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The Wolf Of All Streets
Announcement: New Hampshire Strategic Bitcoin Reserve | Crypto Town Hall
01:23:47
Announcement: New Hampshire Strategic Bitcoin Reserve | Crypto Town Hall
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- [00:01]
Scott
Morning, everybody, and happy Friday. Heading into the weekend here, we've had yet another day of volatile price action with bitcoin. We'll get the conversation about that out of the way to sort of start the show. Obviously, trading right now at $92,680, roughly. But just hours ago, it was trading above $95,264. A lot of optimism that there was a reversal underway. Price action can change things. But I think today it's one of those moments where there's an obvious story as to why we saw drawdown, and that's obviously, I think, the job numbers that we saw today. Jobs smashed. Well, okay, first of all, I should give the caveat that I don't believe job numbers because they revise them down when nobody's looking every single month. And it's just very hard to trust the data. But of course, jobs beat and unemployment was down 4.2% to 4.1%. Over 200,000 doll thousand jobs created when it was supposed to be, you know, mid hundred thousands. So you would think that in the real world that if more people had jobs and unemployment was down, that would be good news. Right? But since we live in the stranger things upside down, when jobs are strong and unemployment is down, it means that the Fed is less likely to cut rates, which means stocks go down and interest rates go up. So just a reminder that for rates to go down, you have to basically want people to lose their jobs. So the real world economy and what's happening in the country versus the stock market itself, there's a major disconnect there. And I think bitcoin, obviously right now trading kind of in lockstep with. With that news? I mean, Dave, is that. Is that how you would view what's been happening this morning and sort of the volatility that we've had?
- [01:59]
Dave
I mean, yeah, I mean, we always talk about this and it's, you know, the Russell is down 2 point over 2%. The NASDAQ is down 2%. People sell what they can sell. They don't sell what they want to sell. Whenever you get days now, 2% for Bitcoin doesn't mean anything. I mean, we don't care. Right. You know, but for equities, a 2% move is significant, and it causes all sorts of trading desk huddles where people say, okay, let's lighten up exposure, let's do this, let's do that. Let's make sure we're liquid in case things go bad. There's an institutional memory that people probably don't know here. So let me share a story from the distant past that is relevant. So everybody on Wall street remembers that Black Monday happened, right? You know anyone who knows Black Monday was the crash of 87. The crash of 87 was an absolute free fall in the market. But the mirror to that was there was a significant down day, there was a bad week before it, and the Friday before was bad. So every time you have what looks to be a bad Friday, managers and risk managers throughout, whether it's buy side or sell side, wants to lighten up going into the weekend. And so the correlation tends to be stronger on Fridays and down moves than it would be otherwise for that reason. So it's not remotely surprising that, that being said, we're in the same range we were the last time we talked about it. I mean, you know, I don't know how many times on this show I have to be a broken record and say, you know, 92 to 103 or 102 is a range and until we break that range, you know, just chill and you know, if you're a long term investor and if you're a trader, take advantage of it and trade the volatility. And guess what, the traders are having a great freaking week and investors, if they're not over leveraged, are probably pretty happy.
- [03:58]
Scott
Yeah, totally agree. And that aligns very well with what I'm thinking here. Andrew, what are you thinking about? Sort of the price action here and this disconnect, obviously, I mean the Fed has continued to, has cut rates up until now. At this point they'll probably pause, but we have yields flying. Mortgages shouldn't be at a multi year high when the Fed has started their cutting cycle.
- [04:19]
Andrew
Yeah, there's some, there's some wonky stuff going on economically. I agree with you on the jobs numbers. For the last nearly three years, every jobs number has been revised lower or worse than the initial number that, that came out on the tape. So it should be expected that people don't look at those numbers in a meaningful way. At the same time though, you know, I'm reminded of all of the commentary, all of the space, all of the, you know, angst around levels like 58K. You know, we bumped around in the mid-50s for a couple of months, couldn't get above 60. Everybody was frustrated. That was, you know, a lot of percentages ago. So we're at the 93ish level and in the 90s and, and the same frustrations bubble up and how, and why or what, and what's next. Same conversations from in the 50s. Oh, by the way, if you've been around long enough, the same conversations happened like, why can't we get above 10k? Same conversations happened, why can't we get above 20k? So these are just recycled gnashing of teeth associated with bitcoin price. But the overall narratives haven't changed. You know, what are we, you know, 10 days away from the inauguration of an entirely new political regime that for all intents and purposes, every economic appointee that matters is pro bitcoin, is pro innovation, and that's going to be substantial short term, midterm and long term. And so, you know, it's the old, you know, sealed saying, you get bitcoin at the price you deserve. And so, you know, all the commentary around where do we go from here in 2025, I think is higher. You know, forget about the short term, you know, machinations on a, on a daily basis, those are going to occur. And, you know, we'll get a chorus of folks that are either annoyed by or our reply guy trolls associated with, you know, it's. It's not at 94 like you said six hours ago, it's now at 92. It's all stupidity because it existed at 58 or 59k or 57k. We're going to go higher in 2025. And I think part of that will be whatever announcement is coming on this show today. These are the kind of announcements that are going to happen more often throughout 2025 and frankly, throughout Trump's term at large.
- [07:19]
Scott
Go ahead, Donnish. My voice cracked like a teenager there. Go ahead.
- [07:23]
Donnish
Audio good? I don't know if I. I was having trouble getting off the meat too, so. It's okay. It just accentuated your.
- [07:29]
Scott
Thank you. Thank you for making it as awkward as possible for me. I appreciate. That's right.
- [07:34]
Donnish
I was gonna say what we're seeing is incredibly bullish for bitcoin right now. It's like crazy bullish for bitcoin. People that know me know that I'm not. The reason why I invested in bitcoin is a lot less of that, like, underlying faith, belief, all of that stuff that, you know, like the, like, bitcoin is the Lord himself. It's not any of that stuff. It was when Scott sat me down and said, hey, look at the Sharpe ratio, Look at the growth. Nothing works. Both like this. What is happening? In the last 12 months, Sharpe ratio has been rising again. We are uncoupling. And today the dow is down 6 or at least looks to be down 600 points. How's Bitcoin doing? We are seeing the uncoupling. This is incredibly important for people to see this. I think you'll be incredibly bullish or Bitcoin. I know bitcoin sometimes leads the markets, but looking at it as just a risk on asset is completely missing the point. There's something really exciting and important happening and I think we need to recognize and say hold on, it is actually acting like a store of value. And if I'm a pension fund I'm sitting there saying, huh, this is an interesting different behavior as far this. I just have to say that Scott, just because I think like people, when the markets are going up and bitcoin is going up, people get really excited. They start acting like, oh, it's just a risk on asset. What is it doing today while the entire market is selling off like it has never has and the Sharpe ratio is rising in real time. And I think it's incredibly important to see. If you don't see what I see, go look at the charts. I'm not a chartist but I do understand basic fundamental stuff. And if you go off just first principles, not just anecdotes, but look at the data at large at a very long timescale, you will see how it does decouple from the markets. And I think that's incredibly bullish right now. Number two, I have been shouting inflation for months. I think people, everybody here knows I've been really worried about inflation. The problem has never been that we were going to see a collapse in the markets. That was all bullshit. Yes, it was happening outside the US at some level. But the US economy has been running hot. GDP numbers, CPI turning again, turning positive again on a six month moving average now with jobs coming in higher than expected. Andrew is right, they had to do downward revisions. But you know Andrew, weirdly they have to do one upward revision which they haven't done in a long time. This last, this one there was a downward revision from the previous month but the month before they actually did an upward revision which is very unusual for them. And so there is, I think they're going to let it play out because it's not their game anymore. The administrative state's going to say hey, we're going to let the numbers run out. And my supposition. And again, people that know me know I'm not like a big Trump fan at all. But I think they're setting him up to fail in many ways because he will have very few instruments because we've already seen price rise, inflation peak. Now they started cutting with a 50. If people remember when they did the 50 basis points, I nearly had a meltdown or kind of did have a meltdown. I was like, what are they doing? This is incredibly dangerous. What are we doing? Because structurally, everything, the biggest structural thing, the two biggest structural things that you cannot mess with easily, that take time are employment, real estate. Those two always take longer than people think, unless you have like a pandemic or something like that. And unemployment hasn't really budged and now we saw unemployment go down to 4.1%. Again, this is not made up data. I think they're setting him up to fail. I think this has a lot to do with the tariffs because it does hurt a lot of companies to have to now not import from outside the U.S. if we see inflation rise back up to 5, 6%, the tariffs don't come. He is stuck between Iraq and a hard place where he doesn't have monetary policy to help him. He because again, don't listen to the super duper Trumpers. Tariffs are going to be inflationary. Like we have years and decades of experience with that. So I'm not worried about that. We know tariffs are going to be inflationary. The question really becomes is the dollar rising alongside, by the way, dollar is not just rising because of the trade deficits and so on. It's literally rising because everybody's expecting the economy to be stronger, yields are rising and now the job data continues to come in and unemployment is still unshaken. We are proper screwed right now. The economy is running too hot and we are out of options. And I think it's incredibly worrisome. There is a real risk to us seeing 8, 9, 10% inflation again in the next 12 to 24 months. And I think we need to have a real conversation around it. And the answer is actually bitcoin.
