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A
People come to understand bitcoin in a myriad of different ways. A lot of people have to touch the hot stove. Bitcoin treasury companies are not, you know, in general the equivalent of alt season altcoins. But there's a very similar lesson that I think is going to have to be learned, which is that it's a great way to get less bitcoin. False is equal to you. You know, it's like, oh well, you could either go buy bitcoin at this company, X, Y or Z, or buy the etf, you, you are incentivized to get them to also your stock. And that's where I, I see the greatest misalignment because it's predicated on, you know, constantly raising more and more capital and, and most of which should be people just buying bitcoin directly. The sentiment has never been worse. For my 10 years around Bitcoin, the fundamentals of bitcoin have never been better. Yeah, and those two things are true at the same time. And I think that there's also, you know, there, you know, my view there also never was an adoption wave since 2021 and that the next one will be particularly large because
B
I mean, we've started now. I was just having a chat, but we may as well just make this the show the adoption wave. New people come into bitcoin when bitcoin's ripping. They come in, in the euphoria phase of bitcoin price that happens every single cycle. And I think because we didn't have that, we never got the kind of broader awareness. You didn't see it posted in all the major news articles and things like that. And I just think we never got that influx of retail but because of AI, because everyone was going to AI and if people were coming to bitcoin like they were probably going to the treasury companies.
A
Yeah, I think that that's, I mean just from my own vantage point of being at meetups, being at conferences, of course, you know, people are trickling in here, there in terms of new people. But there was not a decided wave like there was in 2017 or 2020, 2021. And why that is, I, you know, I don't know if it was just that the price increase was a function of the ETF and a lot of low conviction, small institutional flows rather than an unlock of a wave of new people actually figuring out that there was signal on bitcoin. And then with everything happening in AI sucking both capital out as well as mindshare, she's like, yeah, eventually they're going to print a shit ton of money and people are going to figure out that the bitcoiners are right and the bitcoiners will figure out that that was the North Star and get back to the basics.
B
Yeah, I don't think retail's gone forever, but on the treasury company stuff, you've been fighting a lot online. I've loved to see it, to be honest. Do you think the treasury companies have been a net good for bitcoin?
A
Danny? Everything's good for bitcoin. Okay.
B
Is it though, like in the sense
A
that I think that bitcoin has to humble everybody and that people come to understand bitcoin in a myriad of different ways. A lot of people have to touch the hot stove. Bitcoin treasury companies are not, you know, in general the equivalent of alt season and altcoins. But there's a very similar lesson that I think is going to have to be learned, which is that it's a great way to get less bitcoin, you know, and like maybe a few people were the, you know, minority or exception and that created, you know, this idea that the market as a whole could and that the market as a whole learns that they can't. And that markets might be efficient over short periods of time, but as a function of time it becomes more efficient. And people learn from their past mistakes and that the people that learned that mistake that they, they actually got less bitcoin by buying a bitcoin treasury company at a large premium to the actual bitcoin it held was why they ultimately got lost bitcoin. And they will come to understand it and not make the same mistake twice. And so I don't, I don't ne. I don't think that it's brought in, you know, net, you know, this large amount of net new adoption that a lot of other people seem to think it has. So I think it's been a lot more neutral to, to negative potentially on price. But it just is, you know, it is what it is and the market has to process information. And I think the market is in, you know, part of what might get us out of this, this cycle is a bunch of people actually finding the real signal and rotating out of the treasury companies and buying bitcoin.
B
Yeah, I want to know what it is that you don't like about them. So because if you look at say strategy, obviously easiest one biggest one, like their business model at first I actually really liked as they were a cash flow positive company and they were moving their cash reserves on the balance Sheet into bitcoin makes total sense. What I started to like, it just, it just didn't vibe with me quite right when they started doing the preferreds and they did the convertible notes and it was becoming like a leverage debt play trying to get people to buy their common equity which was then going to get diluted so they could buy more bitcoin. I like, that's where the whole thing got too complex for me and I just kind of fell out of. I just didn't, I didn't. I don't really get it anymore. It's just this complex financial engineering thing.
A
Yeah. So from my side one, they did the converts first and actually made more sense to me when they were doing the converse because they were tapping cap, you know, money, that capital that, that wouldn't otherwise have come into bitcoin. Now I, you know, truth be told, like, I didn't really have a, an issue when they started doing the prefers for me. It was really more when I started seeing things being said that I viewed as confusing the nature of bitcoin as a means to get people to buy stock rather than bitcoin.
B
So this is the, like digital credit narrative.
A
Yeah, I mean, truth be told, it wasn't. It wasn't really even that. It was, you know, we turned bitcoin into money, which I think just by its very nature begs the question of, well, if you turn bitcoin into money, then what is bitcoin? Bitcoin is this very difficult thing to understand as money because it doesn't, you know, behave like the money that people are used to. And then when you start deviating away, say, oh, it's not, it's not even money. It's capital. It's like, well, what, you know, like that stands to confuse far more people than it is. It's like, hey, you know, you think that money is fiat and that it can be easily printed and that it's stable in the short term but collapses in the long term. This is a different kind of money. It's volatile, but it holds its value because there's a fixed supply. And as more people opt into that, it will become less volatile over time and it will evolve from a, you know, nascent and, and, you know, early store of value that's volatile into a form of commerce that's being used every day for transactions. And so that was probably the first one. Then there was a post from a guy who I know and like from strive talking about how digital credit is the most important inflection point in bitcoin. And that I, I looked at and I said, so you're telling me that, you know, in my own view, estimation, no more than 1% of people understand bitcoin. But the thing that's going to make sense to them is a professional preferred equity that is quote backed by Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't have any yield, but you're going to pay 13% to them, like, and that, that's going to be this transformational thing for bitcoin. And what he said in this post was, or this video was that, you know, bitcoin's too volatile for 99% of people. And again, that's where I look, I started to observe this and say, okay, now you're actually saying things that confuse people about the nature of bitcoin when bitcoin is already hard to understand. Is, is this an, is this a net, net benefit? You know, like, what, what, what is going on? And when I started to call out what I perceived to be misleading marketing around these products, people doubled down. And, and then when I dug into it, I started to see what, in my view is a, a really broken incentive structure, which not only are they complex, you know, financial structures, but at a higher level, they ex. Their whole strategy is to get people to not buy bitcoin, but to buy their stock instead.
B
Yeah.
