Latest / Simply Bitcoin / INSIDER: ''Bitcoin Will CRUSH Golds $20T Market Cap in 4 Years!'' | EP 1233

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INSIDER: ''Bitcoin Will CRUSH Golds $20T Market Cap in 4 Years!'' | EP 1233 · Simply Bitcoin

0:00
Yeah, the man in charge of America's sovereign health
0:03
sovereign wealth fund, Howard Lutnick, gave a bombshell
0:07
interview yesterday explaining why Bitcoin is just a commodity.
0:12
But it's not just AUS Secretary of Commerce obsessed with the
0:15
idea of becoming digital gold. Bitwise CEO recently said that
0:19
Bitcoin could reach parity with gold before 20-30.
0:23
That'd be roughly $1,000,000 Bitcoin and that he believes the
0:27
institutions have broken the four year cycle.
0:31
That's a $20 trillion market market cap and implies again a
0:36
$900,000 Bitcoin. So today we're going to be
0:39
explaining all of this and more. And of course we have a very
0:42
special guest joining us. We have Co founder of Lenin and
0:47
a friend Mauricio joining us on the show today.
0:49
And of course my legendary Co host who's always optimistic,
0:53
the one in the only Optimist fields.
0:55
Anyways, here is a clip from the Howard Lutnick interview.
0:59
I believe Bitcoin Magazine did it.
1:01
It was at the White House. I highly recommend you check it
1:04
out, but check out this clip. It's really interesting and
1:06
we're going to talk about it. You know, I believe like the way
1:10
you talk about it is what is Bitcoin like?
1:13
It's like gold to me. It's a commodity.
1:15
Why? There's only so much of it,
1:17
right? And it's like gold now.
1:19
Gold trades anywhere. No one stops me from buying this
1:22
ring when I went to like the ring of gold, right?
1:25
So gold trades everywhere. Exchanges, OK, if you want to be
1:29
an exchange, you can be an exchange.
1:30
But if you want to buy and sell gold, you can buy and sell gold.
1:34
So I think you should be able to buy and sell Bitcoin.
1:36
It's a commodity. It should be treated like a
1:38
commodity. It should be treated like oil,
1:40
should be treated like gold. It's intellectually correct.
1:44
I know people have all sorts of things to say about it, but in
1:47
the end, it's not a currency. It's a commodity.
1:50
And it once you embrace the concept of a commodity, you'll
1:54
see how beautiful that is and how that fits into almost every
1:58
thoughtful box, right? No one stops someone from
2:00
selling oil from one person to another.
2:02
No one should stop someone from selling Bitcoin from one person
2:06
to another using Bitcoin however they want to do it.
2:09
You want to put it on an exchange?
2:11
Fine, call it a Commodity Exchange.
2:13
But let's understand that Bitcoin, if it's treated like a
2:18
commodity, is the freedom that we all.
2:25
I mean, kind of interesting, kind of interesting.
2:29
And I, I heard, I think him talking about this on an
2:33
interview that he did with Anthony Pompliano, right?
2:37
So from a bullish perspective, we'll talk about price.
2:40
We'll play you guys the clip from the CIO, from Bitwise about
2:44
how he believes that Bitcoin's going to reach the market cap of
2:46
gold. That would roughly equate to
2:48
900,000 to $1,000,000 Bitcoin. And then of course, you have
2:52
someone who's part of, you know, the current administration's
2:55
cabinet basically equating Bitcoin to gold, calling Bitcoin
2:59
a commodity. However, I think the way he's
3:03
framing that is on purpose because I think that if he
3:06
called it money, I think from a regulatory perspective, Bitcoin
3:13
would be treated differently. But as long as Bitcoin is a
3:16
commodity, he said it himself, like he's openly saying there's
3:20
more freedom involved. Like people could just send it
3:22
to exchange and you can do this with it and you can do that with
3:25
it. I think he's doing that on
3:27
purpose. And he would, before he was
3:30
Treasury Secretary, he went on Poms podcast.
3:32
And he's like, look, as long as Bitcoin's a commodity, it's not
3:34
a problem. You know, as long as you don't
3:37
call it money. Now, of course, bitcoiners feel
3:40
a certain way about this because, you know, we see
3:43
Bitcoin as money. I think Bitcoin is whatever you
3:45
want it to be, to be frank with you.
3:47
I think that people use it for many different reasons, savings,
3:50
money, commodity, right? Bitcoin is and it is it is
3:55
whatever you want it to be for your personal situation.
3:58
But I did find that very, very interesting that, you know, he's
4:02
kind of taking the stance where he's he's hardlining and he's
4:05
saying that Bitcoin is not money.
4:08
Mauricio, how do you feel about that?
4:10
I mean, he's, this is clearly a strategy.
4:13
It's very wise. I think it's not to stir the
4:16
hornet's nest, but obviously as Bitcoiners, you know, we feel a
4:20
certain way about Bitcoin being money in a commodity.
4:23
What are your thoughts? Great.
4:26
Thanks, Nico. And I, I think, you know, people
4:30
tend to get somewhat, yeah, I think people overthink this,
4:36
this idea because I think to your point, Bitcoin is what you
4:40
want it to be for yourself. Like people, people means
4:43
Bitcoin means different things for different people, right?
4:45
Like some people might use it as money, some people might use it
4:47
as their reserve assets. Some people might use it as
4:49
their investment fund. There's many ways that you can
4:52
use Bitcoin because it can, it can do so many things, right?
4:55
If you if you are, if you are the secretary of Commerce of the
4:59
United States or any part of the United States government, you
5:04
it's not in your best interest to basically portray this as
5:08
money that would potentially compete with the US dollar,
5:11
right? Like you're looking at this as a
5:12
complement to your existing financial system, your existing
5:16
financial stack. How can you use Bitcoin to
5:18
basically further your interests or further your own agenda?
5:23
And if you are the United States where you want to be, you know,
5:26
you're entering in this into this sort of pro technology, pro
5:29
Bitcoin era, you don't necessarily want to reintroduce
5:33
it into the main, into the main sort of mainstream as something
5:40
that is competing with the product that you so cherish and
5:43
value, which is the US dollars, the backbone of the US economy
5:46
and frankly, the global economy. So I think to your point, this
5:50
is deliberate. I, I want to me, I've always
5:52
thought that the governments will treat it as a commodity as
5:56
they should treat it as a commodity.
5:57
And I think this is actually great for Bitcoin because at the
6:00
stage at which we are right now where it has to coexist with
6:04
Fiat, with the Fiat system, this is this is par for the course.
6:08
This is exactly how it's supposed to go.
6:10
And by the way, I will, I will argue that as long as Fiat
6:15
exists, you will be better off spending that Fiat and keeping
6:20
that Bitcoin. That in many ways is the genesis
6:23
of our business. Our business Lenin is based on
6:25
the premise that Bitcoin and Fiat will coexist for the
6:27
foreseeable future. Therefore, you will benefit from
6:30
borrowing Fiat and keeping your Bitcoin.
6:32
So people have different views. People will try to express those
6:36
views in the market by investing certain things or building some
6:39
products that kind of further that idea.
6:42
But you know, if you if you rewind 2 four years, even you
6:47
know, five years back, the companies that have taken the
6:50
view that Bitcoin will be a reserve asset.
6:53
So IE MicroStrategy, IE companies that facilitate loans
6:58
to let you keep the Bitcoin, like let it IE companies that do
7:01
cold storage or multi sig, those companies have benefited
7:04
greatly. Whereas if you look at the
7:07
companies that have tried to sort of drive this concept of
7:10
spending your Bitcoin and using your Bitcoin as money, you're,
7:14
you're having more headwinds because who wants to spend
7:16
something that's appreciating at, you know, 40 to 60% year
7:20
over year? You would you would be a lunatic
7:22
to spend that over something that you know, depreciates value
7:27
over time. So This is why companies like
7:31
for example, for us, and I think it was Preston who who who, you
7:34
know, coined this, but he called letter the speculative attack
7:37
company in that it lets you hold your Bitcoin, get a loan on
7:41
dollars and basically go short dollars while you're still long
7:44
Bitcoin. And we have done phenomenally
7:47
well over the last little bit. Even, you know, we've had a
7:50
record break in Q1. We can get into that later.
7:52
But again, it goes back to this idea that spend bad money, hoard
7:56
good money. And if that money is deemed the
7:57
command, whatever you want to name, that thing is kind of
8:01
irrelevant to me. If it's appreciating and you can
8:03
hold it, great. And if you can spend something
8:05
that's depreciating, do that, right?
8:08
So to me, it's par for the course.
8:10
It feeds this idea that Bitcoin is an asset.
8:13
So a commodity is something that you want to store.
8:15
You want a hoard that's OK to accumulate.
8:18
Why would you want to accumulate Fiat if it's getting debased
8:22
every year? It would be no, there would be
8:23
no sense. Makes no sense for you to do
8:25
that. Hoard gold, hoard oil, hoard all
8:27
the things that are priced in Fiat.
8:29
Beautiful. Yeah, it's an incredible point.
8:31
And and money, so you're essentially you're noticing or
8:34
we're noticing, which is like, obviously it's not in the best
8:37
interest of a member of the US government to basically say,
8:40
hey, you know, Bitcoin is the money because that would
8:43
potentially compete with the US dollar.
8:45
But you're also making the case that, look, here's the reality,
8:48
because I think Bitcoiners had this perception and this was
8:52
before essentially the massive guys, you have to be honest
8:55
here. Like the stable coin adoption
8:58
worldwide was as unheard of, like no one expected that.
9:03
And where it essentially came from was a market necessity.
9:07
Like if you lived in a country that had an unstable Fiat
9:11
currency, the dollar to you is essentially the equivalent of
9:15
holding a gold bar, right? And you didn't want to deal with
9:19
the daily volatility that came with Bitcoin because most people
9:23
around the world are living paycheck to paycheck, right?
9:25
So I agree with you, Mauricio, that at least for the
9:29
foreseeable future, I think we're going to live in a world
9:33
where Bitcoin is whatever you want it to be.
9:36
That's the beauty of Bitcoin. And simultaneously, what's going
9:39
to be existing next to it is going to be the dollar.
9:43
And I think that's going to be the case at least for the next
9:46
10/15/20 years. However, you can use that to
9:49
your advantage, which is what you're pointing out.
9:52
And there's a lot of like companies like Leaden, for
9:56
example, that essentially allow you to tap into the wealth of
9:59
your Bitcoin without having to sell your Bitcoin.
10:02
So we're going to talk about that more during the show.
10:06
And yeah, man, so that's a very, very great way of looking at it.
10:11
I love how you pointed that out. But yes, it was very obvious.
10:14
It was obvious that he was trying to frame it as, you know,
10:17
this is not money, this is a commodity.
10:20
And he had to say it like 3 or 4 times.
10:23
Would you want to have the, by the way, we have to go through
10:26
the rest of the interview, which is this concierge service for
10:29
minors. But like, how wild would it be
10:31
for you to say that you're going to have a white glove service
10:34
for something that comes in mind money in your country and just
10:39
can keep it like it. It makes no sense, right?
10:41
So if you, if you call it money, it breaks the mold of a lot of
10:44
the things that you're trying to do and it goes against, again,
10:47
the the general idea like Bitcoin already is hard enough
10:51
to explain to somebody when you are, when you are not telling
10:55
them about how it's competing with the US dollar.
