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- [00:00]
A
Good morning everybody and welcome to yet another edition of Silver smelting. I mean, crypto Town hall every weekday here at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time on X. I made a joke about silver smelting Town hall because literally nobody apparently wants to talk about anything other than silver. It's become a really, really difficult environment. Silverbucks are seemingly euphoric but angry at the same time. If you say anything negative about silver, you get attacked. Like peak.
- [00:33]
B
Don't you dare.
- [00:34]
A
Like peak XRP Army. It's wild. It's wild word out there, but yeah, silver making all time high after all time high after all time high. And bitcoin is doing what we refer to in the old country as jack shit.
- [00:50]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, 111 even. And I've been, and we all know I've been pretty bullish on, on where silver would go. I have to admit I'm a little surprised that it shredded 100 so quickly. But I guess, you know, it doesn't matter. The supply and demand is a bitch, right? You know, supply doesn't go up and demand continues to increase. And there you go. So it is fascinating because the hot ball of money has made a lot of money. What people aren't thinking about and what does matter. You asked the question this morning, Scott. When what will rotate out when silver peaks. And by the way, peaking is flat for a period of time. Excuse me. Or a range in a period of time or getting boring things. That's still going to take time. Understand a lot of money has been made by the speculators and that money is a bigger ball of money now than it was when it started. And so that bigger ball of money is going to go someplace and we'll see. It'll be some, probably, probably at some point this year, probably not tomorrow, probably not next month, but it's a bigger ball of money and that does matter.
- [01:58]
A
I had to laugh. Somebody said in the comments earlier, I think that silver is the new bitcoin. And I showed that amazing meme of Leonardo DiCaprio where it basically said you've been right about the debasement trade, but you bought bitcoin instead of buying silver, gold or copper. Right. I mean, it's literally perfect because those, if you believed in the debasement trade, those have literally always been the assets that you would have bought. But I was thinking when somebody said that silver is the new bitcoin, I was thinking, I don't know, it feels like silver is like the new Dogecoin 20, 21.
- [02:31]
B
Well, if Dogecoin were needed by everybody building batteries, missiles.
- [02:36]
A
It was needed to buy Dallas Mavericks merch, buddy. I mean.
- [02:40]
B
Yeah, well, there you go. That was pretty much it. Well, I mean, you know, then Cooper Flag should have spelled the top. But I mean, there is a fundamental thing going on here. There are two massive important ones. One is there is the dollar. The Treasuries being held less by, you know, by everybody. And being people holding precious metals to back their currencies is a very large change. And the supply demand dynamics of silver is reversing decades, actually 150 years of demonetization. That's where silver got demonetized by gold. And those do matter eventually. As to quote you know, Congressman Davidson, who, who had. Oh damn, I lost it. I hate when that happens on, on Twitter, he basically made a point that sound money is still incredibly important and it's what we need and you're not going to get. You can't have sound money being something that is in structural deficit. And silver is not going to be money, it's just in structural deficit. Bitcoin has a better chance of becoming sound money at some point in the far future. And I wrote an article this weekend about something that just bothers the crap out of me because it gets talked about, which is effectively the only way for bitcoin to become sound Money has to go through multiple periods like we've lived through this year, which is periods where the people who are who own most of the bitcoin sell it into new holders. And you have to, that has to happen. It's literally the only way it can happen. And, and so, yeah, you know, it's painful when it happens and that's why it's not that easy of a trade. But it's pretty hard to look at the fact that we're still in the same damn trading range. You know, if I think bitcoin right now 30 days is flat. Oh no, it's actually up 1% because it just, while we were talking, it moved up. But. But for 30 days it's basically flat. Which effectively means for the year it's basically flat. Most of crypto is similar. The only ones that are up a little bit are things like BNB up a teeny bit and Tron. But everything else is more or less flat, which is boring if you're talking about it. But what is that actually telling you? That's the question. I will continue to say time based capitulation, Scott.
- [05:07]
A
I've been saying that as well. I totally agree. I mean, let's go to the panel. Robert, Dan, Carlo Gator, you're the four that I see. I never know if there's other people on stage that are magically disappearing, but.
- [05:17]
C
Good morning, Scott.
- [05:18]
A
Good morning, Carlo.
- [05:19]
B
You're here.
- [05:19]
A
I don't know if you have any specific thoughts on any of that, why bitcoin and the rest of the market are not participating, but you can take this in any direction you'd like.
- [05:28]
C
Yeah, I was talking about it on the morning finance show. Everything is responding as you would expect in the face of both domestic turmoil here in the United States. We can't ignore what we're seeing and not trying to make the show political. Obviously, I respect what the purpose of the show is, but the markets respond to this stuff and the world responds to this stuff. So seeing this level of instability on the streets in the United States coupled with obviously the instability around the world that we're seeing certainly is drawing people away from the dollar and into risk off commodities like gold and silver, because those are the knee jerk reaction. Those are the traditional commodities that people run to in times of confusion and uncertainty. And I think bitcoin, frustrating as it is that we continue to see it going down in response to this, which is the opposite of what everyone thought bitcoin would do in this situation, is certainly causing a lot of fud of bitcoin, but today's point, I think it'll pivot because when people realize that trying to unload silver at these historic profits in the spot market for the consumer is not an easy thing to do, I see reports of discounted spot prices. It's hard to validate these metals, it's hard to store these metals, it's hard to get credit on these metals. It's hard to move these metals, it's hard to liquidate them into fiat. And bitcoin obviously is the antidote to that. And the more digital everything is becoming, for crying out loud, we are seeing everything being digitized by vjooqic, put on blockchains and tokenized. And that trend is not going to stop just because we're seeing this current concern in the market. I just think that it's going to take time for network adoption. It starts at the top. The institutions are very, very well aware of where this is all going. And if you're not paying attention to what the institutions are doing with bitcoin, then you stand to be left behind. And I said this on the morning show and I'll say it here, yeah, Bitcoin does this. And then for no explainable Reason it just takes off and I can't discount the possibility of that happening here. Could we all be wrong? Of course. But it doesn't seem to be that the major indicators where the institutions, where the nation states are going to is suggesting that that is a possibility. I think patience will probably be necessary to totally see this through. But ultimately I think Bitcoin is the winner in the commodities game. It doesn't mean that gold and silver don't have a value and don't have a use and I see the merit of holding all of it. But I think Bitcoin's the most liquid and I think Bitcoin will ultimately be the, the winner at the end of the day.
- [08:47]
A
Mean to the panel to continue the conversation. Anybody have comments?
- [08:54]
B
Hey Robert, if you're, if you're behind the mic, you know, what do you make of the yen having a 5% move over the weekend?