A
And then, and for one end of the bookend, which is the people investing in the common equity with the idea of getting more Bitcoin. And I have, you know, logical reasons to, to describe why you won't get more Bitcoin that way. The companies will. But you as an individual, if you were saving in bitcoin, you'd be better off just, just saving in Bitcoin. And then on the other book, enter the, the people that they're shepherding or trying to shepherd into these preferred equity instruments that are fixed dollar equity instruments that are ultimately going to be left holding the bag as fiat loses its value and eventually hyperinflates, that the last person to hold those is the one holding the bag, and that those people would be better off just buying a smaller amount of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is too volatile to you, you are, you know, you are the volatility. The market is the volatility. People pricing Bitcoin for the first time are the volatility and bitcoin doesn't have a yield. So the better thing for those people would be simply buying a smaller percentage of Bitcoin and then learning and, you know, reading a book, rabbit holing, you know, spending the hundred hours to, you know, understand how to, to keep your money. But there's actually a disincentive and that the disincentive also exist to the shareholders that, that people who have bought the stocks have a direct incentive to get people not to buy bitcoin, but, but to buy their stocks. And I'm not saying that everybody operates or effectuates that incentive, but the incentive exists because in the, the same incentive does not exist with a, with the ETF because the ETF is managed to net asset value. So you could hold 90% bitcoin and cold storage, but you decided to buy the Bitcoin treasury stock you need, you suddenly need people to buy your stock and not Bitcoin to, to validate your thesis around that 10%, which is meaningful, right? Because if it's, yeah, false is equal to you, you know, it's like, oh, well, you could either go buy bitcoin at this company, X, Y or Z, or buy the etf. You, you are incentivized to get them to also buy your stock. And that's where I see the greatest misalignment, because it's predicated on constantly raising more and more capital and most of which should be people just buying bitcoin directly.
B
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A
I think the misaligned incentive is that their incentive with their future shareholders is to get them to not buy bitcoin but instead to buy their stock and selling their stock at a premium to the underlying value of Bitcoin, which in my view this has been a lot more controversial than it should be because I'm mostly talking to people that own the stock. But if you, if you talk to a disinterested third party and ask them whether, you know, bitcoin in a stock wrapper with leverage should trade at a premium to, on, you know, bitcoin that's not leveraged, that's not in the stock wrapper, that doesn't have the implications of corporate taxes, double taxation. They would say that the, the underlying assets should trade at a premium and the, the stock should trade it at a discount, just from a pure risk perspective. But the companies have an incentive which is where there's misalignment of selling that premium as a trading multiple. And then they, they make analogies and compare it to things, but they're really harvesting the premium to their benefit to the detriment of the, the person that's buying the stock.
B
How are they doing that? Is that by diluting shareholders when it's above one XM nav to buy more Bitcoin?
A
Right. But also think about the person who's buying the stock, the person who's providing that money, they're paying, you know, 50% premium. In the context of strive today, the strategy premium is much smaller, but it was, it was very large. In 2024 and 2025, those people were, what they were functionally doing was getting less Bitcoin than the bitcoin equivalent that they were buying into because of the premium. And again, the incentive of the company is to do that. Where it's misaligned is with the mis, is the person who's actually buying it. In my opinion, if, if you weren't, if your whole strategy wasn't predicated on getting new capital in the door, new equity capital in the door, and you were producing bitcoin denominated returns, not as a function of harvesting a premium that shouldn't exist. And again, because that premium exists, they're allowed, they're, they're able to do it. But then, you know, they have to sell a story about how they're going, you know, it's like they tell a story about how they're going to be able to get more Bitcoin by raising these prefers. The Preferreds, in my opinion are bad instruments for the people buying the preferreds. But the I, the whole idea of making more bitcoin is predicated on their ability to get people piled in to the preferreds. So it's kind of two ends of the, the barbell. And in both cases I think people would just be better off buying bitcoin. And that same misalignment wouldn't exist if it wasn't predicated on getting new equity in the door, in my view.
B
Why do you think that these companies aren't going to be able to sustain above 1x m nav? Because for people buying the shares in these companies, presumably they're betting that the companies can continue to increase their bitcoin per share. Is that right?
A
No, no, that, that's how, that's how it's been sold. I think from a, from a risk perspective that is fundamentally illogical. Right, where it's like, why is that? Well, because like first you have to start from this idea that there is more risk associated with the stock. Companies like yes, there's potentially more upside dependent on whether or not you price the risk appropriately. But at a, say 1, 1M nav or whatever, which effectively means, and again, the way that I look at it is common equity to the net asset value attributable to common in the bitcoin equivalent. If that was at one to one, then anything more than that would say that bitcoin is riskier, the underlying asset is riskier than owning the stock. In which case if you own the stock, you don't own bitcoin. You own a stock, it's in somebody else's control, they have an expense load, they have execution risk. Whether are they going to be able to get the incremental leverage? Is something going to go wrong? You know, in the context of, you know, GameStop, Citadel basically just said, Robin Hood said you can't buy the stock. You know, censorship, lot of censorship. Risk that going from one to greater than one is an expression that the stock is less risky than Bitcoin at a discount, it would signal that Bitcoin is less risky than the stock, which it, which it is. Then if the, if the stock was trading at a discount, there's an opportunity for that stock on a bitcoin per share basis to both outperform Bitcoin and trend to one to the proper. You know, it's, it's always going to be riskier because there's, there's more counterparty risk, there's more execution risk. But as those liabilities do trend to zero, it would then trend toward one. And it's just, it's a, it's a backward risk view that they basically sold on like it's a price to book value. Like a bank might be valued. But in the, the difference in this context is you can actually own the underlying exact asset with less risk, but you are paying a premium to take more risk and not own the underlying asset that all of your return or quote outperformance would be predicated on.
B
Why do you think that people don't understand this? Because is it as simple as people think that basically trying to take leverage. They think leverage is a way to become an OG.
A
They think that leverage number go up means more Bitcoin. And the big thing that is misses depending on what price you bought in
B
at
A
and what is going to happen. What has happened to this point is like, you know, as it's traded at a premium, the company sells stock to buy Bitcoin or to hold cash that they basically harvest that premium. Well, the market figures this out as a function of time that they were the premium and that as their understanding of Bitcoin goes up and that you know, because by and large these are bitcoiners that are buying the common equity as this way to get more Bitcoin. And like to a person when I brought up this idea and again I don't, you know, go around talking about my background, but I, you know, I've worked for a hedge fund. I worked you know, for an investment bank before that. I've worked in credit restructuring. There seems to be in an entire absence from this entire evaluation of applying discount rates to future scenarios to basically NPV or to calculate what you know, based on what scenario you are ascribing in the future to say what the value of the, the stock should be today. That that's entirely absent from the discussion. They also seemingly none of them contemplate the, the consequences of, of corporate taxes. They, they say, well why would they ever sell the Bitcoin? I say it doesn't matter if they sell the Bitcoin. You know, the, the value of a company is based on return of capital and the timing of that return of capital to you. So in order for it to get out of the corporate structure into your pocket so that you could go get something of actual value like a car or a home or what value really is, they would have to incur that tax. So it doesn't matter if, if they're not incurring it today, you would have to Contemplate it in your own valuation of it. Totally absent from the discussion. You know. And so I think that it's, it is really a simplistic view of leverage number go up equals more Bitcoin. And that just certainly is not true if you are not accounting for the other variables. Again, if you set aside all risk and simply isolated the premium that the stocks are trading, which is a backwards rescue to how, how it should, how risk should be priced along with the impact of corporate taxes, they'd be like, you basically have to out like on a bitcoin denominated basis, you would have to outperform by 20% if it was 1 to 1. If, if you know, Bitcoin went to infinity and Fiat went to zero. But, but nobody, nobody brings that up. And when I bring it up, I was just on a spaces that concept was like foreign to people. And for me, having valued companies like if you valued a stock say outside the bitcoin world that never, that doesn't currently return any capital shareholders, you're still having to apply a tax rate at the corporate level because your whole reason for buying it is actually capital returned to you. And, and it, it seems to be just a very, you know, you know, people are not precisely or like really, you know, they might say, oh I know that there's risk, but they're not pricing the risk is what I'm saying.
