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- [00:02]
A
Bitcoin is continuing to trade sideways on the brink of a big move. The question, of course, is whether it's going to be up or down. But all of this happening while we're getting some information that the Clarity act could be closer to finally being passed. But it seems like it's probably clarity for banks, and the crypto industry actually is going to want nothing to do with the final product when it is passed. Good news. We're being gaslit once again, much like the Inflation Reduction Act. It seems like this is just clarity for banks. At the same time, we know that everything is about to be tokenized. We're seeing huge moves from Intercontinental Exchange, nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange towards making everything faster, cheaper, and on blockchain rails. The big question is, will we actually be able to capitalize on that as investors? We're going to unpack this and everything else right now with Andrew Tillman and special guest Marcus Thielen from 10X Research. Let's go.
- [00:57]
B
Let's go.
- [01:12]
A
Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday and welcome to Space, where we only drink lacroix exclusively because they are my newest sponsor. This delicious lime flavor. I am not sponsored by LaCroix, but I will. It's gonna happen. I'm gonna go ahead and bring on the guests now. We've got Marcus, Andrew and Tillman. Welcome to space, gentlemen. I noticed that neither. None of you are in space.
- [01:34]
C
No.
- [01:35]
A
You could have been in space. We gotta get some green screens.
- [01:38]
C
Yeah.
- [01:40]
A
Feels like we're all in Space at the moment. To be quite honest, if I read the news every morning, I think I'd rather be on my way to Mars or in Project Hail Mary or whatever the new cool thing is with the kids. All right, let's start. So first of all, let's talk about the market. I haven't even honestly bothered to look because I find it just so boring. But bitcoin, I'm going to guess, is at $71,000. It is $71,023. Marcus, you're looking at this stuff all day. What's going on with the market? Are we just beholden to Trump truths, or is there actually something here that could get us excited?
- [02:14]
D
No, I think the interesting aspect is really that bitcoin itself has been not volatile at all. Right. We would have expected a lot of downside pressure, but it seems really that the market is hanging in. Everybody who needed to sell has sold. Everybody who, you know, had to sold. Had to sell, you know, was liquidated basically weeks ago. But over the last kind of like two, three weeks and not a lot of stuff has happened. And I think that's kind of like, you know, reflects that, you know, volumes are very low, futures positioning is very low, but volatility keeps on going, you know, up here and there right on these like, you know, news announcements. So I think there's a chance to make money by, you know, selling some puts, selling some calls. Right. We're trading in a range and volatility is still quite high. Right. You know, we saw volatility pumping to like you know, 60, 65% last week. So. And usually we only got 50. Right. So that's kind of like for, I guess more, you know, advanced people to, you know, to really take some money out of the market. But really we have an option expiry that is quite huge on Friday and that's why we have sort of like been pinned around this, you know, 70, 71k here. I think, you know, after Friday we're probably going to see a lot more volatility in bitcoin. But you know, we have to go through the expiry and then we see where we're going to be.
- [03:31]
A
Yeah, I mean, do you see any future catalysts outside of macro driven headlines that could possibly sort of cause bitcoin to make a decision and go either way?
- [03:41]
D
I mean, unfortunately not. Right. I mean, positioning is very light, so it's, it's going to be very difficult to really push bitcoin down a lot, which I don't think is going to happen. If we're going to go lower because of the geopolitical risk events, we're going to go gradually lower but we're not going to have like a 10% move as we, you know, as we've seen in previous cycles or you know, a couple of months ago. So if lower then more gradual move because there's not a lot of money coming into the market. Right. As you said, there's no real catalyst. You know, USDC actually had something like $8 billion of inflow over the last month. So that's kind of positive. Also February has seen around I think like $26 billion of outflows, which is kind of like, you know, we can compare it actually to June 2022 basically when three arrows, you know, when went under. And then of course we bumped around a little bit. Yes, we went down sort of like 20% low over the next couple of months, but we didn't really gap down lower anymore. And I think that's very comparable because we had huge outflows in February with around like $26 billion leaving Bitcoin. And this month I think we have around like 4 billion only outflows. So outflows have notably slowed and I think that's why the downside is actually fairly limited here. Right. Maybe you go down, test the 60k again, but you know, a lot below. I don't think we're going to be going to do that.
- [05:04]
A
Yeah, I think that's the silver lining in what I'm hearing is that, I mean we are getting bad news headlines, we are having all these macro driven things and bitcoin just kind of doing nothing. And over the past six months those would have been 5% down days. I think now you get a 1% or 2% down day and then you get a bounce. And it does seem like the massive sellers have effectively left the market. So there may not be demand yet, but all we need is a spark of demand in. The sellers are seemingly disinterested.
- [05:31]
D
Well, I think when you look in previous cycles, bitcoin never really bottomed out on massive volume. That's usually for the equity market where there's a big event and then the central bankers have to step in, provide liquidity. But bitcoin is usually it dies down, there's a slow moment and then it starts to rise again. Because at that point it only takes a little bit of money to ignite it a little bit. And I think that's kind of like what we've seen in the previous cycle in 2022. And I would also actually make an argument because back then we had this inflation spike and once inflation peaked, bitcoin started to suddenly rally. And I think that might actually be the case here as well. So maybe the higher inflation that we're seeing now with all prices that the market is pricing in is actually a good thing for bitcoin.
- [06:21]
A
Andrew Tillman comments on the market or you want to move on to stablecoins and the Clarity Act?