- [09:03]
D
Yeah, what's going on with the yen is wild. So I was watching the bank of Japan rate decision that would have been Thursday night here in the US about 7pm and they really should have hiked, to be honest. You have inflation printing at 3 just a month or two ago. You have very weak currency right up until, up until this you had a weakening currency. You had the long end of your, your yield curve just melt down a couple days prior. So I mean truly historic, like full blown meltdown with their JGB the long end. So you would have expected a hike. The market didn't like the fact that they didn't hike. So you had the yen weaken off the back of that, you know that, that rate decision. And then you just saw like a brutal, like it was like a 1% candle in five minutes, which for our currency is especially a major currency pair is huge. And so that was likely the, the bank of Japan rate check. So there is no official comment that I've seen at least. But a rate check is where the central bank will call up, you know, financial institutions, banks, dealers and ask for a quote, right? You call someone up and you call bank up and you say, hey, it's so and so from the bank of Japan. I'd like to buy 15 billion in yen, right? And the first thing that that person on that desk is going to do is put the phone down, scream to the desk to go long. You get the market to. And then of course the rumor spreads and other people of course go long the yen. So it's getting the market to, you know, scaring the market or telegraphing intention to do an intervention, hoping that the market's going to do the work for you. And we saw a 1% decline in five minutes. Off the back of that. Then you had New York, right? Friday, Friday comes around and New York session, I think it was about 9:00am, 10:00am In New York session, rumor started that the Fed had also conducted a rate check on the yen. Now the Treasury Department, the US Treasury Department is who actually handles currency policy, not the Fed. Fed does monetary policy, but when it comes to the dollar and currency policy, that is the U.S. treasury Department. So the New York Fed is the operational arm of the Fed. US treasury would have called up the New York Fed said, hey, you know, this is our intention or this is what we would like to do, then the New York Fed would be the one to actually implement that decision, the kind of operational component of it. And so then with that rumor of a New York Fed rate check, I mean that caused a huge sell off in dollar yen for the rest of the day and then of course overnight, yeah, we have continued weakness in dollar yen. Prior interventions have been like US$100 billion large. But we haven't really seen that I'm aware of recently, the Fed also participating in a potential effort to weaken the dollar or you know, put another way, strengthen the yen. It depends which side of the coin you're looking at. But it's the same thing, right? Either they're, they're, they're weakening the dollar and they're strengthening the yen. Both, both are true. And we haven't really seen the Fed engage in that. Right. We've seen Bank Japan 3, 4, 5 Interventions over the past couple years, but we haven't seen the Fed explicitly, you know, step in. We, they, there might have been implicit approval. Right, like the, the bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance won't just do this without consulting Americans, you know, in the, in the Treasury Department, the Fed, they don't just do it on their own. So before you might have had implicit approval, but this is kind of the first time that like we have a concerted, explicit effort by US Policymakers to weaken the dollar. And it could be, you know, I'm not saying it is Definitely Plaza Core 2.0, something I've been talking about for what, two years now? But, but it, it, it's certainly looking like that. Like if, if you were to engage in some, you know, some sort of Plaza Court 2.0, Mar a Lago accord, whatever you want to call it, this would be not dissimilar from what you would see. And I'll Just remind folks to, to finish 1985, the DXY Dollar Index 161. In 2024, the DXY Dollar Index averaged about 105. Well, in 2024, the dollar was actually even more overvalued on a purchasing power parity basis in 2024 at 105 on Dixie than it was at 161 in 1985. Well, that was when the plaza court happened and the DXY dollar index weakened by what, 50%. So we could be in the very early innings. I think this is what gold is sniffing out and gold and silver. And it's kind of upsetting to see bitcoin is like selling off in the face of a Plaza Core 2.0. Like, guys, this is like crazy. I, I, I'm, I'm kind, I'm a little speechless to see, like, this is literally like the end game that, that you, if anything was going to give bitcoin an AM Omega candle, right, sort of situation, it would be this. And yet what did we see? We actually saw bitcoin sell off, which is pretty disconcerting. I'm just going to be 100% honest.
- [14:46]
E
Yeah, thank you. Fully agreed. I mean, it is somewhat worrying that, you know, bitcoin is getting sold off, but I also wanted to get back to that, to that earlier point where we discussed bitcoin being seen as a stable asset or a safe haven, so to say, in political turmoil. And I believe that we will be getting there. But I believe that the majority of people that are outside of the crypto and bitcoin community, so to speak, they are not seeing that as the most stable asset yet in situations of turmoil. So what I believe is that bitcoin will fulfill that role in time, but that currently this role is not fulfilled yet because the majority of people around the world are still of the belief that bitcoin has no inherent value. And I think that is slowly changing. You see it, institutions are doing that now. They are changing around. They are offering it on a balance sheet. People that were early in the, in the days of 2011, more or less early in that time. And the ones that are around nowadays in crypto, I believe they understand the value of bitcoin and how it can be seen as a, as a stable asset, so to say, or as an asset class that can compete with commodities in terms of being safe havens when there is turmoil politically. But I believe that the majority of people in the world, the common people, so to say, they are not at that stage yet that they believe this is the case. And that is why I believe we're seeing a run to silver, gold, and other commodities by the average person, even your local baker, even your address, telling you that they're investing in silver and gold because it is also being pushed up by a lot of people over the globe. Whereas Bitcoin doesn't have that image yet. At least that's my perception. I feel like the perception of the average person is not yet there to see Bitcoin as the safe haven. But I do believe in the snowball effect, the money being accumulated and flowing back to bitcoin and other assets in the crypto space at a later stage again.
- [16:57]
F
Robert?
- [16:59]
D
Yeah, I just want to kind of link it to what we're seeing here domestically on, on the political level, which I was talking to Marty, Marty, Ben, and like, we were kind of like venturing into this topic, and I, I, I, I still cannot come around to the idea of gold and silver. Like, if you believe, which I think most people, you know, objectively speaking, should, that the political situation in America is deteriorating pretty rapidly. Imagine a world where you are trying to transport your wealth in a hostile domestic situation. I don't want to be trying to get out of California with, I didn't.
- [17:43]
A
Expect California, by the way.
- [17:46]
D
Oh, yeah.
- [17:46]
A
Iran or something. But yeah, go ahead.
- [17:49]
B
Yeah, okay. They're gonna have checkpoints with trucks where they're gonna be and mineral assayers to make sure that your gold and silver, that you pay your tax on the way out.
- [17:59]
D
Yeah, yeah.
- [18:00]
B
Like legitimately, whoever the next governor is, they're gonna have to set those up legit.