B
The interesting there is like I remember maybe six months ago, Fong Li came out and said that 80% of the people that are buying Stretch were retail investors. Do you think this is why? Because the sort of institutions are looking at this company in the same way that you are and actually this appropriately.
A
Yeah, I think the reality is that it's a heavy retail base because it's the, the people who are buying the common equity are the people most bullish on bitcoiners. And it is hard for an institution, you know, if one out of a hundred people understand bitcoin, it's hard for a group of people managing institutional capital to, you know, get over 50, come to consensus. Right. So I think that that's, that's mostly what it is because also it's like institutions, I don't, you know, they're, they make a lot of boneheaded decisions, you know, so it's not like retail's not as smart as, as institutional capital. Like everyone who's early to bitcoin is, is smarter than those institutions. So I don't think that it's that, but I do think that there then is a lack of rigor or lack of thought process as to the risk or how to quantify those risks. And it's more of like a feels. And then the feels gets resolved over time because anytime the premium emerges, somebody, whether it's the companies themselves or a shareholder, will, will harvest the premium to, to realize that and that becomes zero sum.
B
So what do you think the long term looks like for these companies? Do you think, obviously you think trading below 1 XM NAV, but will they survive? Do you think that they can continue to pay the preferred dividends? What do you think will happen?
A
Yeah, my expectation is that I can't say for every one of them, but I would expect strategy to survive. I would expect strategy to materially underperform Bitcoin. But I think that the, the strategy shareholder base is going to figure that out and start selling the stock to buy bitcoin. Now companies that are in worse positions, more leverage, less reason, you know, to exist, higher expense base because like that's what you have to think about. Some of these companies have a really, you know, people say well the ETF has a expense ratio of 0, 25%. Well, start looking at the expense base of these corporate treasury companies and you'll see that they have expenses too and they're, they're higher. And so you know, at some point the companies will just return capital. I, I would expect this strategy continues to, to operate and ultimately shifts the strategy. They, they, you know, once their, their equity begins to trade at a steep discount to nav, it's like, hey, bitcoin can go up with a stock not going up. And that, that's part of the misaligned incentive is like there actually has to be a market for stock. And their incentive is to get people to buy stock so that they can buy bitcoin and not bitcoin. But the incentive of the shareholder is to figure that out. And, and also if there's ever a premium there to sell it to buy bitcoin. But that might be how bitcoin goes up and the share price doesn't, but the company still has the bitcoin. And then the incentives start to align with the remaining shareholders then are living in a world where it's much more difficult for them to be diluted. They do have a large base of bitcoin. And that again, I can't predict the future, but I would expect in that world that strategy then becomes an allocator of capital to generate cash flows rather than raise capital to buy Bitcoin is if, if I Had to factor it in. But I think that anybody who's in it today is going to materially underperform Bitcoin because of the, the very overwhelming. Like when I, when I zoom out. One of the things that I can't, that I struggle with, why people can't see this is why when they zoom out, that they would think that the market for a single name stock would be bigger than the global demand for buying bitcoin directly. You know, because somebody still has to buy the stock for the, the value of the stock to go up. And it's like, why are there going to be a lot more people that, that demand, buying that stock with leverage, with more risk, when they could just own bitcoin, you know, and, and even that, like, you know, genuinely, that was always the case and it was always uninteresting to me, but wasn't problematic in my mind until they start talking about bitcoin in a way that confuses the nature of bitcoin because that's what I view. It's like that actually an understanding of bitcoin, it does it, you know, intentionally, non, however you want to describe it, to the ends of selling stock. And you know, bitcoin working is predicated on more people figuring out bitcoin, not less. And they will over time. I think it will just be better off for everybody if more people figure it out sooner. So I think confusing the nature of bitcoin of like avoiding talking about it as money is really what, you know, perked me up and got me engaged to dive in and look into it. Because it's not, it's not semantics. Like, it's not semantics to expressly go out of your way to define bitcoin as the one thing that makes it unique. Yeah, and, and, and also, you know, someone like Michael Saylor has on public record been critical about the use of bitcoin for payments. There was some interview that he did with CNBC in 2024, I believe it was, where the host asked him, you know, does bitcoin need to be used as currency to, to be successful? And he, he described it as like, you know, that was a misfortunate history of, you know, bitcoin's narrative. And, you know, it's controversial, you know, that, that, that's controversial. But, you know, bitcoin is digital real estate in cyberspace or, you know, in Manhattan or, you know, it's like, that's where I view, you know, I, I put these things together and I say, hey, it's confusing people about the nature of bitcoin that's slowing people's understanding of it. And if you have an incentive for bitcoin not to be used as money and you, you have a view that this is controversial, are your incentives actually aligned with, you know, Bitcoin and your, your, your shareholder base, like, that's, that's what I see to be more problematic.
B
It's interesting that, like, bitcoin, I think last cycle from bottom to top did something like a 7x, and people are still not seeing it as volatile enough and are trying to chase additional leverage with things like these treasury companies. But how do you try and explain to people that the asymmetry in just owning actual Bitcoin is still there because
A
of how few people understand it? By whatever metric you want to look at, I would say a conservative estimate is still 1%. You know, no more than 1% of people understand Bitcoin. Now, if you are confusing the nature of what Bitcoin is and how bitcoin adoption increases and that it is money and that a hundred percent of the world needs money, and money is this very unique economic good that is differentiated from all other goods and it's a basic necessity, not a luxury, that then it becomes easy to say, okay, well, if the end game is 100% of people buying Bitcoin and no more than 1% of people understand it, and you can look at the value of bitcoin relative to all of the, you know, the market of financial assets, you know, first the market of money, you know, in its broadest sense, something like 100 to 120 trillion bitcoins, roughly 1.2 to 1.3 trillion today. That's asymmetric. If you look at the fact that I think only two of the companies in the S&P 500 own Bitcoin square, Tesla. There are other companies that have holdings, but I don't think on a primary basis like Goldman might have some of the ETF or their customers. But from my understanding, like, if you think about holding on a direct basis, again, I'm just looking for benchmarks that say that 1 out of 100 number is conservative, that you can look at a number of different points and say, okay, well, if what's actually happening here is that the world's adopting a new form of money and they're adopting Bitcoin because it has a credibly enforced fixed supply, 100% of people are going to need it, and very few people understand it, and they're about to have to print a lot more money, then there's a, there's a lot of asymmetry left inherently there. If you start to think about it as digital capital, like, I don't even know. Like, if I was to ask you what does, what does digital capital actually mean?
