← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Digital asset treasury companies were all the.
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Rage in the first half of the.
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A
Year and into the summer before we saw a massive collapse across the space, leaving many wondering what comes next. I spoke to David Bailey, the CEO of KindlyMD, also known as Nakamoto, about lessons that he learned from building a digital asset treasury company.
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B
Wall street does not give an F about anything but making money. And they will smile and shake your hand and tell you whatever you want to hear as they slit your throat.
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A
Why he's focused on Bitcoin.
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B
I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, this phenomenon is really about corporate entities buying bitcoin. And we're just at the beginning stages of that. And eventually, every company will own Bitcoin.
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A
And what the future looks like for these companies.
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B
Spoiler.
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A
Everybody still agrees that bitcoin is going way higher and bitcoin treasury companies will follow.
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B
That's dope.
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A
I think the best place to start, obviously, is just to lay the groundwork for where the treasury company market stands right now. Obviously, we had, like, I think we could argue, like, a hype cycle and then sort of this temporary bust. And now, I think, like, any cycle we've seen like that, we probably see a few phoenixes rise from the ashes and see what the space is really about. So maybe you could just sort of set the table. Obviously, we had strategy for years. Then Nakamoto in 21 sort of came in the first half of the year. A lot of copycats, and here we are.
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B
Yeah, even before Nakamoto, there was Metal Planet. There was quite a few similar. So, yeah, I mean, I really don't think.
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Like, this is a fad or a flash in the pan. Like, we had a lot of deals come to market all at the same time. There was a massive glut of supply. And, you know, not all these deals are created equal. So I think, you know, it's going to take us a little while to, like, work through kind of all the supply that's hitting the market. Like, we're really just seeing the supply hit the market, too, which is the one kind of negative thing. It's like we were really the first to unlock and then strive behind us. And then there's more that unlock this month in December. And so, you know, that'll take a little while to work through. But then once we work through it, I think you're going to see consolidation. You're going to see, like, less players. You're going to see some of the, you know, as the market was getting hot, the deals that were coming to market were getting of lower and lower quality. And so I think, you know, you'll, you'll wash out some of the people that were just in search of fast money. And so, yeah, I think this will be in a much healthier place by next year. And I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, this phenomenon is really about corporate entities buying bitcoin. And we're just at the beginning stages of that. And eventually every company will own bitcoin. So yeah, that's my general view.
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A
Yes. I mean, talking about the ones that were sort of a flash in the pan, the ones as I kind of mentioned were copycats, came in later, didn't really have a plan. Money grab, however you want to describe it, because I talked about them getting washed out. What does that look like? Is that acquisitions by better capitalized and stronger players, I mean, they don't disappear. They, they own bitcoin.
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B
Yeah, well, so you know, first off, like the people that were the fast money, you know, in order to raise those incremental dollars after the market was already starting to get exhausted, they had to agree to more and more aggressive terms. And I've seen some, some of these financings where I'm like, I can't even believe it's legal, like what went down. I mean you have companies that are taking what I would call toxic, toxic debt that is like very overleveraged, dangerous debt. And then you know.
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Using that, that debt to go buy, you know, shitcoin xyz. And you know that's, that is questionable whether that will even be around in five years time.
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And then you know, doing these management agreements with funds where like the treasury is actually managed by someone else and they're paying 2, 3% a year and they're locked into a 10 or 20 year deal. It's like, okay, well automatically 50% of all the assets are going to be taken out of this just by the asset manager. So you know, that's, those were just garbage transactions. And the people that were investing into them never really intended to sit in the investments. And you know, I think the market's going to wise up to that, to that activity. And I think, you know, those teams that are running those, they have a very limited set of options about where to go next. Like there's a playbook for treasury companies. You know, a key part of the playbook is like, okay, if you're buying bitcoin, then even when market conditions deteriorate, as long as you just sit on the bitcoin long enough, market conditions improve. And you're able to get access to the capital markets. Again, if you're sitting in an asset that's not Bitcoin, you may never have a second chance at getting access back to the capital markets. Like your balance sheet's not guaranteed to improve in the future. And so a company like that, like what do they do? They are burning money at the top line, like with the management company. You know, maybe they're in like really aggressive, expensive financing terms. You know, they're in an asset that you know, isn't guaranteed to come back. Like where do they go from there? And so I think that those companies, the ones that actually have assets that can be liquidated and some of these treasury companies actually have assets that can't be liquidy. Like the Treasury's locked assets, like locked tokens or.
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A
Yeah, because they're doing OTC deals with vesting or 20% discount.
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B
Right, but, but if there's a liquid value to it, then someone's willing to pay some discount to that liquid value and then convert the assets into something that is valuable. And then I think the other. So like you're going to have like.
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A
So, so quickly that means we could have altcoin treasury companies that effectively sell the altcoins at a discount, buy Bitcoin and become Bitcoin treasury companies.
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B
Yeah, or you have a bitcoin treasury company buy an altcoin, buys them at.
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A
A huge discount and converts to Bitcoin. Right. Okay.
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B
So yeah, so I think like, so like, I think the ways that you're going to like, you're going to see the consolidation, one is like by balance sheet quality, two is like management teams and who, who have quality management teams. And three is like, are the businesses.
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Operating companies with, you know, financial sustainability? Like, do they have an operating business that generates income, for example? And so I think like those are the three things that people are going to be looking for. And I think the wave of consolidation is really going to kick off next year. So just that's my general view on it. I know there's a lot of.
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Let'S say, exploratory stuff that's already happening in the market behind the scenes on, on consolidation. But it takes time to do transactions. Like that's one of the things I've learned about this whole, from this whole process is like the public markets are intentionally slow. And so like for those types of deals to happen, like they, they don't happen in a month, they happen in, you know, six months.
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A
Yeah, that makes sense. So obviously everybody who is involved In a Bitcoin treasury company believes that Bitcoin will trade higher than it does right now. That's a given. How long can they wait if they're burning through management fees or any of these other expenses that you're talking about for Bitcoin to come back? If bitcoin comes back and this is a normal 30% market correction and at all time highs in six months, nobody's worried. But what if it's a three year correction down to 30, 40, $50,000 and it takes that long to return to these prices or higher?
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B
Yeah, I think each business is unique from that perspective. You have to kind of make that assessment yourself. And as an investor, that's where the opportunity arises. I don't think there's just one rule fits all. You know, there are some great treasury companies out there, but if you drill into the actual operating business that they sit on top of, they're hemorrhaging a lot of money. And so you know, a four year time horizon, if you're paying out on preferreds that you issued that were expensive and you have like a, you know, major loss making operating company, then you know it's going to be, it's going to be scarier. You know, like for us, I think our annual operating cost, you know, we're probably.