- [12:50]
Scott
Go ahead, Bill.
- [12:52]
Bill
Hey, good morning. So maybe slightly different perspective. I think that the biggest challenge right now is how to get treasury rates down, knowing that they've got to refinance 7 to 10 trillion in the next few months. And clearly lowering Fed rates is not going to accomplish that. It's had the opposite effect. And I don't think it's necessarily purely inflation driven. I think it's partially driven by the fact that no one is going to want to buy the debt when we start to refinance. And I think that the Fed now accepts the fact that the only way they're going to be able to prick the 30 year bubble is via quantitative easing. And so our take is that we're going to start to see, and I thought this was true last week after 300,000 people were displaced in LA. This week I think you're going to basically start to see significant reversal of the Fed's stance on securities purchases where they're going to do an about face on QT to QE relatively quickly. And while I agree with Danish that, that this is, sorry if I say your name wrong, this is bullish for bitcoin. I think it's bullish for bitcoin because we're going to see Covid like program of the Fed buying their own product which is, which in other words means they're going to start buying bonds because it's the only way they're going to be able to get long term rates down anytime soon.
- [14:27]
Donnish
But Bill, wouldn't that be incredibly inflationary?
- [14:30]
Bill
It probably would be, but that's, that concern is, well, okay, you're talking about the United States government. We're not talking about same people. We're talking about people who are willing to make up any number they need to to support their cause.
- [14:43]
Andrew
Right.
- [14:44]
Bill
If you believe that these, that these non farm payroll numbers are true after what we've seen for the last two years in constant revisions downward, then you're nuts. Right. So my take is they will say whatever they have to say, do whatever they have to do to get treasury rates quickly down to 3.5%. And by quickly I mean within six to 12 months. And yes, that will be long term inflationary, but there is no way. You have to pick your poison at this point. Right.
- [15:20]
Andrew
But Bill, question.
- [15:21]
Donnish
It's not just the payroll data, right? It's the GDP data. We saw CPI turn as well, even ADP data. I mean there is a lot of corroborating data showing that the economy is running pretty hot right now.
- [15:34]
Bill
Sure, I would say it's hard to know what to believe. But on the other hand, if I take it at face value, I agree with you. But I also think that that is going to be trumped by this idea that if they don't get this, these treasury rates down that it is basically going to cause a dramatic, dramatic slump in the stocks. And how does Trump define success? Right. Trump defines success based upon the Dow and the S&P 500 and now probably secondarily bitcoin because of a lot and.
- [16:15]
Scott
Bitcoin at 150 in the first 100 days.
- [16:18]
Bill
Exactly. So if that doesn't happen, he is going to pull out all the stops and you are going to see him throw the Fed under the bus very, very quickly and call for Powell's head on a stake. And so I think that what you're going to see is the Fed basically saying, okay, fine, target inflation right now because of where Treasuries are and home prices and the number of people displaced has to be between 3 and 4%. And so quantitative easing is the only way to achieve that. Right. Other than starting to convince China and Japan to buy our debt again, which I don't think is going to happen anytime soon. So while we may not like it, while we may fear the inflation, and I do, right. I mean, I think, I think the inflation is inevitable as we weaponize the debt and realize that unless we start to balance our budget a la Argentina, which I'm hopeful might happen over the next eight years under, under like, you know, part two of, of Trump Vance, if Vance wins again, which is how long it would take to get to a balanced budget in this country, I think you're going to basically see further weaponization of the debt with an acceptance that real inflation is probably going to have to run closer to 4% in order to get treasury rates down, which is what the public is going to demand because they're not going to be willing to accept the short term pain around 10% treasuries, which is where this could go if they don't start quantitative easing, in my opinion.
- [17:45]
Scott
Dave?
- [17:46]
Dave
Yeah, I think we should all cast our minds back into the distant past of October of 23. I mean it really wasn't all that long ago. And we were talking on macro Monday, Scott, about watching the bond yield as it got closer to 10 years, it got closer and closer to 5%. And effectively James and I made the point that they're going to do everything they absolutely possibly can to defend it and not let that happen and try to push yields back down, which they did. And if you look at what risk assets did that are sensitive to liquidity, what'd they do? They put a lot of liquidity into the market. What have we been talking about now? Well, now we've been talking about the fact that liquidity globally is actually gone down a little bit and looks to be turning and moving back up. And all this move in the bond market, you know, today, you know, hitting like 4 point, you know, 4 and 3 quarters percent tells me is that liquidity spigot is, you know, they're in the process of opening it and you're going to see more of it because they cannot afford to have the long bond go to that level. Scott Besant, for people who don't know, haven't watched him, he was very clear that he doesn't like the policy of funding at the short end of the curve and wants to get back to funding at the long end of the curve for some stability. Well, you can't do that in a world where the rates are going higher and it's going to cost him more because the percentage of the budget deficit that is already interest is too high. And so, yes, I agree with Bill completely that that's what's going to happen. You know, that's been the base case that I've been articulating for over a week now. And so, you know, I think that's exactly what you're going to see. That said, we're not going to see anything, you know, it, you know, it's going to be really hard to see a whole lot on the policy side until the new team is established. And as much as we all kind of want to see it happen, the inauguration is still 10 days away. They still have to start getting, you know, the Senate processes, et cetera. And so things could get a little squishy over the next couple of weeks as this stuff evolves.
- [19:49]
Bill
Can I add two points to what Dave's saying? So one, we don't know how bad it's going to get if Treasuries, long term Treasuries get to, let's say 7, 8% in terms of how many banks have hold to maturity mark to market policies that are actually insolvent, you know, a la First Republic, Silicon Valley bank, who knows, right? I think it could get very, very ugly very quickly and the Fed will do anything it has to do to avoid that situation. And the second situation it needs to avoid is commercial real estate. I'm not an expert on commercial real estate, but I've seen enough numbers to know that the amount of debt that needs to be reset at significantly higher rates given where the market is, is a catastrophe in the making. So those two things combined tell me that the banking system is going to buckle under its own weight significantly if they don't solve this problem. And in the short term, they will consider that a much bigger problem than inflation, regardless of what the public narrative is. And so while I personally am in favor of balanced budgets and one and a half percent tops inflation, if not one, that's not going to happen the next two to three years, in my opinion. There's just no way but I think.
- [21:02]
Donnish
The only thing I will say is that it is incredibly dangerous for Trump to be walking into. You know, it's not like they're handing him a catastrophic economy. They're handing him an economy that looks good at the surface but is awful on the inside. We've all dated people like that. Everybody asks you what was wrong with her? And you're like, I don't know what to tell you, buddy. She was fucking insane. That's what this market is. It's a broken market that looks good on the outside but is incredibly broken on the inside. And if you mess that up, Trump really could be hurting his legacy. So I'm very convinced that they made it hard for him.
- [21:39]
Bill
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:39]
Scott
Donna, in five years, are we going to look back and only remember the amazing parts about this market and forget about all the terrible parts like the toxic ex girlfriend? That's inevitably what's going to happen.