10:57
If you start introducing this idea that somehow it's going to
11:00
compete with the US dollar and may risk the greatest product
11:03
the US has ever built and shipped, then people are going
11:06
to start questioning it. And, and I would, I would say
11:09
it's going to delay adoption. I think this is a a very natural
11:14
step in the evolution of governments adopting Bitcoin.
11:18
And there's a reason why the Trojan horse is such an
11:22
important icon in Bitcoin culture, which is Bitcoin comes
11:27
in, you deem Bitcoin to be what is in your best interest, or if
11:31
it's your best interest to deem it as a commodity, you'll deem
11:33
it a commodity. If it's in your best interest to
11:34
deem it a security, you'll say it's security.
11:36
If it's the best interest to deem it, it's money, you'll deem
11:38
it as money. But at the end of the day, it's,
11:41
it's your that that's your opinion.
11:43
You know, Bitcoin is that's it, it isn't it doesn't exist as a,
11:47
as a uniform, you know, thing, right?
11:50
Like to stump people again, they use it as money.
11:52
Some people use it as a reserve asset, some people use it as
11:55
something else. So I, I just think that this is
11:58
a very natural step. This goes again, furthers the
12:02
idea that you hold Bitcoin, it goes up over time.
12:05
Why spend it then? You know, eventually somebody
12:08
will say, well, you know what, I don't want the Fiat.
12:11
I'll only settle this deal if you pay me a Bitcoin.
12:13
Then we move into using it to settle for transactions and
12:17
other things. Absolutely.
12:19
I also have a clip of of the Bitwise CEO.
12:23
He's predicting that Bitcoin is going to flip the market cap of
12:28
gold. That's not simply Bitcoin saying
12:30
that that's the CIO of Bitwise. Let's check out the clip and
12:34
then we'll talk about it. We elected a pro crypto
12:38
administration in the US. We've established a Bitcoin
12:41
strategic preserve. I think you're going to see
12:43
governments around the world buying Bitcoin.
12:45
I think you're going to see institutions buying Bitcoin and
12:47
corporations buying Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin becomes an asset
12:51
that's held by governments, by corporations, by institutions, I
12:55
see no reason why it won't meet parity with gold within the next
12:59
4 years. I sort of think we're in this
13:02
new four year, multi year cycle of government and institutional
13:07
adoption and. I think the.
13:12
So I mean, he's predicting that's going to happen within
13:16
the next four years or so. The Bitcoin reaches the parity
13:20
of gold that's that's $900,000 per coin in the next 4 years.
13:26
I mean, roughly A9 XI, think it's a little bit ambitious, but
13:30
if you connect the dots with all of the news that's been
13:33
happening, I've been saying this for the last six months, this
13:38
has been by far the most bullish Bitcoin cycle from a news
13:44
perspective I've ever been in. I think this is my third cycle.
13:48
I've never seen this amount of bullish news, but with of course
13:53
the election of Trump, you have a pro Bitcoin administration,
13:57
you have institutions all around the world basically, you know,
14:01
opening there, opening there and saying, hey, you know what, this
14:04
Bitcoin thing, it's probably a good idea.
14:06
You have the success of MicroStrategy.
14:09
You know, it's like it's left and right.
14:11
There's just bullish, bullish, bullish news.
14:14
And what we're going to talk about during the numbers also is
14:19
the massive increase of the essentially the, the, the
14:23
lending market in digital assets, which is extremely
14:26
exciting. And we're going to be talking
14:27
about this too, guys, because this is a great way also to tap
14:31
into your Bitcoin without selling.
14:33
And of course you have to do this responsibly.
14:35
But I see more and more Bitcoiners finding themselves in
14:37
this conundrum where, you know, they've they've huddled for a
14:40
long time and they don't want to get rid of the huddle, but you
14:44
know, they want to start living a little bit because perhaps
14:46
their wife is like, hey, you know what?
14:48
We've, it's been huddling for a decade and we still don't have a
14:50
house, you know, So, you know, there's ways to do that.
14:54
There's tools to do that. So we're going to be talking
14:56
about that. But Mauricio, what is your take,
14:58
man? Do you think it's overly
15:00
optimistic? I'm borrowing Opti's title.
15:03
Is it overly optimistic that Bitcoin reaches the market cap
15:07
of gold within the next four years?
15:12
I think to me it's not so much, well, will it do it?
15:16
I think it's, it's more what's the time frame is going to be?
15:20
If you look at actually my, one of my predictions for, for this
15:23
year, which I, I, I do mostly for fun.
15:26
I, I, I put in that Bitcoin was going to reach 40 ounces of gold
15:31
per Bitcoin. And I think the increase of Oz
15:34
of gold per Bitcoin will continue until to your point,
15:38
Bitcoin gets closer and closer to the market cap of gold.
15:41
Gold is at, I think $12 trillion or $11 trillion last time I
15:46
checked Bitcoin somewhere and, and, and two.
15:49
And so there's still ways to go. But I think if you look at, you
15:53
know, who's holding the gold and why are they holding the gold?
15:56
They're holding gold because it's, it's a dead rock that
16:00
basically just preserves its value culturally.
16:02
It's what it's done for hundreds and hundreds of years.
16:05
And I think as the meme of Bitcoin as a reserve asset grows
16:09
and grows and you compare it against what you can do with
16:12
Bitcoin versus what you can do with gold, it's easier to send.
16:15
It's easier to move. It's easier to store.
16:17
It's easier to verify. It can be, you know, you can use
16:20
it to access products globally. You don't need to, you know,
16:23
secure an army to ship it or halfway across the world.
16:26
You can transfer it for pennies, so it's a superior reserve
16:30
asset. It's it's akin to sending a
16:33
letter via mail or e-mail, right?
16:35
So eventually e-mail wins. How long does it take for e-mail
16:39
to win? Well, it depends on adoption.
16:41
It depends on how quickly we can get the infrastructure laid out.
16:44
But it is a better technology, it's a better asset.
16:47
It's easier for people to verify, I would argue a lot more
16:50
inclusive. So I think it does get to parity
16:54
with gold eventually, whether it's in four years or 10 or 15.
16:58
You know, it's I, I can't really put a pin on that, but for me,
17:01
that's why I'm here, right? Like, I think it's better, it's
17:04
a better preserve asset and it's more globally accessible and
17:08
it's easier for everybody to, to, to have.
17:10
So why would it not become a more valuable thing?
17:15
So yes, it will get to parity in my view.
17:18
Timeline, TBDI think four years perhaps.
17:21
It's a little bit ambitious, frankly, but it'll get there for
17:26
sure. Absolutely.
17:27
I think it's going to get there and it's an inevitability of
17:30
when it will get there. I think it's just a question of
17:33
how long it's sorry. It's an inevitability that it
17:36
will get there, but it's a question of how long will it
17:38
take when. I think, you know, four years.
17:41
Someone in the chat, Opti's conciliary says when gold is
17:45
demonetized for Bitcoin. I'm going to dress like Mr. T
17:48
Yeah, I mean, there will be there will be signs, there will
17:50
be signs of of bitcoiners that have held for for for a long
17:54
time. But you need to keep on.
17:56
You need you need to hold on to your Bitcoin.
17:58
You need to make it over the finish line.
18:00
Huddling is not easy. Anyways, Opti, I want to get
18:03
your thoughts bro. Do you think parody with gold
18:05
within four years? Is it overly ambitious?
18:09
Is it too bearish? You know, I don't want to be the
18:11
bear on the show either, but four years does seem kind of
18:14
quick just personally. And I know we, what's the one
18:18
meme? You know, we overestimate what
18:20
we can do in two years, but we underestimate what can happen in
18:23
10 years. And so four years seems pretty
18:26
big. And to, to clarify, Mauricio,
18:28
gold is currently at like $22 trillion market cap because it's
18:32
been, you know, it's been pumping.
18:33
So, and everyone's saying if Bitcoin does hit the gold market
18:37
cap, it'll be about 1.125 million per Bitcoin.
18:41
So what's that? I don't know like a 30X from
18:45
here or something that means Bitcoin is going to be doing
18:49
something like the 2013 cycle. So four years seems pretty
18:53
quick. But when you really kind of
18:55
break it down and actually I'm going to, I'm going to start
18:57
with the Howard Lutney because it'll go into the bitwise clip.
19:01
So, you know, my more charitable take is very similar to what
19:05
Mauricio was saying on let Nick. It does seem like he's kind of
19:08
saying, you know, let's do this sly roundabout way.
19:11
And if you, if you listen to that clip, he he basically
19:14
saying like, Hey, if you want to use Bitcoin and all the freedom
19:16
aspects that we talk about it, this is probably the best way to
19:19
frame it so that the people in power don't get freaked out.
19:23
And as we know, you know, he's part of the the US government,
19:27
you know, he's part of the Trump administration.
19:28
So he can't really be go out there and publicly be like,
19:31
yeah, Bitcoin's better than the dollar.
19:33
Obviously that would be political suicide.
19:35
So he's definitely not going to do that.
19:37
But if he is kind of doubling down and if you like, it's
19:40
listen to that clip. And he does kind of say all the
19:42
other things that we've already talked about.
19:45
It does seem like a more favorable way of framing what
19:48
Bitcoin is. Obviously, we're seeing that a
19:50
lot of people are framing it in the digital gold meme.
19:53
And I'm going to put a pin on that because like my less
19:55
favorable view on this is kind of going into the stable coin
19:59
talk. And we all know the stable going
20:01
conversations been going on. We're seeing a lot of
20:04
politicians kind of push stable coin talk here.
20:07
And of course, that is to continue like Fiat dominance
20:10
around the world. So that's my like less favorable
20:12
take on that conversation. But connecting this to the
20:15
digital gold meme? Obviously, I've been saying it
20:18
on the show for a while, I'm not the biggest fan of the digital
20:21
gold meme because I do think Bitcoin is much more than just
20:24
digital gold. And if you know, we, we do use
20:26
memes to kind of just use them as crutches so people can
20:29
understand what's going on in the people with capital right
20:32
now. We all know is the boomers.
20:34
And so they can wrap their head around what gold is.
20:36
And so when you connect that to digital gold, then it starts to
20:39
click in their brains. What is actually going on over
20:42
here though? I would say that that meme in
20:44
itself is kind of like an iceberg is the tip of the
20:47
iceberg here and it's much more than just digital gold, but the
20:51
idea of Bitcoin going to gold market cap or, you know, sat to
20:56
gold parity here, whatever, whatever you want to frame him.
20:59
I think like Mauricio said, it is an inevitability.
21:02
If Bitcoin continues to do what it does, we do know it will get
21:05
there and much, much more. We all know that one global
21:08
capital chart, you know, $900 trillion of global capital,
21:12
maybe it's at what 1000 trillion?
21:14
What's even past a trillion? Is it quadrillion?
21:16
I I don't know big numbers, but we know that Bitcoins going to
21:20
go past the gold market cap at some point, whether that's in
21:23
our lifetimes, whether that's in 1020 years or for your great,
21:27
great grandchildren, who knows when.
21:29
But if Bitcoin continues to do what it says, or rather what it
21:32
is doing, then we know that's where it's going to go.
21:35
Bitcoin is going to accumulate a lot of the global capital once
21:39
people start to understand it is the superior way to store value.