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Low single digit percentages per year of operating expense. And you know, our, our goal, we haven't done anything definitive yet, but our goal is to find and acquire companies that are cash flow positive and generate income. So I think like income is going to be a major part of the story going forward. But you know, at the end of the day, like these, these entities are, are like in my opinion, the next generation banks. You know, banks are in the business of monetizing their balance sheet. Like these are bitcoin banks, they're monetizing a bitcoin balance sheet. And once you start seeing people monetize it, well, you're going to see a lot of people copying that strategy and that will just become the dominant, dominant strategy. So yeah, I think when we start going through this consolidation period, you're also going to see an evolution of the business model in general from just running an atm, which there's no moat around running an atm, to actually creating value that's differentiated and unique.
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A
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I was skeptical of the treasury model at the very beginning pretty outspokenly. I don't really hide that. I just thought there were too many coming too fast and I didn't really understand how without taking on risk or Leverage, most of them would make money, at least to be competitive. So I think my concern was that what you described would happen, which is that they would do worse and worse deals and take on more toxic debt and offer higher yields. So that's somewhat played out. So how do they now if you're sitting on those and you have a plan to go, not for you specifically, but you have to imagine that all the plans are derailed. We were going to acquire more companies or we bought all the bitcoin we could buy at 120k and now it's at 85. Like is there is can they do share buybacks? I mean, what are the structural ways? And I know it's going to be different for every single one, so I'm speaking generally. Like what are the structural ways that they can even buy the dip?
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B
Right.
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Because anyone, if you're an average retail investor right now and you believe bitcoin's going to go up, you're super excited. I'm super excited. Like I've been buying the hell out of Bitcoin in the 80s, 90s, even above 100, right. So but if you're a company and you spent it all, what do you do? Like, you know how your plans have, obviously most people planned on bitcoin being at 150 right now.
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B
Well, I mean, actually the scenario you're laying out, it matches, it matches what we're going through. Well, you know, we've, and none of this is material because it hasn't happened. So I can talk about it, but I mean we've had.
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Two merger attempts where we've tried to acquire other companies that have fallen apart because the volatility in the market, the volatility in our stock, like it's incredibly hard to price a transaction where you're doing an all stock M and A deal and your stock is going up and down 60, 70%. Like it's, it's difficult. So I think, you know, one thing, one thing that, that treasury companies need. What we want is like you want some stability in the business. Like it doesn't have to be stability like, you know, you become a boring business. But just like, hey, we need, we need the stock to, you know, operate within some band of reasonableness so that.
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A
We can chill for five minutes so.
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B
We can make it transaction and lock in on economics. So I do think that's caused a little bit of a freezing effect on deals. And like, from, from my perspective as just an operator, if someone came to me and was like, hey, I'm interested In talking about an acquisition deal, like, I'm not wanting to do a transaction with someone who. They did a pipe, and their pipe hasn't hit the market yet. And so we don't really know what the real value of their company is. Like, how do we even have a good faith discussion? Because I'm not going to sign my. I already went through that painful process, or I'm still going through it, but, I mean, we've made a lot of progress. I, you know, I don't want to go through it again, you know, dealing with someone else's pipe. So it's hard to make deals happen in that environment. And then for us, like, you know, we deployed our capital, our, like, ethos in terms of how we deploy capital is like, we're not in the business of sitting on cash. Like, our.
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A
You're not traders. You're not trying to. You're not trying to. Yeah, sit in cash.
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B
Bitcoin accumulators. Like, that's what we're doing. So it's like, okay, well, how do you accumulate bitcoin if you're trading at a discount to nav without just levering up the business into. Into an unhealthy territory? So for us, that's why our.
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A
Our.
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B
Our focus has shifted to income. Like, how do we just generate income? And I do think that. And there's a lot of things that I'm saying that I think maybe Michael Saylor would disagree with me on. Just because Michael's model, not only does he have a lot of things that are unique about his business, but he has a very scalable approach. And so the things that maybe an operator like me at Nakamoto would do are not interesting to him because the scale of it is not big enough to be meaningful for him. And it's a lot of head bashing and work to just, like, barely move the needle. I mean, his one week of the ATM exceeds like, the total value of a large M and a transaction for us. So.
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But, like, the point being is, like, you're sitting on an asset that has. Is liquid, that has a cash value. So just imagine if you were a spac sitting on a ton of cash. Okay, well, what does a SPAC do? They go identify targets to go and acquire. You can spend the bitcoin to acquire a business that generates income. If you can make an assessment of the durability of the income stream, maybe its correlation to the bitcoin price, and saying, like, hey, over the next five years or 10 years, we're going to recover the purchase cost of this asset.
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Using the bitcoin we spent, I think that's a completely appropriate thing to do. And if you were acquiring a business that let's say generated fees on asset management or custody, things that are easy to model, like those would be, you know, things that would naturally make sense to fit inside of a bitcoin bank. So I do see income as being like the next phase of this. And I think there's a lot of interesting businesses out there to be acquired and like, for strategy, like all these people who are, who are dumping on strategy, you know, using the ATM to pay off their preferred etc. If strategy wanted to strategy just go buy a deca billion dollar business that generates massive cash flow and it's like boom, now we have cash flow, we can pay all the preferreds in perpetuity, like you know, f off. So you know, I like at the end of the day, like having a major, a big balance sheet of bitcoin, it's just optionality and you can do all sorts of stuff with that optionality and like, you know, it's easy to say optionality, it's easy to say permanent capital. Like but until you're like an operator and you're actually dealing with the internally, like the dynamics of having a bitcoin balance sheet.
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Like you don't really appreciate or respect what it means to preserve optionality, like that is a huge valuable thing. And like permanent capital, like your investment horizon is totally different when you have permanent capital. You know, the, the, the, if we get it, if we, if we make an investment to acquire something and the payoff is 20 years, so be it. Like, like who cares? So you know, there's not really many investors that sit in that sweet spot where they're able to look, take a very long term view of what they're, what they're doing and make investment decisions around that. Like most investors have a seven year time horizon or a five year time horizon or I mean it depends on.
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A
Yeah, yeah, you talked about the mechanics of the. Okay, go ahead and finish. Sorry.
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B
No, no. So I, I just think like, you know, like those are two really unique things about these businesses. The permanent capital and the optionality that they have. And that sets them up to, you know, be very durable businesses and being able to react to whatever market, market circumstances and even like businesses I mentioned, I was mentioning earlier, like that have very high burn rate at their companies.