- [21:49]
Bill
Not if we're in a depression. Right, so. So it just depends. I mean, if commercial real estate really, really explodes, because we do have 8% interest rates, I don't think anybody's going to care what inflation was in 2025. Right. I personally think that it's immoral for us to be passing on the pain the way we have for 25 years. And we can talk about our respective opinions on the morality of that, but to a degree, that ship has sailed. Right, so we've already decided as a society, this is how we want to do this. We want this to play out by passing on the buck. Fine. Until we basically get our structural house in order and start passing balanced budgets, it's not going to matter. We have to weaponize the debt. There's simply no other way to deal with the level of debt we have when no one else wants to buy it.
- [22:41]
Scott
Fred. Good morning, everyone.
- [22:45]
Andrew
I just wanted to kind of piggyback on something Dave said and tie it into some of Scott's really good advice that he never took, which was he didn't have to do anything over the summer because the price price action was so low with Bitcoin and we didn't have to worry about it. Because if you go by the four year cycle theory, you know, which keeps.
- [23:04]
Scott
Working and keeps happening, you know, it's going to keep working until it doesn't.
- [23:08]
Andrew
So what are the tells or what are the implications in this cycle? And, you know, I think Dave brought up the excellent point is we got the high from the election, we're going to get another high from the inauguration. But then he just brought up about the confirmations. That's going to be a battle. Some will be easy, but some of.
- [23:28]
Bill
Them are going to be very, very difficult.
- [23:30]
Andrew
And if you look back at the trends, Trump's first presidency was 100 days on average for confirmations. Biden's is 103 and so this one.
- [23:41]
John
Will probably be a little bit longer.
- [23:42]
Andrew
So that takes us into about April of getting a lot of these people confirmed.
- [23:48]
John
You know, that's obviously just averages, but.
- [23:49]
Andrew
If you look at the schedule for nomination hearings, we've got a few that are set for hearings, but the SEC.
- [23:56]
Scott
Commissioner is not on the docket.
- [23:59]
Andrew
Doesn't look like that'll be on till even February.
- [24:01]
Scott
And I think when it comes to crypto, that's probably the biggest nominee that.
- [24:08]
Andrew
The crypto world cares about because that implicates all of the cases that are going up against the exchanges right now.
- [24:15]
Scott
Binance, Gemini, Coinbase and then Ripple's not an exchange, but that huge case there. So we've got, you know, if we.
- [24:23]
Andrew
Get the, the nomination done in April, I mean, that lines up perfectly with.
- [24:27]
Scott
Just the wild blow off top that.
- [24:29]
Andrew
We'Re all expecting, you know, at some.
- [24:31]
Scott
Point in 2025, if the cycles go the way they always have. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. We're having some classic glitches getting people on stage, but we're, we're working on it at the, at the moment. Danish, did you have another comment there when I was jumping in?
- [24:51]
Andrew
No.
- [24:51]
Donnish
The only thing I will say is that the four year cycle is a fascinating sort of general commentary because again, the tradfi side of me keeps telling myself there can be no such thing. It makes, if everybody knows there's a four year cycle, then it gets priced in. But then there is, once you understand the technology, you ask yourself, but there's.
- [25:12]
Scott
Also a self, there's also a self fulfilling prophecy. That's the flip side of priced in.
- [25:16]
Donnish
Yeah, but again, people, if people believe.
- [25:19]
Scott
It, they, they trade into it.
- [25:21]
Donnish
Yeah, but they trade ahead of it. Like people don't trade into it, they should be trading ahead of it. And I think that's the part that's confusing. But then you start thinking about the miners who hold a bunch of it. You think like that, that that's where it does make sense. I, I have to say, call me a skeptic, it just feels like if everybody knows that there's a four year cycle, everybody should buy three years.
- [25:45]
Bill
But you've just basically described all of technical trading, right? I mean, what is A Fibonacci retracement. Right. I mean if you look at it, it's kind of like voodoo magic nonsense. But it seems to become a self fulfilling prophecy in, in every kind of trading cycle for, you know, for the same reason that, you know, four year cycle works. Right. I don't, I don't necessarily get it. Is it behavioral, economic, voodoo? I have no idea. But traders seem to believe that if you look at a Fibonacci retracement it actually works. But nobody can explain why. So what's different about the four year cycle versus every other tool in the trader's toolbox that seems to become a self fulfilling prophecy over long periods of time?
- [26:31]
Donnish
But Bill, the four year cycle is true. Then why do people hold. You should just buy.
- [26:38]
Scott
Because they know that. Because they know it goes higher the next time and they don't want to. And they don't want to poorly time it. I mean we talk about this a lot doc, but when you take a really deep look at bitcoin price action, the bulk of the volatility, especially to the upside, comes in a limited amount of days per year. So you just might miss the entry. And if you've got a low entry, you stick and hold. Also, I mean I think it's important to remember our four year cycle that coincides with the having also coincides with global liquidity cycles, coincides with the election cycle almost exactly. Right. So it's, I think it's just a part of a greater story.
- [27:14]
Dave
Taxes is the short answer. Yeah, honest, you don't want to. If you sell with the intention of holding for a longer or before you need it, you take a huge tax loss on it. And you know the. Yes, the cycle so far have been larger than, than that. But as they go, especially now, I suspect that they're going to be smaller than a lot of the tax burdens that people have for taking those gains. So you know, when you take state and local taxes into account. So yeah, you have to keep that in mind, that that's a big deal.
- [27:45]
Andrew
All right, Scott. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for having me on. I just wanted to say that it's very important and very interesting to see that every time when we really start, when I say we in our crypto bubble start talking about inflation and unemployment and FOMC is really when the market is like at a very uncertain stage in crypto. But I also very much agree with you on the fact that if we go through this every single time after the halving year, every single Time there is this last, last dip when everybody questions whether this was really the top, whether we had a pre, just a big run after the halving and then all this accumulation comes to an end. And I do believe that if you look at, I, I think the numbers today that are coming in most likely can be also projected because everybody's getting ready for a Trump presidency. And if you compare the fact that we are all putting our money in crypto, because we believe also, of course, believe in the halving cycle and we see the data. But if you think about the fact that we really bet on a Trump presidency, so a lot of people, especially when Trump spoke about crypto and the crypto president and the United States with crypto capital and whatever, everybody got extremely bullish. And I do think that is happening at the traditional markets as well in small companies. So I don't really necessarily think that today is not. So I do think it's an overreaction and I do think that a rally is coming. Whether it's, whether it's going to last after the inauguration or we're going to get a temporary dip, I don't know. But I do think that this is an overreaction on the market on today.
- [29:08]
Scott
It's something we were kind of unpacking myself and Nathaniel Whittemore this morning on YouTube. But I think that this is just one of those times. Kind of having your point that there's just a lot of uncertainty. I mean, we're having a major regime change in a matter of days. We have this situation where the Fed has been cutting and yields are going up. Markets hate uncertainty. And I think right now, obviously that affects every asset, including Bitcoin.
- [29:35]
Andrew
But also, Scott, can I just add one more thing? So to this fact, the reason why can also be an overreaction is that the dot plot on the last FOMC showed two rate cuts next year. Now when that comes, people are expecting a potential cut in January that is obviously out of the window. But it doesn't mean that there will be no two cuts this year. And therefore, I do think that the fact that the numbers are worse, sure. But this is expected because of the dot plot, and we've seen it previously.
- [30:06]
Scott
Makes sense. We're having a lot of issues getting people on stage, seeing people as listeners who are being viewed as speakers. Dennis, listen, I know you have an announcement to make. I'm actually eager to hear it myself. I don't know what it is and I know that we're trying to get, try to get a Guest up on stage. I'm gonna drop myself, come back onto the show. Dennis, you could run and try to get them on stage, because I know that we have a couple people on stage that other counselors seeing that I'm not. Who have their hands up. So we're in the glitch. So, Dennis, I'm gonna. I'm gonna leave it to you and go work on this in the background. I'll be right back.
- [30:41]
Andrew
Yeah, thanks, Scott. And can any everybody else hear me so far?
- [30:44]
Bill
Yep.