- [06:26]
B
Well, I'll just add my two cents. You know, I think we've said this a couple of times before, but people are just emotional traders these days. There's just like Marcus said, there's very little money needed to move markets and there's so many markets that you can choose from and there's only getting more. You know, if you look at just the tokenized oil play that people started to participate in through Coinbase, you're talking about over $1 billion traded in. I think the second day of its offering. There's just a lot of sizzle out there. And Very little stake. So everybody's chasing kind of what they hear and what could be the next big move. And that, I don't know how that affects Bitcoin long term. I do suspect that hurts it from a competition perspective because more people understand traditional commodities than they do bitcoin for ex. But I also believe that a rising tide floats all ships and the more tokenized everything becomes, the more of a backbone Bitcoin becomes as the first and only, you know, fairly and equitably distributed asset or token. So I think that it's, I think it's a longer play. I think we, we have a lot to sort out as a market and I do see a lot of headlines right now as it pertains to like Rails being integrated. I saw that. I think Securitize and ICE did a deal. They're combining their Rails. ICE also did a deal with OkX. You know, if you saw that Ripple is doing open road, like all of these interconnected exchanges are looking at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is they want to offer everything to everyone, including prediction markets. Prediction markets now have kind of taken the headline in our space as kind of something that everyone's heart harping on and focusing on. And I don't, I don't think that's just a money grab, honestly. I think it's the, the future of finance, which is you go to a, an exchange of your choice and you literally have interconnected markets across the globe through the tokenized efforts. So I, I think we're, we're fleshing that out right now. It's going to take a little bit of time.
- [08:45]
A
Exchange deal with New York Stock Exchange was securitized to build a platform where stocksy trades blockchain tokens around the clock. I mean at this point these like news, there's such big headlines, but they're just rounding errors because we know it's coming, right? I mean the DCC has already said they're going to do it. They have 4 quadrillion in transactions a year. So we know everybody's going tokenized. Whether we can benefit from that, I have no idea.
- [09:07]
C
Crypto is having its Finkel and Einhorn moment. Okay, Finkel and Einhorn, Finkel and Einhorn. And the reason why it's Einhorn is a man. Moment where crypto and tradfi are becoming as quickly as possible. They're, they're just becoming the same thing, right? So tradfi is co opting as much of, of the crypto stuff that they like as quickly as possible. So tokenization in 247 trading is the, the, the thing that everybody wants to talk about in, in tradfi right now. Which by the way, securitize and the NYSE hooking up to, to do some stuff. Anybody want to Guess who handles BlackRock's Biddle portfolio? Oh, it's securitized. So, you know, again, Finkel and Einhorn, we are, we are turning ourselves into. You know, there's a, there's a, there's a decent portion of people in crypto that hate this reality that, you know, traditional finance and Wall street is, is basically eating everything that's good about crypto. But at the same time it just kind of is what it is. It's, it's the new reality. And so you can either decide to profit from it in a meaningful way over the next, you know, two, three, five years, or you can be sour about it and not profit from it because there is going to be a massive, massive leg higher here over the next, let's just call it 18 to 36 months. Because of all this activity happening in a bear market. It will bear fruit. Without question. It will bear fruit. And the scale available to people in crypto is, you know, 10 to 50 Xing as we speak. And the way that people trade, the way that people engage with markets is being revolutionized right now, just right now is, is what's happening. And so there will be moments, there will be flashpoints where asset prices associated with what we've known to be associated with crypto for a long time are going to explode. They just will. And will you be there for it or will you have gotten too bored and gone somewhere else? Which, by the way, take a look at the kind of main characters, let's call it crypto. Crypto. Twitter, you know, two, two and a half years ago. Anybody heard from Ansom lately? That guy's posted anything that, I mean, that guy was the main character for like a year, right? He's, he's the one.
- [12:04]
A
Ventura. Have you ever seen Ace Ventura, Pet Detective? No.
- [12:08]
B
I take it as a no.
- [12:13]
A
And I figure there's people out here just don't know the movie. It was a movie reference. It's the greatest movie of all time.
- [12:17]
D
Most quotable adventures. Yeah, that's like 30 years ago.
- [12:23]
A
Yes,
- [12:28]
D
But I think it's important to point out that, you know, every bitcoin bull market was actually very different. Right. There's not a playbook we're going to copy. You know, like when we look at, you know, it's not just the last one, you know, the DeFi one. DeFi Summer one, right. NFT ones, right. It's not the. The ICO ones, you know, it's not, you know, the ones, you know, the 2013, which was driven by China and, you know, the European debt crisis in China specifically. So I think each market is really different, right? Each bull market is different. So it's not really like a playbook that we can just like, copy. And I think that's why, I think it's interesting that you mentioned this, that actually each bull market had different people, right? Different kind of like super promoters, right? Because you have to just adjust, right? And I think that's really the key thing, to just stay in the game, adjust, have a seat at the table, and then see how the market evolves, right? And then as Andrew said, you. You just jump on this new thing and it's okay if we, you know, if you're going into prediction markets, if we trade suddenly oil, you know, tokenized oil, I mean, you know, just really go with the flow. I think when you look at all these other industries, I mean, do you want to go back to, I don't know, to tradfi banking or anything else? I mean, this, you know, this thing here evolves every two to three years in totally different way. And I think there's so much to learn. And again, it's technology, and technology keeps on evolving. I mean, that's why I don't want to be anywhere else. And, you know, and actually I don't see a lot of people dropping out. I think people are actually sticking around.
