how much you guys have thought about. One thing that's come up a bunch of times, I think Nick Carter has pushed it quite a bit, is this idea of proof of reserves that exchanges would provide a proof of reserves. Is this something Gemini has looked at doing?

Cameron Winklevoss (13:54)

We've definitely looked at it along the way at different points in time, especially around the auditability of custody. And also as we were looking through our ETF application over the years, like, okay, what if we can sort of do a proof of reserve to sort of show that the bitcoin are actually there? Because if, if you pay attention to the gold ETFs like GLD, there's always sort of this rabbit hole of paranoia and people are like, is the gold actually there? And then they put up a camera in the vault to sort of show the gold. Or you can go and do like a vault tour to see if the gold is in like the Federal Reserve in Manhattan, but you can't touch the bars of gold. So are they actual bars of gold or are they like nicely painted gold looking bars and the weight and all that stuff. So it's sort of this endless rabbit hole of paranoia.

Tyler Winklevoss (14:51)

And that was sort of the story of the Wall street bets silver suites. This idea that there's a lot more paper out there floating and traded than there is actual silver. So if everyone takes delivery of the silver, there will be. It's not solvent. Right. It doesn't add up to the actual float there. So, yeah, definitely in the precious metals, this was definitely an argument I heard a lot about and discussed early on years ago. It doesn't seem to be something that we hear a lot about from the institutional clients that maybe because they don't know it's possible they're just not super aware of that. But I think what they are used to is relying on the fact that we're regulated, the fact that we have auditors, the fact that we're Soc 2 Type 2 and Soc 1 Type 2 compliant. Those examinations were performed by Deloitte and were regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services. So that's kind of what they're used to. And we haven't really heard a lot of conversations around that, but it's super, super interesting and something we've considered.

Cameron Winklevoss (16:09)

And to be clear, also though, our custody product, you get a distinct address that is sort of. That is attached and yours and yours alone. It's not a commingled address. So you can always look at that address on the blockchain.

Peter McCormack (16:24)

Right, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. Well, a bigger thing that I will push you on. I am interested because I've signed up now. I am now a Gemini customer in that I've downloaded the app, I've had a play with it. I've played on the website. By the way, the app is amazing, so easy to use. I set up my.

Cameron Winklevoss (16:39)

Thank you.

Peter McCormack (16:40)

Set up my regular buy twice a month. I like the fact that you default it to twice a month. So I end up having a twice a month regular buy, which is pretty neat. So Lightning support, where are you guys at in considering Lightning support? Adding Lightning to the exchange?

Cameron Winklevoss (16:57)

It's not currently, you know, we're. We've been looking at Lightning, definitely evaluating it. It's. I don't think it's on the immediate roadmap and we'll just sort of keep seeing the level of adoption of that.

Peter McCormack (17:13)

Okay, I'm going to push a bit more on that. Is it just because you think Lightning's too early? Is it too much work to get involved? What's the. Because it's one of Those things. It's a bit like supporting devs. It might not have the economic return for you guys, but it does provide the support that perhaps Lightning itself needs.

Cameron Winklevoss (17:33)

Yeah, it's probably a bit of a chicken nag thing in some ways. Right. It requires, like, the more people that support it and the more exchanges that start to offer it as a channel, the more interesting the opportunity. So maybe it's a matter of us talking to some other folks and seeing if we can all push towards potentially bringing it online. I think that's probably the.

Tyler Winklevoss (18:04)

Yeah, and I like the way you sort of talk about it. It's sort of like core dev support. Maybe. Maybe the business case isn't quite there, but I think maybe that's a little bit more. That's a version of our homework after this podcast.

Cameron Winklevoss (18:19)

Yeah. Next time we come on, we'll be talking about our implementation of Lightning Network. But I should note though, that we do offer native Segwit Bech 32 addresses, so customers can use the BC one. And I think we've had that live. I think we were the first to do that. I think it's been live for about two years. We also batch transactions, so we're doing a number of things to kind of help reduce the on chain sort of footprint of the transactions and relieve some of the pressure from the transactions that we generate on the exchange. Obviously that's something we can do and it's not really incumbent upon other people to do. We can just put in Segwit and we already see that benefit both for ourselves and our customers. So we've definitely been thinking about these scalability issues, but I think to Tyler's point, maybe that's a little bit of homework for us.

Peter McCormack (19:23)

All right, well, if there's anyone you want to talk to on that, I mean, let me know. You probably know everyone anyway, but I know Jack Mat Aliza's got me excited with Lightning with everything he's doing. Have you looked at what he's doing with Strike?

Cameron Winklevoss (19:33)

Not. Not familiar with it.

Peter McCormack (19:35)

Right. I'm going to ping you that afterwards. That's something I think you should have a look at. I think you'll like that last thing. There isn't a huge amount going on with this, but I do know some people have been looking at liquid support. Is that something you've looked at at all?

Cameron Winklevoss (19:50)

We have looked at it and we are, you know, we're familiar with the technology. We're not. Again, I don't think that falls on our immediate roadmap, but we're definitely always looking at the Sidechain L2 development and basically seeing how that evolves over time.