21:42
Now, I am a Bitcoin is money kind of guy, or rather Bitcoin
21:45
is an alternative to Fiat currencies.
21:48
But I'm OK with framing Bitcoin in a way where it kind of, you
21:51
know, gets all the regulators off our backs so that we can
21:54
just kind of continue to do what we do and the Trojan horse meme,
21:57
etcetera. But when you listen to the
21:59
Bitwise CEO, and he actually had another interesting clip the
22:02
other day, and even BlackRock is kind of saying something very
22:05
similar the last week, is that the amount of institutional
22:09
interest in Bitcoin right now is insane.
22:12
And I think we've all been kind of feeling this on the show and
22:16
in the chat. It's like with all this good
22:18
news, with all these, you know, and I'll, I'll be a little less
22:20
chair, all this supposedly buying of Bitcoin from these big
22:24
institutions. It's only a matter of time until
22:26
Bitcoin rips. But we are seeing and I know
22:30
this is kind of the one of the conversations right now.
22:32
It's like, is the is the four year cycle dead?
22:35
I'm still on the fence on this. Obviously, in hindsight, we'll
22:38
be able to make that decision. But it does seem with the amount
22:41
of buying that we're seeing, the amount of interest coming from
22:43
the big players in the world, the global big players, not
22:46
just, you know, in Bitcoin, it does almost feel like the four
22:50
year cycle might be on its way out.
22:52
And if that is the case, then who knows how quickly this can
22:55
run. Like if people really do FOMO
22:58
into Bitcoin with like Michael Saylor type buys, I think we
23:02
underestimate how quickly Bitcoin can run.
23:05
And then of course, you know, retail following suit and the
23:07
masses following suit. So I mean gold parody or Bitcoin
23:11
to gold parody right now, in four years, it does seem overly
23:14
bullish, but we don't know what's going to happen.
23:17
We don't know what's in the future.
23:18
It it's going to get there. But in four years, I don't know.
23:21
I've been saying 8 years. I've been saying 2 cycles from
23:23
now is when we get there. I'm I'm starting to feel PTSD
23:27
with 100K predictions from last cycles.
23:29
I don't want to say $1,000,000 Bitcoin this next four years.
23:32
I do want to give a shout out to the live stream 1300 of you guys
23:35
If you add rumble 1400 of you guys watching live between
23:39
YouTube rumble and X. If you guys are enjoying the
23:41
show so far smash that like button help us break 100 likes
23:46
within the first hour of the show.
23:48
Appreciate the YouTube live stream on the verge of breaking
23:51
400 live viewers smash that like button guys.
23:54
It really, really helps pushing us in the algos.
23:58
Guys, we have a jam packed show for you guys.
24:00
We're going to be talking about leaden.
24:02
We're going to be talking about the the lending market as a
24:05
whole. I think this is something that
24:08
people are just kind of not aware of of how to utilize your
24:13
Bitcoin. Michael Saylor has said it
24:15
perfectly. Bitcoin is the most pristine
24:18
collateral the world has ever seen.
24:21
So we're going to be talking about that.
24:22
And of course, we have an expert joining us on the show today in
24:26
the House. And then we're going to be
24:27
talking about El Salvador, some interesting things happening in
24:31
El Salvador. The IMF is saying that El
24:33
Salvador is not buying Bitcoin anymore.
24:36
And then Stacy Herbert of, you know, the Bitcoin office is
24:40
basically saying, no, El Salvador continues to buy
24:42
Bitcoin. They have a public address, so
24:44
you don't have to take their word for it.
24:46
That address continues to go up. They continue to stack.
24:49
So what is going on there? We're going to be talking about
24:51
it. And then we have Treasury
24:53
Secretary Scott Best going on and saying we have to make the
24:58
IMF the IMF again. What does that mean?
25:01
Like a lot of this political stuff going on, the background
25:04
is fascinating. Trump fighting with the Fed.
25:06
We covered that on yesterday's show.
25:08
Scott Bessett calling the IMF. We know how the Trump
25:12
administration feels about the Buchelli administration, right?
25:15
They, they, they get along. So I, you know, I think there's
25:18
some larger forces at play. We're going to be discussing all
25:21
that and then we're going to be doing a deep dive into letting
25:26
during the new segment of the show.
25:27
So it's going to be a jam packed show, tons of content.
25:30
Smash the like button. Before we jump into it, I do
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All right, everybody, let's start the show.
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We have tons to get to. Let's check it out.
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is 94,880, block height 894,495. So that's for a dollar. 1054
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market cap 1.88 trillion Bitcoin versus gold market cap 8.09%
29:03
percentage issued 94.56% decline from all time high.
29:07
If you buy Bitcoin right now, you're getting a 13.1% discount.
29:11
Realize monetary inflation. My favorite stat here, because
29:14
it continues used to embarrass Fiat currencies, is the
29:19
inflation rate of Bitcoin is currently at .84% and it's going
29:23
to continue to go down forever. Anyways, we were talking to
29:26
Mauricio before we went live and I do want to give him a shout
29:30
out. I mean, Forbes, bro, Forbes
29:33
moving up muddy. So moving up in the world, man.
29:35
This is this is this is correct. You know how simply gets on the
29:38
cover of Forbes, we get banned. That's how we get on the cover
29:43
of Forbes. You get on the cover of so on
29:45
Forbes with the good news. So this is awesome.
29:48
I just want to read the headline.
29:49
I do want to talk about it. So Tether, Galaxy and Leaden
29:53
dominate centralized crypto lending as Defy claims a bigger
29:57
share of the $37 billion market. Let me read some of this and
30:01
then and I'll talk to you about it.
30:03
Maricio, it wasn't long ago that crypto lending look like the
30:06
industries most radioactive ruin and that's something to remember
30:10
guys. Remember 2022 and 2023 the the
30:14
so-called great washout you got. I don't want to name any names.
30:18
There's just the the memes make themselves.
30:21
You guys remember Block Fi, right?
30:22
You guys remember Block Fi Celsius.
30:24
Of course you guys remember Celsius.
30:26
I think the dude went to jail Voyager Genesis, right?
30:30
All these, you know, all these lending platforms, like they
30:34
just went under. They were doing some very shady
30:37
things, right? Alex Mashinsky, I think the
30:40
Celsius guy, right? Like he was straight up saying
30:42
like, you shouldn't take self custody at all, right.
30:46
So it goes on to say now a new report from Galaxy Digital
30:49
suggests A partial resurrection is underway, led by familiar
30:54
cast of survivors. Your survivor, Mauricio Taylor.
30:58
Tether, Galaxy and Leadin have emerged as the dominant players
31:03
in centralized finance lending, holding a combined 9.9 billion
31:09
in outstanding loans at the end of 2024.
31:12
That's nearly 90% of the C fi market, according to Galaxy's
31:17
research associate Zach Pork. I, I can't pronounce that, I'm
31:21
sorry. Zach goes on to say crypto
31:24
lending exists for many of the same reasons as traditional
31:27
borrowing. Traders borrow to short tokens
31:29
or increase leverage. Long term holders unlock
31:33
liquidity without selling, businesses take loans to fund
31:36
operations, and lenders earn passive yield on idle assets.
31:41
Today the total crypto lending market stands at 36.5 billion,
31:45
still 43% below it's 64 billion peak in late 2021.
31:51
But the composition of that market is shifting fast.
31:55
D5 platforms now account for 63% of crypto borrowing, nearly
32:00
double their share share during the last bull run.
32:04
So I mean money. So first of all, like
32:07
congratulations for surviving. I want to give you a shout out
32:11
for surviving because I remember that dude, that was an absolute
32:14
massacre. Without naming any names, a lot
32:17
of these people are my friends. You had a lot of predominant,
32:21
you know, people that were very influential in the space.
32:24
They were promoting some platforms and other platforms
32:27
and then, you know, unknowingly because it wasn't their fault,
32:30
right? They're promoting platforms that
32:32
perhaps weren't doing, you know, exactly what they should be
32:36
doing behind the scenes. So my question to you is, first
32:40
of all, like I said, congratulations, right?
32:42
It's it's great to be, you know, one of the three players that
32:45
essentially, you know, have the industry on lock.
32:49
But what I will say, Mauricio, is, dude, how did you survive?
32:53
Like what did you do that Block Fi and Celsius didn't do?
33:00
Man, it's, it's a simple answer, but it's an answer that, you
33:06
know, it's simple for me to say it because I, I'm, I'm in the
33:09
wheats of this business and I understand it, you know, inside
33:11
and now we've been living and breathing this thing since 2018.
33:14
But the act of lending, like the activity of lending dollars
33:18
backed by your Bitcoin, it's a very simple activity.
33:21
You know, all I really need to focus on is a simplified way.
33:25
I need to keep your collateral safe.
33:27
I need to give you the dollars and when you pay me back, I give
33:29
you back the Bitcoin. It's a very simple business
33:32
where you start basically increasing risk and and making
33:38
things, making the businesses a lot riskier than it needs to be
33:41
is when you start accepting other things that shouldn't be
33:45
treated as collateral to, you know, as collateral for loans.
33:48
So similar to Bitcoin, you start accepting things like basic
33:50
attention token and all these other things that have no
33:52
liquidity and you put yourself in a situation where where the
33:57
market gets volatile and you're trying to exit that position.
34:00
You can't, there's no buyer on the other side.
34:03
So there's no way for you to make yourself whole back on the
34:05
dollar. So number one is you started
34:08
taking garbage as collateral that shouldn't have ever been
34:10
taken as collateral. If you look at the companies
34:12
that failed, I, I don't think a single one was Bitcoin only or
34:16
Bitcoin focused. So the second one is they had
34:19
tokens and they had all this fancy financial engineering
34:23
around their tokens. You know, I think Voyager had
34:24
two tokens, Celsius at a token, you know, a plethora of other
34:29
firms had tokens that went under or, or either they had their own
34:32
native token or again, they were just, you know, taking large and
34:36
large amounts of these other tokens as collateral or to
34:39
generate yield on those things. And there was just, you know,
34:43
one, you're taking assets that shouldn't be treated as
34:45
collateral as collateral. The second one is you're taking,
34:48
you know, you, you have all these tokens and all these
34:50
financial it makes lets you play financial engineering
34:54
shenanigans that you shouldn't be doing right.
34:57
The other one is you had companies like in the case of
35:00
luck for others, even Celsius that was taking open term dollar
35:04
deposits that could be withdrawn at any time.
35:06
And they were investing these dollars in mining projects that
35:10
needed, you know, had five to 10 year paybacks.
35:12
So when people showed up to get the dollars, you know, they,
35:15
they had no dollars to give them back.
35:16
So they have to go, you know, straight into insolvency.
35:19
So there was a plethora of of bad behaviors that led to what
35:24
we have to say. By the way, none of them had
35:25
proof of reserves. Not a single one of the firms
35:27
that went down had a proof of reserves protocol.
35:29
Lennon had proof, has had proof of reserves since 2019.
35:32
Now, actually we just released our most recent one.
35:35
And so and I believe proof of reserves should be a standard in
35:38
the lending industry. It will become one if you know,
35:41
if things continue to go well. But that's one of the main
35:45
things you need to look at is do they have proof of reserves?
35:47
And the other ones, how long have they been around?
35:49
Right. But you know, to put it, to put
35:52
it succinctly, these companies, you know, went wrong because
35:57
they didn't keep their businesses simple, because they
35:59
kept trying to go for that incremental percentage profit
36:02
for the incremental asset to boost their assets and platform.