- [13:51]
A
So, yeah, I think the people that are dropping out are just the ones who have lost their money. And we're like playing in memes and all coins and are just broke, sadly. Right. But I don't think anyone with conviction has any questions as to the trajectory of this industry. I think the question, though, which I kind of touched on in the beginning, and Andrew, you said, you know, stick around and make a money, a lot of money over the next 18, 36 months. You know, a lot of people are just questioning how they're going to make that money. I think, you know, everybody knows you can sit in Bitcoin and probably make a 2 or 3x, which, by the way, is really good. But I think there's a lot of people in crypto who want those 10 to 100 X's overnight. And as you see the trajectory of Wall street and government adoption, it seems like maybe those opportunities will disappear as they, you know, take advantage of it. For themselves. I mean, you look at the new outline of the Clarity act, which by the way, I still don't think passes. Like it's big news that they're coming to an agreement on stablecoin yield. But we haven't even gotten to defi the ethics clause like any of the things that would actually hold this up. But it's basically no yield. The deal is the banks get to do whatever they want and you don't. So like once again, retail, there is no agreement.
- [14:55]
C
This is just what the White House has decided that they think would be an agreement. The banks haven't weighed in. Well, the banks have weighed in, given the status of the agreement, but the crypto folks haven't weighed in. Like they're just now looking at what the White House has decided to put out. There is no, there's no broad agreement on this overall.
- [15:13]
A
This is a more narrow and restrictive approach towards crypto.
- [15:16]
C
Right.
- [15:16]
A
I mean, it's like the Clarity act, which was supposed to be a crypto act, but it's actually just a way that banks can adopt it without letting crypto be crypto.
- [15:26]
B
Yeah, I think that there's, there's no putting the cat back in the bag, in my opinion. I, I, we had a great conversation with Caitlin Long on your show one time regarding the tokenized banknotes, tokenized bank to bank transfer, cashier's checks, if you will, wire transfer.
- [15:47]
A
She had a huge piece of news, by the way, on that yesterday. Before that there's going to be massively adopted.
- [15:52]
B
Yeah. So my point is, is if we want banks to do it, great, banks will do it. But to think that we're not going to use the technology is just incredibly short sighted in my opinion, because the world is using the technology and the world is bigger than us. And, and so, you know, I've given this analogy before and I really believe it. It hits home pretty hard. It'd be like if we invented the bicycle and the world was using the bicycle and there was a bunch of people that didn't want you using bicycles, so they outlawed bicycles. And yet you see people driving their bikes down the road all the time. You're going, how are they going to stop? And main we can build our own bikes is the point. Bikes are out of the bag, bikes are some here to stay. If you ever need to get from point A to point B and your only opt is walking or a bike, you're going to choose the bike, I promise. The same thing with blockchain is like if you have the option of Choosing blockchain or traditional sets of rails that have massive limitations and huge cost and friction. You're going to always go the least friction route, which is the crypto route. And so I think that, you know, whether we do it through stablecoin issuance or whether we let the banks issue stablecoins, we're going to get there one way or another, is the point. You know, stablecoins will be used in the bank banks to earn yield, I promise you. It just may not be in Coinbase and. Or coinbase will have to be a bank. But those are two distinctions without a difference is my point. We get to the exact same place. Either coinbase Base becomes a bank and then they can issue yield for stable coins that they issue that rep. All of that. It's just semantics, right? The deliverable.
- [17:32]
A
Never gonna let the exchanges become banks and then offer the same product that they themselves are not offering. So I agree that it's semantics. By the way, tell me your. Your audio is great, but you're frozen like this.
- [17:43]
B
That's.
- [17:43]
A
That's.
- [17:43]
B
I planned, I planned that. That was great.
- [17:46]
A
You look great.
- [17:47]
D
But it might not be called yield, it might be called incentives. You know, whatever we're going to call it. But it's definitely going to come for sure.
- [17:54]
A
Yeah, I mean, that was in this, that, that's basically what they're doing. But this seems like it's even negative for Coinbase, who's already offering rewards. This may actually take that, that away. But effectively, I mean, it's just saying that you'll be able to offer no yield on anything that's passive. You can't do anything that looks like interest. But maybe like as a membership, you know, you can get a reward for being a member or something. Well, we know the industry is going to find a way around it. I just find it really interesting that we're wasting our time every single day pretending like the government's going to help the people. I think we have pretty clear evidence that that might not be the case anymore. But you know, Lummis, she did, she did tweet this yield. Yeah, I think that sign is telling you to stop.
- [18:44]
B
Slow your roll.
- [18:45]
D
Yield, yield.
- [18:47]
A
Slow down. You're not getting it. But in the meantime, you know, we do have an amazing op ed here from Atkins and Hester Purce saying that the American people do deserve this clarity. So we know that the regulators, whether legislators do it or not, are going to push forward very hard with this. And I mean, we reported on this, but the SEC and the CFTC have now given us a token taxonomy and a lot of the things that we are kind of looking for anyways from legislation. So maybe we're getting to a point where we're going to outrun the need for this legislation anyways.
- [19:17]
B
Yeah, let my yield accrue into rewards and let me place prop bets and, you know, all sorts of prediction market bets with it. And I'll take that as a value exchange. Again, it's going to happen whether I
- [19:31]
A
literally just did a 10x on prediction markets under whether you were going to unfreeze without your camera off trading. I froze you. Marcus, what do you think?