Peter McCormack (20:10)

All right, cool. Listen, Lightning's the one I will push you on, so we will revisit that at some point. Okay. We got to talk about the elephant in the room because one of the things that happens when people find out that you're sponsoring they're going to the bitcoiners. The hardcore bitcoiners are going to bring up the shitcoins, the altcoins. They can say, pete, you're working with a bunch of shitcoiners, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so let's just be clear. I won't. I'm only covering bitcoin with you guys. You know that, right?

Cameron Winklevoss (20:37)

Yep. We know the ground rules.

Peter McCormack (20:39)

I'm not promoting altcoins. Right. They're the ground rules. But I guess for me, a successful year would be at the end of next year, Gemini announces that they're dropping all shitcoins and you're gonna become a bitcoin only company. That would be a successful year for me. But I imagine you would see trying to convince me that Defi is something I should care about, would be successful, right?

Cameron Winklevoss (21:04)

Yeah, we think that's the more likely or more productive path. Yeah, I mean, we're pretty familiar with the maximalist arguments, the maxis and look, as bitcoin hodlers since 2012. You would think we'd be incredibly aligned with your worldview, that maybe Gemini should go all bitcoin. And yet here we are trying to convince you about the merits of Defi and yeah, look, I think bitcoin has had an amazing decade so far. Right. It's at a trillion dollar market cap and our view is it's going to hit 10 trillion within the decade and overtake gold. And that's a remarkable thing. But bitcoin is sort of one piece of that larger financial picture. And we still have to address this centralized financial system, this legacy system that's all trust based, all permission based. And to the extent that bitcoin is not addressing those areas, Defi is in many ways. And so permissionless lending, trading, insurance, all this really cool stuff being built on smart contracts. And so I would love to see a world where bitcoin is dominant. It's a reserve, the global reserve currency, not just of the Internet, but of everything. I think that would be an amazing and quite frankly a very realistic outcome. But I don't want to be stuck in a permissioned financial system at the end of that road. I want to be in permissionless, trustless financial services. And Defi is re architecting those as we speak. Incredibly exciting and quite frankly, complementary. I mean, wrapped Bitcoin is a highly tradable asset in DeFi. And I know you might have an issue with the wrapped aspect, but I think that these things work in harmony, in concert. Bitcoin is the og it's why we're here. It taught us how to decentralize the world. But the things that bitcoin isn't eating or decentralizing, let's see what other projects and experiments can do to some of those stacks that are totally centralized and see if they can take a bite out of it, if you will. And maybe bitcoin gets there and comes up in behind and eats all of it. But I love the experimentation. I love the frontier. Let's make no mistake. Bitcoin sort of locked down. It's a very conservative, as it should be. There's a ton of value in there. Right. We can't screw that up. But I think there's a strong argument for other projects that are pushing the envelope with the same ethos and sort of mission that we all believe in, in the decentralization and how the revolution, this movement which bitcoin started and is still pushing heavily, is going to be one of the greatest things to personal freedom and dignity as the printing press, the personal computer and some of these watershed developments in technology. So that's my pitch. Tyler, feel free to pump in there more.

Peter McCormack (24:27)

Yeah, no, I think that Tyler's a maxi.

Tyler Winklevoss (24:29)

Right, Right.

Peter McCormack (24:30)

He was texting me earlier. He's like, don't listen to my fucking bro.

Tyler Winklevoss (24:33)

Yeah, Cameron, what are you talking about?

Peter McCormack (24:36)

Yeah, what are you talking about?

Tyler Winklevoss (24:37)

That's right.

Cameron Winklevoss (24:37)

He's like, we're going bitcoin exchange if.

Tyler Winklevoss (24:41)

Bitcoin's just gold 2.0. We actually wrote a thought piece this summer where, well, if it disrupts gold, it's got to have a $10 trillion market cap. So there's about a 10x from here and that would price each bitcoin at $500,000. That's just if it's a better gold, decentralized gold built for the Internet that works like email. If it's happens to secure other crypto networks, if it happens to be able to do a lot more things like re architect the financial legacy infrastructure of finance, then 10 trillion is just the small bull case scenario. But to the extent that it doesn't want to do that, I think it's really valuable for other projects which are Ethereum or Whatnot to try and tackle that problem. And I don't think it takes away from the bitcoin story, especially if bitcoin's not sort of vying for that. So, yeah, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. We consider ourselves bitcoiners and frankly, look, if it starts getting built on Ethereum or whatever and comes back to bitcoin, there's no other people in this world that would benefit economically more or there's very few. Right. Than us. So we'd be totally happy for that to happen. But to the extent that bitcoin doesn't want to do that, we think it's very valuable to the entire ecosystem in terms of mainstream adoption people coming in. We think that's just super positive for everything.