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Like they still have the optionality of cutting that burn. Like there's, there's a lot that can be done. So I really don't think that you're going to see any spectacular blow ups or like, I don't, I don't think you're going to see anything major happen, at least from like the top tier of these companies that actually have significant balance sheets. Maybe you'll see some blow ups of some like smaller ones where they can't stay compliant with listing fees or whatever. And you know, but I think anyone who has over a thousand bitcoins.
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You know, they're going to be around. It's just, is the management going to change, Is it going to be acquired? Is it going to have to pivot into some new business stream in order to generate income? But that's what you'll see.
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A
So you talked about the difficulty of the pipe and the shares registering and that time in between and how having gone through it, you would never purchase a company that's still going through it. I think most people, myself included, didn't understand the mechanics of that necessarily from the very beginning and probably dumped on you guys or on the people whose stocks went up to, you know, I don't know how high you went, 28 bucks, something like that. And probably. And then you get all the narratives of they're dumping on us, they bought it and they're selling it down, not realizing obviously that like you were getting dumped on effectively. Right? Because you're, you can't do anything and you can't speak, I assume because like you are now the CEO of a publicly traded company. And so having I talked to Mark Moss about this at length and a few other people, I have to imagine that for you that was one of the most personally painful processes ever because you can't really correct the bad takes and you could probably see where they were coming from even to some degree. Right. But like it's not like you wanted price to go up that fast and that far, dude.
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B
I will say the pipe unlocking and going through this experience.
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You know, it wasn't my first pipe to be involved in. Like we've done, you know, multiple pipe transactions. The Meta Planet transaction was a pipe. The difference was that all of those pipes that we were doing, we were doing it with investors that we had a personal relationship with that we had a shared alignment on. You know, we believe in bitcoin. We, you know, bitcoiners have a certain, I guess, philosophy of deploying capital. And so it's like, okay, like, you know, it's, it's not as mercenary, not even close to as mercenary as what Wall Street Is. And so, you know, those experiences that we had with those pipes, they were much smaller, too, which I think is another big key element. Were not bad experiences. And, like, at the end of the day, when you are taking a company public, you have to have some sort of structure, financing structure to do it from. Like, you know, there's not. Like, the reason people are choosing pipes is because there's really not another great way to do this other than to do a pipe financing. I mean, that's. That's a private investment into a public entity. So, I mean, that. That's. That's what you're doing. So it's really about, like, okay, the composition of the pipe, who's participating in the pipe, what are the terms of the pipe? You know, the, you know, are there lockups? Are there? I mean, all sorts of questions like that. So, you know, the. The $700 million pipes, or in our case, it was a $500 million pipe and then an additional 60 on top of it. And then I think Pomp did one that was 510, and Strive did one that was like, 700. Those size pipes are, like, unprecedented, Unprecedented. So no one really had experience. You know, the Wall street guys, I think they had a much better understanding because they've seen, like, different phases of excitement come to the markets. And this is the. This is the game that they're in for our industry. I think everyone was caught blindsided in terms of, like, how painful the process was relative to what was expected. Like, you know, there was a point in time, like, when we did our second pipe, and the demand for the second pipe was so strong. I mean, we raised the 60 million in, like, two days. And if we had had a week, it would have been a $500 million second pipe. And so that was at $5 a share. So we're like, okay, like, there's so much.
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A
The first one was, what, one 12? Like, 110.
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B
112.
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A
112. And then five. I mean, five bucks.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So we're like, there's so much fair to say there was some appetite for this.
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B
And it's like.
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We did not think it was realistic that the stock would go really significantly below 5 bucks, much less go below the pipe price of $1.12, much less go to. Right now, we're sitting at 49 cents. I mean, that's just like. It's kind of wild to us. So, you know, when I look at the dynamics of the pipe and, like, what. What caused what pieces? Like, you know, well, there I mean, there's a lot I could say I, that probably some of it I'm, I'm really not allowed to say. But.
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Adding in, adding investors into the mix that really aren't long term bullish on Bitcoin or the strategy is a huge mistake. And you know, you don't realize it until you live through it. But that capital becomes just immensely expensive capital because if it's going to rotate out, like, you know, we run an atm, like we can sell shares, like we don't need someone else. We don't need you to take your private capital and then give you shares so that you can go sell shares at some big inflated number. Like we can sell shares. So what's the point of us taking your capital? You know, we want capital from people who are going to hold the stock and who are going to believe in the long term vision and plan and are going to ride with us. Just like, you know, the first six investors that came into Metal Planet, that's what they did. Like we're with our Metal Planet position. We've only added to our Metal Planet position since, since that initial investment. So, you know the, so like, yeah, and then the process is like unbelievably painful because like you can't control the stock price. So you know, we did the deal, our stock was trading at like a $50 or whatever when we did the deal at a $12.
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The stock goes to $32 a share or something like that, like you know, on the announcement like the next week.
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And you know the float of the stock, like based on how much proceeds you raised in the pipe, like you're issuing like 99% of all the stock is going to be issued when that, when that pipe unlocks. So it's just very hard mechanics to manage. And you know, it sucks because then people lose money and then they get very pissed and then they just start saying whatever they want to say on, on Twitter. And you're right, you can't say anything. You're not supposed to at least say anything. Some of the stuff I, I just like, I, I literally can.
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A
I mean, I think you're allowed to like dispel outright lies, but not really.
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B
You're not even supposed to do that. Like the other day somebody said something and I, and I, I commented on it and I got a call immediately from my attorney like, hey, don't, don't say. And it's like, dude, you know, like there's a certain point in time where it's like if you don't Say anything. You're hurting investors by not saying anything. Or clarify. Like, you need to, like, clarify misinformation. But, you know, it's just. It's so highly regulated that it's very limiting. So, yeah, dude, it's challenging. It sucks. I don't know if you can tell, like, look, that's a. That's a white hair right there. It's coming in. Here's another white hair, bro. It's been very stressful, but at the end of the day.
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The only way through a pipe unlock like that is by grinding through it. That's the only way. The only way out is through. And so you just have to hunker down and execute on the strategy and the plan. And fortunately, I've been in Bitcoin since 2012. Like, I've been through 4, 5, 70% drawdowns in Bitcoin. Like.
- [24:19]
You know, at the end of the day, our balance sheet is. We're just buying bitcoin. And so from. From, like, that perspective, like, I'm able to, like, sleep well at night, wake up, know that if we execute our plan, it might take us some time, but, like, we'll be in a good place. I couldn't imagine going through this experience and, like, having $500 million balance sheet of a fart coin or of, you know, Avax, you wouldn't even be able to sleep.
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But yeah, man, it's stressful. It's stressful, and it sucks having people be down money. But that's also the nature of investing and the nature of why you want to have investors that are long term aligned.