- [18:05]
D
I, I legitimately find it hard to believe that I would just be able to walk out of California and go to Idaho with 10 ounces of gold. Right. Or whatever. You know, I can transport 12 words in my head and no one knows. You don't have to even take your, your, your cold card, your treasure, you don't even have to take it with you. Right. You memorize 12 words. No one knows how much wealth is in your head. They don't even know that you have those 12 words in your head. So I just think, like, given what is going on domestically here in the U.S. i mean, it's getting kind of hairy. I, I think that, like, most folks haven't truly woken up to, like, where this is, where we are and like, where this is probably headed, but it's very typical fourth turning sort of stuff. Right. And I just, I, I think that in that landscape, in that political social landscape, the single best asset to own is bitcoin. Now the price performance is a totally different situation, right? But like just when it comes to the ability to have a bearer asset, a scarce bearer asset in your head, right. And to be able to transport that wealth with you, if you have to flee the country, it's the same story, right? Like if I have to, God forbid, flee my homeland to go to El Salvador, it's the same story. Oh, they're just going to let you out of the U.S. right? Get on an airplane with 20 ounces of gold and 100 ounces. No, they're going to confiscate that. So, yeah, I just think it's an important point given what we see politically.
- [19:41]
A
I can't see any other hands, Dave, do you?
- [19:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't see anyone. I'll. We'll pick on people in a second. But I do think the one point about political and the one point about prices, there's points in both cases. First, bitcoin is identifiable with two individuals. One is the president and his family. And that basically means half of America is like, I don't want to own this fucking thing. And that explains some of what's going on. The other is bitcoin is clearly identifiable with the head of the World Economic Forum and Larry Fink. And that is not something that people are taking into account. If you look through the history of bitcoin, it has reacted with multi month or often significant delays to news that you might think it would have moved to. And then it moves when it moves because there are, you know, it's not a very big market, it doesn't take a whole lot and that that matters. And I'll point out two situations. One, when it, which is, I think extremely relevant in 20, when Paul Tudor Jones called bitcoin the fastest horse in the race and a bunch of hedge funds started buying it early in the year it was trading around 10,000. That was in May. It didn't move at all. I mean literally May, June, July, August, September, nothing. It didn't start moving until October when it moved to 14, 15,000, which is a 50% move. So don't get me wrong, that's a big move. We would be screaming, people would be having watch parties. If that happened today, then post that in November, December, January, all of a sudden it took off and ended up at 60,000. Right. So it went from a 50% move to a 5x move. There was nothing. There were no news here. It was just the realization, just the seller stopped and the buyers Didn't. And that sort of thing happens because what Gator said before is very true. Most of the world, it's a very small percentage of the world that actually has a meaningful amount of their assets in Bitcoin. Very small. Right. In the financial world, it's probably the best estimates are somewhere in, in a, in, in the tenths of 1%. And so that has happened before. The same thing was sort of true in 17 where it got completely insane. There was a period of time in the summer when it crashed by 50%. Within a month it was off of China FUD. But that doesn't really matter. You know, it was, what, I don't know, the 18th time China banned it and whatever and, and then it rallied back and then it just went absolutely parabolic in November, December. Now the parabolic move was partially triggered because people totally didn't understand that having futures which had been approved and was gonna go live was not a very bullish thing because it was literally the only way that people in the US could short it. But it doesn't matter. It's one of those deals where it has moved. So I continue to say that time matters and shifts matter and you'll, you'll see when, when the selling, when older sellers stop selling and it starts to grind higher, pass through ranges, that's the beginning. Until then, we could have months of this where we're sitting in a trading range just like where we are and we are in the trading range. We've been from 85 to 95, give or take, for, you know, how long now. I mean, it's been a long time. So that's sort of my opinion, Robert. That's why, I mean everyone who uses it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. When you look at price action, when you look at it and say it's disconcerting that it's dropping when it should be rising. That's true, but a value investor would say, great, that's an opportunity to buy more.
- [23:24]
D
Oh, for sure, for sure.
- [23:25]
B
The momentum investor will say, oh my God, I have to be out. And they won't come back in until it's trading between 95 and 100 or actually breaks through 100 with authority. And a lot of investors in the bitcoin world are on the sideline for the exact reason.
- [23:39]
D
Yeah, the contrarian in me is, is looking at this or the bitcoin denominated in gold looking at all those sorts of things and going, oh my God, this is like the perfect contrarian trade right now. Sentiment is so bad in the bitcoin land, you have, you know, bitcoin over gold looking super stretched. All, all these kind of contrarian indicators point me to like, we're probably pretty close to a bottom. We might see kind of capitulatory sort of sell off. Right? But like, I think we're pretty close to, to a short term, medium term bottom.
- [24:17]
B
I mean that's my, my thesis. But I do think that it, it takes time, right? It takes time. I mean it. And people always ignore, you know, the, the impact of time, you know, and so that's why I keep saying time based capitulation. I mean we saw a huge ETF outflow last week and we saw, and we see a lot of nervousness around the government shutdown because of what happened the last time when the government shut down in terms of bitcoin. I mean stock markets don't really give a crap, but bitcoin.
- [24:46]
D
Dave, that was that I saw, I saw your post to my, that I was watching it. That was like right when the news hit the wire about the Insurrection act, when we started to sell off on bitcoin, it was like literally like two or three minutes to the, to the. You don't think that.
- [25:04]
B
Well, I mean I, look, there's no question we have, there's so many cross currents here. As I said, half the country, this is the, the, the, the, the blue and yellow, blue or gold dress thing all over again. Half the country thinks they have come. I don't know about half, but certainly the media you have, if you put on one channel, it's like, oh my God, look at these insurrectionists in Minnesota. We need to send in the troops. You put on another channel, it's oh my God, you know, we, we have stormtroopers in Minnesota. What are we going to do? And it effectively since bitcoin has become politicized in a way where it never should be, but is, you know, it is because of Elizabeth Warren and the overreaction. Yeah, I mean it definitely is going to impact it because the biggest reason why it's an impact, all of that, Robert, means that the deals that they're cutting to spend money willy nilly and not shut down the government are at threat. I mean, at the exact same time polymarket went from 9% odds of a government shutdown to 82. That is not a small move.
- [26:04]
D
I mean, it's just I, I think, I think that, I think when, I think, you know, if, if, if you put yourself in the, in the shoes of a global investor right now you're seeing A State of Our Union in, In. In basically open rebellion against the federal government. If the, if he doesn't invoke the Insurrection act and go in there, right, and do what everyone, you know, kind of on the left says he is, right. Come in with, you know, hardcore. If he doesn't do that, then you've effectively telegraphed to international investors that the, that the federal government is impotent. Well, what does that actually indicate about the health of the dollar, the health of the country, the health of the economy? If the federal government cannot control one of its rogue states, what does that indicate to an international investor? It's no different than, you know, if I'm looking to invest in Turkey and one of the regions in Turkey starts to, to take up, you know, open rebellion against the Turkish government, and Turkey's unable and unwilling to go in and restore order, I'm not going to want to invest in Turkey because clearly the federal government of Turkey is impotent and incompetent and unable to govern its country. Right? So I think that, that, I think that people are, are missing kind of the bigger, the, the bigger information, right? Like the bigger picture there when it comes to what's going on here domestically.