36:05
There was A and to some extent, you know, you're, you're seeing
36:09
some glimpses of that today. You know, just the lending
36:12
market is on a tear. You know, you, you can see it in
36:15
our numbers. We just shared that we had, you
36:17
know, we originate $304 million of Bitcoin backed loans in Q1
36:21
this year. And so of course other firms are
36:24
looking at this and they're saying, oh, we'll do it.
36:27
You know, we'll try to do it for cheaper.
36:29
We'll try to do it with a fancier app.
36:30
We'll try to do it this way or that way.
36:32
And we've seen this movie play out before, right.
36:36
And so I, I think that for you as a consumer, as a Bitcoiner,
36:42
the main thing you should be checking or, or or diligencing
36:46
from the other side when you're considering these products is a,
36:49
how long have they been around? What do other people have to say
36:51
about this? Did they, did they go through
36:54
that volatility of 2022? How did they manage?
36:57
Because if some companies that, that are coming out new and
36:59
haven't been tested, you don't really have any way to know that
37:02
they can or cannot navigate. So I would say that the firms
37:06
that went that went South didn't go South because of what they
37:10
were doing. They went S because of how they
37:12
were doing it and all these shady practices that they had
37:14
around the very basic and simple product that is Bitcoin back
37:17
loans, right? So that that's sort of where I
37:21
would put it. And also always demand proof of
37:23
reserves. Don't.
37:24
Don't ask for it. Demand proof of reserves.
37:26
And that and that's something that you guys do.
37:28
You guys do proof of reserves. And then another thing that you
37:31
guys, what you mentioned there, which I, I, I want to harp on is
37:36
these other platforms had tokens.
37:39
You don't need a token to offer what you do.
37:43
I think you, you described it perfectly, which is like the
37:47
business is simple, right? You know, you send me your
37:50
Bitcoin, I hold it as collateral, I give you cash.
37:53
When you pay back the cash, I give you back your Bitcoin,
37:55
right? You don't need a token and but
37:59
you don't need a token. But it was very lucrative to
38:01
create a token for a lot of these companies.
38:04
But look at how that ended up. And another thing which I love
38:08
about you guys is you guys are Bitcoin.
38:11
You guys are a Bitcoin focus lending platform.
38:14
I believe the last time you told me it was like 95% of the loans
38:18
or something. Maybe it's even higher than that
38:21
are Bitcoin. I'm trying to contain my grid,
38:24
but there's going to be many, many great announcements coming
38:27
on this front. I will share today that 99% / 99
38:32
and that's going to keep going higher.
38:35
But I can. I can't really tell you much
38:37
more than that right now. I wish I could speak my say say
38:40
what's on my me and Marisa right now are talking through where
38:44
where I don't know. How do you when you talk without
38:46
saying words? Anyways, Opti, I know exactly
38:50
what you're thinking, what he says, what I'm trying to say.
38:52
Opti, what are your thoughts on this, man?
38:53
I mean, you were here, bro. We were making content.
38:55
We were in the trenches. Simply Bitcoin was tiny.
38:58
I think we had less than, you know, 10,000 subscribers on
39:02
YouTube, bro. You remember those days bro?
39:06
Block Fi and even Celsius or FTX, they, they definitely put a
39:12
big, you know, ugly stain on the Bitcoin industry at large.
39:15
And I think we're still kind of dealing with that.
39:18
And this story that that we just covered on Forbes is obviously,
39:22
I think as it said, you know, signs of it increasing.
39:24
But I do want to ask just Mauricio, you know, us more,
39:27
more pivoting it away from just the actual Forbes conversation.
39:30
But what exactly was in the Galaxy Report?
39:33
And I think that might be helpful for the audience as
39:34
well. Yeah, definitely.
39:36
So what the Galaxy report did is it it basically for the first
39:40
time since the collapse of many other other firms, Genesis used
39:44
to put out what was considered to be that sort of top report
39:48
around the industry where they broke down their book month over
39:51
month and and I think it was quarter over quarter.
39:53
And then this was treated, you know, by the industry at large
39:56
as this sort of, you know, the go to report of how the lending
39:59
industry was doing. Since they went down, no one had
40:03
actually come out, and no one was really large enough to put
40:06
out a report that was relevant enough to be treated as sort of
40:08
an industry benchmark. So what Galaxy did is they went
40:11
out to basically all the prominent players in the space
40:14
and they asked them to voluntarily share their data,
40:17
which we did at Lenin. And kudos to the other companies
40:19
that did so as well in in the spirit of transparency and
40:23
building a reference point for the industry.
40:26
And shout out to Alex Thorne, who, who was the guy that
40:29
reached out to me and, and, and I was chatting with about, you
40:31
know, putting the stuff together.
40:33
And so for the first time ever, what Galaxy did is it basically
40:37
combined all of our data and created what is an aggregate
40:41
view of the lending market. And it broke it down between,
40:44
you know, by lender and by type of lending.
40:47
So there's decentralized finance and there's centralized finance.
40:50
And so, So what you can take away or what you can see from
40:53
the report is effectively what market share each lending type
40:58
has within those different types of lending, what market shares
41:01
do the different players in each one has.
41:03
And it can sort of give you a glimpse on who's, you know,
41:07
who's at what particular space because obviously the rankings
41:11
and the size of these firms have shifted.
41:13
You know, before these companies collapsed, Leonard was a a a
41:16
very small player relative to the guys, you know, the likes of
41:19
Genesis and the likes of Block 5, even in Celsius, because
41:23
again, their benchmark at the time was assets size over the
41:28
assets. And because these guys were
41:30
adding all these random tokens left, right and center, they
41:34
would get, you know, every time they added, for example, chain
41:36
link, they would get a massive wave of chain link deposits and
41:39
it would balloon their assets and platform and make them look
41:41
bigger and bigger and bigger every time we didn't play that
41:43
game. And so we were always looked as
41:45
the slow boring, you know, Canadians or the little guys
41:48
back then. And I think Tour de Meister put
41:52
a really great tweet when referencing the report and he
41:55
says what I love about this report is that it makes it it
41:58
basically paints lending as they tortoise and the hare
42:00
competition right where at the beginning they the hair was
42:03
doing great and they look to be doing so much.
42:05
And all of a sudden the hair just poof, just disappears.
42:08
And here comes the tortoises. And you know, if you look at the
42:11
names like the the Forbes article said, these are a
42:14
familiar cast of survivors. Galaxy Latin and Tether have
42:18
been around for years. We were around, you know, a lot
42:21
of us predate or contemporaneous with the block fights in the
42:24
Celsius and those other companies that were there are
42:28
now defunct. We just didn't play the game of
42:32
trying to grab assets by supporting things that didn't
42:35
make sense. And because of that, we were
42:39
deemed as, you know, the slow, boring people.
42:42
But what this report shows is that the slow, the boring, the
42:46
consistent, that's what wins the race, right?
42:49
Like you are, you won't win. This is a marathon.
42:53
This isn't a Sprint. And we're running this thing
42:56
like a marathon. I won't let him to outlive me
42:58
and my kids, right. These are the guys are probably
43:01
worried about their next quarter bonus.
43:03
And I I think that's, that's really, really important because
43:07
the values that you have or you try to, you know, you try to
43:11
live to as a company, they get reflected in the things that you
43:14
do right. If somebody tells you they're in
43:16
this for the long run and all of a sudden they start adding all
43:19
these things that don't make sense, but it, it does kind of
43:23
give you a couple of headlines and grab some assets.
43:25
Don't, don't look at what I say, look at what I do.
43:27
And, and I keep saying that, you know, I, I, I have full
43:30
confidence that anyone that's trying to diligence let in and
43:33
go back and see all the things that we've done over the years,
43:35
we'll find nothing. But what I'm telling you now, we
43:39
have never made a decision that will give us an incremental
43:42
point on 1/4 at the expense of risking the business.
43:46
We've never done that. In fact, we were the guys that
43:48
refinanced the Celsius loan clients out of bankruptcy.
43:53
We took 70 or 68% of all the people that was that were trying
43:58
to refinance their loans out of the Celsius bankruptcy came to
44:00
let and the ones that didn't is because they were in
44:02
jurisdictions that we couldn't yet service.
44:04
And I've seen by the way at quick sidebar, I've seen a lot
44:07
of questions here around California.
44:09
I don't know if anybody saw the headline, but a few weeks back
44:11
we announced that we have, we have introduced our application
44:14
for California. So we are coming.
44:17
I will keep you posted on when that is, but it is coming.
44:20
I love it. Love it.
44:21
Yeah, man. I mean, look, the proof is in
44:23
the work, right? The proof is in the work.
44:25
You guys survived, and you guys obviously survived for a good
44:30
reason. And you guys never launched,
44:33
forgive my language, a shit coin.
44:34
You guys never launched A token. And I think, you know, that was
44:40
a major contribution. You guys, you know what?
44:42
What people perceived to be, you know, the slow Boring Company in
44:46
Canada, you guys, you guys did it correctly.
44:49
So when the price of Bitcoin started correcting and the, you
44:53
know, the House of Cards started falling, right?
44:56
You know, the people that did it correctly survived, right?
44:58
And it's so crazy because I don't know if you guys were
45:00
around for those days, but some of those platforms like Celsius
45:04
and Block Fight, they were getting so much attention.
45:08
They're getting so much attention and you know, now it's
45:12
essentially, you know, now it's a they're you know, some,
45:16
somewhere can like the guy was do they?
45:18
Even still around. Dude, no, they're in jail bro.
45:21
They're not even around, but they're in.
45:23
Jail so, so quick note, Mashinsky's sentencing is is May
45:27
8th so for for those interested, a lot of her clients are former
45:32
Celsius impacted clients. So I know they're interested in
45:36
this. So the sentencing will happen on
45:37
May 8th. And and yeah, I mean, it was a,
45:41
you know, thinking back to those days, it was a very frustrating
45:44
time to be in the space because or, or to be in the lending
45:48
space because we had people saying to us, you know, how come
45:53
a firm like Block Fi or a firm like Celsius can offer me loans
45:58
at such low interest rate and you guys can't?
46:02
And we would say, you know, we we had two choices at that time.
46:06
We could have turned around and said, OK, guys, we need to do
46:09
whatever it takes to go match these rates so that we can
46:12
compete with these guys. Or we could say, hell no, we
46:17
have no idea how they're doing this.
46:19
You better go ask them. But we're certainly not going to
46:21
go play that game. That was tough because I had, I
46:25
was on the withdrawal calls with a lot of my clients that were
46:28
either closing loans and taking them to block fire or Celsius
46:31
because they were giving them out for, for cheaper than we
46:33
were. And, or taking out, you know,
46:35
USDC to, to go put it out or, or tether to go put it out on all
46:39
these firms because they were paying higher, higher yield on
46:42
the dollar. So like, how could, how could a
46:44
firm be paying more for the dollars and charging less for
46:48
the loans at the same time? And I would try to convey this
46:54
to them on the call and I would say I and they said, how come,
46:58
how come they can do it and you can't?
47:00
And my answer to them was I, I live and breathe this thing.