B
I don't know, but I don't know. Understand a lot of his analogies. Yeah, I don't know if that's.
A
Imagine trying to explain the narrative, you know, like the fundamental demand for bitcoin. And if someone was like, well, what, what is digital capital? You're like, I don't think most of the shareholders like, oh, it's something you can borrow against. It's collateral. Like, so everyone's borrowing against this thing, but what is the thing? Why, why are they able to. Well, because it's, it's scarce, but it's zeros and ones. So everyone's just, you know, holding the zeros and ones but borrowing against it for other money. How, how does this work? And so it becomes very, maybe it might become more difficult to think about the, the asymmetry of it if you're not thinking about it in the context of money. And you know, it's like when Michael Saylor came to understand bitcoin, he read the bitcoin standard, right? So it's like for one side of the shareholder base, they're saying, you know, oh, bitcoin's not volatile enough, you need more volatility. And then the other side's like, oh, but for the 99% of you, it's too volatile for you just buy my, you know, digital preferred equity. And, and so I think that when you're stuck in that financialized mentality that it might be difficult to see the asymmetry because you're missing something fundamental about bitcoin. And I do think, and not to everyone, because I know people who are really longtime bitcoiners that have started to allocate money to these bitcoin treasury companies. So they clearly get bitcoin. I think they might just be wanting to gamble. They like gambling or something. But a lot of other people came to bitcoin by way of these. They caught enough signal to understand that there is financial upside to bitcoin and it's something that they want to own with it, never actually having rabbit holed it and do have a very limited surface level understanding. And those people are going to rabbit hole bitcoin when the, you know, when the premium flips to a discount. They realize that the narrative was wrong, but they were so close to being on the signal and that will be an unlock. So that's where I say, you know, everything's good for bitcoin. You know, the treasury companies don't have to fail for people to, for, for their stock to go up in fiat for people to have, you know, inevitably gotten less bitcoin as a result versus the very, you know, early minority of people that were in it before it started to get heavily diluted and traded at material premium. But you know, it's like money is money, like there's fundamental truth that exists in the world and people will figure it out. Because you can only solve the problem of fiat money with another better form of money, and that's bitcoin.
B
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A
I would expect that it's something like 3 to 5% of people.
B
As low as that?
A
Yeah, but I also don't believe that, you know, I'm, I, I anchor people to 1% because your question was, you know, is there still asymmetry in Bitcoin? And if you understand, you know, if you come to understand the nature of Bitcoin as money and the importance of its fixed supply and that everybody needs Bitcoin and, and economic systems do converge on one form of money. And it's not random that everyone in the US uses dollars. It's not random that everyone in Europe uses euros and yen in Japan. And it's also not random that the gold standard existed. Then you start to, to be, if you're at 1%, then you start to conceptualize that it's, you know, 1 to 100, asymmetric. But from a practical perspective, we're not like there are not 1%, there are not 80 million people in the world that really grok bitcoin.
B
No, no.
A
And so if it's something smaller than that, you know, which it, which it is, it's like if, if 80 million people in the world really understood bitcoin, the bitcoin price wouldn't be where it is. And because those 80 million people would be, you know, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and you know, they, you know, they have access to more information, more ability to adopt.
B
So it's probably less than 5 million people.
A
Yeah, I would guess if it was 5 million people, you know, the bitcoin conference wouldn't, you know, have to appeal to altcoins and, and you know, have 15,000 people, you know, it's like it, it's still early, Very early.
B
Yeah.
A
And so when I think about 3 to 5%, I think about it from the perspective of who are those people? You know, like, because if it's more people like Michael Saylor, more people like, you know, Ross Stevens, the founder of Stone Ridge, if it's, you know, people who run companies, their spheres of influence in terms of just the people immediately around them that catch on their, you know, catch on to their signal that if it's 1 like 1 in 20 people, if 1 in 20 people really rocks Bitcoin, that would be 400 million people. Right. If I'm doing my math. Right, 8 billion, 80 million times 5. Right. That Bitcoin becomes very easy to see in that world. Like in terms of you're still a little bit crazy if you're the person in your circle that has had enough vision to see how bitcoin goes from where it is today to a fully functioning money system that's being used to facilitate transactions for day to day commerce. And once enough people have figured it out, then it, then it will be like a rush to the exit. It will likely coincide with fiat hyperinflation where people won't be sitting around saying what's the benefit of investing in a bitcoin treasury company or not? And thinking in fiat CAGRs, they're going to be flooding to the only form of money that's holding its vat. And so, you know, another way I would look at it though is similar to when a, when a currency hyperinflates like the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira or Venezuelan bolivar wasn't because 50% of the people, you know, figured out that the money is not working. A smaller group of people figured it out, headed for the exits and then the, the rest of the people figured out what was going on as a function of it. So that's what I, what I view to, to be more likely. But it's also part of the reason why, you know, on the treasury companies, I do think there's a, there's something about the treasury companies that just confuses a lot of people about Bitcoin. Not just about what they, you know, how they talk about bitcoin and that, that confuses them. But like the idea of like, but you buy, you, you know, someone lends money to you and you buy bitcoin and you know, what's the risk that you blow up? Even if I don't think that they'll blow up. But I, but I also think that their adversarial and they're not all adversarial and maybe adversarial is a strong word. But to, to talk about Bitcoin payments where it's not just like a meme like don't spend your bitcoin, like I understand those people, but it's a difference to say like, you know, don't spend your Bitcoin, to saying that Bitcoin payments is a misfortunate, unfortunate part of the historical narrative and to be antagonistic to the use of Bitcoin as payments because that is a necessary part of the end game. If you hear someone like Jack Dorsey talk about it where he says Bitcoin needs to be everyday money to work to be successful. Now that doesn't mean that everybody needs to be paying for things in bitcoin today, but as an end state or an end game, that, that needs to be the end game. Because otherwise if Bitcoin was just locked up in a relatively few large institutions, it would be so centralized that it would not be resistant to censorship. If it's not resistant to censorship, then the, the whole exercise is moot. If it's, if it's not resistance, censorship, you've just recreated the fiat system. They can, they could, if you can censor Bitcoin, you can, it's too centralized to, to not be resistant to it. You, you can alter one rule, you can functionally alter other rules like the, the fixed supply. And so, but where I'm going is that my view of it is, and again, I'm working on bitcoin payments, but I'm also doing that for logical reasons. It's part of the reason why, you know, I, I see this as problematic, but the vast majority of people are going to start to understand Bitcoin as money as they see it being used as money. And so if you are, if your position as a company is antagonistic to that, I view it as problematic to the future adoption of bitcoin to working. And because for some people, only a certain number of people in the world will be able to sit down, read a book, listen to a podcast, see this very esoteric thing and be like, ah, yep, this is the where, where the world's going. I'm going to buy bitcoin today with the idea that, you know, everyone else is going to come to a similar conclusion that this is the best form of money. But when you can go down the street in Austin, Texas, on a square terminal, buy beef for bitcoin and eggs for bitcoin and sourdough bread for bitcoin, that for the person that doesn't have enough vision, and not in a critical way, but just in a very logical way to be like, hey, it's hard for somebody to understand bitcoin as money when it's not using money. Well, when they see it capable of being used as money, that is an unlock. It closes the mental loop. It's like, okay, I'm not using bitcoin as money, but you can. And I'm now going to evaluate this in the context of all this other intellectual kind of thought process or logic about why somebody created bitcoin to be this form of money that has this fixed supply and that it was expressly created because of all the trust that you had to put in banks. And that trust had been broken. Central banks creating money, quantitative easing, banks creating credit bubbles, everything. But if you don't have that being used, or if you're actively working to constrain that, that is something that is in opposition to a wave of people that would start to turn on to
B
it turning on, you know, now square do bitcoin payments. What percentage of your payments that you're making, things you're buying is in bitcoin? Because for me, like, basically the only time I ever actually use bitcoin as money is around bitcoin events and bitcoin conferences. Because otherwise I just don't really have an opportunity to.