- [27:34]
B
I think that's true. I mean, and I said, but don't underestimate the, the, don't underestimate, you know, where people are at, their heads are at. I mean, there are many people. I mean, Gary, I see you up here. I mean, I've heard it in your voice as well. I mean, we went from a year ago talking about peace dividends from Trump because he was going to solve the Ukraine, Russia war. Now, I'm not blaming him for that not happening. I think that Zelensky and Putin are both completely intransigent for a variety of reasons, and he was overestimating his ability to do it. We were talking about that from a incredibly bullish point of view towards, I won't say despair, and clearly you're not, because you're a smarter investor than that. But certainly the tone of your voice is like mine, which is, okay, we got to batten down the hatches and wait here and see. And wait for it to happen. I mean, you know, you talk to a lot of people, you know, a lot of rich people. You talk to a lot of people on the Bitcoin side. I mean, have you seen the mood be this. When's the last time you saw mood like this? Or have you never seen mood like this?
- [28:34]
G
Well, I think we, we, we have had no, I think We've had worse moods than this. Look, I think we're transitioning from, and I would love to hear people's commentary on this. But one, I think this is a very, very small market. There's no one in this market today. Assume there's 500 million investors, you know, real investors around the world. I don't think there's more than that, really. Like, less than 1% of that is allocated to bitcoin. Like, we are. I think we advertise ourselves to ourselves and we think we're much bigger than we are. With this kind of fundamental change, it makes sense to me that bitcoin's just laying here. You don't have any organic natural crypto bros that built businesses that can invest any money in this space. This has to come from external sources and it's not coming in the flows that we want it to come in. I just think it's like, okay, you know, wow, I shouldn't have sold my silver. I'm not unhappy selling my silver. I mean, I left $2 million on the table, right? But I don't really get. Look, you're not going to pick the timing on this or any other trade. Like, nobody does that, okay? I know people like to come on and say they do, but they don't. If you just zone, zone out here. To me, this is zooming out here is like, I just placed bids for $87,000, okay? Like, I think I'm gonna get hit. And then if I get filled there, I'm going to place it at 84, 85, and then I'm going to place it at 78. I think I'm going to get filled in the 70s. I mean, you guys tell me why we're not going to go test low 80s. There isn't any buyers here, man, that we just have to be honest, okay? This is not a Hopium play. This is a. Hey, hey, what's going on? Fundamentally, if it can happen in natural gas in, well, you know, 60 days or silver and gold. And by the way, this has been winding up for decades for silver and gold. You know how patient these people have been. So to me, it's the same trade, dude. We're just, you know, we could be. We could be 36 months early. Let's be honest. I think you gotta, like handle this thing and go, okay, look, I'm gonna survive two to three years. And if you're wrong by 36 months, cool, dude. We get ice cream and champagne. But if you can weather this thing out three years, you're going to be awesome.
- [31:21]
B
I mean, I don't know about years, but I mean, look, I. I've said it before. I'll say it again. Luna happened in May.
- [31:29]
A
Of.
- [31:29]
E
Of.
- [31:31]
G
Of.
- [31:31]
D
What was it?
- [31:32]
B
How year was that? 22. Bottomed in November. You know, basically November, December. So you're talking seven, eight months before anything constructive really happened. Right. Lots of destructive, lots of forced selling, whatever, but nothing came back. We had October 10th. You know why?
- [31:51]
G
But in fairness, Dave, we've never been here on global scale. Okay. I mean, last time we were here. You know, this is a really weird. You know, this is. This is the. The market seems different. Not bitcoin, but the whole world seems different right now.
- [32:09]
B
Yeah, that's true. There are more people looking for the fiat currencies. I hate to just say the dollar because it's the dollar and it's. Although the dollar is down versus the Dixie is down a bit. I mean, it was pretty much tattooed to 98 for a while. Now we're down at 96. But that's only in the short term. But the truth is that. What's happening is silver is different. But is gold going up or. Or are fiat currencies going down? That's really the question, relatively speaking. And clearly there's some element of both in gold as well. I mean, silver has its own different supply, demand dynamic, but everything is different. Markets don't repeat, they rhyme. I'm just saying that the world of crypto is morose. The world of bitcoin is morose. The world of crypto is actually. I don't know what's worse than morose. Suicidal. I don't know what the word is. I mean, it feels like winter.
- [33:09]
D
Well, yeah, but you buy when everyone's on suicide watch.
- [33:13]
B
I am not arguing. I'm not selling anything. I understand that it's like. And I think a lot of people are like that way.
- [33:22]
C
So no alt season.
- [33:25]
B
What is an alt season?
- [33:28]
A
There'll never be an alt season again like the ones we saw in the past where you throw a dart and literally everything goes up. But I think that there will be alts that. That will have alt seasons and will perform well.
- [33:38]
C
I agree, Scott. I was joking. But you know, that's always the. That's always the other shoe that drops. Whenever we have this conversation about getting. With bitcoin being sideways is alts are cooked.
- [33:49]
G
Carlo, can I bounce in here? When you talk about alts, the first thing I think about is bit.
- [33:54]
B
This space was downloaded via spaces down.com visit to download your spaces today.
- [34:00]
G
It went public four days ago. 23, $22. It peaked at 24. I think the average, I think it went public 18.
- [34:09]
A
Gary.
- [34:10]
G
Yeah, yeah, yeah bro. We're at 1333 today, two days later.
- [34:15]
B
Okay.
- [34:15]
G
Went public on Thursday of last week. We are at 1333. Lost 30% of its value in three days. That's an alt market. This is what's happening guys. The alt market is being destroyed by these public entities. It's going to suck every dollar out of the alt market. This is really concerning to me. If it continues to suck Ethereum, I don't know how bitcoin does well in the next two or three years. Ethereum has to do something. It's too much money. It's going to move back into the other, other assets. And nobody wants the crypto Bros. Altcoin market anymore. They want services, products, some kind of future income stream they can think of. And there's Bitco, 33% decline in 8. Like that's crazy. In fairness, it's not 33, it's 10 decline. No, it's more than that. They went at 80. 18. You've lost $5. So you've lost 30% of your value on the IPO. I'll be quiet.