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A
I mean, it's one of those things that feels like certainly not your investors buying the shares at 25 bucks. Right. So it's just people who, I guess, see a news headline and do zero research, don't look into any of the disclosures and just buy something. Right?
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B
Yeah.
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A
I mean, because who else. Who else is buying, you know, at those prices? And like you said, it's so low float that I don't think people realize that, like, you know, a market order of any even meaningful size can move the price probably 20, 30.
- [25:26]
B
I mean, even. Even for our stock, like when we. When we went to 30 bucks, like, we traded the first day of trading like a billion and a half dollars of. Of shares. So, you know, I think there was just a lot of excitement. I think the story of what we're doing at Nakamoto is very unique, and we have a very compelling track record. And so I think that that generated a lot of Excitement too. And you know, I wish in retrospect just knowing how stuff played out, like we should have taken the approach of like don't buy the stock. But you're not supposed to do that, you'll get sued. But like maybe it was, it's also.
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A
Kind of a thing. Yeah.
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B
Not allowed to say yeah, so, but.
- [26:08]
Yeah, and then I think on the flip side like now the market is, is over.
- [26:13]
Overreacting to like micro strategy market conditions, bitcoin price. Like, you know, I won't talk about our stock specifically but let's say some of our peers, they're trading, you know, at a substantial discount to the cash value of, of the bitcoin they're holding.
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A
Like this feels so much to me like when GBTC went from 30 to 50% discount and everyone was like it's going zero and it was the most gratuitous buy in the history of gratuitous buys. Right. You're literally buying bitcoin at a 50% discount. That literally though, that feels like that to me this week for the first time, specifically with the amount of strategy FUD and of course now having a dollar reserve there and all these things. I think it's just, this is how it feels. I remember that feeling well, you remember.
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B
I, I, I, I led the, the class action.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So and you know, we loaded up on shares at a 45% discount. The.
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You know, it is ironic to find myself in this situation relative to going through the GBTC fiasco, but that.
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A
Was a little different.
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B
Yeah, but I, I, I, I agree it reminds me of it and you know, what ended up happening there is like buying the shares at a discount to NAV turned out to be a fantastic investment and I think like that's ultimately what will happen here. And you know, those that don't have like viable leadership teams or viable operating companies, they'll get rolled up by people that do. So eventually it's going to find a good home. So yeah, I.
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I think we've overcorrected and I think, you know, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the market to adjust. I mean I do, I mean the FUD against MicroStrategy has been just so unbelievable and dishonest and I think the, the.
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The de indexing and lack like removing eligibility for indexes. It's just a straight shot across the bow and in my opinion who.
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It'S.
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A
Well obviously I can lay the plot like I can, you know, I can tell you what people say, I have no idea if it's true. But obviously there's this whole JP Morgan versus MicroStrategy narrative. I can't vet that personally.
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B
Right, Yeah, I can't either. You know, msci, actually the Ms. And MSCI is Morgan Stanley. So, you know, maybe people got the wrong Morgan.
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A
I don't.
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B
But even MSCI was spun out and now it's like an independent company. You know, I think that there's a lot of people that. Not just a lot, I think it's the majority of Wall street and institutional finance does not respect Bitcoin and definitely does not respect Bitcoin treasury companies. And they are very bothered by the success that MicroStrategy has had. And I see it all over the place in terms of, I'm not going to call it jealousy, that's the wrong term, but just a sense of entitlement that these, these outsiders are able to come in and exploit the things that we exploit and they're able to make money like we make money or even faster than we make money.
- [29:28]
And like, you know, I've seen it with Metal Planet all year with, in Japan. Like, you know, they didn't move on an ETF in Japan on the, they didn't move on the tax policy for years. They didn't move on an ETF for, for years. I mean, and not because of lack of trying. Like people were investing huge amounts of time and energy and money into trying to make that happen. They just wouldn't move. And then as soon as Meta Planet is absolutely crushing, it's like, okay, well how are they being so successful? Let's try to identify every value add that they have and let's go attack that specifically. And it's like, what's going on here? And you know, I think, you know, metal planets accumulated 30,000 bitcoins, 40,000 bitcoins. Like by any like standard, they've accumulated huge sum of capital. There are tons of banks that wish they had that type of capital. And so they just kind of want to shut off the spigot and shut off, shut off access to these firms. And it's, it's in my opinion, discriminatory. And you know, it's like the capital markets version of what happened with the debanking. And you know, some people called me extreme for saying it's operation choke point 3.0. But.
- [30:36]
Yeah, what it feels like.
- [30:42]
I think at the end of the day, what's great about Bitcoin is that you don't need to ask anyone's permission to own Bitcoin to custody. Bitcoin to be your own bank. And at the end of the day, these people can disrespect us all they want. They've been disrespecting us since bitcoin got started. And now they're just fighting back. And frankly, they're going to lose. So this is just the new reality. And when bitcoin goes to a million bucks of bitcoin, the people with the biggest balance sheets are not going to be the fiat treasury companies. It's going to be the bitcoin treasury companies. So, yeah, that's my general view on that. But it's been extreme to watch.
- [31:24]
A
You guys were pretty open about your strategy at Nakamoto being to find deals like Meta Planet or create them in other.
- [31:33]
Areas of the world. Right. So maybe people don't know, maybe you could explain it. But the TLDR is that Meta Planet kind of was the perfect storm for a bitcoin treasury company. Right. Because it was in a country where institutions really couldn't get access to bitcoin. And there was this huge tax arbitrage where by owning a stock rather than owning bitcoin, you got a major tax benefit. I mean, is that the most simplified way of kind of explaining it?
- [31:55]
B
Yeah. And then fantastic leadership. Yeah. I mean, Simon is just a fantastic executor with a great, great track record and experience. And so. Yeah, I think. I think so. And I think, you know, from our perspective, there are many markets like Japan, you know, maybe not as big as Japan, but, like, many markets like Japan. And, you know, we've done, I mean, at our hedge fund, utxo, should I even know what the number is at anymore? I mean, we have to be in at least 20 different markets. You know, we've had several that have been as. Not quite as successful as Metal Planet, but, like, by. Maybe Pure Returns have been as successful. Smarter Web was another one. But, I mean, there are markets like India, Saudi Arabia.
- [32:38]
Uae, mainland China.
- [32:43]
Turkey, huge markets that have massive.
- [32:48]
Capital controls, have, you know, a lot of embedded reasons why it's difficult for investors in those markets to get access to bitcoin or bitcoin proxies. And the first person who's able to break into those markets is going to be massively successful. I don't. It doesn't matter what the rest of the world's treasury companies are doing. Like, there is a reason why treasury companies were successful in the first place. It's because investors want access to bitcoin. And there's. There's pockets, large pockets of capital that can't get it right.