47:04
I don't think there's a single person out there that works
47:06
harder than us. They might work as hard, but
47:09
they won't work harder than us. And we've like, our job here is
47:13
to find the cheapest and safest way to make these things get to
47:16
you. And I have no interest in going
47:20
through any type of bankruptcy process or adding any undue risk
47:23
to the business. So I'm going to, I can tell you
47:26
very clearly where my yield comes from, where my dollars
47:29
come from and why I have to charge you the rate that I can
47:32
that I have to charge you. And I can point to the things
47:34
and I can point to the rate that I pay on my dollars and I can
47:37
point to the rate that I charge on my loans.
47:40
How? Like you're looking at a company
47:42
that is paying 12% on dollars and lending you those dollars at
47:46
1%. How you ask them, you ask them
47:51
how they're doing it. I can't tell you how they're
47:53
doing it. I can tell you how I'm doing it.
47:54
And this is how my math works. These are these are my goal
47:57
posts. This is how the business works.
47:59
I will explain to you how I make money and how we can make these
48:02
products come to life. How can they do it on those
48:05
terms if they're playing by the same rules that I am?
48:08
And, you know, the sad answer is that most people didn't ask the
48:11
question. They just saw the big logos, the
48:13
big sponsorships, the big names. They were shaking hands with
48:16
people at all the conferences and doing all these keynotes.
48:19
And they felt warm and fuzzy. And they took all their most
48:22
precious acid at, at times, their life savings to some
48:25
people that ended up being, you know, dishonest.
48:28
And, and you know, for us, it was, it was, you know, we had to
48:34
say, we had to say go, you know, we, we, we had to say, you know,
48:37
we will process your withdrawal. We'll close your loan, go take
48:39
it there. But please, please ask them how
48:43
they're making this happen and understand the risks that you're
48:47
taking by doing this. I don't charge you the rate, I
48:50
charge you, man. But people, you know, people ask
48:52
us, why are your interest rates lower?
48:53
Do you think there's anything else that I do other than waking
48:56
up and think to myself, how can I make my rates go lower?
48:59
Like, do you actually think that I'm sitting there thinking, oh,
49:01
I'm going to hose everybody that's coming to take a loan?
49:04
Like that could not be further from the truth.
49:06
We fight to the nail to give people the best rates possible.
49:10
If somebody's out there giving you an A lower rate, most often
49:13
than not, it carries a lot more risk.
49:16
Can you get a cheaper loan than Lenin somewhere?
49:19
Yes, I'm sure you can get a cheaper loan than Lenin.
49:21
Will it be a safe? Will it be, you know, will you
49:24
have the same assurances? Will you have proof of reserves?
49:28
Will you have all the things that you should care for?
49:30
Probably not. So we're not here to build the
49:35
sort of the highest volume loan for the quarter.
49:38
We're here to build something that can be here in
49:41
2022202520352045 and this is the way we believe we can build it.
49:48
Yeah, absolutely, 100%. I mean, and again, I think the
49:52
the proof is in the pudding in terms of that was really ugly
49:57
what happened, right? And you guys are around, you
50:00
guys did it right. You guys didn't launch a shit
50:02
coin and you know, you, you guys obviously made the right moves
50:06
and that's obviously what, what got you here, guys?
50:10
We're going to talk more about letting during the news segment,
50:14
but before we're going to hit the culture segment and we're
50:17
going to be talking about El Salvador, the IMF.
50:20
They seem to be going back and forth.
50:22
Quite interesting where you get Mauricios thoughts?
50:24
And if we have time, we have a quick update for you guys.
50:27
Samurai wallet case update. Again, the reason this is so
50:31
important and a lot of this stuff has been walked back by
50:33
the Trump administration is the previous administration was
50:36
essentially trying to set the precedent that they could
50:40
sanction open source software. And the reason we brought that
50:44
up, we're like, look, you know what else is open source
50:46
software? Bitcoin, right?
50:48
So, you know, they kind of did this slow creep of sanctioning
50:52
Tornado Cash. I believe that got reversed.
50:55
And then when a a bunch of I think it was coin Center sued,
50:59
they lost the case as soon as they lost like a week after the
51:04
samurai guys were in jail. And you know, Samurai was
51:07
essentially sanction too. So anyways, we're going to be
51:11
talking about all this. We're going to be hitting more
51:13
questions on Leaden. But first, let's hit the culture
51:16
segment. We will be right back.
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Head over to leaden dot IO today All right, everybody, we are
53:22
back all right, let's get to this.
53:24
This is kind of weird. This is kind of funky.
53:26
I want to get Marisa's thoughts on this.
53:29
So kind of give a little bit of a like, you know, context,
53:32
right? So I believe there's politics
53:36
playing in real time. I think we're witnessing.
53:39
So essentially for anyone who hasn't been paying attention,
53:43
part of the conditions that the IMF gave to El Salvador for this
53:48
loan was essentially that they had to remove Bitcoin as legal
53:53
tender. But depending on how you look at
53:55
it, didn't really change because it was like, yes, Bitcoin isn't
53:58
legal tender in El Salvador, but you could still use it as a
54:01
currency. And there's no tax, there's no
54:06
capital gains tax implications when you use Bitcoin as it's
54:08
currency. So essentially they didn't want
54:10
the title. Now connect that with what
54:12
Howard Lutnick was saying in the beginning in terms of focusing
54:15
on commodity, commodity, commodity, not money, not money,
54:18
not money. I think the IMF really, really
54:21
wanted to emphasize the fact that Bitcoin is not money, is
54:25
not money. That's what they they really
54:26
focused on. But the thing that was happening
54:29
simultaneously was that Naimbu Kelly on Twitter literally kept
54:35
smash buying Bitcoin to the point that, like, Elon Musk was
54:38
in the comments, Naimbu Kelly was dropping memes of just like,
54:43
yeah, we're just going to keep buying Bitcoin.
54:45
And I think it got to the point where that it embarrassed the
54:48
IMF. And I think the IMF had no
54:50
choice but to essentially say, you know, what part of this
54:54
condition is that El Salvador, you can't buy Bitcoin.
54:58
Now, what's really interesting, when that announcement was made,
55:03
Naimbu Kelly, who's normally extremely active on on Twitter
55:07
on X, went radio silent for 24 hours.
55:11
His next post was exactly referencing that El Salvador was
55:16
going to continue buying Bitcoin.
55:20
And I remember when that happened, I actually posted this
55:23
and I was like, look, they're at a crossroads right now.
55:26
They essentially get to decide that they are their own
55:31
sovereign country with a democratically elected leader
55:35
and they have the right to do what they want with their money,
55:40
or they want a foreign institution that is
55:43
headquartered in Washington, DC to get to dictate what they can
55:48
and cannot do with their money, regardless of democracy.
55:51
Right. So that's the context I'm
55:54
providing. Now, a little bit of an update
55:57
on this saga. And I find it quite interesting
56:00
because we're essentially with social media.
56:01
You see politics in 4K right in front of you.
56:05
You get you get front row access to this.
56:09
Let's check out this dude from the IMFI believe this is Opti's
56:13
uncle. If my memory is called serves me
56:16
correctly Uncle, Uncle Opti or Opti Senior.
56:21
Let's check it out. I'm.
56:23
Sorry, El Salvad, let me say that I can confirm that they
56:28
continue to comply with their commitment of non accumulation
56:33
of Bitcoin by the overall fiscal sector, which is the performance
56:39
criteria that we have. So I will say, Opti, your
56:43
uncle's kind of a Dick, but just kidding.
56:48
That was a joke. That was a joke.
56:49
That was a bad joke. Very rude.
56:52
No, but it's weird because they're they're they're sending
56:56
us. They're sending us like what?
57:00
I don't understand what's happening.
57:02
Right. So this official from the IMF is
57:05
not actually Opti's uncle. He's very respectable gentleman
57:08
and he's basically saying, hey, you know what, like El Salvador
57:13
is complying with this. Here's Lena Tisha.
57:16
She she spent a lot of time in El Salvador and she's close.
57:20
She lives there now she lives there.
57:22
She just seems many people didn't catch the sly wording by
57:25
the IMF here. He doesn't say El Salvador stop
57:27
buying Bitcoin. He says, quote, they continue to
57:30
comply with their commitment of non accumulation.
57:33
Why does he talk about compliance with a commitment?
57:37
Because there's no order from the IMF for El Salvador to stop
57:39
buying Bitcoin today. He's talking about a future bet
57:42
benchmark that isn't even due. In other words, El Salvador is
57:46
complying because nobody is asking El Salvador to stop
57:48
stacking. Don't fall for the IMF wording.
57:51
They're trying very hard to make you think they're winning
57:54
against Bitcoin. Now here's Stacey Herbert, and
57:58
she says El Salvador continues building a perfect staircase
58:01
leading to prosperity, opportunity and new capital
58:03
markets for the country. Actions speak louder than words,
58:07
guys. The beauty of Bitcoin.
58:09
Oh, by the way, breaking news. I believe strategy released a
58:12
mempool a a dashboard as well. They'd be going public with that
58:18
would be effing massive, right? But again, that's why would they
58:22
brand it? I don't I don't know.
58:23
Anyways, we'll we'll wait and see.
58:25
What if if that news does break, but El Salvador keeps stacking,
58:31
right? And obviously Lena knows, right?
58:33
And again, you know, it's one thing what they're saying, but
58:37
if you actually pay attention to what El Salvador is doing, it
58:41
seems that they continue to stack Bitcoin, right?
58:44
It seems like it, right? I mean, the address is
58:47
published. So are they just moving Bitcoin
58:49
from 1 address to another? I mean, like, anyhow, the
58:53
president said they're stacking more Bitcoin.
58:56
Now. This whole thing is quite
58:58
interesting because if what Lena is saying is true, it means that
59:04
they're absolutely effing terrified.
59:09
And if you connect the dots with what Howard Lutnick was saying
59:12
in the beginning in terms of continuing to reemphasize that
59:15
Bitcoin is a commodity, A commodity, commodity, commodity,
59:18
the IMF seemed extremely concerned that Bitcoin was legal
59:23
tender. They they were very concerned
59:26
about that, remember. And if you look at El Salvador
59:29
from like an economic perspective, the country has a
59:31
$32 billion GDP. Elon Musk's net worth is like
59:35
250 billion. Just to give you guys a
59:37
perspective. This is a very small economy in
59:40
Central America. Why do they care so effing much
59:44
what this tiny little country wants to do?
59:47
And I remember there was so much momentum after Naimbu Kele made
59:50
his announcement at Bitcoin 2021 here in Miami.
59:53
I was like, there's going to be more countries that follow in
59:55
the footsteps of of Naimbu Kelly, make pick one legal
59:58
tender. But all of a sudden, it was very
59:59
strange. It's almost as if the momentum
1:00:01
stopped and I couldn't figure it out.
1:00:04
But then when this news started to drop, I was like, wait a
1:00:08
second, the IMF has dealings with like half the countries in
1:00:13
the world. Do you think any of those
1:00:16
countries are going to want to look at Bitcoin?
1:00:18
No, it's it's like IMF policy for them explicitly not to look
1:00:23
at Bitcoin. So you know, this is quite
1:00:25
interesting. And then this leads me to this
1:00:27
next part, which is Treasury Secretary Scott Besson.
1:00:33
So we know how he feels about Bitcoin.
1:00:36
He calls it gold. Very bullish.
1:00:38
The overall overall the Trump administration is full of
1:00:41
Bitcoiners or pro Bitcoin people.