Peter McCormack (26:17)

Yeah. There was one person who said to me, I'm not going to say their name. It was a dev guy who was telling me that wrapped bitcoin is something you have to consider because whether you agree with it or not, you need to look into it and talk about it, because it's still a bitcoin. And I was like, okay, that's interesting because I've heard other people say it's not a bitcoin. Have you actually wrapped any of your own bitcoin?

Cameron Winklevoss (26:40)

No, we have not. No.

Peter McCormack (26:44)

Okay, I'm going to try.

Tyler Winklevoss (26:46)

Here's another. Here's another question, and maybe this is a question for you. It's sort of like the financial system in the 1700s revolved around precious metals like gold, silver. Right. But things were invented since that, like joint stock companies, stock exchanges, other financial assets. And to me, if there's a financial system, our financial system today isn't just gold. So if bitcoin's going to be a better gold, how do you reconcile all of these other services that you have come to use and know and need in your life? If bitcoin's not going to step up and do that, are you. Okay. Going to centralized finance for all of that? Do you think that's preferable than, let's say a platform like Ethereum trying to fill in those gaps? Because I don't think you believe that the financial system should go back to the 17th century. Right.

Cameron Winklevoss (27:53)

Even if it's decentralized and online. Right, right.

Peter McCormack (27:56)

We don't close my account. Did you see that? I don't know if you saw me ranting on Twitter, but my.

Tyler Winklevoss (28:02)

I see you ranting on Twitter all the time. I love it.

Peter McCormack (28:06)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck this, fuck that. But they. No, my bank, I'd been with for 25 years, wrote to me with 65 days notice and closed all my accounts because I wouldn't tell them what I'm basically because I'm sending money to exchanges and they asked me what it's for and I says none of your business. So they closed my account. So I've got like, I'm using Neo banks at the moment, which are fine. I kind of always wanted some kind of decentralized account, which is because I need pounds, dollars and Bitcoin, I need the three. Whilst I'm not a fan of Ethereum, I wouldn't be opposed to using a Stablecoin.

Cameron Winklevoss (28:46)

Yeah, I mean you could park your cash in Gemini and just use the Gemini dollar whenever you needed to go out into the world, whether it's to pay for goods using Gemini pay or in Ethereum and lending, trading, all that stuff. And we're not certainly going to be worried if your money's going to other exchanges. Right. We're in crypto, we understand, but, but.

Tyler Winklevoss (29:12)

Clearly the leg is the bridge is.

Peter McCormack (29:16)

When you can do direct debits. That's, that's the, that's the breaking point at the moment. I need a bank. Yeah, you can get debit cards and credit cards and such and you guys have got your card, right?

Tyler Winklevoss (29:28)

Yeah.

Cameron Winklevoss (29:28)

It's actually a good segue in the sense that one of our products, our newest products that we're about to launch is a rewards credit card. So you can earn up to like 3% of a crypto in the case, this case bitcoin. Forget I said that. Just Bitcoin, actually. Yeah, just Bitcoin. Yeah. But we offer really of your choosing when you're doing your normal like payment behavior and swiping your card, whether it's buying, you know, a new router at Best Buy or whatever, instead of earning flimsy airline miles, which you can't use anyway with the, with the pandemic you can earn, you can actually save and in crypto. So we're trying to create ways where people can really live on Bitcoin. Earn, buy, sell, store. First three money verbs and the fourth being Earn, yield and earn rewards on your credit card.

Peter McCormack (30:24)

So you've essentially done the full Bitcoin stack in some ways.

Cameron Winklevoss (30:30)

We're trying, we're trying to make it easy for you to basically earn and, or use Bitcoin every step of the way. And one of the things with being a longtime hodler, right, is there is many years where you're just sitting on Bitcoin with Gemini Earn, you can actually earn a yield as you hodl. So you just add further stacking sats as you hodl. So we're just trying to create as many avenues and ways for folks to.

Peter McCormack (31:07)

Do that, these kind of products. And like one of my other sponsors, Blockfi, also your partners, you know, we've got a mutual friend in Zach Prince. They get a lot of criticism from people saying, you know, not your keys, not your bitcoin. I think people have still got the kind of Mt. Gox PTSD. They're worried about how the rates are sustainable, bitconnect style or you know, will there be a hack. We're in a, we're in a very different place from those days. Right. You sleep at night okay with these products?

Cameron Winklevoss (31:37)

Yeah. I mean not, not your key, not your server, not your emails. Right. Most people don't want to spin up an email server. But look, I think with the advent of hardware wallets like Ledger, like Nanos, it's never been easier or more user friendly to self custody bitcoin. And so like look, if you're, if that's a concern, you know, obviously don't lend out all of your bitcoin and if you're concerned about centralized exchanges, don't store all of it on the exchange. You know, keep a healthy amount on that hardware wallet. I think it's really a spectrum, that's what we're finding with folks and it's really to each their own.