- [33:16]
A
There's large pockets of capital basically where there's hasn't even gotten to the microstrategy phase, much less the ETF phase. Look at what Strategy did when he was the only game in town and I guess GBTC was there, but you couldn't buy an etf. And if you wanted bitcoin exposure, for better or worse, you bought MicroStrategy. Right. And that's still kind of what Metal Planet is there. So is that still your main focus and strategy? I mean you talked about buying cash flowing businesses, so that sounds like a slight, at least pivot. Yeah, but like are you still very focused on finding all those areas of the world that you just mentioned and funding or creating a meta planet or a microstrategy or strategy in those places?
- [33:53]
B
So we funded three so far. We did a follow on to Metal Planet when they did their institutional round, their private placement. We funded a company in the Netherlands, the first Dutch treasury company, and we funded the first Swiss treasury company. And there's a lot of reasons why people buy these vehicles beyond just.
- [34:15]
Tax arbitrage or like fund mandate, but there's things like retirement accounts that exist in each of these markets that can only invest into a certain basket of stocks. Like this is a major item in the UK for example. They have like a you know, IRA equivalent and it's limited in scope of what you can buy. To buy MicroStrategy is incredibly difficult.
- [34:38]
There's also, you know, index funds that buy, you know, baskets of stocks in certain specific markets or in certain specific currencies. So you know, there's all these different pools of capital to be able to tap. So we, we did both of those markets. I think Switzerland especially has a very interesting capital market with a very low cost of capital.
- [34:58]
You know, there's the two places in the world that have a carry trade are, are Japan and, and Switzerland. So you know, we're still very eagerly looking at additional markets. But like we are being mindful of like two things. One is like market conditions have shifted and so like we want to make sure that we're not deploying capital too aggressively without understanding like where. Why have market conditions deteriorated as quickly as they have? And I'm not talking about even amongst treasury companies, I'm meaning no, just the market market. I'd love to hear if you have any theories about like what, what has been.
- [35:30]
A
I'm just gonna ask you because I, you know, listen, I, I mean I was literally gonna ask you the same question once again. You know, I can follow the smarter people than myself who point out all the whale wallets that are selling long term holders who have finally decided to exit. But I can't imagine that's what's sending us from the 90s down into the 80s. That makes a lot of sense to me intellectually from 125 to 100. Because 100 just feels like a big number. But why would they be selling at 85 and weren't selling it 125? Unless they're just like deep believers in a four year cycle. But I don't think those guys are like, they're not looking at lines on a chart deciding when to exit their positions. So I really actually, I'm not sure. It feels like. I don't want to say coordinated tax. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it feels along the lines of what people are talking about with MicroStrategy. But I just. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is no matter how excited we get, no matter how much we talk about super cycles and all of these things, there's always someone with a shit ton of Bitcoin to sell at any price. And I don't understand it. I really don't. I like, I can't.
- [36:38]
B
Well, so let's. Let's jump into that. But before. Before we do, let's. I want to finish the. Answering the question you asked. So the. We're still looking at these markets, but we're like. We're mindful of the market conditions. We're also like, there is a perception becomes reality type dynamic where. And you know, like when our. When we. The merger happened for Nakamoto and our stocks sitting hammered, my general view was like, look like, you know, people are going to trade this stuff up and down. Like, we just focus on the strategy and ignore the noise. And like, you know, the noise does not matter, but it actually, the noise does matter to a certain degree. Like, there is a, you know, perception equals reality where the stock price is down, you know, the critics are out. And if you're trying to enter a market, you're trying to work with a regulator, you're trying to do an M and A deal. It makes it very complicated or makes it more expensive or difficult to do it in those market conditions. And so like, you know, if I'm wanting to go do the first treasury company in the UAE and I'm having to like partner with all these organizations, they pull up our stock price and they're like, oh, wow, your stock price has just been slaughtered 95%. Like it's not very conducive to getting a deal done. So you know, we are dealing with that. And that's also like why we've kind of shifted our prioritization to getting some income coming into the business. Like from like my perspective, like what can I control? We want the business to be stable. Like stability is actually a huge premium in this market environment. Stability is like you're a life raft for other people who don't have stability. Stability makes it easier to plan and do things. So like the one thing that Nakamoto doesn't have that it needs is it needs, it needs income. I'm sorry kindly MD needs is it needs income. And so.
- [38:26]
You know, one of the things that's unique about our transaction is that when we put it together we, we actually have a call option to do an all stock deal to get BTC Inc. And UTXO. Our, the businesses that I, I've spent the past 13 years building, those are very profitable businesses. BTC Inc. Actually just put out their year to date financial Snapshot up through Q3 and it's like 67 million in revenue, you know, 20 something million in profit. Like you know, strong business. And that's like not inclusive of UTXO as well. And so you know, those are, those are options that we've already kind of papered and structured. We don't have to worry about, you know, if we call the option the transaction, you know, falling apart or whatever and would put us in a place where kindly MD is now generating significant income and then that income is going into acquiring new Bitcoin or buying the stock back if we're trading at a discount, which is ultimately like where you want to be. You know, getting back to the permanent capital topic earlier.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah.
- [39:33]
B
Like doing share buybacks is without a, without an actual plan of where what you're trying to achieve is a road to nowhere. You're just taking permanent capital and you're, you're burning it.
- [39:45]
A
And the optics are bad. The optics are bad as well. Yeah.
- [39:48]
B
I mean there was a moment when we were trading at like a 40% discount to nav and it's like, okay, well if you're at it like there is some point in time where it's like I can't generate an ROI like this in the market. Even over a multi year period. I won't be able to generate that type of roi. So it makes sense. But those are like, generally you can't deploy very much capital in those types of environments. Like maybe you can squeeze off like a few million dollars of buys, but like that's it. If you're buying your stock back and you're trading at a 5% or 10% discount to NAV, it's like, okay, well guess what? The price of bitcoin can swing 10% in a day and then a day.
- [40:20]
A
Right?
- [40:20]
B
Yeah, yeah, you're not trading at discount in NAV anymore. And then it's like, you know, you just burned your capital. So you know, the, because you have this capital permanently and because you're going to be able to generate yield on this, on this bitcoin over time, like to lose a permanent dollar that you're able to generate 3, 4, 5% on per year for the next 50 years. It's a very expensive dollar to, to lose. So.
- [40:45]
Anyway, a bit of a tangent. So. Yeah, so we've, we've, we've shifted our prioritization to getting income generating businesses into Nakamoto because it's going to bring us stability. It was always part of our, our, our strategy from day one. But it wasn't the priority. And now it's become the priority. And I think income's going to become the priority, you know, for all of these treasury companies, in my opinion. So okay, so going, switching topics back to what's going on with the price of Bitcoin. So you know.