- [19:50]
D
No, I think, you know, definitely it's gonna, gonna, gonna come. I think there's just all this, like, you know, I hope it's gonna come before, before the summer. I think it's gonna be, you know, tight now with everything because I think we, we had risk of losing an opportunity here. Right. Obviously, you know, if you come into the summer recess and then everything. So I think it's a little bit selfish, I think in the very short term here because I think everybody wants to move on and everybody, I think, needs to make a little sacrifice here and there.
- [20:18]
A
Right.
- [20:19]
D
But I think the bigger scheme, I think now is really the time and I think it needs to be pushed through, I think before September. Otherwise it's going to be tricky. Right. So. But, you know, one way or another, I think there are other countries who might offer something like this and, you know, maybe that's how people have to.
- [20:36]
A
Yeah, just go open a foreign bank account, get that yield. Sweet.
- [20:42]
C
I'd love to be a fly on the wall of, you know, both banking execs as well as the banking lobby and the conversations they have about this because again, they wouldn't push as hard as they're pushing just for the greater good. You know, they clearly have data that shows that when money moves off of their Italy banking platforms and go to exchanges like this and they see the freedom and speed at which they can do things and there's opportunity for yield that's sitting there. It's. It's that that money doesn't come back. It just doesn't come back. It stays at Coinbase, it stays at Gemini, it stays at Kraken, it stays there. It doesn't leave. And no different than when you have a Merrill lynch or a UBS account, once you're on that platform, when you do move your money, you're moving it inside of that account from one asset to another. Right. Like, oh, no, crypto assets are Going down. Well, let me, let me just jump over here to USDC and let it sit for a while and earn three and a half percent yield while I wait. Right. That may be dumb at the time from a trade standpoint, but you're still keeping it on platform. In platform as opposed to, wait, maybe I shouldn't keep it on Coinbase. I'll send it back to JP Morgan. That's just not happening.
- [22:09]
A
Yeah, for a while there you kind of had to, Right, because you didn't have the like everything apps, you know, in Coinbase now from the crypto side obviously, but now we're seeing obviously the Schwab's and the Morgan Stanley's, they don't want you to send your money off to go buy crypto at Coinbase. So they're incorporating all markets. I can see you kind of nodding.
- [22:27]
D
Yeah. I think the interesting aspect is because, you know, a few years ago, of course, all these crypto exchanges, they were offering, you know, $10, $20 for sign up and everything. Right. And we looked into this a little more closely for a commercial bank, right? So if you just, you know, JP Morgan Chase or whatever, you know, as a retail customer, actually the value you have for them, the lifetime value, you know, having account with them, dealing with them, whatever is like 1500 USD. So it's actually massive, Right? So it's exactly as Andrew said. Once you pull the money out, maybe they're losing really like 5, 6, 7, US$800 per customer. Right. So this quickly like adds up and I think that's why they're fighting so hard because you know, it's, I mean we look at all these, you know, apps that we're using, you know, from Robin Hood, I don't know, you look even like FTX was like a great app, right? A lot easier to handle. Like these banking apps that we're using. And I think that's kind of like where kind of the younger people, they're definitely going to say, well, why should I deal with, I don't know if it was bank of America when I can just deal with Robinhood or Coinbase or anything. And I think that's why they're really pushing back because they might lose 500 to $1,000 really per customer. And I think that's kind of where it quickly adds up literally in a lot of money where, you know, maybe the banks have really accounted for this money, but you know, but if they don't make the revenue, then the banking landscape, you know, 10, 20 years from now is going to look very, very differently.
- [23:48]
A
They're screwed. So the clarity act is a. You know, when I talked to Chris Giancarlo, he said the banks need it more than the crypto industry actually because they want to adopt a faster, cheaper technology and have wider margins, but they actually need clarity to be able to do that because they're the bigger institutions with fiduciary responsibilities and they can't just go adopt something else without actually knowing what they're allowed to do. So that's one side, the other, I think they're just trying to slow this all down so that they can catch up.
- [24:16]
D
Well, they need to ring fancy assets. Right? That's really the key, the ring, you know, fencing, you know, the customer value, basically. I think that's what, what really is a real hiccup here.
- [24:27]
A
Yeah, I mean, aren't we all just going to be like replaced by AI anyways and wasting our time here? I mean, so this is OkX obviously launching their agentic wallet. We talked about the fact that they had launched an entire OS like on chain. OS was a toolkit for AI. But like, I mean now you're, this is, you don't even need it to be a human right now. This is a wallet for your agent that will do all the agent things with that within that wallet. And I've already seen stories, I'm not saying it's easy, but like people who programming bots to go into prediction markets and literally just arbitrage, like sports betting spreads, you know, like things you can't do as a human. Go check 50 sites, find where the prediction market is giving you that 1% edge or whatever and you know, turned, you know, 200 grand into 1.4 million I think was one of the stories.
- [25:12]
B
I mean, but see, here's the thing. Those things happen right now. Those things are all happening right now. There are people with algos that make money by definition through arbitrage in the markets. Like there's, there's a lot of that going on. What's different about this new wave is that everyone can participate. But here's the dangerous thing that nobody really understands or talks about, which is the markets are a zero sum game. The prediction markets, the financial markets, name them. If there's a winner, there's a loser. There's never two winners and no losers. There's always offsetting bet unless the house is on the other side of the trade. And, and the more the house is on the other side of the trade, the less of a market it is and the more of A casino it is. So when you have these free markets, if you will, that are allowing customers to place prop bets, to place sports bets. I saw Bitgo just announced that they're integrating prediction markets into their infrastructure.
- [26:20]
D
Otc.