Tyler Winklevoss (32:22)

Right. And if you don't like Gemini, you can take it off. Right. Whereas like the products where your bitcoin's actually jailed, like Robinhood, a lot of people tried to take their crypto, they realized they actually have to sell their Bitcoin because they never really had it. They couldn't withdraw it from Robinhood to Gemini, had to sell it into cash, taxable event, wire the cash out, wire that to Coinbase or Gemini, then rebuy Bitcoin. That's not a good product for obvious reasons as I just stated. But if you don't like Gemini or you start getting spooked about our security or whatever, just withdraw to your hardware wallet. And so like Cameron said, some people don't want to run their email servers or all that stuff like the extreme sort of tinfoil hat crowd. A lot of people are okay using Gmail and trusting Google or using AWS and trusting one company, Amazon, that have good track records of trust and privacy, security, reliability. And I think when there's offerings like Gemini and other centralized exchanges that are user friendly, I think ultimately it Brings just a lot more people into bitcoin, which is great for everyone in bitcoin, even if you don't believe quite in that. So I think yeah, that's sort of like our are thinking there is that it is a spectrum. Like it's not one size fits all. People come from very different experiences, life experiences. We live through the Mt. Gox days. That's what we were luckily unscathed. That informed to build Gemini regulated in the U.S. like other institutions like that, but other people who grow up in Argentina or Zimbabwe where currencies are completely debased and there's zero trust in any situation, they may be more hardline about being completely bankless, not trusting anything, whether it's with their emails, their crypto and whatnot. So we firmly believe the more options, the better. Gemini is our option. The trick here is a lot of people don't realize is like if you're helping to onboard people from centralized finance, you need to build a centralized bridge into this new world of crypto. There's no way to help people effectively get their money out of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs without this centralized funnel like a Gemini, because you can't plug into those banks unless there's a centralized bridge that's licensed and regulated like a trust company like Gemini. So that's the only mechanism we know to help people transfer their value out of this crappy centralized system into this new frontier of crypto. And hopefully with all the products we offer, they can stay there forever. And if they don't love Gemini for whatever reason, they can go away, go to some other place and be completely decentralized. But when we go back to when we started this in 2014, there was no other way to help institutions get into Bitcoin in a high volume, high throughput way than building what we built.

Peter McCormack (35:49)

Next up, I talked to Cameron and Tyler more about Bitcoin's path to a $10 trillion market cap. But before that, I do have a message from my amazing show sponsors. Okay, this show is brought to you by Exodus Wallet. Now, I've been using Exodus Wallet for over two months. I've had some issues recently. I told you about this. My goddamn bank, Lloyds bank, they got in touch and they're like, pete, we're closing down your accounts. You got 65 days and then you're out of here. And I've been a customer for 25 years, so that's increased my conviction on I need to be running more of my company on Bitcoin because, you know, being debanked like, that is a bit of a pain in the ass. So I've been increasingly doing it anyway. You know, I get paid in bitcoin by some sponsors and I also pay some of my suppliers in bitcoin. And the only problem I was having is my accountant kept bitching at me. She was like, pete, you never keep good records. Who's this bitcoin going to? What's it for? Blah, blah, blah. And so I needed something. So when Exodus reached out and they're like, peter, we want to support your podcast. I took a look at the wallet. I was like, yep, that does everything I need. I can get my audits, my accountant. It's pretty smooth. I'm happy to have you as a sponsor. Now, if you want to check Exodus out, please do head over to exodus.com or just search for Exodus in the Apple or Google App store. So this show is also brought to you by casa, the very best in bitcoin security. If you are a big bitcoin holder and you are only using a single hardware wallet and you've not got your bitcoin security shit together, then listen, you're more of a moron than me and that is some achievement. Now, I have been a customer for nearly a year. I'm about to upgrade to their diamond package, which I am very much looking forward to. And look, in this year, I've been a customer. I've protected myself from my own stupid mistakes, but also in person attacks, device failure, and so much more. Now, CASA are such a badass company that they do have a product for every bitcoiner. So with CASA Gold, you do get triple the security of a hardware wallet and it's only $10 a month. So what the hell are you doing? Go check it out. And with CASA Platinum, you get their three or five multisig. And with Castle diamond, which I am going for soon, you get a customized personal security review, inheritance, planning, and of course, their best in class in security. There is no better time to get this shit sorted. You can find out more at Keys Casa, which is K E Y S Casa. And last up today in my friend, sportsbet IO. My friends over in Estonia, the best place for online gaming because they accept Bitcoin. But not only do they accept Bitcoin, they also agreed to run a competition. You know how much I love Lamborghinis, right? You know I'm always talking about it. So I reached out to sportspat and I said, you need to give a Lamborghini away to someone who listens to my show. And they're like, pete, we know you love Lamborghinis. We will do this. The competition is coming soon. We are just working out the mechanics. Bear with me. Now, with sportsbet, you have every market you could possibly be interested in. They cover football, tennis, American sports, motorsports. They even cover esports. And for new customers, they always have a range of promotions available. So if you want to find out more, please head over to Sportsbet IO promotions, that is s p o r t s bet IO promotions. So when you think about it going back to 2014, I know you had high conviction because you went out and bought a shit ton of bitcoin. But at the same time, to see where we are now, 20, 21 bitcoiner. We've got the clock here. Where is it? Here. You guys got a block clock?