1:00:43
You have RFK Junior Tulsi Gabbard spoke at the Bitcoin
1:00:46
conference. Like you have Howard Lepnick
1:00:48
who's speaking at the Bitcoin conference this year in in
1:00:51
Vegas. And you have David Sacks the the
1:00:54
White House crypto AISR. So you know, if the IMF is
1:01:01
messing with their bags, like obviously that doesn't make them
1:01:04
happy. So let's check out what Scott
1:01:07
Besson had to say. 1st, we must make the IMF the IMF again.
1:01:13
The IMS mission is to promote International Monetary
1:01:16
cooperation, facilitate the balanced growth of international
1:01:20
trade, encourage economic growth, and discourage harmful
1:01:24
policies like competitive exchange rate depreciation.
1:01:29
These are crucially important functions to support the US and
1:01:33
global economies. Instead, the IMF has suffered
1:01:37
from mission creep. The IMF was once unwavering in
1:01:42
its mission of promoting global monetary cooperation and
1:01:47
financial stability. Now it devotes disproportionate
1:01:51
time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and
1:01:55
social issues. These issues are not the IMF
1:02:00
mission, and the IMF focus in these areas is crowding out its
1:02:05
work on critical macroeconomic issues.
1:02:09
The IMF must be a brutal truth teller, and not just to some
1:02:14
members today. IMF.
1:02:18
The IMF has been whistling past the graveyard.
1:02:22
It's 2024 external sector report was entitled and balances
1:02:27
receding. This Pollyanna outlook is
1:02:30
symptomatic of an institution more dedicated to preserving the
1:02:34
status quo than answering the hard questions.
1:02:39
So I mean, that last part and you put the politics aside,
1:02:42
we're not really a political show.
1:02:44
I mean, Bitcoin, I don't know. We're not a political show in
1:02:46
that sense, right? But that last part, I do want to
1:02:50
play it again, right, because it's very powerful what he just
1:02:53
said. Bring the status quo, then
1:02:57
answering the hard question. Dedicated to preserving the
1:03:00
status quo, then answering the hard question.
1:03:04
The IMF is more dedicated to preserving the status quo than
1:03:09
answering the hard questions. And you could see how this
1:03:11
applies, right? It's, it's like, it's, I'm not
1:03:14
just seeing things like you could see how this applies to
1:03:16
this, right? And what is the status quo,
1:03:20
right? What is the status quo 'cause
1:03:22
they, they, they spent a, a ridiculous amount of energy.
1:03:25
And by the way, what, what? Oh man, I think what we found
1:03:31
out in the last five years is like a lot of the media isn't,
1:03:38
they don't exactly do, they don't exact, they're not very,
1:03:42
they're not accurate sometimes. And I think that we've, we kind
1:03:45
of found that out in the last couple of years.
1:03:48
And what really like caught my eye as someone who makes content
1:03:54
and is in the media business is how much attention they gave El
1:03:59
Salvador. Remember, El Salvador then
1:04:02
exists before it made Bitcoin legal tender.
1:04:04
As soon as they made Bitcoin legal tender, it's like like
1:04:09
Satan spawned out of the ground and all of the media just
1:04:13
focused on this small country that survived this crazy civil
1:04:18
war. And for the first time they have
1:04:20
relative security and they just went crazy.
1:04:24
And I was like, OK, something's why are they so hell bent?
1:04:27
Like why are they? And, and, and my honest
1:04:31
conclusion is it, I think it had to do with Bitcoin.
1:04:34
Like honestly, I think it has everything to do with Bitcoin.
1:04:37
So, you know, I, I showed you guys a picture of, of the two
1:04:41
first pro Bitcoin presidents outside the White House, Naimbu
1:04:43
Kelly, President Trump, you know, again, I don't think, I
1:04:49
don't think a lot of these things are coincidences.
1:04:51
I, I, I don't think you, you don't really have to read too
1:04:54
much into what he's saying, right?
1:04:56
They're more interested in preserving the status quo than
1:04:58
answering the hard questions. Like my question to them is, why
1:05:03
are they telling a sovereign country what they can and cannot
1:05:07
do with their money? That's pretty simple question.
1:05:10
Marisi, you have any thoughts on that?
1:05:12
A. Few.
1:05:16
So, OK, so I guess just just to sort of, I mean to share my
1:05:21
point of view on a few of the things that you've mentioned,
1:05:24
OK, the IMF, you can look at it as a political organization,
1:05:28
whatever is you want to look at it.
1:05:29
To me, I look at the IMF as a bank for countries.
1:05:32
OK, So what countries need money?
1:05:35
They go to the IMF for a loan or they go into the bond market.
1:05:38
Like there's three ways for for a country to raise money. 1,
1:05:41
you, you try to create your own bonds.
1:05:43
You raise the money from your own economy, which sucks because
1:05:46
you draw cash from your own economy and you kind of take it
1:05:50
away from it. And the second one is, and you
1:05:53
can do, and you'll do that in your local currency.
1:05:55
So if you have your local currency, you will issue the
1:05:57
bonds in that local currency to your local people.
1:06:01
The second one is you can try to sell them international crowd.
1:06:03
International crowd most often wants a U.S. dollar denominated
1:06:07
debt and they are, they can be a lot more demanding.
1:06:10
And the third option, which is the one that most countries tap
1:06:13
into when they find themselves challenged to raise domestically
1:06:18
or from the international bond market, is you show up at the
1:06:20
IMF and you say, hey, Mr. IMFI, need AI, need a loan, right?
1:06:25
And very similar to banks. When you go to banks and you ask
1:06:28
for a loan, they'll ask you, well, OK, well, what's your
1:06:30
income? What are your expenses?
1:06:32
What's your credit card debt? You know, what's your car lease?
1:06:36
And then eventually you say, well, I need $1,000,000.
1:06:39
They might come back to you and say, oh, you have too much
1:06:41
credit card debt. Oh, you're spending too much
1:06:43
money on this or oh, you're spending too much money on that.
1:06:46
And therefore, you know, it breaks our model.
1:06:48
We cannot give you this loan, right?
1:06:51
So like a bank, the IMF says, well, I'm going to fork you
1:06:55
these, you know, $2 billion, whatever the amount is.
1:06:59
What are your, what are you going to do with it?
1:07:01
And how are you going to pay me back, right?
1:07:03
And most often, I mean, if you're in the, if you're in the
1:07:06
shoes of the IMF, again, I'm not trying to defend the IMF by any
1:07:10
means. But if you showed up or for any
1:07:13
country showed up to the IMF and they said, hey, I need some
1:07:16
money. And then you said, OK, what are
1:07:18
you going to go do with it? And and then you tell the IMF,
1:07:20
well, I'm just going to go buy Bitcoin with it.
1:07:22
They'll say, well, you know, that's not really why we're
1:07:26
here. You know, we're here to kind of
1:07:27
help you develop things in a certain way that can make you
1:07:30
compatible for global trade and, you know, basically, you know,
1:07:34
make you a, a net positive to the world.
1:07:36
And perhaps what they're saying is we don't see Bitcoin as
1:07:39
something that's going to help others because we don't think
1:07:42
everyone has Bitcoin and such that when you buy it, it helps
1:07:46
everybody. We think that when you're buying
1:07:48
the Bitcoin and you're hoarding it and you're not using that
1:07:50
money to sort of develop other things in your economy to boost
1:07:52
trade or exports, it's not really the type of investment we
1:07:55
want to make as a bank, right? So when, when people go to the
1:07:59
IMF, they borrow money from the IMF.
1:08:02
So when when Buchelli at times is spending money, it is
1:08:05
spending the IM FS money in some ways, like some of that money
1:08:09
for that budget is coming from the debt financing he got from
1:08:12
the IMF. So in the same way that banks
1:08:15
can tell you I don't like that you have this much debt, I don't
1:08:18
like that your lease is this big, therefore we can't approve
1:08:21
this amount for you. The IMF is basically trying to
1:08:24
do its same thing. So it's it's, it's, it's strings
1:08:27
attached money, right? It's not no strings attached
1:08:31
money. And so that to me is now the the
1:08:36
other thing I will say is that Naibu Kelly understands this
1:08:39
incredibly well. And Naibu Kelly is a brilliant
1:08:44
politician. Don't forget, it was not too
1:08:47
long ago when he was announcing Bitcoins legal tender and then
1:08:52
he announced the volcano bonds. OK, the volcano bonds were his
1:08:55
sort of response to, oh, you're not going to give me money or
1:08:58
I'm not going to be able to source money through.
1:09:00
I'm gonna have no, no problem. I'm going to go source them
1:09:02
through these volcano bonds. And the volcano bonds never went
1:09:06
through. But he did actually issues
1:09:08
traditional bonds from El Salvador, which by the way, have
1:09:10
done phenomenally well. And for for those investors who
1:09:14
bought it at at the emission And what he did after the fact is,
1:09:19
is, is basically, it's basically it's pretty much like the art of
1:09:22
the deal. Like you see a lot of this in
1:09:23
politics where Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan tyrant, used to
1:09:28
do this often time. So ahead of an election he would
1:09:31
create was was some ridiculous threat.
1:09:35
For example, I don't know if you recall him threatening to invade
1:09:37
Guyana, right? And to have like a, a, a, a sort
1:09:42
of incursion into Guyana and people went up in arms and
1:09:44
thought, Oh my God, this is crazy.
1:09:46
And this is right up leading up to the election.
1:09:48
And then right before the election, he says, you know
1:09:51
what? We're we're just going to stay
1:09:53
out of Guyana. And then everybody thought he
1:09:54
was a moderate guy and came back and and you know, he obviously
1:09:58
stole the election anyway. But what I'm trying to say is
1:10:01
that this idea that you create the problem, you know, you, you
1:10:06
create you, you bring it here. And then you say, well, if you,
1:10:10
you know, to get the money, you have to tone it down this much.
1:10:13
But at the end of the day, it's a win.
1:10:14
Buchelli kept Bitcoin as a as an option for people in El Salvador
1:10:20
to use to stack the hold to spend.
1:10:22
And he got the money from the IMF, which made his bonds do
1:10:26
even better. And now he can kind of keep this
1:10:29
flywheel going of his own bonds to get to a point where you
1:10:33
don't need the IMF money. And once you do so you kind of
1:10:37
break the chains from the IMF and you'll be able to, you know,
1:10:41
continue. But but you will get there
1:10:43
faster if you're able to play ball with them, get the
1:10:45
financing, bridge you and then, you know, grow faster because of
1:10:50
it, right. And so I think there's a lot of
1:10:53
things at play, but I think the IMF is what the IMF is.
1:10:58
And Bukele, understanding the rules of the game, was able to
1:11:02
move his chest pieces in such way where he got this cake and
1:11:05
he gets to eat it too. Yeah, I mean, what a beautiful
1:11:09
summary, man. And just kind of breakdown of
1:11:12
just the politics involved and and again, it's interesting and
1:11:16
and yes, it is the art of the deal, right?
1:11:18
It's just aiming further than your mark, right.
1:11:21
And then you know what, what what seems as as, oh, you're
1:11:25
settling is actually what your your goal was.
1:11:28
But before you just aim so ridiculously high that yeah.
1:11:33
It's a huge win. I was in El Salvador for the
1:11:36
Plan B conference when the news of the legal tender broke.