- [35:18]
A
Just. Yeah, I found the tweet above but Gary, I've pinned this tweet above. I've said this a third thousand times. I think I was the first person calling, you know, from circle, going public to saying that that was our alt season bye bye to altcoins. But it continues. The real money is still in public markets and we have enough ways to get crypto exposure in public markets. I mean the old alt seasons looked like the charts of treasury companies, right? One massive pump and then a Christmas tree down the other side. Even when people think about alt season, they think about it wrong. I think with a kind of the same view you give like a psycho ex girlfriend that you now want back years later. Like it was only for a couple, it was only for a couple weeks or months at any given time and all of them ended up going way back down.
- [36:03]
C
You know too Scott, it almost seems to be the strategy that you never buy at the IPO price. We learned it with Coinbase, we learned it with Circle. You wait for that 50% massive correction and then maybe you consider at that point making a move. But buying just on an IPO lately has proven to be a disastrous trade.
- [36:25]
A
It took me so many years to get even on Coinbase and that was only because I just averaged down the whole way. Brutal, though. Absolutely. A brutal, brutal process. But Gary, I think that that's the right point is that the altcoin money is in public markets. I just like to. Maybe it's this despair that we all have is the signal for alt season being immin. But I feel like we've had this despair for four years and there's still been no alt season. So probably not a very good signal. I mean, I don't know if anybody here can think in their mind.
- [37:01]
G
I don't see how we're ever going to have an alt season. I. I just don't see it there. The. And by the way, I'm not sure you're going to have a bitcoin season because the rhetoric now is going to be, look what Silver's doing. The only way you can buy bitcoin is self custody. Guys, that's a bad pitch for us, okay? That is not a good pitch. The silver and gold guys just go, hey, buy this. Buy, buy, buy whatever you can buy, buy it. Right? Constraining this money to 1212 phrases is lunacy. I know that I'm going to create a lot of haters, but if we want demand here, like just notice what's happening, okay? People are buying paper. They don't care. Okay? It's an easy instrument to carry. And then you start adding complexity. Hey, 12 seed phrases and all this stuff, it's. I know it's a, great, you know, escape valve and it's a, you know, go pack kind of strategy, but it's not helping adoption. My lawyer is never going to self custody, dude. And the more you talk to him about it, the more he's going to.
- [38:08]
D
Find it irritating and scary. Right? Most people are terrified. Yeah.
- [38:12]
G
By the way, the stats, Robert, we lost 3 million coins, okay, in self custody. So like the stats aren't good for self custody. It hasn't been sold well, hasn't been received well. And they, you know, it technically it seems like people are pretty poorly equipped to handle it. I mean, and it's killing our market, dude.
- [38:32]
B
It's like killing our market under understand. I mean, I. That's why it's literally why I wrote a quick article. I think just reposted it again. I. I don't know how to post in the nest here, you know, called the path to bitcoin adoption. I mean, look, self custody today the technology is the U ui, ux. The user experience absolutely sucks balls. I mean, how many people here on this panel every time they have to update their ledger now yes, you have it backed up. You have your seed phrases, whatever, don't, don't, don't have their heart in their mouth. I mean, come on, you know, it's like, oh my God, I have a ledger wallet, I have to update the software. What the hell is going to happen? That cannot be the foundation for a financial system. Sorry, just absolutely can't. And I'm not blaming ledger and I'm not blaming Trezor, I'm not blaming whatever, but it literally will never be, you know that. And you know, because of that, you know, that is by far, you know, I don't have a whole lot of, you know, in, of wealth in, in wallets because at the end of the day I'm not going to have a significant amount of my wealth in something that I, I may have to go, I don't know what will happen. And, and that's a big deal. You know, look, every time I get on the bitcoin today spaces and I hear people saying if it's, you know, not your keys, not your coins, it's not real, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they don't understand a simple thing, which I've been teaching, I taught my kids and I raised all of them this way, that the most important thing in life is optionality. The fact that bitcoin has the optionality to be self custody is important. So what Robert said earlier in this conversation matters. But the fact that it doesn't need to be is also important people, you know, Aunt Minnie in Minnesota, I probably shouldn't use Minnesota as whatever, but you know, Aunt Minnie doesn't care. She wants to be able to be exposed to the financial aspects of assets and you have to be able to have both. And it has to be, it literally has to be that way. And we need, and that's why things like not to bring it back to politics. But clarity is important. There are a lot of developers out there, a lot of companies out there who want to offer products and services around Bitcoin to fix these problems.
- [40:44]
C
I think the prudent approach. Dave, if I may. You bring up excellent points. And the problem is people are scared that in a situation where there is a massive demand to exit your liquidity from exchanges. You don't want to be caught in a situation where that's the moment where you're trying to understand and learn self custody. Because the number one rule of self custody is you should never rush, you should never do things out of a sense of urgency. So yeah, you should diversify. It's not A bad strategy to balance your assets between self custody and exchanges based on your comfort level. But to, to not have a strategy for self custody is also dangerous because when you need self custody is not the time that you want to be scrambling to try to create self custody. So you, you've got to have a plan and you've got to have obviously a level of comfort in holding in self custody because you're absolutely, absolutely right. It comes with cold sweats, sleepless nights and worries about what in the chain could go wrong. And these are all definitely things we all have to consider. But there's merit to exchanges and there's merits to self custody. You just don't want to be scrambling at the 11th hour if you have a quote bank run and trying to figure out how the hell do I get my bitcoin into self custody now.
- [42:08]
B
Absolutely. Look, it's all about optionality and it's all about growth. Anyway, you know, bit petro, you and I have been on a bunch of spaces together. You asked to come up. I mean, is it on this topic or something else?
- [42:20]
F
No, it's on the topic. And I also want to touch a little bit on Gary's point of self custody and adoption as a problem because what's, what's actually kind of interesting is that when I was doing humanitarian work on the border of Colombia and Venezuela back in 2017, 2018 with Bitcoin and crypto, Bitcoin back then was very difficult to work with because of the high fee environment. So if you're giving a refugee $5 and if $3 go to the, goes towards a transaction fee, whether it be on Ethereum or Bitcoin, it makes no damn sense.
- [42:54]
B
Right.