Cameron Winklevoss (39:10)

No, we need to get one right.

Peter McCormack (39:12)

I'll speak to mvk. I'll get you one today.

Cameron Winklevoss (39:14)

Awesome.

Peter McCormack (39:15)

I'll get you one.

Tyler Winklevoss (39:15)

Sweet.

Peter McCormack (39:16)

Okay, I'll get you two. So we're at bitcoin at just.

Tyler Winklevoss (39:20)

Where are we?

Peter McCormack (39:21)

59, 81. You've built this huge company. Obviously we have Tesla. I mean, since we last spoke, Tesla have now bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin. How do you take it all in? I know you had the conviction, but are we ahead of where you thought we would be? We on track.

Cameron Winklevoss (39:42)

So it was 2012 and so we've been sort of in it for, gee, going on almost a decade. And I guess it's like one of those things where in some ways we believed in this was our vision of the future. I think in some ways we're ahead of where we thought we'd be. In some ways behind. I think we were thinking in 2014, 15 and 16, there was a lot of chatter that Wall Street's coming into bitcoin and it really did not happen. And it's totally fine because it's been very much an individual revolution. And bitcoin, at least in our view, is all about empowering the individual. That's really why we built Gemini, to get people into the bitcoin world and this alternative system that we believe creates greater choice, independence and opportunity. I think once you don't have alternatives or you're locked into a system or jailed into it, that's really not great for the individual and empowerment. And so look, I think in some ways it's amazing to see sort of what's happened and it's at times surreal. Sometimes you wake up and you're like, wow, this has actually happened. You're in a big way. But the other part of me says we're so early. I mean I want to use a baseball metaphor, but I know I need to use a cricket. Like the first wicket. Are we in the first wicket or something? I mean we're just, you know, it's really amazing to see Tesla take a $1.5 billion position. But we also have to remind ourselves this is an incredibly founder driven, founder led, mission oriented company and there's still many, many companies on The S&P 500 that aren't there, that will be there I think tomorrow or might not have a founder who is as sort of direct and able to do something like that. So there's a lot more dominoes that will and quite frankly need to fall in this regard. We're literally just getting started. We're like one tenth of the way to the, the $10 trillion market cap.

Peter McCormack (42:03)

Who is your baseball team?

Cameron Winklevoss (42:06)

I guess, you know, we kind of grew up with the Mets in the, in the, you know, the 86, 87 Mets. We were just old enough to kind of understand those championship, that championship team and know a lot of those players. But the Yankees, I mean it's hard not to love. The Yankees are just absolute excellence and such a class act. So, you know, it's really hard.

Peter McCormack (42:29)

I went to my first baseball game a couple of years ago in la. I went to a playoff game. Was it Yankees? It was Justin Turner hit a walk off home home run and the place went wild. I loved was eight innings of boredom and then just like this crazy end. So I think I'm in LA fan. Do you, do you two just support the same team on everything? You got any rivalry anywhere?

Cameron Winklevoss (42:52)

It's a good question.

Tyler Winklevoss (42:53)

Nothing's coming to mind.

Cameron Winklevoss (42:54)

What do you think?

Tyler Winklevoss (42:55)

Yeah, I think we're kind of aligned there. But back to baseball, I think that's kind of the charm, right? Because you're beautiful spring evening, you're watching a game, you can get up, grab a beer, grab a hot dog, come back and it's not in danger of missing everything. So I kind of like that slow pace. It's sort of like almost a picnic. And it's kind of refreshing when we're always living on Twitter, plugged in on Slack, on email. I mean the amount of information being thrown at all of us today that are connected on the Internet is just incredible. So it's kind of nice to slow it down.

Peter McCormack (43:35)

So back to this path to $10 trillion which I like your thesis. I trust you, Mitch. Making me hoddle. I Think the point you're making with regards to Elon Musk being founder led is probably very similar to what's happened with Square being Jack Dorsey led. But do you think there's now an imperative for all, especially these S and P and tech companies, to be looking at bitcoin and you know, what's your experience on the inside? Like, is there a lot more people looking at it than May that we may be aware of. But it takes some time to be set up. Like, I don't know what is involved from someone like Elon Musk thinking, okay, I am interested to actually taking the next step. How do they even plan custody? It can't just be a case of Elon Musk says, yeah, let's buy some Bitcoin, and three days later they're transferring 1.5 billion on exchange to Spot Buy.