A
I mean, it's still low, right? But in terms of percent, it's greater in number of payments, smaller in absolute value, I'd say. But like my local grocer accepts bitcoin. The, the woman who cuts my hair, she's. She's on. She was already on square, so she now accepts bitcoin. It was her first bitcoin, you know, so I've, you know, again, when you think about it again, it's a microcosm. But a woman who had never bought bitcoin, I've been, I've been going to the same woman for eight years. Okay. Since I moved back to Austin. Great, great lady, super based. And she, the first bitcoin that she ever got was after Square turned on bitcoin payments and I paid her in bitcoin. That's cool that she had every opportunity. I've been talking to her about bitcoin for eight years. Right. But it was Square turning the ability to accept bitcoin on. And she was like, yeah, sure, like that. For whatever reason, super easy for her. You know, going to an exchange wasn't, you know. And, and so I do think it's a critical part. And, and, and one of the other things that occurred in my, you know, flipping on the, the bitcoin treasury companies was like, you know, it was the, we turned bitcoin into money. Digital credit is the most important inflection in the history of bitcoin. Credit on bitcoin is, you know, bigger than lightning, you know, like, or multi sick, you know, like that that was like implicitly the, the comment. But then, you know, Saylor also made a comment about how what was happening with the preferred stock of, of strive was the most important interesting thing happening in bitcoin at the time. It's like it was happening at a time where Square was rolling out bitcoin payments to 4 million merchants. Like, what are we talking? What are we talking about? And so I don't think like Sailor's bad, you know, like, I wish that like 2020 sailor would come back.
B
Yeah, you know, that's exactly where I'm at.
A
He's in there. He's in there. Like there was a podcast, I don't know if you were a part of it, but there was a podcast that he did with, with Eric Kaysen and John Valor.
B
Mr. Yeah, and huddle.
A
And it was a huddle. But like you, when you listen to it, it's like, man, this guy gets like the. That was awesome importance of bitcoin. And I'm like, where's that guy?
B
He's in 100%.
A
He's in there.
B
I want to see him come back to. Yeah, I think he might be gone though. I think you know, when you talk, you do. I hope so. You know, when you talk about this like bitcoin, this bitcoin is hope we hope he comes back. Yeah. You know, when you talk about like this end state of bitcoin, this hyper bitcoinized world, however you want to call it. Do you think that Bitcoin is the global reserve currency? It's used in every single payment by every single person. Because there's this like, growing idea that Bitcoin won't step into that role and instead will be the global reserve asset and we'll still have some like, USDT stablecoin type payment. Rails.
A
No, Bitcoin will be the reserve currency. I think, like, there's two things that I think confuse people. They, they refer to an, a reserve asset versus a reserve currency. And when they're doing that, they're kind of like they're realistically, maybe conflating is the wrong term, but they look at the treasury as a, as a Treasury bill as a reserve asset and the dollar as a reserve currency. But the dollar's money. And a Treasury is a claim on future dollars at some future point in time. And if the dollar held its value rather than degraded in value, then why would they need to buy the treasury, right? So it's like, hey, they know the dollar is losing value. The treasury is functionally speaking, guaranteed by the US Government. So I'll, I'll own the treasury because it's going to give me some nominal yield which is better than just holding the dollar. But, but a large function of it is, is created by the, the decline in the dollar. And so it's like money is both an asset and in a currency, not all assets are money, but money is an asset. You know, it's like, it's not semantics. It's like the thing that makes money, money is unique to it. And the other assets don't have the, the properties that could allow it to be that thing. And so I do think that there's going to be an inclination to try to force Bitcoin into a box that says, oh, you have to use this fiat stablecoin. And there's going to be Bitcoin and the institutions. That's part of what I see the, the being problematic. Now, the economic gravity of Bitcoin will dictate that it will break through those barriers as well. But that doesn't mean that everybody, you know, first people through the door aren't caught up in the crossfire. But the reason why I so, so one, it's this, like a currency is an asset. Now, Bitcoin is unique in the history of money because it is a form of money that is both functional as money and as a currency. And you know, for the longest time, I didn't really appreciate the distinction of when people were differentiated between money as currency. If you, if you ask somebody about the dollar, they'd be like, is the dollar money or, or currency? They would probably look at you sideways like, what are you talking about? Like what?
B
Because they sound like the same thing, right?
A
Because they think of them the same thing. It's like money's currency. Currency is money. Well, if gold was money, gold needed to be refined into a currency. To have the utility in trade, you had to set a.
B
You need to turn into coins.