- [42:54]
F
And so we were using, back then that lightning wasn't a thing and we were using Bitcoin to basically give refugees $5 of food or medicine. Overwhelmingly the lesson that we learned is that what these people need is access, not with self custodial solutions. Even though the most compelling freedom oriented narrative that we gave them was that you could hold all of your money in 12 words in your head. Ultimately the bigger rub was what do I do with this crap once I have it? And if it's in my head, how do I give it to somebody else? Right. And so when it comes down to the regular person actually needing these to use Bitcoin from, from the perspective of actual use, then yeah, you're going to have to rely on much better UI ux. Part of our problem is that the UI UX is very, very difficult. I mean it's very unnerving for a lot of people. And you can try and go about the way of telling them about, you know, seed security and all of that, but at the end of the day, the majority of humans are not ready to have that level of responsibility, nor do they want it. They want daddy to hold them tight. And so at the end of the day, that's, that's part of what we're seeing here. We're seeing the maturation of the, of the consumer saying, hey, I want the safer product. And when you are in a particular situation where there is uncertainty and fear in the general market, the first thing that's going to, to signal that is going to be energy. And we saw that very, very clearly. Oil capitulated hard compared to where we were at. So did, so did gas. Gas just took a recent rise because of this, this winter storm. But watch out, at the end of this winter storm, gas is going to plummet. It gonna be ugly. So if we're seeing general markets spooking, you can expect that that spooking is going to continue, especially in the most liquid markets. And the more liquid you are globally 24 hour, the more likely you're going to be the panic button. So when you are the panic button and you are the easiest panic button with the most liquidity globally, guess what's going to happen to your price? I mean, I think this is the general, like idea that a lot of the bitcoin maxis are like, you're being a doomer. It's like, no, it's not being a doomer. It's realizing that bitcoin cannot escape the gravity well of liquidity and that M2 and probably fed net liquidity is the thing that moves bitcoin the most because it moves everything else the most.
- [45:42]
D
Well, but we've had bank reserves going up by $200 billion over the past two months. And you've had bitcoin go down.
- [45:49]
F
But that's not liquidity hitting. That's not liquidity hitting bitcoin in the time of growth. That's bitcoin. That's liquidity hitting bitcoin in a time of fear. And in a time of fear, you're in a different, you're in a different psychological regime. People are going for safety. People are going for the asset that they can store completely unplugged. And the funny part is that's a argument because it's all paper. So it's not really the gold you're keeping in your safe. But mentally that's what they're at, they're at like shiny rock I can put in my. I can. I can bury in the yard and I don't need electricity to run it. But that's not system money.
- [46:23]
D
They're selling their bitcoin for dollars. What does that tell you? You know, it's like we're supposed to. If you look at the DXY correlation with bitcoin, it's like, terrifying. Bitcoin has basically been trading in line with a positive correlation to Dixie. Right? People like bitcoin has become. This is why I've been saying for like 18 months, look, if you believe in the coming kind of multipolar, not war, but reordering, if you believe that China is going to win, you should get gold. If you believe the US Is going to win, you should get bitcoin. The west is show. Or at least the US has chosen bitcoin and the east has chosen gold. Pick your horse.
- [47:03]
F
I 100% agree with that.
- [47:05]
D
Yeah, I 100% agree with the.
- [47:07]
G
Take that.
- [47:07]
F
That the United States is going to be using bitcoin as the last geopolitical power lover that it's got left to pull because it gave up the energy one to China. The amount of. Of power generation that China has is astounding people. And we're nowhere near that. So I think that's. That's honestly the biggest, like, lesson here is that, like, if. If you are betting on somebody on now, I guess we're. Because here's the thing, guys, like, I served in the military. I have a lot of friends in. They're terrified of this new Ukraine warfare that has arrived that has come out because it proves that the militaries of old are pretty much useless. Like, you can't have capital ships anymore. They get sunk either by hypersonics or by drones. So all of a sudden, like, what really matters is your ability to produce, not your ability to have had produced.
- [48:13]
A
Hey, guys, great conversation, but I want to move on. I personally had invited Mauricio up. We've been having him on for a very long time. And I wanted to kind of, because I thought it would be a down day to talk about what's happening in the lending market. And I want to be, you know, respectful of his time since I specifically asked him to come and spend about 50 or 20 minutes. Mauricio, you would have loved the conversation today, though.
- [48:35]
B
Hey, I just want to make one quick point and. Because obviously, you know, I already plugged Mauricio on our earlier show. So glad to see you up Here, dude. And that is when you talk. Someone mentioned natural gas. Understand, the natural gas market is smaller than the bitcoin trading market, but it's still pretty sizable. It has moved in the last week. In a week it has moved 60%. That's 6, 0. So, you know, understand moves in large assets can in fact happen much more rapidly than you than you think. I mean, it was languishing down. It had been collapsing.
- [49:11]
G
David, this is all demand driven. Okay? This is. I'm aware people are freaking out on storage. They're freaking about, hey, what happens when the pipes blow and we do force majeure. So, I mean, I've seen this a thousand times. It won't last.
- [49:26]
B
No, of course it won't last. My point is that. My point is that trading changes very fast. And so I'm not saying it will happen very fast. When things change in the markets that people are morose about, they will change in a hurry. And moves can happen much faster than you think. It could go years, as you say, without it. Anyway, Maurizio, sorry to interrupt. I just want to make that point.
- [49:53]
H
No worries, guys. Thanks for having me again. And yeah, sorry I missed the first little bit. I was traveling all weekend and I had a busy morning so I couldn't join the first hour. But yeah, happy to chat.
- [50:07]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to just kind of dive in, obviously to Lenin specifically, because I thought it would be a great time to do that, especially after the last year's close. I mean, I think you guys did a couple billion, 1.4, 1.5 billion in loans last year. And I just want to kind of talk about what that environment looks like moving forward. I mean, maybe you know, a recap of sort of 25 and what it looks like in 26 now that we have the cities and JP Morgan's entering the bitcoin lending space.
- [50:36]
H
Definitely, yeah. So I would say 2025 was the best year in the history of our business. And I think that speaks volumes. I mean that. And based on our estimates, we believe 1 in 3 of every Bitcoin backed loan worldwide is done at leadn. And so by having the breadth of coverage that we have, we get to see trends across the industry. Different countries, different cultures. Actually, I did see among the things that I saw last year was explosive growth overall around this concept of not selling your bitcoin borrowing against your bitcoin. If you recall, we entered 2025 with the crypto ball and kind of a consensus view that bitcoin was going to go up and to the right throughout all year. And I think that drove a lot of the behavior that you saw throughout the year. Because there was pretty much an expectation, I think in the market that bitcoin was going to end the year in, call it 150 to 250, was sort of the consensus everywhere you asked, across the board would give you, you know, obviously new all time highs. There was very little, bud, I would say, around, you know, bitcoin trading sideways or even going down. And I think that's what led to so much of the frustration towards the end of the year after we made that all time high in October. You know, I think that there will be, you know, if you look at the sentiment, right, comparing sentiment last year to the start of this year, it's almost the complete opposite, right. You know, I met so many people. I was just at a conference this weekend. I met a bunch of our clients over the weekend as well. And, you know, people are there. People are still the hardcore people, the believers, they're still there. But the sort of retail interest and the broader, you know, I would say curiosity from the overall market is not in bitcoin right now. It's in precious metals. Right? Like everybody's talking, everybody wants in precious metals. Everybody wants to talk about what's your gold strategy, how much gold you had. I was coming in at the customs office yesterday and the guy that was admitting me into Cayman again was bragging about how much gold and silver they had bought. So I do think that the gold and silver, I'm starting to get social markers that that one might be a little bit overdone at the moment. Just again, anecdotally, nothing scientific about that, but I do think that the mood this year, it is a bit different. And obviously people, their belief on what price expectations will do in some ways drives the demand for or the desire to not sell your bitcoin. So in a market like 2025, you have both the people that already have bitcoin and have held it for a long time, they don't want to sell it. A lot of times they want to reinvest it. They're bullish on bitcoin, so they're growing their businesses. And so that drives flow from the sort of core industry participants that are always here. And then you also get the tourists, right? Like tourists, meaning people that got curious, got excited about the news, the momentum, the coverage on the media, and they bought some bitcoin and they want to take a loan to buy MSTR or another type of bitcoin project or Bitcoin related equity. But I think right now you're seeing the industry people are still here, the bitcoiners are still here. People that live on a bitcoin standard still don't want to sell their bitcoin and they're still coming to Leaden. But I do see a big uptick in new clients and new loans generated when the price moves higher. Yeah, but yeah, maybe I'll pause there.