- [41:20]
In general, I, I, I, I really don't, don't have a, a good theory about what's going on. And.
- [41:26]
I would say in every market crash I've just about been able to pinpoint like okay, this is the macro dynamic that's going on that's causing this to occur. And for us to move from 120 to where we're at right now, which is like what are we trading at?
- [41:43]
A
I mean we're recording December 1st. For people who don't know, this will come out in like six days. We usually try to squeeze it closer, but who knows? We're in the 80s, right. We could be at 100 or 70 when this comes out. But we're the 80s right now.
- [41:55]
B
Yeah, 84,000. So like this is like a solid 30%.
- [41:59]
A
You know, normal, normal bull market correction from some perspectives.
- [42:04]
B
Yeah, there is a.
- [42:08]
Yeah, I mean in theory, yeah, we do doesn't feel that way.
- [42:15]
This doesn't feel like that. It feels like someone is a forced seller and they're liquidating huge sums of Bitcoin.
- [42:21]
A
So you think this is like maybe an October 10th unwind that huge liquidation event and someone's unwinding as a result.
- [42:28]
B
Yeah. I mean, something happened on October 10th. And so, you know, and. And since October 10th, it's just been persistent downward pressure. And I've heard all sorts of rumors floated of like, okay, it's this firm or this firm or whatever, but, you know, to. We're talking about tens and tens of billions of dollars.
- [42:48]
A
Who's that big? Yeah, there's not many people that would have been that big. They would have forced. That forced selling would have been over by now. That's all. That sort of aligns with what I was saying about, like the 125 to 100 kind of makes sense now. I'm pretty lost in the 80s.
- [43:01]
B
Yeah. And so, like, whoever. Like, there's only a handful of people that have the amount of bitcoin to be this big of an impact. And if it's any of those parties, then this could get worse, you know. Now it might not be.
- [43:15]
A
We'd be talking about exchanges. Like, I mean, people have hundreds of thousands of bitcoin, Right? Yeah.
- [43:20]
B
Being a big bitcoin, big bitcoin exchange is not enough. You need to be like a massive one. Like, this would have to be like, you're at the binance level or the coinbase level.
- [43:30]
And, you know, I think if it was like a, you know, a top, you know, let's say five to 10 or whatever, I think even those would not have made a big enough impact to cause this. You know, probably the most compelling thing that I've heard, and I haven't looked into the data enough to know this is real, is that the basis trade is unwinding. And, you know, the CME is one of those marketplaces where it's. It's. It's quite big and there's a lot of bitcoin there.
- [43:56]
But, you know, I don't think we've even seen enough contraction there to really add up to what we've seen. So I think in environments like this in general, you have to be like, very. You have to be very risk off and you have to be very conservative. Because the thing I've learned about bitcoin is, like, it can always get worse. Like, every bad thing that can happen will eventually happen.
- [44:20]
A
We all have such ptsd.
- [44:22]
B
Yeah. Which is good. That's why we're survivors, you know, like, so, like, in order to survive, you got to have your head on like a swivel. And if you can't identify what's going on, then you have to assume, like, whatever the dynamic is, that dynamic can continue and you need to put on the risk hat of like, okay, well if this dynamic continues, if this price goes down another 10,000 or 15,000 bucks, like, who's at risk? Like, there's people who are at risk of blowing up and you want to make sure you don't have your money. You're not, they're not your counterparties, they're not your custodians, they're not your lenders.
- [44:56]
A
Every one of us has been there. I don't know if you have. Like, I've told my stories thousands of times, so it's pretty boring. But like, you know, I was one of Voyager's bigger creditors. One of my proudest moments was when I thought I would had no exposure to Luna. And then I got the email from, you know, the CEO of ARCA saying that they were doubling down on Luna on the way down. And I was an investor in ARCA and almost puked, so happy that I had no Luna exposure and then got absolutely wrecked on that investment. You find a way in this market.
- [45:25]
B
The risk manifests in ways you don't expect. And so, and you know, the, I've also found that if you can identify like what's going on.
- [45:34]
And you can keep and you can stay nimble, there's massive money making opportunities as well in even the worst pessimistic environment. Like as much money on the way down as it is on the way.
- [45:45]
A
Up and all of it's made, I mean the, the true money is made by, you know, buying when you want to puke and then not actually puking when you and selling. Right.
- [45:53]
B
So, or, or shorting things. I mean, like one of our best investments that we made at UTXO is like when, when we knew FTX was, was in trouble, like we went and identified all the bank problems. Partners that are going to have, you know, basically a run on the bank as people are margin called. And we shorted the banks and we shorted, we shorted them to zero. So Signature and, and Silvergate and so, you know, wow, great businesses. I, I, I mean maybe not Signature, but Silvergate was a great business and I, I respect those guys. But at the end of the day it's like, guys, if you're going down, like it might as well be us that's making money on you going down and not, you know, hedge fund XYZ that, that hates this whole shebang. So, so yeah, I mean like if you can identify what's going on, you can get ahead of it, you can avoid it, but you can turn it into an opportunity.
- [46:41]
A
But it's interesting because you said in an environment like this, and I think when we're describing this environment, it's like you have 50% of the people who think it's a 30% correction and 50% who literally think we're in the fourth turning and Bitcoin's going to like 10,000. Right. There's like no in between either super bullish or super bearish here. But in the past, if you were saying this is a time to not take on risk for bitcoiners, that would mean I'm just going to buy a bunch of bitcoin and wait this time it doesn't feel like that. It does feel like even a lot of the smarter people are afraid to buy right now because it might go much lower. It just feels different in that regard. I'm not. And maybe I'll be an idiot. I don't know. Listen, I don't think you can ever be an idiot for buying bitcoin unless you think that 126 was the forever top. So like, yeah, I can argue with people on Twitter all day because I share all my buy who think I'm an idiot for buying an 88 or 95 or whatever I think those are. Yeah, call me, call me in a decade.
- [47:34]
B
Yeah.
- [47:36]
At 10,000 and at 1,500, I finally write like, yeah, but, but with.
- [47:42]
A
That said, it feels like a lot of people who are in my camp are not buying right now.
- [47:46]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I think it's because they're, they're is so much uncertainty as to what the catalyst is. And you know, I, I actually think another thing that you mentioned it earlier, the four year cycle. Like, you know, I, I've been a big believer in the four year cycle. Like this cycle. Yeah, not anymore. This cycle. I, I just like from the, the trenches, like the, the market structure had, has changed, the buyer has changed. Like, and I think the four year cycle is, is, it's different. I don't know how it's going to be different, but elongated or maybe whatever and, but there's still a lot of, of OGs that are, that are. That is the mental model.