A
You had to turn into. Coined into a standard unit. You know, like the idea of one ounce needed to be standardized. Gold, the element on its own is just an element. Putting it into a standard unit, putting the stamp of a crown, you know, having a currency issuer that is turning it into the coin, ensuring that there isn't counterfeit out there was a functional part of the, the role of the currency issuer relative to the money. That there actually was a distinction. And in the entire history of commodity metals, that has. That has functionally been the case. And like a gold bar that doesn't have, you know, the mark of a crown on it to this day is considered different, is not considered to be currency. That's why they call it bullion. Now, Bitcoin is unique because not only does it have this fixed supply and have these monetary properties, but the bitcoin network does. And I'm not distinguishing between bitcoin the asset and bitcoin the network. I put those two things as one. The network is not valuable without the currency. The currency is dependent on having these nodes to be able to transmit money in this system, to have final settlement. But the bitcoin in its totality is issues. The money verifies all transactions and has a standard unit baked in. You don't need someone to create one ounce of gold. You have one satoshi. And so for the first time, a form of money can be a currency as well, Bitcoin. Because the bitcoin network is capable of doing all of the things that a currency issuer was previously necessary for, to refine money into something that was a utility in trade. So it doesn't need the issuer. That's like the, the fundamental aspect of Bitcoin then when it comes to. Well, yeah, there are going to be people who want to put bitcoin sitting in a stablecoin wrapper and say that you have to use this. Or they might even just think it's a good idea that, that it's a, it's a, it's a good way to Scale that there will be that inclination. Tether's already started to buy bitcoin. They'll probably allocate more to bitcoin over time. But to a holder, the economic incentives dictate even if you are going to use a custodian, this isn't about purity, it's about pragmatism. That if you were going to use a custodian or not, that if you were going to use the custodian and somebody was like, hey, you're going to deposit your bitcoin to my bank or my bank like entity and I'm going to give you a note back in, it's denominated in some other money, not bitcoin. You'd be like, well why do you need to do that? Why don't you just denominate it in bitcoin? Denominate your liability to me, your obligation to me. Or more likely the, the incentives will dictate, hey, this is not a deposit. This is a bailment arrangement. Like you can't legally, you can't take my money and give it to somebody else. But in either of those two scenarios, the, the bailment arrangement or the, or the deposit arrangement, the economic incentive would dictate like just make it denominated in the, the currency that I'm giving you, not some other currency for which you're the issuer of that has a different denomination, right? And if, and if one bank wants to do that, another bank is going to follow the economic incentive and say, well, I'll let all you know, whether it's a different bank or a different jurisdiction, they would say like I'll let you, you know, I'll denominate my liability to you in bitcoin rather than some currency. I just made up and said that, you know, my currency is convertible to you at, you know, 10 to 1. You're like 20 to 1, which was like dollars to gold at least around, you know, 1920 or 1930. It's like you basically would have to make up some new currency supply or even if you were issuing it one to one, like imagine like a tether to dollar. If you were to do that with bitcoin, if it wasn't actually in bitcoin but was in, you know, BTC tether, it's not bitcoin. You know, like your liability to me would be the currency and the gravitational force of the economic incentive would just be like, well, it's all the same to you. Like just denominate your liability in bitcoin, you know, and if you Won't, I'll go, I'll go find someone that does. And so for that reason, Bitcoin will just be the reserve currency. There's no there. The, the, the network's capable of, of doing all the functions of a currency issuer that it's technically not needed. It's all it's introducing would be introducing greater economic friction and the individual that also aligns with the incentive of the individual on the other side. And so people will try to do dumb things, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, all of the incentives are like squarely behind. You know, you central bank hold Bitcoin or you, you government of country XYZ hold Bitcoin, you individual in America just hold Bitcoin or hold it with a bank that denominates them Bitcoin.
B
And so I've got like one bit of Keynesian brain rot that I can't get rid of, which is what credit looks like in a fully bitcoinized world. Because like I understand the, the sort of positives of it are that if, if, if I, if we live in Bitcoin, I'm denominating like any, any credit that I give is denominated in Bitcoin. Like that gets rid of so much malinvestment. But does it also slow investment to the point where it's much harder to build new things?
A
No, not, not in my view. I think that deflation, if you think about it as a concept, because, and I'm not suggesting you're Keynesian, but a lot of Keynesian struggle with this is that if there is realized deflation, that is evidence of the fact that people are willing to sell their goods and service for less and less money, that they wouldn't do that if they didn't have an incentive to do that. Right? And that there is nothing that precludes a fixed supply currency that is neutral with the creation of credit. All it eliminates, or the viability of credit for that matter, all it eliminates is the ability to bail out banks if banks lend money and can't return it to the depositors or then the shareholders after the depositors. And so the way that I think about it is, and to compare with the fiat system, because it is really difficult in the fiat brain world, because the fiat, the fiat world exists so far detached from any semblance of reality that like, if the fed system has 6 to 7 trillion of base money in it, right now there are like 105 trillion of, of dollar denominated debt that exists, like excluding, we're not talking about unfunded pension liabilities or derivatives. Just, you know, government debt, state, local, federal credit card debt, auto loans, student loans, mortgages, vanilla debt, things that are not preferred equity, things that have a fixed maturity and a fixed liability. Well, how in the world could the credit system be like the amount of debt be 105, but all the money that exists is only 6 or 7. That functionally means that the same dollar has been lent out, you know, 7, you know, 16, 17 times that it. Because that is the system that exists today where credit, the credit system is actually larger than the amount of money that exists, which only exists because the Fed introduced dollars and prevented like the, the entire credit system from restructuring and shrinking for 50 years like it was turbocharged at the time of the financial crisis. And the credit creation has accelerated as a function of all the dollars that they put into the system in the great financial crisis and then again in 2020. But, but they were doing the same thing functionally in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, before the financial crisis, that the only way that, that could get to that extreme of the there being, you know, 15 times to 17 times the amount of debt than the money in a world where you can create money and bail bad debt out. So the way that I see the, the bitcoin world working is there's 21 million bitcoin, all bitcoin are always being saved by everybody. And some of those people are going to be 70 years old, 80 years old, 90 years old. Some of them are going to be 20 year old coming into the economy and they don't have any money and they're working well in that world where everyone's on a bitcoin standard, the opportunity for bitcoin to increase by a factor of 10. When everybody's in this world, bitcoin's the pricing mechanism. You're not just paying for things in bitcoin. The ribeye is priced in Bitcoin or SATs. The gas at the gas station is priced in SATs. You know, you're not thinking about a fiat price of bitcoin. Well, in that world, bitcoin's going to be, you know, in, in a year it might lose a percentage or 2 if there's some contraction in the economy. But more likely as it's going to be increasing in purchasing power as, as productivity increases, as people are willing to sell the same good for less money because they're able to produce it more efficiently at less cost. You know, that's like saying like, you know, back when I was a child or you know, a young adult, when a beer was a dollar, say rather than, you know, $8 today or whatever it is, it's like a beer going from like you know, a dollar to 99 cents the next, the next year. Well, in that world where money is appreciating and say that, you know, if there's 21 million Bitcoin, the amount of bitcoin that's lent out is likely going to be a fraction of the 21 million. So let's say that 10% of the Bitcoin are lent out, but not like lent out to do some trading scheme. It's like, hey, I'm going to lend you this money and you go build a building, start a business. A business, whatever. Well, if 10% of Bitcoin are lent out, say 2.1 million, and I know there are lost coins, but let's just use the example. Well, the 21 million minus 2.1, the 18.9 million, that's the market of growth of who you're serving with that business. And so yeah, bitcoins, you know, would be appreciating by productivity gains, but. And some businesses would fail and not be able to, you know, repay loans similar to how existed on a gold standard. Right? Not all loans were repaid, but economic activity flourished. So now would there be a world where like you had 21 million bitcoin and the amount of debt in the system was 200 million Bitcoin? No, because the businesses that have those loans would fail and there couldn't be any bailouts. But it's not hard to imagine if you're thinking in that bitcoin denominated world and seeing the credit system as going back to its utility of productive capital formation, like actual capital building a plant, building a manufacturing facility, building telecom infrastructure, you know, or building satellites, whatever people are building, that if the amount of debt that exists is a fraction of the total supply, that your growth of that, of that money base that's lent is all the other bitcoin. Because you're doing it, you know, you're speculating, you're speculating in some business to, to drive growth and the rate of interest would likely be, you know, the way it used to work was that, you know, if the economy was growing at 8%, say if 8, you know, productivity gains were 8%, then like the, the most secure loan would be, you know, something underneath the, the rate of growth of the economic system and that the, it all, it all would be in harmony in that world. So I don't know if that, if that helps from a, a context to see how, you know.