- [30:45]
Andrew
Okay. Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to get into this and talk a little bit about this announcement that we have, which will be a double announcement and a little bit of additional information on top of it as well. For those of you that might not be familiar with my work at Satoshi Action, we have been advocating for and educating on behalf of bitcoin with lawmakers and regulators since the launch of Satoshi Action in June of 2022. We've had quite a bit of incredible progress over that period of time, our legislation. So we craft model policy essentially at the organization, and we go to lawmakers and we say, hey, if you like this bill, if you like bitcoin as much as we do, then maybe you should introduce this piece of legislation. And we work with those lawmakers to help get that type of legislation across the finish line. We have the lawmaker here in the spaces with us today for the announcement that we're going to be making. Trying to get them up on stage before I see them in the room, but trying to get them up on stage before we. We move into this stuff. Rep. Ammon, you can't. You don't happen to be able to speak, do you? I can't. You show up as a listener to me, but maybe you. Maybe it's glitching and you're actually up on stage.
- [31:53]
Scott
It shows the listener for me, but it's showing you the speaker for him, but obviously we can't hear him, so I'm working on it. If you could go ahead, Rep. And try to request, and we'll see if we can get you up that way. Otherwise, I'm sending you another invite. But, yeah, we'll figure it out. Dennis, keep speaking if you can.
- [32:11]
Andrew
Yeah, definitely. So for us at Satoshi Action, a lot of people might not be familiar with us. They see the announcements or as people like to meme me the announcements of the announcements. But ultimately, when we have something that we say we're going to be announcing, we do deliver real tangible results for the bitcoin ecosystem. Since we have launched Satoshi Action, we've been able to secure the passage of four historic laws protecting the rights of bitcoiners. Everything from the right to mine, the right to self custody, the right to run nodes, the right to peer to peer transactions. We have done all of that at the state level. Four different states have signed our legislation into law. Four different governors and four different legislative bodies have decided that this legislation makes sense and it is a good idea and they want to be a leader on bitcoin. It looks like we were able to get Rep. Ammon up here on stage with us, so I'll drop into that here in just a moment. But we have been working tirelessly to move this type of legislation forward and I'm really excited to be joined by Rep. Keith Ammon, who's been a long term friend of mine. We actually, we know each other probably longer than any other lawmaker in the entire country. Rep. Ammon is someone that I have gone to visit with and also have even given a Lawmaker of the Year award to because of his work in the space. And he was also the very first lawmaker ever to introduce Satoshi Action model policy. And it's been an absolute honor to work alongside him. Just a little bit about Rep. Amman. He has held several leadership positions including the Vice Chair of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. He's been the Assistant Majority Whip and also the Clerk of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee. He's. He's well known in the bitcoin and the blockchain ecosystem for his advocacy in technology and education. He also founded the New Hampshire Blockchain Council and has been involved in legislation related to bitcoin and crypto for some time now. He's an OG bitcoiner, someone that goes way, way back. And he was also recently elevated to the position of Majority Floor leader. So in a moment, I'd love to hear from Representative Keith Ammon, but I would just like to jump in since everybody's been waiting so long. I would just love to jump into the announcement and then we can talk a little bit about the legislation and also share a number of items with the work that Rep. Keith Ammon has done in the past. So I'd like to announce that for the first time in the state's history, a bill has been introduced by Representative Keith Ammon to make a strategic bitcoin reserve in New Hampshire. But that is not the only announcement. We already know that this bill has received a hearing and will be heard in the New Hampshire State House as early as next Week. And that's also not all. Representative Keith Ammon has also introduced a bill to protect the rights of bitcoiners. The right to self custody, the rights to be able to use, buy, sell, trade, bitcoin and digital assets. Representative Keith Ammon, it's an honor to have you here. We've spent so much time together and I'm excited to be working with you in the 2025 legislative cycle to get this stuff across the finish line.
- [35:06]
Keith Ammon
Great to be with you, Dennis. Thanks for the introduction and good to be with everybody. Happy to participate.
- [35:12]
Andrew
Yeah, I mean, listen man, we, me and you have gone back and forth for some time now. As I mentioned, you're the very first lawmaker ever to introduce satoshi action model policy. Of course, that first introduction was not one that got across the finish line as a standalone bill, but it did result in the inevitable passage of a study for the state to study the implementation of micro grids. I'm a big believer in micro grids and the ability for bitcoin mining to enhance micro grids. But great to have you up here. Would love to have you talk just a little bit about your role in the state and also maybe tell people a little bit about your background in the bitcoin ecosystem.
- [35:48]
Keith Ammon
Okay, just a slight correction. That bill did make it across the finish line. It just, it changed form, but it is in law. And the Department of Energy in New Hampshire is, they're developing rules for micro grids. So there is going to be a framework that comes out of that.
- [36:07]
Andrew
Yeah.
- [36:08]
Keith Ammon
Hi everybody, my name is Keith Ammon. I'm a fifth term state legislator in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has the third largest body of legislators in the English speaking world. So India and Capitol Hill and D.C. have slightly larger, but we have a 400 member state representative body and it's a true citizen legislature. There are people from all walks of life, not just attorneys. And we're all there pretty much on a volunteer basis. And that includes our state senators, our state senators and our state representatives. We get paid a whopping $100 a year by the constitution. So that's fixed in the constitution. And you know, the hundred dollars a year back when it was, when it was written into our state constitution, was actually worth quite a bit of money. And so it's an easy conversation to have with our legislature that the dollar, the purchasing power of the dollar has obviously been eroded based on the value of our salaries. And by the way, we have to pay taxes on that and we have to pay for our own business cards and license plates. So we run our state a little bit differently. Having said that, our state is the number one in a lot of rankings. So our state ranks number one on many freedom indexes. We have one of the best economies in the country. We have just an ethos here. Live free or die is our state motto. We have an ethos for freedom in our state. And when it comes to blockchain, the way that it can empower and bitcoin, especially the way it can empower people to be sovereign self sovereign, is very appealing to a lot of people in New Hampshire. So as Dennis said, we have some bills in the pipeline. On Wednesday at 10am you'll be able to watch it on YouTube. We'll have a hearing for the, what we're calling the SBR bill, but it enables our state treasurer to purchase Bitcoin and we also have precious metals in there.
- [38:26]
Scott
Do you mind if I ask, Rep. Hammond, you said it's at 10am on Wednesday, about how long will that be? Because that's actually something we could potentially live stream here on this spaces.
- [38:35]
Keith Ammon
Oh, interesting. It will be half an hour, which.
- [38:39]
Scott
If we usually start at 10:15, so maybe we can get the back half of it just to start the show. I think that'd be really interesting to watch because I think it kind of leads to the next question. We see representatives such as yourself in multiple states proposing these. And I think it's hard as the general public to have an idea of what the process actually looks like and what the odds are of them and what the odds are of them actually passing.
- [39:01]
Andrew
Right.
- [39:01]
Scott
And I think that probably varies state to state. So do you have like a feeling for the, I guess the chances that this bill will pass on Wednesday? If that's actually the procedure, would it be on Wednesday?
- [39:12]
Keith Ammon
It won't pass on Wednesday. No, it's the state, the beginning of the process. So the bills have just been introduced in New Hampshire. We get about two weeks to file legislation that just that closed a few weeks ago. And now the bills are ready to be introduced to committee. And that's what's happening. Excuse me, on, on Wednesday. And in our committee, this is the Commerce Committee in the New Hampshire House. That's where the bill will be introduced. And the way our committee works is we go, you know, public hearing, then we have a subcommittee work session. So that'll happen a week or a few weeks later. The work session is when the members analyze all the testimony that we received. You know, is there a way to make this bill better with an amendment and Then out of that subcommittee, a recommendation goes to the full committee and then we have something called an executive session where we vote on the committee's recommendation on the bill. So that's sort of like a three step process just in committee. And then every bill in New Hampshire gets a vote on the full floor of the House. So there's no, there's no. This bill will get a full vote of the New Hampshire House guarantee. And that'll happen a few weeks after the committee recommendation, a week or two, and then it will go to the Senate and the whole process starts over again. And if the Senate agrees, then it goes to the governor for signing. So every legislation doesn't have 100% chance of passing. Right. There's always something that can derail it. But at this point, I think we have a pretty good path to victory here. We have the majority leader as a co sponsor and we have some other influential members of the House and the Senate are co sponsors. So I put it greater than 50%.
- [40:59]
Scott
Dennis. That's better odds than we see in most places, right? By far, yeah.