- [26:21]
B
Otc, exactly. So it's, it's nuts. I mean it's wild west stuff. But if you look at like what you're ultimately going to be doing, if you let a robot go into the markets and make decisions for you every single day, there's going to be a new robot created to, to as a predator to your robot. And it's going to be this constant bleeding edge that progresses extremely quickly and fails very quickly. It's just going to shorten the time cycles of how long these automations have their day in the sun. As the point we have those now and right now we don't know who those people are. They use them completely in a black box, completely apart from, you know, law. And we, there's no chasing it down. AI is going to chase this down very, very quickly. And here's the point though. I would never trust a robot to, to, to place bets for me or to take my money because guess what? There's going to be a day where I'm on the losing side of it and I have no one to blame, I have no nothing to go.
- [27:25]
A
And robot, it's perfect. You don't even have to take responsibility for any of your financial decisions anymore.
- [27:31]
B
That's my kind of, my point is there's no neck to choke. And when I lose money I need to know why and I need to understand how not to do that in the future. And if I just keep throwing money at this black box that I have no idea what it's doing or why it's doing it. And there's always a new black box that's smarter, faster, stronger. And I'm up against people who have warehouses full of computers, not my dinky little laptop. I mean it's more of the same, just on a faster frequency.
- [27:58]
A
I'll say that this is not about having it trade for you necessarily. I mean I think that it's just interesting that now we got so quickly to the plumbing where the major, you know, like a major centralized, decentralized exchange. These major platforms are now giving products specific for these agents to do things for you. We all know that agents are going to transact and they're not going to do it with cash. We all agree are going to transact with some sort, on some sort of blockchain rails. Well, we now already have the actual tools built for them to do that instead of, you know, hoping it comes in the future.
- [28:34]
B
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that's what's happening.
- [28:37]
C
The one thing I'll add is that, you know, obviously at Arch Public we've got tens of thousands of retail customers. I will tell you Right now, 99% of the people that are, you know, do things at Arch Public are and have capital to deploy are 50 plus and have no idea what that agentic wallet thing even does or means. And are, it's confusing. They're like, I don't, I don't know what that is and I don't think I want to touch it. And maybe somebody will teach me at some point, but I don't want to have anything to do with that. That seems weird and I'm just kind of getting comfortable with, you know, crypto exchanges and moving money around on there. That seems like, you know, that, that, that's, I'm not sure about that.
- [29:23]
A
I know it's coming for us.
- [29:24]
C
Yeah. And so it's, it's, it's neat and it's cool to have an agentic wallet, but what in the world is that? What in the world is it?
- [29:33]
A
I think if you, you know, gone down the open claw and.
- [29:37]
C
Oh sure, yeah, right. Like 1% of 1% like those, those
- [29:40]
A
types doing it for you. Marcus, I know you gotta run, but any final thoughts there on any of this?
- [29:46]
D
Well, it's inevitable, right. I mean I think there's some, you know, money to be made. I think the, the question really is are we going to go down, you know, the same route as these robo advisors, like you know, five, six years ago, they're sort of like, you know, was the topic du jour and then they all sort of like failed when they, when the first crash came or is this something real? Right. But I think the interesting aspect with this prediction markets, there are strategies where you can make relatively easy money and then there are strategies where you can make, you know, these kind of like lottery bets where you really don't win. And I think the, if you have the right strategy, you can make money with you things. But I think it's, you know, you need to have a, you know, a well thought out plan and I think giving it to a black box and don't know what's going to happen, I think that's difficult for some people to justify it. Right. So we'll see. I mean, but it's, nevertheless, it's around us and people are Asking for it. And there can be money to be made for sure.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah. I'm going to just have my agent bet on whether Tillman will freeze. By the way.
- [30:42]
C
Marcus is absolutely right. Like the last thing people want to do is hand their money over to a black box. It's the reason why wealth management has stood the test of time with actual humans. Because whether it's good or not, good people grip their capital like it's the only thing that matters in life. When you really get down to it, you know, that's what most people, that's how most people act. And so they want to have somebody to talk to, a human to talk to. As Tillman just said, something goes wrong, they want to have a neck to grab and you know, putting something in a black box and there's something. Agent something or other that, I mean, we're long taken. Taken off in his.
- [31:29]
A
Named Athena.
- [31:30]
C
Yeah. Mm.
- [31:31]
A
Well, and so we know exactly who to blame.
- [31:34]
C
Yeah. That, that, that there's a little Finkel and Einhorn going on with Athena is what I think,
- [31:41]
D
I think one, one, one more point to add is like a lot of the quant funds, you know, have, have blown up over the years, right? Because if they have only one strategy and they don't adjust. And I think the, the key thing with humans is always they, they adjust. Right. They're emotional, you know, they, they realize when things come. But if you just have like one black box strategy in a certain way and you keep on trading it, at one point it will simply blow up. And I think that's kind of like what we have seen in the financial markets with a lot of the quant funds. I think we had this even like 2007. Right. That's how it started. Because there were some long and short funds were like, you know, blowing up. And I think that's what we've seen over time. The key thing for humans is always to adjust. And I think that's kind of like where, you know, one strategy is it going to work with, with this whole AI right now? Yeah, maybe, but maybe in three months it might be totally arbitrage because everybody's doing it and then you need to adjust. So it's really the ones who can adjust their models or you have a human adjusting, you know, the strategy all the time. So that's how I look at it.
- [32:40]
B
Yeah. I would add just, I think that registered investment advisors and that entire model is dying and it's, it's not being talked about. And to, to Marcus's point, why am I paying 1% to an RIA to rebalance my portfolio twice a year.