B
No, it definitely helps. This is an impossible question to answer and I always ask it to you, but when do you think we do go from the gradually to the suddenly and end up in, in this world you're talking about? Do you think it'll be in our lifetime?
A
Yeah, I hope it, I mean like, hope, you know, we could, we could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Hope. Hopefully that doesn't happen. But if we, if we live to the average lifespan of, you know, people in our countries, it will be in our lifetime. I don't know exactly. You know, there might be a lot of pain that happens along the way as fiat hyperinflates. I don't view it as we're just gonna seamlessly transition from a world of excess and a bunch of zombie companies and a bunch of bad debts to a bitcoin standard and without dis. Economic volatility and dislocations. But yeah, I mean, I, I continue to believe that this is like a, you know, I, if we had this conversation two years ago, I would have said 10 years. If I'm, you know, keeping myself honest, I'll now say eight years. Because I would have said 10 years that nothing's changed about that. And you know, I added up to the amount of money that they're going to have to print the, the unsustainability of inflation as, as it exists today. Artificially manipulating interest rates higher doesn't make it cheaper to get oil out of the ground or to produce food. And so what people have found in the Keynesian view of economics, the raising of interest rates should have brought inflation down. And it might be bringing the price of houses down, but it doesn't make the production of any good cheaper. And the lion's share of people in the economic systems in the developed world are struggling to get by as it is. And so I don't know how, with all the money that they're going to have to print to sustain the credit system, the fundamentals of Bitcoin being as strong as they've ever been in terms of like the amount of development that's happening at the wallet level, the multi sig. Custody level, the, the payments level, the, the mining side that, you know, now on the mining side, there is a big secular shift happening where a bunch of large miners that are unprofitable are pivoting to AI. But there's con. There's continuing to be innovation to drive the price of a hash down which will ultimately drive the price of bitcoin and nominate energy down. All of that. The fundamentals, I don't know if this was on, we might have been talking about this off screen before we came on, but it's like the sentiment has never been worse. For my 10 years around Bitcoin. The fundamentals of bitcoin have never been better. Yeah, and those two things are true at the same time. And I think that there's also, you know, there, you know, my view there also never was a adoption wave since 2021 and that the next one will be particularly large because of that. But that if bitcoin increases in, if adoption increases by 10 times, then Bitcoin is, you know, 10 trillion to the, or 12 trillion to the broadest definition of dollars as like 25 trillion ish today. If Bitcoin demand in the next eight years increases by 20 times, and I think about that in terms of like, if the number of people that actually Understand Bitcoin is 0.1%, if that grows to 2% in the next year, what's more likely that we get to 2% in the next eight years or not and that they're going to have to print trillions upon trillions of dollars that, that bitcoin becomes in that time period with two more having events of the bitcoin network continuing to enforce its fixed supply knowledge distributing at a ne, you know, at an accelerating pace, that Bitcoin becomes as large or the clear second in terms of sizes of currency system and not, not. And I don't mean by like a, a little spike up, I mean like at an equilibrium where I can hold a price like it's holding this price of, you know, 64k for a long period of time. That, that when it be, when, when it's clear that Bitcoin is either the largest currency system in the world or the second largest. That's where I think you see the, the wheels come off the Fiat bus, truly. And, and people instinctually move into Bitcoin without having to have a intellectual conversation. But move into Bitcoin to use Bitcoin because it's the only form of money that's working much like people pick up the telephone without thinking about it.
B
I'm here for it, man. I said I hope we do see it in our lifetime. I'd be very disappointed if not. I hope this isn't like the quantum thing where it's always 10 years away.
A
No, I mean, well, you know, quantum needs to achieve things that are theoretically possible. And Bitcoin only has to do the exact same thing. That's, I mean, like, realistically more infrastructure needs to be built out, but from a fundamental of the, the validation of the base money and the enforcement of the fixed supply. It doesn't have to do anything different.
B
Yeah. To close out. Parker, you should tell everyone who's listening who wants to start taking bitcoin as payments, how they can find out about Zap. Right. I use it every single month and it's fucking awesome.
A
I was just gonna ask for a testimonial.
B
No. It makes my life so easy. I invoice everyone through Zapprite. I still don't do the discount in bitcoin, but I need to do that. But everyone has the option.
A
What about for cheat code?
B
Well, that actually worked really well because we had such a janky ticket set up the years before, before we used Zaprite where people would have to, hey, with bitcoin, we'd have to like verify the transaction and go in and issue them a ticket. Using Zapprite was super straightforward. Awesome. And, and when we use it next year for cheat code, I mean we did a discount for bitcoin this time and I think we're going to do something a little bit more interesting this year if we do cheat code. We've not quite announced it yet.