- [41:04]
Andrew
I mean, generally speaking, I would say that we have on average a 20 to 25%, sometimes 30% chance of a piece of legislation passing. But given Rep. Keith Ammon's leadership in the past in the state on all things bitcoin blockchain, he's well positioned to be able to help put this piece of legislation into a position to be able to be successful. And then he was also, as I mentioned earlier, was just elevated to the position of majority floor leader. So he, alongside his co sponsors are in a good spot and we're very excited to be working with him. Like as I mentioned, you know, Rep. Keith and myself go back and we've had a lot of great interactions over the, over the years as Satoshi Action has grown and matured. You know, he was the original lawmaker to introduce microgrid legislation. I went to the state a number of different times to help participate in educating lawmakers there. There was a commission that in fact repped Keith. I mean, he's put a number of commissions together, including a nuclear commission, which is very exciting for the state as well. But he put a commission together to study crypto cryptocurrency writ large. And I went there to help educate on the benefits of bitcoin mining and ultimately they put a report together. In the end, that report cited Satoshi Action and a number of other advocates that went there to the state to help educate lawmakers and ultimately called on. It was a report from the governor called on the state to integrate bitcoin mining as a piece of energy infrastructure into the state. So a lot of great opportunities and potential for great legislation in the state of New Hampshire. And I always love Rep. Keith Ammons view on states. You know, he had a tweet recently saying, you know, make state legislators great again. You know, we at Satoshi Action are big fans of the states. We think the states can be a primary mover for a lot of this type of stuff. You know, we have our hopes and prayers for Washington D.C. to do something given all the political potential that we have there with the new administration. But regardless of what happens in Washington D.C. we will be continuing to fight to prove that these ideas, whether they be the bitcoin rights or whether they be strategic bitcoin reserve legislation, are not only ideas that lawmakers want to introduce, but that lawmakers will pass into law. So, Keith, I would love for you to share. Rep. Ammon, I'd love for you to share just a little bit more about your background in bitcoin. I think people would appreciate just knowing just how long you've been there and you've seen the changes over the years in the state with a number of different bitcoin and crypto advocates in the state.
- [43:29]
Keith Ammon
Yeah, I mean, so we have a strong libertarian culture up here in New Hampshire, and libertarians are always interested in how money works. You know, personally, I, I was always interested, interested in how money works. I was also interested in computer science and cryptography. I, I read years ago, I read Creature from Jekyll island when I was in my early 20s, and that sort of laid the foundation in my, in my mind, you know, what would come next. And early in late 2010, early 2011, there was a group in New Hampshire talking about bitcoin before it kind of went mainstream. And so a lot of my friends have been in it a long time, and we went through all these different eras in bitcoin's history. We had the 2017 block size wars. There's always factions developing. But bitcoin has its own nature. It's its own thing. And we can have opinions about it, but it will just do what it does. It's kind of amazing that way. So not getting sidetracked on too many other crypto projects, There is innovation in some of these other projects, but bitcoin is the, the thing that Satoshi set in motion to change civilization. Right. And that's, that's, in my view, that's its importance. And so I, I've been since 2015 in the new Hampshire legislature, I've been talking about bitcoin. I think it was like 300 then or something, sponsoring legislation. And years ago, I was the crazy, you know, I guess they thought I was using it for nefarious purposes or something. But as time has progressed, and especially with the number one thing or a large influence on the legislature is Fidelity is one of our largest employers in the state. So having Fidelity have their own etf, I think you can't get more mainstream than that for New Hampshire. And so through the course of time, I've become less crazy, even though I've been sticking to the same message. You see things changing around us. So that's kind of fun.
- [45:55]
Andrew
I'll put it up top here in just a minute, too. This isn't a new thing for you either. You've been talking about the state potentially buying bitcoin or allocating to an ETF for some time now. I think there's a tweet even as, as far back as May of last year where you had brought this stuff up. A lot of people are talking about strategic bitcoin reserve, more so as of July when the Trump announcement occurred in Nashville. But this is something that you have been focused on even before that announcement became a reality.
- [46:24]
Keith Ammon
Yeah. Trying to get bitcoin or digital assets with bitcoin, especially on the balance sheet of the state, I think is a great first step. I'll put. I don't know, can I put something.
- [46:33]
Dave
In the chat here?
- [46:34]
Keith Ammon
How does that work in spaces?
- [46:36]
Scott
You can either DM it to me and I can throw it up above, or you hit the little. If you're on a specific tweet, you hit the icon in the bottom right corner with the arrow pointing up and you can add it to the spaces.
- [46:48]
Keith Ammon
Oh, I see.
- [46:50]
Andrew
I added the one Rep. Ammon, of the thread that you made where you said, should the state of New Hampshire investigate allocating a small percentage of its reserves? So if that's the one you were thinking of, that's the one I put up top.
- [47:01]
Keith Ammon
Yeah, there's another one. I wrote an article that I think covers. It's like a. I'll send it to the host here. So that's a pretty good one. That. That's sort of my broad opinion on where the state should go. And it went out to a large media outlet in the state, so got some good feedback on that. And lots of. Lots of regular folks, voters across the state are very interested in this. So I've been getting a lot of people Reaching out to me, connecting with me. And I think we have some good grassroots support here.
- [47:36]
Andrew
Yeah, it's great to hear. I mean, I remember when I was there in 2023, it was even just that short period ago, there just wasn't this level of excitement or interest in it. But you've been there diligently educating lawmakers, your colleagues on the issue of bitcoin. I also wanted to say as well that we've, you know, it is so critical that folks follow along with your story. So if you're wanting to follow along with Rep. Ammon and to support the effort to make a strategic bitcoin reserve in his state, please make sure you give him a follow and, and support his work. And, you know, when he's putting good stuff out there, make sure that you're helping people get visibility on it. As people see, you know, it's a distance. This is politics.
- [48:16]
Scott
Right.
- [48:16]
Andrew
As people see him gaining the ability to get his voice out there and he's gaining traction on social media, that also does help him. So please make sure to give him a follow. It's important that we also follow a lot of other people in the space that are doing the great work of moving these things forward. I see Samuel Coleman from Switzerland, a lawmaker that's in here that we've had some great conversations with. I also see my good friend Andreas from Chile down below. We've had some great work there as well. You got to really follow along with these people. And one of my goals has been to the lawmakers and the advocates out there. I have the privilege of having a larger social media account. So one of my goals is always to make sure and highlight those others that are in the space that are doing great work. Please do make sure that you follow Rep. Ammon and follow with the work that he's doing. But also Rep. Ammon, we brought it up in the very beginning. It's not just the strategic bitcoin reserve bill that we're going to be working on in 2025. We also have the potential chance to work on bitcoin rights in the state. Also dubbed Blockchain Basics is sort of its, its header name. Talk a little bit about that type of legislation and its chances of potentially getting passed into law as well.
- [49:21]
Keith Ammon
Yeah. So we're calling it the Blockchain Basics law in its House Bill 302 that has not been released yet. That bill is waiting for hearing date. So this bill combines multiple things. So we had the Governor's Commission on Cryptocurrency there's some recommendations that have not been implemented still from that final report. One of them is the fact that our court system doesn't have a way to, it doesn't have expertise. So we're standing up a blockchain docket in the court system similar to how Delaware has. Their expertise is in corporation law. So we're standing up some expertise in our state court system in the judiciary. And that's a result from last year. We passed a Dow Legal personhood bill. So our secretary of state currently is standing up a registry for Dallas. And that's a bill that we got passed last year. So we're trying to get our, our state regulators, you know, blockchain friendly as much as possible. And I think we're making some progress there. It let's see if I have the right notes here. One second. There's a novel thing in this legislation where this is something maybe no one's heard before. All right, let me just go over basically what we're doing. So we have the dispute docket. We have rights related to digital assets. It shows an individual can use digital assets without excessive governmental regulations to protect self custody. Zoning protections for asset mining that can't be discriminatory. Zoning prevents individuals from being compelled to disclose their private keys unless absolutely necessary. And then here's the, an innovative one. Our state has a background in having very good trust laws. So one, this is a novel idea to create this idea of a blockchain based trust. So that'll be something that I think no other state has tried. And then protections for operating blockchain networks. And if you're providing staking, it's not going to require a money transmitter license and some other things. So that, you know, that's a pretty comprehensive build up we're trying to get through. I think split parts of it will get across the finish line and some might go to study, study commission, but we should get pieces of it across.