- [32:57]
A
When I formula from his bigger RIA
- [33:01]
B
that that looks cookie cutter as cookie cutter gets versus having an AI agent look at my entire real time financial status across all markets, across all exposures and rebalance my portfolio daily. Right. That's an hourly. Well, however frequent you need to based upon your current, you know, net worth and what, what's justified. But yeah, it's happening in real time. But trading is, is, to Marcus's point, very emotional. And there's a winner and there's a loser and I don't care if you have 100% of the market competing with robots. There's going to be 50% of the robots that lose and there's going to be 50% that win and that that demographic is going to change literally every day. So it's going to be like you chasing your tail. And any strategy that you have that you deploy at scale becomes like an attractive nuisance. The market makers of Victor eventually pick up on it and you become the target. So even if you've got the holy grail of holy grail goose that lays the golden egg strategy, you better keep your mouth shut about it and not tell anybody and keep your money at a very small level and make it without anybody noticing. Because as soon as someone notices, and I don't mean someone, I meet an AI agent, as soon as they notice the pattern, they start working against it is the point.
- [34:23]
D
Well, it's. Your margin is my opportunity. Right. And because all these trades are on chain, so you can easily like, you know, see who's making real money and who isn't.
- [34:31]
B
Right.
- [34:31]
D
So.
- [34:31]
A
Yep, yeah,
- [34:36]
B
you're muted, Scott.
- [34:40]
A
You're muted.
- [34:42]
C
Which is probably a good thing for the show myself.
- [34:45]
A
Shut up.
- [34:47]
B
I love the professional nature of this show. I mean, we have our act together.
- [34:51]
A
This morning I muted myself because I've been coughing a lot and then I mute myself and I just talk. Marcus, thank you so much for joining. Man, let you go. Appreciate it. Everybody give Marcus follow. It's down in the show notes.
- [35:02]
B
All right, see you, Marcus.
- [35:04]
A
I was reading Einhorn. Honestly, I was looking up Ace Ventura movie.
- [35:09]
C
Yeah, Very, very high.
- [35:11]
A
That's what I was doing. And I was muted.
- [35:13]
B
You're muting for coughing or muted because your social media channels are showing Ace Ventura and you don't want the volume to.
- [35:20]
A
Oh my God, I'd hoard as a man.
- [35:27]
C
By the way, the point that, that Marcus made about robo advisors, like, you know, robo advisors Were tried, you know, 10, 15 years ago. They got huge valuations. Betterment, wealth front and others. And you know, they gathered some assets. At the beginning they were just a shiny new toy. Like hey, you don't need your relationship with your, your advisor or your advisor team. You can just click a bunch of these boxes and then everything that you do will be taken care of. And it, and it just didn't take off. Betterment and Wealthfront still exist, but they exist as kind of a shell of what they thought that they would be. A bunch of their competitors got bought and swallowed up by, you know, pure wealth management. Yeah, it is a wealth management in the, and the, the business of money is a very, very, very difficult wall to, to climb.
- [36:33]
B
You think they have a little better lobbyists than Blockbuster? Did you think that? Yeah, extinction events a little bit harder.
- [36:41]
C
Much, much harder. But at the same time too, you know, I think and, and I would hope that the world of, of wealth management is, is serious about the fact that, you know, on the bleeding edge, and maybe not on the bleeding edge, probably 30, 40% of their, of their customer base that has meaningful capital in their accounts are shoving those accounts into AI and saying am I properly positioned? Should, you know, tell me about my positions? Tell me what, what should I be thinking here? Is this the, are these the right moves? Should what questions should I ask at my next review or should I ask those questions right now? So that's happening. That's going to be the continued evolution of what happens in wealth management. You know, an ongoing, you know, just a crazy disruption where these, these places go away and they're, you know, you know, new robo advisors happen again, long, long way off from that again just because of the way people are trained, the, the way that they, they think and how they think about. I have to have, I just feel more comfortable if there's somebody I can talk to. I gotta have somebody to talk to to, right? I gotta have somebody to talk to.
- [37:59]
B
Well, I, but even if AI is used to make you an more intelligent consumer, when you go talk to somebody, there's a huge benefit in that.
- [38:08]
C
You know what I mean?
- [38:09]
B
It makes you a lot more intelligent with your questions and your, your queries. And I do, I, I do. See, I mean I didn't know about Sylvia until, you know, pumps thing, right? Yeah, until pump's thing. I was blown away. I, I mean he's got 17, 000 people and several billion dollars now under the advisement. It's a personal cfo. And if you think about like the lack of financial literacy in the United States specifically around, you know, all things finance. I mean, I don't even think if you ask majority of people what's the time value of money, I don't even think they understand that concept. And yet it's literally what the entire foundation of our capitalist society is built on. And so like, I think AI agents to bridge that gap are going to be imper. And I think you're already seeing kind of people run to that education because they feel like it's of benefit to them. And you know, that's not going to turn off. And think about how robust the answers are going to be as it pertains to crypto. When AI agents are using nothing but crypto for a bigger set of a bigger economy online than there is in the real world when that takes place. I mean, AI agents aren't going to be giving you answers around, yeah, you should probably trust your person out of, you know, Roanoke office money manager. And you know, it's, it's going to be like, hey, this is, this protocols managed $3 trillion of transactions without an issue. You've got nothing to worry about. And boom, you set it and forget it and you're, you're off to the races.