- [48:28]
A
And yeah, they believe like, oh, I saw a Reddit post that said bitcoin was going to top on October 6th and it did. I'm out. Right. So I do think that's a big part of it.
- [48:36]
B
And, and, and I think like, okay.
- [48:43]
You know, it's, it's very interesting. Like if the four year cycle is broken, then the mental model that people have used like the biggest holders of bitcoin have used to determine risk on and risk off environments like that's broken. And now they need a new mental model to understand what's going on. And when you need a new mental model like when you're in an unprecedented situation it creates uncertainty and when there's uncertainty it's risk off. So it's like, you know, like I could see like this is like we're it, this is the breaking of the four year cycle.
- [49:15]
A
A lot of sense. And it makes a lot of sense because yeah, it makes a lot of sense and I've thought about that a lot as well. But you articulated it well. I think for a lot of these people if they've been deep believers in the four year cycle and kind of just whether it was self fulfilling or they just believe they knew where price was going to go up and down. Now all of a sudden you have to be like 10 year to have studied macroeconomics for 10 years and understand the Japan carry trade and why gold's going up and silver's move and interest rate arbitrage. I mean these are just a bunch of guys who bought a lot of bitcoin early and had the balls to hold it. They're not macro economists and even the economists have no idea what the hell is going on. Right. I mean the last two weeks ago or whatever the stock market was 3% off all time highs and the fear and greed index for stocks was like four. It was like the most fearful markets had ever been and they're at an all time high. So nobody knows what the hell's going on.
- [50:12]
B
Well, you know, if you peel back the surface of the stock market it's really just like the Mag 7 and then the majority of stocks are actually down on the year.
- [50:21]
Outside of the Mag 7. So you know, and it's given us an all time high score but like it's not an even distribution across, you know, equities. Yeah, I.
- [50:36]
Yeah I, it's, it's interesting. It's like it is forcing people to evaluate what their, what their worldview is. I will tell you like the spin on it that the bullish part is, is like we've also been captured by the four year cycle and like once we break the yoke of the four year cycle and the four year cycle now all of a sudden can become the eight year cycle or you know like, like now. I really couldn't imagine something more bullish than us establishing like hey, this is the new normal There isn't a four year cycle. We're gonna have enough of your next year.
- [51:07]
A
Like if we don't need to assume that the next three years are going to be complete shit. Correct.
- [51:11]
B
Like if we have a bull, a bull market next year, it's going to like send the bullishness for the next year, like insane. Because it's like, oh, wow, like new, new paradigm, you know, it's not trading in four year increments anymore. So. Yeah, but I mean, you gotta, you gotta have conviction in your investment. And I think, you know, there, there are a lot of, of bitcoiners that are absolutely convicted who've been around a long time. And then I think there's like, there's institutional folks that do not share the conviction. They're just following the money. And I think there's also, you know, there's some OGs that didn't sell a dime. And once they got over 100k and they're sitting on 10 billion plus, they're just like, okay, let's start selling. The person who sold that 100,000 bitcoins at 120k. I forget how many exactly they sold. They're looking like a genius right now. So real good feeling.
- [52:09]
A
Real feeling really good. Especially if they're in a tax free zone of some sort, right? And don't know 40% of that to the United States government. I guess with all this in mind, I know we're kind of coming up on the end of time here, but with all this in mind, like the lessons you've learned in the last seven, eight, nine, nine months since you've been doing all this, I guess, is there anything you would have done differently or more, I guess, directly? Is there anything, someone who's trying to do it you would advise? I mean, listen, you guys just stuck your necks out, right? So like all credit in the world, you couldn't have known what was going to happen until it happened. Yeah, right. And listen, and I very transparently, I started buying Nakamoto once it dropped below the pipe price. I was like, I'm doing better than these guys. Let's go. Right? And we'll see. Right? So I don't expect anything. You know, it's a long term investment for me. I don't flip. Flip stuff around. But, you know, if someone was starting this right now, would you have raised capital in a different way? Are there like announcements you would have not made, do you think the SEC or even like we've heard rumors that the NASDAQ's not looking at these favorably at this point, would you have not done a reverse merger? Would you formed a new company? I mean there's a million ways this could be done.
- [53:22]
B
I still have gone the pipe process to do the ipo. You still get to the same fundamental question of like, okay, well what's the valuation at which you're raising money at? And you still get to the same crux of the issue. We actually, when we did our pipe, our North Star was like, this is our all in bet. Like we're rolling everything into this. All of our personal relationships, all of our capital, all of our businesses, like this is all in bet. So everything needs to be structured to be maximally fair, maximally transparent. We didn't take like a big vig of the transaction to pay ourselves. We didn't like, we, we like when people like you pipe, you price the pipe too low. We price the pipe at the value of the money that was invested. If we price the pipe higher, it would have just been a payout to us. So it's not like there's not like some mechanism to like share the upside with like the public or whatever. So.
- [54:13]
So yeah, I mean.
- [54:16]
Everything we've done, we've tried to approach it from doing it the right way. I think the, the lessons learned from the process are really you, you need to have long term aligned partners and we could have raised one third less money and the third we didn't raise is the third that sold right away and we didn't really need that capital. And so like that actually just became a weight on the, on the, on the business. I think the other thing that we messed up and you know, hindsight is 2020 is like on the convert that we took, like we locked in this convert that had amazing terms, zero percent interest, you know, long three year time horizon, etc. But what we didn't appreciate was like the Convert ARB ecosystem. And you know, even though the convert we took was, didn't allow shorting it there, there was the ability to syndicate the convert to other people and those people could short. And so, you know, it's a very long agreement. That's a very tiny sentence in it. That was the pivotal sentence. But you know, if, if, if you're a stock that is like thinly traded and someone goes and shorts your stock for $500 million, like you don't have a seasoned enough cap table to support that type of selling, it's going to crush the stock. You know, we're not, our capital stack is not the same as microstrategy when they were a company that was a 20 year plus company that was public and they had, you know, a wide shareholder base and could support that type of shorting. Like, you know, when GameStop does a short, you know, the stock trades down 5% because they have a robust, you know, liquid stock. And so that was like a dynamic, a market dynamic that we didn't really understand or appreciate. And I, you know, no one, we have great advisors, we have bank bankers, etc. And you know, no one really picked up that that was going to be as big of an issue as it was. And so like, that would be some advice I would give is like when you're looking at financing options, there are lots of ways to structure debt and you need to take into account the nuances of the capital structure that you have in order to determine like what's the best debt approach. And then I think the last thing I would give advice to someone on is like, you got to understand.