- [52:06]
Andrew
Yeah, that's a great thing about, you know, working with you. And of course this is possible in other, in other states and we do utilize it that way. But it seems in New Hampshire it's a very effective tool where you can kind of almost like downgrade the bill to a study and at least get that across the finish line. So that's something that we're always trying to pursue with lawmakers. I think I actually discovered the power of that, not only with our policy director Eric Peterson, who's been instrumental in getting studies together at the state level for us to be able to study the Purchase of Bitcoin via ETFs for pensions and for Treasuries. But also I think Rep. Ammon, I'm not sure if you're open to questions. I'm sure some people might have questions with regards to what's going on in the state. There's a number of different speakers on the stage. That's a pretty friendly, friendly audience if you're open to it. I'm sure there would be some folks that might be.
- [52:53]
Keith Ammon
Yeah, I'm open to a couple of questions. Sure.
- [52:56]
Andrew
So if anybody has any questions, would love to, love to have you chime in to ask Keith a potential question around what's going on in the state. I know Bill, that you've been doing some trust stuff in as well. So we'd love to hear from you on that issue.
- [53:10]
Scott
Bill, can bill you there sometimes?
- [53:13]
Bill
Yeah, absolutely. So look, I mean the combination of, you know, on the corporate side, the microstrategy playbook with family offices and you know, January is kind of a month for family office events which I've spent most of my time doing the interest in kind of setting up and I'm using air quotes here, kind of personal or corporate Bitcoin reserves is higher than it's ever been. I would say the interest was like really not even there this time, the last cycle or even this time last year. And now the inbound interest that we see on how do I basically set up either the family, the corporate or the entity kind of bitcoin reserve. And I actually don't want to sell. I want to borrow against those assets in the future for, you know, kind of a lifestyle model is something that we just haven't seen before and is now kind of a, not only a regular discussion but probably the most common refrain within that, within that group or two groups, I would say both corporate as well as high net worth and family offices. And I suspect it's going to make its way down the income pyramid in the coming months. As if we see the kind of price appreciation that operations obviously many of us expect. If you have Bitcoin at 150k, clearly anybody who's been holding for a while or even new buyers who are putting money in are going to basically look at that as kind of a quasi bank account that they can draw down against on an ongoing basis. And this is something that, like I said, we've been spending a tremendous amount of time on to kind of get this rights to allow clients to retain title to assets. That's one of the keys here, right? I Mean, we've talked about this, you know, and I know, I know Scott, you have personal woes with this issue around retaining title to assets when you are, when you're setting up these kind of strategic reserves. And you know, now I think in this kind of next generation of service providers we have the right models in place where entities can set up bitcoin reserves, retain title to their assets, borrow against those assets when they need to, but know that they're, they're actually their assets and they're not lending them to any third party or taking counterparty risk to any third party to set this up. And if anybody has questions or wants to dig into any of that, happy to, to go further.
- [55:51]
Scott
Oxenson.
- [55:54]
Bill
Hi, I, I actually have a question to, to Keith if it's, if it's possible to ask as well.
- [56:00]
Scott
Yeah, go ahead.
- [56:02]
Andrew
Sure.
- [56:02]
Bill
So first of all, thank you so.
- [56:03]
Andrew
Much for your work.
- [56:04]
Bill
I've been following also the announcements and.
- [56:06]
Andrew
Everything that happened in venture.
- [56:08]
Bill
So considering that there is a plan to actually like use the rainy day fund to invest into bitcoin exchange traded fund.
- [56:16]
Andrew
Right.
- [56:16]
Bill
So there were some concerns. So like, you know, how would that be allocated is like the percentage wise.
- [56:22]
Andrew
So this is question number one.
- [56:24]
Bill
And the second question I, you've been talking before about the, you know, the energy and the like, the like actually all the efforts that can actually improve the grade and the, the statewide energy plan. But what I've seen in the comment section when I was like reviewing this. So the biggest, the biggest concern of regular people who don't understand the depths of, of what we're talking about here is that bitcoin mining is energy intensive and they are saying that, you know, integrating it can be actually increasing the energy cost for regular citizens. So is there some kind of research paper or something that where you attack those questions and can help you to.
- [57:04]
Donnish
Distribute to, you know, spread the news.
- [57:06]
Bill
That it's actually already taken care of.
- [57:09]
Keith Ammon
Yeah, I think. Dennis. Dennis, don't you have a report that you could reference? So basically the short version is bitcoin mining uses electrons that aren't valuable at that moment in time.
- [57:23]
Andrew
Right.
- [57:23]
Keith Ammon
When there's a low demand and high supply. So bitcoin is like a bottomless battery that can turn that electric energy into economic potential. And what that does is it incentivizes building out more generation over time and that benefits the grid. When you have more supply, the prices go down. That's the short version of how bitcoin mining improves the grid.
- [57:52]
Andrew
Yeah, certainly. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Rep. Ammon there's certainly benefits for bitcoin mining for the grid, but also there's a very special ability for bitcoin mining to particularly be helpful for clean energy. For instance, if you're a big fan of wind and solar like you, you must be a big fan of bitcoin mining because wind and solar deal with massive amounts of energy curtailment, which essentially means that they produce more energy than is actually purchased. Some renewable energy providers curtail up to 40% of their potential generation, which is a huge amount of waste. If you go track California, Caiso, California's ISO, they alone curtail, are on track to curtail more energy than the bottom 36 yushin, bottom 36 nations use combined. So it's an incredible amount of power that's going to waste. And the way that bitcoin mining plays a role here is that bitcoin mining can be placed virtually anywhere on the planet as long as there's energy and some sort of connectivity. And given the advent of Starlink, there's virtual connectivity anywhere on the planet. So you can put a bitcoin mine right next to the wind farm or the solar farm and monetize 100% of the excess generation that is occurring from those sites. So if you again, so if you are very pro wind and solar, then you should be really just sort of obsessed with bitcoin mining as a tool to advance that type of clean energy resource.
- [59:12]
Keith Ammon
So we have a startup small modular reactor company in New Hampshire. It's called starcube. ST S T A R C U B E Tech is their website and I was talking to one of their executives last night at a function and they're talking to bitcoin miners because advanced nuclear and bitcoin mining go together like peanut butter and jelly. They can incentivize each other and actually make the project viable from the beginning. Right. So the miners can be the first consumers and justify the building out of an smr. So I think we're going to see. And high compute data centers, high performance data centers are another piece of that. But so here's an advanced nuclear startup talking to bitcoin miners and excited about the potential for cooperation with that. So imagine a future where we have SMRs that power our towns and cities. Bitcoin mining can jumpstart that whole build out and that's kind of an amazing thing.
- [60:24]
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. Big fan of nuclear. I mean, you put a whole nuclear commission together there in the state as well. I mean, in theory, you can literally place generation anywhere in the world. Now because of bitcoin mining, because there is the potential to have demand anywhere in the world. Because bitcoin mining can be located at any site, doesn't matter where. It gives the opportunity to build generation anywhere. In the past, you used to have to sort of build generation in tandem with demand and that creates a lot of problems, especially for parts of the world where, you know, you're in rural parts of the country. Rural parts of the state potentially. I know in the north country as it's, as you like to refer to it in, in New Hampshire, there's a ton of energy problems up in the north and lack of jobs. And so the ability to potentially create use bitcoin mining to incentivize the growth of nuclear in the north is huge. Maybe talk a little bit about rural revitalization and how important that is to state lawmakers across the country.
- [61:17]
Keith Ammon
Yeah, so you know, in many states there's a concentration of population around major cities and then there's the rest of the state. Right. And few less infrastructure there. So there's a potential. Our state, our population is near the south third of the state, so the northern two thirds, there's a lot of retirees on fancy homes on the lake. But there are towns that used to have manufacturing and that have sort of struggled to have productive work for their members. Right. So for their citizens. And so mining data centers, just having an abundance of energy would create more opportunities for potentially manufacturers or energy hungry businesses to come and provide jobs in those places. So, you know, that's an interesting thing. I was on a call just before the spaces with Microsoft. They're interested in AI and new nuclear development and they're looking at New Hampshire potentially as a place to think about building it out. So that would benefit bitcoin mining if that happened?