A
Okay, well, I hope it happens. I hope I can make it this year. It honestly, from, from, from my view in the States, it looks like a phenomenal event. But yeah, for, for anybody, whether it's a, a podcast, we, you know, for people hosting bitcoin events, we have a full ticket suite and I appreciate you, you plug in that. We'd love supporting you on that. But you know, at Zap, right, we're bringing bitcoin fiat into one platform. It's bitcoin native. We meet everybody where they are. We support non custodial solutions on both on chain as well as lightning. But we also have custodial solutions and we're really just helping, you know, anybody. We really focus on people who already understand. And so I just encourage people that, you know, if they are running a business and they grock bitcoin, they understand why Bitcoin stores value that. Whether it's with zap, right, or somebody else. It's like if people come through zap, right, and they're better off with Square, given the nature of Square suite and their type business, we send them straight to Square. But my, my message to people is that if you understand bitcoin and you're a key person in the operations of a business or if you own a business, I would very much encourage you to evaluate your options in bitcoin payments. We'd love to support you at Zaprite, if you go into Zaprite.com, which is Z-A P-R-I-T E.com and submit a contact form, I'd be the person that, you know, helps figure out if we're the right solution or help create a solution for you with us. We'd love to support you. We've got an API for custom built websites. Our ticket solution is great that Danny uses Invoices our a really popular tool. So yeah, just chopping wood and you know, in my view it's get back to basics that stacks, you know, stay humble and stacks. That's, I think bitcoin's better than, you know, buying stock in a Treasury company. And you know, not everybody has to accept bitcoin as payment today. Not everyone has to pay for their Bitcoin. If people only have 1% of their savings in bitcoin, you got too much fiat. You need to keep rabbit holing Bitcoin. But that is also the light at the end of the tunnel. It's the end game. And so I encourage people that are further down their journey to put in the effort to make that investment and will pay off for people.
B
The best thing about Zap, right, is we had a little quirk when we were trying to launch the tickets and I emailed you and the fix was done overnight. So that's pretty good as well.
A
That's the power of, you know, working with a bitcoin company. And we treat everybody with that same, you know, it's like if there is an issue, like we solve it. But it's also the beauty of AI that's like, everyone talks about AI and about how AI, you know, AI sucked the, you know, air out of the bitcoin balloon. It's like, well, they solve two different problems. Bitcoin's money and you know, AI needs money too. But it also accelerates the development of bitcoin applications. And our team on the engineering side, Nate, our CTO and all of our engineers have really leaned into that side. So we're able to, to really lock in and deliver high value features in a fast, efficient way. So our, our customers, like you, Danny, are the best, you know, sources of feedback of what they need. Because if they, if someone needs them like you, then, then 10 other customers do or 100 other customers do. So we appreciate getting that feedback.
B
Yeah, it's awesome. If you run a business, check out zappry. Thank you, Parker. Appreciate your time. We've got to do it again. I'm going to come to Austin soon. We've not the one in person in a long time.
A
Yeah, you. You come to us and I'll get over to wherever you are, whether it's at cheat code or, you know, further away across the.
B
Yeah, cheat code. Next year, I think we're going to do it. But there'll probably be an announcement very soon.
A
Well, good luck to England tomorrow.
B
I think we're going to do it, man. Did you see Spain just beat France?
A
I actually didn't. I saw. I watched the first half.
B
So Spain beat France. I think the only way we were ever going to win this world cup is if Spain beat France. I don't think we could have beaten France, but I think we got a shot.
A
Was it 10 or did they each end up getting 2 nil? Oh, well, okay.
B
Yeah. So just Argentina's get through, but I think. I think we're gonna do it. Fingers crossed. This might age like milk, but thank you, Parker.
A
Keeping my fingers crossed for you.
B
See you, ma'. Am.
A
All right. See.
What Bitcoin Did
Episode: Why MSTR Will Underperform Bitcoin | Parker Lewis
Host: Danny Knowles
Guest: Parker Lewis
Date: July 17, 2026
This episode examines why companies like MicroStrategy (MSTR), known as “Bitcoin treasury companies,” are likely to underperform Bitcoin itself over the long term. Host Danny Knowles speaks with Parker Lewis, a prominent Bitcoin thinker, about market incentives, adoption waves, the confusion caused by Bitcoin-wrapped equities, and what true Bitcoin understanding and adoption looks like. The episode also critiques prevailing narratives around Bitcoin as “digital capital” and treasury company business models, emphasizing direct Bitcoin ownership as the superior path.
“It’s a great way to get less bitcoin...the greatest misalignment because it’s predicated on, you know, constantly raising more and more capital, and most of which should be people just buying bitcoin directly.” (Lewis, 00:30; 11:20)
“The sentiment has never been worse. For my 10 years around Bitcoin, the fundamentals of bitcoin have never been better.” (Lewis, 00:47; 68:20)
“It just didn’t vibe with me quite right when they started doing the preferreds and convertible notes...this complex financial engineering thing.” (Danny, 04:44)
“If you talk to a disinterested third party...should [a] bitcoin in a stock wrapper with leverage trade at a premium?...they would say the underlying asset should trade at a premium and the stock should trade at a discount. Just from a pure risk perspective.” (Lewis, 14:45)
“People are not pricing the risk.” (Lewis, 24:12)
"If Bitcoin is too volatile for you, you are the volatility." (Lewis, 09:45)
“If 80 million people in the world really understood bitcoin, the bitcoin price wouldn’t be where it is.” (Lewis, 41:00)
“Bitcoin is unique because not only does it have this fixed supply...but the bitcoin network does all of the things that a currency issuer was previously necessary for.” (Lewis, 54:31)
“If the number of people that actually understand Bitcoin is 0.1%, if that grows to 2% in the next year...Bitcoin becomes as large or the clear second in terms of sizes of currency system.” (Lewis, 68:30)
“Markets might be efficient over short periods of time, but as a function of time it becomes more efficient...People learned that they actually got less bitcoin by buying a bitcoin treasury company at a large premium to the actual bitcoin it held.” (Lewis, 03:05)
“You can actually own the underlying exact asset with less risk, but you are paying a premium to take more risk and not own the underlying asset.” (Lewis, 19:00)
“It’s not semantics to expressly go out of your way to define bitcoin as the one thing that makes it unique.” (Lewis, 26:50)
“If you understand the nature of Bitcoin as money and...that everybody needs Bitcoin and...systems do converge on one form of money...that 1 to 100, asymmetric.” (Lewis, 39:41)
“When enough people have figured it out, then it will be like a rush to the exit. It will likely coincide with fiat hyperinflation where people won’t be sitting around saying what’s the benefit of investing in a bitcoin treasury company or not…” (Lewis, 41:45)
“It’s hard for somebody to understand bitcoin as money when it’s not being used as money. When they see it capable of being used as money, that is an unlock.” (Lewis, 45:55)
“There is nothing that precludes a fixed supply currency that is neutral with the creation of credit. All it eliminates...is the ability to bail out banks.” (Lewis, 61:00)
For listeners: If you own or are considering Bitcoin-wrapped equities like MSTR or Strive, this episode is a must-listen for understanding the deep risks and why direct Bitcoin ownership remains the clearest path to benefitting from the ongoing monetary transformation.