- [56:44]
And maybe this is this like, you know, maybe this is obvious to other people, but I mean I've been running a private business since I was 22 years old. Like, you know.
- [56:55]
You know, I, I, I, I have a certain philosophy of how I do business and that's what I've done for 13 years. And I think a lot of people in Bitcoin and crypto broadly have a similar philosophy. Wall street does not have that philosophy. And Wall street does not give an F about any of anything but making money. And they will smile and you know, shake your hand and tell you whatever you want to hear as they.
- [57:22]
Yeah, and you know, the, the like, you know, I won't call anything out specifically but just like, you got to understand that you are not, you are not the customer. Like, you're not, you're not the person everyone's trying to like make good with. You're the product. You are, you are the prize pig being led into the sausage factory. And there is a whole ecosystem of businesses that are there to make money off of you because you're a one time thing and you know, once you're gone, there'll be another prize pig right behind you. And their kind of job is to just pillage as much as possible and no one will really tell you the real.
- [58:08]
No one's in the business of telling you the truth about what's going on.
- [58:11]
A
Right.
- [58:11]
B
You have to think completely independently and assess these things for yourself because you just can't trust all of the inputs. And then even further, even if someone has good intentions the other thing I realized from this process, you know, I've probably taken, I don't know, 200 phone calls with investors over the past three, three months.
- [58:29]
A
Yeah.
- [58:30]
B
You know, if I were to take all of their feedback and advice and put it on a whiteboard.
- [58:36]
50% of people would tell me, you should do more of this. And then the other 50% of people would say the exact same thing.
- [58:45]
A
I should opposite.
- [58:46]
B
Yeah. And so it's like, okay, well like, you know, you know, these people, what they want is they want the stock price to go up. That's what they want.
- [58:54]
A
And so they're literally everyone that they.
- [58:57]
B
Think is going to help, but it's just their personal opinion. And so like at the end of the day, you know, you can't just rely on people's personal opinions to direct you about what's the right strategy to do. You have to make your own assessment. You have to focus on the midterm and the long term. You have to be okay with just not having control over the immediate term. You know, it's funny, like, since launching, like we've had a couple things that we've announced that I thought, okay, this is like really bullish news. The market's going to react super positively to it and the stock's down 10%.
- [59:25]
A
Crazy.
- [59:27]
B
You know, there's days where we've done nothing. Like our best performing day, we did nothing, woke up, we're up 20% in a day. And it's like, okay, like you just have to like appreciate that there's just dynamics at play and you just, you can't control them. So you gotta focus on the medium to long term, no matter how hard and painful it is. Yeah. And I, and I think just like if the number one thing is like seek out people that are aligned and believe in what you're doing and work with those people. And like, it's not about what your stock price is today, it's about what's your stock price gonna be five years from now. And you know, if you don't have long term aligned people, your stock price five years from now could be the same as it is today. Like, you know, like you need to build the. Exactly what Bitcoin did, exactly what micro strategy did you build? A die hard group of people that are ride or die on the strategy and business and, and who are betting on the team. And anyone who's like not bought in, they can buy the stock later. Like they can buy the stock once we've gotten through all the hard stuff. Like the People you want, the people who are going to hold, who are going to ride with, you know, during the hard stuff. And so of course, yeah, that's what I would optimize.
- [60:36]
A
Marriage.
- [60:37]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [60:38]
A
It's funny way you talk about the bankers and all the people shaking your hand and stabbing you in the back. It's like comes back to the core ethos of Bitcoin. Don't trust verify. Right. But you don't know until you know.
- [60:50]
B
Yeah, no, I mean it's, it's boys to men. Like there, there are no boys that survive as the, as a CEO of a public company. So you just got to. Well, I don't know.
- [61:01]
I will say on the flip side, it's like as stressful as it is when you're winning at it, like when you do good moves, it feels so amazing. It's just like, it's like, it's a very challenging thing and it's just the fulfillment that comes from like achieving something challenging. And you know, I, I honestly, I have so much respect for Sailor. I mean I've always had respect for Sailor. But like after, after going through the past three months of just like the stock price and the volatility etc, and I look at like what Saylor went through at a similar age when MicroStrategy was like the tippy top of the dot com bubble. And then you know what, everything that followed after, dude, he has been through the gauntlet. Like he is, he is an absolute Roman general. And, and that experience is what prepared him to handle the situation today. You know, other weaker men would be struggling right now with the amount of that he's under. And he's just as calm and focused as a freaking bullet. I mean it's. And, and that comes from that experience. And so, you know, you can't be a grizzly war veteran without going to war and you know, battling it out. So it is what it is. It is what it is.
- [62:21]
A
It'll be interesting to see where everything heads. Man, I appreciate you taking the time. I'm glad we had this conversation. It clarifies a lot of ideas in my head and I think you tend to have the right vision. Basically just zoom out. And I just can't imagine, I know as an individual how hard it is even to. I don't even have a portfolio tracker. I hate knowing so much. Right. So I just deleted it. So I can't even see. But like as the CEO of a publicly traded company, I can't even imagine like waking up and wondering what the stock is Every day or who's saying what. It just seems like you really threw yourself out there, so.
- [62:57]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, true. But, dude, you know, we've been doing this for a long time. Like, there's really nothing else in the world to do but this. And if I could do it all over again and someone said, hey, do you want the opportunity to have a public vehicle that has, you know, half billion dollars of bitcoin and the ability to pioneer bitcoin in the capital markets? That's a dream come true. And so worth it. Yeah, worth it. And you know what? I'm in my mid-30s. I turned 35 this year. Like, I'm doing this next 30 years, man.
- [63:35]
A
I'll be 50 next year.
- [63:38]
B
Well, you have the hardest.
- [63:43]
A
The DJ ears.
- [63:46]
B
You can't do anything great. That's easy. It's got to be hard.
- [63:51]
We got to see this thing all the way through. We got to see bitcoin all the way through to hyper bitcoinization. We have to see bitcoin through until every central bank, every government, every corporation, every individual has it. And at this point, we just have to see it through because we've been working at it so long. I mean, it's like you can't start a journey, a quest, you know, the Hobbit would not have been published if Bilbo gave up, you know, before they ever made it to the mountain. You know, like, it's just definitely never.
- [64:17]
A
Gotten to the Lord of the Rings, Right?
- [64:22]
The next generation. Dude, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. And I hope I want to have another conversation in the not so distant future once things stabilize about all of the things that bitcoin treasuries can do once this all kind of equals out. I think think people are still confused as to how many innovations and products can come of this once things are normal. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.
- [64:47]
B
All right, ciao.