- [54:16]
A
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. But I guess with all these banks CFTC is approving Bitcoin eth, I think USDC as collateral. I mean as a general just observation, how much do you think that this is improving access to financing globally and how much are you servicing out outside the United States or how much are people outside the United States, I guess looking for these products?
- [54:42]
H
Yeah, I would say our business is about, I want to say 55% rest of the world, 45% US. So it's almost a 50, 50 split in terms of the activity or the coverage across the GEOs. I think actually some of this Scott, comes down to culture, right? Like I think America has understood these loans a lot faster than other cultures because America has basically historically been used to operating with credit, right? In America you're born and you almost, it's a God given right to get credit. If you look at, if you look at a list of how to move to America and have a successful life, the number one or number two item on the list is build your credit. Right? And so America understands credit a lot better and more intimately than I would say even European culture, Latam or any other emerging market. And I think that leads to them feeling a lot more comfortable using these types of products. I think the other thing that I will say as bigger players are coming into the space is we are seeing the cost of capital come down and that is flowing down to our loans. We dropped our rates by 50 basis points in December. So we're at 11.9% for the headline loans up to $250,000. And then above that we can custom do custom rates as well. That's definitely improving and I think that's going to be a trend that will continue into 2026 because the banks and larger financial players, I mean the cat's out of the bag that financing bitcoin backed loans is a great risk return especially at current rates. And so I do expect to see more capital flow into the space. We do have some really exciting news around that front but I can't jump the gun just yet. But do keep a closer eye on Leden in the weeks and months to come because we do have some, we have a jam packed product roadmap for this year and some of it given that we are in the space of loans and capital. A lot of the innovation that Leden does is actually on the back end and on the structuring of these financing agreements that allow us to hold Bitcoin more safely for our clients. We keep elevating the bar on proof of reserves and we're also given the cleanliness of our model, given our track record and our simplicity, we want to drive that. We believe we have a moat in terms of size and experience and we're going to use that to lower our rates and try to get as many people to discover Bitcoin backed loans and use us if they ever want to access one.
- [57:30]
A
How do you think people are primarily using these? I mean I know I've seen stories about college, retirement, a lot of people obviously doing it. Instead of mortgages, are they lifestyle loans? You know, I mean how are people approaching these?
- [57:42]
H
Yeah, great question. So I would say about 30% of these loans are going to people that are buying either more digital assets or some type of bitcoin security instrument. So they are reinvesting the loan proceeds into more bitcoin like exposure. I would say about 30% of our clients do that. Another 30%, which is another big bucket, is to purchase real estate. And so many people are very bitcoin rich, but they go to the mortgage, they go to the bank to try to get a mortgage and the bank says your income doesn't qualify. You have a million, you know, you have millions of dollars in assets but you don't have any after tax income or if you have a business, you're not paying yourself enough, et cetera. And so they have a lot of bitcoin and wealth but they cannot get the house of their dreams or the financing for the house of their dreams. They don't want to sell their bitcoin to buy it. So they come to let in get a loan and buy the house. And so that's about another, I want to say 30%. So we're at 60, I would say another 20%. And this one is the one that I think is growing the fastest right now. And I expect this segment to grow quite a bit in 2026. Is businesses. So many, many businesses are onboarding to led in. They have and these are private businesses. We service public companies as well. But by and large we're seeing a lot more small to medium sized businesses that are run by bitcoiners. They have bitcoin on their balance sheet and they want to grow the business and they take a loan from us.
- [59:13]
B
To.
- [59:16]
H
Build a gym or build a studio. There's a very, very cool use case that we're going to be revealing in another very inspiring business that we're going to be revealing at the Plan B conference this weekend. So I'll chat with you about that when that goes live. But we're seeing increasingly more businesses use lent to finance their operations and their growth. And then the last 20% would be, I would say lifestyle. So these are people that are paying for a car, vacations, a computer, et cetera.
- [59:46]
A
So obviously there's been an emerging use case of an old narrative in places like Venezuela or around the world where they have hyperinflation. Those places people I would imagine are spending tethers or stable coins I should say not non specific, but is there a way that you kind of bridge saving in bitcoin and borrowing to then spend in USD and to entirely avoid the local currency?
- [60:12]
H
Definitely. So there's a lot of that. The other side of the bitcoin back loan business is of course course we issue dollar loans backed by bitcoin but we also borrow dollars from either institutions or people in eligible markets can deposit into let in their tether or their USDC and they can earn a great return. Right now we're paying 6 and a half percent APY on balances up to 100,000 and 8% on balances over 100,000. So people in places like Venezuela many times use leden to park their idle tether or to park their idle USDC. It's an open account. It takes 50 minutes to start earning interest in 15 minutes when you want to take it out. So it's pretty practical in that sense. And people do use us in many ways as their savings account for their dollar digital dollars. We don't have a wallet per se. So Lennon is not the place that you kind of pay your bills out of or spend out of, but it's where you manage your wealth. And increasingly we're seeing more and more people use that account to park smaller balances. We do have foundations and other institutions that park size because it's a great our loans go out to only our bitcoin backed loan borrowers. Those loans are backed two to one and we've never had a loan loss. And so getting the ability to earn 6.5% to 8% on those dollars with that risk return and Getting proof of reserves every month. It's a pretty compelling proposition. And I actually, I'm pretty optimistic about the growth of that side of the business, which will also help our loans because as that account grows more and more, we get obviously access to more capital. We have more, you know, as the, as the loans from institutions that we can get, those rates drop. We'll be able to improve or drop rates as well on the funding side, obviously, as the market allows. But that means that you're always getting a great return with a very, very low risk as a dollar savings or dollar earner. And you're getting the best value proposition, risk return and best cost of capital. If you're a bitcoin backed loan, borrow.