1:11:40
And I remember thinking to myself, I remember thinking to
1:11:44
myself, he got the loan. Like I, I, I wasn't thinking at
1:11:48
all about, you know, IMF, you know, the legal tender, this
1:11:51
legal tender that my, my question was, and I was in El
1:11:53
Salvador talking to people and I said, Hey, what's changing for
1:11:57
you? They're like nothing, absolutely
1:11:59
nothing. I can still spend my Bitcoin.
1:12:01
I can still spend dollars. Nothing's changed for me other
1:12:04
than this guy just got a massive loan and that massive loan is
1:12:08
going to be used to power beautiful projects in El
1:12:11
Salvador, which can be tourism projects like all of us or not
1:12:16
all of us. A lot of us are going down
1:12:18
there. El Salvador needs more hotel
1:12:20
infrastructure. Is that a Bitcoin investment?
1:12:22
No. Can you use some of the IMF
1:12:23
money to further the investments of El Salvador tourism and then
1:12:26
by proxy increase the Bitcoin activity in your country?
1:12:30
Hell yes, right. How you know how you know how is
1:12:34
he able to continue buying that Bitcoin or or at least show that
1:12:38
Bitcoin? I'm I'm very curious or I'm very
1:12:41
interested in the language. Nowhere in the language that
1:12:44
I've seen on these posts have I seen El Salvador is buying
1:12:49
Bitcoin. This Bitcoin belongs to the
1:12:50
government of El Salvador. Everything is continues to build
1:12:53
a staircase, you know, continues to create and you know, a fun
1:12:57
for prosperity, fun for this and for that.
1:13:00
There are many things that you can do in the background to
1:13:05
comply with certain things. And, and I think I think Bukela
1:13:10
is a master at this and he's he's walking a fine line between
1:13:15
challenging the IMF but also working with them.
1:13:18
And I think he's winning. Yeah, I think he's absolutely
1:13:22
winning. And I think, you know, it's just
1:13:24
it's the the the success of that.
1:13:26
I was just there like a week ago, the six again, that part of
1:13:32
the world genuinely is not that safe.
1:13:35
Like it's just not that safe. And I think what he's been able
1:13:38
to do from a safety perspective and the amount of like, you
1:13:42
know, free advertising, right, that he got with the big, like,
1:13:47
it was ridiculous. And the tourism that the country
1:13:50
got, right. I mean, you have a Central
1:13:52
American leader and they're rolling out the red carpet at in
1:13:55
the White House, right? Like it's the real deal.
1:13:58
So, you know, very good. And again, this is a country.
1:14:02
This is, it was Opti who told me this.
1:14:04
I think it was like, this is a country that has a $32 billion
1:14:08
GDP. This is a very, very small
1:14:10
country and it's having a very it's, it's has an extremely big
1:14:14
impact for just the general size of the economy.
1:14:17
So I think he's done a great job and that was a great breakdown
1:14:21
by Mauricio. I want to add one last thing
1:14:25
because I think some people miss this one to talk about El
1:14:28
Salvador. What Najib Ukele has done to
1:14:32
turn El Salvador into the most from the most violent and
1:14:36
dangerous country in the world to now a place where Americans
1:14:41
can walk around old San Salvador with their iPhones out taking
1:14:45
photos is doing exponentially more for the people of El
1:14:51
Salvador to the average person of El Salvador, that Bitcoin
1:14:54
legal tender. And I know that we tend to grade
1:14:58
Buckele on on what he's doing for Bitcoin as this that's the
1:15:02
benchmark. I think that rightfully so,
1:15:05
coming from a person who grew up in a place where you couldn't be
1:15:08
up at a certain time, you couldn't crossover, cross a
1:15:10
certain St. have friends, you know, robbed, kidnapped,
1:15:13
etcetera. My wife was kidnapped.
1:15:16
What he's done for that country from a security perspective
1:15:21
dwarfs what he's done for them from a Bitcoin perspective.
1:15:25
And if you haven't been down there, I welcome you to go down
1:15:29
and walk down South Salvador and snap your iPhone photos and try
1:15:33
to go do that in Honduras or try to go do that in Guatemala.
1:15:41
And then tell me what you think is more meaningful.
1:15:44
Absolutely, one hundred, 100%. I completely agree.
1:15:48
Again, if you've you've spent time in the region, you've lived
1:15:51
in the region, you know exactly what Maurice was talking about.
1:15:55
You generally have to, you know, look over your shoulder.
1:15:58
You can't pull out your like that is a really bad idea,
1:16:01
right? And and I'll somebody you can
1:16:05
you feel I genuinely, I, I feel safe, right?
1:16:09
And you just you don't, you don't get those vibes.
1:16:11
You you will feel it like this is something that I can't
1:16:13
describe. Like you, you'll go and you'll
1:16:15
you'll understand like something, something is sketchy.
1:16:17
Your body will tell you this, right?
1:16:20
Instinctively. So anyways, guys, we're going to
1:16:23
move on, Nico. I, I, I know we're running
1:16:25
along. I just, I do want to say one
1:16:26
thing about the Scott Besson IMF stuff and this going on, you
1:16:31
know, not to rehash what Mauricio said or Nico said.
1:16:34
My main take away from this is I just love that the IMF is
1:16:37
getting called out from, you know, the highest position to
1:16:39
power. And you know, and I think all of
1:16:42
us here at simply Bitcoin in the chat, we constantly stressing
1:16:45
the importance of reading, you know, the economic hitman and
1:16:48
you'll understand why this is very important.
1:16:51
So I'll just leave it at that because we we are running along
1:16:54
today. All right, everybody, let's move
1:16:56
on to the next segment. We're going to talk about all
1:16:58
things let in. We will be right back.
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Anyhow, thank you Opti. I do want to address this
1:19:38
comment and by the way, appreciate.
1:19:40
Appreciate it bro. Thank you for the five great
1:19:43
British pounds and the comment was divided this by 21 million.
1:19:49
I do want to give a shout out to the live stream to 2089 people
1:19:53
watching live right now. If you guys are enjoying the
1:19:54
show, we're on the verge of breaking 200 likes on YouTube.
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Smash that like button. If you guys are enjoying the
1:20:00
content and again we're joined here by Mauricio.
1:20:03
Mauricio is the Co founder of leaden.
1:20:05
I saw a comment and I want to nip it in the butt because this
1:20:08
is what we do here on simply Bitcoin.
1:20:12
Where is it? Where is it?
1:20:14
Here, here it is. I found it hard.
1:20:17
Huddle says, hey, I know we talk sell sovereignty, but Lenin
1:20:21
wants your Bitcoin and repromote them 'cause they give us money
1:20:24
as a sponsor. Oh, and I also have a loan with
1:20:26
them. So Nico, OK, alright, so let's
1:20:28
talk about this. So OK, I'm number one, I'm a
1:20:34
business owner and #1 #2 I'm a bitcoiner, right?
1:20:37
So obviously as a bitcoiner, the goal should be to have more
1:20:42
Bitcoin than the day before. You don't want to sell your
1:20:45
Bitcoin. It's now Bitcoin has become a
1:20:49
stable coin. But two years ago, Bitcoin
1:20:51
wasn't a stable coin. Bitcoin used to go up and you
1:20:55
don't want to sell your Bitcoin. So what we do on this show, all
1:21:00
the sponsors that we have, all the partners that we have,
1:21:02
they're actual products that we use that have helped us in our
1:21:06
Bitcoin journey. Like for example, Casa is what I
1:21:09
recommend to my parents and my grandparents because I don't
1:21:11
trust taking self custody. I'll be honest with you, Leaden
1:21:14
is a great tool if you essentially you don't want to
1:21:17
sell your Bitcoin, but you want to unlock some of the liquidity
1:21:21
in your Bitcoin. So we're having to sell it.
1:21:23
Now does that come with trade-offs?
1:21:25
Of course, you have to be responsible because again,
1:21:29
Bitcoin is very volatile. If Bitcoin drops 50%, do you
1:21:32
have enough to essentially cover the the Because they're going to
1:21:36
ask you for more collateral, right?
1:21:37
Like you can get yourself into pickle, but if you're
1:21:40
responsible with it, it's a great tool that you can use to
1:21:45
essentially get cash without it being a taxable event and either
1:21:49
use that cast to be a degen and buy more Bitcoin.
1:21:52
I don't recommend that or use that cash to essentially fund
1:21:56
your business, which is what I've done here at simply right.
1:21:59
So yes, I mean, I'm all for it, like and yes, they are a
1:22:03
partner. But yes, I actually use the
1:22:05
product and yes, I actually use the product for you can use it
1:22:08
for whatever you want, but I use it for funding my business
1:22:12
without having to sell my, without having to sell my
1:22:14
Bitcoin. So yeah, I mean, it's a great
1:22:17
tool. Now I agree with the people
1:22:20
that, you know, are they, they come from this kind of like
1:22:24
purist standpoint, which is like, all right, man, I'm going
1:22:28
to have my Bitcoin, have it in self custody.
1:22:30
There's nothing like self custody.
1:22:32
That's 100% true. Like there is nothing that
1:22:35
replaces self custody. But at the same time, there are,
1:22:39
there are realities of #1 living of #1 #2 having a, a, a, a
1:22:45
business in Bitcoin and #3 like, it sucks to sell your Bitcoin.
1:22:51
It really does. And I, I would have a lot more
1:22:54
Bitcoin today if I didn't, if I didn't sell it like here and
1:22:56
there. Because at the time when Bitcoin
1:22:58
was what, when Bitcoin was $3500 or $1000, you're like, you know,
1:23:03
sell a couple, why not? And and you, you think about
1:23:05
that now you're like, holy, if I'm effing more on why did I do
1:23:10
that, right? So you kind of learn by like
1:23:13
burning your, your, your, your, your fingers on the metaphorical
1:23:17
stove. And you're like, OK, so
1:23:20
essentially, again, letting is a tool and you can use that tool
1:23:24
responsibly to help your business or to help your
1:23:27
purchases. Let's say your wife is like,
1:23:30
hey, listen, I'm tired of living in a one bedroom shack.
1:23:33
And you know, we've been huddling for 15 years and it I
1:23:37
think it's time to upgrade. I've had bitcoiners and
1:23:40
Maudicio, I'm sure some of your clients fit into this category.
1:23:44
They're effing oh geez, OK. They don't need like they got so
1:23:49
much Bitcoin. They don't need like they can
1:23:51
just sell, you know, 1/4 of it. Buy a mint.
1:23:57
They're like F, no, I'm not going to sell it.
1:24:00
I'm going to take a loan against it so I can keep my Bitcoin.
1:24:04
And the beautiful part about Bitcoin too, is that before it
1:24:08
became a stablecoin, it tended to go up, right?
1:24:11
So over time, the cash that you owe, you know, obviously there's
1:24:17
an interest rate. Bitcoins before it became a
1:24:20
stablecoin, bitcoins annual appreciation rate tended to be
1:24:24
bigger than the interest rate of the of of of the of the loan.
1:24:31
And you guys are a you guys offer a refinancing feature as
1:24:34
well. So you know, as the Fed lowers
1:24:37
rates, you guys could you you can essentially refinance the
1:24:39
loan. So what is your that's my take,
1:24:42
that's my response to the comment.
1:24:44
It's best to nip things in the butt.
1:24:46
But could you talk about this man?