- [39:50]
C
Well, there's a precedent already in wealth management. So your typical wealth manager is not sitting around actually executing trades on behalf of 7,000 customers with $4 billion that they're, that they're running. Right. They farm that out to product companies that, that money sits in. And those decisions are made with ETFs and REITs and all sorts of stuff.
- [40:14]
B
And I hate to say it, they're made in conjunction with what product lines do we have to have to give our customers enough access to everything where they feel well served and how much money can we make on this set of products? What are the fees that generate, are generated on the back of these products? Andrew, you're spot on there. There's a conflict of interest as it pertains to what they offer you and how much they get paid to offer it to you. And here's the sad part. Like if you look at most of these companies and I was, I, when I got out of college, I was looking at getting into this and I did a little stint at one of the firms and all my job was, was to drive around to wealthy people's houses and try to get them to put money in the firm. Literally that was the only thing that they cared about was like, how much money can you bring in under management? Because they get charged a management fee for it and that's all they care about. And so if they spent as much time on the business of their customers as the business of their them, then we wouldn't have the problem with the Clarity act that we're seeing. Like that that's what they're focused on is their business model. And I hate to break it to you, but anytime you have to use legislation to keep competitors away from your business model, time to throw in the towel and change your business model. Honestly, I mean it's, it's, it reeks.
- [41:36]
C
Well, the, the, the, the huge gap associated with, you know, agentic or AI being involved in the wealth management space is something you and I have talked about a lot, Tillman. There's a lot. There's a huge difference between information, then using that information to make decisions and then there's this huge gap and then there's execution, right? So then there's a huge gap between trust associated with the execution of transactions versus information and is that information valuable? We've all gotten to a place, not we've all, but society is quickly moving to a space where AI handing us information that we're asking for is something that we value. Right? The execution of things is a, is a different deal. We're not there yet. And, and the, well, it started with
- [42:30]
B
simple queries where we could, we could challenge AI and figure out how close to reality the answers were, right? It's like, where's the best hamburger place in Dallas? Well, I, I, you know, if they don't put the top five on there based upon what I think I'm calling BS on the AI, you know what I mean? Like, whereas, so it was like simple queries that we could instantly validate and then we're moving now into like more complicated queries where the, the inputs aren't all visible. It's like, how much should I have exposure to Bitcoin? And AI is looking at more things than I've defined as the parameters to use as the judgment call. And so I'm having, there's trust now injected in their decision making or their advice because now it's, it's broad advice. It's not just like where's the best five hamburger joints? It's like, if I'm gonna eat today and I'm in Dallas, what should I eat? Well, I mean if hamburgers are the top five and the number one hamburger joints, the best hamburger joint in America, maybe it's hamburgers, but it may choose like there's just a Much broader array of what it delivers to you. Well if it delivers to me pizza and I'm allergic to marinara sauce, it's basically blown that AI model up, you know what I mean? Right out of the gate. So the point is Andrew's making is like there's these clunky unintended consequences about the inputs that we give it. And the ultimate AI that we could build is only as good as the extension of our will.
- [44:06]
D
Right.
- [44:07]
B
And so we have to deliver it a lot of pre instructions basically to say okay, well if this happens then this should happen. If this happens, these are the five choices you get to choose from. If those five choices don't work, then this is your like all of that has to be built and we're just not there yet. Right. And so if you have AI right now and you go, hey, what should I eat in Dallas today? Not going to be that you might 40% may be happy 30 but it's not going to be where it is five years from now because the personal nature of the agents that we're building are going to be so personalized that it's going to know really what I want to eat.
- [44:47]
C
That analogy was really good. And coming from someone that is steeped in the generation of lay off me, I'm starving.
- [44:56]
A
Starving.
- [44:59]
B
I map every city based upon diners drive ins and dives and what the restaurants he says I should visit there. So you have my secret.
- [45:09]
C
Yeah, you should start Tillman AI for just food.
- [45:14]
A
I would use it.
- [45:17]
B
You never trust a fat skinny chef. That's I, I do know that. That's, that's I fed that to my AI agent. Average weight of the head shaft. The restaurants I need to visit or must be above 2:30.
- [45:30]
A
Publicly accessible information.
- [45:33]
B
I think you could take a picture of somebody and hey, I could kind of approximate the weight. So I think we're there man. We can get there.
- [45:40]
C
Yeah. Execution, that's one of the reasons why people, you know, use us because they've gotten to a point where wait a minute, I can have what feels like an agentic type of execution happening when I don't have my hands on the wheel. And oh by the way, if I have questions about the executions, I can then call people in arch public and have conversations like it's the perfect marriage of where we are right now in the world as people get very comfortable with this. I mean heck, I think Scott just sent an email to one of our concierge program team while we've been on this
- [46:21]
B
to Andrew's point Like, you could set up a hundred different. You could set up a hundred different instances inside of our software that trade a diff 100 different parameters based upon infinite number of variables against each parameter. Like all of that could be done once it's done. If a trade triggers in there, Scott doesn't know which one it's TR has triggered. It's not like he has them named like children. And he knows it's not like that. What it does though, is it goes, oh, a trade was triggered. I know that. I set that instance up. And by George, if you want to track down the logic that made that decision, you can absolutely track it down. And if you knew it intimately enough based upon the setup, you would have known that it triggered before it triggered. So the point is, is like these are rules not, you know, AI deciding. It's. It's really an extension of your own will and what you want. Want to have happen.
- [47:18]
A
I would not want A.J. i personally, I would not want this to be agentic.