Tyler Winklevoss (44:28)

Well, I think that a lot of times it is right that founder driven, he certainly has a lot of friends in tech who are in crypto. So I'm sure he's been looking at this space. Remember, he started back in PayPal, so he's been thinking about money in the Internet for decades longer than me. So I think that's how it starts. But he's such a bellwether, right, that if you are a CEO of another company, you have to be looking in that, asking yourself, what does he know? What do I know that he doesn't know? Where I'm not buying bitcoin. Oh, and then you look at what's happening to the dollar, the Fed, the debt burdens, the money spent by spending, the money printing. That's been happening before the pandemic for the last decade. And then what happens? What's been happening to get us through that? So you see what's happening over here, you see Elon Musk doing this, Jack Dorsey making these moves over there. It starts to become completely irresponsible not to at least have a story. Maybe your positions were not ready, but you have to have thought about it. I think if you have cash on your balance sheet, if you're a CEO, and I actually think that, I can't remember if it was last year or this year, but the corporate treasury putting bitcoin on the balance sheet started at some point. Those dominoes will continue to fall. And like Cameron said, Fortune 500 companies, all of them will have something. And then at some point a central bank will fall. Central banks, their muscle memory has been to stack gold. Even when they say everything's happening, everything's fine, this is normal, all this money printing, no big deal, nothing to see here. Don't listen to what they say. Look at what they do. And their balance sheets, they've been stacking gold. So that behavior doesn't indicate that everything's okay to me. Right. Because they're getting this hard money and then they'll discover that the hardest money in the galaxy is bitcoin. So at some point there will be a central bank that starts putting bitcoin as balance sheet. So when you think of. And then it's just bananas, right? And when you think of how early we are in the corporate treasuries doing this and then the fact that central banks will do this because this behavior they do with gold and if you do it with gold, you are going to do it. It's not an if, it's a when with bitcoin. And that's just like the Bitcoin Gold 2.0 story. So I see a path to 10 trillion very easily. But as we know, bitcoin's a lot more than just a metal open source project. Gold built for the Internet, it can do so much more. So we published that thought piece of the case for 500,000 Bitcoin. But, but it's conservative. It could be a lot more.

Peter McCormack (47:32)

The article made the front page of the Daily Mail website.

Cameron Winklevoss (47:36)

Oh wow.

Peter McCormack (47:36)

I'm not sure if you know that.

Cameron Winklevoss (47:38)

That's cool.

Tyler Winklevoss (47:40)

Yeah.

Cameron Winklevoss (47:40)

And look, I think there's also even some intermediate steps, right? There's pension funds and then there's sovereign wealth funds which are sort of a proxy. The state would be like the LP of that or the central bank. I'm sure they all have different, slightly different structures. But there are some really innovative and brilliant sovereign wealth funds out there. You know, Singapore, Temasek and all that stuff. They're, you know, these guys are all, these guys and gals are all long, you know, they're long tech. They understand that. They're out on the curve on the frontier. So it's just really a matter of time. But, but it's going to be, it's going to be sort of one of those mad dashes as Tyler mentioned. I mean, every once in a while I remind people on Twitter that there's only 21 million Bitcoin and there's 46 million millionaires on the planet right now. There's not a full bitcoin to go around. You don't want to be the millionaire who's not in that 21 million bucket, then you're no longer going to be a millionaire. Right? And it's like being at a party. The music stops. You got to find that seat. And buying bitcoin is like buying a pro rata seat on this network of money, this store of value network. And really, time is of the essence.

Tyler Winklevoss (49:02)

Yeah. One other thing is you're starting to see a lot of these big banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Boney, get into bitcoin. That's all driven by their customers, their private wealth. Customers are seeing what's happening with the price of bitcoin. They're like, how do I get exposure? We don't know. We don't know how to do it.

Peter McCormack (49:23)

Well, all the announcements coming out are that these banks are allowing their wealthy clients to buy bitcoin. That's the announcement.

Tyler Winklevoss (49:31)

They're freaking out because the wealthy clients are seeing. They're seeing the price of bitcoin. It's the best performing asset of the last decade. It's going to be the best this decade. And they can't touch it. Right. So how are these private wealth managers doing their job if they literally can't get their clients bitcoin? So that's driving it. That's what drives all these banks is ultimately it's the business case and the demand from their customers. And so, yeah, as the price keeps going up, everybody's like, what are we doing here? The risk is sitting on the sidelines. The risk is doing nothing. I think that's the ultimate. That's the people like, oh, how do you get comfortable with bitcoin holding bitcoin? How do you get comfortable not holding bitcoin with the US Dollar?

Cameron Winklevoss (50:23)

Right.

Tyler Winklevoss (50:23)

So much more risky. I would never take that bet over the last decade or the next decade or the one thereafter. The way I think about it. The way you think about it, Peter. The way Cameron thinks about it, that's rapidly becoming the way everyone thinks about it. They're like, wait, I don't have chips on the table. That's kind of reckless and insane. I should fix that.

Cameron Winklevoss (50:47)

Yeah, I mean, I was just gonna.

Peter McCormack (50:49)

Say it's a bit like your friend Jelly Hands, Mr. Dave Portnoy, who sold all his bitcoin after you recommended it to him. And now he's saying, yesterday, Paper hands, I call him Jelly Hands. He's like, what's my entry price? I'm waiting for another entry price. And it's like, what, are you gonna wait for it to go to 100k and drop down to 80? Like, what are you, Are you buying this to hold for a few weeks and sell it or like, are you buying this for a decade?