1:24:48
Because I think people don't under, I think some of your
1:24:52
biggest clients, and this is a hunch, right?
1:24:55
I think some of your biggest clients are Ogs that are trying
1:24:59
to upgrade their lifestyle. But like, yo, I'm not going to
1:25:02
sell my stack. F that dude.
1:25:03
I have 1000 Bitcoin like I'm not going to sell my stack, right?
1:25:07
So. You, you, you know, you're
1:25:09
absolutely right. And again, for the privacy of
1:25:12
our clients, we're obviously never going to name names, but
1:25:15
most people that you know, you probably look at on a screen, a
1:25:18
lot of them are our clients. And I remember this one
1:25:22
distinctly because in this particular case, and this guy is
1:25:25
not a, not a content maker, but in this particular case, there
1:25:29
was one of our clients who had, you know, loads of Bitcoin and
1:25:33
he went, he wanted to buy a house very much the case that
1:25:36
you're laying out right now with his wife.
1:25:37
They were, I think they were having a second baby.
1:25:39
They needed a bigger space so that he came to me or he came to
1:25:43
us and he said, I'm going to buy, I want to buy this house.
1:25:46
Would you be able to give me, I think a couple $1,000,000 worth
1:25:51
of a loan back then to buy the house if I can't get it from the
1:25:55
bank? And I said, of course, you know,
1:25:58
go, go to the bank, try to, you know, try to buy it with their
1:26:02
money. Because if they can give it to
1:26:03
you at a lower interest rate, why would you need me?
1:26:05
Like, you know, try to get it from them.
1:26:07
So it goes to the bank and the bank says, you know, show me
1:26:11
your income. And no, the guy has many, many
1:26:14
bitcoins. He's basically retired.
1:26:16
And so in his, you know, in his tax incomes, whatever, like
1:26:20
what, what, and the money that he makes when he gets paid, he
1:26:22
had very little money. He wasn't getting paid very much
1:26:24
because most of his money was in assets, rightfully so.
1:26:27
So the bank says, no, we, we're not going to give you any money
1:26:31
to buy the house because a loan, many people think a mortgage is
1:26:34
a loan based on the value of the house.
1:26:36
It's not a mortgage is a loan based on your income backed by
1:26:39
the house. But if you don't have the
1:26:41
Bitcoin or if you don't have the income, you're never getting the
1:26:44
house, no matter how much cash you have on hand.
1:26:47
And so at this time, you know, we were, we had a pretty open
1:26:51
discussion and he said, you know, this is what I'm going to
1:26:53
do. I'm going to take out a loan
1:26:54
from you guys to buy the house. And then once I own the house,
1:26:59
certainly the bank will give me some extra cash based on that
1:27:02
asset and then I'll pay you, I'll partially repay the loan.
1:27:05
And I said, no problem. You know, you take the money at
1:27:07
Lennon, you can repay the loan at any time, no penalty,
1:27:10
fractionally, fully, whatever you want.
1:27:12
And so we, I said, no problem, go, you know, go do it.
1:27:15
So he takes a loan with us, goes and buys the house.
1:27:18
And then he goes to the bank again and says, OK, now I own
1:27:21
the house. Can you give me some cash at a
1:27:24
lower interest rate so I can go pay down the letter loan?
1:27:26
And the bank says still no, because again, we don't care
1:27:31
about that asset, we care about your income.
1:27:34
And so the reality of many Bitcoiners is that if you do
1:27:37
want to live on a Bitcoin standard, if you do want to have
1:27:40
most of your money in Bitcoin and minimize every aspect of
1:27:42
your Fiat life, you will not have access to these Fiat
1:27:47
products that many of us are used to like loans, credit
1:27:50
cards, things of that nature. So Bitcoiners and the reason we
1:27:55
started leaded was when I started mining Bitcoin back in
1:27:58
2015, we were building our mine. Obviously we got paid in
1:28:01
Bitcoin. We had Fiat expenses.
1:28:03
We wanted to grow the mine, reinvest, but nobody, the only
1:28:06
way to do so was to sell the Bitcoin to buy the equipment and
1:28:09
then wait for it to make more Bitcoin and potentially,
1:28:11
hopefully buy back, buy back the same Bitcoin in the not once was
1:28:16
I able to buy back the same amount of Bitcoin, you know, not
1:28:19
once. Every time I sold it and I got
1:28:22
enough money to buy it back, it was much higher.
1:28:24
So I never had the same amount of Bitcoin.
1:28:26
I was always getting left behind, left behind, left
1:28:27
behind. What I wanted was somebody that
1:28:30
said, hey, that's an asset. I'll lend you some dollars
1:28:32
against it. And when you pay me by and by
1:28:34
the way, keep the upside. I don't really care about the,
1:28:36
the, I don't really care about the, the, the Bitcoin itself as
1:28:40
long as it doesn't go down. You know, I have a collateral
1:28:42
that I can sell. Every single person back in
1:28:45
20/16/2017 laughed us out of the room.
1:28:48
They said Bitcoin's not an asset.
1:28:50
Why would you? Why would you not just sell it?
1:28:52
And you know, it was, it was at the, at the beginning it was
1:28:56
discouraging, but later we realized these guys were just
1:28:59
asleep at the wheel. And we, if we, if we got this
1:29:03
right, we were going to be one of the primary ways or, or you
1:29:06
know, I, I believe the primary way you can access financing
1:29:09
without selling your Bitcoin. And that's what we set out to
1:29:13
do. And still to this day, if you
1:29:16
show up to a bank and you tell them that you've been living on
1:29:20
the Fiat standard for the last five years, please give me a
1:29:22
credit card, they'll tell you get lost.
1:29:25
Now, the other thing that is very that is very special about
1:29:29
Bitcoin is that I believe and I have to check the stats because
1:29:33
I'm not freshen up on them right now.
1:29:35
But Bitcoin makes you know, for example, if Bitcoin moves 40% up
1:29:39
in a year, that 40% increase usually happens in four days, 5
1:29:45
days. So you have to be in the market
1:29:47
for those four days, for those five days.
1:29:49
It basically Bitcoin operates in like a step function, right?
1:29:52
And so the key to this is that you always need to be in the
1:29:56
market. If you're trying to came in and
1:29:58
out and time the market so that you can buy more, you're getting
1:30:02
wrecked, man, and you're never going to get the same amount of
1:30:05
Bitcoin back. That's not the game that we're
1:30:07
in. We're not traders.
1:30:08
We like holding on to things and let diamond inflation do its
1:30:12
thing. So for me, I think again, done
1:30:17
responsibly. If you look, just look at the
1:30:19
chart, every person that's used our loans responsibly since
1:30:22
we've been operating in 2018 has made money in the sense that has
1:30:26
created wealth by not having sold their Bitcoin.
1:30:30
The the, the interest is, is. I'll give you an example.
1:30:32
In 2024, our clients made about 8 times more money in the
1:30:38
appreciation of their collateral asset than the interest that
1:30:41
they paid us. And as more, more financing
1:30:47
comes into the space and competes to fund our loans, our
1:30:50
interest rates will go down. And as our interest rates will
1:30:53
go down, the things you can do with these loans will become
1:30:56
more and more and more because the hurdle rate of what you have
1:30:59
to make to cover the cost, aside from the appreciation of the
1:31:03
Bitcoin, it just gets easier when you're getting charged a
1:31:06
lower percentage, whatever it is that you're doing has to
1:31:09
generate less to cover the cost, right?
1:31:11
And, and, and forget about the upside of the, of the collateral
1:31:13
asset. So collateralized lending has
1:31:17
been happening since before coin money existed, like in, in the,
1:31:21
the, the, a couple of reference points here.
1:31:23
Before coin money existed, people were lending each other
1:31:26
seeds backed by goats and goats backed by gold.
1:31:29
Like lending is a natural human interaction and the first set of
1:31:35
human rules, the hammer rabbi code has a section to deal with
1:31:39
interest rates. So we, I don't believe are going
1:31:43
to get rid of loans either on a Bitcoin standard or on a buy
1:31:47
Bitcoin Fiat standard or any type of standard, because
1:31:49
lending is just part of commerce.
1:31:52
So for us, we saw Bitcoin as a way of, of solving a lot of the
1:31:57
problems with collateralized lending today, which is how can
1:32:00
I verify where your my collateral is being held?
1:32:02
Like how much easier is it if you look at a proof of reserve
1:32:05
support or or an acid address on the chain versus going and
1:32:08
checking somebody's vault and seeing if the goal has something
1:32:10
in it or having to melt the whole thing?
1:32:13
So Bitcoin solves so many problems that have plagued no
1:32:18
Fiat lending even. And we think it's just the
1:32:21
natural evolution of an activity that we've been doing for
1:32:26
thousands of years. And so again, you know, well,
1:32:30
there people people's views on certain things are also tainted
1:32:33
by their own life experiences, right?
1:32:35
Like maybe they were jaded by a lender.
1:32:37
You know, I know people that have just gotten screwed over by
1:32:39
block for in Celsius have a probably a different opinion on
1:32:42
lending that those that never did.
1:32:44
And by the way, though, though, that did a huge damage to the
1:32:47
industry because you know, it, it was a bad apple.
1:32:50
And now people got an idea on their heads about apples in
1:32:53
general, right. And so I, I think again, lending
1:32:57
is not going to go away. Our, our, our approach is that
1:33:02
we want to do it in the most responsible way and the most
1:33:04
sort of enduring way that this can be done.
1:33:06
Because if we do that right, then Bitcoin would do, it will
1:33:09
do its thing and our clients will make money.
1:33:11
And if our clients make money, we'll make money.
1:33:13
So that that's really what we're here for. 100%, man.
1:33:18
And, and I'm seeing some, some questions in the chat.
1:33:23
You know, what's the minimum loan?
1:33:24
The minimum loan is $500. I know you guys take a lot of
1:33:27
pride in that 'cause you guys want to be inclusive in terms of
1:33:31
'cause you guys have to understand, right?
1:33:32
Like most of the world is not playing with $10,000 or $20,000
1:33:38
or $30,000, right? And that's just something to
1:33:42
keep in mind. Seems like yeah, look, someone
1:33:45
had a bad experience. Block fi in the chat.
1:33:48
Yeah guys definitely recommend letting use them myself.
1:33:53
I think you guys get a a discount on the loans too if you
1:33:55
guys use the the code. You use the link.
1:33:59
Right here, you see, I'm we're, we're getting in trouble for
1:34:02
people not using people, people going like, hey, Mauricio.
1:34:05
I'm going to be like Opti. I'm going to be like Opti like
1:34:07
this, you know, but but no use the code you get a 25 bit
1:34:12
discount on the on the loans. Yeah, don't, don't just go
1:34:16
directly and say simply Bitcoin sign you because it gets us in
1:34:19
trouble, man. Use the link.
1:34:20
All right, everybody, I hope you guys enjoyed today's show.
1:34:23
If you did smash the like button and consider subscribing.
1:34:26
I'm your host, Nicos, my legendary Co host Optimus Fields
1:34:29
and again, the Co founder of Leaden in the house.
1:34:32
Mauricio, thank you so much for joining us guys.
1:34:34
We love you all and we'll see you tomorrow on the next one.
1:34:37
Today's episode was brought to you by bitcoinwell.com, a
1:34:40
Bitcoin only platform on a mission to enable financial
1:34:44
independence.