- [47:23]
B
Well, here's the point. There's going to be winners and losers with it being agentic. And this doesn't produce winners and losers. This produces an outcome that removes emotion from trading, harvests volatility, and gives you the smoothest cost curve in your acquisition goals.
- [47:39]
A
That's what it does. Right. I'm not trying to like throw it there and YOLO 100x leverage against something else.
- [47:47]
C
Right?
- [47:48]
B
Yeah. Well, if you want to be right, you first have to decide on what time frame you want to be right on. And the shorter the time frame, the harder that mountain is to climb. So, you know, I would just urge people to look at the kind of the long investment strategy that has proven to, to produce wealthy people over time, which is like, let's smooth our cost curve out, let's harvest volatility, and let's accumulate a position that's relative to our net worth as riskless as we can as. As we can put together. And if you do those things, you don't have unhealthy, unhappy outcomes. You, you have 100% of what you signed up for.
- [48:32]
A
So here's the site.
- [48:34]
B
Yeah. Go to archpublic.com try out our software for free. I don't even say try it out. You can use the entire version of it for free, up to $10,000 of annual trading volume. So if you're a beginner or somebody who does not have any bitcoin exposure or any other altcoins and you want that, this, I would argue, is the most PRUDENT riskless way to do that, where you're not the, you're not the trader, you're not sitting there in the markets every day watching and emotionally being attached to the price move.
- [49:05]
C
Yeah, this is, I mean, we, we've worked on this for six years now, and we've, you know, we have worked extremely hard, but we're, we're, we're at a moment where this is being adopted at scale, is, is the right way to say it. We are. The amount of people that we add on a daily, weekly basis continues to grow. People being comfortable having conversations with us about it and then figuring out that this makes sense. Like crypto markets are 24 7. Traditional markets are about to go 24 7. How in the world am I to keep up with this if I don't have a system of some sort that is by my side and that I can trust? And so, again, we've set up the company here in a way that not only are the products and performance something to really sink your teeth into, but more so than anything else, it's communication and service on the back end. We have teams of people that you can talk to, spend time with, make adjustments on your setups, and we'll explain everything from A to Z as often as you need to. And that's why people get really comfortable, is because, okay, philosophically this all makes sense, but then how do I do it? And I need to be, be able to talk to somebody about how do I do it. And you know, people, people take a journey with us and they love it.
- [50:41]
B
They absolutely put us to the test. I, we, we love hearing that's the most rewarding part of having this company is that a lot of people don't know that this technology exists. We introduced the technology to them, they run with it and they're using it on their own with, by themselves. But they then give us a lot of the credit for teaching them how to use it. And they come back and say, you've given me 15 hours of my life back per week, or you've changed, you've paid for my pool or my house renovations in Costa Rica. Those are two real comments that we've gotten from our customers. So, you know, it's one of those things that, like Andrew said, the more complicated the markets get. If you were in silver, for example, over the last, you know, 20 years, you know that the money making event happened in the last six months. And if you didn't have any type of tools to systematically take profits all the way up, you're back down 50% from its high going, are we going to ever see that again? And, you know, take that and then stretch it across all of your positions and stretch it across 27, 365 markets. And the future is going to be about managing profits and managing risk. And when the risk reward ratio changes drastically, how often do you have automation, rebalancing and taking that risk off the table? Because silver at 120 bucks an ounce is a lot more risky than silver at $20 an ounce. And if you're waiting for a money manager to call you once a quarter quarter to say, oh, well, we've made a bunch of money in silver. We should probably sell some and move it into this asset. You may have missed the boat. And I would argue that the frequency of which the volatility occurs in each one of these markets going 247 is only going to get worse. And so it becomes more and more prev. Paramount that you have tools that manage that emotion and manage the time commitments. And that's where we live, right at the nexus of that. And we're very passionate about it and love to share it with people. So call us.
- [52:51]
A
I live so deep in this that I'm starting a second portfolio. Yes, you are.
- [52:56]
B
It's quite addictive.
- [52:57]
A
I could squeeze something different out of it.
- [53:02]
B
Volatility exists on all the markets. I don't blame you, man. Harvest, it's harvest time. Make hay when the sun shines, as they say.
- [53:11]
A
Oh, man, my brain is just in Ace Ventura mode, man.
- [53:15]
D
Oh, gosh.
- [53:18]
C
So good.
- [53:19]
B
If you need to work on derailing
- [53:23]
A
five minutes, just wait longer.
- [53:31]
C
What a great movie. And when he says, yeah, I talked to. I talked to Snowflake.
- [53:36]
A
And then he.
- [53:37]
C
Then he talks like a doll.
- [53:50]
A
Excuse me, I'd like to ask you a few questions.
- [53:54]
B
You know, during the campaigns, you see the live reaction of the audience. I need to know what the audience thinks of this conversation because I. I would venture to guess most of them have no clue what y' all are talking about.
- [54:06]
A
Dan Marino should die of gonorrhea and rhyme. They're little footballs.
- [54:12]
C
How did. How did that lady. How did that. That actress look so old 30 years ago and still look?
- [54:19]
A
She's the old lady in movies.
- [54:22]
C
The old lady in movies. It's extraordinary.
- [54:25]
A
It is quite a role. Good for her.
- [54:27]
C
Well done for her.
- [54:28]
A
Alrighty, then. We're gonna go ahead and close down the show because it's gotten such high quality content. I highly suggest you. They got Arch Public and Andrew Tailman, the Ghost of Marcus. Thank you for joining me in space. See you guys next week. Thanks, guys. Bye.
- [54:50]
B
That's dope. Let's do.