Cameron Winklevoss (51:11)

Well, I think, yeah, I think DTG or Davey Day Trader Global likes to go in and out. Right. But this is, this is a patience play. You know, you have to go along and we'll get him back in, we'll.

Peter McCormack (51:24)

Get him back in, we'll get him back in. Why do you still think Wall street doesn't fully get this themselves? Like, I was talking to Preston Pisch about this and he almost feels like the company treasury has leapfrogged Wall street as the kind of like group of people in this bull run that has really been pushing the adoption of bitcoin. What's happening with the Wall street guys?

Cameron Winklevoss (51:50)

So it's an interesting question, and I think it's no secret that the best trade over the past decade was really big tech. And it still is a great trade. But tech used to be this sector allocation. Hey, we're going to do a little tech here, we're going to do a little financial service industrials, yada, yada. But really you wanted to be heavily concentrated in a few symbols. But it's sort of obvious, and I think Peter Thiel described it as like, too stupid to advise. So how do you sort of earn your keep as an advisor if you're literally telling people, like, buy that company that makes that product that you literally spend 10 hours a day on looking at. Right. The black mirror of the iPhone. Like, that's some pretty straightforward, stupid, I'm putting that in air quotes advice. Right. And you're supposed to be the wizard who gives people sort of this inside baseball or this complex strategy. But it's really simple. Bitcoin's a simple, simple idea. When you boil it down, it's go long. The future of store value money, the future reserve currency. Yes. You're going to literally hodl it for years. Just don't look at it and you're going to ask someone to collect a fee on that advice. It's kind of a hard sell. And so I think a lot of the resistance sometimes is this baked in belief of diversification and portfolio construction. And people making those straightforward, simple bets on the future sometimes become elusive in those environments. So I think that's part of it. And I think there may be a belief that a little bit of a resistance in people who have been in capital markets for 20 years and they sort of climbed the mountain, they learned, became experts at what they do. And then all of a sudden there's this new thing over here and it requires you to walk down the mountain and Learn again. And stomaching that and becoming like a beginner, a total noob, where you can't just, you know, reach back on years of experience. It's very humbling. I mean, I get humbled by bitcoin on a daily basis. Right. You have to be humble, be prepared to be humbled over and over again. Your patience will be tested. And I think for a lot of people, that's just not an attractive, attractive path.

Peter McCormack (54:28)

All right. Last thing I want to cover with you guys before I let you go is I want to cover the regulatory side again. So I think it's always, for a lot of people, the biggest fear, the biggest fear is that the regulators are going to come in, they're going to ban this, or they're going to just make it so difficult to use. In my mind, I think with Parsa, I think we have the regulatory moat. I think there's so much money, especially in the US there's so much money already in bitcoin, so many investors in bitcoin. I think it's actually economically damaging to hold bitcoin back in the U.S. which is why I think we have some good people, certainly within government and people like Mayor Francis and Senator Loomis who are kind of pro bitcoin. You guys have been very good at working closely with regulators rather than fighting them. Just trying to kind of build in that relationship. Where do you think we are put people's mind at ease with regards to the regulators? Because we did have Mnuchin trying to sneak something in before he left office.

Tyler Winklevoss (55:28)

Yeah, yeah. So I think if we were back in 2013, this would be kind of an open question. There was some hearings and we really didn't know. I think that the US will never outlaw bitcoin. There's too much precedent that's been set in the courts. The coin flip order, which was a CFTC enforcement action which was upheld in the courts, consider bitcoin a commodity like gold. We are a New York trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services. There would be so much would have to be undone. And you're talking about companies that are providing careers, building the economy. Some of them are going public. They're going to become drivers of the stock market. To unroll that back is so unlikely to me. Of course, it's not zero percent, but it might as well be. Remember, regulators are also. They're stakeholders. They don't want things happening bad to the companies. They're obviously for consumer protection. But it's important that they embrace this innovation and A lot of times they go back and forth between public service and private practice. And a lot of them may own bitcoin at this point, and they're part of it. They believe in it. Certainly the DFS believes in the promise of cryptocurrency, bitcoin and all this stuff and that like every day that goes by, you're seeing that. You're also seeing people leave. A lot of these private companies, crypto companies, go into government. I think it's like such a strong amount of people who believe in this in the US that I think it's like next to zero percent chance that sort of gets rolled back for whatever reason. So I think the ship of sail, the case is closed. It's not an open question in the U.S. i think the same for the UK and Europe. Singapore, we're in a licensing process with the mas, their top regulator there. They're embracing it. All of the jurisdictions that are free markets, open markets, and believe in capitalism, believe in bitcoin, believe in crypto, and I think see it as an opportunity more than anything, than a threat. And anyone who's done their homework realizes that to stop bitcoin you have to snip the Internet, you have to become North Korea. So that's not really. And then you lose everything else, right? You lose the Facebooks, the faang companies that are the biggest drivers of the US economy, and also a lot of these tech companies that drive other economies. So. So it's completely untenable to shut the Internet down to try and kill bitcoin. So it's sort of like one of those things. You're better off working with it. And then a lot of these folks become employed by crypto companies. A lot of them own crypto and they get a taste of it and they see the promise, they see the opportunity. So we have a lot of champions in government and more by the day, certainly more than we had many years ago. And the places that have vibrant markets that you actually want to do business are all pro bitcoin. They all embrace it. Bitcoin in some ways has made the right enemies, whether regimes and authoritarian regimes or jurisdictions. But we were never counting on that to begin with, right?