- [62:33]
Andrew
Yeah, definitely. Well, Rep. Ammon, I know you're, you're a very busy guy. You have a lot of work to get to in the state and I'm very much looking forward to working with you and, and getting resources up there to the state so that we can have a successful hearing on Wednesday. For those that might have been tuned in a little late, we announced that there's going to be a strategic bitcoin reserve bill in the state of New Hampshire along with also a bitcoin rights bill. And we'll be working with Rep. Keith Ammon to be able to get this type of legislation across the finish line. That strategic bitcoin reserve bill which is mentioned and also I put a tweet out about it is getting is going to have a hearing on Wednesday. We get a lot of questions from folks like, oh, you know, introductions are great. We want to see progress. I 100% agree with you. We at Satoshi Action deeply care about making legislative progress. We're not here just to do messaging bills or signaling bills that, you know, show that we're interested in this stuff. We actually work to get it across the finish line. That's why me and our policy director Peterson have always sat down and said we want to make sure we pursue legislation that is achievable and that we can get across the finish line. Rep. Ammon mentioned that this bill has roughly a 50% chance of passing into law, given the amount of support that they have there in the state. So we are totally looking forward to it. I mean, I'm excited to travel back to the state and to work in the state, given it was the very first state that we ever worked on any type of legislation with. So it's an honor to be working with you again. Would love to give you the opportunity to close out this announcement with any potential comments that you might have.
- [64:05]
Keith Ammon
Yeah, thank you, Dennis, for all the work that you've done and thanks everybody for listening and all the work that you do. I'm sure in this space. I did want to get a plug in. This is kind of like a novel you mentioned about messaging. This is a messaging bill, but there's a potential it could pass. So this would be a constitutional amendment for the New Hampshire State constitution, and it would enshrine the right to compute and so that it's a right of individuals to freely access computational resources and that no law regulation should impose any discriminatory rates or limitations that would unreasonably burden this right. And what's kind of fun about it is we have a Supreme Court justice, retired, who is also who is now a state representative, and I ran this idea by him and he signed on as a co sponsor. So we have a former state Supreme Court justice as a co sponsor of this new right that I don't think any other state has tried. And I think this would definitely overlap with the bitcoin community that we have a way to access computation. It's part of our expression and freedom of thought. So just want to get that plug in. That'll be coming soon.
- [65:23]
Scott
Awesome. Dennis, thank you for asking me to host this. I think this is a great announcement. Rep. Evan Appreciate your work and I love seeing this happening at the state level and especially from people who've been here longer than myself. You're obviously a knowledgeable OG in the space who's been working relentlessly. And so I imagine there has to be a bit of vindication and a breath of fresh air here to see, you know, these bills getting the respect they deserve and actually getting a serious look and as you said, a better than 50% chance of passing. So thank you so much for your relentless work.
- [65:58]
Keith Ammon
Thank you for that.
- [65:59]
Andrew
Yeah. Make sure you follow Rep. Am and I'll say it one last time, if you want to follow along with his work, we'll be supporting him as well. But thank you so much. And Scott, it's been, it's, it's. I really appreciate you letting us come here to do the announcement. It's always an honor to be a part of this. These spaces that you put together, you put some great content together. You know, you deserve a lot of credit for your dedication to getting great content out there and helping people to have visibility on what's going on in the space and just the number of speakers that you get in here, I mean, even the ones that are in the room right now. Bill Simon, Dave, you know, I've spoken alongside a lot of you guys for some time now and you just put, you put together just an incredible cast of folks to come in and provide real, real, real great insight and knowledge on the space. So thank you for the work that you do to do that. I know it's, it's, it's sort of a thankless job.
- [66:42]
Scott
I appreciate it. Des. Yeah, I mean, listen, we have a, you know, we have, we have the luck to have this sort of daily platform and the idea is breaking and covering and unpacking the news with the best minds. And so when you can bring us a news story like this, it's, it's mutually beneficial. So I really do appreciate it. This is great. It's funny. You know, Rep. Ammon mentioned before, obviously this is kind of a bitcoin only conversation in this regard, but he hinted at, yeah, there are other chains that are doing, doing some pretty impressive things and we happen to also have John Mullen here and I don't want to let this conversation end without me talking to him about what's happening because I invite him up because there is a huge news story. The first story was that President Donald Trump confirmed with Hussein Sajwani of damac, if you guys don't know, is one of the largest developers in the United Arab Emirates, specifically in Dubai, to invest 20 billion in developed state of the art data centers across the U.S. we know data centers can be used for many things, including bitcoin mining. And then John, I don't know how you guys have these announcements constantly, but then Mantra, which is John's the head of the project secured a 1 billion tokenization deal with DAMAC amid Sejuani's 20 billion US data center ambitions backed by Trump. This was not a widely reported story. I saw it and had to have you on. I happen to know Alisa Dwani from dmac, who's very big in Web three. Awesome dude that's been in the space for a very long time. We have a very close mutual friend, Shant. And so this was like one of those things where so many things came together that I had to have you up to ask what's going on, because RWA clearly is going to be the narrative, I think, of this cycle, or at least one of the few outside of, you know, bitcoin reserves and all these. And it seems that you guys are continuing to really push this.
- [68:30]
John
Thanks so much. Great to be here. Good to be back. You know, it's kind of funny, the news that came out with hussein and a $20 billion investment into data centers in the US was completely not planned for our announcement. This happened to kind of work out in alignment also due to the fact that we're actually actively exploring the same asset classes with the family with the mock. So that was really a bit fortuitous, but better to be lucky than good, irrespective. This has been something that we've been working on for a very, very long time with the mock and the team over there. So we're super excited to get it out into the market and share a little bit more about what we're actually doing. So for those who don't know about Mantra, we're one of the leading real world asset protocols and the largest real world asset layer 1 specifically geared for facilitating tokenized assets coming on chain in a safe, simple and compliant manner. Big focus on the Middle east and Asia and we have very strong connections, you know, in the region. And, you know, these are the reasons why we're able to bring, you know, big deals from, you know, the creme de la creme of, of institutional backers to, you know, to the market and really excited that we're able to actually start putting things on chain now that the mainnet went live last year.
- [69:54]
Scott
I literally remember last cycle sitting with Ali on a Zoom call and they had a metaverse division and we went into the metaverse to tour the apartments that you could rent or buy from the back They've been on top of this for a very, very long time.
- [70:13]
John
Absolutely. The family is always pushing the edges of innovation. We work very closely with all the children, but particularly with Amira, the daughter. She's a force to be reckoned with.
- [70:27]
Scott
Yeah, my wife saw the houses they were building on that island and she was like, maybe we should go to Dubai.
- [70:34]
John
Well, keep a lookout for the Mali Islands because we're maybe there's a little bit of alpha in, in that one with, with how it pertains to mantra. But, but they're doing some really interesting stuff building some really, really high quality real estate over in Dubai in the uae. You know, they're a massive, massive conglomerate and it's good to see that they're also expanding into other kind of real estate sectors, data centers, hospitality and you know, obviously being kind of masters of commercial and resi real estate over there, which is one of the hottest markets. But super excited that we're able to kind of finally start talking about this. I think on previous spaces that I came on here we did talk about the idea that just tokenizing SPVs is kind of what I call faux tokenization. So we're excited that we're kind of pushing the boundaries of innovation at a more regulatory level in that market. So pretty excited that we're finally able to talk about it.
- [71:35]
Scott
So what does this actually look like? I mean we talk about this every time that you come on. But like what, what are you actually tokenizing on their behalf? I mean they do real estate development, I think hospitality obviously data centers. What's the benefit here generally of tokenization for an organization like them? And so what's the service you really provide?
- [71:55]
Andrew
Sure.
- [71:55]
John
So you know, we come as a protocol. We help support the kind of the technical implementation of bringing their real world assets on chain. Every asset class and you know, every even you know, sub asset class within, within real estate is actually slightly different. So you know, as it pertains to, you know, residential real estate assets that mock properties has, whether it's off plan or postfab, we're able to effectively tokenize both the equity as well as the financing of these type of instruments. So you can be able to particip as an investor, earn yield or you can participate, you know, and actually own the property with a smaller barrier to entry to, you know, potentially buying one of those villas on the world islands out in, in the sea in Dubai. So that's just one example. Obviously when it comes to data centers, these are like yield bearing assets and you know, that's kind of perfect for a tokenized product. So these are some of the kind of the areas that we're looking at to bring asset classes that in many instances have been limited to either the region where they're being created in. This brings access to a more global audience. And obviously with the father being in Mar a Lago with President Trump just a few days ago, I think now the whole world knows the Dahmach name. And again, better to be lucky than good. But we couldn't be happier that the timing just worked out this way.