- [62:30]
A
Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. That's exactly how I'd anticipate that people will be using those in those situations. I saw a quote recently from a comment from Palo Arduino, obviously this CEO of Tether, saying that he thinks that the next wave for stable coins and bitcoin back credit, I guess, will be kind of the small and medium business world. Do you expect that we're going to actually see that? And can they afford, I guess, or why would they pick, you know, floating rates? But you guys, it's sometimes 12%, right?
- [63:04]
H
Yes. So I agree. Paulo and I chatted about this on the podcast we did when we announced their Tether's investment into Lenin and I coincide with him. I do believe that if you look at the person who is using Bitcoin backloads, these people are, broadly speaking, sophisticated investors that are looking to protect and store their wealth. These people are not gambling on altcoins and different places. And so I think if you look at that Persona, the Persona is that of a person that is building slow and steady and is not gambling. They're working and they're very disciplined about their operations and about their investment philosophy. And if you look at who those people are, these are individuals who are, you know, likely have been successful. And these individuals many times run businesses or have key roles within businesses. And so if you think about a business, the, the a business has to. A business cannot allow for its treasury to get decapitalized. It'll die. Right. And this is the sort of Michael Saylor thesis. And Michael is not alone in that thesis. Right. Again, there's a lot of digital asset treasury companies trying to use Bitcoin on their balance sheet as some form of financial engineering. But by and large that's not the primary use case across smaller and medium businesses because they don't have access to bond markets, et cetera. These people predominantly are using Bitcoin on their balance sheet to protect their wealth from being debased. And businesses are also in the business of growing and they need to expand. And a lot of times, if you can turn that treasury balance into productive capital while keeping the upside exposure and doing it in a tax efficient way, that would be. Lennon is a bit of a shoe in for that. Because if you're running a business and you're taking the loan to grow the business, there are situations where you can write off the interest expense from the loan against the revenues of the business and that makes it even more tax efficient. So I do completely expect businesses, small, medium businesses, to adopt more Bitcoin and more Bitcoin backed loans.
- [65:32]
A
Try to get the mic button on, as is always the case here. So, yeah, that really, really interesting. So I kind of want to talk about, I guess finally, still kind of your 2026 predictions, how this market will sort of evolve and if you think that these can start to eat a significant portion, I guess, of traditional lending and when that would happen.
- [65:58]
H
Yeah. So maybe I'll talk to you briefly about my view on the market. I think last year, in hindsight, if you go back a year and you think about where we were, Trump had just gotten elected, we had the crypto ball, there was consensus that we were going up into the right Trump coin launch, Melania Coin launched soon after, and then there was a flurry of treasury companies. And again, the trade back then, in hindsight felt really crowded. Right. Like if you asked a room of people who thinks bitcoin's going down after Trump got elected and they installed the crypto czar, nobody would have put their hand up. Right. Whereas now I see a very different scenario.
- [66:44]
B
Right.
- [66:45]
H
I see people sort of down. There's a bit of infighting even within the, even within bitcoin Twitter, which is typically a sign that, you know, the, there's discontent in the market and price action. So generally speaking, I think that's good for price action because there's people that have taken risk off the table that have kind of rage, quit, sold off their bitcoin. And that means that those are the same people that are going to have to be chasing once the narrative comes back to bitcoin. So I actually feel better about the potential of price appreciation this year than I did last year based on narrative and obviously macro. A few things have to go right on the macro side, but I feel better about price this year than I did last Year. And the second one on your topic about how much of this is going to eat traditional lending. I had a really interesting conversation with a business owner this weekend who was asking me about bitcoin back loans and she said that she was nervous about taking a small business loan because she didn't want to provide a personal guarantee. She was very nervous that if something went wrong, she would lose her house. And again, I think another reason why business loans are going to become more and more a part of Len and businesses will, will run to bitcoin back loans more and more is because at Lennon, your bitcoin is your collateral. There is no risk that, that you're going to lose your house over a bitcoin back loan. So as a business, it's a really great way of limiting your personal liability if you structure it through a bitcoin back loan. And again, these are the criteria on the margins that more and more people are starting to understand. And once you do that, bitcoin back loans make increasingly more sense as a tool to get financing. And I think again, as more banks, more institutions start coming out with bitcoin backed loans, people will spend more time trying to understand them. And once they can appreciate the nuances and how these can be beneficial to them, you are going to see more and more people use them.
- [68:54]
A
Anything I might have missed before I let you go?
- [68:58]
H
Well, no, I mean I missed the conversation. You guys probably talked about this at length during the show, but this is a big week coming up. We have a very interesting meeting tomorrow between the SEC and the cftc. It's a harmonization meeting for crypto regulation. So I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of that. And then there's a Senate business meeting to consider the Digital Commodities Intermediaries Act. So a lot of implications for the industry from that piece of legislation. So I'm following that pretty closely. And we have three interest rate decisions, but they're all sitting that they're going to hold. So yeah, I'm just looking at hopefully the potential rotation out of gold and just paying attention to these legislations.
- [69:44]
A
You, like us, are beholden to the macro and legislative news agenda.
- [69:52]
H
Hard not to lose.
- [69:53]
G
What a world.
- [69:54]
A
You remember when we could just talk about bitcoin was cool and nobody cared. So much fun. Well, that was amazing. Dave, any final thoughts before we wrap? I know we're about 15 minutes over, but I love taking Mao's time when we have.
- [70:08]
B
Welcome to to Smelter Town hall again tomorrow.
- [70:13]
A
Smelter Town, if I may real quick.
- [70:15]
D
I want to ask Mauricio a question.
- [70:17]
F
Mauricio, can you.
- [70:18]
B
Can you talk to us about.
- [70:23]
D
But you. As far as, like, you know.
- [70:30]
B
Sorry. Can you hear me? Okay, one more time because we couldn't hear you. You broke up. How about now?
- [70:37]
F
Can you guys hear me now?
- [70:39]
B
Can you hear me?
- [70:39]
A
Not really. Not really. Super quiet. All right, we're gonna go ahead and wrap. I'm sorry, but we're way over time. I can't hear anything now.
- [70:48]
B
Yeah, you're breaking up. Sorry. Technical glitches, dude.
- [70:54]
H
All right, send me a note. Happy to chat.
- [70:58]
A
Yeah, perfect.
- [70:59]
B
Okay.
- [70:59]
A
All right, guys. Well, thank you. We'll be back tomorrow for another smelting. Silver Town hall crypto. Town Hall, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Especially to Mauricio. Guys, check out. Give him a follow. And obviously, check out. Leden really is the future. Thanks, everyone.
- [71:14]
H
Bye.