Cameron Winklevoss (59:06)

If you start a startup, do you.

Tyler Winklevoss (59:07)

Really care if you can do business in North Korea or certain jurisdictions? So anyway, long winded way of saying is people should, in my opinion, rest easy at night with this idea that I don't think bitcoin will ever be outlawed in the us, the uk, Europe, in certain parts of Asia.

Cameron Winklevoss (59:27)

Yeah, there's like, I think at this point there's just so much financial inertia and incentives to sort of become a capital, a bitcoin capital of the world. The innovation, the job creation, the value creation. And it only takes a few jurisdictions to do that. And I don't think most places want to be left behind. It's like imagine if you just didn't adopt the automobile and you didn't build roadways for your citizens and then you would miss entire industries. And at the end of the day, I don't think few people want to miss out on that. It's just too interesting and impactful. So I think there's great legal precedent in the US as is, as well as, I think the uk, Europe and Singapore and parts of Asia. And then there's just also tremendous incentive. Look at Singapore, it's become an FX capital of the world. You know, it's grown from, from a fishing village into this incredibly prosperous, pristine country. And they're going to become a crypto capital. The MAS is leading the way there with, with a thoughtful licensing regime. Right. It's incredible what they've done and what they will do. And I think a lot of people want to emulate that. So. So yeah, that's, that's our, that's our view.

Peter McCormack (60:54)

Awesome. All right, listen, I know you've got to get on, so we'll close out here, but firstly, thank you for sponsoring the show. Looking forward to this big year ahead. Maybe a couple years, maybe four years. We will see, see how we get on. Hopefully the planes will be flying soon and either I'll be in New York or you'll be in London. We can have a proper catch up, you know, anything I can do to help you plug into the Bitcoiners and vice versa. I'm sure we're gonna have a big year, guys.

Cameron Winklevoss (61:19)

Thanks so much, Peter. You've always been a tremendous resource. It's fun talking with you and look forward to grabbing a pint on one side of the pond.

Peter McCormack (61:30)

Yeah. All right, Tyler, Cameron, peace out. Take care.

Tyler Winklevoss (61:34)

Cheers.

Cameron Winklevoss (61:34)

Thank you.

Peter McCormack (61:38)

I always like talking to Cameron and Tyler. They've been on the show twice before. The show numbers always smash it. I know you like hearing from them. I'm a big fan of Gemini. I have now signed up to use the products. I'm a Gemini customer. Love the ux. I've set up my repeat buys. Yeah, it's very, very cool. So please do go and check that out. Now, I did do a show a few months ago with Cameron, Tyler, where we Got into their article the case for a five hundred thousand dollar bitcoin. And if you haven't checked that out, that was episode 272. I think it's like the third biggest show I've ever made, maybe even the second. So definitely go and check that out. And on this show, yeah, it was great to dig into that theory a bit more. It was also in that interview that I first raised sponsoring devs with them and they've been super responsive. I mean they pretty much reacted straight away from that interview and immediately pledged a whole load of cash to supporting projects. And they've continued since then as I think, I think it's around half a million dollars so far. And they said, look, this isn't the end. We want to have this relationship with the bitcoin community, we want to support projects. So I'm really looking forward to working with them over the next year. Two years, three years, however long it lasts. And who knows, maybe I can convince them to go bitcoin only at some point. And maybe I can convince them to buy a football club, maybe a small football club in small British town. I think that would be good to have in their roster. Anyway, thanks as ever for listening. If you've got any feedback, you know you can get in touch. It's hellohatbitcoindid.com or you can also join my Telegram group. My producer Ben Prentice is in there scouring the chats. He's helping people away with various questions. So please do and go check that out also if you want to support the show. All I want these days is reviews on Apple podcasts because the reviews help with the listings. And you know what, we're doing pretty well there in the UK chart. We hit number two for finance yesterday, which is pretty, pretty amazing really. Some more on from Bedford, who just asks questions of some of these amazing bright minds, has got a podcast hitting number two in the UK finance charts. Honestly, my mind is absolutely blown. And we also hit number 13 in the US chart, which is also incredible. I've been above Peter Schiff for three days. I'm not sure how he's handled it. Peter, I'm sure you can cope. Anyway, please do go and leave me a review. Also never edit my daily email. That's ineveredit.com Go and check that out. That's your daily dose of bitcoin and macro and tech. A pretty cool job the guys are doing there. And Defiance, listen, that's going to be taking a two month break. We are relaunching that under a new brand called Hijack. Hijack being the mother brand for everything we're doing. So you're going to hear me say a lot about Hijack soon. Anyway, have a great weekend. I love you all, and I will see you all next week. Sa.