- [73:32]
Scott
So how does this sort of align with the longer term vision? I mean, you've always talked about working primarily in Asia and United Arab Emirates obviously, and that they're leading, but is this sort of a, a showcase for what you guys can do with other organizations, sovereigns nation? I mean, it seems like this is something that will be useful literally everywhere if it's proven. In this case, yeah, absolutely.
- [73:59]
John
I mean, we are really focused on bringing billions and billions of dollars of assets on chain. And to do that you need to work with the big boys. That means large institutional players, sovereign capital, sovereign wealth funds, these type of things. So given the relationships in the ue, we're able to help support a lot of these initiatives. But at the same time, I think, you know, given the, honestly just the kind of the attractiveness of the UAE as a, as a crypto hub right now, a lot of people are looking to that market as one of the more progressive regulatory frameworks for how you can operate crypto businesses and VASPs. But at the same time, there's just a lot of capital there. There's a really positive outlook on what the space will look like there. So internationally you're seeing a lot of people, talented capital coming in, looking for opportunities. But at the same time, you know, there's, there's also a limited amount of opportunities locally. We're probably one of the bigger local players and at least on a pure crypto basis. So people are looking outward as well. And I think that's why this connection between the US and the UAE has been struck. I think the timing is no coincidence. You know, Hussein even said so himself. So I think with a little bit of the thawing of the kind of the, I guess, anti crypto rhetoric that we've seen under the Biden administration, it's no surprise that these things are happening now. And mantra has quite global ambitions. Our goal is to bring a minimum of $100 billion of TVL and assets on chain by the end of 2026. And obviously with partners like Damoc, we're well underway.
- [75:46]
Scott
What will be the value in theory of this then with DMAC, if your goal is 100, you know, how far will this, you know, in the next two years with their assets? How far will that likely move you? Ballpark?
- [75:59]
John
It's a good question. I mean, you know, we've signed for a minimum of 1 billion, so I, I would say that honestly and frankly speaking, that's probably on the smaller side compared to where we can go given some of the projects that we're working on with them and others. You know, the, the opportunity with our real world assets is frankly immensely immense and it really does dwarf in nature. Just, you know, the idea of some of, you know, even just like looking at TVL on DeFi llama, you know, even some of the biggest chains only have, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 billion of TVL. And you know, we have only launched, you know, three or four months ago and you know, we already have a multi, multi billion dollar pipeline of real world assets coming on chain, including this deal, including, you know, the deal we announced with MAG Group, which was a $500 million transaction which can go up to, you know, 3. So there's, there's a, there's a lot of feedstock and we're hungry.
- [76:58]
Scott
That was the last time you were on was MAG Group. That's exactly Emirates Financial Tower. Yeah, I mean they're, they're another absolutely huge. It's like you have every single one of them. You know, you run around, there's four names on every one of the buildings, things and they're like sectors.
- [77:16]
John
There's more coming, trust me.
- [77:18]
Scott
Yeah, so I mean, is there anything you can talk about in that regard or is it. I'm assuming that's all under wraps for now.
- [77:26]
John
Well, yeah, I mean, you did mention one of the projects that we're working on earlier. So expect some stuff around that coming sooner rather than later.
- [77:37]
Scott
You're killing me on that one. Because my wife literally stalks the Instagram. Her Instagram for those houses. Maybe I'll end up in Dubai. How much time are you spending in Dubai these days?
- [77:49]
John
Pretty significant amount to be honest. I'll actually be flying out there on Sunday. I'm based in Hong Kong. For everyone listening, the team is primarily between Hong Kong and Dubai. But to have a fairly distributed team, we have people in Australia, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas, etc. But primarily Hong Kong and Dubai, I'm probably there, I mean, at least two times a month, maybe 30 to 40% of the time.
- [78:18]
Scott
So a lot. Yeah, sorry, I got personal.
- [78:23]
John
It's not the summer.
- [78:24]
Scott
Yeah, no, no, no. It's a little warm, slightly warm there. So obviously you have the chain and you're tokenizing all these assets and bringing them on to sort of drive the RWA space. But you also have your own token Ohm. That's great. And so I think worth for those who haven't heard sort of speak here before, which we've done in a number of times and in other venues like what's the relationship between all of this and everything that's happening in the actual token?
- [78:56]
John
Yeah, so I think a lot of people see OHM as kind of like the beta play for real world assets. Obviously not financial advice but you know we are, you know, building out different value accrual mechanisms more so than just being the gas token for a layer one. A number of different areas that we're exploring, but these could be considered mint and burn fees for tokenized assets, other different type of ways that you can actually stake the token and then earn some sort of real world asset backed yield. So these are a number of different initiatives that we're exploring on ways to drive value to the OHM token. And right now asides from just bringing all these assets on chain, we need to make them composable, we need to make them programmable and we need to make them liquid. So building out a DAPP ecosystem, supporting that, focusing on a couple of the core like defi primitives is really important to actually make some functionality with these RWAs that you can do. Interesting use cases. One particularly that's like quite relevant for the Mac and for real estate is the idea of being able to actually, you know, collateralize and borrow against your real estate portfolio on chain in a semi permissionless manner or even permissionless manner. So this is something that we're actively looking at. And I think this will probably be one of the cooler use cases for, you know, particularly like multi jurisdictional real estate portfolios because you can basically make sure that if you have the real legal backing codified into the token with the proper governmental bodies verifying that this token actually represents the real thing rather than just some sort of SPV that you can get rugged on, it really does make a game changer and this is something that all our investors and our community is super excited about.
- [80:49]
Scott
Yeah, so I guess kind of I'll ask you a bigger pie in the sky question to sort of wrap it up. I know everybody listening, we appreciate you guys being here like 30 minutes over time, what's the real end game? Give me the most ambitious vision that you could have for five years down the road for I guess the RWA space. But you as a chain as well, I mean, you kind of mentioned obviously the attractiveness of being able to collateralize these assets, use them to earn yield. All doing that on chain, frictionless, without the sort of third party parties, really the promise of crypto in the first place. Right. But like is this, does this eat, does this eat that entire industry? You know, what, what does the end game.
- [81:32]
John
I mean, this is think it eats the industry. I think it just becomes the new version of finance, to be honest. And I think where we see this, I'm not saying it's going to happen in five years. I mean, there's still a long, long, long way to go. Frankly. A lot of this stuff is still clunky, a lot of it's not super functional. But we are trying to build out the infrastructure as well as the kind of liquidity layer for actually bringing real world assets to have liquid markets behind them, to be able to actually do interesting things with them. This isn't the first time that people have talked about tokenized assets as an interesting asset class. I mean, this has been around for years now and there are challenges. I mean, there's still technical considerations, obviously there's regulatory ones. Most of these assets are highly regulated in nature. So I think if you're a real world asset project, it doesn't take a regulatory or compliance mind and focus. You're probably just chasing a narrative and really not focusing on what really matters, on doing this stuff the right way. So that obviously is supported by the fact that we're working very closely with all the relevant regulatory bodies, governmental agencies in the places that we're operating actively. And I think when you do this on a case by case basis, it does really start building up a very strong competitive advantage in moat because as I say, pretty regularly you can fork code, but you can't fork a license.
- [82:57]
Scott
Love that. John, any other final thoughts before I let you go?
- [83:00]
John
Well, appreciate you having us on. You know, hopefully once we tokenize some of those island properties, we'll have to have you come visit as well.
- [83:09]
Scott
Yeah, I can stay in the garage or something. I've seen the prices.
- [83:15]
John
Awesome, man.
- [83:16]
Scott
Well, thank you so much. And yeah, and Dennis, thank you again for bringing up Hammond. This is just. And to all of our other guests, Dave, you're still here. Great for the amazing conversation before that. Really love doing this show every day of the week. It keeps me accountable and on top of everything that's happening in the space. And it's nice to have this platform to break the news. Hope you guys all have an amazing weekend, and we will see you back on Monday. Thank you, everyone. Have a great weekend. Bye.